by Laura Bickle
But the cold glare in Dalton’s eyes was foreign to me, a killer look I’d never seen before. He shot the man again.
“He’s dead,” Renan affirmed. “That’s beyond any shifter’s ability to cure.”
Dalton’s shoulders sagged, as if a weight had not been lifted from him, but doubled on his shoulders.
More shots rang out in the distance in the direction of the house.
“C’mon,” Renan said, pulling me to the field. I ran as fast as I could, grasses lashing my knees.
The fight here had gone sideways, fast.
A helicopter swept over the field, blades slicing the air with a deafening roar and a blinding spotlight. I glanced to the left to see Halley, kneeling in the grass, concentrating with all her might to create this illusion. And it had to be an illusion; the helicopter blades didn’t churn the grass.
In the spotlight, a man with a flaming sword shielded his eyes. Silva, in maned wolf form, ducked out of the light, running straight for Halley.
I screamed, running as fast as I could, but there was no way I was going to reach Halley in time.
A yellow shape bounded across the grass and plowed into the maned wolf, knocking him off target.
“Bristol!” I yelled.
The maned wolf turned to snarl at Bristol, who stood his ground, barking his head off. Renan rushed the man with the sword, and the sword doused itself. They rolled on the ground, and I hoped that a grass fire wasn’t imminent.
I took a shot at Silva. I missed, and the maned wolf slunk low into the grass, evading my sight. And I was out of ammo. I reached into my jacket pocket for more, but my extras must have fallen out in the creek. I swore colorfully.
Starr screamed, and I turned.
The barn was on fire. One of Silva’s men was slinging fireballs into the barn walls like a kid playing dodgeball. The flames licked the exterior of the building, rushing around the corner toward the door.
I launched myself at the barn, to the door. Ripping the door open, I heard the horses screaming inside.
“Luna, get back!” Dalton’s arms were around my waist, hauling me away from the barn. I kicked and fought against him, screaming, but I was no match for his superior strength.
Tears ran down my face. “I can’t let them burn!”
“You can’t help them!”
The mage with the fireball stood before the barn, silhouetted in wicked glory. I stomped on Dalton’s foot and smashed the back of my head against the bridge of his nose. I was stronger than I used to be, and I reveled in it for that moment.
I reached to my belt for the awl and threw it at the mage. I said a prayer to the Goddess and my ancestors for this terrible weapon to fly true.
It lodged in his back. The fire playing at his fingertips faded, and he fell like a ton of bricks. He convulsed in the grass, shrieking, and I saw that his skin was being flayed from his body, staining the grass red.
I turned back to the barn doors, but the blaze was too hot. I flung my hands up, feeling the blisters popping up on my skin.
Celeste shoved me aside, as if I were a little girl trying to play with adult magic. She stood before me, her hands balled into fists and hair blowing wildly in the backdraft. Magic crackled around her in a tangible aura. She lifted her hands and thrust them toward the barn, as if she flung the heaviest object she could muster at an attacker.
Wind rolled up, a terrible wind that screamed down into the valley. Windchimes shrieked, and the grass flattened. Clouds swept across the sky at impossible speed. Shingles ripped from the roof of the house, and one smacked me in the back of my head. I fell to the ground, clinging to the grass with my fingers. Trees groaned and fell in the forest. The illusory helicopter above flickered and vanished.
A dull roar sounded, like a tornado. It swept down, tearing everything in its path, sweeping into the field and slamming into the barn. It bellowed through the open door, through the hayloft, exhaling straw and frass and tools into the darkness like a god blowing out a birthday candle. I watched in shocked amazement as the roof was torn from the barn, shearing off in metal sheets to land in the field.
And the fire...the fire blew out.
The wind died, as suddenly as it was whipped up.
Celeste put her arms back down to her sides and stood silently, staring at the barn.
I scrambled to my feet and charged into the barn. Dalton was behind me. We found the horses, chickens, and the goats mostly unharmed. I saw a few burns and singed feathers, but nothing permanently damaging. I herded the animals out, pushing them out into the field. I found Taffy, the skunk, hiding in a water trough with Marvin, the peacock, and a dozen mice swimming for dear life. I overturned the trough to rescue them, heart pounding. Marvin ran screaming into the night, bedraggled and horrified.
I lurched out of the barn, scanning for more threats. Where was Silva?
He had taken the shape of a man and was running across the field, away from the barn with three of his men. There was no sign of Renan. I shouted after Silva, furious, but he was beyond reach.
A pale shape glided in from the forest. It swept down and plucked something from Silva’s neck. Silva slapped and punched at it, but the bird skimmed up and away, winging toward me.
Awestruck, I extended my arm. An owl lit on my wrist, and I winced as her claws chewed through my ruined jacket into my flesh.
“Athena,” I gasped.
In her beak was the Tooth of Thralls that Silva had strung on a necklace. I took it from her. “Thank you,” I whispered.
She bobbed her head up and down. The man told Renan that he couldn’t have this. I figured it had to be important.
“It is.” I didn’t know how it worked, but I could feel power buzzing in it, ancient and warm. I pocketed it. “Where’s Renan?”
She pumped her wings and flew at low altitude over the flattened grasses. I followed her, heart in my mouth, afraid that I’d find Renan dead in the field.
I nearly tripped over him. He lay still, face down in the grass. I knelt and turned him over. He was still breathing, though he’d lost a lot of blood.
“Is he going to survive?” Halley asked, crouching down. Blood ran down her face, but she seemed as whole as anyone else.
“I think so,” I said. “His wounds are already growing shallower. I think that...with a shifter, if you don’t kill them, then they heal. I think.” I wasn’t sure what the rules were, but I needed to know, now that I’d invited this curse into my life. I placed my hand on his face. His breathing was already evening out.
An anguished shriek sounded across the field. Halley and I exchanged glances. That shriek was unmistakable.
“Starr,” we said in unison.
I left Renan’s side to rush back to the barn. Starr was sitting on the ground, cradling Celeste in her arms.
“What happened?” I demanded, falling to my knees. I took Celeste’s pulse. It was erratic, too fast. Her eyes were glazed and she stared into space.
“I don’t know,” Starr sobbed. “She just grabbed her chest and fell.”
I pressed my ear to her chest. “I think she’s had a heart attack. We need to get the squad out here, right now...” But I knew that it could be a half-hour before the volunteer fire department could be here. “We have to bring her to the clinic. I’ll get her started on an antiplatelet agent...”
Her pulse fell away from my ear. It just stopped. I lifted my head and shook her, but she didn’t respond. I yanked my aunt out of Starr’s arms, laid her on the ground, and began chest compressions. I counted to myself feverishly, pumping until my arms ached, tears dripping down on her sooty shirt. She was wearing that turquoise sequined shirt that I always said was too over the top for cooking dinner.
“Come on,” I sobbed. “Come on.”
I tried to summon the warmth to my hands I’d felt with Dalton and Bristol, that warmth that kept blood from leaking away, that quiet power that healed vast wounds. I willed it to come to me, tried to push it from my hands with all the
force I could muster to make Celeste’s heart beat once more. I tried to force life back into her, but my hands were cold and her chest was still.
Starr reached out and placed her hands over mine. “Luna. She’s gone.”
“She can’t be gone. She...” And I looked into Starr’s eyes and realized what she was saying.
Starr nodded.
“She’s gone,” I repeated. I sat back on my heels and my shoulders slumped. A sob wracked my body.
“Look.” Halley’s hand was on my shoulder. I looked up.
Halley pointed to a figure. It was Celeste, outlined in golden light. It wasn’t the Celeste we’d always known, older and cranky. This was Celeste in her prime, spine straight, crackling with power and wind tangling in her red hair without the slightest bit of grey in it. She smiled at us, her kohled eyes crinkling. She was wearing a completely over the top dress that looked as if it belonged to a movie star on the red carpet.
And she turned away, walking through that windswept field to the graveyard. We watched her until she sunk into the ground, to be with Estelle, our mother, and the rest of the Summerwoods.
“WE’RE THE LAST. THE last of the Summerwoods.”
I stood in my only black dress in the graveyard, my shoes sinking into mud. My sisters and I stared at the sharp tombstone we’d had dragged in with a backhoe to place above Celeste’s grave. State law grandfathered in family burials to family burial plots, and we hadn’t had to embalm Celeste or place a casket in a grave liner. We buried her as the Summerwoods had always been buried, wrapped in a shroud in a grave dug by hand. Once the coroner had confirmed that she’d died of a heart attack, the body had been returned to us. We’d washed her body and wrapped her with flowers and herbs, tying the shroud tightly around her body. We had cried, laughed, and ached the whole time.
In that time, Dalton and Renan had begun to make repairs to the farm, tacking up shingles and getting creative with tarps. An insurance adjuster had called the wind that Celeste had called down a “freak microburst,” and offered enough money to repair the roof to the house and replace the decrepit barn, which had been written off as a total loss. Hiring out these fixes would be slow going in the spring, when most everyone in the county was out planting. Dalton and Renan had made sure that the old barn was still structurally sound enough to serve for now, reinforcing the walls and trusses until the new one could be constructed.
We did not dig graves for the Casimir who had died here. Dalton had summoned Sandy and the rest of the Sheriff’s Office. The coroner had been unable to explain how two men had been found without skinned, and Dalton put forward the idea that this was part of the group’s occult practices. No fingerprints were possible from them, though prints had been successfully taken from some of the others. A single thumbprint turned out to be connected to the theft of an ancient garment purported to be the Veil of Isis in Cairo. Aside from that, it was as if none of the Casimir existed. No one had come forth to claim the bodies, and they remained in the morgue, silent and still.
It had taken all of us a day to dig Celeste’s grave. Renan and Dalton had helped. Even Bristol did, though I told him he needed to keep his incision clean. We had dug the grave last night and ended as a full moon rose on the horizon. We buried her under the full moon, heaping that dirt upon the hole we’d made. In the dark, no one had seen our tears.
The next night, we had come to make offerings. We’d cleaned up and made flower garlands of spring blooms: peonies and dogwood blossoms and lavender. It was like we were little girls again, decorating the graves of the dead.
We three sisters stood there, arms linked. We said the chants for the dead that we all knew by heart:
“As above, so below.
“As within, so without.
“In the ever after,
“You carry the blessings of my heart.”
The power in the ground moved up my legs, settled into my spine, and swept out my hands, flowing like water.
“I had been afraid that Celeste’s death might have closed the well,” Halley said. “But it didn’t, no more than the deaths of other witches on the property had done.”
Starr sighed. “It might have been easier if she had. If the power were shut off, Silva couldn’t use it.”
“But it’s not,” I said. “And we have to protect it from him. He’s still out there, somewhere.” My fingers flitted to my pocket, where the Tooth of Thralls lay. I still hadn’t figured out what to do with it, but I knew that it held the key to shapeshifting. I only had to learn how to unlock it.
“We’ll be ready for him,” Halley said.
Holding hands, we left the graveyard. Three dogs were waiting for us at the edge of it: A maned wolf, a wolf, and a yellow Labrador who smelled like he’d rolled in something rotten.
I wrinkled my nose. “Bristol. What did you—”
He gave me a doggy grin, danced away from me, and plunged away into the field, toward the sagging barn. The other two canines turned and followed.
I watched their tails move above the grass.
We had lost family. But also gained it in this place, the source of magic.
Luna’s story continues in Mane Shift Book Two: Shifting Summer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs and sometimes reads them to her cats. Her books have earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Laura’s work has also been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016. The latest updates on her work can be found at authorlaurabickle.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my wonderful editor, Samantha Groom, for your laser focus and sharp insights. Thank you to my wonderful husband for being in my corner, and to Roxanne Rhoads at Bewitching Book Tours for publicity and moral support. Thanks to Merrie Destefano for blurb help and showing me the bright side of life. And a big shout out to the always-amazing Danielle Fine for her inspiring cover art.
NOVELS BY LAURA BICKLE
Mane Shift Series
Shifting Silence
Crow’s Curse Series
Morrigan’s Blood
Morrigan’s Bite
Morrigan’s Bond
Crow’s Curse Collection
Fantasy Novellas
Winter’s Last Reign
The Wildlands Series
Dark Alchemy
Mercury Retrograde
Nine of Stars
Witch Creek
Phoenix Falling
The Hallowed Ones Series
The Hallowed Ones
The Outside
The Anya Kalinczyk Series
Embers
Sparks
Ashes
YA Urban and Rural Fantasies
The Dragon’s Playlist
Flesh
Pawned
