by Annie Bellet
“No,” he said and I could hear the head shake that came with it. “We’ve all got manacles on, hooked into the stone floor. I have a collar on that is also chained down. If I shift, it’ll kill me since I can’t shift out of it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Close your eyes. I’m going to make a light.”
“Make a light?”
I focused, trying to ignore the headache and my own fear, shoving it all away and focusing on my magic. No hands. No talisman. Well, I’d been practicing for this, right? I summoned a ball of light, just as I had out in front of the mine, though I kept this one small and blue tinted. By choice, not because I was exhausted and out of my element with no hands and no tools. That’s what I told myself.
I squinted against the light and looked around me. Carlos knelt next to me, a large black man, heavyset, though it looked to be mostly muscle, with dreads that fell below his shoulders, and golden brown eyes squinting back at me. His hair was a mess of pine needles and dirt and his clothes were streaked with dirt and dried blood. I guessed he hadn’t come very quietly. A metal collar with nasty spikes pointing inward decorated his throat and a thick manacle was bound to his leg, both tying him into a heavy ring in the middle of the small chamber with large chains.
Twisting my head to see beyond Carlos, I made out three small shapes huddled against the far wall, a camo-patterned blanket covering all three. A large chain connected to the ring disappeared under the blanket and I guessed they all must be tied to it somehow. One set of eyes blinked against the light, a boy, I thought, though it was hard to tell in the near darkness.
“Peter, Thomas, and Primrose?” I asked quietly as I twisted more, trying to sit upright.
“Yes,” Carlos said. He moved as best he could with the thick chain restraining him and helped to prop me up against the cold, damp wall.
“Why are we alive?” I said even more quietly. He was a shifter, I barely had to speak aloud for him to hear me, and I didn’t want the kids to overhear us if I could help it.
“This I don’t know. I think because we are not crow shifters. He told me I am not a part of things and I would be able to go once he was done.” Carlos shook his head. “The kids, I think he is waiting to see if they will change into crow or not.”
“That could be a few years,” I said. They were pretty young from what I could tell, years younger than Emerald. The knowledge that he had gone out of his way to keep Carlos and the children alive was somewhat comforting. Alek wasn’t a crow shifter, so even if the spirit and this Not Afraid guy got him, it didn’t seem like his fate would be full of organ removal.
“Time and logic are not things Not Afraid cares for,” Carlos said. He smiled briefly, his teeth flashing blue-white in the light.
“Bully for him,” I muttered. “I think he’s possessed by or working with a spirit. We have to get out of here.”
“Would love to, but…” Carlos motioned at his collar and then jiggled his leg, making the chains rattle. “The little ones are only tied by an ankle each as well, and to the same chain. But the steel is new, I can’t break it.”
He was implying, of course, that if a lion shifter, and a Justice at that, couldn’t break the metal, I had no hope. He was wrong. Probably.
Okay, I told myself. All you have to do is destroy the metal. You like destroying things.
The upside of sorcery is it is just raw power. It can be shaped to do or become just about anything if the will is there and if the raw power is there. The downside is that whole having to shape the power and have enough of it in the first place.
There was no way with my hands tied and no focus like my D20 that I would be able to keep up the light and somehow destroy my bindings. With the monumental headache I was nursing, the fact that my body had probably had to reconstruct part of my skull to heal me, and all the magic I’d already expended, I wasn’t sure I could even do what I wanted to do.
But I was dead sure that I wasn’t going to stay here and shit in a bucket while this Not Afraid dude and his evil spirit cohort slaughtered more people.
I let the light die. “Might want to back up,” I whispered to Carlos and waited until I heard him scoot away.
The easiest way to work magic you’ve never worked before is to have a path for it, a way for your brain to understand and enact the thing you want that won’t fuck with your worldview and physics and stuff too much. It was that whole stones and hands problem again. Fortunately, the way I’d learned to control and channel my magic was through Dungeons and Dragons, and DnD has a ton of spells in it. They wouldn’t do shit for a normal human, but in the hands of someone with actual magic, they aided my will and imagination, gave me a focus.
Rust Ray is one I’d used as Dungeon Master, not for realsies, on a party and nearly been lynched by the players. They kind of hate it when you destroy their gear.
“Touch attack,” I said softly to myself, focusing my power on the manacles around my wrists. I was touching them, so this could work. I pushed my magic at the metal, visualizing it corroding, weakening, rusting away under the onslaught of power. I twisted my arms, putting as much pressure on the metal as I could.
My magic stopped pouring through me, weakening to a trickle as I gasped, straining to hold the spell. My head throbbed and red danced across my eyelids as I squeezed my eyes shut in concentration.
The manacles broke with a discordant clang. I let my magic go and pulled my arms in front of myself, rubbing them to restore full feeling. A million tiny needles pricked at my skin and I turned my lower lip into hamburger as I resisted indulging in more whimpering.
“You all right?” Carlos said.
“Yeah. Hands are free. Just got to get my feet. Hang on.” I wasn’t sure I could call up more magic, but I did it anyway. If I hadn’t spent the last three months training and pulling on my reserves over and over, I don’t think I could have managed. Score one for exhaustive practice. Emphasis on exhaustive.
It was easier to rust the manacle on my leg. My hands discovered it was only one leg that was actually chained. The other was tightly duct taped to the metal, and I was able to rip the tape off without resorting to magic.
I crawled to Carlos, feeling for him in the darkness. “Hold very still,” I said.
I was ready to drink a horse trough worth of coffee and swear off ever doing magic again by the time I’d broken his collar, rusted out his leg binding, and freed all three children. I wasn’t sure I could even walk, my head spun so badly. I managed a small ball of light in one hand and hoped that Not Afraid and his spirit buddy were far, far away. I was in no condition to do more than pass out on them.
Carlos had a rapport with the kids, keeping them quiet as he bundled Primrose, the youngest who looked about six years old, into the blanket and motioned for the others to follow me.
We moved into the large chamber, Carlos sniffing the air and listening before he motioned me to keep going. I wanted to search the cavern for my necklace, but commonsense won out. Escape was more important. I led us back the way I’d come; every step seeming like it went nowhere, the walls tight and cold. One foot in front of another was the best I could manage, my head down, my whole being concentrating on walking and not losing the light.
Then there was light that wasn’t mine, daylight dimly piercing the way ahead. The ground had turned upward at some point and I’d been too exhausted to notice. The steep main shaft loomed ahead of me as I turned a corner toward the faint light. Fresh air. Sunlight. Being deep underground will make you appreciate the small things. I had no idea why an adventuring party would ever, ever, ever go into a dungeon. Idiots, clearly.
Just a few more feet, I told myself. Then I collapsed. Warm fur caught me and I heard someone behind me curse in Spanish. Wolf. She was here, under my half-prone body, lifting me up. I clung to her and managed to stumble upward, my thighs burning and my vision blurred to uselessness.
Then daylight. Full, glorious sunlight and the heat of a summer afternoon. We were out of the mine. Now w
e just had to get the kids back to the camp.
Alek was there, coming toward me with concern in his ice blue eyes.
“I’m okay,” I said, hopefully sounding more convincing than I looked. I didn’t want to think about how much dried blood was matted in my hair or how dirty I was. My kerchief hadn’t survived the head wound. Without needing to hang onto my magic, I felt slightly better. I still leaned heavily on Wolf, but my breathing was coming back under control and my eyes no longer felt like they were squeezing out of my head.
“Alek!”
“Carlos!”
The two men looked as though they might embrace, except Carlos still had a wide-eyed little girl in his arms.
Then Alek looked at me and I guessed from the look on his face that the sight wasn’t pretty.
“Are you all right?” he asked, gently touching the side of my face. Blood flaked off and I reached up, wondering where my kerchief had gone.
“You should see the other guy,” I said.
“I hope I do,” he said, his voice lowering into a growl. His eyes were glacial and promised violence upon whoever had hurt me.
I wanted to throw my arms around him and tell him I loved him right there. My romantic timing sucked, but being hit in the head and chained up underground had apparently clarified some things for me.
“Alek,” I started to say but he shook his head slightly, softening the negation with one of his slight smiles.
“Back to camp,” Alek said. “Then we will talk.”
“I don’t know if the kids can walk that far, after being chained so long,” Carlos said.
“I can walk,” one of the boys said. Peter, I thought. He looked the least pale and weak of the two boys. Two weeks underground and chained wouldn’t have been good for anyone, much less a little kid.
“I bet you can,” Alek said. “But would you rather ride a tiger?”
Peter and Thomas looked at him, then at each other, then back at him, their dark brown eyes suspicious. “I don’t see no tiger,” Peter said.
Alek smiled and shifted. One moment he was a huge Viking of a man, the next a giant tiger. Dire tiger, Harper called him. It wasn’t a bad description. Shifter animal forms are more like the Platonic ideal of the animal than any realistic version. They are bigger, prettier, stronger, faster. A giant white tiger is one of the most beautiful and most terrifying things ever. Alek was lovely and scary as fuck, is what I’m saying.
Carlos lifted the wide-eyes boys onto his back. A tiger isn’t made for riding, but I knew they would cling and Alek would take it carefully. It wasn’t like their combined weight would give him back problems.
“I wanna ride tiger,” Primrose said, clutching at the blanket.
“How about you ride a lion instead?” Carlos asked her. “You had better ride with her, Jade, keep her on.”
It was a testament to how tenuous and dangerous the situation was that he would allow a virtual stranger onto his back. I was about to say I had my own ride, but glanced around and realized Wolf was missing again. Great.
“Come on, Primrose,” I said with what I hoped was a nice smile. “Let’s ride a lion.”
If Alek was a dire tiger, Carlos was definitely a dire lion. His ruddy mane reminded me of Narnia movies and I struggled not to make an Aslan joke. It didn’t hurt that my brain was so fried and in pain that I couldn’t come up with a good one anyway.
I put Primrose up onto lion Carlos’s back and then climbed on. He rose up and I gripped his mane with one hand and held onto the little girl with my other arm. Alek and Carlos moved through the woods in big, ground-eating strides.
It seemed to take no time at all to get back to camp. I felt the hum of the wards on the boundary stones and then we were through the ferns and out of the woods. The People were gathered around the big house, much as they had been when Alek and I arrived.
Sky Heart was there, standing over an indigo-wrapped body laid out on a stretcher. Wildflowers in little bunches were strewn around and the air was solemn, no one talking until we emerged into the big clearing. A woman cried out and ran toward me, reaching for Primrose, who squirmed and called out “Mommy.” I let her go, sliding to the ground as Carlos dropped low to let us off his back.
Staggering to keep my feet, I looked up and my eyes met Sky Heart’s own. They were red, puffy, and full of fear.
For a long moment we were swamped with people asking questions, relatives claiming the children. Carlos and Alek shifted back to human form, but none of us were able to answer much in the clamor and press of bodies. I swayed on my feet but forced myself to push gently through, heading toward Sky Heart. That man had things to answer for and I wasn’t going to be shoved aside like yesterday. Whatever was going on, I had a strong feeling it began with the leader of the Crow.
I got through the crowd and stopped, facing Sky Heart over the corpse.
“Who is Not Afraid?” I asked him. I knew his keen shifter hearing would be able to catch my words.
“I do not answer to you, exile,” he said, the fear in his face morphing into rage as he looked at me.
“Good thing I now have two Justices with me then, isn’t it?” I shot back. “You may pretend you are outside all laws, but I hear the Nine don’t take well to shifters killing shifters. If you caused this somehow…”
He cut me off with an angry cry like the hunting shriek of a hawk and shifted. His huge crow form lumbered into the air with angry wing-beats, scattering the bunches of flowers and blowing dust into my face. Sky Heart fled into the tall trees surrounding the big house and disappeared among the shadowed high branches.
I stood over the corpse, too tired and shocked to react. A hand touched my arm and I jerked sideways.
“Come,” Pearl said. Her dark eyes held only sorrow. “You may use our bath. Then we will talk.”
“Damn right we will,” I muttered.
She ignored my ungracious comment and led me through the crowd. I caught Alek’s eye and he gave one of his gallic shrugs that I took to mean I should just learn what I could and we’d talk later. I hoped that now they had brought the children home safely, the People would be more inclined to let the Justices help, more inclined to share what they knew. Maybe I’m still naïve, or maybe I’d been hit harder in the head than I thought.
I’d been hit pretty damn hard. The mirror in the single bathroom in my old home revealed a thick pink scar along the side of my face that was slowly fading out as my body did its quick healing thing. Bruising would take longer to heal, unfortunately, but at least my vision wasn’t impeded by swelling. The side of my head was caked with flaking dried blood, my hair was a nest of pine needles and dirt, and my clothes looked like someone had dragged me over a mud-covered cheese grater. I felt naked without my talisman and rubbed my chest where it usually rested.
Not Afraid had better start being afraid, I thought. I wasn’t going to forgive that theft, not that I would forgive the murders either. Or the being hit in the face with a two-by-four or bat or whatever the hell that had been. His list of transgressions was substantial.
I stripped and washed off the worst of the grime before running the hottest bath I could stand and sinking into it. My hair floated out around me like ink and I sighed. It would be a bitch to untangle and braid again, but relaxing completely in the hot water and letting the dirt and blood soak out of my skin was worth it.
Pearl knocked and then came in before I could respond. For a moment I wanted to order her out, but she was my mother still in some ways. She’d wiped my ass as a kid and breastfed me. I didn’t have anything she hadn’t seen before. Bonus was that it meant I could question her without having to move.
“Why do you stay here? Any of you?” I said. It wasn’t the question I’d meant to lead with, but Sky Heart’s fear and anger bordered on insane. It was worse than I remembered from when I was a kid. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed back then.
“It is our home,” Pearl said. “Without Shishishiel to protect us, who knows what might happen. Th
e world is not a very nice place.”
I almost started to argue that there was a lot of good out there, freedom, people who didn’t throw people out who weren’t like them, but then I thought about how it might be for someone who had lived in a bubble for centuries. And I thought, fleetingly, about Samir. There was a lot of evil in the world.
Yet, hiding from it hadn’t helped me, and it didn’t seem to have helped the People. Evil had still found them.
“Are you sure Shishishiel still protects you?” I said.
“Yes.” Her tone allowed no further questions along those lines and I decided to take a hint and drop it. She set down the folded stack of clothing and pulled over a small wooden stool from the vanity.
“Who is Not Afraid?” I asked.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“Carlos, the other Justice. He talked to the guy who has been killing your people. That was the name he gave.” I watched her face carefully, but her expression was guarded; only a slight tension about the mouth and eyes giving away any emotion at all, and I wasn’t sure what that emotion was yet.
“A little more than a hundred years ago, there was a murder like these ones. It only happened once then, because Sky Heart caught the man responsible and he was executed. That man was called William Not Afraid. He is dead. Whoever this man is, he cannot be Not Afraid.” She shook her head emphatically, as though it would help make her words true.
“Who did Not Afraid kill back then?” That was what I envisioned a cop on Law and Order asking. Trace the original crime, see what started that, then you could find out why there was a copycat. Of course, cops didn’t have to contend with near immortal beings, magic, or spirits. Lucky them.
“Opal,” Pearl said softly. “Sky Heart’s second wife.”
Figured he would be at the center of this. “Did he ever tell you why?” I didn’t clarify if I meant Sky Heart or Not Afraid, because I didn’t care how she took it. Either would do if she had an answer, so I left it deliberately ambiguous.
“No. It may have had something to do with Not Afraid’s twin sister. That is what I have always suspected, but Sky Heart won’t speak of it.” She looked down at her hands and picked at imaginary lint on her jeans.
