by Annie Bellet
“What are you doing?” She/I cried.
Sky Heart advanced on her/me. He was younger, stronger, his hair with its mane of feathers floating and flapping in the strong wind like wings. Shishishiel’s power hugged him like a dark mantle and she/I cringed.
“You are not Crow,” he said. “You have one last chance, fledgling. This is your final flight.”
“Please, please, no,” she/I begged him. Not Afraid had changed, he was crow. She would too, she was his twin, she needed more time. Even as she/I thought these things, we knew that there was nothing inside her, no power, no connection to an Other, an animal self.
Her/my only connection was to Not Afraid. He wasn’t here, but he was coming, her distress calling to him across the miles of forest.
Too late. Sky Heart lunged forward and grabbed her/my arms with bruising force. “Fly,” he yelled, his breath hot on her/my tearstained cheeks.
Then she/me flew, thrown off the cliff. One moment there was dirt beneath her/my bare feet, the next just sky. The clouds were steel above, unbroken, the sun hiding its face.
“Brother,” she/me screamed as the flying turned to falling.
I jerked away from Not Afraid just as I felt the horrible crushing pain of impact, pulling myself back to the present, back to life. I staggered, going to my knees, tears running down my face as his grief stayed with me, flooding my own senses. He had felt her die; her memories lived on in him. She might not have been shifter, but she was born a twin to one, born with inhuman blood in her veins no matter how human she appeared. Buttercup lived on in Not Afraid, lived on as Blood Mother. I was sure of it now.
“I found her in the cave,” Not Afraid murmured. He knelt down in front of me, his hands splayed in supplication. “That is where Sky Heart left them. He stripped her body, leaving her for animals to find and scatter the bones.”
The vision was over, but I still saw her broken shape, now naked and twisted, covered in blood and dirt, discarded like trash on the cave floor.
“How many?” I asked. “How long?”
“I have found sixty skulls,” he answered. “I started before; this is when I built the grave here in front. I tried to bury them, to quiet their spirits. That is when Blood Mother found me. There is only one way to quiet the dead. Justice, vengeance.”
“So you confronted Sky Heart, but he killed you.” I didn’t wait for him to nod before continuing. The pieces were falling into place. “How did you come back?”
“Some things are too important for death to stop. Blood Mother needed to regain her strength. And now Shishishiel has abandoned the People. Now was the time.” The blue light was back in his eyes, casting shadows on his gaunt face.
“If Sky Heart dies, justice will have been done. No one else will need to die.” I forced myself to meet those cold eyes.
“If they knew,” he said.
“If.” I cut him off. “That is a big if. I saw no one but Sky Heart in your sister’s memory.”
“I will kill them all if it means getting to Sky Heart.”
I believed that. “You said Shishishiel has abandoned him. Why can’t you get to him now?”
“There is still power in the stones, and Sky Heart carries a talisman. Like yours, but it keeps Blood Mother away. Without her help, I cannot kill him.”
Looking at his face, seeing the intensity there, the desperate need, I knew why he had risked bringing me here, why he had showed me the vision and the bones.
“You want me to let you in,” I said.
“You have power.” He reached toward my D20 talisman and I flinched back. No way was he getting his hands on that again. “Our needs are not so different. You want to stop the killings; I want to kill only Sky Heart. He is the end.” His expression grew more sly, and it was so adolescent and obvious I almost laughed.
Laughing would have been pretty bad, so I held it in. Teen boys do not like being laughed at and I doubted it would be any different with resurrected teen boys filled with the enraged spirit of their dead twin sister.
I leaned back on my heels, looking out over the ravine, looking away from the bones. He wanted to kill Sky Heart and he wanted my help. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I did not like Sky Heart, and that dislike was quickly turning to hatred in the aftermath of the vision. It was hard to deny the evidence that my grandfather was a coldblooded killer as well as a narcissistic cult leader. I had suspected that he had killed Ruby, my grandmother, but it wasn’t talked about and there had never been any evidence of it.
It would be simple to destroy the boundary, I thought. Magic like that worked as long as the anchors were sound. Destroy a boundary stone, and the magic should snap. Sky Heart’s talisman would be harder to get, but the danger of an object like that was once it was removed, it no longer protected the person. If I could get it away from him, keep him from fleeing in his crow form. That was a lot of ifs.
But Blood Mother, the spirit, had proven very tricky with her illusions in the forest the day before. She had tried to fuck with my emotions. I didn’t trust the spirit and that meant I couldn’t trust Not Afraid. The vision felt so real, the bones were real, and this place had the energy of sorrow and evil about it. All that I could accept. Perhaps.
“I will help you,” I said, meeting his cold gaze again. “But there are conditions.”
“What conditions?” he asked. His mouth pressed into a thin line and I guessed from the flicker and dance of blue fire in his eyes that neither he nor Blood Mother liked the idea of strings attached.
Well, bully for them. They wanted my help, they could suck it up and do it my way.
“I will speak with Sky Heart first. He will tell me the truth and when I have verified what you say about him is true, then and only then will I break the wards and let you in. And only if you give your oath, on the bones and memory of Buttercup, that no one else will be harmed, that Sky Heart’s death will end this and you will rest in peace.”
He considered that for longer than I liked, but perhaps him thinking it over was a good thing. Agreeing too quickly would have been suspect.
“How will you make him tell the truth?” he said finally.
“I have a spell for that,” I lied. It wasn’t really a permanent lie. I had a few hours of walking back to the camp to figure out how I was going to cast a truth spell. I had some ideas.
“We agree,” he said. “We give our oath. Killing Sky Heart will end our vengeance and justice will be done.”
I searched his face for signs of a lie, but found none. He had given an oath. In my heart it felt right. I wanted to trust him, and an oath given from a spirit like this was serious. Breaking oaths for supernaturals like ourselves wasn’t something done lightly. That would have to be enough.
Now I just had to figure out how to deal with Alek and Carlos. I doubted they were going to let me walk into camp, magically bind and interrogate Sky Heart, and then possibly let a murder happen.
As if reading my mind, Not Afraid spoke, “The lion and tiger have crossed the boundary. They hunt for you.”
Them being out of camp would make things easier. If they didn’t find me.
“Can you lead them away? Keep them busy until I can get back?” I asked. “Without hurting them,” I added.
“Yes.” Not Afraid flashed me a smile and for a moment looked as young as he had been when he died the first time. “I am good at being the deer.”
“All right,” I said. “You’ll have to point me in the right direction to get back.” I was going to do this. The killing had to end. As Not Afraid had said, justice needed doing, and it looked like it was up to me to see it done.
With grim thoughts and dangerous plans swirling through my head, I got to my feet and followed Not Afraid back into the woods.
I wasn’t as far from the ranch as I’d thought. The darkness had made the going very slow and it took me less time to return. The sun rose, cresting the trees, and I judged something like two or three hours had passed by the time I encountered th
e boundary stone I’d passed on my way out.
It was enough time for cold certainty to fight off my doubts. Enough time for me to come up with the basics of a plan. Three months before, a warlock had tried to turn some of my friends into living batteries. He’d been able to incapacitate shifters and trap them in their animal bodies. I had stopped him and eaten his heart, taking his power so I could free my friends.
I didn’t like going into Bernie’s memories, tapping into his knowledge. He hadn’t been a very sane or very nice man. I felt like it should have bothered me more to kill him, but every time I touched his power or accessed his knowledge I remembered why I wasn’t bothered at all.
I stopped at the stone and placed a small rock I’d picked up in the woods an hour before on top of it. I had filled the pebble with my power until I felt it wouldn’t hold more without blowing apart. Which it would, as soon as I told it to, in a blast designed to at least score if not break the boundary stone. The explosion would disrupt the ward.
If Sky Heart was guilty. I was sure he was, my mind going over and over the things Not Afraid had shown me and going over my own gut feelings about this place, about my grandfather.
But I would do what was right. I would cast my version of a circle of truth and I would hear his guilt from his own lips. I was sure this was the only way I could live with myself later. The murders had to stop but justice needed to be done, as well.
I looked around the gravel circle and saw a few people gathered in a group near one of the cabins, talking. The doors of one of the pole barns was wide open and there were sounds of people using tools inside. Further on I saw two women throwing pottery on wheels under the awning of another barn. The scene was more normal than it had been, domestic even.
As I stepped into the camp and walked toward the big house, I wished for a fleeting moment that Alek wasn’t off on a wild goose chase. I wanted to ask him what he thought, tell him about what I had discovered. I hesitated at the steps of the house. I was acting alone again, the way I was used to doing things. My whole life since Samir had killed my true family, the family of my heart, I’d been alone. I wasn’t used to having friends who I could trust with difficult things, friends who could handle themselves in the magical world. The real world.
Alek wasn’t here. I shook my head. This was my choice. My decision. I would learn the truth and I would stop these murders. Alek would understand that.
My thoughts felt like lies and I shoved them away. If he saw the bones. If he knew.
The door opened and Sky Heart stepped out onto the porch, taking away my last moments to think.
“You will leave,” he said, leveling the shotgun at me. “Now.”
No more hesitation. I caught the gun with my magic and yanked, ripping it free from his hands to clatter uselessly onto the boards. Then I pushed my magic into a circle using the knowledge I’d gained from the late Bernie the warlock. The power formed a ward, locking Sky Heart inside. I layered on a second spell courtesy of Bernie, a spell to keep him from reaching out to that other plane, from calling on his crow half and shifting.
What would have taken Bernie multiple items carefully researched and gathered and the power of a full moon and hours of ritual took me a couple of seconds.
Now for the coup de grace. Or as Harper would call it, the cup-dee-gracie.
I layered one more spell, forming my magic into a glowing white circle, envisioning the purity of truth, a light that pushed away all lies, all shadows, a light that would let nothing hide within it.
My head started to pound and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold the spells for long. Time for a chat with grandfather.
“Did you throw Not Afraid’s sister off a cliff?” I asked, keeping the question as unambiguous as I could.
Sky Heart’s mouth worked as he stood frozen inside my circles and his eyes blazed with rage.
“Yes,” he said, the words hissing out of his throat.
Was that enough? No. I wanted to know more. I wanted to hear him admit to all of it.
“How many children have you thrown off that cliff?” I said, my voice rising. Behind me I heard people moving, coming closer. Good, I thought. Let them come. Let them hear.
“Jade?” Pearl called out to me, but I ignored her.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell them, Sky Heart. Tell them all how you killed their children.”
“You don’t understand. You are exile. You are not one of us. You should be dead. I should have killed you when you were a baby. I let your mother keep you. I was weak and now we are all punished for it.” The hatred in his face shocked me and I almost lost the spells.
“How many?” I demanded. “Tell them.”
“I do not know,” he screamed. “All of them. All the ones who are not my people. They were abominations, insults to the pure blood of Shishishiel. Like you. Just like you.”
I reached out with a thread of power and found my exploding stone. A slight nudge of more power and it went off. A crack reverberated through the camp.
“No! What have you done,” Sky Heart shrieked.
I sprang forward, clearing the steps in a leap and broke my own circles by diving into them. I ripped the beaded bag from his neck, pulling him forward. I kicked his legs out from under him and jumped aside as he tumbled down the steps.
He sprang to his feet quicker than I expected and turned on me, snarling.
A huge crow dropped out of the clear sky like a comet of death, slamming into Sky Heart and carrying him back to the ground in a swirling cloud of feathers. He screamed as the crow’s unnaturally curved and sharp talons dug into his chest. Blue-white fire ripped into Sky Heart, flowing from the crow’s open beak.
He died screaming, his chest bursting open, as the crow ripped out his heart and turned it to ashes before my eyes.
I stood on the porch, the beaded bag in my hand, shaking as the adrenaline dump hit me in the aftermath of using so much power.
The crow, which I guessed was Not Afraid, looked up at me and cawed, his huge black wings spread.
“It is done,” I said. “Justice is done.”
“No.” Jasper was the first to reach Sky Heart’s body. He waved his arms at the giant crow as though he could shoo it away. “NO!” he cried again.
The crow looked at me and something in its gaze warned me, but not soon enough.
Not Afraid beat his wings and flew up into Jasper’s face, his talons hooking into my father’s chest. Blue fire spilled around them and Jasper screamed in pain.
I gathered my magic but couldn’t blast the crow without hitting Jasper. I jumped off the porch and attacked the crow with my hands, tearing at his feathers. Cold burned me, icy fire rippling up my arms. More on instinct than with clear thought, I thrust the beaded talisman around Not Afraid’s neck.
The Crow shrieked and shifted. Now I wrestled with Not Afraid himself. He looked fifteen but his body had a strength I couldn’t match. Jasper went down and Not Afraid shoved me off, then came after me, ripping the talisman bag from his neck. He was free of my father. Free and clear for me to blast the shit out of him.
I summoned my power and sent a bolt of pure force at him. It should have ripped him apart, but he merely staggered and then laughed. His hands and face were covered in blood. My father’s blood or Sky Heart’s, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.
“You broke your oath,” I said as I struggled to my feet.
“I had a prior oath.” He grinned at me, his gaunt and bloody face a death mask. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small rectangular piece of paper, tossing it onto the ground.
I ignored it and lunged for him, sending another bolt of power at his face. His eyes flared blue and he shifted to a giant crow again even as he leapt to meet me.
Wolf sprang between us, her huge body slamming into the crow and knocking it aside. I twisted and managed to avoid colliding with her as well. She spun and snarled, spit dripping from razor-sharp teeth as long as my fingers.
Not Afraid beat his
wings and lifted into the sky, circling once and then glowing with bright blue fire before disappearing into the sunlight like a ghost.
I let go of my magic, falling against Wolf’s warm body as exhaustion hit me like a drunk driver with a lead foot. My foggy brain realized someone was crying, pleading over and over for someone not to leave them.
Jasper. I opened my eyes.
He lay in a spreading pool of blood, his chest ripped open, his heart a smoking ruin within a mess of pink lung tissue and too-bright red blood. I knew he was dead. Even a shifter can’t heal a vital organ destroyed by fire.
Pearl knelt over him, his head in her lap, smoothing her hands over his hair again and again, her pleading a high keening, the words blending and melding until they meant nothing. Emerald stood behind Pearl, her face pale with shock, her green eyes wide and unseeing. As I watched, shudders and shakes took over her body and she dropped to her knees and clung to her mother.
Movement to my side caught my eye as something fluttered on the ground. The paper that Not Afraid had removed from his shirt.
Slowly, as though I had aged a thousand years, I staggered over and picked it up.
It was a post card.
I crumpled the post card in my hand, igniting it with a thought as I let it flutter toward the ground again. It was ash even as it hit.
A scream that shifted to a high-pitched snarl was my only warning. Em rose to her feet and sprang at me, shifting in midair into a white wolf. I threw my hands up and pushed magic out into a shield in front of me.
She bounced off the shield and twisted, landing on her feet. She sprang again and again I forced her away.
“Em,” I yelled. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Snarl. Leap. Bounce. Twist. Repeat.
Then people around us started shifting, turning into crows. They rose as a black swarm into the sky and descended at me, dive-bombing me like I was a bird of prey.
I pulled my power around me like a dome and hunkered down, throwing everything I had into keeping the shield up. Through the barrage of black wings I caught Pearl watching, Jasper’s head still in her lap, and I silently pleaded with her to stop this, to call them off.
