by Beth Dranoff
“If she’s just a dream,” Anshell called back to him, “then why do you keep trying to catch her in your net?”
“I’m not,” replied Ezra.
“I am,” called out the female who had laughed while Ezra had tortured me. A voice I wouldn’t soon forget. “Give her up or your pack dies. Anshell Williams, leader of the Seven Moons pack, will be leader of nothing but bloodless corpses. King of bloodless bones!”
She laughed at her own macabre joke. Then she clapped her hands together and the pairs of glowing eyes stepped forward, each with their hands—claws, I corrected myself—wrapped around the neck of a clan mate.
I could smell the salty-coppery scent mixed with wet fur from here. Also the fear, as the Vine Tattoo Girl—Anika—was thrust forward. Above the tendrils etched into her skin was a trail of beaded blood, pearl drops of red. A necklace of life cut short.
In a flash she was flanked by two vampires, ghouls with long slavering tongues that lapped at the blood seeping from her jugular. I couldn’t move. And even if I could, there was nothing that I could do to stop this scene, this series of actions already in motion.
Nothing, whispered the wind. Nothing. Just wait.
From behind the vamps, two blue ice demons glided forward. They swept their bows to all of us, their waiting audience, ostensibly to be sure they had our collectively rapt attention. I couldn’t speak for anyone else just then, but I sure as hell wasn’t looking elsewhere. Male and female? One was definitely larger than the other, with the stereotypically burly-broad shoulders of a linebacker—inter-dimensional or otherwise—while the other was smaller, more rounded, fractionally more delicate. I was as surprised as anyone, maybe, when the smaller one let out a deep guttural groan and stepped forward to lay a hand on the bleeding woman. The larger one, with a whistling, higher-pitched squeak, lay its hand across the seeping throat and fused the gash in place with a swathe of twinkling blue frost.
Then they opened their palms and raised up their hands as though in supplication to the ripe moon. Tendrils of wispy blue frosted smoke seeped out of their slack-lipped mouths. The shimmering ice-tinged particles wrapped themselves around the woman, curling and swirling faster and faster. Her eyes were wide despite her clenched fists of bravado.
“Stop,” said Anshell. “She is not part of this.”
“If they stop now, she will bleed out before you can get to her,” Alina said. “Frost is the only thing holding her life in place. Would you deny her that life? For someone who doesn’t even belong to you?”
Anshell didn’t answer immediately, scanning the shadows of the trees for any sign of his crew. Alina took his silence as an opportunity to show a bit more of her hand. Pressing her luscious cherry-red lips together and whistling. Once, twice.
We followed her gaze to where at least a dozen clan shifters, in various states of animal to naked human form, were being held by their throats by twice that number of vampires and flanked by twice that number again of glittering blue frost demons.
We were well and truly screwed.
Anshell continued as though he hadn’t noticed.
“You are in contravention of the Inter-Species, Multi-Dimensional Accord of Non-Interference,” he called out. The Accord of what now? “This act is one of unprovoked aggression and will be punishable by the Council Forces if you don’t release mine forthwith.”
Alina laughed a mirthless bark. It was the first nonsexual thing I’d seen her do all evening. Unless maybe someone was into that barking thing.
“You think those fools will help you?” Alina made a show of slow-motion head shaking and tsk-tsking. “Who do you think whispers the sweetest of sweet nothings in their many, many, many pointed ears?” She licked her lips, leaving a trailing sheen of saliva behind. “As luscious as you are,” she continued, “and mmm, but you are a prize specimen, you’ve got nothing on me and mine. You are outnumbered. Plus, you care what happens to your minions, which makes you weaker than me.”
Anshell said nothing. The great mystical leader in whom I’d put my trust, and all he could say was nothing? Where was his plan B?
Anshell looked across the gloom directly at me. Oh yeah. He could read my thoughts. Damn.
He blinked. Once, twice. And then he vanished, taking Sam along with him. At least I thought it was Sam.
“Be cool,” Sam whispered in my ear. I jumped involuntarily anyway. He was behind me, naked, the bristle from his unshaven face rough against my cheek. I felt his hands on my upper arms, rubbing up and down, whether warming himself or me I wasn’t sure. Sparks shot from my nerve endings everywhere he touched. I was no longer cold.
I realized I was human again. From one blink to the next. No wonder Sam was reminding me to chill.
As if it was possible to be cool around him. The man was heat incarnate, his nearness distracting even as he wrapped me in a blanket of protective comfort.
“I’m fine,” I said instead. As though I wasn’t freaking out at my loss of control, at the potential of my impending doom.
He nodded, breath warm in my ear, and then he was gone.
* * *
There was a flash as lightning brightened the sky and the scene in all its desperate beauty. White and grey and red and blue. Thunder rumbled so hard it felt like the earth shook a moment in response. But it was Toronto, and winter, and while snow-smothered thunder and lightning storms were rare, frost quakes were rarer still.
I was alone—arms outstretched, standing as the rain and snow came down, dotting my arms with moisture. Another flash and I saw silhouettes of others, but they seemed tiny, far away from my vantage point, like cockroaches scuttling beneath rocks and leaves. Never mind that there were no leaves right now, only layers of packed-down death and decay moldering, semi-frozen, in the frosted earth below. Never mind that just moments, minutes, hours before I had been thrashing around on the ground in the painful throes of my first almost completely full shift.
Now I was naked from the waist up, partially clothed from the waist down, and drenched fully in moisture as rivulets of semi-frozen liquid drew a pattern of veins and living writhing snakes through the curls of my hair and down along my shoulders and sides and in between my breasts. I raised my arms and felt pinpricks of cold on my fingertips. Paws with needle-sharp claws. Then I was fully human again. Did I do that? Recognizing my bits and ends and expectations and limitations.
Plus I was naked on the beach without feeling cold. Nifty.
Another flash, another bang of thunder. No time to ponder my belly button as fighting broke out all around me again. I had a feeling it had been going on before that as well. Could I have been that distracted? But then I ducked out of the way as a blue crystal-encrusted warty fist headed towards my ear.
It was as though no time had passed, and I was immersed in another one of Anshell’s full taste-touch-feel hallucinations. Except my now was actually now—and had the power to end my current timeline and existence for real.
Through the fray, a pattern was shaping and re-shaping itself. I felt rather than saw Anshell and Sam heading towards me. There was a rush of cool air, the lightest feather touch, and the cold storm of heat that was Jon fanned out behind me.
We were untouched, even by the spray of scattered blood and crystals highlighted by the moon. Protection magic of some kind? Everyone else was fighting and screeching and dying.
For me? In spite of me? I hoped I was worth it.
“Here,” Jon said, handing me a T-shirt and sweater. I had no idea where my bra had gone or what shape it was in now. Again? This was getting to be a thing around Jon. “Ritual doesn’t require you to be frozen.”
I shrugged on the layers and felt immediately better.
“Where to?” The flow of blood and crystals and fur and nails was distracting. I didn’t want anyone else dying for me. Seriously, how was it that none of th
e fray was touching us? It felt as though we were wrapped in a protective bubble that pulled and distorted in spots but never let any of the bad through.
Still, I was grateful—I knew the pack was providing a necessary distraction for what we were going to try to do. Me, Anshell and Claude with Sam and Jon watching our backs.
It would work. Right?
* * *
Ten minutes later found us away from the battle.
I was trying not to shiver.
Thanks to whatever weirdness was going on with my blood and that whole semi-shifter ability I seemed to have developed over the last few days, it’s not like I was feeling the cold for real. I knew intellectually that it was cold out, could feel my nose hairs stick to themselves as a reminder that the temperature was not exactly suntan, sunscreen and umbrella-on-the-beach weather. It was a different kind of chill I was feeling. That sinking, snaking, crawling prick of fear rippling along my spine telling me to be anywhere but here where I was now. Clearly I was leaning more towards the flight aspect of this whole potential scenario here.
“What are you thinking, girl?”
I shook my head at Anshell’s words.
Didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to feel either.
“It’s okay,” Sam said, coming up beside me. “The fighting isn’t here.” I scented him and he smelled like pack. Familiar, and yet different from me. He was wearing a shirt, pale blue denim, which was open and hanging loose against his skin. I wanted to push aside the fabric and nuzzle into the crook of his neck, taste that spot behind his ear. A faint smile wisped the edge of his mouth as though he knew what I was thinking. Maybe he did. “The pack will hold off the others for as long as they can. As long as it takes.”
“What takes?” I shook my head to clear it. Sort of worked. I had a curious gnawing feeling in my gut, a hamster on a spinning wheel, a hunger for...for what? Popcorn? I shook my head again.
Guess my skull was thicker than I’d realized. Either that or it was muffled by the fur that had been sucked back into my pores. Science and everything I knew about biology could not adequately explain the metaphysical conundrum that had pounds of fluffy full-body-coverage fur vanish into nothingness when shifting back to human. I didn’t put on fur weight—even though logically speaking I should be at least ten to twenty pounds more. Did it dissolve? Or did something else happen to it?
All of which had nothing to do with what was going on in the here and now. Plus, Anshell had been speaking while I’d been spacing. I wondered if it was important, what he’d been saying.
“So you understand,” Anshell said. “You know what comes next? Do you consent? Remember—you need to say the word.”
“Huh?” Very eloquent, Dana. But it did convey my I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about response to Anshell’s request for verbal affirmation. Even though I did. Focus, Dana.
“Do you understand what comes next?” It seemed as though Anshell was having a hard time with patience. His voice was tight and his features kept blurring, and I didn’t think it was my eyes this time.
Just in case, I rubbed them. Nope. Anshell was still smudged. I turned around to see more.
Sam was cat and man, layers of feline superimposed onto human. The man was muscles and an orange glow with light that seemed to burn from within, some kind of large fiery feline mixed with what could have been a snow leopard. White with spots. Beneath it all was man.
Before me were rings of fire. Rocks and pebbles scattered in a symbol of infinity. The flames burned blue and red and green; within each center spun a strangely tear-shaped vortex of light and dark and shadow.
Anshell extended his hand to me across the fire. His arms came into focus, patterns of hair in flèches pointing towards the ends of his fingers. Sparks poking out from where he ended and the air around us began. Intermingled energies.
What had they called me? A prism?
“You know what needs to be done,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied. Even my voice sounded strange to me, as though wrapped in layers of different atmospheric pressure zones. My back was prickling.
“May I?” Jon touched the inside of my wrist with two fingers, lightly.
I had to shed a few drops of blood. Right. And of course Jon would be the logical one to help with that. Because vampire. Among other things. Even though we’d never truly shared blood before, and it still kind of grossed me out. Did he usually brush his teeth afterwards? Was that even a thing? Focus. Would it hurt? Think about something else. Fuck. Okay. If I was going to spill my blood this one time, Jon may as well get some pleasure out of it because I sure as hell wasn’t. I glanced at Sam; got the chin bob of approval before I looked away.
Deep breath. I could do this.
“Okay,” I said.
Jon nodded, and the hint of fang in his smile highlighted the predator I knew he was capable of being. I braced myself for the pain, sharpness puncturing skin; instead I felt the brush of lips, a feathering tickle and a surge of something other than hurt. And in that moment there was only Jon and me and oh! and nothing else mattered.
It wasn’t our physical relationship that was complicated.
I didn’t even feel him bite me, as high as I was on the wave of Jon-induced endorphins I was riding. Wow. Only vaguely aware as he wrapped his fingers loose around my wrist and shook a few drops of blood from it, gentle, on to the ground in front of us before licking the tiny wounds closed.
“Take off your sweater and shirt,” Anshell said.
“Um, no, I don’t think so.” Even as I became aware, again, of the pain scattering once more across the back I couldn’t see. My voice now hollow, reverberating sound along a long spiral plastic tube. Still. It was cold out—at least the last time I’d checked—and the logical part of my brain banged its fists against the doorway of my sanity, pointing out reasonably that removing my shirt in such temperatures on the say-so of some guy I couldn’t even keep in focus was not something I wanted to be doing.
My back was really starting to prickle now, with the fabric of my shirt sticking to points on my skin. It was the strangest sensation.
It burned.
“Dana, take off your sweater and shirt,” Anshell repeated. Maybe he had something there. I was starting to feel the cotton melt like bubbling wax against places that should have been ice. In fewer seconds than I had fingers on my hand, my T-shirt was off and thrown to the side.
My skin still burned. I felt Sam slinking up behind me, felt his warmth drawing out an answering fire from my back as he leaned in to look closer.
“It’s your spots,” he said. Breath hot against my spine, drawing goose bumps. “They’re glowing.”
Anshell came over to take a look and whistled through the space between his teeth.
I was getting a bad feeling about all of this.
“Tell me again—”
The tension I’d been holding in my breath exhaled just a bit as I recognized the husky melody of Jon’s voice.
“Why are you really interested in her?”
“She’s kind of cute,” said Sam. “And a damned good fighter.”
I rolled my eyes. Sam was baiting Jon. Fortunately, Jon had had a lot more years to get in touch with his inner Buddha and wasn’t grabbing this worm.
“Anshell?” Jon turned to catch the pack leader in his gaze, dismissing Sam.
“It has already begun,” said Anshell.
“The time for dancing has begun / upon her back has cast the sun / all aglow in misty purpose / as the Evil calls to its service.” Celandra did a hip shimmy and slid out from the shadows towards the fire. “There below the midnight moon / twice before has shone its doom / calls to home its errant daughter / all her foes now meant for slaughter.” Celandra raised her hands up towards the light of the moon and clapped, twice. Drama queen. “Then ther
e is but one who can / stand before her to a man / on her back will point the way / to the worlds must be kept at bay.”
“Celandra,” I said. “Could you possibly be a little less cryptic?”
She leveled her smoky-grey gaze to mine and raised a bony finger to point. At me. I closed my mouth. There was something in her eyes that slithered up my spine and froze the words against my tongue.
“Unless the fire horse spins its wheel / until the Glormath hears the appeal / all will be lost and there for naught / so many great warriors will be caught.” Celandra spun and spun until I felt dizzy, but I could not look away. Her eerie words spun in my head along with her hair. “Light and dark begin anew / fire and ice and fur there too / but the one who bears the blood...”
“Is marked for life to block the flood,” Anshell finished. The great leader was looking a little shocky himself. Celandra nodded her approval.
“Were you taught how it ends?”
Anshell shook his head at the dragon’s question. “Only that the one who bears the marks will burn with the path of the bridge between this world and the next,” he said. “But I always thought it was a children’s song. Do you think...?” Anshell’s words trailed but his eyes were on me, flicking back and forth to Celandra for confirmation. That I was some kind of lynchpin for a prophecy uttered by a dragon woman a few brimstone crumbs short of a full and fiery loaf of sanity.
Celandra said nothing but arched a single bushy, tufted eyebrow at Anshell. I could have sworn I saw something crawling along one of the curled hairs. Ick. Anshell sighed and nodded.
“Um hello? Semi-naked girl standing here waiting for information, please?” I tapped my booted foot in a show of demonstrable impatience. Jon touched my shoulder, possibly in a show of support, and...oh, wow. The burning in my back felt cooler. Less painful. Relief.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” Jon replied with a mock-gallant tilt of his head.
“So...we’re thinking now that Alina is preparing a ritual to open the door between the first and second worlds?” Sam stepped forward, motioning to the infinity fire pit and I moved in closer to look. To my right was a circle of lights and flaring points of blue and green weaving around what could have been Alina in the middle. To my left was the infinity flame loop replicated in miniature—was that Anshell, Sam, Celandra, Jon and myself there? What the...?
