“As you prefer.”
We walked in silence for several minutes. I knew he was waiting for me to ask. But I wasn’t going to. I had no intention of asking. There was no way in hell I was going to ask.
I asked anyway. “What prophecy?”
His smile was smug. “From a goddess two lines diverged, but they shall be reunited in Victory.”
“That could mean anything. I don’t see how it makes me part of your ‘new world order.’ ”
“I fail to see how it could be clearer. In you, Victory, the two lines—demi-human and demi-demon, Cerddorion and Meibion Avagddu—will become one again.”
“But—”
Pryce gestured, like he was swatting away my stupidity. “Don’t you get it? It means you’re destined to be the mother of my sons.”
I nearly tripped over my own feet. No way, no how, would I ever let Pryce touch me, let alone that way. If he wanted to hear the pitter-patter of little cloven hooves, he’d have to find someone else to beget his demon brood upon.
I turned to tell him so, and he punched me in my solar plexus.
The air whuffed out of my lungs as I doubled over. Pryce stepped back, and I twisted away. The wooden staff whooshed past my head, clipped my shoulder in a starburst of pain, and slammed into the ground.
I couldn’t get a breath.
The staff disappeared. As Pryce lifted it, I launched myself forward, head-butting him in the stomach. He grunted, staggering.
Rape. The ugly word clanged like an alarm bell in my head as I reached for the knife in my boot. He knows I’ll never give him what he wants, so he’s going to rape me.
There was no knife.
I was just taking a daytime walk, damn it. I hadn’t gone armed. Maenllyd was supposed to be safe.
My lungs started working again. I felt dizzy with the rush of oxygen, but I straightened, keeping my knees bent in a fighting stance. Pryce swung the staff at me like a club.
I jumped back, and he pressed forward, swinging the staff. His face twisted in an ugly scowl. He gave a particularly vicious swing, and as soon as the staff swept away from me, back toward his shoulder, I rushed in and smashed his knee with a stomp kick.
There was a pop. Pryce screamed and gripped his knee with one hand.
I wrenched the staff from his other hand and swung it as hard as I could, slamming it into his side. He flew sideways and hit the ground, one leg stretched out, the other bent at a weird angle.
I raised the staff to bring it down on his head. Why not? He’d tried to do it to me. The asshole wanted to rape me. I was acting in self-defense. He deserved to die. He deserved to be annihilated.
Fiery pain slashed my right arm. My demon mark glowed red.
Do it, something urged. Crack open his skull. Smash his face to a bloody pulp. Kill him. Kill him now! DO IT!
Cutting through that urging came Mab’s calm voice: You must be purely yourself.
Purity.
Shit.
It didn’t matter what Pryce deserved. The rage, the overwhelming compulsion to pound his head into a grisly mosaic—those didn’t come from me. They came from the demon mark, and I would not let that control me.
I would not kill anyone lying injured and helpless on the ground.
I hurled the staff like a javelin, as far as I could throw it. It landed among the sheep. The animals bleated and ran.
The voice clamoring for blood grew silent. My demon mark cooled, paled to pink.
At my feet, Pryce moaned. I kicked his shin, hard enough to get his attention.
He twisted his head to look at me. Sweat coated his forehead.
“If you ever try to rape me again,” I said, “I’ll kill you.”
He moaned and closed his eyes. Then he disappeared.
What the—? I stared at the place he’d lain a second ago. Something hit me hard from behind, knocking me onto my hands and knees. A vicious kick, then another, cracked my ribs. A shoe smashed into my nose. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. Pain exploded in my back, my sides, my head. I curled up, covering my head with my arms and trying to make myself too small to be a target. The attack continued, the blows kept coming, and the world dissolved into an agonizing haze of hurting, hurting, hurting.
Then it stopped.
Something grabbed my hair and yanked my head up. “Understand one thing, cousin,” Pryce’s voice growled in my ear. “I’ve no need to take by force what is mine by destiny.”
He let go, shoving my head back onto the ground. Cloth rustled. I blinked the blood out of my eyes and squinted up at him. He stood over me, whole and unhurt. “I wanted to see what you’re made of,” he said, “and I must say your performance was disappointing. It worries me. Prophecies, after all, are tricky things. So I’m glad for the tests.”
Tests. The word drifted on a dark sea of pain. I couldn’t grab hold of it. What was he talking about?
His voice changed, becoming loud and echo-y, like he was shouting across a canyon. “There will be three tests. If you survive them, I’ll know you are fated to bear my sons.”
Light flashed; tremors shook the earth. When the quaking stopped, I was alone.
19
EVERYTHING HURT. I TRIED TO TAKE AN INVENTORY OF MY injuries, but the individual pains blended into one big ball of agony. I knew several ribs had cracked, my nose was broken, and probably my right arm, too. My liver and kidneys throbbed with pain. One eye swelled shut; the other was a mere slit. I coughed, and pain wracked my chest. Bloody mucus spewed onto the ground.
When I tried to sit up, pain stabbed me in so many places I gave up and fell back to the ground. I had two choices. I coughed up more blood, then groaned. Make that three choices: I could just die right now. But I wouldn’t let Pryce win so easily.
So, two choices: I could lie here and wait for Mab to send a search party. But that would take hours, especially because she didn’t know which way I’d set out walking. Cold seeped from the ground into my fractured bones. I didn’t know if I’d make it that long.
Or I could shift. Shifting would fix my broken bones. Soft tissue was trickier. My internal injuries might heal imperfectly, or not at all. And the effort of making the shift might require more energy than I could summon. If I tried to shift and failed, I’d be left in this battered form, too weak to heal. I’d die before Mab could find me.
A freezing raindrop hit my face. More followed, a few random splatters that soon became a steady downpour. Each drop felt like a needle of ice piercing my flesh. I couldn’t lie here helpless until someone happened to find me, wounded and half-frozen. What if no one did? And what if Pryce came back?
There was really only one choice. I’d have to try shifting.
A gentle bleat wafted across the field, and I remembered the flock of sheep we’d seen. Pryce had nothing but contempt for the creatures, but right now they sounded like safety to me. I could hide among them. If Pryce returned, he’d never know I was here. He’d find nothing but bloodstains on the ground and a flock of stupid sheep.
I closed the eye that still worked—even that small movement hurt—and concentrated. I pulled the sheep’s bleating into me, filling my mind with it. I thought of fleece, thick and soft and warm, protecting me from the rain. I sniffed the air, searching for a hint of grass. I focused on these sensations, letting them fill me, folding them into the core of my being.
And I began to change. An energy field glowed around me as my arms and legs thinned, as my nails hardened and thickened into hooves. Woolly fleece sprouted, diminishing the cold as it grew along my belly and back, my neck and head. My nose lengthened and broadened. Sounds sharpened as my ears grew. The shift hurt—God, it hurt—as my body reshaped itself. But the pain was different. This was the pain of creation.
The energy field flared … then flickered. Panic sped my heartbeats. It wasn’t working. I’d fall back to my usual form or, worse, end up half-shifted and dead from the effort. I couldn’t let that happen. Pushing aside the fear, I poured every ounce
of concentration into changing. The energy glowed brighter, then a little brighter. With a flash, it exploded outward in sparks and stars and fiery spirals.
Why did I lie here alone? Bleating over there. My kind, calling me. Flock meant safe. I bleated back. Other voices answered. I stood up, trotted to the flock.
Into the midst of them I went. Smell of sheep all around me, warm and safe. I bleated, happy. Grass smell. Old grass, winter grass, not new. Hungry. I lowered my head to graze.
I ate and ate. Warm, fleecy bodies on all sides. Safe. Ate more. Light dimmed. Then sudden movement on this side and that, all around. The flock bleated a warning. I ran, bleating too, keeping with the flock. Must stay together. Others slowed. I slowed with them, stopped. Looked back. What made us run? A two-legs walked through our field. Just walked. No danger. I bent to graze. The two-legs bleated in a high, strong voice.
“Vicky!”
Up jerked my head. I looked at the two-legs. Why did her bleat call to me?
“Vicky!”
Something good about this one. Carrots? Apple? I stepped toward her. She kept walking, toward the stone barrier. I bleated, went faster. Had to catch up. Something good.
The two-legs stopped. Looked at me. I trotted to her. Nudged at pockets. No apple smell. No carrot smell. But the two-legs’ smell was good. Safe. Like home.
“Oh, Vicky.” She scratched behind my ears. It felt good. I leaned into her. Warm. Happy. She stepped away. I stepped with her. She walked on the path, away from the trees. A bleat behind. I stopped, turned. There was the flock. But here was the two-legs who felt like home. I stood, not sure where to go.
“Vicky, come.” Two-legs clicked her tongue and patted her pocket. Apples, maybe. Or carrots. I followed her across the field.
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, I KNEW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS—home at Maenllyd, in the shift room. What I didn’t know was how I’d arrived here. I had only dim, fuzzy memories of following Mab away from the flock.
The shift room is a special room in Maenllyd’s cellar. Ten by twelve, its cement floor has a drain in the center. Small, barred, horizontal windows near the ceiling let in light. A cot is pushed against one wall. There’s only one door, with an automatic lock. Beside the door is a numbered keypad.
Although it sounds like a prison cell, the shift room is really a recovery room. It’s a place where Mab or a visiting relative or I can go in animal form, a place where we’ll be safe until we shift back to our human forms. The locked door keeps any animal contained, but once someone shifts back to human form, they just tap a four-digit code, written on the wall, into the keypad to open the door.
I lay under a blanket on the cot, feeling like an elephant had been flamenco dancing on my skull. Experimentally, I stretched to see what else hurt. Pretty much everything. But it was an achy soreness, not the battered agony that made me believe I was dying.
Something was in my mouth. I spit it into my hand: a disgusting mess of semi-digested grass and bits of other stuff. Gross. Brilliant idea, shifting into a cud-chewing animal. At least there was no blood in it. I sat up and threw the mess on the floor. I’d come back and clean it up later. The room needed to be hosed down, anyway.
“Here, child, use this handkerchief.”
I bunched up the blanket in front of me. Mab sat in a wooden chair a few feet from the cot’s head. Her face looked grim, even fierce. To me, that look was beautiful. My aunt—strong, formidable, watching over me, never letting the bad guys win.
I took the handkerchief and wiped my mouth and hands. “What time is it?”
“Just past seven in the morning. You shifted back eight hours after I found you.” The corners of her mouth quirked. “We must have made quite a sight, me lifting you over the stile. I was quite terrified Farmer Davies would shoot me for stealing one of his sheep.”
I rubbed my temples and tried to remember. In human form, it’s hard to make sense of animal memories, all flashes and sensations and nudges of instinct. I remembered following Mab across the field, squirming and kicking as she lifted me in her preternaturally strong arms. Being on the other side of the stone wall. Trotting behind her. Balking at the kitchen door, then tempted inside as someone—Rose?—gave me a whiff of chopped-up apples in a bowl. My hooves clicking strangely on the flagstone floor. Eating. Feeling sleepy.
“You put sleeping herbs into the apples?”
She nodded. “And the herbs to prevent dreams. Also some for healing.”
That explained my headache. I’d probably ingested enough magical herbs to knock a human into next month.
“You were weak,” Mab went on. “It was clear you needed rest. When you shifted back to human form, you had bruises all over. You must have been very badly hurt, especially considering the moon phase.”
Shifts are strongest around the time of a full moon. The animal brain takes over more strongly—and healing happens faster. Tonight would be the first night of the full moon. Mab was telling me that, without shifting, I would have died.
She set her mouth in a grim line. “What happened, child?”
I stood and wrapped the blanket around me, then sat on the cot. Every muscle screamed; I felt like I’d sprinted a marathon.
“Is it bad now?” I asked.
Mab reached into her pocket and produced a hand mirror. “I thought you’d ask.”
I studied my reflection. Two black eyes, faded so that they looked like they’d happened a week ago. My nose was straight and unbroken. No cuts, although a new scar, thin and white, marked a corner of my mouth. I peeked under the blanket. Faint, yellow-green bruises mottled my torso.
I returned the mirror. “You were right about Pryce. He definitely means harm.”
Mab drew in a sharp breath. “He attacked you?”
“Right after he shared his evil plan for world domination.”
Her brows slanted downward, like she thought I was making an unfunny joke. I sat on the cot and told her about my conversation with Pryce, how he was using the Morfran to strengthen Uffern’s demons and expand the demon plane into the human world. I left out one thing: Pryce’s desire to make little demon babies with me. I knew I should tell Mab, but I decided not to. Yet. From a goddess two lines diverged, but they shall be reunited in Victory. It was too crazy. I needed time to think about it.
“I said I’d stop him,” I said, “and he got me with a sucker punch. I fought back. I thought I had him, too. One second he was moaning on the ground at my feet, the next he was gone. Somehow he got behind me. Once he did, he beat the crap out of me.”
“He went into the demon plane. His human form regenerates there.”
“So he can pop into the demon plane, and then pop out again at another location?”
“If the sites are close together, yes. Otherwise, he must pass deeper through Hell, but he can travel anywhere on Earth that way.” She paused for a moment, her eyes distant, then gave a single, brisk nod. “Get washed and dressed. We must press forward with your training.”
I stood. I wasn’t eager for another session with The Book of Utter Darkness. The Book of Utter Evil was more like it. But it was necessary—I could see that. Pryce had to be stopped. Aside from the whole world domination thing, he’d just made it personal.
“Vicky.” Mab put her hand on my arm. “If Pryce attacked you, it’s because he fears you.”
“Maybe,” I said and kissed the top of my aunt’s head. Or maybe demi-demons just had peculiar ways of courting a girl. But if Pryce didn’t fear me now, he would—and soon.
IN MY LUXURIOUS BATHROOM, THE FIRST THING I DID WAS vomit long and violently into the toilet. When I’d puked up all the cud a sheep’s stomach could produce, I rinsed with mouthwash. Not yet minty-fresh enough, I brushed my teeth and flossed out some stray blades of grass, then went back to the mouthwash bottle for another round. Then I took a long, steamy shower, letting those jets of water soothe away my aches.
Being a shapeshifter wasn’t always a nonstop glamor-fest.
I put on some je
ans but had trouble choosing a sweater. No wool—anything but wool. I found a ribbed red cotton turtleneck and pulled it on. If I shifted today, I’d better not choose a turtle. I wouldn’t have anything left to wear.
My stomach was feeling better, so I headed downstairs and grabbed some coffee and a fresh-baked muffin from the kitchen. Rose’s eyes widened when she saw my battered face. “It looks worse than it is,” I told her. She gave me another muffin.
Soon, I was in the library, stretched out on the sofa studying The Book of Utter Darkness as Mab sat in her chair by the fireplace. The illustration I’d seen yesterday had changed. Before, Avagddu had looked angry, howling with hunger and rage. Now, the infant was laughing. Instead of a single crow flying out of Avagddu’s mouth, there were hundreds. The sky was dark with crows. The Morfran emerges.
When I tried to read the story again, the meaning wouldn’t take shape in my mind. Here and there, I caught a single word or phrase—Avagddu, Great Crow, hunger—but the story itself remained obscure, nothing but incomprehensible combinations of letters.
I turned pages until I reached the end of the story of Avagddu and Taliesin. Or where I thought the end was. Without being able to read the words on the pages, I couldn’t be sure. So I began again.
It took forever. I’d stare at a page until I started to go cross-eyed, waiting to see whether understanding would flood my mind. The process wasn’t helping my headache. I tried to be patient, to be calm, to keep myself centered. But I’m not a patient person on my best day, and the frustration of trying and trying and trying to understand a book I couldn’t read drove me crazy.
I turned a page, snapping it and nearly tearing the parchment. Take it easy, Victory. Then I realized that Victory wasn’t self-talk—the book was sending the word into my thoughts. I stared at a group of letters, and the impression of Victory grew stronger. Keeping still, as though moving would dissolve the meaning, I waited. More words appeared in my mind.
When the dead walk, then shall Victory bind itself to the legions of Hell.
Pryce’s first two signs: zombies in Boston, and the strengthening of my bond with Difethwr. I’d done that for my own reasons, not to fulfill some stupid prophecy. And I didn’t appreciate being referred to as an it. Or did the sentence even refer to me? Maybe the book was predicting some kind of triumph for the Hellions. Mab said the book would try to trick me; I shouldn’t jump to conclusions about its meaning.
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