Denying the Alpha: Manlove Edition

by 5 Author Anthology

  “Then maybe the boredom will break him.”

  “Boredom?”

  “Ma’am, have you ever met a crow?”

  The witch looks at me, debating, then resolves. “No, this one is made of sterner stuff. It’s dangerous to keep him alive.”

  Thariff makes no movement and his witch casually walks around the book. She tilts her head, reading the inscription on the side, I’m sure not for the first time.

  To an expert in the language of the spell, the inscription is the key. It says the protection spell can be bypassed by selfless ones with goodness in their blood. Of course, there are very few experts in the language of magic and Keldrith is not one of them. It’s easy to misinterpret selfless ones as innocent.

  Keldrith huffs and says, “Send one of the pups up here. The little girl.”

  She’s read the key as the blood of children and that little girl is going to die. Sacrificed to the ambition of this witch. The same way I was supposed to die.

  “That won’t defeat the book,” I tell her. “Killing a child. Many have tried before.”

  Keldrith looks at me crossly, then turns her ire on Thariff. “Why are you standing there? Kill the crow.”

  “Oh, now, I thought … maybe you’d want to leave the room.” The wolf shrugged. “For deniability … or—”

  His charmed tongue fails him and the witch rolls her eyes and does a thing I’ve never seen in real life, only read about in books. She takes out her own knife and, as thoughtlessly as slicing butter, cuts her forearm. She flicks the drop of blood in his direction and speaks in the language of magic which hurts my ears to hear spoken aloud so casually. There’s a whistling that a human might not be able to hear and—

  Something leaves Thariff. The color of his eyes darkens and he looks at me with utter emptiness.

  I thought a frightened wolf was the most dangerous kind. But I see now, I was wrong. A soulless one is far worse.

  “Slit his throat and leave his body at the doorway for his witch to find.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” He draws his knife and removes his vest so it will not get dirty.

  The witch calls out the window. “Azatia, come to me.”

  I look at Thariff’s face for an explanation of that name. But there is no trace of Thariff. He must have loved me to name one of his pack for me.

  But that doesn’t matter now.

  Thariff crosses the chalk circle on a mission to kill a weak and dying thing. He doesn’t relish the easy prey. I’d hoped I would warrant a hesitation, a moment where his soul shone back and fought, but no. Not for a humble crow.

  I admire his grace, the arch of the knife and the sharpness of the motion. He barely interrupts his stride to deliver a killing blow. It’s so terribly easy for his knife to slit my throat.

  As whatever precious blood is left in me beats out through my neck, I stare at that damned book. The grimoire seems to look back at me from its glass prison.

  Maybe it’s my imagination, the dying thrashes of a blood-starved brain, but I see how it will happen. How the little girl, maybe only three years old, and more wolf than girl, will be compelled by the hag’s soul magic to sacrifice herself. I see her sobbing and fighting her own body, pushed against her will ever closer to the great tome. I see her howling and trying to force her own transformation, tearing at her clothing to escape. But still she moves indelibly toward the book. She’s terrified of it, of the death that awaits.

  Thariff lifts me onto his shoulder and carries me down steps. Am I dead? Is this what death is like? He moves so quickly and I find I can breathe a little, there must be some blood getting to my brain.

  Because my thoughts are consumed by the little girl.

  She will open the glass. The glass will burn her, break her fingers. But she will be compelled.

  The child, hair full of seeds and knots, passes Thariff on the stairs. Her eyes are as soulless as his and she runs up the stairs with blind obedience.

  My warning makes a wheeze and not a word. No. She will die for that book and it won’t unlock it.

  No, she will unleash it. She will lift it in her tiny, destroyed hands. Then because she fears it so greatly, the fear will consume her.

  Thariff brings me outside the tower. A shroud of magic hangs in the air, hiding me from even Madame Lamrow’s magic. He props me against the door and then steps back.

  Then having fulfilled his witch’s command, Thariff’s soul returns to him.

  A terrible horror floods him. But at once, he kneels beside me and claws at the pouch on his belt to find something he’s concealed.

  The stump of a unicorn horn.

  Hardly the freshest of magic, nor the most powerful, but maybe just enough.

  He presses it to my neck and I feel the rush of the magic. Oh, more than enough. My teeth rattle as the life rushes back into my body. Leaves me thrumming with magic, my throat repaired, the soreness of my muscles vanished. The residual wrongness lingers in my bones, which have been twisted and reset so often tonight they are no longer certain if they are holding the proper shape.

  I look up at him and he grins with relief. I delight in his joy, in the adoration in his eyes.

  “Oh, you’ll live!”

  “Well, you wouldn’t leave me alone even if I didn’t, would you?” I try to rise. I see the sky beyond the fog and I know what needed to be done. Lamrow must be summoned. Her coven must—

  My head swells with dizziness and I fall.

  “We’ll hide you. You’ll fetch Lamrow when you’re stronger and you’ll save my pack.” He wraps my vest with all its stupid colors around me and smiles. “She’s been tearing through the city to find you, you know. Pidgeon’s Paw will never be the same again.”

  Of course, she is. She’s a good witch who would never let harm come to someone if she could help it. “There’s no time, Thariff. The little girl, the one you named for me—”

  “Oh, don’t read anything into it.” He chuckles and kisses my forehead. “And don’t worry, we have plenty of time. Keldrith thinks you’re dead and she’s too used up for much more magic today. I saw it in her before—”

  “The blood of innocents. That’s what she thinks it says.” My throat feels raw when I speak too much, my body trying to re-wound itself. “When I was a boy, a man hired me to touch the book and die, to break the protection spell so he could use it. And that’s why she summoned the girl.”

  Thariff startles and looks up the tower. Despair breaks over his face, because he knows it’s too far. Still, he runs, shucking his trousers as he goes. I see him transform for the first time, and the animal that emerges is a truly bold and noble creature. A beast sleek as midnight bounding up the stairs on a mission to save the littlest member of his pack.

  He’ll never make it in time. The tower is too high. She’s doomed.

  No one could span that distance. Not on foot.

  I reach for my ribbons, so used to them dangling that their absence confuses me. I stare up at that tower and I wonder if it’s worth the risk. Without the ribbons and silver. I mean, it’s no risk my life in the horde didn’t prepare me for, but it’s been a long time. Still…

  I transform.

  I have nothing to anchor me to this world. No silver ring. It’s terrifying to slide into the astral without a ribbon to tether me, without the claws of a witch dug into my soul to bring me back. There’s no guarantee I will come back. Nothing to pluck me from the endless winds and back to a reformed body.

  Except for my will.

  But if I know anything about myself, it’s that I’m a stubborn fool. Fear is beneath me.

  So, I demand what I need from the potential magic floating around waiting to be commanded. It’s not a shape I’m familiar with. But it’s … correct. Something primal. Something truer to me even than the black wings of the crow.

  The transformation is finished and I don’t hesitate. I fly.

  Fast and free and utterly unfettered. I’d chase after Thariff, but the doorway is too small for m
y wings.

  What am I? Eagles were never this big.

  Straight up to the tower then.

  Thariff sees me, perhaps smells the magic. I hear his howl of joy. I don’t pause to relish in the sound, though it fills my heart, carries me higher. The borrowed magic is confused. What is there to anchor it except for the weak frame of my bones and blood? It might slip away, but it won’t. Not yet.

  Not until I damned well say so.

  I beat my wings and break past the haze of the magic shrouding the tower. Into the fresh air and the night sky. In the moonlight, I see my own shadow on the tree as I soar higher.

  No bird. Nothing as small and frail as that.

  That’s a griffin’s shadow streaking across the broken cobbles of the hag’s tower. I’ve unleashed a thing a dragon would fear.

  I hear the girl before I see her. Hear her howls of dismay and the stream of profanities and pleas. Through the glass panes of Keldrith’s elegant torture chamber, I see her reaching toward the book, fighting for her life against the witch’s magic.

  I dive, falling so fast.

  The glass shatters beneath my talons … or are they paws? The gale from my wings knocks down potions and podiums, scrolls and scrying mirrors.

  The little wolf’s eyes go wild as her terror of seeing a fully-grown griffin breaks the witch’s spell. She howls and dives toward an alcove, hiding beneath a bookshelf. Like a mouse scurrying away from an owl, she escapes me. I focus on the witch.

  Keldrith looks deeply confused. Before she can regain her senses, I bear down on her. She tries to run, but she’s too tall to fit behind anything, too proud, perhaps, to throw herself out of the way.

  She’s soft in my talons and she screams with fury and fear as I flap out of the shattered roof. The night air is cool and fresh and I climb higher and faster than I ever have before.

  For a moment, I see in the bright distance, the shine of the city and the tallest tower. Madame Lamrow has left the light on for me. She wouldn’t approve of this.

  But I see things more clearly than my mistress.

  I drop the witch. She tumbles through the air like a leaf, like a field mouse. It fills me with an instant pang of pity, because she claws at the air and finds nothing. No wings, no safety. I’ve never thought to fear the way this woman will die.

  Except … she doesn’t dash against the ground. There’s a … a wave of magic, a tsunami rising from the cobbles where her body should break. It crests over her and she swims through the midnight shimmering like a mermaid.

  Like a shark. Coming for me.

  I realize my miscalculation. I can’t kill a witch. Her magic won’t let its vessel be destroyed. It takes another witch to do such a thing.

  I ought to have grabbed the girl. Ought to have carried the little feral child to Lamrow and let my witch soothe and care for me, feed me, sing me to sleep until I was healed. The wolf would have told her the terrible truths. Lamrow would have come with an army of lion’s-teeth.

  When the hag hurls the magic at me, I dart back into her tower and narrowly avoid it. I catch a brief glimpse of Thariff, back in his human form, crouched by the bookshelf, extending a hand to the little girl to coax her out of hiding.

  I perch in the window and beat at the air with my wings, trying to fight the flow of her magic with wind. It works for a time, sending the witch higher than the tower. She screams with rage and Thariff yanks the girl from behind the bookshelf.

  Yes, now go away.

  He pushes her toward the stairway. “Get Lamrow. Run.”

  Thariff doesn’t need to tell her that. She’s off like a streak of lightning.

  Now, follow her, Thariff. Give me a last worried look and then go away.

  He takes my unspoken request the same way he always has, staunchly ignoring it. Though I suppose if I can’t dislodge a dog’s loyalty when I’m safe enough to sic my witch on him, I certainly can’t when I have his witch in full fury bearing down on me.

  Thariff comes back into the room and circles, looking for a weapon.

  I try to signal to him with screeches and wing flaps to fucking run away, but he remains occupied by his search. Something specific. Something he knows will hurt her.

  She returns, slapping me across the chest with a blast of disruptive magic and knocking me out of the window. I skid across the floor of her tower, pushed by the force of the blow I didn’t see coming. I hit the stone wall and feel the afterglow of the magic. It seeps through my fur and feathers. Radiates like fire in my blood, carries away parts of me. I can’t find the muscles in my body to get my legs under me and my wings flail against the stone helplessly.

  One blow and I’m defeated.

  The hag lands in the window and cackles. I hate a witch who cackles. It annoys me to no end that I’m going to be killed by such an average creature.

  “You should have run home to Mommy when you had the chance, crow. Instead of imitating something better than yourself. She might have been able to save you.”

  I snap at her with my beak, and she fearfully skips out of my reach. She resumes her gloating from a safe distance. “What I just hit you with? That was the memory of the magic I used on you—Thariff. My spell book.”

  The witch extends her hand and never looks away from me. “Imagine what I’m going to do to you when I have my spells before me.”

  I roll my eyes, unafraid of her. She’s going to unmake me again. I doubt she will be stupid enough to bring me back into the world, even in pieces this time. If she’s got any sense, she’ll kill me quick, but I doubt she does.

  Thariff, without hesitation, extends a book to the witch. He’s wearing … iron gauntlets?

  It’s not his witch’s grimoire in his hand. It’s Lamrow’s.

  Keldrith trusts his loyalty. She never looks before she seizes the book. The book which protects itself by reflecting back the intention of whoever holds it.

  It takes a moment for her to realize what’s gone wrong. As if the book is teasing her, as if the book wants her to know she’s not only been defeated, but utterly and irrevocably outclassed in her defeat.

  Then the unmaking begins.

  First just the snap of the little bones in her body. The shock renders her silent, turns her face ghastly pale, makes her muscles tense and stiffen. Only her eyes seem under her control as something bubbles under her skin. And her eyes flit to the book and then to me, then finally to Thariff. I wonder if I ever fixed him with a look that hurt and betrayed. If his reaction was just as stony and unapologetic.

  The woman’s last choice in life is to attack Thariff. I caw miserably as the magic slams him into the air.

  If he falls, I cannot save him. I will try, but I will fail.

  He hits the stone wall beside and above the window. Something crunches in his back, maybe just his leg. He rolls down the wall and collapses on the floor. Where he lies still. I can hear him wincing, grinding his teeth, but he remains still as if he were dead.

  Satisfied, the hag dissolves into her own pain. A shrill and shrieking thing as the book takes her apart piece by piece. I don’t avert my eyes when her skin peels back, when her bones liquefy, when her muscles unthread. There’s something still conscious in that puddle of gore. Keldrith meant to scoop me into a jar and hand me back to Lamrow. I know this because the book creates a little mason jar to neatly contain the shivering mass.

  After a moment of silence, when the ringing of her screams dies from our ears, Thariff stirs and lifts his head and shoulders. His leg is twisted, likely broken, and he sniffs cautiously at the room. He tries to stand, fails in a loud and painful fashion, and then drags himself to the mason jar.

  The living thing inside gurgles toward him. An attempt to attack? A plea for the comfort of his touch? Either way, Thariff scrapes across the floor toward the fire.

  He pours what’s left of her into the fire pit, below her bubbling cauldron.

  The air sizzles with the release of magic, with the death of a witch.

  That’s t
hat, then.

  I ruffle my wings and make myself comfortable. I’m not going to survive this. The magic wants to return. It’s too dry here and I don’t have a witch’s inner reserves of power. Not enough to anchor this massive form. The magic will leave and it will take me with it because I don’t know how to return to myself without it. It will carry off my soul in triumphant oblivion.

  I’m going to look at Thariff, revel in his beauty, remain as dignified and quiet as possible. His pack is free, the book will be returned. The child survived. Madame Lamrow will be proud that she didn’t raise someone utterly hollow.

  Thariff watches the witch burn and holds his chest as if some great painful thing has been taken from there.

  He’s free of the hag’s curse and that is the best thing of all. Worth whatever I’ve suffered. Including this strange awareness of disappearing bit by infinitesimal bit.

  Thariff grins at me. “She’s gone.”

  I purr.

  The wolf crawls over to me. This is a good thing. I stretch my neck to give him a place to lay against me.

  He sags against my side, the lion’s flank. He brushes his hands over the feathery fur. “I didn’t know you could be a griffin.”

  I didn’t either. Probably because I can’t and it’s killing me. I rub my forehead against his. Last attempt to give him the words I can’t speak and now never will.

  He chuckles as if I’m a pet and scratches my head. “Suppose you’ll ever trust me enough to go on another coffee date? My treat. You can insult me all you want.”

  The muscles in my neck are thick and useless and I lay my head in his lap.

  “Aza?” He puts his hands on my body. He’s so warm. Or I’m too cold, too drained as the magic draws from my life. “Are you fading?”

  Yes. Into nothing. Into the aether. Not pop-in and pop-back, but a slow surrendering to pure magic. To forces too large for any human to hold alone.

  “Fuck!” Thariff leaps to his feet. Except he’s still badly hurt and so he crumbles at once. Undeterred even by his own howl of pain, he drags himself to the shelf.

  No. I mewl after him, surprised by the cat-like sound. I want him to hold me until I’m gone. He can’t save me. He can only love me until—