Hellforged

I limped in the direction the athame had gone, but I’d lost sight of it. So again, I turned off my headlamp, located the glimmer a few feet ahead of me, and approached it. This time, I took several minutes to let my impatience drain away, breathing deeply and slowly and going inside myself until it didn’t matter whether I was deep in an abandoned mine or snug in my own bed. When I’d achieved that feeling of centeredness, I switched on my headlamp.



The light didn’t come on.



I tried the switch again. Still no thin beam boring through the darkness. Oh, no. Please, no. Not now.



My hand went to the flashlight on my belt. As I touched it I knew it was the one Pryce had fried earlier, but I tried anyway, flicking the switch half a dozen times like I had before. It didn’t work. What a surprise.



The panic I’d experienced before was the baby brother of what hit me now. I fought down the urge to scream, but not for long. I shrieked and howled and tore at my hair and just wanted to run. My sprained ankle saved me. As soon as I tried to take a step, pain shot up my leg and the ankle gave way. I fell sideways onto the floor, clutching my leg. My face landed in a puddle, but the shock of cold water and hard stone did nothing to snap me out of it. I kept screaming, the sound echoing like a chorus of the damned, until I drew a breath and inhaled a mouthful of water. I sputtered and pushed myself to a sitting position.



I coughed my lungs inside out, but by the time I finished I no longer felt like screaming. The cavern was silent, except for a steady drip drip drip nearby and, farther off, the muted rush of running water. Mab had mentioned an underground river. If I’d run off in a blind panic, I might have fallen in and been swept away by the icy water. Mab and Kane would never know what happened to me.



Okay. No more running, no more screaming, no more panic. I had to get out of here, so we could get Mab back to civilization. I wasn’t going to wait around for a rescue party, and I refused to enter the demon plane. If I stepped into Uffern carrying Hellforged, I might was well wrap up the athame with a pretty bow and give it to Difethwr as a birthday present. The only way out was to shift.



I’d have to be careful. It was difficult, sometimes impossible, to hang on to my human thoughts and intentions when I shifted to an animal. And the animal I had in mind was so much smaller than my human form that its tiny brain might not serve my purpose.



One thing I had going for me—the only thing, as far as I could see—was that we were just a few days into the new lunar cycle. This early in the cycle, my animal form would be weak. Maybe my human side could retain enough control to get Hellforged out of here.



I stood and placed the athame on the ground at my feet. Then I concentrated. Like a mantra, I repeated three words: “Knife. Out. Car. Knife. Out. Car.” For several minutes I said them out loud, then I drew them inside myself. Knife. Out. Car. I repeated the words until they were etched into my mind. I hoped my reshaped brain would be big enough to hold all three.



Knife. Out. Car.



I took off my boots and shivered at the clammy touch of the cold, damp floor on my bare feet. Lightly, so as not to send the athame rocketing off again, I placed my feet over Hellforged, favoring my throbbing ankle, and curled my toes around the grip. Knife. Out. Car.



I extended my hearing, sharpening it, listening for tiny sounds I wouldn’t usually notice. Knife. Out. Car. I thought of wide, leathery wings; a snub nose; beady eyes. Knife. Out. Car. I thought of hanging upside down, wings wrapped around me like a blanket. Knife. Out. Car.



I started shrinking. Big, I thought, big enough to carry a dagger. Then I resumed my mental chant: Knife. Out. Car. Pain squeezed my head as my skull compressed and my ears slid to the top of my head. My arms stretched and grew impossibly long, my fingers spreading out, webbing growing between them. My legs shortened to little more than feet and ankles; my toe-nails became sharp, strong claws. As it felt like my head was being crushed to powder, I managed to repeat my mantra one last time. Knife. Out. Car. Then the energy blasted out, and I changed.



Water sounds. Dripping, trickling, rippling. Rock groaning. A pebble rolling. I leapt into the air, wings going fast. Cried out. Sound bounced back at me. Too many echoes. Too many sounds. Walls, floor, rock, dust—crowding in. Confused. I couldn’t hear where I was. I slammed into rock, fell. Something fell with me, clattered onto rock.



I shook myself. I stretched my wings, flapped. No hurts. I cried out again, many times, listened. Cried out, listened. Sounds came back to me, gave me the shape of the nearby wall. I cried out again, again, again, listening for shapes. I could hear my location. Into the air I went, wings carrying me. I cried out, cried out. Listened. Heard shapes, heard spaces. Moved through them. Wings beating fast, fast.



Through the sounds, a light. Small, color of the thinnest moon. Near where I fell. Knife—a shapeless sound inside my head. I wanted the silver light. I swooped, touched rock. My feet found the light, grasped it. At its touch, I wanted out. Out. Under the moon, the big moon, where air smells like grass, not rock. Out where sounds go a long way before they come back.



I called. Heard an open space that went up. Up meant out. I flew up, toward out.



Narrower here. No water sounds, just my cries, bouncing off stone. I flew fast. My ears brushed stone. The tip of one wing, the other wing, brushed stone. But no crashing. I heard the shapes. I flew through a tunnel of sounds.



Now, echoes took longer to come back. Wider space here. But rock smells, not out yet. I heard another up-slanting space, flew there. Echoes closed in. Up I flew. Other sounds now. Voices—coarse, two-legs, no-wing sounds. Wind. Grass rustling. A big water lapping its shore.



I flew toward the sounds, toward out, carrying the sliver of moonlight.



I burst out of the rocky place, into the wide air. Cold. Many sounds, but long echoes. I flew up, dipped, swooped. Cold. I listened for food. Too cold. Cold felt wrong. Felt like sleep.



No-wings below, pointing. I dodged, moved fast. Too fast for no-wings to see. Out is no good when it’s cold. I wanted shelter, warmth. Wanted to fold my wings and sleep.



Back to cave, to shelter. No, cave felt wrong. Where was good shelter? Warmth came from no-wings, from a shelter beside them. Car. It looked warm, a good place to sleep. I swooped down. A no-wings made an opening, and in I flew. A four-legs, gray and furry, lay on its side, eyes closed. Yes, a good place to sleep.



I dropped the sliver of moon, moved in close to the four-legs. Warm fur. Safe smells. Sounds of breathing, heart beating. Good feelings inside me. I found a perch, covered myself with my wings, and slept.



30



THE ENERGY BLASTED OUT, AND I WAS NAKED AND FREEZING and it was dark and I didn’t know where I was.



“Knife! Out! Car!” I heard the words before I realized I was the one shouting them.



“It worked, Vicky.” Kane’s voice came from behind me. “You did it. You can let go now.” Warmth enveloped me as he draped a blanket around my shoulders. “We’re almost back to your aunt’s house. When you woke up and started flying around the car, Jenkins realized you were about to shift back. He pulled over and we let you out.”



Woke up—I’d fallen asleep without Mab’s tea. I sifted through the kaleidoscope of memories and impressions from the shift. I remembered darkness, three dimensions of sounds, a glimmer of light, cold, sleepiness … but no Difethwr. Maybe a bat’s dreamscape was too small for a Hellion to squeeze into.



Kane and I stood in a field tinted silver by moonlight. About ten feet away, the Land Rover waited at the side of the road.



“Mab—” I wrapped the blanket around me and started toward the car.



“She’s doing fine,” Kane said. “I just checked on her.”



Mab slept in the back of the Land Rover, still in wolf form. I ran a hand over her fur; she whimpered softly and twitched in her sleep. I didn’t know how to check a wolf for a fever—was it like a dog? Gently, I touched her black nose. It was dry but not hot.



“She’s fine,” Kane repeated. He put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed.



I borrowed a sweatshirt from Kane’s suitcase. I never would have guessed he owned one, let alone two. This one was dark blue and smelled like laundry detergent with the slightest trace of Kane beneath the soap. It was big on me and covered most of what needed covering. I tied the blanket around my waist like a sarong to keep my legs warm.



Now that I had my bearings, I recognized where we were—no more than a few minutes from Maenllyd. I climbed into the back of the car and sat by Mab, my hand on her shoulder. Kane got in front, beside Jenkins, and we made our way home.



Given the length of the drive, I calculated that I’d been in bat form for a little over two hours. Shifts can last different lengths of time, depending on a number of factors: the moon phase, the type of animal, the strength of emotion at the time of shifting. Smaller animals generally mean shorter shifts. As a wolf, Mab could stay in animal form for another eight to ten hours. Healing her injuries might keep her in wolf form even longer.



Jenkins turned left, and we went through Maenllyd’s gates and along the driveway. When the Land Rover pulled into the coaching yard, the front door burst open to reveal an anxious-looking Rose. She ran down the steps and peered into the car, counting heads. Her hands flew to her mouth when she saw Mab.



“She got hurt, but she’s recovering,” I said. Kane’s promise of she’s fine echoed in my mind. “Kane saved her.”



Kane shouldered Mab into the house, like when he’d brought her out of the mine. We got her settled in the shift room, where Rose insisted on sitting with her. I showed Kane the blue bedroom, the guest room Rose had prepared for him. We both needed to clean up.



“I’ll meet you in the library in half an hour,” I told him. “Go down the stairs and across the front hall. Turn right and keep going until you get to the room with all the books.” He nodded and reached for me, but I turned away. I went down the hall and climbed the stairs to my room.



HALF AN HOUR LATER, I WAS SHOWERED, DRESSED, AND FEELING human again—a phrase that really means something to a shapeshifter. I hurried down to the shift room to check on Mab. She was still asleep. She lay on her side, tongue lolling, one paw hanging over the edge of the bed. Rose sat beside her, knitting. She put a finger to her lips, and I nodded, backing out of the room.