Chapter 1
11 years later
Life is what you make it.
This was something that Katra believed more than anything as she gazed at her reflection in the bathroom mirror of the log cabin she and her father had lived in for the last 8 months, the light reflecting off the silver charms of Addi’s bracelet on her wrist. She’d had it adjusted a number of times over the years, even though her wrists had always been fairly small, though in relation to her equally small body, they were appropriately sized.
This time around, Katra and her father had wound up in the outskirts of a small town in southern Alaska, and this time of year, in late autumn, the woods were calm and inviting, and she had every intention of putting them to good use.
She tilted her head and watched as her reflection mimicked the movement. For possibly the thousandth time in her life, she thanked the gods that she lived in the 21st century, where her naturally ombre flame hair was not considered horribly unusual. People wrote her off as just another weird, artistic millennial who probably listened to Fall Out Boy or something and was committed to keeping her carbon footprint as small as possible. To be fair, she really did enjoy the band Fall Out Boy, but as far as carbon footprints went…well, she really wasn’t even sure what a carbon footprint even was.
Although she suspected it probably had something to do with carbon.
Maybe a footprint made of carbon?
No, that didn’t make sense. Carbon was a gaseous element…right?
Shaking away her fly-away thoughts, she pulled the bright yellow-orange ends of her hair up into a wild, messy bun, and wrinkled her nose at her too pale skin that was sprinkled with the lightest dusting of pale freckles. Why couldn’t she have the beautiful, smooth olive skin that the native Alaskans around her so often had? Sometimes, life seemed so unfair.
No time for those thoughts. She had stuff to do.
Exiting the bathroom, she made her way down the short hall of their two-bedroom cabin to the living room where her father was most likely to be found.
Her father was, as per usual, seated at his desk in the corner of the small, quaint living room, with a historical volume spread open on the desk in front of him. The glasses he wore were barely hanging on the tip of his nose, and he subconsciously pushed them back up with the side of his index finger, never breaking his concentration.
“I’m gonna run into town for more milk, dad.”
“You’re lactose intolerant.”
Rolling her eyes, she shook her head while moved to grab some cash from the black porcelain box sitting on the kitchen counter given to them by Daromir when she was young. It was enchanted, and every week another wad of bills magically appeared in it like clock-work, and if they happened to be in a Canadian town, the money would automatically change to Canadian currency. She always knew what day it was by how much cash was in there. “I know that, dad, but you aren’t, and last I checked, you drink a glass of milk with every meal. You should really drink some water every once in a while.”
“Probably.” Jakob replied absentmindedly, his attention still focused on whatever piece of history he was studying up on as he once again pushed his falling glasses back up on his nose.
Katra rolled her eyes again before grabbing her distressed, black leather jacket she’d found at a thrift shop in a small town in Washington state. Throwing it on over her dark red tank top, she headed out the door, not bothering to say goodbye since she knew it would most likely go over his head completely unnoticed.
She didn’t really want him to stop drinking so much milk, because it was the only excuse she had to get out of the house without him questioning where she was going. Not that he really questioned her often. He was fairly eccentric, as far as wolf shifters went, who were generally more grounded and practical, and she often found him with his head in the past, marveling over the stories and legends and people that made up their history. He would often quiz her on supernatural history, the wars, the truces, the extinct species as he trained with her in the field behind their cabin. After all, he was still a shifter, and as such, he felt it was only responsible to make sure they were both fit and capable of fighting if it were ever necessary. Even with his head-in-the-clouds mentality, he was still grounded enough to put his entire life aside for the purpose of keeping her safe.
Making her way down through the trees and towards the town they lived outside of, she knew full well that the milk would be bought after her real mission was achieved.
Roughly 20 minutes later, she found herself at the rickety old wooden door of Harrietta Weikeshter, the local herbalist who provided the best remedies for any malady. Everyone who was anyone knew that, whether it be a migraine or gout, irritable bowel or allergies, Harrietta was the one who could get you fixed up quicker than you could say ‘How long will it take for this to work?’.
Not that many people actually said that. They all knew better than to ask such a stupid question.
But what most people didn’t know was that Harrietta Weikeshter was a spectacularly skilled witch. She had been making up spells for Katra for the last 6 months, spells that Katra used to work on and refine her phoenix shifter power.
This was the reason why she was so grateful for her father’s love of milk.
Knocking on the door, Katra waited a few minutes before she heard the shuffling steps of Harrietta, and a moment later the door opened to reveal the frazzled, blue-haired old lady, who gazed up at Katra without an ounce of surprise and beady black eyes that seemed to root out all of Katra’s innermost secrets.
“Well, hello there, child. I’ve got what ya need right back here. The last ones work out okay for you?”
Nodding as she stepped into the tiny cabin, Katra quickly pulled the door shut behind her. While there weren’t any supernaturals in this town other than herself, Jakob, and Harrietta, she still didn’t want to risk someone spotting her and tattling back to Jakob as to her unusual whereabouts. He had garnered a job at the local bookstore, albeit part-time, and more than a few people knew about his flame-haired daughter. Perhaps it was the years of quiet and peace, but they both seemed to have begun feeling a sense of complacency when it came to following Daromir’s instructions he had given them that fateful day all those years ago.
The day when her mother died.
Pushing the familiar sense of loss to the back of her mind with a skill learned from years of experience, she smiled at Harrietta as the old woman shuffled back into the room with a small, cloth sack. “Got the same ones from last time. Not too strong, like ya said; just a few air-thickening spells, some cloaking spells, a couple small weather spells—ya know, the ones that make mini storms in a ten foot radius—and some ‘o those fire spells you asked for last time. Why you want fire spells? Seems kinda dangerous.” Harrietta eyed her shrewdly with her beady, all-knowing little eyes as she handed her the sack, and Katra responded in kind with a thick stack of 20’s.
“Don’t worry, Harrietta, I’m not going to do anything bad with them.” She was aiming for reassuring, but without revealing any more information, it came out sounding more suspicious than anything else.
“Well, I guess that really depends on your definition of bad, girl, now don’t it?” Harrietta responded with that same knowing look plastered onto her wrinkled face.
Katra often suspected that Harrietta knew exactly what she was, though how, she couldn’t begin to guess. There was something in the way she would eye Katra, like she was gauging how tough she should make the spells, or how varied she should make them, as if she were also keen on learning the extent of Katra’s abilities.
She never said a word, though, just handed over the spells and took Katra’s payment.
“Be careful with yourself, girl. You’re not the only one living off that so-called grid.”
This was a surprising statement, seeing as how it was the most information she’d ever received in regards to the blue-haired old witch, and also because it gave a glimpse into how much Harrietta seemed to already know about Katra, though Katra had never said a word edgewise on the subject.
She eyed the witch warily as she slowly nodded before turning and grasping the doorknob, keeping her eyes on Harrietta the whole time. On her part, Harrietta simply watched her leave, no expression to speak of on her sagging face.
Katra shook her head and closed the door behind her, feeling a little unsettled by the unusual encounter. Heading back into the woods, she made her way to the clearing she used for her magic training. She’d made it a point to make sure it was far enough away from civilization that no one would see or hear what occurred there, so the trek was a decent 15 minutes along a largely untraveled path.
15 minutes for a shifter, but at least an hour for a human.
By the time she made it to the clearing, she realized she only had about 10 to 15 minutes of practice time available to her, and she felt her ire rising, noting her frustration towards not only her inability to get good training in but also the necessity of hiding it. She’d been working on this training for a while now, and the runes were still holding steady. Perhaps Daromir had lied, and the runes were stronger than he’d made it out to be. Perhaps he was just jealous of her enormous power, wanting to be sure she never attempted to harness it. Sorcerers were, after all, notoriously power-hungry, eager to be and remain at the top of the supernatural pecking order. They tended to stay out of the supernatural community, but, were they ever to be present in a situation involving other supernaturals, they were keen for everyone in the vicinity to be aware of who was the head honcho in terms of sheer power.
Sighing heavily, she untied the small, cloth bag from where she had attached it to one of the belt loops on her black jeggings. She randomly selected a tiny, glass orb from the sack and, lifting it high above her head, she threw it hard against the ground, glad that Harrietta was skilled enough to create spells that didn’t require any spoken incantation.
Instantly, a small thundercloud appeared above her, with tiny strikes of lightning raining down around her. Her power responded instantaneously, almost of its own accord, and she watched as the tiny flames of her magic ate away at the clouds, lightning and rain. Within seconds, the spell was devoured, leaving nothing more than the slight smell of rain. This was good. Her magic was reacting faster and faster, but so far, she had only tested them on small, relatively simple spells.
She really wanted to try this out on something bigger, something tougher, something a little more out of control.
She wanted to try it out on fire.
It was an intriguing thought. Could her fire magic destroy other fire magic? Pulling another orb out, she felt the warmth in it, and knew she had selected the correct spell. Holding it above her head like she had with the other spell, she heaved it at the ground, where it shattered instantly.
Massive flames leapt up into the air, startling Katra with their height and violence, and in the next second the flames began to spread out, growing exponentially as they consumed the grass in the field and reached for the tall fir trees surrounding the clearing.
She could feel the wildness of the fire as it expanded, quickly turning into an unnatural, magically-induced wildfire. It was only a matter of minutes before it became too large to ever control, and if she didn’t stop it, it would easily take out the entire forest in under an hour.
Reaching for her power, she watched as her magic flames began to appear around her, and the sight of her fire magic consuming the witch’s fire magic was baffling. There was a clear difference between the two, with the witch’s fire looking very much like any normal fire, whereas Katra’s fire seemed to twist and writhe like a living thing, moving in ways that no normal fire would ever possibly move, and if she didn’t know better, she would almost say it…sparkled.
Her magic fucking sparkled with deep, golden-orange sparks.
Baffling though it was, she needed to focus, because, as she stood watching, she realized her magic wasn’t eating up the fire as fast as it was spreading. For the first time since starting her own version of magic training, she actually pulled on her magic, instead of just letting it flow at its own speed.
It was like releasing a dam. Her magic suddenly poured out of her, and the golden-orange sparkles brightened to a blinding gold, with hints of white sprinkled throughout, as it rushed forward to consume the fire. She was dumbfounded by how quickly her power ate through the witch’s fire magic, and less than a minute later, she was standing in a blackened field with not a spark of fire around her. In fact, as she began to shuffle forward, she couldn’t even see or smell any tell-tale smoke that was usually left behind after a fire was put out. She couldn’t even feel any residual heat.
The only evidence of any fire was the massive, 5-acre field filled with charred and burnt ash that used to be grass.
Katra had a sinking feeling in her chest, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she needed to grab Jakob and get the hell out of Alaska.
Fast.
Katra was well over half way home before she had the devastating realization that she was milk-less. A quick turn and a mad five-minute dash back into town found herself scanning the dairy aisle at the one and only local grocery. It was a tiny store, family owned for well over a hundred years, and carried only the most basic items. And certainly none of those special, gluten-free, fancy-schmancy items. Which was fine for her and Jakob. They could care less about gluten seeing as how they were too busy caring about keeping one step ahead of the supernatural community.
“You have pretty hair.”
She paused just as she was reaching for the handle of the glass door showcasing the milk, and turned to see a small girl with long, dark hair pulled into a side ponytail standing just to her right. The little girl couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5, and she had large, deep brown eyes that were currently staring up at Katra with a sort of worshipful fascination. She was tugging and twisting the end of her long ponytail as if she could somehow make it magically change to mirror Katra’s bright, flamed colored hair.
“Uh…thanks. I think.”
“Momma says that I can make my hair be any color I want when I grow up. I want my hair to be orange, like yours.”
It took no small amount of effort for Katra to keep from snapping at the little girl. She really hated the orange in her hair, and often found herself wishing that her hair was all the same shade, preferably the darker shade of red at her roots. The only thing holding her back was the knowledge that kids were gifted with no filter, something that Katra kind of envied.
“You’re really short.”
The hand holding onto the fridge handle tightened, almost enough for her to break it if she weren’t purposely holding back. Shifter strength was leaps and bounds greater than human strength, and were she intent upon it, she could easily snap the metal handle in two. In fact, it took more effort for a shifter—any shifter, the type of animal didn’t matter—to hold back on their strength and speed. The strength, speed, invulnerability to most weapons, accelerated healing, and advanced eyesight, hearing, and smell were universal in the shifter community. The things that varied were the familiarity with the given animal; wolf shifters were able to communicate with and control wolves, lion shifters could communicate with and control lions, hawk, falcon, and eagle shifters could communicate with and control other birds. They also tended to have a dramatic effect on prey animals, increasing the animal’s anxiety to the point of forcing them to flee. Then, there were the outliers—the dragon shifters. They not only had the other common shifter abilities, but a few of their own as well—in human form, they could only be destroyed by silver, like any other shifter, but they were completely invulnerable to magic. It simply slipped right off, like water sliding down a glass window pane, or a ball bouncing against a brick wall, unable to do any damage at all. In dragon form, they were even more formidable. The only weapon at all that could kill a dragon shifter in its dragon form was a god-forged weapon, such as Excalibur, and those were all lost. Within the dragon shifter community, there were different subsets of dragons—fire dragons, ice dragons, water dragons, earth dragons…even the elusive dark dragons, shifters that could not only control the shadows around them, but could even spew suffocating shadows like a fire dragon could spew fire or an ice dragon could spew ice. However, even with all these powers and abilities, the dragon shifter community was easily the smallest of all the shifter races, numbering in the low to mid 200’s, last she heard—a paltry sum in comparison to the some-odd thousand wolf shifters.
But they still had the phoenix shifters beat.
“Are you still growing?”
Did this vexing child have no parents or what? Where in the seven hells was her mother?
Katra wrenched open the refrigerator door and grabbed a random carton of milk, not bothering to check if it was whole or 2% or whatever, and frankly not caring. Her father certainly wouldn’t care. He’d drink goat milk if it was all there was.
“No, I think I’m all grown.”
“Wow. I hope I don’t grow that small. I wanna be a giant, like my daddy. He has no leg. A big tree fell on it. I want to have no leg too, just like him.”
Katra’s eye twitched. “Good luck with that.”
Whirling around, Katra purposefully headed to the front register and slammed the gallon of milk a little too forcefully onto the counter. Were she not hell-bent on getting out of the store and away from that accursed child with her aggravatingly inappropriate interrogation and tendency towards over-sharing, she might have apologized—she should have apologized—but as it was, she just wanted to get away and back to her father in the hopes that she could get them out of town ASAP.
“Wow. You got some totally legit hair, girl. And I freaking love your leather jacket. Totally old school.”
There was simply no holding back her eye roll as the teenage girl behind the counter stared at Katra’s bright hair in much the same way the little girl had. This girl looked to be maybe 2 or 3 years younger than Katra, and she had dark hair just like the little girl, only her hair fell to just below her shoulders and had roughly three inches of neon blue at the ends. Undoubtedly, this girl had a penchant for bright colors, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise to Katra that she would admire the deep reds and oranges and yellows of Katra’s hair.
What did surprise Katra, though, was the deep green color of the teenage girl’s eyes. It was an unusual sight in these parts, where the average eye color ranged in different shades of brown, with a few hazel thrown in for good measure. But this girl had eyes that would make an emerald jealous, and the color complimented her naturally golden skin tone flawlessly.
Katra was downright jealous.
“Uh…thanks. You too. I love that blue color.”
“Thanks. It’s a fucking pain to do it, though, cuz I have to bleach the ends twice before I can use the blue. I even have to special order the strongest blue hair dye cuz my hair just doesn’t want to take the color. I bet your hair takes that color easy, doesn’t it?”
She couldn’t help the short, sharp laugh that escaped her at the girl’s query.
“Oh yeah. So easy, you’d almost think I was meant to have this hair color naturally.”
Katra was understandably concerned.
As she stood in the small kitchen of their little two-bedroom cabin staring at her dad while he read and tugging at the sleeves of her worn, black leather jacket, the field of ashes remained emblazoned behind her eyes. She couldn’t get the image out of her head, nor could she dispel the lingering sense of foreboding that was plaguing her. It was like watching two cars heading straight towards each other on a one-way road, and neither one of them were moving to the side to bypass the oncoming collision. There was unavoidable destruction ahead.
The question was—what, or who, was the other car in this situation? And how could she avoid it—or them?
“Hey dad…”
Jakob’s head didn’t budge from the downward angle it was currently positioned in, and though she couldn’t see it from where she stood, she could hear the crinkle of an ancient page being turned. “Yes, nebol’shoy ogon’?”
Katra still smiled at the Russian term of endearment he had called her since she discovered her shifter ability. Small fire. If he only knew about the ‘small fire’ she’d just destroyed with her…small fire. “I’ve been thinking…we’ve been here for a while now. I think it’ll be a year roughly two weeks from now.”
“Hmm.” His response was neither affirmative nor denying, and she felt her irritation begin to rise.
“I really think we should probably consider moving on. We don’t generally stay around a place this long.”
For the first time since she began the conversation, her father turned and looked her in the eyes. “Yes, this is true, but we’ve done very well keeping a low cover, and this is, quite possibly, the only town in the continental U.S. that doesn’t have another supernatural. Besides, I’m quite enjoying working at Bookend to Bookend.” He turned around, resuming the attention he was giving his book, clearly feeling the conversation was done.
Katra huffed softly, her ire and frustration increasing. How was she supposed to convince her father that they needed to leave without letting him in on the little fact that not only had she been secretly training with her fire magic, but she’d also managed to burn down a 5-acre field by using her power to eat away at spells that she had purchased from a witch?
This was going to be exceedingly difficult, and were it not for that lingering feeling of impending doom, she would have been tempted to drop it all together.
“I know you like working at the bookstore, dad, but I really don’t want us to push a good thing. You know how quickly things can go from perfect to horrible.”
The visible tensing of her father’s shoulders and the straightening of his spine was more than enough to tell her she’d crossed the line, and honestly, she already hated herself for it. The moment the words bringing up her mother’s memory left her lips, the guilt filled her up, and it was all she could to do keep from avoiding her father’s gaze when he turned and settled it on her.
He said nothing, simply stared at her.
This was worse than if he’d verbally admonished her, and he knew it. His silence was deafening and suffocating at the same time, and said a thousand times more than if he’d spoken an entire monologue. A few moments of this was all it took before she finally broke their stare-down and looked away, shifting uncomfortably on her feet as she searched for an alternate way to approach this.
She never ceased to be amazed at how her father could turn her own guilt trip around on her. He no doubt learned that from her mother a long time ago, and over the years had never quite lost the habit. Not that she was really trying to guilt trip him. Though, in hindsight, that really was what she had been doing, though unintentionally. She’d simply been latching onto the first thing she could think of that would surely guide him to the conclusion that they needed to leave, post haste.
It was, undoubtedly, a poor course of action.
A knock rapped against the door.
Katra and her father looked at the each other, both holding the same question in their eyes.
Who the hell could that possibly be?