Both of them were silent, eyes empty and haunted.Neither reacted to the presence of a hundred-plus-pound sapphire bird. Threats eliminated or ineffective, I stared at my godson. He lay in the center of a witch-type circle, sealed with an ongoing working. The dome of the circle was low, and I hadn’t disrupted it when I dive-bombed Shimon.
I wanted to race in, breaking the circle working, grab EJ, spread my wings on the far side of it and leap through the shield as we fell into flight. But at some point, Shimon had closed the circle. Because it was still active, it might explode if I broke it improperly. The ward would surely react to EJ trying to get through. Anything I tried or did might kill the little boy.
I didn’t have hands to help him, either, and though claws were nimble, mine were huge and I hadn’t exactly practiced using them. I was unwieldly on the ground.
I could change form. But if I did, I couldn’t get back through the shield. My hindbrain figured out what I had felt when I pierced the outer shield, incoming. The magics of ley lines. Brittle and sizzling and electrifying. Powerful enough to keep me inside the cave, in any form but Anzu. Ley lines and rifts were part of the same power structure, and as an Anzu, I could—clearly—go through them. I should have thought this through before I bubbled time and dove in. Flying by the... feathers of my hindquarters, literally. But now, bubbling time again might kill me, and if I was dead, I couldn’t save EJ. And in human form, I couldn’t get though.
I couldn’t just sit here. Help was likely many hours away. Eventually one of the vamps would wake and the mind of the Flayer would take him or her over. I’d have to dispatch whoever it was, even if it was Tex, my friend. And then there was Dudley. The sickness I had felt earlier grew. I had to finish this, had to get EJ out of here.
I needed a safety net and time to figure out my next move, and since bubbling time was out of the question, then gore would have to do.
With wings and claws, I attacked the Flayer’s torso and tore through his left shoulder joint. Using the arm, I batted the bashed head farther away, against the far stone wall. I tossed the arm at the mouth of the cave and it flewoutside, flashing as it passed through the energies. Interesting. The Flayer could get out without dropping the shield. I hopped atop the body and tore off the other arm, throwing it too, though it landed inside the shield.
I reared back and slammed my beak into the exoskeleton, once, twice, the sharp cracks reverberating through my head. On the third bone-breaking peck, my beak pierced through, stabbing into blood and viscera. I grabbed the exoskeleton in claws and my beak. Straining, I separated it, ripping it along the cracks my beak had made.
Good meat. Strong vampire blood,Beast thought. She shoved me down, hungry. Faster than I could think, she pecked out a lung and tossed it up. Opened her beak and took it all in at once.
Gack! Stop!
Beast ignored me and stuck our head inside the cavity, ripping into the heart and liver, tearing them free and shredding strips off with our beak and claws. One by one, she ate them. With each gobbet of gore, I felt better. And grosser.
Gack. Ewww. Stop.
No. Good vampire blood,Beast thought.
I’m eating rats. Eating sentient beings, and not for the first time. I’m a monster. I’m gonna hurl.
Inside me, Beast flicked her ear tabs and exerted pressure against me, pushing me down, taking alpha place.Is like Beast giving milk to kits.Will grow back if Jane lets it.With one eye on Shimon as I ate, I glanced with the other eye at the unknown vamp. The vamp was pretty much out of it. The witch was immobilized. No one was watching me binge-eat an insectoid vamp.
My queasiness faded slightly as I realized that Beast had a point. The Flayer was immortal. He’d grow back all his parts if he got the chance. With one independent eye, I looked over the cave, finding that EJ was still asleep and wouldn’t be forever mentally ruined by my dietary habits.
I closed my mental eyes and let Beast feast. When hunger no longer slashed me like knives, Beast withdrew, flopped down on the floor of our soul home, and let me take back over my Anzu’s body. Bloody, needing a bathif I stayed in this form, I hopped over to a dark corner and shifted shape, hoping to achieve my half-form this time. The shift took a long time.
It hurt. A lot. And it didn’t work like I’d hoped.
***
I was human—shivering and naked, wanting to toss my cookies. Pain was a deep ache, as if bruised all over; I was weak as a newborn kitten. But I wasn’t starving like usual after a shape-shift, just ordinary hungry. Shifting into or out of Anzu used energy from elsewhere, not my disease-ridden body. I guessed the elsewhere was the nearby ley lines, this time, but it was just that. A guess.
The ward flashed overhead, but when I looked I saw nothing. No one. Likely it was a rock or stick dropping from the crevasse above. The cold of the cave pressed into me. Curls of dried blood and blood dust littered the stone around my bare legs.
I had eaten part of the Flayer of Mithrans.Gack.Justgack.
Holding on to the cave wall, I found my feet and my balance, to study the circle with human and Beast vision. It looked like a simple ward, one a child might create in witch school. I walked across the rough, frigid floor of the cave to the arm of the Flayer and lifted it. Breaking the circle as a human, Anzu, or any other form might have made the circle explode, but I was ninety-nine percent certain that Shimon himself could break it. He was a control freak, and no way would he allow a circle he couldn’t manipulate. Still, that one percent chance that I was wrong was a scary one percent. And I might yet kill my godchild.
The exoskeleton was heavy but far more flexible than I had expected. I carried the arm to the north point of the circle and stopped, staring at the sleeping little boy. If I was wrong... Dear God, if I was wrong, I’d kill him. But if I waited, the Flayer’s reinforcements might arrive and EJ would remain a prisoner of the Flayer of Mithrans. I hadn’t prayed much recently, but I said a silent prayer and listened for an answer. There wasn’t one.
Carefully, using the strange-looking hand of the Flayer, I leaned in and touched the cold, dead exoskeleton fingersto the edge of the circle. Nothing happened. I pressed into the energies, seeing the spark of magics as I brushed away the salt. There was life enough in the hand that the circle recognized it and fell. There were no explosions. EJ had survived me pants flying. I swallowed past a fear-dry throat and remembered to breathe. I tossed the arm outside with the other one.
I spotted a bundle of discarded clothing in the corner. On top was a length of emerald green velvet that turned out to be a cape, the fabric warmer than my icy hands. That seemed a dangerous sign, not that I had time to worry about the condition of my human body. Staggering, I knelt beside EJ. He was as cold as I was, so, likely hypothermic, spelled asleep, but his pulse was steady and his breathing was even. I hoped that was a good sign. I wrapped him in the emerald velvet and, clasping the hem of the cape, pulled him across the stone floor, close to the fire. It burned in the slight depression of a fire pit, circled with rounded, blackened stones. The stones were warm and I shoved several close to EJ, nestling them around his small body. I had to stop and breathe for a while, and wished I had achieved half-form. But there was that old adage about peasants and horses flying. Or riding horses. Or maybe it was pigs. Whatever.
Sitting on a warm stone near my godson, I added wood to the fire and rested. My legs were skin and bone, and though I hadn’t checked my weight, I wasn’t certain how I was managing the mass change when I shifted forms. Pain snaked through me. I could almost feel the tumor growing, as if the magic of being Anzu had given it power.
The jesses on my ankle were painfully tight in human form, especially with them slung around to keep them out of the way. I removed the ties and the marble, pulled off the gobag, and dressed in the clothing inside it. The sweatpants and shirt were amazingly comforting. I hung Soul’s crystal and the marble around my neck, next to my own golden nugget and lion claw. I pocketed the Glob and pulled on socks and the thin-soled shoes. There was no cell service underground; I’d have been surprised if there had been.
I secured my weapons, such as they were, and hung thecell in the gobag as close to the cave opening as I could, hoping it would attract the attention of my backup. Weak, sick at the stomach, I ate two protein bars and managed to keep them down. I tore open a jerky strip and bit off a two-inch length, which I tucked into my cheek to soften. I hadn’t packed water. Stupid of me. And I saw no water in the cave.
Now that I was human, I grasped the fact that I had no plan for rescue. I had flown in through the outer ward and killed the bad guy, but that wasn’t going to accomplish much once the wood ran out or EJ woke up or the Flayer’s pals appeared. I needed a part two, a how-to-get-home plan.
