Metal scraped on metal. “Regret.”
“You said that. Regret for what, exactly?”
Images flocked thick and fast. She struggled to keep up. Another snare—but this time, cunning claws picked the trap loose, freed the terrified animal within. The crest of a mountain,bare stone bleached white by the sun. An… altar? The rescued creature laid down, a shining knife raised high—
“What the hell?” She tried to stand and almost choked herself. “Some sort of—sacrifice? That’s why you wanted Maggie? And now youregretthat? What, because you got locked up in here?”
And then she had to stop and turn her angry words into images layered with context and meaning, and hope they understood.
Their reply came, slow and tentative. Not the dragons. A figure with a pale face framed by dark hair, eyes like black stones. Teeth like their wings.
Carol went cold. “Me. You wanted me for a… sacrifice.” And now she was trapped in here with them.
I can really pick them, can’t I? For a moment there, I thought I’d gotten them all wrong. That there was a reason behind all of this that would make it okay.
Like Eloise on the boat. Or Briers at work, acting nice so she would stay by his side like a loyal puppy, ready to be used as a scapegoat while he stole Maggie and the eggs. Like the razor-winged woman in the basement, despairing and desperate. Thinking that because they were in the same situation, they would be on the same side.
Like Moss…
No. She couldn’t think about him in the middle of all this.She didn’t even know whatthiswas. Not yet. Being kidnapped? Being taken as a sacrifice to…
Oh.
“Not to kill. Take… for gift. The god takes, and we receive. Gift to you. Like us. To make right.”
And there it was. It all made sense.
“The Soul-Eater. You’re going to the Soul-Eater, tofreehim, so that he’ll take away your shifter abilities. Turn you into normal humans?”
The bird woman nodded.
She’d guessed right about that, with the other bird woman. But to have it made clear—she was horrified. Did they understand what they would be unleashing on the world?
What would I unleash on the world, to be rid of a shifter side that hurt me? I already begged Moss to stay with me. Is the kraken less bad than the Soul-Eater?
“You want to be rid of your shifter sides. And you thought I would want the same thing.” Her voice was flat. That’s where they were being taken. To have her shark stripped out of her.
By a monster who would go on to wipe shifters from the face of the planet.
“Why?” she burst out. “You want to damn everyone else just to be human? That’s horrific! It’s not a gift, it’s murder!”
“We were betrayed!”
I bet you were, given you’re locked up in here same as me.The thought died on her lips—but enough of it must have escaped. Metal rang on metal as the bird shifters hissed angrily.
The woman above her pursed her lips, images flickering too fast for her to follow—or maybe being pulled back before she broadcast them fully, like stuttering half-words as she tried to figure out what to say.
“Before. When—”
A war. Another one, because there were always wars, but this one had done worse than kill—it left their warriors broken, human things. Denied the sky, denied the plummeting exhilaration of death.
Then a god offered them stronger wings, killing wings, to defeat the enemy. The gift was meant to be temporary; after, she would give them something new. A shape fit for living in, not only death-dealing.
Then that god had died.
Carol winced, trying to sort through the images. Maybe if she thought of it like watching a foreign film?Previously, on CSI Shifters…
They’d gone to… someone. For more magic? Something that put them in a sort of Sleeping Beauty sleep, until the god who’d promised to restore their old shifter forms returned.
