Lance looked like he wanted to throw up his hands, possibly crack his tablet in two, and definitely have a stiff drink. “There are more of them?”
“No. Only two, always two,” she recited, then shrugged. “But—this Weaver may not know how to heal us. She will be a different one of her. They are reborn new people, not reborn their old selves. They learn different things. Ours was young,” she added suddenly. “She delighted in every new thing she could do, forging our souls into something that had never before been seen. And then she was dead, and we preferred to sleep also, rather than cut ourselves to pieces in the years waiting for the new god to grow into her powers. Yours was…?” She aimed the question at Moss and Julian.
Moss exchanged a look with Julian, then shrugged. “A long time ago.”
What had the Weaver of Souls been like as a person? Julian had never thought of that. She was a god from a story, an avatar of shifter creation.
The same way the kraken of story was a mindless killer and not the tired, joking man in front of him.
“I don’t know what she was like,” he admitted. “Except that she helped capture the Soul-Eater. She created the kraken, and—”
“And did not know what she was doing, I think.” Quick-killer clicked her tongue. “To leave you thinking you must seclude yourselves for so long. Or maybe she died, also, before she could correct your guardian form.” She nodded sharply at Moss.
“Sounds like this Weaver of Souls had a habit of leaving things undone,” Lance said grimly.
“The two shifter gods are returned to the world.” Only when everyone’s eyes turned to him did Julian realize he spoke aloud. “The last time they both walked the Earth, it was almost the end of all shifters.”
“That was a long time ago. The world’s changed a lot since then,” Carol pointed out.
Francine frowned. “We must be able to find a better way to solve this than locking someone up in magical stasis. When the Soul-Eater rises again—”
“They’ll just be a kid.” Moss rubbed his forehead. “And they’ll have no idea what’s happening to them.”
“Which puts us on a time limit.” Lance’s voice was grim. “Most shifters these days find their inner animals before their teens.”
“Some are later,” said Carol quietly.
“Does it happen the same way for these shifter gods?”
Lance looked at Moss, who shrugged uncomfortably. He didn’t know.
Quick-killer clucked her tongue. “The power moves to them at once. But the ability to use it … later. Yes.”
“We could have up to twenty years before the two of them re-emerge.”
“Or none,” Keeley cut in. “Maggie was able to shift from birth. Uh, hatching.”
“Prrp!”
“And they could reincarnate anywhere in the world,” Julian said quietly.
The reality of what they were facing set in.
Lance leaned back. “Sounds like we all have our work cut out for us.”
“All of us?” Francine asked, her voice all sharp edges.
Lance met her gaze, and she stiffened. “That’s up to you,” he said.
His glance took in everyone in the room. Old friends. Old enemies. Shifters from a thousand years ago. Shifters from the modern world, who were still finding their feet in it.
Like him.
The shadow dragons guarded the Soul-Eater in his prison. That was what they’d done for a thousand years.
Now the prison was empty. The Soul-Eater was in the world again.
And Julian no longer knew his place in it.
