Dorian. I betrayed Dorian.
For the greater good, for a larger cause.
Something twists violently in my chest, and I gasp.
“This was a mistake.” I rise from the couch.
“Lloyd, let’s talk just a little longer,” pleads the doctor.
“Do you see this?” I hold out my hand, where the veins and tendons are knotting and coiling under the skin. My very bones ache until I can hardly stand upright.
“Good god,” mutters Dr. Jekyll. “What is that?”
“You can see it?” I confirm. “I haven’t lost my mind?”
“I can see it, and I think you need a different kind of doctor,” he falters.
“Usually, I have more time between episodes.” I pull my hand close to my chest. In a moment, the small bones will begin to disconnect from each other, and I will have to transform or watch my body disassemble itself. “It’s happening at shorter and shorter intervalsnow. Do you think meditation will help, Doctor?” I laugh, shrill and wild.
The doctor rolls backward in his chair, putting distance between us. “What’s happening to you?”
“I’mshifting, motherfucker. I came to Nashville because there are other shifters here, and I thought perhaps I could ingratiate myself to them. But I’ve been sick, as you can see, and I haven’t had the time.” My spine rolls involuntarily, and I grit my teeth, forcing out my next words. “They’re a close-knit group, not easy to penetrate. But I may have to go to them and beg them to help me, to cure me. I thought I would try this first—mind over matter, you know.”
“That’s not really a thing,” murmurs the doctor.
“I should have known it wouldn’t work. You humans pretend to know the mind, but the chasms in your knowledge are vast, and you are confidently wrong about so many things—aagghh!” I grimace as my shoulder pops. “Open that window, will you?”
“Look, I’m not just a therapist,” says Dr. Jekyll. “I was premed and biochem once, before… Well, that’s not important. Maybe I can take a blood sample, figure something out to help you—”
“The window,” I gasp.
He hurries over to it, but the latch barely budges. “It’s an old building,” he apologizes. “We never open the windows because there aren’t any screens—”
“Hurry!” I roar.
He wrenches one last time and manages to shove the window wide, just as I lurch forward and transform into a raven. I soar past him, cawing with the sheer relief of being out of that body.
Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe I was never meant to save the world from itself. Maybe I should leave humanity behind and become a beast or a bird forever.
If that is my path, I will first have to make some arrangements for Cernunnos—my useless, pathetic, lost puppy of a god—before I disappear. And perhaps I will go to the Shifter Collective in Nashville, just once, to ask for their help. Imprisonment or death at their hands can’t be worse than my current torturous existence.
I wheel in the sky, cawing again for the benefit of Dr. Jekyll, who is gaping at me from the window far below. Perhaps I’ll give him a vial of my blood before I take beast form forever. He can amuse himself studying it.
Higher I rise into the sunny air. I’ve seen beautiful cities, but this one is unmatched for its mystical energies. I sense the power of the ancients everywhere, traces of the muses, the leannán sídhe, lingering in the blood of everyday citizens. A resurgence is occurring, new powers unfurling and old ones awakening.
But for once, my heart doesn’t thrill at the thought of being a part of it all. For once, I’m not energized by the possibility of the future, but exhausted.
After millennia, I believe I have finally grown old.
2The Phantom
In the City of Music, I am haunted by the cries of the dead.
The souls of deceased humans usually find their way into the Afterworld, but occasionally, some are misdirected, left behind as unsettled echoes, doomed to rove the world, out of sync with life.
The lost spirits can sense my former status as lord of phantoms, god of the Afterworld, but many of them don’t understand that I no longer have the power to grant them safe passage. I cannot guide them or give them rest. My lack of response infuriates them, so I have become a locus for their anger, the eye of a howling hurricane of wretched souls. I rarely know a moment’s peace.
I’ve been abandoned by my summoner, the one who raised me from my cursed sleep. He is a hybrid creature, a blend of shape-shifting púca and wicked gancanagh, love-talker and soul-eater. I was his goal, his hope, the next step in his complex plan…and yet he was foiled in his purpose, cheated when his enemies trapped me in this form. I’m not the powerful ally he wanted. With my memories blurred and my powers reduced to a mere flicker of the inferno theyonce were, I’m useless to him. Useless to everyone.
