I nodded, my communication skills as a fox being limited and all.
With a final look to the east, Cho’s mouth settled into a tight line of determination. “Let’s begin.” She closed her almond-shaped eyes and dug her fingers deep into the dirt.
I was ready to hang onto every word of her spell, wanting to learn more about the witch side of my magic, but when she began she spoke in Japanese. And though I’d studied some Japanese, I wasn’t fluent enough in the language to follow the intricacies of the spell.
Before disappointment could set in, my fur stood on end as the air around us electrified. A breeze whipped up, rustling the leaves of the trees that surrounded us and making the long grasses around us sway.
Whoa.
Cho’s chanting increased in volume and intensity, speeding up until her words merged into what seemed like a single melody. The magical breeze circled the area around the gate, settling above us like a tornado.
I tilted my gaze upward, staring warily at the visible cloud of violet magic funneling above us, while Brock edged carefully around the area so as to be closer to me.
Then a bright purple glow began to seep up from the ground, dividing my attention. It was faint at first, but quite rapidly it thickened until it all but concealed anything behind it. My paws began to tingle as magic moved from the earth into me.
I shifted on my feet, resisting the urge to fight off the tangible magic pressing in on me. My fur whipped in every direction as the magic from above thickened, congealing into a fog that precisely matched the one rising from below.
Heavy, as if it were solid, the violet mist pressed on me from all sides, making me feel caught without escape. But Cho told me not to fight it, not to resist, so I clamped down on my instincts to fight, or at least to get out of the fog’s way. Brock, Dad, and Cho were no longer visible, hidden behind the wall of purple that separated me from them. Though I couldn’t see them, I could still sense Brock. Our bond to each other buzzed happily in my heart, reassuring me things would be fine. I could do this, though I felt like climbing out of my skin.
The purple mist grew thick enough that it transformed into a glow, settling across my fur like a neon coating. Cho’s chanting rose to the next level. She was practically singing now. Her melody vibrated beneath my skin as the power continued to build, pressing in on me. When what felt like electricity rose through the ground beneath my paws to vibrate through my legs, torso, and finally traveling into my head, Cho’s spell reached its crescendo … and the purple mist that surrounded me in every direction imploded like the collapse of a nuclear blast. The violet power sucked inward, consuming me entirely, before it blasted outward in a rushing wave that pulsed across all of the pack’s land, leaving behind a clear sky, shot through with the first rays of the morning’s sun as it peeked above the horizon.
My heart was beating a mile a minute, my flesh feeling like tiny ants were crawling all over it. I was panting like I’d just sprinted. I could almost feel the blades of grass moving in the wind, the roots of the trees that reached deep into the earth, as if all of nature were an extension of me. Was I now tied to the land’s power?
Immediately, I searched out Brock. The beaming smile on his face suggested everything had gone well. I turned to Cho, who looked as pleased as my father.
‘You all right, Eve?’Brock asked.
I nodded, working to release the tension from my body.‘I’m fine. That was just weird as fuck.’
‘It looked weird as fuck too. At least now there’s only one of you again.’
I snapped my attention around our circle. He was right. There was no duplicate of me. That was a relief. I had enough to deal with without mirrors of myself running around—though if I learned to master the skill it could become a really cool party trick.
“That was excellent, Evie,” my dad said. “The spell appears to have been a complete success.”
“Absolutely,” Cho added. “Everything went as well as we could have hoped. Evie’s powers are fully linked into those of the land now, I can feel it. With a bit of luck, the earth’s power will give her the advantage she needs to seal the gate to the underworld, once and for all.”
Sounded like a damn fine plan to me. Especially the luck part. I welcomed all the luck we could get.
‘Ask them if I can change back to human?’I projected to Brock. When I got the okay, I trotted over to the trees where I’d left my clothes and made quick work of returning to my human body. I had questions to ask. With my katana back in hand, I moved over to the others.
“I don’t really feel any different than I did before,” I announced. Other than maybe feeling like I could sense the energy of nature around us, but that could be my mind playing tricks on me or some kind of remnant of the spell.
“That’s okay,” Cho said. “It definitely worked.”
“Great. Now what?”
“Now we start your training,” my dad said.
“I’ve already been training.” I didn’t want him to think I’d been sitting around doing nothing with Haru and Reo.
“Not the way I have in mind. The survival of all of humanity rests on your shoulders. We have to step things up.”
I barely managed to keep from rolling my eyes. Step things up? How could things possibly get any more intense than they’d been over the last few weeks? It was barely 6 AM or something. The only thing I wanted to step up was my napping game.
As if I’d jinxed myself, I narrowed my eyes at the location of the gate, which I could no longer see now that I was back to being human, or as close to it as I got as a hybrid kitsune-witch. But I could sure as shit see the putrid-looking black-green fog seeping from what appeared to be a random spot in the forest, but had to be the gate.
“Uh, what the hell is that?” I asked, pointing.
