Part I-The Summoning

An ancient and powerful entity, known only as the Huntress, is stirring in this modern day mythological adventure.

The day was quickly turning from twilight to dusk.  As the sun slipped beneath the horizon line, and darkness settled over Slatey Springs, a serene silence rushed through the tiny, sleepy town.  The air got tighter, almost like a door was being closed on a muggy room, and Slatey Springs was shut inside.  People rarely ventured out after dark in Slatey Springs.  Not because the night was frightening, but because the night felt so final.  Like now the day was over, there’s nothing left to do.  Tonight, like every night since her life began, Gavagene’s heart began to race, beating against her ribcage like it was beating against the bars of a prison, rattling her from the inside, begging to rip her open and crawl out.  The anxiety and the yearning was trying to take her over.  She sat on the couch in her living room, legs tucked under her body, book laid open in her lap.  She read and re-read the same sentence over and over again.  To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.  To the person in the bell jar…. To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped…

Eventually the words stopped making sense all together but Gava kept her eyes on the page, forced them to move back and forth, pretending to read the words on the paper that appeared foreign now.  She couldn’t have made sense of them if she tried.  But from in the kitchen, her mother watched Gava, eyes sharp and narrow, lips pursed over her tiny teeth.  Every night, in the hour before dusk, Gava sat down on the couch of the living room.  Every night, she read The Bell Jar.  Every night, her mother stood like a statue, watching her from the kitchen as dusk approached.  She had started reading The Bell Jar when she was twelve years old.  And now she had read it 273 times, this was her 274^th.  She nearly had the book memorized at this point, but she still couldn’t concentrate on the words. 

Gava’s hands began to shake and sweat began to bead on her forehead.  She hoped her mother wouldn’t notice.  Turning the page, still pretending to read, Gava concentrated on breathing slowly through her nose.  Meanwhile, every cell in her body was coming alive, it felt like her very soul was on fire.  Instead of the words before her, in her mind Gava pictured the forest, thick and fresh and fertile.  She imagined running, toes in the dirt, her feet bare, weaving between the trees, catching glimpses of the full moon above her between the leaves.  Gava always knew when the moon was full.  Her anxiety was the worst.  And tonight her anxiety was nearly unbearable. 

During the day, Gava was a quiet, lethargic girl.  She was difficult to wake in the morning, and she struggled to rub the weariness from her eyes, even as the late afternoon came.  Her mother had medicated her with stimulants from the time she was a child, but they rarely did much for Gava.  They kept her from dozing off during the day, but didn’t help with much else.  Gava loved to learn, but she could almost never do it during the day.  She used to sneak her books into bed at night, and after her mother had gone to bed, she was read by the light of the moon through her window.  Eventually, her mother found out she was doing this, and she took her out of public school and began homeschooling her on a perverse, nocturnal schedule.  Then, one day, Gava’s aunt found out her mother was doing this, and suddenly Gava was enrolled in private school, no more night classes for her, except for in the summer when her mother hired private tutors that shuffled in at sun down. 

But still, every day, no matter what, as dusk fell, Gava sat on the couch and read The Bell Jar while her body began to ache with need, and her skin began to crawl with desire.  This ritual had begun when Gava was twelve.  She had succumb to her desires and had jumped through her window, out into the night, and took off running into the forest at the edge of town.  As she passed the city limits, she felt herself becoming dizzy and jittery, as if she were drunk.  The next thing she knew, she awoke in the back of an ambulance.  She had been found naked, laying in the forest, dirty and bruised, eyes spinning wildly.  The doctors couldn’t figure out what had happened.  Her mother had collected her quietly, driven her home, attached bars to every window in the house and bolts to every door, and had begun the ritual that they practiced now.

“Gene,” her mother snapped.

Gava had been daydreaming still, imagining herself, darting through the forest.  She was only shaken back into reality when he mother tugged the book from her hands and snapped it shut.  Gava realized suddenly that she was drenched in sweat, panting like a nervous animal, tensing and relaxing her body.  Embarrassed, she straightened up, wiped the sweat from her face, and tried to relax as every molecule of her being begged her to run.  Her mother was holding her hand out.  In her palm were six white tablets"sleeping pills.  Gava took them every night when it was the school year.  She hated taking them but they were the only thing that could calm her down enough to sleep at all.  Without water, Gava scooped them up and swallowed them down.  Wordlessly, she stood up from the couch and brushed past her mother. 

Up the stairs, down the hall, second door on the left was Gava’s bedroom.  It was not very large, but it was comfortable.  Books tumbled across every surface, along with sketch paper and charcoal pencils.  In the corner sat a telescope that Gava had bought at a flea market, much to her mother’s frustration.  It didn’t work very well, but Gava peered into it nearly every night.  In the middle of the room sat her full sized bed.  It wasn’t a canopy bed, but she had fashioned hangings out of curtain rods that she suspended from nails in the ceiling. 

Gava shut the door behind her and locked it, fearful her mother would follow.  She rushed to the window, throwing the curtains open.  Through the bars, she craned her neck until she could see the full moon, until its light fell on her face, making every inch of skin it touched sing.  Gava dropped to her knees, racing against the sleep medication, she laid on her stomach and reached beneath her chest of drawers.  Prying up a floorboard with her nails, she fished a metal lock box from beneath the crevice below.  Once it was on the floor in front of her, Gava froze, listening for sounds of her mother.  She heard dishes clinking from the kitchen.  Relieved, Gava spun the combination into the lock and threw the lid open. 

Inside the box were all the things she knew her mother would never allow her to keep.  Most of them were sketches Gava had done herself.  Sketches of the forest, of the sky, of the moon, of a single grey eye that swam at the edges of Gava’s memories, a quiver of arrows, a cascading waterfall.  At the edges of the sketches were symbols that Gava had etched vaguely, not really knowing what they meant, but somehow she knew they meant something.  She pawed through the sketches, felling herself growing weary as the pills took effect.  Beneath the papers was a dried bouquet of wildflowers she had picked herself and a silver necklace she had stolen from a gift shop in a museum.  The chain was light and felt like water as it pooled in her hand.  The pendant on the end depicted a tiny silver wolf, head turned up, howling at a phantom moon.  Quickly, Gava put the necklace on and tucked it beneath her sleep shirt.  She placed her sketches back into the box, closed the lid and locked the box, before putting it back in its hiding spot.  Sitting back up, Gava fingered at the necklace, cool against her breast, as she leaned against the wall below her window, staring up at the moon. 

As a child, the full moon had simply been enchanting.  Now that Gave was nearly eighteen, it was alluring.  Gava was embarrassed about the feelings that had begun to rise in her at fourteen.  But she couldn’t resist them.  The haze that the sleep pills were causing made it easier to give in.  One hand still gripping the necklace, her other crawled down her body and slid between her legs.  Gava closed her eyes, the moonlight on her face feeling more like sunlight.  Pleasure shook her body immediately before the pills finally dragged her down into sleep. 

Nearly every night of her life, but especially on the night of a full moon, Gava had the same dream.  It was always the same, even as a child.  It was very similar to the daydream she usually had at dusk, but much more wonderful.

Gava was running, her bare feet digging into the cold earth.  She was quick, efficient.  When Gava ran during the day, when she was awake and firmly in reality, it was labored, painful.  Her joints would ache and her head would spin.  But in the dream, it felt more like flying.  Her body was long and strong.  She looked down and didn’t recognize her naked body, yet she knew it was her own.  She weaved between the trees, effortless.  The forest around her was completely still.  Nothing moved except for her.  There wasn’t a sound, save her own soft footfalls.  The trees around her were white and gnarled and had large, flat leaves the size of Gava’s face.  Up above, Gava caught glimpses of the moon.  She was alone and at peace.

Then suddenly she would notice something up ahead.  Someone or something else running, weaving between the trees so quickly that Gava could never see it properly.  A glimpse of white cloth here, a leg there, but Gava never saw the whole.  Then Gava sensed the entity beside her, something massive and wholly not human.  Gava never looked down at it, she didn’t need to.  She knew what it was and she felt no fear.  Whatever beast ran and panted at her heels was not pursuing her.  Instead, they were running together.  And whoever was up ahead was their guide.  No, they were not running from something, they were running after something.  The three of them, together, chasing"hunting"something Gava could not see, yet she trusted the person up ahead to lead the way.

Nearly every night, Gava had this dream.  She never saw who was up ahead, she never glanced down at what ran beside her.  And they never caught whatever they pursued.  But it was a surreal, meditative experience.  If she couldn’t run through the forest at night for real, she was content to do it in her dreams. 

Nearly every night, Gava had this dream.  But not tonight. 

The sleeping pills drug her into fuzzy darkness, and she waited for her feet to touch the ground in the familiar forest of white-barked trees.  She could see her dream materializing around her, the trees like ghosts.  But suddenly, she felt like someone had thrown a lasso around her throat and she was being dragged backwards by her neck, away from the forest and her nightly pursuit, away from the dream that felt like swimming through a cloud"fuzzy on the edges and immaterial.  Instead she slammed into a very real ground, crashing to the forest floor on her side.  

Gava looked up and around her.  She was in a very real forest, with dark and wide trees, under a cloudy sky.  Beneath the canopy, she laid beside of pair of legs, which stood beside another pair of legs, next to another, and another.  Many pairs of legs, standing together around a fire.  The smell of smoke made Gava gag as it filled up her lungs.  She tried to roll onto her stomach and push herself to her feet, but the ground pitched beneath her in a very real way.  It tilted and it rolled and it fought her as she tried to get to her feet.  Her head felt like a weight, not wanting to get too far from the ground.  She swayed and bobbed and tried to stand but she finally gave up, just letting herself fall back onto her butt, looking at the scene before her.

A group of people stood in a perfect circle, hands linked, around a bonfire which was spitting red tendrils into the sky like a living beast.  The people all wore black cloaks with heavy hoods pulled up over their heads.  Gava tried to see the faces of those across the circle from her.  Most of the time, their faces were hidden by shadows, but when the fire sparked again, Gava realized that they wore masks made of animal skulls, each a different creature.  One person stood in the middle of the circle, a woman, not much older than Gava herself.  She wore no hood, no mask.  In her arms was a heavy leather tome.  Her eyes darted back and forth and Gava noticed her lips were moving rapidly.  That was when Gava realized that she couldn’t hear anything.  This women was reading from the book, but Gava heard no sound. 

“Elefthorosi!” 

Gava head the word like it was being etched into her skull.  It made her ears ring and her body ache but suddenly she felt weightless.

“Ela mazi.”

Gava was floating, her body unraveling, and she landed softly on her feet.  She could hear now, the crackling of the fire, the wind through the leaves, and the hum coming from the circle.  Above everything was the woman’s voice.  She wasn’t merely reading, she was shouting, like a television preacher.  Gava didn’t understand the words, but somehow she recognized them; like hearing the voice of someone she only knew as a child.  She couldn’t place it, but she knew she had heard it before.  The woman continued to read, to shout, the fire continued to spit black smoke and bright tendrils into the air.  Gava stood just outside the circle, suddenly frightened.  Everything about the scene, not just the language, seemed familiar yet so foreign.  She knew she shouldn’t touch the people, she knew she should not interrupt.  Somehow she knew that if the woman stopped reading, something terrible would happen.  So Gava only stood, staring over the shoulders of the two people in front of her. 

As the woman read, Gava began to really feel her surroundings.  The dirt under her feet.  The wind through her hair.  Every sound of every animal, and even of every plant.  It all felt so real that Gava forgot that this was a dream.  The woman stopped reading abruptly.  When Gava looked up, she caught the woman’s eye.  Her eyes were completely black, glinting like flint, reflecting the sparking fire.  It made Gava shiver, but it didn’t frighten her.  The woman stared right at Gava and smiled.  Gava opened her mouth, tried to ask where she was and what was going on, but no sound could come out.  The woman’s face screwed up in disappointment and she dropped her gaze, her eyes turning to an entirely normal dull green.  The woman tilted to her left like she might fall.  One of the hooded figures moved like she might catch her, but the woman straightened up and hissed “Don’t break the circle!”  The figure tensed and returned to its original place as the woman straightened herself out and turned the page of the book in her hands and began to read again.

Suddenly Gava realized that there was someone on the ground beside her, struggling like Gava had.  It was an older woman, in her thirties maybe.  She had long, straight blonde hair that fell like a curtain around her pale, naked body.  Gava looked down and realized she herself was naked as well.  Unlike the other dream, Gava felt embarrassed and moved to cover her exposed body.

“Soror Iphingenia, ela mazi!” the woman in the center of the circle shouted.

The blonde woman floated up weightlessly and set her feet gently on the forest floor.  She looked around, not in a confused or frightened way, but as if taking stock of a situation she wholly expected.  She even nodded a bit, a small smile on her face.  But the smile disappeared when she spotted Gava.  In fact, the color drained from her already pale skin and her eyes widened like she had seen a ghost.

“Britomartis?” the woman gasped in disbelief.

At the sound of that word, Gava felt like her head was being split open.  She grabbed her ears, from which blood was now streaming, and began to scream as if she had been stabbed.  Pain, searing hot pain, filled every inch, every cavity Gava had.  The ground opened up beneath her and Gava was swallowed whole, falling down away from the fire and the circle and the blonde woman, tears streaming down her face and she fought something she couldn’t describe.  She fell and fell through darkness, until suddenly she landed in her own body, laying in her mock canopy bed.  Gava crashed into herself and woke with a start, sweating pouring from her body, the sheets a tangled, wet mess.  She struggled to sit up, and then to remember to breath.  Gava thrashed about until she fell out of bed, taking her fake canopy with her.  Finally able to breath, she leapt to her feet, ran out her door and into the bathroom across the hall.

The light was harsh, and it hurt her eyes.  But Gava didn’t squint.  She let the fluorescence burn her corneas as she stared at her own pale face in the mirror.  Struggling to remember what she looked like, Gava drank in every part of her face, panting until she felt calm.  Gava splashed some water on her face and gulped down some mouthfuls straight from the focet.  She peeled her sweaty sleep shirt off her body and stood in the chilly bathroom in a pair of shorts and her wolf necklace.  Goosebumps broke across her back, making her feel real, reassuring her that the dream was over.

A firm knock on the bathroom door made Gava jump. 

“Gene,” her mother said starkly, “what’s going on?” 

“Bad dream, mom, nothing to be worried about.”

Her mother paused and Gava knew she was trying to figure out whether to be mad or worried.

“What was it about?” her mother asked as softly as she was capable of. 

“I uh...I don’t remember much of it,” Gava lied.  “I was drowning.”  This was only a half lie, Gava had nightmares about drowning in her bathtub at least once a year.  In fact whenever she wasn’t dreaming of running through the forest (or of attending some strange bonfire, apparently) she was dreaming of her own death in a handful of gruesome, painful ways.

Her mother was silent for longer this time.

“Open the door Gavagene,” stricter this time.  That was an order.

Gava put her damp shirt back on and opened the door just a crack.  Her mother’s stern, angry face stared back at her.

“Dreams aren’t real,” her mother snapped. 

“I know, mom,” Gava groaned. 

“No,” her mother snapped, shoving the door open wider and forcing her way into the bathroom.  “They are not real and you should not let them get you this upset.”

“Okay, I know, I’m sorry,” Gava said, dropping her eyes.  She hated when her mother was like this. 

“You’re not listening to me.”  This time her mother slapped her.  Gava jumped and grabbed her stinging cheek, but it was nothing she wasn’t use to.  “They’re not real, you shouldn’t pay any attention to them.  You’re being f*****g childish, Gene.”

“I’m sorry,” Gava whimpered.

“No, you’re NOT!”  Her mother slapped her again, on the other side of her face, harder this time.  “You are always letting thses little things get the better of you!” SMACK.  “I told you to stop dreaming and to stop having these nightmares!” SMACK.  “I told you to stop remembering these stupid fantasies!”  SMACK!  This time, she hit so hard that Gava fell to the floor.  Her mother backed up a step, her face stony.  “Now.  Because you don’t find your bed comfortable, you will sleep in here for the rest of the night.”  Gava’s stomach sank.  Her mother had found her out of bed.  “And....”  This time, her mother kicked her, hard, in the stomach.  “If you ever touch yourself again, I will kill you.”  With that, her mother turned and left the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, and locking it with a final click.  Her mother had specially installed locks on every door in the house, to which she held the only key.  She particularly enjoyed locking Gava in places.

Gava sighed, and pulled herself onto her feet.  She definitely wasn’t dreaming now.  The face that looked back from the mirror was red and bloody.  Gava licked the blood from her busted lip.  Defeated, she lowered herself to the cold tile floor.  Curled in a ball, Gava shivered against the sink for the rest of the night, not falling back asleep again.

On Sunday nights, Malik video called his mother at 7:00pm from his dorm room.  It was the last thing his mother did before she went to bed.  But tonight, Malik asked if he they could move their weekly appointment from 7:00 to 6:00.

“I have a study group meeting at seven,” Malik had lied in a text message to his mother the day before. 

I thad been almost two months since her son had gone off to college, but Sondra Gully was still as weepy and proud as the day she had left him at McCormik Hall. 

“Are you eating enough?” his mother pestered.

“Yes, mom.”

“Getting enough sleep.”

“Of course.”

“How are the classes going?  Are they starting to get difficult?”

“No, they’re still beginner level, nothing crazy.”

“Oh baby, I hope you get straight A’s!”

They went back and forth like this for thirty minutes before his mother picked up her laptop and journeyed around the house, forcing every resident who was home to wave at Malik and wish him well.  His father on the couch, his sisters in their bedroom playing video games, his older brother talking on the phone to his girlfriend, his baby brother flopping around his crib in a baby-like way, his dog sniffing suspiciously at the computer.  Finally, around 6:45, Malik began urging his mother to say goodbye.

“Okay, mom,” he said, feigning a yawn.  “I should get going to my study group.”

“Okay baby, study hard.  Normal time next week right?”

“Yup, seven next week.”

“Okay.  Don’t be afraid to call!  I love you, I love you, I love you, and I am so proud of you!”

“Love you too, mom,” Malik smiled, while his mother waved furiously. 

Malike hung up the call and slammed his laptop shut.  The sun was only just getting low in the sky, yet he was already starting to feel out of control.  He crossed his room and glanced out the window at the quad below.  It was only late summer, students were outside, lounging on blankets, reading and playing music, or tossing frisbees and footballs to each other.  Malik then looked up at the sun, not even touching the horizon yet.  He balled and unballed his fists, digging his nails into his palm, hoping to ground himself.

His dorm room was small.  Malik had swung for a single, and had ended up in something he was certain had been a janitor’s closet at one time.  There was barely enough room to walk between the bed and the desk, both of which were flushed against opposite walls.  Swinging the door to the closet open fully wasn’t even possible, as it would hit the bed before he could open it all the way.  Digging through a strategically placed pile of jackets, Malik fished out his heavily worn backpack.  With efficiency that came with practice, he pulled a carefully wrapped ham from his mini fridge and dumped it into the bag, along with a change of clothes.  Inside the bag already were a toothbrush, toothpaste, trail mix, deodorant, soap, wet wipes, chapstick, lotion, a bus pass, a credit card, and $50 in cash.  He snapped the bag shut and threw it onto his back. 

Outside of McCormik Hall, Malik stuck to the quickly growing shadows until he reached the South Green parking garage.  He walked through the low ceiling, concrete structure, his footsteps echoing eerily.  His bike was parked at the far end of the garage.  Fear began to grip him as he felt his heart rate rising and felt the twilight creeping through the sky, so he broke into a run.  He was worried he wouldn’t make it to Richland State Park in time.  He couldn’t stay near campus, it was hunting season, and the woods nearby were unprotected.  So he kicked his motorcycle to life and squealed out of the garage, out onto the street.  Soon, he was off campus, across the bridge, flying down an empty back country road, gulping down the cooling air and trying to maintain control.  Richland Forest was only twenty minutes away on his bike, but when he glanced at the sun and saw it quickly racing towards the horizon, he sped up until he was nearly going 100 mph.

Just as he was getting close to where he knew he could hide his bike (he had been planning this for months now), red and blue light flashed behind him.  Internally, two sides battled.  Keep going and try to shake the cop and risk a chase, or stop and hope the cop was quick?  A second cruiser pulling out behind him made him choose the second option.  He screeched to a stop in the gravel beside the road, trying to control himself from shaking as he pulled his helmet off. 

The cop sat in the car for what felt like eternity.  Malik stared forward at the sun, which was nearly halfway down.  He considered running for it.  He knew his bike could accelerate fast enough to outrun the cruiser.  Just as he was moving to put his helmet back on, the cop got out of his car.

It was a woman, plump and short, marching with a confident swagger towards Malik.  When she reached him, she did an abrupt right face and pulled her sunglasses off her face.

“Son, you know how fast you were going?”

No sooner had the words left her lips, did Malik realize that the moon had reached the sky, and it was much much too late.

He knew what to expect, but that didn’t stop the shock he felt when the searing pain began at the base of his neck.  The pain began to drip down Malik’s spine like molten metal, burning and searing his very skeleton itself.  He bit his lip.  He knew he would begin screaming soon, he didn’t have much time.

“Ma’am"“ Malike grit his teeth against the pain, “it’s an emergency.”

“What emergency?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

Malik didn’t want to leave his bike.  He didn’t want to let the police take his information, watch him transform, and begin some sort of crazy manhunt.  He couldn’t let that happen.  Yet he was afraid that he had no choice.  He fell sideways, his bike going with him.  The pain in his spine, now creeping up towards his head, was joined by the pain of being crushed beneath his bike.  The police woman was shouting in shock, asking him questions, trying to pull the bike off of him.  Malik tried to tell her to run, but his mind was quickly being disintegradted by the pain and he couldn’t make his mouth form words. 

The cop freed Malik from beneath the bike.  He scrambled to his feet and began to run, blindly, towards the woodline that was about 200 yards away.  The police woman was screaming at him to stop running.  She got her wish because Malik didn’t make it very far before collapsing.  His whole body was in excruciating pain now.  All he could do was let himself fall.  He couldn’t hear anything, but he knew he was screaming.  The police woman was by him, as were three other cops that had been in their cars.  He tried to wave them away.  He could feel his bones expanding now.  That was the worst part.  His creaking, popping, snapping body while his bones stretched and expanded, bent into a new shape.  He could feel his skin and stretching impossibly as his body rearranged itself and his muscles doubled in size.  His clothes tore, shredding away from his body as it grew to a massive size.  Hair, dark and wirey and thick, began to sprout across the lower half of his body while leathery, black scales armored his shoulders.  He was nearly blind with pain, but he could see the police, their faces contorted with fear, backing away.   

Once his body had finished changing, he laid on his side for a moment, panting and trying to get his bearings.  Experimentally, he got to his feet.  Dusk had settled while he had changed and the moment Malik caught sight of the full moon just above the trees, he couldn’t help but throw his head back and howl.

When he had finished, he turned to look at the police who still were standing, fearfully, near the edge of the road.  Somehow, the fears and anxieties Malik had had in a human form had faded away and now there was only the desire to hunt, to kill.  But he was still coherent enough to know that he at least needed his backpack.  After all, his clothes had torn, and he didn’t want the police to take his only other articles with them.  His backpack, straps torn, sat on the ground near the police.  The moment Malik began moving towards his, two of the officers pulled the weapons.  Malik eyed them suspiciously, he could smell their fear.  He took another step towards his bag and a shot rang out, then another.  Both hit him in the shoulder.  They stung, but didn’t penetrate the scales and thick fur that covered his upper body.  Yet the pain was enough for Malik to lose himself entirely to the beast. 

The four cops didn’t have a chance.  Malik moved too quick, too efficiently.  Their bones snapped like twigs between his teeth, their bodies split open like pinatas, spilling treats across the pavement.  It was mere minutes before they were all dead, even the one who dove into his cruiser and tried to start the ignition.  When he had finished with them, he devoured what he could, but he was still hungry.  These humans had been easy kills.  Malik needed a hunt.  So he shook out his fur, scooped up his backpack in his teeth, and took off into the treeline.

It wasn’t long before Malik caught whiff of a deer, a stag actually, young still, but large.  Excited, he took off, tracking the scent through the trees for miles until he caught glimpse of the animal near a stream at the base of a hill.  Malik crouched low and circled silently around to the animals flank.  The stag straightened up, ears flicking back and forth, trying to identify the sound, but Malik was too silent for it to place what it was hearing.  Reassured, the stag returned to drinking from the stream.  Finding a ledge which he could hide his bulk behind, Malik waited, low to the ground.  The stag continued to drink for several more minutes before it straightened up and listened again.  Once more assuming it was safe, it began to walk lazily towards a path of berries a few yards away.  Malik, wanting to give chase to the animal, released a low growl from his throat.  The stag had heard him for certain now.  It froze, rigid and ready to run, listened for just a moment before taking off at a quick pace around the north side of the hill.

Malik leapt from his hiding place, bounding after the animal.  The two of them beat through the brush, bouncing around trees and over creeks.  Malik held back from his full speed, just enjoying the chase, the flex of his muscles, the pounding of the stag’s heart up ahead.  He needed the animal to accept death, to understand it’s fate.  Malik chased the animal out into a clearing, the glorious moon bright in the sky.  It bound straight across the tall grass, before veering left and heading east.  Malik turned with ease and precision, deciding now was his time to attack.  He could hear the stag growing tired, he could smell it in the air.  Just as his prey reached the woodline once more, he dug his feet into the ground and really began to run.  Shifting towards the right side of the animal, he eyed the stag’s throat.  Just as he drew even with his prey and pulled his lips back from his teeth, something stark white, moving too fast to see, leapt out from the right.  It’s mass connected with the stag.  There was blood as both the stag and this other predator went crashing to the forest floor with such a force that they slid for nearly 20 yards before hitting a large tree and coming to a halt.

Surprised, Malik rounded angrily on whoever had taken his kill.  Too his shock, he was looking at another wolf.  He had never seen another werewolf before.  Even the one who had bitten him had come from behind while he slept.  He suddenly realized that he had never even seen himself in this form, he didn’t know what he looked like as a wolf.  The opportunity to look in a mirror during a full moon had never presented itself.  Looking at this other werewolf, he was actually struck by how absolutely terrifying of a beast that he was. 

This brute was nearly three times the size of a normal wolf, and only slightly more massive than Malik himself.  It was entirely white.  It’s face was covered only in taught skin, with a mouth that could fit a pumpkin with ease, and canines two inches long.  Yet there was something frighteningly human about it’s face.  It’s eyes were large and a crystalline blue around pupils that were merely crescent slits.  It’s flat head drew back into bat-like ears that seemed too big for its body.  Past it’s ears, its fur stuck out in tufts from underneath thick scales.  The scales were so large around its neck and chest that it almost gave the appearance of a mane, like a lion.  The large scales gave way to smaller, more interspersed ones along its body.  The tail was long and naked, like the face, and flicked back and forth like a cat's as the animal tore open the stag hungrily.  Down the length of its legs, the scales turned to fur, ending in massive paws with long talons for claws, and a dew claw that extended all the way down and dug at the ground. 

Once the stag was dead, the animal turned and looked straight at Malik.  The white of its mouth and chest were stained with blood.  It stared at Malik with an incredibly human expression before it turned again, dug its teeth into the stag and, with little effort, drug the animal away. 

Malik was so taken aback he wasn’t even angry about his lost kill.  When the wolf disappeared and the forest settled once more, Malik doubted that he had even seen the beast at all.  Pawing at the ground, he tried to decide what to do next.  He found himself simply wandering through the woods, snatching up squirrels and other rodents from their holes, and absentmindedly wondering about other werewolves. 

 

 

Nora didn’t know if she should be satisfied or not.  On one hand, she had successfully summoned two souls.  After practicing magik and participating in the Craft for nearly fourteen years, she had never done anything quite so complex.  On the other hand, though, she hadn’t been able to maintain them.  Somehow, the two had reacted off of each other and both had disintegrated only moments after she had solidified the second into this plane.  As she stared at herself in her bedroom mirror, she once again found herself questioning the path she was going down.  When she had been approached ten years ago, she didn’t realize how f*****g hard this was going to be.  She looked at her clock, it was nearly time to walk.  Nora was so worn out, that she didn’t know if she even had the energy to open the planes and seek out her confidant, but she knew she had to.

Nora was turning from her vanity set, about to move to her bed, when there was a sharp knock on her door.  Normally, Nora didn’t answer her door.  She was technically squatting in this house.  She rarely had callers, most people who approached her house grew confused and disoriented and never made it to her front door.  Every so often, a determined teenager on a dare made it all the way to the wrap around porch, but would quickly lose their nerve after knocking politely on the door.  But something about the urgency of the knock, and the way the air shifted around Nora, made her mentally call out an apology before she left her bedroom.

By the time Nora reached the grand stair case, her visitor was standing in the foyer.  It shocked Nora to see the woman in the flesh.  She had spent most of her life reading descriptions of the Nymphs, she had even glimpsed their souls, but that didn’t prepare her for actually seeing one in her home.  Nora recognized the woman as Iphingenia, the second of the souls she had summoned the night before.  She was massive, well over six feet tall, and so lovely it was almost difficult to look at her.  Her skin was almost white it was so pale.  Her straight blonde hair, not nearly as long as it had appeared intangibly, fell in a smart modern bob just at her shoulders.  She was dressed in a skirt suit, something expensive for sure, and designer heels which only made her towering height more imposing.  Her aura, a baby blue color, was so bright it almost hurt to gaze upon.  Nora remained at the top of her staircase, looking down on the impatient Nymph, unsure what exactly to do.

“You’re the witch who summoned me last night?” Iphingenia snapped.

Nora was excited that this woman thought of her as a witch.  She bit back a triumphant smile, hid her nerves, and squared her shoulders. 

“I am,” Nora said with a nod.

“How did you do that?”

“What do you mean?”

Iphingenia tapped her toe.

“How did you summon me?  That’s an incredibly advanced spell for a witch as young as you and a circle as inexperienced as yours.  Where did you learn that?  How did you do it?” the Nymph asked, sounding annoyed.

Nora couldn’t deny a Nymph this information.  It was her power that Nora was drawing on anyway.   

“I’ll show you,” Nora said, beckoning Iphingenia up the stairs.  It took less than a second for the Nymph to appear by Nora’s side.  It made Nora nervous, how tall the woman was, but she led her to her spellroom anyway. 

The spellroom was at the end of the dusty hall.  It had been a library once.  The walls were still lined with books, most untouched by Nora or anyone else for years.  The floor in the middle of the room had been cleared and laid with new cherry wood floors.  Around the room were tall stands, some with glass covered displays, others with book cradles holding open her spell books.  A enormous iron cauldron sat near a stove by the left wall, beside it was a shelf full of glass jars of various size, color, and content.  On the opposite wall was a shelf full of candles, leaves, stones, paint, gems, and the other assorted items Nora used to Cast.  Her alter stood at the far edge of the room.  It was larger than most alters, and Nora was quite proud of that.  The most remarkable part of this enormous room, however, was not its strange contents, but instead it was the fact that the far wall had collapsed, along with part of the ceiling.  The room opened up and nature had started coming in.  Vines and branches jutted in through the open end, thick as a jungle.  Warm morning sunlight filtered through the green leaves, casting an otherworldly glow into the room.

Nora kicked off her shoes and shrugged out of her clothes, unabashed.  Near the door, hanging on mounted antlers, were cloaks and robes.  Nora grabbed her favorite"a black silk cloak that swept the floor.  She offered another to Iphingenia.  In response, the black suit the Nymph wore began to melt away like ice on a summer day.  In its place was a immaculate white robe made of a material Nora couldn’t identify.  Nora shrugged and hung her plain cotton offering back on the antlers and led Nora into the spellroom. 

“What should I call you?” Nora asked.  She knew well enough not to call Iphingenia by her real name.  For a witch as powerful as her, saying her name was like speaking a spell.  It held power.  Simply saying it could summon that power.  It wasn’t a name to be simply thrown about in casual conversation.

“I’ve been going with Pheobe lately,” Iphingenia said.  “And you’re name is Nora Tucker, is it not?”

“Nobody has used my last name for years, but yea that’s me.” 

On the table near the far edge of the room, the heavy leather book sat where Nora had left it when she had gotten home.  She scooped it up and held it out to Pheobe.

“Here it is.  I got the spell from here,” Nora explained.

Pheobe’s eyes widened at the sight of the book.  Gently, like picking up a sick child, she took the book from Nora’s hands.

“Where did you get this grimoire?” Pheobe practically whispered.

“Uhm...that’s a long story,” Nora said sheepishly. 

Pheobe eyed her suspiciously.

“I didn’t steal it!” Nora snapped.  “Technically.”

“Do you know whose this is?” Pheobe asked.

“Of course I do,” Nora said defensively.

“How did you get ahold of this?”

“I...uh...it was in a mausoleum...in Romania,” Nora tried to explain.  “Transylvania actually.”

“How did you know where it was?”

“The Huntress told me.”

If possible, Pheobe’s eyes got even wider.  “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

So Nora led Pheobe to the disheveled furniture by the bookshelves left from when the room was a library, and the two sat down.  Pheobe shuffled through the pages of the grimoire, but also appeared to be actively hanging on Nora’s every word. 

Nora started from the very beginning.  From the time she was a child, Nora had been interested in paganism and mythologies.  She began attempting spells at the age of fourteen.  She was, surprisingly, incredibly good at it.  Soon she was mastering manipulations, potions, and casting that she had no idea were well beyond what most witches accomplished in a lifetime of study.  It came naturally to Nora.  At sixteen, noticing the disturbances she was causing, a local coven tracked her down and demanded she began to study under them.  There was no room for her in the circle, they told her, but she needed to begin to study in order to be safe.  So she began the tedious work of reading about the Craft instead of practicing it.  The coven who had tracked her down was a Nanayan coven consisting of mostly of middle aged divorcees with no natural ability and little devotion.  Their utter plainness was so disappointing to Nora.  The only one of interest, the high priestess, was the only one who had any talent at all.  She was a dream walker and had been the one who had sensed Nora in the first place.  Nora was afraid that this was the pinnacle of magik, this was as good as it could get.

But it wasn’t long before a much more powerful coven, a coven of Surya, tracked Nora down.  The Nanayans couldn’t really do anything when faced the the actual power of the Suryan coven.  The Suryan’s, however, had little interest in training Nora or trying to keep her in reigns.  They only brought her to a Lilithian witch who put her in a trance and, in true testament to the Lilithian’s awesome power, taught Nora to dream walk in a matter of hours. 

It was on her first dream walk that she met the woman who she knew only as the Huntress.  The Huntress asked Nora to complete an important quest for her.  It didn’t take much to convince Nora to drop out of high school, run away from home, and begin tracking down artifacts.  Nora didn’t ask many questions.  She did her research.  She accepted what the Huntress explained.  But she had a feeling that digging too deep would get her into trouble, would get the attention of someone she didn’t want the attention of. 

Nora began her own spellbook, filling its pages with spells she found in ancient books, spells she read about online, spells she made up herself, and spells that the Huntress carefully explained in great detail to Nora in her dreams.  After two years, the Huntress gave her the names and addresses of two other women.  Nora tracked them down and found the other witches.  Both young, like herself.  Both struggling to understand their natural power, like herself.  Performing the blood spell given to her by the Huntress, Nora created a Trinity with Caroline and Marcey. 

The power of the Trinity shocked Nora.  She was suddenly performing magik that she had only thought was fantasy.  This was just the beginning, the Huntress had promised, when she found a complete circle, then they would know real power.  Once the Trinity had mastered what the Huntress had deemed necessary, they split up.  Caroline and Marcey traveled to every corner of the world, tracking down very specific witches while Nora went after a strange array of artifacts.  The grimoire had been in Transylvania, in a mausoleum labeled “Marka” and a tomb labeled “Stefana.”   

It was quickly becoming clear what the Huntress was intending Nora to do.  With everything they needed gathered, Nora began performing circle magik.  It was intense and terrifying and surreal. 

“She wants you to reunite the twelve?” Pheobe asked quietly, speaking up for the first time since Nora had begun her story.

Nora nodded slowly.

“Last night I was supposed to summon all of the Nymphs,” Nora said.  “I couldn’t do it though, I wasn’t strong enough.  I only got you and Britomartis before the entire spell fell apart.  There was interference.  And I...I wasn’t strong enough.  The circle wasn’t ready.  I wasn’t ready.”

Pheobe nodded slowly, staring down at the grimoire still in her hands.  She stood abruptly and handed the book back to Nora. 

“You will see me again,” she said plainly, turning suddenly and walking out of the room.

“Hey!” Nora cried, leaping to her feet to follow.  She gingerly sat the grimoire on the table before rushing after Pheobe.  “Wait!”

But by the time Nora reached the doorway, Iphingenia was gone.

Malik awoke to strange hands, shaking him violently.  Once his eyes had adjusted to the blinding sunlight, he saw a circle of people, most in uniform, standing around him.

It took a moment for his memories to come back to him.  Malik felt the forest floor beneath him and saw the trees above him and remembered that he had changed last night.  But another memory was floating to the surface.  An enormous white wolf, stealing his kill. 

Who were this people?  They were saying things, but Malik’s ears were ringing so loudly that he couldn’t hear a thing.  The morning after a change always felt like the worst hangover of Malik’s life.  Every inch of him ached.  His head was pounding.  His stomach churned. 

A park ranger was pulling him to his feet.  The uniform her wore made another memory surface.  Four police men.  His motorcycle.

“Oh god!” Malik cried, falling to his knees.  He began to puke, huge red chunks and bits of hair that he recognized as the squirrels he had eaten the night before.  He puked and heaved as tears ran down his face and sweat broke out across his naked body.  Once he had calmed, he was being pulled to his feet again.

“Are you Malik Gully?” someone was saying in his ear. 

Malik nodded his head vaguely.  His body was wrapped up in a rough blanket and he was dragged and pulled through the forest by two police officers.  It was a while before they reached a road.  Malik wondered where his backpack was.  He thought he might throw up again.  But they were approaching an ambulance now and he was being loaded inside, handcuffed to the gurney.  After a quick prick, morphine rushed his system, and he fell back into a fitful sleep.

(New, added July, 10)

Pheobe paced anxiously back and forth inside her observatory.  This wasn’t possible.  What Nora had done was simply not possible.  A new witch with blossoming powers couldn’t have done this.  Sure, a simple summoning spell was easy enough.  A soul summoning spell was a bit more advanced.  Summoning twelve souls with one spell was something she could have only done with incredibly specific instuctions and a very well thought out, long prepared plan.

But nobody, not Nora, not Pheobe, not even the Huntress herself can reintegrate a disintegrated soul.  Britomartis was dead.  Gone.  Completely.  She had been killed and her soul had been destroyed centuries ago.  But even though this was true, even though Pheobe had seen it happen, had watched as Britomartis was murdered by Surya and her soul was burned with eternity fire, she had seen her the night before.  It was Britomartis’s grimoire Nora had used to summon her.  It was Britomartis’s power which had enabled a soul summoning spell in the first place.  The spells in that grimoire would be entirely useless if Britomartis’s soul had been destroyed. 

Something was going on, and Pheobe was going to figure out what.

She was shaken from her thoughts by the sound of the heavy door to the observatory being dragged open.  Britomartis nearly transmuted herself to another room, not wanting to face Isabel right now.  But she didn’t.  She gripped the railing in front of her and waited to pretend that she hadn’t heard Isabel coming.

“Hey you,” Isabel said sleepily. 

Pheobe feigned a jump and, plastering a fake smile to her face, turned and greeted Isabel.  Even as frustrated as Pheobe felt, she was glad she hadn’t avoided her wife.  Looking at her now made Pheobe feel incredibly at ease.  Over the centuries, Pheobe had had a series of lovers and wives, all of them more lovely than the last, but Isabel was the most spectacular.  Isabel had been a model in her youth, gracing the pages of Sports Illustrated and Vanity.  When she had turned twenty, however, she decided to quit modeling and go to school to become a lawyer.  Now, ten years later, she had her own firm.  She was sharp and smart and had a quick tongue and an even quicker temper.  Isabel was incredibly personable, for a mortal.  Isabel was still as lovely as she had been when she was young, but now that she had surpassed thirty, he beauty was incredibly refined.  Her caramel colored skin was smooth and exceptionally soft.  Her eyes had the glint of intelligence and but the weariness of wisdom.  Her dark brown hair was cut into a fashionable pixie style that was messy with sleep.  But it wasn’t her beauty that Pheobe appreciated in Isabel. 

Isabel was strong and lovely and graceful and everything Pheobe had once hoped she would be, so many many years ago in her youth.  She was the embodiment of what had sent Pheobe searching for the Goddess in the first place.  Pheobe had never accomplished that goal, instead she had transformed into something else entirely.  So it was nice to have Isabel around, to remind Pheobe of her humanity. 

Now Isabel was tucking herself up against Pheobe’s body, burying her face into Pheobe’s breast.

“How’d the tele-conference go?” Isabel asked in a muffled voice.

“It was....enlightening,” Pheobe said, wrapping her arms around Isabel while she stared out the window of the observatory at the expanse of choppy sea beyond.

“Want me to make breakfast?” Isabel asked.

It was a Monday morning, but neither women needed to go into work.  In their jobs, they held odd hours.  Both had worked through the weeked, Isabel at her firm in the city, Pheobe from her home office.  In fact, Pheobe had thrown herself into her work lately, she was particularly enjoying playing mortal in this lifetime.  She hadn’t found herself using spellwork for a long while, a year at least.  It had been even longer since she had spoken to the other Nymphs.  She was finally falling into the groove of pretending to be normal.  Not that Pheobe could ever be normal, there was far too much magik running through her, but she could at least go after normal, human goals.  She was actually proud of her position of CEO over a multi-billion dollar tech agency with several government contracts and thousands of high power clients across the world.  And because she could never do anything in a straight and narrow way, Pheobe was running a black market armory and training 14,000 mercenaries at a remote location in South America.  Just because she was pretending to be human didn’t mean she was going to give up the power she had once held over the world. 

But what was happening now, with this drop out runaway mortal girl living in an abandoned mansion in a forest in Washington state, took complete priority, and Pheobe had work to do. 

“No, baby, I’m afraid I can’t stay long.  I just came to pick up some papers and pack.  I need to get on the jet.  I’ve got an old contact in Barcelona I need to meet in person with.”  Pheobe found it hard to lie to Isabel, so she told her half truths when possible.  She would send the jet off, Pheobe thought, but she wouldn’t be on it.  Her Changling would be seen disembarking in a private air field in Barcelona.  But Pheobe had a much quicker way to travel.

Isabel made a complaining sound, a sort of groan, not releasing Pheobe. 

“When will you be back?”

“As soon as I can.  A couple days, that’s all.  I’ll be home by Thursday.”

Isabel sighed and released her lover. 

“Can we make some plans for this weekend?  I want to go to a beach.  We both need a break,” Isabel said broodingly.  Pheobe agreed, she needed a break from her company.  But she was afraid a break would not be possible for a long time, after what had happened last night.  Despite this, Pheobe nodded happily at Isabel.  Satisfied, Isabel turned and walked toward the observatory door. 

“I’ll be in the shower,” she said.  It was an invitation, but Pheobe knew she didn’t have the time.

Once the door to the Observatory shut, the entire house shifted around Pheobe, rotating like a wheel beneath her feet until it settled and Pheobe was standing in her office.  Items were already spinning around the room, packing a small briefcase that was impossibly deep.  The bookshelf swung open to reveal a secret passageway and, while her bag packed itself, Pheobe descended the stone stairway into the cold darkness below. 

Iphingenia’s spellroom was considerably more massive than Nora’s.  Artifacts from thousands of years of life and magik cluttered the enormous cave-like room.  Between where she stood at the foot of the stairwell and where her alter stood along with her more valuable and powerful posessions was a crystal clear lake that sat perfectly still.  A blueish, phosphorescent light, originating at the bottom of the lake, lit the entire room.  Pheobe stepped out onto the surface of the water.  Ripples danced out from her toes, but she didn’t sink through the surface.  Walking on water, Pheobe hurried across the entire length of the lake.  When she reached her alter, she scooped up her grimoire and a heavy silver amulet sitting on her alter and then turned and rushed back across the lake, up the stairs, and into her office.  Grabbing the now packed bag as the bookcase swung shut behind her and magically sealed, Pheobe walked up to the enormous, gilded glode which sat in the middle of her office.  The globe spun obediently until Pheobe was looking at Spain.  Pheobe reached out one perfectly manicured finger and touched the glowing hot surface of the globe, just north of where Barcelona would be.  

Caly was having a very strange dream.  It had started out like a normal dream"very vague, she was in a store of some kind, looking for some product that wasn’t really important"but then it changed.  The aisles went dark and everything solid began to disintegrate into thick fog until there was nothing but a grey haze all around Caly.  Things felt…different all of a sudden.  She recognized the feeling, it was one she had had before, often as a child, less and less as an adult.  Something she couldn’t control, that just happened.  From the fog came a voice, calling Caly’s name.

“Calypso…” the voice whispered so soft she could barely hear it.  “Calypso…” over and over, somewhere just past Caly’s vision.  Nobody called her by her full name, not her parents, not even Cyrus or Julia.  “Calypso!” the voice suddenly hissed in her ear.  Caly spun around just in time to see a body disappearing into the fog. 

“Hey!” Caly cried after it.  But whoever or whatever it was didn’t turn back.  It only whispered her name once more.  So against her better judgement, Caly began to follow.  No matter how fast her feet carried her, Caly could never see more than a hazy outline before her. 

“Wait!” Caly cried, her voice echoing eerily through the haze.  “Who are you?”

Suddenly, the fog was gone.  Caly was standing in the cold, silent parking lot of a motel.  It took her a moment to realize it was the same motel she was staying in right now.  The vacancy sign flickered ominously, but other than that, nothing moved.  Everything was so still and silent that it took Caly a moment to realize that there was another person standing in the parking lot as well.  Their features were hidden by shadows, but they stood no further than twenty feet from Caly.

“Who are you?” Caly asked again.

“It’s time, Calypso,” the person replied in a deep, strangely familiar woman’s voice.

“Time for what?” Caly cried, taking a step forward.  Without moving, the figure glided a foot backwards, maintaining the distance between them.  The figure shook its head, then turned slowly, and began to walk towards the motel.  Caly followed. 

Dread filled the pit of her stomach as Caly realized they were walking towards the room she was staying in.  Room 106.  The curtains were tightly drawn, the door would be locked up and braced.  Yet the shadowy figure passed through the wall as if it were made of mist.  Fear gripping her, Caly ran at the same spot, shocked when her own body passed through the brick as if it weren’t even there.  The inside of Room 106 was exactly as it was when Caly had fallen asleep.  Her own canvas bag sat ready under the table, beside Cyrus’s and Julia’s.  The furniture had been shifted into a perverse maze from the door, set with traps to awake the occupants if any intruder were to enter.  Salt lined the doors and windows and around the bed, drawn in chalk faintly on the dirty carpet, was a Saint’s Circle.  Caly watched with dread as the figure approached the bed, stepping right over the chalk outline to stand beside the sleeping figures.  On the bed, Caly saw Julia and Cyrus on either side of her own sleeping form. 

“What do you want?” Caly asked, trying to circle the bed so she could see the figure’s features. 

The figure ignored Caly, who was stopped by the chalk circle and the invisible force field it create around the bed.  It leaned down, reaching a hand out towards Caly’s sleeping body.

“No,” Caly cried, suddenly afraid of what might happen when this figure touched her.

Suddenly Caly’s eyes opened and she was face to face with a women with silver eyes, a moon-shaped face, and long, pale hair.

“It’s time, Calypso,” the woman said.

Caly sat straight up in bed, reaching for the gun she kept strapped to her thigh at all times.  She drew it and flipped the safety, brandishing it at the now empty room.  She gulped down the cold, air conditioned air of the tiny motel room while she aimed her weapon at every corner and crevice.  Cyrus, always a light sleeper, was up now too, pulling his own pistol.  Julia, the hardest to wake, grumbled vaguely into her pillow before turning over and reaching for her own weapon, strapped to her ankle. 

“What?!  What is it?” Cyrus cried, looking back and forth between Caly and the empty room.  Caly was panting, still unsure exactly what had happened.  Keeping her weapon up, she crawled over Cyrus and stood beside the bed, careful not to leave the Saint’s Circle.  She flipped on the light and looked around the room once more, before carefully crossing their maze and trying the door, which was still securely locked and braced. 

“What is it Caly?” Julia moaned from the bed.

Taking one final deep breath, Caly lowered her weapon. 

“Just a dream,” she said, rubbing her eyes.  “A really…strange dream.”

Cyrus was crawling carefully out of the bed now.  He set his weapon on the bedside table, and fit his own naked body along the back of Caly’s.  As he kissed her neck, his fingers ran gently down her arm, loosening her grip on her pistol until she released it into his hand.  His lips found her ear as he secured the gun back in its holster on Caly’s thigh.

“What was the dream about?” he whispered sweetly, sending chills down Caly’s spine as his arms wrapped around her and began guiding her back to the bed. 

“This…woman,” Caly said.  Already she was struggling to remember the details.  “She had…silver eyes.”

“What did the woman do?” Cyrus breathed, bending Caly’s body like putty, kneeling her down on the bed where Julia’s arms were waiting. 

“She said…” Caly started, but Julia’s hands were dancing up her thigh now and Caly couldn’t remember anymore.  “I don’t remember what she said.”

“It was just a dream,” Julia assured her, with a smile.  Caly let herself be laid down in bed, Cyrus tucked behind her, Julia in front of her. 

“It’s alright, you’re safe,” Cyrus promised, turning off the light.

Caly nodded nebulously as Julia and Cyrus stroked her. 

“What time is it?” Caly asked.

“Almost six,” Julia answered, fitting her body perfectly against Caly’s front and kissing her with petal-soft lips.  “Just enough time for some fun before we get to work.”  Meanwhile, Cyrus’s hands were tightening around the front of her body, drifting sensually downwards in tight motions.  Julia entangled her legs with Caly’s and Cyrus kissed her neck.  As always, there was no place Caly would rather be than between her two lovers.  She let them work, let herself relax, and when Cyrus fit himself inside of her, Julia’s mouth muffled Caly’s cry. 

As Cyrus thrust long and slow into her, Julia’s mouth worked her way down Caly’s body, stopping lavishly in several places before settling between her legs.  Caly closed her eyes and reached her hand toward the head board, biting her lip as she gripped the cold wood. 

“Do you love me?” Cyrus hissed in her ear, holding her hips tightly for leverage.  Caly nodded vigorously.  “And Julia?” Cyrus asked.  “I f*****g love her too,” Caly moaned, reaching down and wrapping her fingers in Julia’s short hair.  One of Cyrus’s hands moved over Caly’s mouth as he felt her begin to tighten.  When she climaxed she screamed, the sound muffled as Cyrus pulled against her, holding her against his chest.  Julia sat up happily, wiping her dripping face.

“Well,” Julia said lightly, “time for a shower.”  She dove over Caly and crashed into Cyrus.  Cyrus stumbled back off the bed but, always the acrobat, sprang to his feet spritely, Julia in his arms as she kissed him wildly.  Caly turned to watch the two of them, while Cyrus stumbled blindly backwards towards the bathroom.  Julia cackled as the Cyrus spun her around.  Caly shifted lazily so she could watch the two of them.  Julia was pinned against the shower wall, her eyes sparkling while she grinned at Caly.  Cyrus struggled momentarily to turn on the shower, and as soon as the steaming water was dousing them both, he began to thrust into Julia.

Caly sighed and rolled off of the bed.  She crept along the wall to the window, parting the curtains just an inch and glancing outside to the still dark parking lot.  Her dream loomed in her mind’s eye for a moment before it was obliterated by Julia’s cries of pleasure echoing off the tiled walls of the bathroom. 

“It doesn’t sound like you’re getting very clean,” Caly called, letting the curtain fall back into place.

“We have to be a little dirty before we can get clean,” Cyrus called back.  Caly glanced over her shoulder.  Julia was bent over now, back arched, as Cyrus drove into her from behind, his hand twisted into her hair.  Caly turned back to the window and parted the curtain again, this time looking to the cloudy sky.  It was then that she noticed the lonely security camera, standing guard beside the check in window in the parking lot. 

“Hey, I’m going out,” she called to the couple that she doubted were listening. 

Tugging on a cotton dress, a baggy hoodie, and some rain boots, Caly grabbed her backpack, cracked the door and squeezed outside.  A balding man and his mousy wife glared at Caly as Julia’s pleasured screams escaped the room.  Caly smiled devilishly before snapping the door shut behind her and pulling up her hood. 

Per habit, Caly kept to the walls, sneaking like a cat towards the main office of the motel.  She knew the front door had a bell, so she would have to sneak around the back.  A quick try on the doorknob told Caly it was locked.  Swinging her backpack to the ground, she dug around until she found a lock picking kit.  With a speed that only came with years of practice, Caly unlocked the door and slipped silently inside. 

On a cot in the small office, an overweight man snored soundly in front of a tiny television which was playing some cartoon.  Another television across the room showed the parking lot, the judgmental couple pulling away in their mini-van.  Caly snuck silently across the floor.  Pushing the release button on the VCR, she snatched up the tape, threw it into her backpack, and was gone from the room in less than thirty seconds.  The door shut silently behind her, Caly pranced triumphantly back to Room 106. 

Inside the room, Cyrus and Julia were still going at it.  Caly shut the door to the bathroom quietly before pushing the tape into the massive television in the room.  After nearly ten minutes of struggling with the calibration and the settings of the television, Caly was able to play the security footage.  Listening for a moment to Julia and Cyrus winding down playfully, Caly rewound the tape to the beginning of the night. 

She reviewed the footage at twice the speed, chewing on her lip nervously.  The shower turned off and she heard her lovers chatting as the dried off.  Caly’s stomach twisted in a peculiar way and suddenly she was ejecting the tape from the player.  She never hid things from her partners, but for some reason, she was stashing the video in the bottom of her bag, turning off the television and trying to look casual as the two of them stumbled out of the bathroom in a whirlwind of steam.  When Cyrus spotted Caly, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. 

“Where’d you go?” he asked.

“Just to the car,” she said, standing and brushing past them into the bathroom.  Before they could ask any more questions, she shut the door behind her.  Working nervously, she threw off her clothes and stepped into the still wet shower, letting the scalding water burn her skin.  After several minutes, as expected, Cyrus cracked the door and called to her.

“Julia and I are going for breakfast.  Want us to grab you something?”

“I’d kill for an omelet,” Caly responded, scrubbing shampoo into her hair innocuously. 

“One Omelette du fromage coming right up!” Cyrus called out gleefully.

A moment later, Caly heard the door snap shut.  Washing the remaining soap from her hair, she turned off the shower and jumped out.  Still dripping wet, she wrapped herself sloppily in a towel while she crossed the motel room and snatched up her bag.  Another moment later, the tape was back in the television and Caly was fast forwarding through the beginning of the night at triple speed.  When the time at the corner reflected 3:00am, Caly slowed the tape to double speed, eyes narrowed as she watched expectantly.  The hour between three and four passed agonizingly slow.  Caly was about to give up hope with the fear that her companions were about to return, when a shape moved from the corner of the screen.  Heart racing, Caly hit the play button.  The shape was massive, but it kept mostly to the shadows and Caly couldn’t make out what it was on the grainy tape. 

Caly leaned so close to the screen that her nose was almost touching the glass.  Finally, the shape detached itself from the shadows and stepped into the dim light cast by the lonely street lamp over the parking lot.  A lump rose in Caly’s throat.  She knew exactly what the creature was.

A werewolf, the largest Caly had ever seen, nearly the size of a horse, pawed softly to the center of the parking lot.  It stood perfectly still for a beat before turning its glinting eyes right towards the camera.  For a good ten seconds, it stared into the camera in a way that made Caly feel afraid.  Then the beast turned its massive head and looked back toward the shadows from which it came.  The wolf turned to its right and strolled casually off camera.  The moment it rejoined the shadows, the entire screen began to glitch and twist. 

Angrily, Caly slammed her hand against the side of the television.  But it was becoming quickly apparent that it wasn’t the television.  Something was passing through the parking lot that was only reflected on screen by a smudge, a glitch on the film.  Caly pressed pause.  The time stamp read 0458.  Caly tried to make out what it was that was being hidden from her, but it was useless.  She pressed play again.  The tape went on for another few seconds before suddenly the scene changed.  The glitch disappeared.  The parking lot was suddenly lit with the dim light of a rising sun.  The time stamp read 0522.  Twenty four minutes were missing entirely from the tape.  She ejected the tape, looked at it for signs of tampering.  But nothing was out of the ordinary.  Those twenty four minutes simply didn’t exist.

Not much scared Calypso Kriptke.  She had been raised with the acute knowledge of inhuman creatures and world altering magik in the world.  It was as normal as the knowledge that she needed oxygen to breath and food to eat.  She was the direct descendent of her namesake, and for centuries her family had been hunting and killing those less desirable creatures which threatened humanity.  This usually involved exorcising demons or tracking misbehaving creatures.  Caly very much disliked working with witches, priests, sorcerers, or anyone else who manipulated magik.  She knew there were cutthroat politics involved in magik and her family was famously uninvolved, always neutral.  Not much scared Calypso Kriptke, but this was acutely frightening. 

Watching the tape, Caly somehow knew that it was something that she should not get involved with.  It had all he indicators of magik.  What would her mother say?  Destroy the tape, forget about it, find the next job and move on.  Yet something deep inside of Caly was stirring, something that she couldn’t explain.  She wanted to know, she needed to know.

Caly was shaken from her thoughts when the door to the motel swung open.  Automatically, Caly stuffed the tape into her bag.  Julia and Cyrus were smiley and chatty as always.  When Cyrus spotted Caly sitting cross legged on the floor, he cocked his head.

“What are you doing?”

Caly jumped to her feet, wiping her hands.  “Television was on the fritz,” she said with a shrug.  “I was just trying to adjust it.”

Cyrus accepted it, presenting a plastic bag with gusto. 

“M’lady!” he cried with a fake accent.  “My humble offering,” he bowed, going to a knee.  Caly grabbed the bag from him, hitting him firmly on the side of the head.  “A*****e,” she grumbled as he laughed, getting to his feet.

Julia lounged on the bed, shoes and pants kicked off already, eating a messy pile of pancakes from a Styrofoam container. 

“What’s on the agenda?” she asked through a full mouth. 

Caly sat at the desk in the motel, pulling her own breakfast out of the “Thank you, come again!” plastic bag.  She reached for a thick notebook on the table.  She flipped it open to the back, retrieving a neatly folded letter written on pastel periwinkle paper and set in an envelope of the same color.  The front of the envelope read only “To the Kriptkes” in neat cursive.  Caly tossed the letter like a Frisbee to Julia, who caught it with sticky fingers.  The crisp, neat paper was quickly soiled by Julia as she pulled the letter roughly from its envelope and wrestled it open with one hand.  She chewed her pancakes noisily, the journey of her fork between her container and her mouth never halting or slowing as she read the letter. 

Caly had read the letter twice already.  It was from a polite woman named Alice Weaver living in New Jersey whose daughter had begun acting “quite unwell” almost a month ago.  Since, she had descended into typical possession behavior.  Alice Weaver had described the behavior as graciously as possible, but her panic was apparent through her measured words.

“Why isn’t your sister handling this?” Julia asked, setting the letter to the side without finishing it.  “Don’t we have bigger better things to get to?”

“Minthe is in Germany,” Caly said.  “Besides, Alice may be super sweet about it, but my mom thinks we’re dealing with a Barbatos.”

“F**k,” Cyrus contributed.    

“Yea, so we’ll head to Jersey and make an assessment.  If it is a Barbatos, well…mother is ready to send the ethereal body.”

For a few moments, the three of them ate their breakfast in silence, considering the fight waiting for them in New Jersey.  Finally, Caly spoke up.

“Hey, Jules,” she asked as casually as possible.

“Hmm?” Julia replied absentmindedly. 

“You haven’t heard from any werewolves lately have you?”

Julia’s mother and all of her siblings were werewolves.  Somehow, Julia had been born human.  She had a few…beastly attributes (like the insatiable libido she demonstrated on the days around a full moon), but she didn’t transform into a hellhound.  Her family was part of a large pack living in Toronto. 

“I haven’t heard from any of them in over a year, why?” Julia said, swirling her finger around the left over syrup in the bottom of her container and licking it up greedily. 

“I don’t know, I just…thought I heard a call last night.”

Julia shrugged.  “There’s wolves all over.  There might be a pack around here.”

“Do you know if wolves ever work with witches?”

Julia looked genuinely confused at the question.  “I don’t know why they would,” she said.  “I mean…maybe sometimes.  But I don’t think that’s a thing.”  She paused a moment, thinking.  “All wolves attend the Goddess, that’s why they have to change on a full moon.  But a lot of wolf mythology has been lost through the centuries.  Every pack has their own beliefs, really.” 

“What does your family’s pack believe?”

“Hmm, well I don’t know all the specifics, they didn’t seem too concerned with making sure I knew it,” she paused for a single, dry laugh.  “But they believed that the first werewolf was created by the Moon Goddess to hunt down a lover that had done her wrong.  After that, the first werewolf, a woman named Lyca, became the Goddess’s lover, and that all werewolves are direct descendants of Lycan and therefore must worship the Goddess by changing during every full moon.  But I’ve heard at least twenty different creation stories.”

Caly knew that most mythologies were of the same nature, loose and passed by word of mouth, getting warped over time.  Where creatures came from, how magik came to be, how the worlds were created.  Nobody knew what the real truth was, people only knew what worked. 

“Which Moon Goddess?” Caly asked.

Julia shrugged.  “I don’t know, take your pick.  A Moon Goddess.  The Moon Goddess, I don’t know.”

Tracking down mythologies through so many different cultures was difficult.  The right answer was usually buried in a hundred wrong ones, it was hard to tell the difference. 

While Caly’s head spun, Cyrus and Julia began a conversation about something unrelated that lasted through the rest of breakfast.  They continued to argue in jest as the three of them packed up the room and headed to their car.  As hard as she tried to concentrate on their conversation, Caly couldn’t help but be stuck in a world of her own, mind racing, the security tape still in her backpack.  Caly threw her bag into the bed and swung herself into the driver seat of her lifted black truck.  Even the music, the laughter, the conversation of her lovers as they headed to New Jersey couldn’t shake the chill that settled in the base of Caly’s spine.  Over and over, the words echoed in Caly’s head, even though she didn’t know what they meant.

“It’s time, Calypso.”

 

Malik awoke in the hospital, shivering under a thin blanket.  His memory was groggy, but he knew he had had his stomach pumped upon arrival.  They had been rough with him, forcing the tube up his nasal cavity and down into his stomach painfully, pumping his stomach full of saline until he began to throw up, again and again, into a metal pan.  This had gone on for forty five minutes until he only threw up the salt water and bile.  Finally, the tore the tubing from his throat and left him to fall back under the influence of the medication. 

When he tried to move, he realized his wrists and ankles had been handcuffed to the bed.  He wondered just how screwed he was, just what evidence the police had.  Pain clenched his heart when he thought of his mother.  “I just spoke to him last night!” she would begin to sob.  “There’s no way he would kill four people.”

Even now, those words echoed around in his head like he was trying to make sense of them.  Four people, he had killed four people.  Since he had bitten nearly four years ago, his changes had always been foggy.  He could usually remember what had happened, but he never felt that he was truly in control of himself when he changed.  Something else entirely took over his body and lusted for killing.  But after his first change"that terrifying October evening four years ago when he barely made it out of his house without his family’s notice"he had sworn to himself that he would never curse anyone else, he would never bite a person, he would definitely never kill a person.

Yet last night, it had come so easily.  It had felt no different from killing a stag or a rabbit.  Deep down, Malik was afraid that this was because he had meant to kill them, to cover his tracks, to hide his identity.  But there was no escaping this.  Malik had known from his very first change, eventually people would find out, eventually everything would go wrong, it was only a matter of time.

The lock clicked on the door of his room, shaking him from his thoughts, and Malik watched a woman enter his room.  She wore a pristine white pantsuit and pumps.  Her honey blonde hair was piled on the top of her head in an intricate twist.  Her arms were heavy with items.  She entered his room, slammed the door behind herself, and locked it once more.  Then, after depositing her armful on a nearby table, she stood at the foot of Malik’s bed with her hands on her hips, surveying him with her bright blue eyes, a small smile on her lips.  Something about her seemed eerily familiar.

“Well,” she said, “you’re fucked, huh?”

“Who are you?” Malik asked, his throat still sore.

“I’m your lawyer!” the woman said as if this was obvious.  “You can call me Cheyenne.”

“I have a lawyer?”

“You do!  A f*****g good one too!” the woman smiled, shrugging out of her white jacket to reveal an equally white blouse which showed on her lovely shoulders and exquisite neckline.  “Wanna watch a movie?  I brought one you might like.”

She clicked across the room in her heels in a very authoritative way.  Cheyenne was pretty, that was sure, but Malik had a hard time thinking of her as pretty, there was something far too imposing about her demeanor.  It was frightening.  He could never imagine speaking to a woman like her under normal circumstances.  Scooping up a disk from her pile she had left on the table, she moved a chair across the floor until she could reach the small TV that hung from the ceiling.  Her movements were quick and efficient, she put the disk in the player, pressed play, and leapt limberly from the chair.  With a broad, whimsical smile, she came and stood beside Malik’s bed, arms crossed in front of her. 

The video took a moment to begin to play, but once it began, Malik was watching the same country road he had been stopped on.  His stomach sank.

“This part is boring,” the woman said, toying with a remote attached to Malik’s bed, finally fast forwarding the video.  Every so often, a car went by at three times the speed, while the sun sank at a rapid rate.  Finally, a quick blur Malik recognized as himself on his motorcycle darted across the screen and the camera, mounted on the dashboard of the police cruiser, began to move.  Cheyenne pushed play again.  “Here, we go, this is where it gets good!”

Malik watched himself pull over to the side of the road.  He watched the female officer get out of the car and march towards him.  He could see himself beginning to shake, to change.  He fell to his side, the bike coming with him, the cop freeing him a moment later.  Malik began to feel sick, he had never watched himself change before, and he didn’t know if he wanted to.  Already in the video, his spine was beginning to lengthen and bend into an obscene position.  Just as Malik was about to look away, his video self scrambled to the right and out of frame, the female officer following.  A moment later, three more cops run past the camera and out of frame.  For a long while, there is nothing on the screen except an empty road and Malik’s tipped over motorcycle.

“This is my favorite part,” Cheyenne whispers.

Suddenly, the cops appear on screen again, all four of them backing up, a look of horror on their face.  Malik knows what happens next, and he is certain he doesn’t want to watch, but he can’t look away, he’s too curious. 

The female cop pulls her weapon, shakily aiming it at something off screen.  She fires once, twice.  Then Malik sees himself.  As a wolf, he looks almost exactly like the white wolf he had seen the night before, except slightly smaller, and a muddy brown color instead of white.  It’s both terrifying and fascinating to watch himself leap forward and sink his teeth into the throat of the officer with the gun.  She goes down immediately, and wolf-Malik rounds on the other officer.  One is between him and the cars, the others are on the opposite side.  Malik chases the two down.  The first he grabs by the arm, swinging him like a rag doll and tossing him through the air.  The other, whose running as fast as he can down the road, Malik chases down playfully, catching him by his calf before jumping onto his back and effectively crushing his skull with his teeth.  Finally, Malik turns menacingly towards the last cop, who has run past the camera and is jostling the frame as he jumps into the cruiser.  Malik bounds happily towards the car, reaching it in a matter of seconds before disappearing off the screen.  A moment later, he is back, dragging the final officer by his leg while he screams and fights.  Malik drags him off frame, towards the woods, and everything goes still.

Cheyenne pauses the video and looks down at Malik, still smiling like an excited child.

“What do you think?” she asks.

Malik can’t think.  His mind has gone completely blank.  A hazy memory is one thing, but watching the video?  He will never forget that, not as long as he lives. 

“Who are you?” Malik finally chokes out.

“Cheyenne, I’m your lawyer, remember?”

“I mean who are you really?  You know what I am.  Why are you teasing me with this?  What do you want?”

Malik looked up at Cheyenne angrily and when he caught her eye, he realized exactly who she was.

“You’re"….you’re the other wolf, from last night, the white one,” he gasps.

Cheyenne smile for real this time, an earnest, incredibly wicked smile.

“When you keep howling like an idiot, you’re going to attract some friends,” she said darkly.  “We’ve been watching you for a while.”

“What do you want with me?” Malik asked, straining against the cuffs which held him down.

“To get you off,” she said with a wink, “legally, of course.”  She laughs at her joke while she rounds the bed, standing at the foot once again.  She leans down and grasps the front rails.

“Imagine how all of this looks to the police, Malik,” she begins.  “They’ve got this tape where you get pulled over, you freak out, and a second later some kind of enormous creature like they have never seen attacks and kills four cops.  At first they thought it had gotten you too, it ate you.  So they go running into the woods, looking for your body.  And they find you, with a scratch on you.  And when you threw up in the woods, do you know what they find?  A ring.  The ring that belonged to Officer Carter.  So they pump your stomach in the hospital, and you start puking up remains.  Human remains.”

Cheyenne stands, pausing for effect, another twisted smile creeping across her face.

“These poor humans have no idea what to think.  They certainly can’t think that werewolves are real.  They’re out there right now, running around like confused children.”

“So why are you here?” Malik asked.

“I told you.  I’m your lawyer.  And a friend.  We certainly can’t have humans thinking werewolves are real.  And we certainly can’t have a werewolf going to prison.  And we certainly can’t have the humans digging around.”

“Whose we?”

“The pack!  Of course,” Cheyenne cried brightly.  “That’s why I am here.  You’ve been playing lone wolf for four years.  We shouldn’t have let you be alone for so long, but you slipped our notice.  So I’m here to amend that mistake.  You will have the chance to join a pack.  You won’t go to prison.  You can keep going to college.  You’re family doesn’t have to know what’s happened here today.  That tape will be destroyed.”

“What if I don’t want to join a pack?” Malik said angrily, unsure why he was challenging his good fortune.  “What if I don’t want any of this?”

“Don’t want what?”

“To be a…a f*****g werewolf!” he cries, almost laughing at the absurdity of this conversation.

Cheyenne looks struck, confused, as if the thought had never crossed her mind. 

“Malik, the bite isn’t a curse,” she said slowly.  “It’s a gift.  The most amazing gift in the world.”

It certainly didn’t feel like a gift.  His life had been hell, barely existing from month to month, living in constant fear.

“It’s an invitation,” Cheyenne continued.  “Most people spend their whole lives as a sheep, just a mindless part of the flock.  A bite is the invitation to join the pack, to become a wolf.”

“You like being a werewolf?” Malik asks, shocked by the idea.

“Malik,” Cheyenne begins, suddenly surprisingly gently.  She sits gingerly on the edge of hi bed.  “I can’t pretend to know how you feel.  I was born this way.  I had my first change when I was four years old.  This life, the pack, it is all that I have known.”  Malik tried to imagine that, having been born this way, to a family of other werewolves.  “But I’m sure that, for someone like you�"someone bitten, having their whole world view changed in a matter of seconds, nobody to turn to for help or advice or support�"it can’t be easy.  Usually, when somebody is bitten, we find them before their first change.  But you…you didn’t go to the hospital did you?”

No, Malik hadn’t gone to the hospital.  His bite had been small, on his heel, barely a scratch.  He had told the ambulance that he had cut himself on sharp rocks.  He had been encouraged to go to the hospital anyway, but the overworked doctor had sent him home after less than a glance.  Malik didn’t protest, he had wanted to get as far away from thoughts of the attack anyway, wanted to pretend it didn’t happen.  “Four killed and two in critical condition after animal attacks Boyscout camping trip” the newscasters had read dramatically.  Malik had been a coward.  He had heard his friends dying and he had run.  The animal had caught up with him for a moment and had just sunk its teeth into Malik’s heel when one of the counselors hit it over the head with a shovel.  Malik didn’t even stop running, didn’t look back to see his hero having his throat torn out. 

“Less than five percent of those who are bitten survive their first transformation.  Those who do are the chosen ones.  The first change can be such an excruciating painful death, that most ask to be put down.  The two others who survived the attack, we found them and we tried to help them through the change.  They didn’t make it.”

Malik recalled vaguely hearing that both injured boys had died due to complications.  It hadn’t occurred to him until nearly a year later that they might have been werewolves too, that they could have helped him.

“Usually, when we approach a lone wolf, we try to do it slowly.  We noticed you two months ago.  I’ve been following you during changes.  I was going to try and make contact with you last night, but I saw what you did.”

Malik’s stomach twisted at being reminded of his crimes. 

“I blame myself, for not reaching you sooner,” Cheyenne said, comfortingly touching his thigh. 

Before Malik could even form a coherent thought, Cheyenne stood, immediately changing back to the frosty, calloused person she was before.

“The police are going to come in here in a few minutes, along with a doctor, and they are going to release you and discharge you.  You’ll get dressed and come to the B wing entrance of the hospital.  There will be a car waiting for you there,” she explained quickly, pulling her jacket back on. 

“That’s it?” Malik asked in disbelief.

“That’s it,” she affirmed, pulling the DVD from the television and gathering the rest of her items from the table.

“It’s over?” Malik said, almost just to hear the words.

“Oh no,” Cheyenne said, opening the door to his room.  “It’s just beginning.”

The door snapped shut, and the woman in the white pantsuit was gone. 

(new, added July 12)

As quietly as she could, Gava pawed through the box of old photographs in the hallway cabinet.  Her mother rarely took pictures.  There was only a handful of pictures of Gava as a child.  But that is precisely what Gava was after as she flipped through picture after picture of people she didn’t know.  In her art class, this week’s project was to draw two self portraits, one current and one from childhood.  Most kids in her class had too many pictures to choose from, but Gava was stuggling to find one picture of her as a child.

Finally, she found one.  It was of her, maybe four years old, standing as sullenly as ever next to the dining room table, wide eyes staring forward at nothing in particular, unaware of the camera.  She wore a too-big T shirt dirty with paint and mismatched socks.  It always shocked Gava how different she looked as a child.  The girl in the picture was fair, with small features and strawberry blonde hair, nothing but long limbs and sharp angles.  The changes had been subtle, unnoticeable unless one looked at a picture of Gava when she was young.  She didn’t even look like the same girl.  As she grew older, her features had grown sharper, her hair had gone from a red to light brown to chestnut to black, her eyes had slowly changed from pale blue to dark brown, her long sharp limbs had softened and filled out.  Gava wondered if anyone would even believe that the girl in the picture was her.  The inscription on the back"“Gavagene 2001”"was the only indication that the picture was even of her.  Gava put the picture aside anyway and repacked the box. 

Like every morning, but especially this morning from lack of sleep, Gava was slow and lethargic getting ready for school.  She brushed her teeth and combed out her knotted hair.  She used lip gloss to hide her busted lip.  She pulled on her white knee high socks and her pleated skirt.  When she had shrugged into her ICPS blazer, she looked at herself in the mirror.  As always, she felt that her body in this school girl costume looked way too porny to be appropriate. 

The Immaculate Conception Preparatory School was nearly an hour away.  Her mother drove her in her purple Honda Civic.  The drive was always entirely silent.  No conversation, no radio.  Gava would stare out the window at the rising sun while her mother stared straight ahead, face stony.  But today, Gava’s mother turned off two exits early.  It took Gava a moment to realize.

“Where are we going?” Gava asked, sitting up and looking around.

“To your aunt’s house,” her mother said, voice gravely. 

Gava’s Aunt Cora was a sharp, cruel woman.  She visited the house at least once a week.  Usually, she never said a word to Gava.  Gava would be sent to her room while her mother and Aunt Cora sat and spoke in hushed voices, always in a language Gava didn’t recognize.  When she was younger, Gava would ask questions about Aunt Cora.  What language were they speaking?  Who is she related to?  But her questions always went unanswered, and usually punished.  Although Cora never spoke to Gava, she was always very concerned about her.  Specifically about the way her mother cared for her.  Cora always encouraged her mother to be crueler.  Any time her mother showed even the smallest amount of care for her daughter, Cora would show up and things would immediately change. 

In all of the years, Gava and her mother had never gone to Cora’s house.  Gava hadn’t even the faintest idea of where it was.  She had always thought that maybe Cora lived far away, maybe in another country.  Cora was so sharp and so strangely proper and refined that Gava imagined she must live in some upstate manor, having been raised in Europe.  So it surprised her that Cora only lived a thirty minute drive away in a single story, grey colored house in the middle of a suburban cul-de-sac.  As the Civic pulled into the driveway, the garage door opened, and Gava’s mother pulled inside.  Once the door had shut behind them, her mother turned and looked sharply at Gava.  In a voice that she reserved for very special occasions, she snapped at Gava.

“Gavagene, stay in the car,” she screeched.       

Once her mother was gone, Gava didn’t even consider leaving the vehicle.  She sat perfectly still, barely blinking, not even thinking, as the minutes passed by until the door opened and Cora came into the garage.  Cora threw the car door open and, for the first time in years, spoke directly to Gava.

“Get out,” Cora hissed in the same kind of voice her mother had used on Gava.  Gava immediately undid her seatbelt and stood up.  Cora slammed the door behind Gava.  Scurrying like a frightened rat, her mother slipped out of the house. 

“Mother?” Gava called, confused why her mother wouldn’t even look at her. 

Cora grabbed Gava’s arm, digging her long red nails into the skin.  Gava tried to twist away immediately, but Cora hissed, “Stand still,” and Gava froze.   Her mother paused before getting into the car, looking only at Cora.

“Bring me everything,” Cora commanded.  Gava’s mother nodded and got into the vehicle.  The garage door opened, the Civic backed out, and the door shut once more.

“What’s going on?” Gava asked.

“Shut up.”

Gava shut her mouth and didn’t make another noise. 

“Come with me,” Cora commanded, tugging on Gava.  Obediently, Gava followed Cora inside.  They walked through a surprisingly dirty, dingy, and dimly lit house before turning right and going through a strangely out of place metal door.  They descended into a severely unfinished, cave-like and frankly terrifying basement.  Gava had a hundred questions burning on the tip of her tongue, but her aunt had directed her to “shut up.”  The basement looked like a dungeon, and fear began to bubble in the pit on Gava’s stomach. 

Her aunt threw her to the center of the room.  Gava tripped and fell onto the dirt floor.  Terror gripped her now, so strongly that she broke through her aunt’s command.

“What’s going on?  Where’s my mother?  What are you doing?” she shot gunned in a feeble voice.

“I said, shut up!”

Her aunt accompanied this command with a firm kick to Gava’s face.  Gava fell against the dirt again, holding back even her cry of pain. 

“Sit up.”  Gava sat.  “Take your clothes off.”  Gava promptly stripped.  “Put this on.”  Gava took the dirty white gown and tugged it on.  “Get in.”  Her aunt pointed to a small cage that sat in the corner of the room.  Gava paused once more, her fear breaking the command. 

“W-what?” she stuttered. 

“Get into the cage!”

Gava scurried on hands and knees now, slinking into the far corner of the cage.  Her aunt slammed the door shut behind her, locking the heavy padlock with an ancient looking key.  The moment the lock clicked into place, the entire cage shimmered in a strange way, as if a pale light washed over it.  Gava suddenly felt absolutely trapped. 

Without a word, Cora turned and walked up the stairs.  The only light, being cast from the upstairs, disappeared as the metal door swung shut and the lock clunked into place.

Gava was alone.

In a moment, Pheobe was standing in a large, airy veranda overlooking a massive vineyard that went on as far as the eye could see.  Sitting at a small table, eating a meal of fruits and bread, was a woman with waist length black hair in braids, dressed in a decadent, deep emerald evening gown, complete with a string of enormous white pearls which glinted against her dark skin.

“You’re late, old friend,” the woman said, taking a sip of wine the color of blood.  “You’re out of practice.  But then again, you always had a difficulty with time zones.”

“Makaria,” Pheobe smiled, sitting across the table from the woman.  “How long?”

“Mattea,” the woman corrected.  “Four hours, give or take.  I’ve been waiting here for you since lunch time.  I had hoped the globe would help.”

“Well a rarely find much use for it these days.  What’s it been, twenty years?”

“Twenty two,” Mattea amended.  “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“I need a Trinity spell done.”

Mattea was physically taken aback by the request. 

“What possibly for?” she cried.

“I was summoned last night.  Etheral summoned.”

Mattea frowned.  “What did he want from you?”

“No, not Surya.  Or a Suryan coven,” Pheobe paused, making sure to take in her friend’s reaction.  “It was a Minilyian coven.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Mattea snapped, waving a hand as if to shoo away such a ridiculous notion.

“It’s true!”

“There are no Minilyian covens,” Mattea said as if talking to a child, “they were wiped out.  And even if it was a new coven, then one of us would have felt a tap on our powers.  No new coven of any real power, especially the power to etheral summon, would try to be Minilyian.  You know this.”

“It was a Minilyian coven.  And none of us felt it because they were using Britomartis’s grimoire.”

The wine glass slipped from the Mattea’s fingers.  The glass shattered noisily, and the wine seeped through the silver table cloth, spreading through the fibers like a blood stain.  Absentmindedly, Mattea waved a hand.  The wine released itself from the cloth, hovering in the air for a moment as the glass reassembled itself, the pieces scooping up the floating wine until a complete glass sat in tact on the table.

“Impossible,” Mattea whispered.  “The grimoire is in my mausoleum, in Romania.  Heavily guarded by spells.  If anyone had touched it, let alone used it to Cast, I would have known.”

“Besides,” Mattea continued, “Britomartis’s magik is dead, gone.  That grimoire is essentially useless.”

“Makaria, I saw her.”    

“No, listen to yourself Iphingenia!  What you are talking about simply is not possible.  You’re trying to tell me that a young Minilyian coven is preforming ethereal summonings of long disintegrated souls!  If they had done magic like that, it would have been noticed.  A witch who could do that would be watched, and the second she attempted that spell, they would have stopped it.  There is no way they have the grimoire.  There is no way they summoned Britomartis!”

“But that’s the thing!  Because Britomartis is gone, they wouldn’t be looking for her magik.  And I tracked down the caster.  It was a young witch.  A high school drop out.  Living in an abandoned building.  She showed me the grimoire.  She told me a Lilithian witch taught her to dream walk.  And that night...she met Minily.”

Mattea stood now, pacing.

“She called her the Huntress, but what she described, it’s her, Makaria.  She told her how to get the book.  Gave her the exact names of the other witches to make a circle.  And last night, she summoned Britomartis.  She was trying to summon us all!”

“It’s not possible,” Mattea whispered, mostly to herself.

“I saw her.”

“You saw her die, Iphingenia!  You said so yourself, she was burned with eternal fire.  There is no resurrection after that, especially not by an inexperienced caster,” Mattea was saying, rapidly now, as if frightened.  “This has to be a trick.  He must be coming after the rest of us now.  He wasn’t satisfied with just destroying Minily, he is going to try and kill us all.  If this was her, Iphingenia, if this was Artemis, she wouldn’t communicate with some inexperienced witch living in a hovel!  She would come to us!” 

“She was trying to come to us, last night!  She instructed this witch to summon us!” Pheobe cried.  “I ruined her spell.  When I saw Britomartis...I said her name and she disappeared.”

“Minily is trapped in an inescapable dimension,” Mattea cried, still trying to explain this to herself.  “Surya put her there.  He created the dimension.  He killed Britomartis.  If all of this is true, then there is something we don’t know.  Something that has been kept from us.  Why?  Why would this have been kept from us?!  It makes no sense!”

“I know.  That’s why I want to do a Trinity spell.”

Mattea took a deep breath through her nostrils.  “You’re solution is Trinity magic?  As if we’re not already under enough scrutiny.  If we try that kind of magic, they’ll notice.  And they’ll try to stop it.”

“But if we use Britomartis’s spell, from her girmoire"“

“We’ll still be using our own magik"“

“But it will buy us just enough time.  All we need to do is summon.  One time.  If it works, then we know.”

“But you said yourself, summoning her can be unstable.”

“I know.  That’s why we would summon ourselves to her.  Then we would know where she is, we would know what is going on!”

“You want to risk that?  What if it’s a trap?  And what if she’s not even on this plane or in this dimension?  Then what?  We’d be stuck there.”

Pheobe nodded.  “I know,” she said with a sigh.  “But what else can we do?  We have to know.”

Mattea stood now, moving quickly to the rails of the veranda, gripping it with white knuckles, staring out at the vast landscape before her.

“How will we even get to Aspalis?  They’ll know if we’ve reunited a Trinity,” Mattea said slowly without turning around.

“We won’t, we’ll use Nora, the witch who casted it in the first place.  If she could do it with a bunch of inexperienced teenagers, then our power will definitelybe enough.  We’ll create a Trinity with her and then we’ll summon Britomartis.”

Mattea whipped around now, but didn’t say a word.  Neither Nymph spoke for a long time, both simply staring at the other, assessing the other’s sanity.

“That’s a crazy plan,” Mattea finally said.

“I know.”

Mattea sighed and walked through the French doors into her manor without a word.  Pheobe jumped up from her seat and followed as Mattea walked through her expansive home.  The entire house was a working monument to Makaria and, by association, the Nymphs.  Everything was pristine, the air sealed tight around it.  Unlike most of their companions, Mattea had no massive staff, no servants.  She never allowed any human"with the exception of her favorite pets"into her home.  She maintained it entirely on her own.  But nothing in the house was as glorious as a tribute as the gallery.  The gallery was in the North wing.  It was massive, full of priceless works of art from every century.  Mattea closed the doors softly behind them, locking them magically.

“Did you believe it?” Mattea whispered.  “When it happened?  When he banished her, his sister?  Did you believe that could happen?  That someone so powerful could be trapped?  And that it was done by her own brother?”

“No, he never would have betrayed her,” Pheobe said, resolutely.

Mattea nodded sadly before sharpening her eyes and continuing in a serious tone.

“But he did, Iphingenia.  He killed Britomartis.  He imprisoned Minily permanently.  And he’s been limiting our power and slowly destroying us for centuries.  I didn’t believe it, either, when it first happened.  But after six hundred years, I’ve realized it had to be true.”

“This isn’t the old days,” Mattea said, moving her gaze somewhere over Pheobe’s shoulder.  “Things have changed.  And if...if they find out what we are doing, they won’t let us live.  They won’t care.  They’ll make us suffer and then they’ll destroy us the same way they did Britomartis.  Do you really thing they’ll spare Isobel?”

Pheobe felt a pang of guilt in her heart.  She hadn’t even considered it.

“Yes, things have changed.  But I think it’s time for things to change again,” Pheobe said, straightening her shoulders.

Mattea nodded and turned once more, leading Pheobe through the gallery.  Makaria had been a muse, and she had always loved art of every kind.  Her gallery reflected that.  It contained many original pieces by renowned artists, most of whom had created their one of a kind masterpiece right in this very gallery.  Most depicted Makaria herself, in various scenes, settings and poses.  After Minily was gone, Makaria had filled her time seducing and inspiring artists, who would come and live in her manor for a period of time, creating and falling madly in love with a woman who would never love them back.  They usually left her manor broken, and insane, taking their own lives or drinking themselves to death in a matter of months after they left.  Writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, playwrights, composers"all inspired to their most beautiful work at Makaria’s hands, and all met their end by her hands as well.

But a very particular piece was on central display in Mattea’s gallery.  An original, painted on site.  Martin Johann Schmidt, Diana and Achtaeon.  The man had done this painting once before, but unsatisfied with the unreal painting, Makaria had brought Martin here and had described in painstaking details the changes that were needed.  Martin had redone the painting, right in this very spot, staying up for nearly seven days, taking no food or water until he was done.  When he finished, he collapsed and a day later he died.  But Makaria was satisfied with the painting. 

Very few people saw this painting.  Pheobe recognized it immediately.  It was a favorite of Mattea’s.  As opposed to the original painting, this one was much larger, more space separated the bathers and the prince.  The faces and bodies of the Nymphs were exactly right, as Martin had been shown their likenesses in a fever dream.  In fact, every detail was right, down to the landscape.  And the blood.  Especially the blood.  Unlike the original, the prince wasn’t gaping at the women as they playfully bathed.  No, in this picture, true to reality, Diana turned and was staring at the prince while her attendants crouched around her.  The prince, halfway through a painful transformation, screamed in agony.  That scream echoed through Pheobe’s memory as if it had been yesterday.  She remembered her own fear in that moment.  Pheobe hadn’t been a Nymph for very long when she had witnessed it.  The poor passerby who dared to gaze upon the spectacle of divinity in the grotto.  As if any mortal would have been able to look away.  The needless cruelty of the act had baptized Pheobe into a new world.  In the woodline of the painting, dark shapes took form and the body of a massive dog leapt from the trees.  Pheobe stared at the dog, wondering sadly how Berline was doing.

Mattea was reaching a finger towards the painting.  When she touched it, the painting rippled, as if made of water.  Gathering her dress in her hands, Mattea climbed up onto the frame and stepped into the painting.  Pheobe followed suit and the moment she detached herself from the canvas, she was standing by the water of the grotto, the water falling peacefully nearby.  The place was empty, none of the characters from the scene remained.  The woods were peaceful.

Up ahead, Mattea was stepping into the water, her green dress dissolving around her.  Pheobe followed, her own clothes melting away as she walked through the water.  They reached the water fall.  As they walked through, pure white robes fell into place on their bodies. 

The spellroom was small, but as lovely as one would expect from Makaria.  The cool cave was carved in a perfect shape, sheltered by falling water on two sides.  Natural light filtered through the water, lighting the room in a way that was both eerie and peaceful.  Makaria grabbed a silver necklace from her alter before turning with a flourish. 

“Shall we?” she asked, holding out a hand.

“My bag?” Pheobe asked. 

Mattea’s eyes glinted for a moment.  “I have it,” she said, staring through the water.  “You know where we are going?”

Pheobe nodded, before reaching out for Mattea’s hand.  The moment their fingers touched, both women disappeared.  

As promised, a sleek black Lincoln Continental was waiting for Malik.  He had barely believed it when the police had come into his room and begrudgingly told him he was free to go.  “You have some lawyer, kid,” one cop had grumbled.  He was even more surprised when the doctor came into his room and, in a cold harsh tone, directed him on some medication to take before telling him he was being released.  He was given his backpack, which had clearly been rifled through.  He changed into his clothes and walked unopposed out of the hospital. 

He had expected Cheyenne to be in the car, but she wasn’t.  Nobody sat in the back of the vehicle.  A partition blocked his view of the driver, so all he could do was sit in silence, wishing his phone had any charge left.  He ate all of his snacks still left in his bag.  He had no idea how long he would be riding in the car.  From the look of it, it was the late afternoon.  The car drove through the city for a while before getting on the highway.  After nearly an hour, Malik felt himself growing sleepy, so he laid out across the leather seats and used his bag as a pillow.  He fell asleep surprisingly quick and when he awoke again, the car was driving over a gravel road.  It was dark out, and Malik was famished. 

“Hey,” he called out, knocking on the partition, “can we stop for some food.”

There was no reply.  Even though he knew it was in vain, Malik checked his bag again.  He hadn’t eaten all day, his stomach felt like it was caving in on itself. 

Luckily, the ride didn’t last much longer.  Soon, the car was turning off the gravel road and onto a paved driveway.  All around was thick forest.  They passed drove up a hill for a moment before the car stopped.  Malik craned his neck and saw a massive iron gateway up ahead.  He heard the driver’s muffled voice.  The gate swung open and they continued up the driveway. 

The car stopped abruptly.  The door swung open and Malik was staring up at Cheyenne.

“Good to see you made it,” she said with a smile.  She had changed out of her white business suit, but was now in a white jumper, belted at the waist with a silver link.  She still wore the heels which made her tower over Malik.  She pulled him up out of the car and put her arm around his shoulder, making Malik feel like a child.  But any embarrassment he felt quickly melted as he looked up at the mansion before him.

“Welcome to Wolves Den,” Cheyenne said with a wink.

The mansion was built entirely of what looked like full trunks of pine trees, brown stones and enormous windows.  It looked like the largest, most beautiful log cabin Malik had ever seen.  As they walked around it, it was apparent that it had been built into the side of a cliff.  Malik couldn’t see over, so he had no idea how far down the face of the house went, but all around the house were natural springs, cascading into pools the went right to the edge of the cliff, and created a kind of moat around the house.  The level that they stood on now was higher than the ground floor and the front door.  Arm still around him, Cheyenne led Malik across what could only be described as a draw bridge and down a flight of stairs carved into the stone.  On either side of them, the pools fell in water falls, collecting in a deep stream that went right under the stilted middle of the house and fell off the face of the cliff. 

Malik immediately couldn’t believe that such feats of architecture was possible, yet Cheyenne was unlocking the front door and leading him inside.  The floor beneath his feet was see through, below the stream rushed towards the cliff.  The foyer, which made up most of the middle of the house, was larger than his childhood home.  The massive hall had high vaulted ceilings and was just as rustic as the outside of the house.  On either side were spiral staircases that ascended to the upper floors.  At the far end, an enormous window opened up to the sky.  Cheyenne smiled even broader and walked him to that window.  The floor was still clear and they walked right over the water fall.  Malik stared down from dizzying heights.  He felt himself sway and hesitate, afraid to walk any further.  Cheyenne laughed and held him upright.

“It’s a little overwhelming the first time,” she said, pulling him right up to the window. 

Malik stared out at the valley below him and the mountains all around him.  Even at night, he could see for miles all around.  His breath caught as he took it all in.  Cheyenne only beamed, watching his reaction.  Malik felt like he could stand here for hours, just taking it all in. 

After a few minutes, Cheyenne released him, clapping her hands together.

“So,” she said with finality, “this is Wolves Den.  I’ll take you to your room.  I’m sure you’re starving, so we’ll see what’s left of dinner.  Then you can meet Accalia.”

“Who’s Accalia?” Malik asked.

Cheyenne smiled, her eyes glinting.

“The Alpha,” she said.

Author's Note

This is the first part of a story I have been working on (that is as of now, untitled).

Reviews

[Tanya]

Your writing sucks a person in, every word came alive in my mind as I read it. Keep it up, I want to know more. Very detailed, and well written! Kudos.