Chapter One
July 2048 - Birchdale, The Shifter Alliance Alashiya was torn from sleep by a catastrophe a century in the making. The shockwave of all her wards being breached at once shook the crumbling foundations of her house, knocking photos off walls and bolts of fabric onto the floor. The scent of magic clung to the back of her throat like congealing blood as she surfaced from the easy nothingness of sleep with a gasp. For the span of several frantic heartbeats, the air was dense with residual energy, making it almost impossible to breathe. It covered her skin in a sticky residue that evaporated almost as quickly as she perceived it. When the magic faded, it left her cold and trembling. The lush heat of the summer night was just a memory as she threw off her thin blankets. It’d been a long time since she’d dealt with a threat. Though her body remembered what to do, her limbs struggled to keep up as she stumbled around in the dark. Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs as she strained to hear in the awful quiet. Even the normal night noises, always so cacophonous in the summer, had gone silent. Every instinct screamed at her to run. She had no weapons, no offensive abilities. It was a nymph’s natural inclination to put distance between themselves and a threat. They were fantastic runners and could hide themselves in the wilderness with ease. But running came with its own risks, as she knew well. Sometimes running saved your life, but it just as often led to a death further up the road. The sound of a crash from the direction of the barn nearly made her scream. Alashiya clapped a hand over her mouth and pressed herself against the nearest wall. Her windows were heavily obscured with thick, handmade curtains and moss to regulate the temperature, but if she dared to peer through the tiny gap between the fabric and the wall, she could make out the dark shape of the dilapidated barn across the sloping yard. At first, she couldn’t spot anything unusual. The moon was hidden behind a dense layer of clouds, which were no doubt biding their time until they could unleash the full torrent of a summer storm on the land. Even with her exemplary night vision, it was hard to see anything at all. The noise had come from the barn, she thought, but it hadn’t sounded like someone breaking in. It sounded more like someone had driven a truck through it. The idea wasn’t impossible. Every year, some drunk hunter or hiker did something stupid like that in town. The result was typically a rescue from the local rangers and a very high bill. But after her last unpleasant encounter with a group of hikers, she’d reinforced the wards that obscured the entrance to her property. Any vehicle, if that was indeed what had hit her barn, would’ve had to first find the gate and then come down the overgrown main road to do so. I would’ve felt that, she decided, gut churning. I would’ve felt the moment they crossed over the property line. So either they appeared out of thin air, or… Her gaze traveled up toward the roof of the barn. The high peak, meant to allow snow to slide easily off, had begun to slump a little as the building aged and fell into disrepair. She’d watched it happen over the course of a century and knew the shape of it like she knew her own face. Even far across the yard, swathed in near-complete darkness, she could tell that it had changed. A little bit of her fear eased as confusion set in. Her heart rate began to slow. Had something fallen from the sky? The vivid memories she had of her land being trespassed all involved men melting out of the trees or sauntering down the road. Some beings could fly, of course, but she’d never met one, nor even seen one pass through town. Winged people tended to avoid flat land, she’d heard, and Birchdale was nothing if not flat. Maybe it’s not an intruder at all. Another knot of unease unraveled in her belly. She stood perfectly still against the wall for some time, her gaze glued to the shape of the barn. The heady rush of adrenaline eased back. She stood there for so long, her bones began to ache from the tension of pressing herself against the wall. Night sounds resumed. There was no movement in the dark. No crunch of summer-wild vegetation underfoot. The door to the barn didn’t swing open, though she could allow that she might not have been able to see it even if it did. The longer she stood there, the more it seemed like she had imagined the whole thing. She might’ve believed it, too, if she didn’t feel the residual zing of her wards settling back into their proper arrangement, or taste blood on the back of her tongue. Going back to sleep was out of the question. Calling for help wasn’t an option, since she hadn’t had a working phone for years, and running to her nearest neighbors wasn’t either, seeing as they were elderly. She could slip from the house and risk making for the woods on her own, reliving memories best left buried, or she could confront whoever or whatever crashed into her barn. Her choices were all terrible, but doing nothing was untenable. In the end, it came down to a fundamental question: If it really was an intruder, did she want to die like her grove? Alashiya swallowed a sour mouthful of bile. No, she thought, if there’s someone out there, I’m not going to be hunted down and slaughtered in the dark. It went against every instinct, but she unpeeled herself from the wall. It was lucky that she’d moved nearly everything into one room when her grandfather passed. It saved on wood for the stove during the winter and it meant that her steel fabric scissors were close by. Hastily throwing on her boots and a thin cover-up, she shoved a flashlight into her pocket and gripped the scissors in her right hand. She kept her mass of curly hair tied back at night, but tendrils escaped to tickle her clammy cheeks as she forced her legs to carry her across the creaky wood floor. Her left hand shook as she unfastened the antique lock. Maybe it’s a meteor, she tried to convince herself. Wasn’t that more likely than someone flying through the roof of her barn? Despite her heavy boots, Alashiya’s footsteps were light on the mulch that blanketed the paths through her garden. During the growing season, the area was so lush with life that it was nearly impossible to walk through — a chaotic jumble of symbiotic plant life she depended on to survive. The plants, who normally hummed with pleasure and demands at her nearness, were disconcertingly quiet as she passed them. Her home sat on a slight hill above the barn, where some enterprising farmers had once kept cattle but which her grove had begun to convert into communal housing. There was little wind that night, but the air was thick with moisture. Born and raised on the land, she knew in her bones that a storm was on its way. She didn’t use her flashlight as she silently picked her way around her labyrinth of a garden, fearing that it would alert any potential intruders to her approach. With every step she warred with herself. Why was she doing this? Was it a product of trauma or misplaced pride? What could she do against an intruder, armed with little more than a pair of sewing shears? But everytime she nearly convinced herself to run, Alashiya remembered the screams. She remembered her parents pushing her into the woods, urging her to run. She remembered what it was like to be found, days later, and to come home to a grove of ghosts. She wasn’t helpless, and this was her land. If someone wanted to take it from her, they’d just have to kill her. So she walked, keeping to the darkest, wildest parts of the property. Gradually the barn resolved itself into more than just a sad shape in the dark. Her breath caught as she stumbled to a stop near the tree line. Behind her, birch trees stood like solemn spectators dressed in bone white, the patterns of black eyes on their trunks ever-watchful. A stately owl she’d known from a scrawny fledgling stood on the roof like a sentinel against the dark sky and its stormy clouds. The owl watched her, too. Details were hard to come by, but she could see just enough to balk at. The roof had been nearly completely caved in. For a wild, wonderful moment, she nearly laughed at herself. The roof had been falling apart for years. She didn’t have the funds to fix it, and even if she did, perhaps she wouldn’t have had the heart. What would she do with a large barn, anyway? There was no one and nothing to inhabit it, save the bats who dangled from the rafters and the mice who made their homes in the ephemera of lives long extinguished. It felt like a fitting tribute to allow Blight to reclaim it, as he would do to all things eventually. Even her. Perhaps that was all the noise was. One too many boards had rotted and it simply gave way. It didn’t explain the wards, but neither did a meteor. Only a sapient intruder would’ve triggered those, but how likely was that? A far more reasonable answer was that something had gone awry when the roof collapsed. Perhaps an old ward laid down into the structure by one of the grove had activated, or maybe she’d simply done something wrong when she layered them again just before the start of recreation season. Maybe it’s Blight, she thought wryly, recalling all the stories her parents used to tell her. When she was little, she believed the god of forests, decay, and darkness would appear when she least expected it. He was in every shadow and rustling of leaves. She’d been told he’d show up when she needed him most. Faced with the unlikely prospect, Alashiya wasn’t sure what she’d say to a god except, perhaps, that he was a century too late to help her. Whatever had happened, there appeared to be no sign of life in the barn — threatening, friendly, or divine. The large barn door was still closed. There were no voices, no footsteps. If there was a shifter about, an owl certainly wouldn’t have perched contentedly on what remained of the peak of the roof, its golden eyes calmly surveying her. Animals usually became restless and wary when a bigger predator was about, so his relaxed posture eased her worries. It’s nothing. Thank the gods. Alashiya’s sweaty grip slackened on the scissors. She pressed the heel of her hand into her eye, fighting back the sting of tears. She could’ve collapsed into the undergrowth and wept with relief, but she wanted to get back to her bed far more. She’d just begun to turn around when the horrendous clatter of something moving in the barn made her heart lurch. The owl let out a low, authoritative hoot, as if to say, You should probably check on that. Her breath escaped her in a long, reedy exhale as she stared unblinkingly at the white trees. The warmth of the night had turned to cold needles, thousands of them pricking her from within and without. It’s just the debris settling. That’s all. The fantasy was shattered not a moment later by a terrifying animal rumble. Cold sweat dotted her forehead as she forced herself to turn back around. The owl remained where he was, but his head had cocked to peer down at the barn below his talons. He didn’t appear alarmed in the slightest, but why would he? He could fly away at a moment’s notice. What a relief it would be to have a pair of wings. It’s an animal, she thought, fighting the sharpest edge of hysteria. It has to be. Animals tended to like nymphs. Even the most aggressive moose or wolves wouldn’t attack her, so long as they weren’t ill or injured. But a moose wouldn’t have dropped out of the sky, so that left only a handful of terrifying options — almost all of which involved her being shredded by claws and potentially eaten. Whatever it was, it sounded big. Bigger than big. Alashiya’s fingers had begun to numb from her grip on the scissors, but she didn’t feel any discomfort as she stared at the old, rotted wood of the barn door. The air stung her eyes and forced her to blink. This was stupid, she decided. Running in the opposite direction of the intruder was obviously the right choice. It was all very clear to her now. Why hadn’t she done that? Why didn’t she ever actually listen to what her instincts tried to tell her? A charged, syrupy summer breeze, a prelude to the coming storm, had picked up and was no doubt blowing her scent through the gaps between the wood of the barn. If the creature was alert at all, it probably already knew she was there. The instincts of millennia, of every one of her line who’d come before her, were a live wire inside her, urging her feet to move. Her pulse jumped in her neck and wrists with a frenzied beat. A plaintive whistling note pierced the air. Alashiya’s right foot, which had moved backward without her conscious permission, froze. More noises came from the barn. A lower, sadder sound was followed by one she knew well — the involuntary, breathy moan of a creature in distress. A lump lodged in her throat. Whoever or whatever had crashed into her barn was possibly injured. That changed things. It both lowered and escalated the risk of confronting it considerably. An injured intruder was less able to harm her, certainly, but the likelihood of attack from a large, wounded animal increased. The smart thing would have been to make the trek through the woods to her closest neighbor’s home. The Thompsons had a telephone she could use to call the rangers station. A wild-eyed troop of young, eager shifters with tranq guns could be there in twenty minutes. It was funny how most of the time twenty minutes didn’t seem very long. Twenty minutes of sleep was nothing. Twenty minutes of facing down an injured animal all by herself was very much not. But doing the smart thing meant possibly leaving an injured creature — sapient or not — to die alone. Alashiya couldn’t make herself walk away, not when those terrifying but pitiful sounds continued to reach her. She tried to. She really tried. But could she face herself if she turned her back on a dying creature? No, she decided, at once resolute and annoyed with herself. I may be the last, but that’s not how we were made. If I die, it’ll be because I chose to help. Even my ghosts couldn’t blame me for that. Still gripping her scissors, she shuffled stiffly away from the treeline. One shaking hand rested on the handle of the door. She had to say something, make some noise to alert the animal to a friendly presence. Her throat was almost too tight to make any sound, but she forced herself to speak. “Hello?” It came out as barely a whisper, the syllables of the word nearly swept away by the breeze curling through the bony, watchful trees, but the creature must’ve heard her. There was a pause, followed by a low, menacing rumble. It sounded like some great engine roaring to life just beyond the door. Like every souped-up, nut-dangling, chrome-finished truck she’d ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on had melted together to have a monstrous metal baby in her barn. It couldn’t have been an animal. It just couldn’t. It was unlike anything she’d ever heard before, and so loud— Alashiya nearly stumbled back a step, but her fingers remained reflexively hooked around the handle, stopping her retreat. She couldn’t pry her fingers away. Her arm was locked there, like it was drawn to the door by some invisible force. The strangest feeling hooked its claws into her. It was a pull behind her breastbone, the faintest tug as all her blood rushed away from her head at once. It was that same force that held her arm captive, and now it sought to pull the rest of her toward the door. Her senses tingled with staticky awareness. Whatever was beyond that door knotted a thread around her beating heart and yanked. The boards that made up the door were in fairly good shape, considering their neglect, but time and the seasons had warped them enough that there were gaps between several. She peered into the largest one, but despite the hole in the roof, there was even less light inside the barn than outside. While she stared, desperate to discover what she was dealing with, the terrible warning growl grew louder and louder. Figuring she was already in for a pound, Alashiya stuttered, “Ca—can you speak? Are you injured?” The growl died away. For several seconds, the world went quiet. Shaking from head to toe, she dared to lean closer to the door, her head angled to look through the widest gap. She saw nothing but darkness. It was an all-encompassing blackness that appeared, after a moment of inspection, strange. The fine hair had just lifted off the back of her neck when a violet eye the size of a dinner plate appeared an inch from the door. It was an almost unnatural color, so vibrant that it seemed to appear from some other world. It was the most purple thing she’d ever seen. It glowed beneath a pitch black lid, and its sinister expanse was broken by an almond-shaped pupil narrowed to a quivering, hair-thin line.
