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“Mai!” Gunner’s voice threaded toward me through the otherwise empty building. Vaguely, I noted that my recent yell might have sounded like pain rather than aggression to a distant werewolf. But I could ease the alpha’s worries later. For now, I had a fight to win.
Spinning on the balls of my feet, I dodged beneath my opponent’s sword, continuing to pretend my only impulse was defense. It wasn’t, though. Because I’d stopped worrying about my sword touching my opponent’s the moment I lost my temper. Which opened up an endless array of opportunities in the fight ahead.
In the end, I chose the simplest game plan—feigning a stumble in order to bait my cloaked enemy to attack. Predictably, my opponent responded just as I’d expected. He or she easily bypassed my flailing sword arm then lunged toward my left shoulder. All I had to do was wait until the last moment then raise my own weapon in three...two...one....
“No!” Mama started, the word perhaps the beginning of a proverb or perhaps her first attempt at giving it to me straight.
And then images flickered behind my eyeballs. Mama on her deathbed, hands shaking as they reached out to fold my much smaller hands around the hilt of a sword so similar to my own. “This is yours now. Keep it safe until your sister is old enough to understand its power.”
Even though the memory was twelve years old, I still remembered the tingle that ran through me...and the way clinging to Mama’s glowing star ball had eased my grief over the months afterwards. Because while my mother’s physical body had faded into absence, her spirit had remained beside me for more than a decade. The warm security of her presence had wandered afield to help Kira shift at frequent intervals, but it had always flowed back in my direction whenever I cared to call.
Except the warmth was fading fast now that I actively fought against that beloved connection. The chill began in my feet and quickly engulfed my entire body as I placed my own sword right where it needed to go to slice Mama’s star ball violently aside.
I tried to mitigate the offensive at the last moment, understanding too late that magic works on intention first and foremost. I’d launched this attack from a place of rage and hatred, and that might just be enough to finally split my dead mother and me apart.
Which wasn’t at all want I wanted. I hoped to cling to the tiny fragment of Mama’s undying spirit, to keep her close and listen to pesky proverbs if that was the only way she could communicate from beyond the grave.
But my change of heart came too late. Two thin streams of magical weaponry met for the very first time with a bell-like tone rather than with the usual clang of reverberating metal. And as they did so, an electrical jolt racked my body, the shock hitting me one instant before the connection to my mother’s memories winked abruptly out.
I hadn’t appreciated what I possessed until it was gone, I now realized. Hadn’t appreciated how much I depended upon Mama’s silent—and recently not-so-silent—presence to buoy me up. Had I thrust her spirit into the void without a life boat? Or—worse—was she now being forced to empower my opponent, a free spirit turned into a prisoner within the enemy’s cloaked form?
No wonder the hooded figure’s eyes crinkled with pleasure. No wonder my muscles turned to water even as my opponent’s hardened into stone.
The shock at losing a part of myself that I hadn’t fully realized was present loosened my grip until it was all I could do to cling onto my sword as I was pushed backward against the wall. I couldn’t even struggle. Lacked the presence of mind to duck down and out of my opponent’s grasp before being pinned by someone considerably larger and stronger than myself.
I was trapped between a serial killer and a hard place....
Then I was spinning sideways. My neck whiplashed, my limbs flailed in a vain attempt to catch my balance.
And when I came at last to stillness, the back of my skull was pressing hard against the floorboards while I peered up into the panting face of a tremendous male wolf.