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with him, a flicker of red and white at the corner of Dane’s eye. Behind them, his magical workshop
murmured quietly to itself, just loud enough that Dane could hear it.
“I’ll do it, but only so Cyrus doesn’t owe you,” Dane said at last. A pang of fear spiked in him, fear
that he’d try to change and not know how, that his body wouldn’t answer, that he’d look like a fool in front of Ezqel for being broken enough that all the magic in the world couldn’t fix.
“I don’t care why you do it.” Ezqel passed him and stepped out into the sunlight. “Your reasons are
your own,” he said, his voice small in the outside air. “Didn’t you say you wanted it that way?”
“True enough.” Dane followed, trying to consider how he felt about that. Suddenly, he was blinking
in the sunlight. His human eyes were too slow to react. Letting the beast seep in was like grasping air at first.
“North, first. Then the rest of the compass.” Ezqel stepped up onto a rocky outcropping. The wind
pulled his hair and robes in all directions, buffeting him, and it lifted him as he shimmered into feathers and beak and claws and bright eyes. A gyrfalcon, larger than anything the world had seen in these late days,
took the wind under its great wings and became small in the sky.
Dane watched Ezqel soar, relieved to have the moment to himself. Instinct led his feet to the clearest
path winding north and he loped along it, bare feet cold on the earth. It was strange to have his body so
straight and vulnerable. The wind, growing colder the farther he got from Ezqel’s haven, pulled his robe
open and bit at his bare skin.
It has to happen sometime. The voice was his own, not Ezqel’s, not Cyrus’s. The wind was empty of
Cyrus’s presence and his magic—once in a while, the wind let him be alone. I don’t remember. I don’t… It had been so long.
Dane ran until he could hardly see for the wind in his eyes, though his hair caught on branches and his
feet cut on stones, until the pressure in his chest was a fire that made him feel human. He knew the
mountain, knew this upward slope and the place where it broke. Sometimes, there was only one way to
make things happen.
He knew from the slip of the scree under his feet exactly where he was, and that the gap ahead would
leave him no choice but to change or find out how deep it went. The forest fell away so that, suddenly, he
could see distance and a horizon and the sky arched overhead. The black cross of the bird swung up toward
the sun, waiting for him. He remembered miles disappearing under his paws, the bunch of his muscles, the
way his claws cut into the earth’s skin…
Four paws to the ground, long body like a coiled spring, ears back flat against his skull, he doubled
his speed over the last yards to the rift in the mountainside. The gap yawned under him, but he was already stretching out to the ground on the other side. His momentum and weight rippled up into his body as his
forepaws hit the ground, translating to his hind paws as they gained purchase and threw him forward again.
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The world was different, yet familiar, like coming home after years away. The bird was a speck so
high in the sky that he lost it, but he could feel the eyes on him. He didn’t need the bird to tell him what was ahead.
Three men. No, two men, and one dog. Dane’s muzzle wrinkled and the sneer drew his lips back so
that their taste swirled around his fangs. He bit the air as he circled to pick up their trail, coming up behind them.
“That’s no bird.” The rifle bolt had a sound that never failed to make his blood rise.
The dog smelled him coming and was turning to face him. It stood on two legs, but it was leashed and
enslaved no less, straining against invisible chains. Dane cleared it and came down on the man with the
gun, dipping his head to tear the man’s spine out with a snap of his teeth and shake of his head.
The other one was trying to radio for help—Dane could hear the crackle as the headset came on—but
a shadow passed over and, when it lifted, the man’s head was gone. The bird laughed and dropped the head
as it made for the zenith again. The body crumpled with the jerky hesitation of a thing unsure it was dead.
The dog was afraid, the smell of its sweat and adrenaline stronger than the blood in Dane’s mouth.
With no master to direct it, it backed away and turned to run. Dane swiped through the tendons at the back
of its legs and flipped it over on its back. He pi
It beat at him with clenched fists and tried to summon magic that never came. It was mad, mad in the
eyes, mad in the stink of it, yelping like a dog with a human mouth. Dane killed it with a bite and a shake of his head, and dropped it, spitting out its poisoned blood. The cry of the bird reminded him to leave curiosity to the minds of men. Shaking his head again to clear it, he turned to follow the bird.
Ezqel’s forest was vast, but his paths through it followed the laws of magic, not matter. Every step of
Dane’s paws, every beat of Ezqel’s wings, covered miles. The forest was infested with men. Taniel hadn’t
been exaggerating. Methodically, with the help of the whispering wind, the lion and the falcon hunted
every last one and brought them to earth.
The sun set on them at the edge of the human world, next to a burning truck and a crumpled
helicopter. The corpses that Ezqel had summoned up out of the forest—once they were dead, he had more
dominion over them and they were easier to command—lay in neat stacks, matched with their various body
parts, awaiting disposal. The forest still felt uneasy, but at least it was clean.
Dane stretched out next to the flames of the smoldering truck and watched Ezqel peck out the eyes of
a man who had, until today, likely considered himself to be firmly in control of many things. The
screaming faded to sobs as the bird stepped off the man’s chest and, with a flick of its feathers, was Ezqel in his fae form again. What there had been to learn from the man had been disappointingly minimal.
Always, they were only following orders.
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Tatterdemalion
“Should I let it live?” Ezqel crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the squirming man trying to
crawl away on fingerless hands and crippled legs.
Dane rumbled and got up, stretching until his back cracked and his twitching tail nearly caught fire on
the burning truck. Sneezing at the offense of smoldering synthetics, he paced over to circle the last of their prey. If they killed it, it was likely that Moore and her kind would be stupid enough to send more, and that would be irritating. He yawned mightily, shaking his mane for emphasis.
“You’re right.” Ezqel bent to pick up the man’s cell phone and, muttering an unlocking spell, pressed
a few buttons gingerly. Dane didn’t recognize the voice on the other end. “This is over,” Ezqel said to it, holding it out in front of him as though he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it and didn’t want it too near his face. When Ezqel threw the phone at the ruined man and it landed in front of him, the man scrabbled for it and began babbling into it hysterically.
What happened? Who’s there? What do you mean, they’re all dead? The phone echoed the distress
back across the miles.
Dane sat and sighed, bending his head to lick some gore from his chest. People didn’t learn. Worse,
they forgot. If they bothered to remember, no one would have been foolish enough to come into the forest.