Chapter Twenty-Four
Cliff
Walking around campus was an interesting experience, since I’d come into my powers. I noticed things I’d not before, like the odd shifter here and there. I could see it in their shadows, in the lines of their spirit. And the odd looks I got every now and again made sense.
I finished my test with relative ease, and I was reasonably confident in my A in the class.
“Cliff, my dude! Where have you been?” One of my fraternity brothers waved me down as he jogged up, eyeing me up and down. The scent of canine wafted off him, or maybe fox. His shadowed form hiding in his spirit gave me a clue.
“Moved down to live with my brother and his new family.” I laughed and waited for Ransom to catch up with me.
“Ohhhh. Demi. Omega?” His tone dropped low as he eyed me up and down. “And mated. Oooh.”
He wagged an eyebrow at me, and I tensed, waiting for a negative comment. “I can’t tell what you are though. Deer? Goat? I smell a lot on you. Mixed pack?”
I shrugged. “I don’t… It’s complicated.”
“Not manifested? No, you smell manifested. C’mon. Something weird?” His half grin twisted when he bumped my shoulder. “We all know you been living with that old witch up yonder. Did you know you was a demi?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not sure what I was. All three of my siblings are the same thing. Sorta.”
He followed me out of the building, yammering about other shifters on campus having a get-together after finals, offering to get me mega-drunk.
“I’m omega. Not going out drinking anywhere other shifters are.” I gave him a sidelong glance.
“Bad experience with an alpha?” His breath shuddered as if he were sniffing me.
“Yeah.” I hefted my backpack and attempted to walk away from him, that alpha scent annoying me. He followed still, though. I knew Ransom fairly well before all this, but I didn’t have much trust left for other shifters after the boars. At any rate, if I could get to Mrs. Pemberlin’s car in the back parking lot before he grabbed me, I could whip out the god powers and get away if he tried something.
He hesitated and fell a step back. “That why you’ve not come back to class and missed all the chapter meetings? Left your job?”
“Yeah. So, yeah… I’m like… See ya, man. I guess. Done with classes and all. Not going to graduation.” I waved him off since it seemed he was going to take a hint, but he kept following. Though, his posture eased, and he kept the distance between us.
“Sorry. I—I knew you were something, but we’re not allowed to say nothing unless you show the signs. I got an inkling you might know, why you moved out of the frat house.” He paced behind and I set my sight on the back parking lot. “But can’t you tell me at least what you are?”
As I rounded the corner, out of sight of others, I turned on my heel and glared at him. “I said that it’s complicated.”
His eyes widened, and he paused, stepping back. “Dude…what the fuck are you?”
I held myself up to my fullest height and stared him down. “I said it’s complicated.”
“Hell, the fuck, yes, it’s complicated. Jesus, man.” He paused. “If you can’t tell me what you are, tell me who fucked with you? Okay? I’ll make ’em pay, disappear… I don’t truck with anyone fucking with omegas.” Ransom stared me down, afraid of whatever flashed in my eyes.
“Boars. They’re taken care of.” I sneered and earned a wide-eyed, jaw-dropped expression.
“Holy shit! You’re a god’s mate!” His face stayed mired in awe. “The boars are out for blood over what happened. You’re the Buckling Stone’s mate? Let me tell you, I am rooting for him. The boars are shit.”
I let loose a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Muscles in my body relaxed, and I turned, studying his worried face. “Almost lost Buck. It wasn’t cool. And if Buck was gone, I think I’d have died, too.”
“Between you and me, that witch deserves what’s coming to her.” Ransom’s upper lip curled. “Friend of mine knows where she’s hiding, and we totally ratted her ass out. I know she’s going to try and hit Storm’s land.”
I halted mid-step. Anger boiled under my skin as I slated my gaze toward him. “Who and where?”
“She’s in a caravan on her way. Gadge Winsley, not that the name means anything. She’s a throwback from a fox clan. Dad’s a boar. Absolutely ashamed to share kin with her.” He rolled his shoulders, and it was everything I could do not to dissipate on the spot and hunt her down.
“Get me the exact location as close as possible,” I said. Though part of me wanted to go after him myself, I wasn’t quite that stupid. Another was owed his pound of flesh.
I barely processed what he told me as I walked to my car. Some witch with a death wish, desperate for money and at the mercy of the boars… Grim’s remnants. Maybe he should have done away with them all.
“One moment.” I grabbed my phone as he stood there, staring at me with genuine shared anger.
I dialed a number and on the third ring, a hoarse and listless voice answered. Brook hadn’t been the same since River had been relegated to his original form. “Cliff?”
“I found out who did it. You want to come with?” Ransom stared at me wide-eyed. “I have a fox here who is going to tell me all we want to hear.”
“On my way. Stand near some water in a quiet spot.” The line went dead and I could feel the pull of another god searching for me, pricking at my senses. He’d find me soon enough.
Ransom fidgeted as I gestured for him to follow me, his expression flowing from nervous to vindicated. “I’ll come too!”
“Gods travel differently.” I unlocked the car and grabbed a bottle of water from the backseat, opening the stale contents before I poured it on the cracked pavement. The resulting puddle rippled and reflected the sky above, water seeping down for but a moment before Brook materialized from its surface, drawing up from a spout into existence before giving me a wan smile.
“I want to help!” Ransom stared me down and Brook huffed.
“This is the business of gods.”
“There must be something I can do. I had the info, but I can—” Ransom steeled himself when I fished in my pocket to hand him the keys.
He stared at them.
“Get my car back to Mrs. Pemberlin’s house. How long’s this going to take, Brook?” I swiveled my gaze to him as he stared Ransom down, eyes traversing his lean, rugged frame. Hazel eyes glinted back, full of fear.
“An hour, tops. You in a skulk?” Brook narrowed his gaze.
“Y-yeah. Timberline Ridge.” Ransom nodded shakily.
“See if anyone wants a god on their side. We could all use a little more worship.” Brook grinned wickedly, his teeth glinting sharp in the afternoon light. In his sharper moments, I could see beyond the human disguise he wore, to the ichthyic features beneath. His father had been a n?cken, and the discordant features showed in his bloodlust.
“O-of course. Anything. We’re— We never really had an opportunity. Gods find us, you know.” He fumbled as I pushed my keys into his hands.
“Take the car to Mrs. Pemberlin. My mate is there. Tell him I’m on my way with Brook soon.” For good measure, I reached into my pocket and drew out my wallet. “Address is on my ID.”
Brook took the cue and rested a hand on my shoulder, fingers digging in. “Lead the way.”
Brook, as an aspect, had the element of his god, and River leaned toward his water and demise, destruction even. My element, of stone and death, shared with him. In the same way a landslide took the land, a flood could do worse. Water could drown and stone could crush, yet water could wash my element away if given enough time.
The magic didn’t work for me as well as it did Brook, who’d had hundreds of years to wear his skin and guise. And before that, even, he was an improbable creature.
Through ground water we moved, me nothing more than silt in his flow, dust in cloud as we rose to the surface and leaped pieces of ourselves from one drop of water, to dust to the next, compounding our ability to travel as we homed in on the area of the country they’d be in.
I wanted to murder, to cut and rend, but as someone who resonated with stone, silt, earth, and the ground itself, it was Brook’s duty to tap into something he was far more comfortable with. Death.
We have a name, a notion, a goal. Feel that energy we’ve locked into and it becomes a beacon. It’s not omnipotence, but it’s fucking close. Brook’s thoughts swam in my mind, his voice watery, like the melody of water playing over rounded stones, but a deceitful cold lay beneath it.
Like he said, I could feel something drawing me south and west, following ley lines that drew me ever closer to my goal.
I lost myself to the flow as Brook aided my travel until we entered soil once more in tandem and spiraled through groundwater to surface at an RV park not six hours west of Thunder Acres. Madness lay within. Anger.
Brook and I solidified our forms as we walked a gravel path into the park, surveying dilapidated RVs amid newer ones, searching out the scent of boar and that familiar feel of Buck’s power that surely would have still lingered on the witch. I wondered, idly, what she’d done with the power, and if it was truly worth it.
“Have you killed before?” Brook rolled his shoulders as the bits of humanity he wore on himself faded away. The placid ginger I’d come to know held his head high as his ears pointed, teeth lengthened, and lips thinned. Sharp teeth amid a gash-like wider mouth bared. His skin paled, a rainbow sheen over it like scales shone in all the places his clothing didn’t cover. His hair, though, remained the same, the shaggy mop of red, only it was needlessly wet, dripping as his clothing was.
“Not a human. Hit a squirrel with my car once on accident.”
Brook leaned over and sniffed me, drawing some conclusion with a grunt of approval. “Your hands. Show me.”
I lifted my hands, turning the palms up. Brook studied them for a long moment before lifting his, turning them, and glancing down purposefully to get me to look. As I did, I paid attention to a myriad of dark, red-mottled stains that riddled his hands from fingertips to wrists, going all the way to his elbows. “Blood on my hands. I may not notice a few more stains, but you will, and Buck will. Do you wish to get blood on your hands? Rayne bears blood on his hands, now, too.”
With that in mind, I stared down at my hands and shook my head. “Buck and River have so much more on their hands. What’s one stain?”
“First one’s the hardest, but it gets easier and easier. Blood for revenge is the darkest.” I swallowed hard, knowing Buck would resent it. Because he held so much blood on his own that they dripped, I knew my own clean hands were a constant sign of guilt to him.
“Soon it won’t matter.” I sighed and glanced around us, my gaze drawn toward a nearly new RV toward a more abandoned end of the park. Buck’s power seeded the area, emanating from the RV as well as the scent of boar and madness. As much as I wanted revenge as fast as possible, I made myself patient.
“How are we going to do it?”
“The best way for water to kill. Draw arsenic from the soil for me.” Brook stared the camper down as a shadow wafted past the window, a portly snub-nosed asshole that when I squinted, had a bandage across the bridge of his nose from recent surgery. Likely from the damage that Eve had done. Too bad that it was all in vain. He wouldn’t need the nose much longer.
“That jerk’s kid killed my brother. He had me kidnapped and nearly assaulted. He tried to kill my boyfriend—mate. And he turned my new bestie into a fucking bird!” As Buck had taught me before, I brought about the image of something in my mind.
The best source of it I knew was arsenopyrite, a yellow crystalline form that occurred in inclusions among rich metal sources like precious metal mining. Because I had a good idea of what it was and how it looked, I could make clearer images in my mind than most. So, when I drew up the image, the surrounding ground lit up like fireflies in the night with small flecks of it that called to me as I called to them. Which, considering what arsenic was and could do, was mildly terrifying.
Brook fished in his pockets and pulled out a small glass vial, filling it from the air itself with pure water. I guided the motes of arsenic that called to me, letting them flow into the bottle, tainting it just the right amount.
“Ordinarily, I’d want to use my bare hands, to hurt them in a way that let everyone know. But everyone will know no matter what we do, and we are silent. We are calm and reserved. But we are vengeful.” Brook sighed heavily and melted into the earth, a puddle that soaked the ground with the bottle. Arsenic could do little to us, so I didn’t worry about him absorbing it.
I stood afar, watching the RVs as I sensed Brook’s power traveling from one to the other, three in total. Behind each stop, he left an aura of death to come, as that would take a day or two. Arsenic poisoning wasn’t something that happened right away, insidiously slow.
A door opened to one of the RVs and a woman stood there, moon-faced and pale. Narrow eyes focused in on me and she frowned, inhaling deeply.
Witch. Boar born.
I stood straighter as she reached for a staff inside her RV but sank into the earth when Brook’s presence under my feet alerted me.
When the symptoms hit, she’d know who her doom was.
Is it done? I thought in question to Brook and received a sensation of agreement.
It is done. Let’s get you back to your mate.
Like we’d done before, we traveled together, both our minds silent and burdened by the weight of what we’d done. It was a long while before I could make myself communicate. Doesn’t feel better.
Usually doesn’t. But it’s what needs to be done. Gods don’t want to control our worshipers. But worshipers want to control gods. This country is rife with people who want to be and should never be gods. We’ve stopped that. That is what we did. Vengeance comes on its own time, in its own way. We’re preventative maintenance.
That felt better to think of, but I mentally prepared myself for what was to come. I’d have to tell Buck.
As we approached my old apartment, nearing Mrs. Pemberlin’s land, we found Ransom in the car waiting for us.
He peered over the steering wheel nervously when we appeared, his expression shifting to one of worry then sadness. “How did it—”
Brook held up a hand. “It’s done. Best not to ask how or talk about it.”
I shrugged and approached the driver’s side, swapping out with him. “We’ll give you a ride home. Want to hang with Buck and Mrs. Pemberlin for a bit?”
Ransom swallowed hard, the muscles in his face tightening so much his ears twitched. Dark eyes glistened as he nodded and got out of the car, tossing me the keys. It wasn’t too far up the road. So, with all the exhaustion that finals week and what we’d just done could give—I drove.