CHAPTER 2 #2
By the time the last few wolves made their offerings, the moon had peeked out above the boughs of the pine trees to the south.
She was a nearly full, waning crescent. Her lambent light fell gently upon the far side of the amphitheater, bathing the wolves there in a spill of silver that fell just short of illuminating the crowd below us.
If not for my preternatural eyes, it would have been difficult to make them out in the gloom of shadow cast by the rim.
The last wolf stepped away from the dais, and I braced myself for impact, remembering this part of the ceremony well.
Their blood acted as the seal on the spell, and as it disappeared into the granite, magic burst from the plinth and howled over us.
I gritted my teeth, leaning forward against the onslaught.
Gasps broke out around me, whispers following in their wake.
I wasn’t the only one surprised by the strength of the magic.
Gia and I had been caught out in a thunderstorm one summer night before starting our junior year of high school, and the weight of the air pressing down around me now reminded me of it.
All the hair on my arms stood on end, waiting for the lightning to strike.
The clearing smelled like burnt aether. If power had washed over my psyche earlier, it crashed against it now like a hurricane-ravaged sea.
My skin puckered, fur threatening to punch through it.
“Mom,” a little girl said from nearby. Her voice was strained.
“Come on. Up you get,” the mother said, leading her daughter out into the field so she could shift.
They weren’t the only ones rushing from their seats.
Even grown wolves were among their number.
The threat of shifting seemed stronger now than at the first ceremony I’d attended.
Gia and I had fought it off just fine when we were younger, and I couldn’t remember a single adult giving in back then. What was different this time?
“Do you feel that?” a familiar voice said from nearby.
I turned to see Audrey, one of my mom’s closest friends, sitting nearby with her hand raised.
She moved it back and forth in front of her as though brushing it over something.
The moonlight bathed her dark skin in hues of purple and blue.
Her curly hair bobbed over her shoulders in the metaphysical breeze.
She was a mystic, like the woman who led us.
Beside her, her husband shuddered. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. The magic is… growing. Like Antoinette isn’t the only one controlling it anymore,” she answered.
Her gaze fell to the dais. Antoinette must be the name of the mystic presiding over the ceremony. If she was losing control, then who the hell was trying to take over?
A shiver of unease ran through me. It was bad up here in the crowd.
How much worse was it down in the hollow?
I searched the wolves for my best friend.
Gia wasn’t capable of casting magic, but she had an awareness of it that most of us didn’t.
Unlike me, she could actually see wards.
She could even sense spells being cast, where I only felt the aftermath of them.
Finally, I found her. She sat with her shoulders scrunched up and her arms wrapped around herself in obvious discomfort.
Antoinette, still standing on the dais, picked the knife back up and paused for a moment. “If any among you has yet to come forth, please do so now.”
No one moved.
“Then we may continue,” she said in a calm, easy tone that belied the smell of anxiety permeating the air around me.
Her gaze rose and swept over our seats, a slight smile playing across her lips.
“If those mystics in attendance would help to reinforce the barrier, that would be welcome. The Goddess is restless tonight.”
I stared down at her, eyes wide. The Goddess is restless?
Was that who was interfering in the ritual?
Only She alone would know why, though I couldn’t help but worry over it.
Our Goddess was known for Her foresight.
Was there some darkness on the horizon that only She could see, and that was why She was dipping Her fingers down to earth?
To shift events so that we might have a fighting chance of overcoming whatever it was that She foresaw?
Audrey rose swiftly to her feet, palms up, chanting softly. Over a dozen others throughout the audience stood along with her, adding their power to the barrier.
Down below, Gia pivoted her head around like an owl, eyes wide. When our gazes met, she mouthed What the fuck? up at me.
I shrugged back at her, feeling helpless.
Antoinette, seemingly unperturbed by this turn of events, clasped her hands together in front of her and addressed the wolves on the hollow floor.
“As the moon casts Her gaze upon us, I would ask that you welcome Her into yourselves. That you make ready for Her blessing and open your hearts to the ones you will soon share them with.”
Many down below bowed their heads in obedience.
Antoinette lifted her gnarled hands in a clatter of bracelets and began to chant again.
Her magically amplified voice drowned out the spells of the other mystics, deafening me to all other sounds.
My existence became a muted world dominated by the cadence of her speech, the recurrent rise and fall of her tone and tempo.
She started keening, and I had to bite my lip to keep from howling along with her.
Others around me were having less success controlling themselves. More and more of them fled the amphitheater to shift form in the field, and now a ring of wolves covered in fur looked down from the edge of it, watching the ceremony with solemn amber eyes.
If the magic had felt like a hurricane before, the wind wall suddenly compressed around the eye, squeezing what felt like a category five down into the bowl of the hollow around us.
The force of it punched through me, knocking the breath from my lungs.
My hair pulled loose from my braid and lashed at my face.
I had to slap my hands onto my knees and dig my fingernails into my skin to keep hold of my human form.
As swiftly and violently as it began, the power collapsed in upon itself, detonating with the force of a small bomb over the shifters inside the ward. Many were thrown to the ground. Even up where I sat, I was rocked backward by the force of it.