Fangs of Fate (Untish #1)

Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

TATE

Being a bird shifter was a gift that I was both lucky and unlucky to have. Aside from gifts of agility, magic was incredibly rare in vampires, shifters were rarer. Some considered shifting a violation of natural law, but others simply thought it was freaky—all understood it required an underlying access to a large quantity of raw magic.

I wouldn’t really care what they thought if it wasn’t illegal to shift. No one in the Glenn knew I could shift except for Fletch. I was—to my knowledge—the only vampire who could shift into a bird within the Glenn. There had been a few other shifters, mostly into things like cats, and they had disappeared or had been executed for either defying nature’s laws or for conspiring with the Shifting Vamp—a rogue group who refused to join any of the Four Houses after the Great War. They were outcasts, biologically wrong beings and dangerous to society—or at least that’s what the Glenn tried to indoctrinate. I wonder how Principal Predi would respond if he knew that one of the school’s Blood Queens was, in fact, a shifter. He’d probably lose his puny mind.

It always felt odd to me. How could being a shifter be classified as ‘unnatural’ when it was, in fact, natural? I’d heard other vamps accepted those known for their shifting abilities. But those were just rumors. As a child, I loved stories of magic, dragons, and shifters. And once I discovered my ability to shift, a year after I transitioned, my mother smuggled me into the HQ Library and got me access to the database so I could research everything there was about shifters.

In a nutshell, there wasn’t much data. Mostly folklore and a recent history of the known shifters over the last century, along with their fates. A fate I’d like to escape.

My mother made sure I knew the Fern Vamp allowed shifters to live, even if they weren’t tolerant of vampires who originated from outside their borders. My fail-safe if I should ever look to leave the Glenn.

I banked left and let the breeze lift me higher. Nothing compared to the freedom of flying. How could something so natural and right be evil? I was alone in this. It was just me, my thoughts, and the clouds. Not even my mother understood the feeling of shifting. A gift I’d apparently inherited from the male who sired me.

According to Fletch, my mother came from a line that had shifters sprinkled throughout; although, no one had the ability within the last seven generations—save for me. My father was a shifter, or at least that’s what I gathered from the hushed mentions of him I’d managed to scrape from my mother before her death.

Fletch, ever the historian, told me shifting used to be more common than it is now—that as we’ve evolved over the last couple of centuries, shifters slowly stopped appearing. Well, that or they hid it like I did—at least for now.

I stretched out my wings and reveled in how the constant ache in my right leg wasn’t present. In this form, I suffered no injury, had no ailment. Thank blood that I was never discovered.

The Glenn tested our DNA at birth and again in early adulthood, seventeen to be exact, right after we fully transitioned to determine any irregularities as well as gene markers of special abilities. They claimed this was to determine how we could best serve the Glenn, but really, it was a witch hunt. Thankfully, my last test didn’t show my shifting trait, though I never knew how . I’d often suspected my mother hid it from them.

A weight pushed my wings down and made inhaling hard: guilt. I highly doubted my mother committed treason. No, it was far more likely she died because of me. Was she working with the Shifting Vamp to secure me a place and got caught? There were so many missing pieces.

I began to circle down, letting the air buff my descent as my adrenaline picked up at the thought of plummeting. I had only been able to shift for three years, give or take, and had only shifted a handful of times due to the inherent risk of being spotted. Once I realized this cliff existed, it was a game changer. I had a haven to shift where I couldn’t be seen. I tried telling Fletch that, but the old worry-wort ‘forbade’ me from it—as if he could. He was always the pessimist. He also had the nerve of regularly trying to ship me off to outer settlements where there was the least amount of oversight from the guara, not to mention I’d be far away from President Dale.

But the idea of simply monitoring a small human village just north of one of our smaller vampire villages shouted boring . It was like being sentenced to watch cattle graze and make sure the wolves behaved. No thank you. I was and always would be a wolf, even if I didn’t like to feed from most vessels.

I adjusted my course and continued to fly over the bellowing sea below. The wind blew through my feathers, raven blue with rose gold tips that were translucent against the stark black of the night. Each breeze, a song welcoming me back. Beckoning me forward. I flew higher, above the clouds blanketing the sea. Above the oppressive surf and the sheltered tree-lined coast. I flew up until the air was too thin and even then, I pushed further. Something about limitations always bade me to test them. There was a fire in my belly, especially when I shifted, that was intense and insatiable. I could see the expanse before me, clouds that just appeared to be a cottony fairyland of promise and freedom.

I opened my beak and released a cry—it came out strained and almost restricted, as always it felt like a half measure. Unlike what President Dale did to Lucas. There were no half-measures there. There weren’t any half-measures with what they did to my mother either.

She was gone, as was my father. The infamous ‘he’ in my life, the male who would forever haunt me. The dad I never knew and likely would never meet. My mother didn’t give me answers and now, in her death, I wouldn’t find them. I often wondered if maybe he were ancient and old, dead by now. If he could shift, perhaps he was at the end of his life when he sired me. I shivered at the thought.

Is that why I’ve been cursed with the shifter gene, nature’s balance?

These questions always circled my head, but especially up where I was completely alone with my thoughts. As always, there were no answers, just more questions asked into an ominous void.

Fire burned in my chest, flowing through my veins. I began to climb again, my wings beating faster and harder than before. The thinning air burned my chest.

I could feel that thread, coiled, glistening, beckoning me forward; internally, it seemed to disappear into a darkness, a latent murkiness. I could never seem to break beyond that wall. I could sense more, glimpse the power turning, but then when I tried to focus it just…vanished.

I was tired of the unknown. Tired of limitations and rules. I rose higher, even as my lungs protested. Even with my head buzzing, the oxygen getting too thin, I pressed on. The wall began to fade, I could glimpse the raw magic begging to uncoil, dancing in golden-pink flames.

Flash . The image of the vampire husk on the floor.

No, I would not focus on that. Higher, I needed to go higher.

Flash. Screams from the auditorium filled my ears along with pain, magical pressure, a sense of wrongness.

I yanked on the string, willing it to break free from the wall and release the tension in my chest.

Flash! The memory from a night a little over a year ago…Fletch, pale-faced telling me of my mother’s death. Her body never recovered.

I pulled harder on the string—I was tired of pain and half-measures. My mother had been taken from me.

FLASH! The husk on the floor appeared again, but this time it was my mother, her honey-golden hair now tinted purple with her green eyes no longer green, but a sickly red.

Rage, so deep and raw filled my belly; pain so intense took over my nerves. I opened my mouth and roared.

Fire erupted from my mouth and engulfed the sea of clouds. My vision went hazy, my body throbbed from the internal pressure begging for release. I screamed and more fire erupted. What the hell was this?

I’d never done this before. I searched for that string, and it no longer was in a dark pool but seemed to flow into a pool of fire .

The thought was numbing, panic began to fill my mind. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t be breathing fire.

Doubt began to take over, my flaps became unsure. Dizziness and then blackness began to cloud my ability to think, to process. I was falling. Wind rushed past my face, through feathers that no longer felt secure. I needed to right myself, but the mechanics of flying escaped me. The sea began to rise as I descended to meet it.

The cliff, I needed to get back to the cliff. I willed myself toward it, trying desperately to adjust my course. A little more to the right, a little more?—

The sea was clear now and the white foam became distinct swells. I had moments to land before the sweet song of the sea became my eulogy. The cliff was just ahead, I had to get there.

Haze began to overtake my vision; my eyelids were heavy. So very heavy.

No! I needed to open my eyes, focus. But the welcoming warmth of oblivion welcomed. The cliff was just ahead, I could make it. I could?—

Darkness welcomed me in a warm embrace, and everything faded.