Page 105 of Prey It By Ear

The beginning of the end for the oppressors is nigh, but I’m still worried that things will go wrong.

A scream echoes from the far side of campus—not a real one, just the sound of a hyena girl cackling at something. It’s so routine that it doesn’t even make the crows look up from their roost. I wonder what it would take to make this place care about anything, and then I remember that in a few weeks, it will.

The darkness under the trees is at a lower temperature than the campus behind me. I let the cold bleed into me, reminding me of the difference between actual power and what preds teach in their little seminars. True power is knowing the shape of every shadow and being willing to step into them. I slip between the first two trees, and the woods close behind me with a noise like the closing of a vault door. For a minute, I pause at the edge, look back at the campus, and let myself feel the smallest flicker of hope that maybe this time, someone will surprise me.

Maybe the bunny will; maybe she won’t.

Either way, the night will do its work, and I will be there to watch the sunrise.

Once I’m fifty yards into the woods, every remnant of campus sound dies, as if I’ve walked through a pane of soundproof glass. The silence here is not really silent; it’s more like a blanket thrown over the land to muffle things. Enchantments laid within the bounds of this forest deaden the unhurried tick of wood expanding and the almost-subliminal percussion of tiny claws, teeth, and wings claiming the night before the larger predators bother to do so. I placed that small magical safeguard to allow me to move with stealth when I must come here, but it doesn’t activate until my aura breaches the perimeter.

No need to give my enemies and foes the same advantage when they cast us out for that kind of ability.

I walk at a normal speed, since the woods know me. The birch trees were old when the campus was still a single stone building, and some of the low-growth ferns might remember a time when prey and predator were just words and not a death sentence for the former. I run my hand along a trunk as I pass, feeling the slick moss on it, and the tree responds the way all living things do when someone gives a shit about them. It shivers and then steadies. I press my palm to a weak spot in the bark, and after three seconds, a ribbon of heat pulses through the cambium, closing the wound. Nothing dramatic—just a nudge, enough to heal a small insult.

A fallen log blocks the next segment of the path. It’s half-consumed, which is precisely as it should be, but the moss has turned a little yellow where something acidic spilled. I run my fingers along the spine of the log, and as I go, a line of impossible green unfolds in my wake. There is no ritual to it. If you know how to look, the world will always show you how to fix itself; it just needs reminding.

Suddenly, I see a fox appear on the root structure to my left—smaller than average, with an old scar over the left eye and one ear clipped from a fight that probably shouldn’t have involved foxes at all. It does not move, but its nose angles up to catch my scent. I make a soft click with the back of my teeth. The fox’s tail lowers, but it doesn’t run. Not a familiar or a shifter—just a real animal, with a real distrust of anything that walks upright.

I respect its caution in the world we live in now.

Passing the prowling fox, I glance up. The canopy is dense, but there are slits where the sky shows through in indigo streaks. A half-moon is rising, pale as bone and unremarked by anyone but the creatures beneath it. About a hundred yards in, the ground changes to less moss and more rocks. There is an old trail here, but most people don’t come this far in after sundown. I know because I had minions watching the campus last year before our attack to learn the patterns and habits of the residents, so I could maximize every possible hiding spot.

I pause at a weird, stunted beech tree, its bark half-flayed off by some adolescent predator with a knife. I do not heal this one because not all scars need fixing. Instead, I set my hand at the base and whisper three syllables. The wound closes a little—just enough to keep out fungus, not enough to erase the story. It’s a metaphor for my fractured heart and psyche, so I wish it luck on its journey before I move on.

Healing our world and the creatures in it is the heart of my work. The plots, the subterfuge, the middlemen and their stupid double-agent bullshit are simply a means to an end. I have spent almost a thousand years doing it while I waited for the one. Every time something grows over a wound, every time a bird takes a seed and plants it a hundred yards away, it’s a win. Even if the preds burned down this entire patch of woods, they couldn’t get the memory out of the soil. The memory would just wait, and one day it would choke their world in green.

Perhaps I am a bit maudlin tonight, but it has been so very long without hope, and now a better world is within our grasp—it simply requires a cleansing fire to allow things to regrow.

The book feels heavy tonight. Not physically, but its hum is louder, more insistent. I shift the bundle under my coat, feeling the heat of it through three layers of fabric, and remind myself to be careful. Wardings can be subtle, but this one wants to be read. There is nothing so dangerous as a book that wants to be read, especially if it needs to be done under specific circumstances.

I check the moon through the trees again. Five minutes to the shack, and maybe ten after that before I complete the handoff. I let my free hand trail through a patch of bracken, and the leaves stand up a little straighter behind me. Another fox, or maybe the same one, runs across the trail ahead, carrying a dead shrew. Its tail is bushy and clean, a minor miracle in a world like this. It does not look at me, which is fine. I am here to deliver the thing, and then to watch what happens when it makes its way to the right people in the right manner.

The wind picks up, but it doesn’t break the air; it just ruffles the topmost leaves and whispers a warning. I’m almost at the clearing now; I know because I smell the blood. The world out here has already forgotten the lesson the campus tries to teach every day—the strongest beings always win. Sometimes, that is a much longer game to play than we wish, but it will eventually come to pass.

In the clearing ahead, the old house sits at its center like a rotten tooth. I step into the moonlight, letting the ambient magic swirl up around my ankles, and adjust the book so it’s held flat against my belly. It throbs once, like a heartbeat. I press back, and the feeling subsides.

No one is here yet. I have a few more minutes to make sure everything is perfect. I drop to one knee and set the book on the mossy stone, unwrapping it as I let the cloth fall away. The cover is darker in this light, but the runes still glow faintly, flexing as if they know the work to come. I lean back on my heels, look at the world through the lens of a perceived traitor, and allow myself a rare, honest smile.

For tonight, that will be enough—it has to be, until my unlikely allies bend the knee.

The Distance

Delores

It’s Sunday night and the annex living room has achieved maximum entropy—blankets draped like accidental tents, three distinct piles of reference books, two coffee mugs abandoned to coldness, and one small sand cat sprawled diagonally across a chair like she owns it all. I’m curled in the center of the couch with a tartan throw over my knees and a highlighter tucked behind my ear.

My notebook is open and half-filled with lines of handwriting, while my tablet shows the textbook I’m working from. The TV’s got the volume set low, but playing a British mystery. Every time I focus on my task, a crisp voice from the flat screen pipes up to accuse someone new of murder-by-poisoning, which would be much funnier if I didn’t know ‘who dun it’ from the first fifteen minutes of the show.

It’d be nice if that instinct would help me solve all the damn puzzles here, but alas.

Across the room, Chessie is at the whiteboard, and the marker squeaks as he updates the ‘Surveillance’ and ‘Outreach’ columns. He’s got his sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back in a cute topknot, and his glasses make him look so nerdy-cute that I have to look away quickly. Every so often, he checks a note on his phone and then annotates with a little flourish, never quite looking away from the board.

Felix is at the dining table, which is technically not in the living room, but with the open layout here, it might as well be. He’s surrounded by fanned-out lesson plans with an actual red pen in hand, his posture so severe it would make my ballet professor proud. Occasionally, he underlines something in his binder, then sighs and flips a page with the drama of a man carrying the weight of the empire on his traps.

My dragon is in his big chair with a glass of scotch and his glasses perched precariously, as he frowns at the text. There’s a literal tower of library acquisition forms teetering on the ottoman, which he works through with mechanical regularity, stamping, initialing, and sometimes circling with a green pen before setting each one in a neat stack on his left. He’s so serious that I want to tweak his nose, but I don’t because we’re supposed to be getting our work done before tomorrow morning.

Sitting cross-legged on the rug, Rennie has a botany syllabus on one knee and his phone on the other, flipping between the two with a studious focus as well. His hair is messy, and he’s getting a little bit of a tan from all the work in his garden, but no one has told him because it will fuck with his whole emo appearance. I notice, though, because it’s just barely there until he blushes and then you can really tell. If we mention it, he’ll do something crazy like buy a giant floppy hat, and Fitz will never leave him alone.