Inherit (21 page)

Whatever my mother’s secret, whatever her sacrifice, I know down to my marrow that Bestemor and I were the ones who sacrificed the most and paid the highest price.

I leave my grandmother, already in a deep sleep, and find my father watching my mother intently out the back window. Most of the rooms in our house have windows facing the tiny garden, so making a spectacle in that particular space kind of guarantees a captive audience. Not that my drama queen mother has an issue with that.

My father takes my hands when he sees me, but I don’t have that free-wheeling courageous calm that surged through me before.

“What’s her deal?” I tug my hands out of my father’s grasp, because I’m my own tether now, but my gaze meets his, and I expect, at least, some ‘
aw shucks, your mother and drama
’ understanding to pass between the two of us.

Instead he looks like a guilty kid watching some innocent dummy catch the brunt of his rightful punishment. “Your mother has reasons for the way she is, Wren. And some of those reasons…some of them are so beyond her control, it’s frightening. For her, for all of us. We never know when we can lose our own free will or what it will do to us.”

“I don’t understand.” Worries, thoughts, partial clues, and messy emotions crash in my brain, a fifty-car pileup of explosive disaster that I don’t want to face but can’t resist rubbernecking.

“It’s a lot. And we’ll tell you everything. From the beginning. But not tonight. We’ve all been through so much today. Maybe you should get some rest. We all need some rest.” My father glances down the hall as if to check and make sure that, yes, there still is only one guest/sewing room. The couch in the living room is a dusty old loveseat that wouldn’t comfortably sleep a toddler, and it doesn’t look like he packed a sleeping bag.

He and mom aren’t actually divorced. Not that an unnourished, only-applicable-on-paper marriage equals harmony, bliss, and the ability to sleep in a full bed together happily. I decide that, like so many things in our life together, it isn’t my business to ask and they don’t have an inclination to tell me, so I throw my father an awkward, unsatisfying wave and head to my room. I stop halfway down the hall and turn on my heel to offer him one small shred of comforting help. Despite all reason, I’m having a hard time dealing with the idea of him sleeping uncomfortably.

“My old sleeping bag is in the hall closet. It’s kind of short and has Barbie and the Rockers on it, but you can use it if you need to.” He gives me a puzzled look, and I catch the tip of my tongue between my teeth and bite down hard.
Not my business
, I remind myself.

He takes a half-step in my direction, then seems to think better and makes do with a little nod/smile combo.

Besides every other aspect of my life going rotten and falling apart, when I open the door to my room it smells like the stall at the tri-county flea market where they sell socks and eggrolls. I throw up the sash on my window to let some fresh air in and hear the screen door slam. My mother gives a little shriek and says, “Ryuu! You scared the shit of me!”

Maybe a decent person raised with moral parents would close her window and not eavesdrop, but I’ve been lied to and kept in the darkest-of-all-dark-under-the-stairs cupboards for long enough. If they won’t tell me any answers, I will absolutely spy for information, no guilt.

“I love your hair like that,” my father flirts, his voice sweet and smooth. “You always had fantastic hair.”

My mom’s laugh clinks out light and girlish. “I had this crazy hope Wren might inherit it. She’s gorgeous, but I look at her, and it’s like I see a mini-Ryuu. Am I in there at all? Is there any part of me in that gorgeous girl we made?”

“You’re a shieldmaiden, not a witch. Even you can’t override dominate DNA. And she’s one hundred percent yours, right down to her stubborn, defiant toes.” I hear one or both of them sit on the creaky swing that hangs off the questionably-sturdy rusted frame in the backyard. “Come sit by me,” my father invites my mother.

The creaks get dangerously loud, but then fade into a steady back-and-forth squeak as they, presumably, enjoy a warm evening in the backyard, swinging. I lie on my bed and hold my breath tight in my lungs, listening to the parents I’ve never really known and wondering if they still love each other, if there’s still enough love and happiness left between the three of us to squeeze into some kind of family unit.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I know she’s not lying because her voice has this purr of self-satisfaction. Which makes sense, since she did contribute to fifty percent of my looks no matter how much she sees just my father when she looks at me. But it’s still irritating. “Dangerously beautiful. I don’t know about that Balto boy hanging around.”

My father’s grunt is so paternally pissed off, I turn my ear for more, as excited and pleased as I am furious and indignant. “You’re damn right about her being too beautiful. And powerful. Do you think the boy has any ulterior motives?”

My mother’s sigh is so long, it creeps right into my window and tickles my ear. “The problem isn’t the boy, though he’s going to be a scarily powerful magus once he opens up to his powers. The problem is Magda. She was on the edge of the dark arts when we fought so many years ago, and Wren is on her radar now.”

The creak of the swing intensifies as they pick up a tiny bit of momentum, lunging from plain old quick-paced to flat-out crazy. “I always thought we should take her somewhere else. This is too close to too many covens.” My dad’s voice doesn’t actually come out and accuse, but it’s drunk-walking the accusation line for sure.

Mom lashes out with a fury so controlled, it’s like her words are skating on a sheet of black ice. “Where else were we supposed to send her? At least here she was in the middle of a shieldmaiden hotspot. I thought that if she had any powers, she’d wind up hiding in plain sight. And, at very best, I assumed she’d have middling to high powers, like I do, and they wouldn’t even notice her. How could I know she’d come into the powers with so much strength at such a young age? Ryuu, I swear to you, I’ve never seen anyone learn the shields so fast or with such mastery. She manipulated the
smør
and changed the entire concept of how that shield can be used in days. Not even the most advanced shieldmaiden in the last two hundred years has been able to do what she mastered in no time at all. I had a hard time hiding how impressed I was during training. The last thing we need is for her to get high on her own powers, which are damn incredible.” My mother’s words vibrate with a pure pride I’d never even caught a hint of during training. “The problem is, the line between the dark side and the light is so thin right now, and one step over the edge could unravel everything.”

I rub my hands up and down my forearms, flecked with goosebumps and at-attention fuzzy arm hair. I was so sure she was disappointed in me, it was branded as a fact in my brain, proven and undisputed. Now that I hear the truth, it occurs to me that my mother might be the most complicated liar I’ve ever met. And I know better than anyone that every lie has a color-wheel’s worth of tones in every shade of grey.

“So our baby mastered
smør
? You’re serious?” My father’s voice is new moon full and bright with happy pride, but his words already start their panicked eclipse by the next sentence. I hear a distant, strange sound, almost like a hug crow thundering its caw through a loudspeaker. It rolls and trembles like thunder. “Robin? How long ago did you practice the
smør
shield?”

“Three days. Why?” The squeak of the springs on the swing comes to an abrupt stop.

“It only takes two days for the trackers—” my father begins.

My mother’s gasp cuts him off. “There aren’t any in this area! My mother did a cleanse before training. I’m sure. Unless someone ordered an origination search. But who would have known to look? And why would they have sent—” Her last words are almost lost in another rumbling caw.

I jump off the bed and press my ear to the screen, but all I can hear is the buzz and chirp of a symphony of crickets and then, farther off but getting closer every minute, the occasional caw of a crow.

My father says the word quick and long, like a warrior pulling his sword from its sheath. “
Kråke
.”

My mother, the one I expected to answer with a warrior’s snarl, chokes out a word so tinged with love and loss and pure, primeval maternal worry, it pulses through my ears and pierces my rapidly beating heart. “Wren!”

Chapter 21

I spring from my bed and meet my parents down the hall. “What do we do?” I sputter.

“
Kråke
are soldiers of the shieldmaiden. They could be here for information or destruction, but we have to hold them off.
Tentakkel
. Right now, Wren.” My mother’s words coast soft and slow to my ears, calming my heart and stilling the explosive whir of my brain. She puts her hands on my shoulders and closes her eyes. Her hair lifts at the roots, then higher, flying around her perfect cheekbones like there’s a sexy-hair fan blowing on her. She murmurs the incantations that she needs to say, but I don’t bother.

I always said them to humor her, but my shield powers work without the spells. Actually, I maintain a stronger grasp when I go completely still and put my mind to my work. Right at the core of my stomach, I gather the bright white, swirling constellation of energy and light. I flick, here and there, softly at first, until the ball unfurls and releases long-reaching feelers.

I concentrate harder, and the feelers gain strength and stretch with frantic energy past me and my body, tunneling in a quick, focused pattern until they wrap around the people I love, belting Dad, coiling around Mom like a boa, cradling Bestemor, who’s still sleeping blissfully in her room, in a cozy grip.

If I’m nervous about the
Kråke
, I snatch at that energy before it has a chance to overwhelm me and I manipulate it, pulling it apart and feeding it, bit by bit, to the squid of grasping protective energy that winds around my family.

My family.

The people I don’t know if I love or hate, but now realize I would die or kill for, no question.

I can hear the caws of the
Kråke
vibrating closer, excited because they sense a target. It’s like the roof of the house is blown off, and I’m able to zoom in and stare into their black dewdrop eyes, glassy and fanatically determined. Their claws flex and retract, ready to grab and tear, and their black wings fold and expand, bellows of disaster and reckoning.

They circle the house, swooping and diving like black flames, eager to tear through everything good and peaceful Bestemor has cobbled together here and rip it to shreds. I’m afraid of their hateful eyes, their long, piercing beaks, their razor sharp talons. They want me. I’m the shiny eyes of a newly dead corpse that caught their attention, and they’re bound and determined to peck at the glint until it’s just a raw wound.

But I’m determined that they’re not going to get what they want.

Not today.

Not this girl, not this family, not when the promise of something better is finally in my lap, and there’s still so much to fix. I’m stronger than they are, and I know it with every radiating shield I pulse through.

I hold the
tentakkel
shields steady and click them into a kind of cruise-control while I muster a new, vibrant, violent wave of energy. I claw across doubt and guilt and grab at my fiberglass-thin connection with Loki, calling to her with my mind and heart laid bare and open.

Loki, I will find you. I will come for you. But help me. Help me before they take me away and I can’t do anything for you. Help me.

I know it’s weak and probably runs more along the lines of throwing a bottle with a ‘Help me!’ note into the ocean than sending a true, transmitted SOS, but it’s all I have.

If Loki can help me, I know she will, but I can’t wait on it. I have to pull my big shieldmaiden boots on, cuff my sleeves, and put some elbow grease into taking these bitches down.

I hold my
tentakkel
energy still, then start reaching into the deepest folds of my brain, the cartilage in my ears, the nails on my toes, the recesses deep inside me that I ignore, overlook, and don’t engage, and I pull with all my might. This is the tug-of-war game that could end my life, and I’m not letting go of my grip no matter what gets sent my way.

The sound of my mother’s musical incantations strengthens my hold, and I pick up on arrow-points of energy she sinks into the weakest areas of our shield as the
Kråke
beat their enormous black wings against the tremulous walls, scratch holes with their claws, tear with their beaks, and throw the full weight of their bodies at it, all in an attempt to puncture through our shield. They manage to pop dozens of small holes, and the sharp, grating crack of their caws muddies our focus, loosens our hold, and weakens the power of the shields.

I begin another round of incantations to Loki, my entire body shaking so hard, my teeth chatter. My father’s voice accompanies mine in my head, and it’s like his big, warm hand takes mine and helps me calm down. I focus on the words in our head and try to ignore the squalling, squawking birds Kamikaze-ing against our shields. Some slam so hard they break their necks or smash their skulls, sliding down the sides of the shield with smears of crimson blood. I screw my eyes tight against their assault and listen to my father’s prayer, adding my own on top of it.
Loki, great spirit of the Kochi family, please aid us in our time of need. Loki, great protector of the Kochi family, please bless us with your power.

Like a spool of thread unraveling, the words spin out and find their way across miles to a hidden place I can’t see, but I can feel her, can feel Loki’s tiny heart thumping with a rapid, steady beat. The shields tighten and the white, frenetic power I was able to pour out in quick waves and flailing tentacles whirls in a blinding blizzard of energy. The screeching noise is painfully fierce, its cold iron spikes jabbing my eardrums over and over. More black feathered bodies throw themselves at the shield, and broken, spent feathers catch and spin in the wind while more splatters of red explode against the shield.