Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

She smiled, showing fangs every bit as sharp, white and pointed as Gold Cat’s, but way more dainty.

‘Nice gnashers,’ I muttered, wondering why she’d chosen to Glamour herself with them, then added louder, ‘so are you anything to do with the cat?’

She laughed. ‘Me, dearie? Oh no, that . . . cat is not known to me. I am Viviane.’

She announced her name as if I should know it. I didn’t. I did know her voice, even if the last time I’d heard it, it had sounded older, deeper and more crotchety. ‘You’re the spirit of the tarot cards.’

She snapped her fingers and a fan of translucent, blank white cards appeared in her hand. ‘I am, indeed, bean sidhe.’

Good to have it confirmed, even if her showing up in person added a whole slew of questions to the suspicions already in my mind. Nor was I thrilled about having Viviane’s now much larger and no doubt sharper teeth near my flesh. But now I’d get the last and final tarot card. Looking on the bright side, it was bound to be way more enlightening that the previous four.

I held out my hand. ‘I offer my blood solely in exchange for the answer to my questions. No harm to me or mine.’

‘Pfft!’ She shot me a disgusted look. ‘I’m not here for that.’

Disappointment and surprise washed through me. ‘Then what are you here for?’

‘Oh, just a little chat,’ she said airily. ‘Nothing more.’

Yeah, and I wasn’t a sitting duck in a circle of ashes with a magical collar fastened round my neck. Gold Cat seemed to agree with me, if its low growl was anything to go by. Maybe it was on my side after all. ‘Start chatting then,’ I said flatly.

‘Direct. Good.’ She nodded. ‘I like that.’

She didn’t, or she’d have told me what she wanted. No, she’d probably much rather string me along until she got me in a position that she thought I’d agree to whatever it was, without her giving too much in exchange. Well, two could play that game.

I went back to sprinkling salt on the ash circle. Viviane gave me an arch look for a moment then started laying her cards out in what, from the corner of my eye, looked ironically like Patience. Once she was done, she moved a couple, then said to no one in particular. ‘That cat is not a cat, nor is it a true shifter. It is an ùmaidh .’

An ùmaidh . A temporary changeling.

My hand shook and I only just managed not to dump the rest of the salt. It took flesh and a sliver of soul forged to living matter to animate an ùmaidh . The living matter had to be Carlson’s body; I wasn’t entirely clear where the flesh had come from, unless it was the flesh Carlson had fed me (ugh), and then somehow I’d managed to sunder part of my own soul. Did that mean Gold Cat was made from both of us? Was it gold because it was more me than him? And what had happened to Carlson’s soul? Or souls, since shifters had two souls. Maybe Gold Cat had two and a bit souls now? Or maybe there was nothing left of Carlson at all. I didn’t know. And I didn’t know how I’d created an ùmaidh either. Unless the magic had helped? It had done that before, made impossible-for-me-to-do things happen because it decided I needed them.

Viviane moved another couple of cards. ‘Now you’re thinking that cat is your ùmaidh , and you’re right, bean sidhe. But you’re also wrong.’

Hmm. I kept sprinkling salt; Viviane wasn’t done with the free information.

‘Shifters have two souls, one human and one animal,’ she said.

C’mon, Viv, tell me something I don’t know.

‘The human soul is the usual reincarnated one, but the animal soul isn’t. It’s an animus.’

Now she was getting interesting.

She placed a finger on one card. ‘Animus are primal spirits who long ago decided to embody themselves in animals, predators mostly, instead of the magical flesh The Mother chose to clothe herself in.’

I wasn’t entirely sure what a primal spirit was, but The Mother is our creator, and the first to shape herself out of the magic way back when. A shiver of fear pricked goosebumps over my skin. Bad enough when gods or goddesses take an interest in you, even more so when it’s The Mother. If primal spirits were anything like even a minor god or goddess, the last thing I wanted was to have one set its sights on me. I squinted at Gold Cat dozing in the sulphurous sunshine. It didn’t look like an überpowerful primal spirit, but hey, looks are deceiving.

Viviane flicked a card into the air and gave a sharp nod as it vanished. ‘Unfortunately, the animus shortly discovered the downsides of chaining their spirits to their animal hosts. One was that animals die too quickly. And by embodying themselves in actual flesh, the animus only keep their immortality so long as their spirit lives on in their host, or its descendants. Should all their descendants die, the animus dies too.’ She vanished another card. ‘But there was an even greater threat to the animus’s immortality: their animal hosts were not the most efficient predator in the humans’ world. So the animus sought primacy by bonding their animals’ bodies and souls with those of humans. In doing so, they succeeded in using the humans’ shapes, along with their animal shapes, as they willed, thus creating the first shifters.’

Which hadn’t panned out too well for them, since shifters had still ended up being hunted almost to extinction. But it did tell me how Carlson’s ritual was supposed to have worked. It should’ve bonded my soul with whatever part or parts of the animus’ soul that Carlson carried and turned me into a shifter. Only it hadn’t worked quite right, for whatever reason.

‘When the shifters die,’ Viviane carried on, ‘their human and animal souls move on, but the part of the animus’s spirit rejoins with itself by travelling into another shifter, a direct descendant of the human who is dead.’

I stopped sprinkling salt and stared at the back of the cave, hearing Carlson’s voice saying, ‘Our pride is dying. Adults ain’t living once the kits all gone. Only thing keeps us all living is if we’s mated an’ having kits.’ Which sort of made sense if the shifters’ pride were all sharing one or two primal spirits. With no more children being born, and the human and animal parts of them dying, the primal spirit had fewer bodies to inhabit. Until it had no body left at all, and died.

No doubt why Carlson had advertised on the Forum Mirabilis for a female weretiger, and when that hadn’t worked he’d got hold of a copy of the ritual and used me as his experimental guinea pig. He didn’t have any direct descendants. With Carlson dead, the animus was finally dead too.

Except it wasn’t. I’d somehow made an ùmaidh , and the animus had bonded to the part of my soul in the ùmaidh , instead of me. Or maybe I (or more likely, the friendly magic) had severed the part of my soul the animus had bonded to, so I didn’t end up a big-cat-shifter.

Whatever.

The ritual hadn’t worked. I wasn’t a shifter. The animus was stuck in a temporary changeling’s body. One that was going to die in a couple of weeks.

My relief came with a thread of pity for Gold Cat. No way did I agree with its methods (or Carlson’s methods? I wasn’t sure who’d actually been in charge), but it just wanted to survive, like the rest of us. Of course, Gold Cat wasn’t the only spirit in the cave; Viviane was another. And she’d been quiet long enough that her info-freebies had evidently come to an end. I turned and gave her and the Gold Cat an enquiring look.

‘So have the two of you been chatting’ – and no doubt plotting too – ‘about all things primal while I’ve been sleeping?’

Viviane shook her head. ‘Oh no, that cat isn’t interested in talking to me .’