Lost

  A Thornbriar Academy short story

  By Cali Mann

  Lost

  Copyright 2019 by Cali Mann

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for review purposes.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  PO Box 29308

  Atlanta, GA

  https://www.calimann.com

  Cover Design by VICTORIA COOPER

  NOVEMBER 2019

  Flipping through volume 400 of the Encyclopedia of Mystical Arts, I read the titles: Sirens, Sorcerers, and Spirit Shifters. Shit. I was bored. This work-study gig with Professor Ward was worse than I thought. My skin itched, and I glanced at the clock. After seven, my bros would be out on the track, running, and I was stuck here cooped up in the library. I hadn’t changed forms yet, most shifters didn’t until they turned eighteen, but I still felt the call of the wind.

  The image under “Spirit Shifter” was a woman tearing out her hair and wailing. Dramatic much? “Are Spirit shifters really that bad?”

  Behind me, the room was suddenly silent, but I shelved the volume and picked up another before I noticed. Stretching my back, I glanced back at Professor Ward. His face was as set as the masks of marble that decorated the entryway of Thornbriar Academy. I swallowed. “Professor?”

  “Sciro,” he said, his dark eyes narrowing, “never trust a spirit shifter.”

  The Professor had a good fifty pounds on me, all of it muscle, and he seemed to expand even more as I stared at him. Sciro, you idiot, my brain yelled at me, but my hands curled into fists, anyway. But my vampire nature was a glutton for punishment, as well as blood, I supposed. “Because of your mate?”

  He growled, his were at the surface. The Professor was an earth shifter, and thus could transform into a land animal. I’d never seen him shift, but I’d heard his creature was a grizzly bear. He was certainly prickly enough for one.

  Each shifter’s form was tied to their element. As an air shifter, I had both the powers and challenges of a vampire, speed and daylight sensitivity, but I could also change into a crow. Or I would be able to next year. Air shifters were the eyes and ears of any community, the best scouts, despite my current predicament. I knew that the Professor had married a spirit shifter, and there had been some sort of tragedy. Being caught not paying attention for an air power was like getting caught with your pants down. Stupid.

  Reigning himself in, Professor Ward stared down at the papers on his table. His hands curled and uncurled around the thick wood edge. He sighed. Then he said, “Trisha was unlike any woman I had ever met. She was beautiful, that goes without saying, but she also lit up a room just by walking into it. We couldn’t help but love her.”

  “We?” I asked, letting my fingers uncurl. There was no danger here, just a story and I could never resist one of those.

  The Professor grimaced, running a hand through his thick mane of rusty brown hair. “Remus and I both loved her and she loved us. When we were together, she was on fire.”

  Not literally I assumed, but I kept my mouth shut, sliding into an armchair. Fire shifters had been known to expel some smoke, but true fire was rare.

  He didn’t even notice. “Her powers were amazing. You know that spirit shifters can borrow any of the other forms?”

  I nodded. That was what made their power so unstable. Spirit shifters were prone to insanity. The Council had decreed that they should be killed at birth, but despite the risks, parents were reluctant. Most of them anyway. I pressed my lips together. My religious parents would have gladly done me in, if they’d known what I was to become.

  “What did she pretend to be?” I asked, because that was the only way she could have survived.

  The Professor smiled. “A water caster. She loved to swim.”

  Her parents must have hidden her, and when she was old enough, they taught her to pretend. There was no way the Council would have let her live if they’d known.

  “In the beginning, it was good. Remus and I met her here at the Academy.” He looked toward the far window and the darkening sky outside. “We followed her around like puppies those first few years, our tongues hanging out.”

  I snorted.

  “But I never thought I was good enough for her. Remus and her shared their love of science. I leaned more toward sports, my earth spirit needed the grounding of physical activity.”

  Glancing around at the walls of books surrounding us, I said, “But you came back to academics.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s because of her. Trisha made learning seem exciting.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Of course, she also liked the shirts with the dip, right here.”

  My imagination filled in the rest and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Sex was a part of our shifter natures. We needed the physical and emotional outlet, especially before we could transform. Our creature forms clawed at us from the inside, and sex burned off some of that excess energy.. The faculty looked the other way when students visited each other’s rooms even after curfew. Still, it wasn’t something we talked about openly.

  “We pursued her throughout school and when she finally accepted us,” he rubbed his forearm, where the trailing vines of a mate bond lingered, faded with age and distance like an old tattoo on a human. If she still lived, the vines would have remained forest green and fresh looking their whole lives together. “It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I was complete and whole for the first time. Even my bear seemed content.”

  My heart ached for him. To have experienced a mate bond would be a dream come true for any shifter. I didn’t dare to hope that I could ever be worthy of one. But to have it torn away so brutally. He was a stronger man than I’d ever be.

  “The mate bond seemed to strengthen Trisha too. When we found out she was a spirit shifter, not a water one, we thought the Council was wrong or that Trisha was different.” His face darkened. “We were wrong.”

  “What happened?”

  He growled, but then he continued. “We graduated. Remus wanted us to go away, as far from Council society as we could get. So we went to Iceland.”

  I shivered. Thornbriar Academy sat in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so close we could almost touch the sky. We had winter and snow but nothing like the sheer brutality of an Icelandic winter. Not that I’d ever seen one.

  “Remus and Trisha were studying harp seals. They’d always been better scientists than I.” His mouth curled into a rough smile. “I’d rather curl up with a book and a hot tea in the cold.”

  That’d be his bear nature showing. It surprised me they’d take a bear shifter to a winter climate. “Did you see the glaciers?”

  He nodded. “And the northern lights.”

  “Wow.” I’d grown up in a suburb of Atlanta. I’d dreamed of seeing amazing sites like the Northern Lights but I hadn’t yet. Since my parents had disowned me when they’d discovered I was a vampire, I’d lived on the streets until the academy recruiter had found me. Not much money for travel, even if I’d dreamed of it, and my sunlight allergy didn’t help either.

  “It was a simple life, and we were happy.” He stood and crossed the library to his office. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. I glanced over at the volumes still waiting to be reshelved, and groaned. Should probably do a few more while I was waiting. I headed over and lifted the next volume from the stack.

  I couldn’t imagine Professor Ward as a young man in love. Shifters lived longer than humans, so he didn’t look that old but his shroud of sadness had always made him seem older. But he was resilient, most shifters didn’t live long after their mates were dead. Even if they didn’t seem sick, their souls gave up the fight.

  I heard the hot pot whistle, and I used a burst of vampiric energy to shelve the next twenty volumes. I could at least pretend I hadn’t stood here staring at volume 402 and thinking about Professor Ward’s tragic love life. When I spotted him carrying a tray back to his table, I stepped away from the shelf and joined him.

  The mugs were gray and green, Thornbriar Academy’s school colors. I picked one up, curling my hands around its warmth, and the earthy smell of cinnamon hit my nostrils. As a vampire, I needed blood every few days, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy other flavors. The enhanced senses made pleasures like herbs and spices even more potent.

  Professor Ward added a generous dollop of honey to his tea, and I had to hold back my laughter. He noticed my amusement and shrugged. “Can’t do anything about old bears.”

  I snorted. Guess that was my confirmation of his animal. “So, what happened?”

  “How’d it all go wrong?” He sighed, his broad shoulders slumping. “Remus died.”

  My mouth dropped open. “How?”

  “We’d been exploring through some ice caves. Damn, those things are beautiful.” His eyes got a faraway look as if he was seeing it all again. “Remus ran up ahead, and the cave was unstable. It crashed around him.”

  “Couldn’t he shift?”

  “Water forms aren’t much good encased in ice. I dug as deep as I could, in human and bear form, and Trisha tried everything she could think of.”

  While shifters lived a long time, we weren’t immor

tal. Nor were we immune to the dangers of the natural world.

  “Remus shifted over and over again, and we dug, but the ice and rock refused to budge. The more Trisha melted the ice, the more rock came down from above.”

  Liquid glimmered at his eyelids, and I turned my gaze away.

  He heaved a big sigh. “Finally, we knew there was nothing to be done. Trisha transformed into true spirit, a form she’d never taken before, and climbed inside, sitting with him until he ran out of air.”

  They’d been pack. I could see it in the set of his shoulders. Other than mate bonds, pack was the strongest bond a shifter could make. Trisha had linked them in love, and they’d become brothers in spirit.

  He sipped his tea, and we sat in the silence of remembrance.

  I had made good friends at the academy, Terrin and Adrian, and we were on our way to being pack. I couldn’t imagine losing either of them. It would shred my soul. Professor Ward had lost a pack member and a mate, how was he not curled up in a ball of constant depression? How had he not taken the final step? He was truly the strongest shifter I had ever known.

  “After Remus died,” he began, clearing his throat as if he were determined to make it to the end of the story. “Both of us were distraught, but Trisha would never recover. Her behavior became erratic, and she spent hours out on the beach talking to people who weren’t there.”

  “Talking to him?”

  Professor Ward shook his head. “I don’t know what demons or angels she spoke with, but she never said any names I recognized.” He lifted his mug, but then he set it down again untasted.

  “Some people say that those who speak in tongues are prophets, telling us of what is to come,” I said slowly, hoping there had been some good in it all.

  He snorted. “I speak fifteen different languages, ancient and modern, and I can tell you that most of what Trisha said was gibberish.”

  The sharp pain of his loss shot through me and I squeezed my hands around my mug.

  “I built fires for warmth, wrapped her in heated blankets, and fed her broth. One day, she wouldn’t come home with me and I slept on the beach, trying to keep her warm,” he said, then rushed on as if he had to get it out.

  “One night I fell asleep, exhausted, and when I woke, she was gone. I searched the beach and the water for days, and I couldn’t find her. I thought..” His voice caught. “Maybe she’d swum off. She was a good swimmer.”

  Though he paused, I somehow knew there was more. My throat was dry, but I couldn’t drink. I stared at him.

  “Her body washed up on the beach three days later.” He stared at the hardwood floor, his hands squeezed into fists.

  “During those three days—” He took a deep breath, gulping air. “In her madness, she’d murdered three towns of humans and half the seal population, before drowning herself.”

  Three towns? My heart sank. She’d killed? “Why?”

  He shook his head. “She was lost and there was nothing I could do.”

  My eyes felt hot, and I looked away. How could any creature live through that? To love so greatly and to lose so much. It weighted me to the chair: his grief and my grief for him. It was too much.

  “Sciro,” he said.

  I looked up and met his dark eyes.

  “Never love a spirit shifter,” he said quietly. “They are too much for us.”

  Blinking, I nodded, and I swore a promise in my heart. The Council was right to kill them at birth. Spirit shifters were dangerous, and I would stay as far away from them as I could get. “They really are that bad.”

  Nodding, Professor Ward grimaced, and then he glanced at the pile of books still sitting on the floor. He raised a burly eyebrow at me.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, yeah, I know. They aren’t going to shelve themselves.”

  The End

  Read more about Sciro and the other shifters of

  Thornbriar Academy in:

  Found: A Reverse Harem Academy Shifter Bully Romance (Thornbriar Academy Series)

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZQNKF85

  www.calimann.com

 

 

  Cali Mann, Lost

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