Page 53 of Wolf's Bane
“I know, he told me last night. This is a treasure,” she said, holding her mother’s journal like the piece of wonder it was.
“A phrase Mama uses repeatedly isnot magic—”
“But a mutation,” Solenne finished. She could almost hear Amalie’s voice.
“Yes. It got me thinking about mutations.” Luis withdrew a stack of books from the satchel.
“When did you become a scholar?” she teased.
His back stiffened. “I read. We just don’t share the same interests.”
“My apologies. It was rude of me to interrupt. Please continue.”
“Not if you intend to tease me,” he said. She made a zipper motion over her mouth, which seemed to appease him. “Well, I thought about the nexus mutation. There are three varieties: werewolf, vampire, and witch.” He paused. “Please don’t yell at me for using those words.”
“We really do need a better lexicon, but one problem at a time.”
“Right. Three mutations.” He held up a hand and ticked off fingers. “A shift in form. A shift in metabolism. A shift in matter. But we only concern ourselves with two of those.”
“Because those suffering that mutation are—can bedangerous,” she quickly corrected herself. “Alek aside, we know that the, um, newly transformed, often slaughter their own families, sadly.” Many a hunt started in the remains of a home, torn asunder by blood and violence.
“But a witch with the ability to transform matter?” He opened a leather-bound book to a strip of ribbon marking a page.
Looking over his shoulder, Solenne recognized the passage. A written account of an early colonist who transformed water into ice. “That’s a useful trick for the summer, but really. Lead into gold? Water into wine?”
“Liquid into a solid? You don’t see how that could be useful?”
Solenne shook her head. The witch mutation was rare. So rare that she had never seen or even heard of a witch. None seemed to exist in recent memory. “If they were even real, which I doubt.”
Luis shook his head. “The mutations are all about channeling energy from the nexus, yes? That’s what Mama wrote. The crea—those like Alek have to shift to spend the energy. I’ve never encountered a blood drinker, but plenty of scholars agree that their metabolism consumes itself, giving them an unending hunger and a craving for, um, blood. Their bodies burn themselves up to spend the energy. And witches? They manipulate the energy to transform matter. Organic. Inorganic. That’s useful, Solenne. Don’t you see? Too useful to slaughter.” He handed her book after book, each filled with ribbons to mark significant passages. The bindings positively bulged from his notes. “We’re the witches,” he said.
Solenne sat in disbelief. “Luis, no.”
“Yes! Don’t just dismiss this out of hand. People with the witch mutation were—are—useful. They were recruited to be hunters. Look.” He opened another book, the title worn away on the cloth binding. The book fell open to a familiar page.
The Blackthorn Blade.
“Luis, again, that’s a fairytale. A story.”
“If the early hunters were witches, they could manipulate matter. Why not channel nexus energy into weapons? Blackthorn glowed under the moon,” his voice changed as he read from the page. “Crafted by the most skilled smith and empowered by the hunter, the blade could turn the vilest creature into ash during a nexus event.” He shut the book. “Empowered, Solenne, by witches. And if it was a focus for nexus energy, then it makes sense that it was at its most powerful during the solstice or equinox.”
“Luis, you’re talking about a magic sword.”
“It’s not magic—it’s science!” His words echoed in the greenhouse. Clearing his throat, he adjusted his cravat. “This is science. The original settlers may not have had the best vocabulary to describe what they saw, but the other generations did, and they agree. Blackthorn was real. Our family made amazing weapons, the kind we just don’t have anymore.”
Even if the Blackthorn Blade were real, which she highly doubted, Solenne did not understand why it mattered. “Exactly. We don’t have any functional weapons from the original settlers. We’ve got a heap of broken tech that doesn’t work. We need to focus on what we have and what we can do.”
“Mother believed it was real. I’ve read her notes—”
“And it got her killed,” Solenne snapped.
Luis may have been too young to remember that day, but she remembered every moment with startling clarity. Amalie attempted to charge the battery of an old pistol with nexus energy. At least, that was what Alek reported. He had assisted her in her workshop that day.
The battery exploded with a force hard enough to shake the stone house. They found her in her basement workshop, shrapnel buried deep in her heart.
The scent of burnt hair lingered forweeks. The thought of the putrid odor was enough to make her stomach turn.
The color drained from Luis’ face. “Yes, well. It’s not magic. It is science, therefore it is reproducible. I’m certainly not a witch, and I don’t suspect you are, either. Recessive genes, you know. Our best course of action is to find Blackthorn.”
