The Waning Moon by Amy Cissell

Author:Amy Cissell [Cissell, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amy Cissell

The next week passed so quickly I would’ve guessed magic was involved if I didn’t know better. I spent each day working on further developing my shields. My physical training was relegated to the back seat for now, although I did try to get a run in every other day. This much stress and magical build-up could only be handled by physical exhaustion.

Arduinna stopped by every day for a briefing. Although General Aldea and President Murphy had originally balked at our revised plan, they quickly came around. Rumors swirled everywhere in the mortal world when Aldea and Murphy had a press conference to announce a credible threat to St. Louis of the kind that had hit Portland and the Black Hills. The National Guard came in to help with evacuations, and the whole city was in chaos.

Raj seemed to be enjoying it, but the rest of us—and by us, I mean me—were annoyed. We’d stocked up on enough water, fuel, and food to get through a month, but not having take-out readily available was destroying my morale.

By the twenty-ninth, St. Louis was greatly diminished. There were, of course, people who’d chosen to stay. You could bring irrefutable proof to some that staying put would result in certain death, and they’d smile and maybe lock the door.

That evening, the last plane took off from the airport. There was the occasional distant buzz of a faraway aircraft, but I’d never realized how much noise I automatically filtered out. Everything was muted.

It felt like we were preparing for war. People were ducking and covering, and I began to doubt my strategy. By associating the gate openings with terrorist events, it was going to make me a terrorist. Any magical beings were going to be associated with—motherfucker!—breaking the humans’ world.

By sundown, I was positive I’d engineered the future attempted genocide of supernaturals. Even when President Murphy and General Aldea manipulated the big reveal, I didn’t see how they could spin this to cast the magically inclined in a favorable light. I’d wanted to delay because I knew what humans did to things that frighten them; they’d spent a long time being afraid of things that go bump in the night. All you had to do is look around to see what they mock, what they try to lighten up, what they dress up as on Hallowe’en, and you could tell witches, vampires, and werewolves were not high on the trust list.

They liked elves, though. I scowled at the thought of Finn seeming more benign than Isaac. There was no hope for me. Dragons are almost never portrayed as benevolent.

I pulled some flames from the campfire Isaac had started to build and ran them up and down my arms. It was getting cold at night, and the warmth of the little fire elementals was soothing.

“Are you going to say anything” Isaac asked. “You’ve been sulking for hours. What’s wrong?”

Harsh. Isaac wasn’t usually a jerk, even when warranted. I wanted to answer like the sullen teenager he’d named me, but “nothing” wouldn’t leave my mouth.

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