9th Life

Prologue

[author's note: The short prologue has a very different feel/voice and I debated on including it. The feedback was overwhelmingly in favor of it though. Most of the book is from Skyler's POV.]

Prologue

Stars alight! That sacred dark
That changing night that finds us One
Where truth and form and sense unfold
Where fur is born and fang unbound
I sang that night when in new sight
The dark shone changed like stars alight

 My whole life, I've not known what I believe, or rather I should say, I've believed a thing I couldn't know. We're one. All of us, everything—One. Those older than me have experienced that fundamental truth, and I've no reason to doubt them, but I prefer knowing to believing. As of tonight, I'll finally know.

My name is Bastian. I am Ailuro, seventeen as of today. And my whole life has been a prologue to this moment.

Nearly all of the sixty-four members of my isolated Kindred stand with me. They encircle me in the wooded clearing lit only by a fitting claw-shaped moon. My father's spirit has dropped into that timeless formless state known as the Field, his body stilling as that which is more truly him seeks a place only the initiated can go. He's my guide, introducing me to that depth which grants the shape-shifting Ailuro their gift. His unfamiliar chants, ancient words only heard in ritual, call to me across the clearing. Then they pull from within.

Before this moment, I was like any other human, not that I'd ever known any outside of my own hidden people. But now, my potential looms before me, a door finally unlocked.

A warmth slips over my skin as a soft glow reveals faces that were lost to shadow only moments before. Is it that glow I feel? Every hair on my body leaps as if lightning struck nearby, leaving my skin charged—lit from within. But where my skin ends and the rest of the world begins is no longer clear.

Like my father, I've fallen still, feeling as if I've mostly abandoned my body. My view, for the most part, remains unchanged. My awareness is something else entirely.

Belief is a poor substitute for experience.

There's only One. All of us. Everything. My father... his energy threads through me, and I can identify him, but we are no longer two. Of course, words can no more explain this than they can reveal what a blackberry tastes like.

It's as if Life is a fabric, an all-encompassing energetic cloth defining where and what I am. I'm tied to emotion, tied to thought, but my physical body is less bound. At its core, it's a projection of trillions of miniscule lights flashing in and out of existence quicker than thought, darting between this hidden One and the world I've always known.

I can change my thought about how those lights, those building blocks of form, reappear. The mold is not set. My body is, in truth, an idea.

Ideas can be changed.

My father's lips no longer move though I still hear him as the light that comprises everything. Through sound alone, the whole world rings new. The soft hitch of a child's nervous breath. The wing beat of owls in silent flight. And there... unfamiliar breathing... the unsheathing of a dagger.

Father! My thoughts scatter, devoured by a fire within. I mentally claw at the phantom blade buried in my chest. Get it out!

As if I'm his reflection, our knees hit earth, our eyes never wavering from each other. The dagger handle pinning his shirt to his chest bears that same uniform glow, as if insisting it's of no more importance than the hair on his head. He's dying, tangled in that primordial fabric, death woven to my very being.

I feel them—all of them, friend and foe, like a whisper in my mind. Within the Field, they're like shadows overlaying, revealing their oneness. Our connection runs far deeper than our similarities as Ailuro. Their attack is unprecedented, their determination a shocking current through my thoughts. But then, they're not just any Ailuro. They're Maarjaara.

The expanse I've become bucks with the shockwave of my mother's arrival in the Field. Her spirit's here, pursuing father deeper, seeking a way to release me from the depths he's bound me. She's desperate as only a parent can be but where she snatches at hope, I suffer tug-of-war—one with promises to see me undone.

Someone else's rush of fear pulls my gaze to my girl, my Marensei, who's never known the taste of it. All my life, she's been fleet-footed action and hardheaded daring—a reckless version of myself. Now she stands frozen, wide eyes darting between my parent's trance and my pain. She looks the still center of chaos, but her thoughts betray her. She wages her own internal battle, and her eyes give her away a breath before she acts.

She's one with me, and it's a mistake. Initiated herself, she guessed my mother's intent and hoped to untangle me, but it's not the same. Within, the gravity of our joining draws my parents to me, and I know what it is to long for death. No mortal form hosts four where only one has any right to be.

I'd leave it all if I didn't fear taking her with me. Pain eclipses everything and yet, even tasting it, she loves me too much to let go. Pain can change everything too... and I wish I'd never earned that love.

The rest of the clearing is snatches of struggle, but Marensei hasn't gone unnoticed. One Maarjaaran's intention registers through my pain the moment he commits to ending her life.

Don't touch her!

Locked together in the Field, we're helpless as he leans in to her. Wearing only black shorts, he looks like he's stealing a kiss, stopping just shy, as if awaiting permission. She won't give it, but then, he's not really asking. Tied to me, her breath is his for the taking. Yet another Ailuro gift. Slowly, he inhales.

It's our death he wants. I feel it. No amount of screaming shuts him out. Not here. Not even in this.

I am not one with him—or his kind!

Agony consumes me, and the purity works a strange alchemy. I'm reduced to one feeling, one desire. I am the very nature of hatred.

I am Fury.

The singleness of thought ignites within and, for the briefest of moments, All bends to my will... and then nothing.

*******

Author's Note:  Available on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1oj6adC for only 99 cents. Book 2 & 3 are available as well and complete the trilogy. Thanks for reading!!