Mary was eager to see the girl work. She'd never encountered a necromancer before, not even in all her centuries. It was a fascinating experience.
The girl had to have five specialised candles which she arranged in the shape of a star, or a pentagram, or something sort of magical shape. The girl proudly informed Mary that this was to keep the occupants of the star protected. Mary didn't know shapes had such powers.
Then there was the added benefit of a dozen or so strange herbs, bones of some sort of animal and graveyard dirt. All of this when mixed together with the right words created magic or something like that. It was fascinating, but rather ridiculous.
The girl mumbled a lot after that in some sort of strange language, and then she pricked her finger and dripped the blood into the pot Adele had received from the kitchen. The entire process reminded Mary of a night long ago when she'd sworn a blood oath with a bunch of idiots. Absentmindedly she looked down at the long scar on her palm .Sometimes she could still feel the biting pain of the silver.
Silver, another reason being a werewolf was annoying. Mary had always liked silver more than gold and this body she couldn't even touch the stuff. When she'd cut into her palm that night it was agony, but she'd barely felt it. At that time she'd been floating in euphoria because everything finally made sense.
The girl was still muttering to herself and Mary had the feeling it would continue for a while, so she let her mind drift.
It had been two days since Anya Royce jumped and no one expected her to be alive, even if she was a werewolf. Now the search efforts focused on recovering her body.
Mary listened as her parents discussed what the police had told them, that they might never find the girl's body. The river had been so over flooded and had so much debris in it, they had no idea if she was only a few feet from the bridge or had drifted a few states over by now.
Her idiotic parents were trying to think of ways they could comfort their small, sweet girl, their youngest child. Mary sighed; she didn't need to me consoled. She was completely fine. It wouldn't have done well to let them know that, so for the moment she was the traumatised girl. It wasn't hard, she just copied Eva.
"The alpha is distraught you know," her mother said, unable to resist the gossip. "He knew the girl well."
"Can't have known her that well if she went and offed herself," her father said. Her mother smacked him lightly and scolded him for speaking ill of the dead. "Sorry," he whined out. "I'm just shocked, this doesn't really happen. I mean humans I can understand, but she had an entire pack behind her."
Mary smiled to herself. She personally had made sure that Anya had no one. She refused to get someone's name tattooed onto her face, and more importantly she refused to lose the brainless groupies that followed her around. It had been all most to easy and lots of fun to ruin the girls life.
At the beginning it hadn't meant much, that silly little bet, especially because she knew she could win it. Yet, the brat refused to cry no matter what. After a month it stopped just being about winning the bet, it became Mary's sole purpose to destroy her. This stupid little werewolf didn't have the right to try to stand up to her, she didn't have the right to act like she was better than her.
It had been easy to come up with a plan.
Mary no longer wanted to just make the girl cry, she wanted to completely destroy her. It took all of ten minutes to come up with a plan. She'd written them down on a piece of paper, which she quickly memorised than burned.
Step 1: Begin by making the teachers hate her.
This had been one of the more difficult tasks as Anya Royce was a goody two shoes. She needed to make the teachers believe that Anya was a bad egg, that she was a little lying, cheater. Mary had seen firsthand what a teacher could do when they didn't like a student, courtesy of the imbecile David.
Mary had instructed the boys to take her homework, she had planted cheat sheets in several of her works, Anya wrote an essay and instead of stealing it Mary replaced it with a plagiarised copy. She made Anya late for class, she made the girl fail tests, she made the girl a nuisance in any way possible. It wasn't long before the teachers were calling in her parents.
Step 2: take away her friends and family supports.
The friends were the easy part. Mary sent Blake to go and flirt, made them look at him with big googly eyes, and he only had to say stop being friends with Anya and they complied. Mary threw them a bone, elevated their status in the school, and that was all it took for Anya to be all alone in the school. Her family was a more difficult manner, and to do it she had to put into place steps 3 and 4.
Step 3: Get Anya to hang out with the undesirables.
Step 4: Get her hooked.
A small deal, which involved a large amount of blackmail on Mary's part, with the drug dealers and the thugs of the town led to them showing Anya a scrap of kindness. The girl, desperate for any real friends now that her own had left her followed. She wanted to fit in, wanted to feel like she wasn't despised by everyone.
It hadn't been long before her parents told her not to see these people anymore. Mary herself watched, hidden behind a tree, as Anya snuck out of her house for the first time and fled to her 'friends'. She needed to feel like she fit in, that she was wanted, and Anya would have done anything to make sure they wouldn't leave her in the dust. This meant that when they produced alcohol she took a sip, and the next week when it was weed she smoked it, and the next month she was on some very harmful narcotics.
Those steps had worked faster than Mary thought they would.
It was one short month later that Anya had her first major fight with her parents, full of screaming, crying by her mother and Anya throwing things.
Step 5: Break her heart.
She couldn't have done this one without Blake.
Step 6: Completely crush her.
Six steps were all it took for Mary to ruin her life, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't other factors. There were all the other endless little things, courtesy of her follows, that contributed.
By the end, Anya had no one she could trust and felt she was completely alone in the world. Mary had even gotten David to threaten her if she told anyone, something bad would happen to that brother of hers. It worked.
Mary turned her attention back to her parents in time to hear her father say, "Let's go get Mary; it's time for the pack run."
"I think it was nice of Alpha Gregory to organise the run in the girls honour," Her mother remarked. "Do you know what's happening afterward?"
"Some sort of memorial, come on."
Mary took this time to stand and trudge down the stairs. By the time she reached the bottom tears were silently gliding down her cheeks.
"I'm ready," she sniffled, not looking at her parents as she tried to pull her jacket on but halfway bursting into loud, shoulder shaking sobs.
At the same time her parents converged, with 'oh honey' and 'it's alright' and 'I think you should stay here'. These two were simply too easy.
Mary waved them goodbye sombrely, watching as they walked through the rain and into the woods. When they were out of sight she quickly stripped off her bright and colourful clothing -that was much more toned down than usual, she was actually wearing sweatpants and a tank top!—and changed into the dark jeans and a windbreaker. She bundled her blond curls in a cap and was off. She didn't use an umbrella because she knew it would make her more noticeable.
Tonight she needed to blend into the darkness.
The walk to the river didn't take long and when she arrived Mary was impressed with the size. The steady thrum of rain had made it even larger and she had the feeling if she waded out a few feet she would have been swept away.
She didn't come to admire the river. She tore her gaze away and begun at the bridge. She stared up at the bridge through the rain, the lights blurred to hazy orange from the rain. Mary dreamt about Anya on that bridge a lot, but most of the time she was the one pushing her off. It wasn't a bad dream.
Mary set off, sticking close to the riverbank. She didn't need a flashlight, her werewolf eyes keen enough. Distantly she could hear her wolf whining and complaining, as it often did. The wolf didn't like what Mary did, she'd become adept at ignoring it.
She wasn't sure why she was here or what she hoped to find. Maybe she was just curious. Maybe she was morbid. Maybe she was evil. Mary didn't care, she wanted to find the body.
She knew that no real search party had been organised since the days after Anya's death the world had mourned. During the day it poured literal buckets, drowning the trees and overflowing roads. It made searching impossible, but Mary had read the weather reports and knew that the rain was supposed to break for a short while in the next three days. If she was going to do it she had to do it now.
Mary walked for a good hour, carefully combing the river for any hint of the vivid blue hair or a smudge of that awful leather jacket. There was nothing. Mary turned and saw she could still faintly see the bridge. She checked her watch and cursed softly, she had to get back in time to fake looking like she spent the time sobbing.
That meant showering the mud and rain water from her, that her parents would be able to smell. She'd have to change back into her bright, but depressed clothing. She'd mess the kitchen up, an empty wrapper of chocolate, a half heated up can of soup, and tear stained tissues placed here and there. In the living room she'd put in some ridiculously cheerful movie, and add a couple to the coffee table to look like she'd gone through it. Add an empty mug of hot chocolate, a laptop with a Google search for how to deal with grief and even more tissues and she'd be fine.
She could spare maybe half an hour more than she'd have to leave. She sighed. Why had she even come out here in the first place?
And then she knew why when she saw a shimmer of blue. She froze and narrowed her eyes, not believing her luck. Yet, there she was, tangled in a bunch of debris, mostly submerged except for her hair, which floated eerily on the surface.
Mary couldn't help herself. She placed one foot in the icy water, her wolf's whining increasing till it was almost deafening, but she ignored it. She waded until she was waist deep and stopped a foot away. She looked around and marvelled that if the river hadn't have been flooded Anya would probably be lying on the bank.
Slowly Mary reached into the water and gritted her teeth and found the fabric of the girls jacket and slowly begun to pull. The body didn't want to float, and Mary had to keep it above the water but it was no problem with her advanced strength.
Mary looked down and was surprised, she hadn't expected this.
Anya's skin was moon white, pale as snow and rather beautiful. Her eyes were closed peacefully and her hair floated around, almost iridescent in the water. The left side of her head, near her ear was caved in, and Mary knew she hit it on a rock. There was a few scrapes here and there but Anya looked peaceful. More peaceful than she'd ever felt in life. Somehow she was ethereal.
Why had she done this? What had she hoped to gain by finding the girl's body? This was a waste of time. Mary sighed and let the body drop, but as she did her hand brushed the girl exposed collarbone.
Mary screamed.
Two things happened. The first thing was agony, pure pain that was nothing like she'd ever experienced. It was worse than the first time she shifted when she was ten, when all her bones begun to snap and break. Every inch of her was on fire. Suddenly she was looking up herself, looking at her body standing there, stock-still and blank faced. Then she was back and gasping.
The second thing that happened was she remembered. She remembered everything that had been hidden from her for eighteen years.
Mary stumbled out of the water, letting Anya sink. Mary fell to the ground gasping, her body still trembling from the pain. Her wolf was howling in her head. Mary ignored all this, focusing on something more important.
She remembered. She finally knew the truth, why she never felt things like other people did, why she didn't feel like she was a werewolf and why she'd always been different.
Mary was a soulshifter.
"Mistress?"
"Mhmm," Mary said as she came back to the present to see Adele standing next to her.
Adele handed Mary a notepad with Adele's neat scribble covering it. "It's the figures for the arrival of the others," Adele said helpfully. "On the next page I've included the progress on shipping Wolfsbane into this country and various others, in both powder and liquid form."
"I thought we agreed we'd use airborne," Mary muttered, looking over the page. She could still hear the girl murmuring and chanting in some unrecognisable language.
Adele looked down, "The witch apologises but admits that she couldn't produce large amounts of airborne wolfsbane. She gives the excuse that the ingredients which make it toxic could not be spread in the air over a large area and still remains poisonous. It is not completely wasted, as a small dose sprayed directly into the vicinity of the target will have its affect."
"Yes," Mary remarked dryly, "Because no one will be suspicious of a person spraying gas in their face."
"The witch recommended a perfume sampler cover."
Mary paused and nodded, "That should be fine. What isn't fine is this figure on the troops. I need the entire army here within the next two weeks."
Adele looked stricken. "But mistress, it is increasingly difficult to find the funds to not only import them from all over the world, but to also house and feed them."
Mary looked at the paper and knew what had to be done. "Get them all over here; I'll just speed up my arrangement with the alpha."
Adele smiled, nodded and scurried off. Mary turned in time to see the girl reach over to her mother and touch her forehead. Mary watched intrigued as the girl poured the contents of the pot, which had been reduced to a dark brown liquid, into a cup. Her mother grimaced and swallowed the contents with several shudders of disgust.
That's when it got interesting. Jessica closed her eyes and immediately a change rippled along her skin. It wasn't that different from when Mary shifted into her wolf form. Her skin changed, instead from the swollen purples and greens, into a pale cream, flooded with life. The wounds dotting her skin knitted themself together easily. Hair shot out of her scalp, replacing the patches of missing hair. When Jessica opened her eyes they were no longer clouded and white but a dark brown.
"Impressive," Mary murmured to herself, watching the little girl smile at her mother before her eyes closed and she collapsed. Jessica didn't seem all too concerned, giving her daughters hair a quick stroke before picking her up.
Jessica turned to Mary with the girl dangling in her arms, "She's always like this after regeneration. It takes a lot out of her to repair all the damage." Jessica laid the girl gently onto the couch.
"You haven't aged," Mary told her, looking her over. It was true; Jessica still had a youthful appearance of someone in her very early twenties. Mary might have been jealous if she was going to be in this body for much longer.
Jessica shrugged, and eyed Mary. "You have. You're also very, very different."
"The years change some of us."
Jessica shook her head, "I mean you're completely different. It's like you're a different person, everything's changed."
"I know what I am now; it does wonders for my self esteem."
"What are you Mary? Because I know you're not just a werewolf. You've always been different, but now it's like you're not even from this planet."
Mary let out a tinkle of a laugh that somehow sounded sinister. "I'm certainly from this planet; I've just been on it longer than most."
Jessica asked again, "What are you?"
Mary sighed and brushed away a stray curl. "I'm what many call a soulshifter."
Mary was expecting the confused, "What?"
No one ever knew what she was. The world had forgotten her species over the years, and Mary had tried very hard to make sure it stayed that way.
"Let's sit, and I'll explain it," Mary said gesturing to the table. "Soulshifters are creatures with the ability to remove their soul and implant it into another body."
Jessica's eyes widened. "You mean you could just steal my body?!"
Mary sighed, "It doesn't work like that. You see, my species is very old and very rare. We used to be rather powerful and feared, but then the reapers made it their mission to hunt us all down. Soulshifters can't just flicker between bodies, it's a rather exhausting experiences. The soul has a tendency to attach itself to the body, so we have to rip ourselves rip and it's a rather agonising experience. It's easy to lose concentration in the pain and instead of changing bodies simply become dethatched and die. It takes a fair amount of power and concentration to move between bodies."
"You could essentially be immortal," Jessica whispered and seemed to realise something. "Mary . . . how old are you?"
Mary shrugged, "It's hard to keep track in all honesty, but America had yet to have that tea incident that caused all that trouble."
Jessica looked down at her hands, "Could you teach someone."
"No,' Mary replied briskly. "We are born, not made. I can see how it would appeal to you."
"What happened to the real Mary?" Jessica asked suddenly accusing.
Mary raised her eyebrows, "What on earth are you referring to?"
"You stole her body!"
Mary began laughing at that. She could see how Jessica might come to that conclusion, but the truth was that this body was the only body she hadn't stolen in centuries. She'd been forced into this body.
Reapers had a special hatred of soulshifters. To them it was an affront of nature that they could steal others bodies and essentially cheat death. This led to many problems for soulshifters. It wasn't odd for reapers to be assigned to follow them until the moment they tried to shift bodies, and then steal their souls halfway through. The reapers were relentless in their persecution. They had especially hated Mary.
It was nearly twenty-nine years ago. She'd spent decades trying to regain her people after world war two and wasn't having much luck. She was getting desperate and she knew the reapers were after her. She could sense them following and hear them waiting impatiently. Mary, going by Jane back then, knew they didn't have long to wait. The body she'd darted into at the last moment was dying. It was cancer, deep in her stomach and it was quickly killing her. Mary was struggling to catch up to a bus that was about to leave when it hit her, the worst stomach pain yet. It was almost as bad as when she shifted souls. She groaned and clutched her stomach, blood dribbling out her mouth. That was when her vision doubled and she saw into the realm of souls. There were three of them, wearing their black cloaks and waiting. Mary spat at them.
She was dying and they were waiting. She needed a distraction and she came up with a desperate idea. She fumbled in the purse she'd dropped and pulled out the small handgun she acquired. In another life she'd been a soldier who was an excellent shot.
The reapers laughed at her, thinking she was pointing the gun at them. She wasn't. She waited until the bus begun to move toward her, waiting until the last possible second before firing the gun. She watched that one bullet travel through the air and let a smirk of victory pass her face when it hit the driver square in the forehead.
She watched impassively as the dead man's food pressed on the accelerator and sent them shooting forward into oncoming traffic. Mary didn't watch any longer, but heard the large crash and the screams that began. When she turned the reapers were gone. Mary pushed herself to her feet and looked around; she needed to find someone quickly.
She didn't get to choose.
A painful kick in her stomach and a burning in every single part of her and then she was looking at her old body collapsing on the ground. She was drawn to the easiest vessel at that moment. A middle aged woman with two girls next to her, crying into her husband's shirt upon hearing that the child inside of her appeared to have died.
Mary had often heard in later years the surprise on everyone's face when they'd gone to the doctor again only for her to give her mother a large kick. At the time she'd been proud, but now she looked back on it bitterly. Eighteen years of not knowing anything.
She was about to tell Jessica this, when there was a pounding on the door. Mary's eyes narrowed and she pressed a finger to her lips, looking at Jessica. She nodded and slunk out of sight.
Mary stood and walked over to the door, which was again assaulted with several powerful knocks. Mary felt the protective instinct of her wolf stir as she opened the door.
"Hello," the man said. "My name's Vex. I'm here to talk with the necromancer. I knew her father, even helped in 2003."
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