Shifter! My mind screamed. I wanted to run, but I stood there, my body unable to follow even the simplest of instructions, like move your damn feet. The only way out of the alley was past him, and I couldn't force myself to go so much as one step closer. Torn between terrified disgust and morbid fascination, all I could do was back away, and stare, slack-jawed, as the shifter twisted and spasmed in front of me, his body seeming to melt and reform as if made of clay.

I don’t know how long I stood there, enthralled, before the sounds of the guards approaching broke me from my trance. Their yells and pounding boots echoed down the narrow streets making it hard to tell which direction they were coming from. Instinctively I stepped deeper into the alley, seeking to hide in the shadows as I desperately tried to think of a way out of this mess. Preferably one that didn't end with me arrested, though if my choice was between the shifter or the guards, the guards were the better option.

The alley was a dead-end, and there was nowhere to run, but my window for running was already gone anyways. The guards were closing fast. Even if it took them a few minutes to find us, there was no way I'd get past them. The veil was my only chance, though I hadn't wanted to draw on it with the shifter so close, it was my only choice now.

Tearing my eyes away from the spectacle in front of me, I reluctantly turned around. I didn't like having my back to the shifter, but I needed room to construct the weave that Ben had taught me. The one that would connect the veil to this world. I'd done this particular spell so many times over the last year, that it usually came as easily to me as tying my shoes, but as I divided my awen into nearly a dozen individual flows of energy, I found myself struggling to maintain control of them.

Our awen wasn't just a pool of energy resting inside us; it was an integral part of our being, attuned to our emotions and environment. Instead of the smooth, steady strands, I was used to, my awen looked and felt frayed, almost knotted in places. The threads of energy quivered with the same tremors that coursed through my body. They caught and pulled at each other, sometimes sliding from my grasp and collapsing completely.

Up until tonight, my forays into Otherworld had gone off without a hitch. I'd never needed to create a weave under these conditions, and I worried that I wasn't up to the task. Despite the cold, sweat dripped from my face as I tried to force the unruly flows into submission. For every three strands I managed to pull together two would unravel, but slowly the pattern began to take form. I let out a sob of relief when, all of a sudden, the last thread snapped into place. My nose twitched as the air around me suddenly smelt like the burnt ozone that usually followed a thunderstorm. The mist of the veil materialized a few feet in front of me.

It felt like an eternity had passed, but everything had taken little more than a minute. While I wanted nothing more than to step through, get the hell out, and pretend this night never happened; I couldn't just skip off into the veil. With the shield still in place, there was a chance the shifter could follow me through. As much as I loathed the thought of touching him again, it would take hours for the shield to dissipate on its own. I had to take it down now.

Turning around, I extended a thread of my awen back towards him. It still resisted me, but this didn't take nearly the precision that the weave had required. All I needed to do was sever one strand of my shield. It wouldn't completely unravel, but only a small hole was required to prevent him from following.

I should have run. I should have risked the guards. The shifter was a mess, his body contorting uncontrollably as it reverted to its normal shape, but as I severed the shield, he lunged at me, moving with the kind of speed and agility that seemed impossible in his present state. I tried to get out of the way; tried to throw myself towards the veil, but he was too fast. Barreling into me, his weight sent me crashing against the wall. The force of his body slamming into mine drove the air from my lungs.

Pressing his forearm against my chest, he leaned forward, bringing his face within inches of mine. His breath had the rotten sweetness of overripe fruit, and the surface of his skin rippled as if a swarm of maggots writhed beneath. I fought to catch my breath as bile began to rise in my throat.

He reached his free hand into the pocket of his coat, the material pulling tight, seams stretched near to bursting, as it tried to accommodate his new larger physique. I flinched when he withdrew a knife, and pressed its cold edge against my throat. Whether it was by design or because his hand was still unsteady, I felt a slight sting as the blade pierced my skin.

I'd been trying to stay calm, trying to keep myself from succumbing to the terror that had been steadily building inside of me, but I could no longer hold it back. The slow trickle of blood sliding down my neck brought forth the flow of frightened tears I'd been trying to suppress. Pitiful nearly incoherent pleas tumbled from my lips.

"If you want to live, put it back," he slurred, the words coming with some difficulty from his still misshapen mouth.

Sobbing, I glanced to my right. The haze of fog that indicated the border to the veil was only a few feet away. It might as well have been miles. Quickly I wove another strand to replace the one I'd cut. My control was even worse than before, and it took me a couple of attempts to even get that single thread in place.

Once the shield was whole again, he took a step back. With his body no longer pressed against mine, I felt like I could breathe again, though he still kept the knife firmly against my skin. The elderly gentleman from before was completely gone. In his place stood a much younger and larger man. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, but being a Faye, he could be well into his second century. Blonde hair fell to his shoulders, and cold, pale eyes stared out from beneath a heavy brow.

"That's a smart girl," he said. "You can still walk away from this. All you have to do is get me through." Grabbing me by the arm, he yanked me away from the wall and spun me to face the veil. "But if I feel that weave shift even slightly, I'll slit your throat. Understand?"

Unable to speak, I gave the slightest nod of my head. Putting a hand on my back, he dug his fingers into the fabric of my coat, between my shoulder blades. He stepped in close behind, his blade never leaving my throat, as he pushed me forward.

Tears still blurred my vision and my heart hammered in my chest as we slowly approached the border, my feet dragging as he drove me forward. There was still time to destroy the weave and sever the connection, time to do the right thing and trap him here. He'd most certainly kill me, but at least I wouldn't be responsible for bringing a Faye assassin through to Earth. With each step, I tried to make myself reach out and unravel the weave. Tried to make myself do the right thing, but I simply couldn't. Shouts rang out behind us, but it was too late, with one last step we crossed over.

I felt the shifter stiffen behind me as the veil enveloped us. Stepping into the veil was like stepping into a fog bank, except it wasn't made of water. The veil was nothing but energy, with no physical presence it existed everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The alley we had left was still there, stretching behind us, and the sound of running feet echoed off the tall buildings that still loomed on either side of us, though everything appeared hazy and out of focus. For the moment, we existed in both worlds.

Looking behind us, I saw the guards come running, stopping just shy of the border. They were less than five feet away. A few more steps and they could grab us, but none of them dared to come any closer. They knew what would happen if they did. Still, if one of them had been willing to sacrifice himself, they could have stopped us. But stopping us wasn't worth their lives.

Reaching out with what little awen I had left, I severed the weave. The guards and Otherworld disappeared as if they'd never been. Even though we had only taken a few steps in, once I broke the connection, Otherworld ceased to exist, at least for us. In every direction, there was nothing but the endless expanse of the veil.

When I was training, Ben would talk about how the veil made him feel completely isolated and alone as if nothing in the world existed except himself. It did the opposite for me. I always felt like someone or something was there watching, unseen eyes following my every move. Ben insisted it was my imagination, and maybe it was, but sometimes I'd swear I'd caught a glimpse of shapeless shadows moving through the fog. But it was always at a distance and out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I turned my head for a better look, they would be gone. I could feel those invisible eyes on me now.

The energy of the veil swirled around us. As always, thin, nearly transparent, threads floated through the air, while thicker, heavier cords crept across the ground, but it was different than normal, agitated somehow. Usually, the energy moved like a current through the veil, flowing by with little regard for me or my charges, having no more awareness than a river parting around a rock. But now, instead of streaming smoothly past, the current twisted and churned; silvery coils of energy branched off from the thicker cords.

The coils crept towards us, seeming to advance and retreat in rhythm with my pounding heart. I shuddered when the first made contact with my leg, wrapping itself around my ankle. It was dense enough that I could feel the fabric of my pants shift beneath its touch as it encircled my leg. I'd never seen the veil respond like this and I held my breath as it slowly started winding its way up, moving past my waist, to my chest, hovering for a moment at breast level.

Frozen, I stood there as it penetrated my chest. The coil of energy felt warm as it slid along the surface of my awen, probing it, examining it. I let out a sigh of relief when after a few moments the coil pulled back without incident. Unwinding from my waist, it extending behind me towards the shifter. I didn't turn around, but I could still tell when it made contact. I felt him tense, his fingers tightening on the back of my coat.

"What are you doing, girl?" He hissed, shifting the blade against my skin as if I needed a reminder that it was still there.

"It's not me, it's the veil," I said quickly. "Just stay calm. It will be fine." I hoped I was right. It was as if the veil sensed an intruder but couldn't quite decide if we were it.

The coil lingered on him longer than it had with me, but it eventually retreated, settling down around our feet. We stood there for a few minutes, neither one of us daring to move, as the energy of the veil swirled around us. When the tendrils did nothing more than touch, I started to walk forward, slowly at first then faster when it became evident that the veil wasn't going to do anything further. The shifter stayed close behind me.

I grew calmer the deeper we went into the veil. The coils of energy offered no resistance. They parted and reformed as we walked through them, and eventually, they pulled back entirely, rejoining the currents that were now calmly flowed past us.

It didn't matter which way we went, there was no true direction or distance, in the veil. As long as you held an image of your destination securely in your thoughts, you could enter from any place and exit at another, be it New York or London. I tried to still my mind and focus on where we were going, but the cold steel against my neck made it hard to concentrate.

We didn't monitor our side of the veil like the Faye did. There was just too much ground to cover, and we didn't have the same connection to our environment that they did. Unless another Tuatha happened to be close enough to feel the weave forming, they'd never catch you in the act, but that didn't mean there weren't any risks. The council had scouts, or what those of us on the wrong side of the law called sniffs, who could sense this level of magic from hundreds of miles away, so it wasn't a good idea to cross near where you lived or to use the same crossing point twice.

I'd spent yesterday afternoon in a park, memorizing details of the area where I was supposed to deliver my charge to whoever had paid Jason for his passage. That was back before I knew what he was, there was no way I could go there now. Even if it wasn't a trap, which it most certainly was, I didn't want to meet the kind of people who were willing to pay to have a shifter brought through.

Instead, I thought of a rural black top that I had driven down on my way to the park. When I was training Ben had always insisted that a smart smuggler should have a backup. Somewhere to go if the job went wrong or wasn't feeling right. I'd never needed to use one before, but I was glad Ben's training had stayed with me.

Walking through the haze of the veil, I focused on a lone oak tree, it’s few remaining leaves, having already lost their fall vibrancy, desperately clinging to the last vestige of life. It sat between the asphalt and an empty field. I pictured the broken, barbed wire fence, with its rotting wooden posts and rusting wires that separated the field from the ditch where a weathered, wooden cross marked the loss of someone's loved one.

I kept that picture firmly in the corner of my mind while the rest urgently searched for a way out. I didn't believe for a second that he would let me go when we made it through. I could sever the shield anytime, leaving him to be torn apart by the veil, but I was too close. I would suffer the same fate as him, and that was only if he didn't manage to slit my throat first. Die in the veil or die on the other side, the only difference was that in one scenario he would die with me and in the other, I would have let an assassin loose in my world.

I was running out of time. Though still obscured by energy, the shape of a tree was beginning to take form about twenty feet in front of us, and the soft outline of what could be a fence beyond that. Beneath our feet, the ground had become rough and uneven like walking on loose soil. Everything was still shrouded in fog, but it was beginning to take on a firmer form. The shifter had given no indication earlier that he was able to see someone else's awen, so I risked starting the weave that would connect the veil to Earth.

I don't know if it was because my body had become used to the abject terror that was thundering through my veins, but my awen didn't fight me as it had before. I slowly laid each strand in place, careful not to connect the final piece. Cautiously, I reached into my pocket, moving slowly so as not to draw his attention. Bypassing the additional marbles, my fingers searched out one of the other trinkets I had inside. It took me a moment, but my fingers finally settled on a button, the only one I had.

Cradling the button in the palm of my hand, I tried to brace myself for what was coming next, which was a lot of pain and quite possibly my death. Steeling myself, I reached up and grabbed his forearm as I slammed my head back, making contact with his nose. Ignoring the shooting pain that radiated across my skull, I pulled with all my strength wrenching his hand and the knife away from my throat. He staggered back, his grip on my coat dragging me with him.

Thanks to my struggles completing the weave in the alley, exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me, and my awen was nearly depleted. Most of what I had left was tied up in the weave that would take me home, and that spell wasn't even completed yet. Trying to conserve as much of my awen as possible, I directed the tiniest flow I could handle into the button pressed between my palm and his forearm.

The button had a weave tied to it just like the marbles, this one designed to add to the electric current that naturally ran through the heart. Like healing, elemental magic did not come easily to me and electricity was by far my weakest element. Though it had taken a good bit of my awen to tie each weave of wind to a marble, I could get a handful done before I was spent, and the weaves would last upwards of a month. But this one button had taken every ounce of awen I had, giving me a splitting migraine in the process. It took me nearly two days to recover, and the weave would only hold for about a week. I had considered not bothering with it this time, but now I was glad that habit and caution had won out.

There was no way to direct it. The shock coursed through both of us. I'd been ready for it, but the sudden jolt of current surging through my body still caused my knees to buckle, sending me stumbling forward. My coat ripped as it tore free from his grasp.

Yelling, he dropped the knife, clutching his arm to his chest. He staggered a few more steps backward, providing the distance I needed to make my escape. For the first time, I started to have hope that I might actually make it out of this alive.

I quickly wove the last line, completing the weave, and connecting the veil to Earth. I half fell, half ran towards the shimmering haze of the border. When I was only a few feet away, I turned around, ready to use the last of my awen to sever his shield.

He had recovered faster than I could have anticipated and I was shocked to see that he was only a few feet behind me, having already closed most of the distance between us. He was too close, but it was too late to do anything else. I slashed at his shield. His bellow of pain turned to rage as a part of his shield dissolved exposing his own awen to the veil.

The veils reaction was instantaneous. I felt as much as saw the forms solidifying around us as distorted shapes sprang up from nothing. They encircled us like hunters converging on their prey. One stood directly between me and the opening to Earth, close enough for me to reach out and touch.

The misty shape seemed to ripple and blend with the veils energy, fading and reemerging like a ghost. It looked humanoid, standing on two legs. It was easily at least seven feet tall; its body covered in a shroud of mist, or it was a shroud of mist, I couldn’t tell. The only things I could make out clearly were a pair of yellow eyes staring at me from deep within a misty hood, and large clawed hands with nails that were several inches long and had a metallic sheen. Were these the shadowy shapes I sometimes thought I saw, stalking just out of sight, or were they manifestations of the veil’s energy, only brought to life when an intruder was detected?

It didn't really matter either way I was dead. I had hoped to be far enough ahead of the shifter that I would be outside of the ring that now surrounded us, but I hadn’t been quick enough. In front of me, the guardian opened its mouth wide, and I fell to my knees, hands clutching at my ears, as it and the others let out deafening screams that reverberated through the veil. I think I started screaming too, but I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t hear anything other than their piercing cries, and I couldn’t think as the sound seemed to burrow into my skull.

Crouched there, huddling on the ground, I waited for my unavoidably bloody end. They weren't there for me, but it didn’t matter. I was between them and their prey, and I would suffer the same fate as him, their frenzied attacks making no distinction between the two of us.

I flinched as one of them pressed against me, but the tearing of flesh that I expected never came. Instead, I was pushed to the side as the guardian rushed past. Opening my eyes, I saw that there was now nothing between me and the exit. I didn’t question the miracle that had left me alive, and I didn't look back as the shifter screamed behind me. I lunged for the border.