Chapter 1
Preoccupied with approaching doom while snowflakes settled on his hair and sheepskin jacket, Ashe Evans walked right past the white buffalo standing in two inches of snow beside the road. A disgruntled snort disturbed the snow-muted morning as the buffalo, offended by Ashe's rudeness, thumped a hoof impatiently against frozen ground. Startled from his thoughts by the sudden noise, Ashe turned swiftly to locate its source.
"Good morning, Mr. Thompson." Ashe, his nose and ears red from the cold, breathed a relieved sigh and waved at the large bison, causing the heavy backpack he carried to slip from his shoulder. Mr. Thompson's breaths were misty white clouds in the late March snowfall as he blinked at Ashe in irritation.
Ashe Evans might have been any twelve-going-on-thirteen-year-old trudging toward a rural school in the snow. He wasn't. Cloud Chief might have been any small farming community in western Oklahoma. It wasn't. The buffalo might have been any buffalo still living in the Central Plains, but Amos Thompson would tell you himself (quite majestically, in fact) that he most certainly was not.
Protected by three vampires and a perimeter spell laid each year by an itinerant witch, Cloud Chief, Oklahoma, appeared to be a ghost town on maps and to passing non-residents. Inside the spell's boundary, werewolves, shapeshifters and vampires populated the small but thriving community.
"Sorry I didn't see you, Mr. Thompson," Ashe apologized. Snow had collected atop Mr. Thompson's woolly head, giving anyone with any imagination at all the idea that he wore a beret between short, curving horns. Ashe waited until he'd turned away to smile. Stamping his hoof again (Mr. Thompson had no patience for inattentive children) the buffalo trotted off to help neighbors check on spring lambs.
Hunching into his sheepskin jacket, Ashe hefted the backpack to a more comfortable position and continued on his way. Transformational Arts, his first class of the day was waiting, along with inevitable shame and eternal embarrassment.
Every seventh-grade student at Cloud Chief Combined was expected to take (and pass) Transformational Arts. With a vampire father and a shapeshifting mother, Ashe should be passing Transformational Arts easily. He wasn't. Ashe, no matter how hard he tried, couldn't produce a single scale, feather, talon or patch of fur. The school year was winding down too, with only six weeks of classes remaining. Struggling to fight off a recurring bout of misery, Ashe wondered if his parents ever imagined that he might turn out frustratingly ordinary.
"What happened to you?" Ashe, dumping his backpack beside a desk in Transformational Arts, stared at his best friend. Black-haired, dark-eyed and looking much like his werewolf Packmaster father, Salidar DeLuca frantically swiped at his left ear and hair, attempting to brush white chalk dust away before Mrs. Rocklin arrived.
"Dori hit me with an eraser," Sali growled, glaring accusingly at Dori and Wynn across the aisle. Dori Anderson, a shapeshifting ocelot and Wynn O'Neill, an extremely rare unicorn, glared right back. A feud simmered constantly between Sali, Wynn and Dori, with occasional eruptions of mild violence and adult language. Fed mostly by insults from Sali, the hostility showed no signs of ever letting up.
"Don't you know to duck?" Ashe wanted to snicker at Sali's predicament—the chalk dust wasn't easily removed from dark hair.
"It was a well-planned, two-prong attack," Sali replied, his nearly black eyes staring at the chalk dust that now covered his fingers.
"Ah, the ocelot-unicorn maneuver—surround your enemy and distract him," Ashe nodded respectfully at Dori and Wynn. Wynn, quite pretty with long white hair and pale-blue eyes, acknowledged the near-compliment with a return nod. Dori, wearing her curly, dark-blonde hair shorter, wasn't about to concede anything to the enemy camp. With green eyes flashing a warning at Sali and Ashe, Dori turned away with a disgruntled "hmmph."
"Mrs. Rocklin's coming," Ashe hissed, shutting down conversation inside the classroom as nine students scrambled for seats. Ashe heard their instructor walking down the hall from the opposite end of the building, giving his classmates plenty of time to slide into seats and innocently face the blackboard before Mrs. Rocklin arrived.
Exceptional hearing seemed to be Ashe's only gift. Better than the werewolves and his vampire father's, Ashe's ability to hear the tiniest sounds from a distance had the entire community scratching their heads in confusion. As Ashe hadn't managed to become anything other than himself, he wasn't about to boast of his auricular proficiency.
Mrs. Rocklin eyed Sali, who continued to surreptitiously brush chalk dust from his hair. Knowing without question that Sali had been up to something, Mrs. Rocklin called on him first. "Salidar," she said, lifting an eyebrow, "You will go first this morning. Try to get all your fur out on the initial attempt."
Reddening guiltily, Sali stood. Ashe knew Sali was self-conscious during his changes from human to wolf and at times his turns weren't a complete transformation under Mrs. Rocklin's watchful eye. Dori snickered, earning a nasty glare from Sali.
"You can do it," Ashe reassured his friend in a whisper so soft only Sali might hear. If Sali were alone or with Ashe, his turns were perfect. Whenever Sali transformed in front of his older brother Marco, something always went wrong. Marco wasn't merciful when he teased Sali about the unsuccessful attempts, either.
Closing his eyes, Sali focused on changing. Before long, a furry, half-grown werewolf pup stood amid a puddle of Sali's clothing, with no missing patches of fur. Proud of his accomplishment, Sali sat on his haunches and grinned a wolfish grin, his pink tongue lolling mockingly.
"Showoff," Dori grumbled. Sali's wolf hearing caught Dori's words easily. Turning his head, he offered a sharp-toothed grin to her as well.
"Your ear is still covered with chalk dust," Wynn pointed out maliciously. Several classmates stifled laughter as Sali raised a paw to awkwardly swipe at his left ear.
"Very good, Salidar," Mrs. Rocklin acknowledged Sali's flawless transformation while ignoring chalk dust. "Ashe, would you please?" she gestured with a hand. Mrs. Rocklin no longer had to finish the sentence; Ashe understood what was expected. Without a word, Ashe rose and pulled Sali's clothing from beneath the wolf pup's feet. Following a tail-wagging Sali, Ashe carried jeans, T-shirt and sneakers to the changing cubicle at the back of their classroom.
Ashe performed clothing duty six times before Mrs. Rocklin called his name. Lowering his head to hide the flush that crept up his neck and threatened to become full-blown embarrassment, Ashe stood amid whispers from his classmates. "He can't," competed with "he's human." For the first time, however, Ashe caught the worst insult any shapeshifter could level against another. "Empty," echoed in his ears.