She closed the gap, and it was her turn to cup my cheek as she said quickly, “Hey now. No need to get all bashful again. We're past that now aren't we? What happened to that confidence you just had that had me purring?”
I almost whispered, “It was her.”
She gave me one of her explosive barks of laughter, and then she booped my nose and said, “She... is you. You are the same person, just different aspects of your psyche. It was invigorating to find you had that in you. Now I'm doubly attracted and fascinated with you.”
I was feeling so awkward but then she made an exasperated sound, and we were kissing. It only took a moment for me to get over the initial shock of it, to melt into it, returning the need in her lips with my own. We broke the kiss panting, as I gazed into her eyes. I'm sure I had a goofy smile on my face. I was feeling sly, so tipped my hat to her, humming, “Dun da dun da, dun da dunnn.” Huh, I wonder where the hat went when I changed.
She giggled. “There she is. You're a hopeless geek, Aya.” Then she assured me. “She won't be inclined to hunt on her own anymore if you let her out every once in a while like that.”
I countered, “She? But you just now said that we are the same person, just different aspects.”
She sighed and said, “I'm just trying to put it in the best context for you to understand. Think of her as your animal instincts. As long as you stay in the driver's seat, they won't overwhelm you and force their own way to the surface. It isn't science, it's more... nature than anything.”
I nodded and then asked as I started to wring my hands, “Mind if I... umm... kiss you again?”
She smiled and dragged me back down to sit, “Yes, please. We'll have time to discuss this later.”
Then I found myself in heaven again. Kissing Doctor Olivia Nazari.
Chapter 7 – Raid
I don't know how long we were there, kissing each other in want and need, heating me up almost as much as I had been when my other form had been drowning in her pheromones.
My other form? Just how surreal had my life become?
We broke apart again, and she smiled and said, “I'm sure you have so many questions. It's going to take more than a night to even scratch the surface, we really need to have you speak with my mother to...”
Both of us cocked our heads toward the ladders, I blinked upon the realization that I heard horses out there. They were heading quickly toward the camp, and I could hear the men still talking by the campfire and in the tents. I raised a hand tentatively to touch an ear. She sighed out, “They aren't canine ears. You're still partially manifested... your eyes so you can see, and your other senses are enhanced too, just not as intensely as a full manifestation.”
Oh. My cheeks burned, and I asked, “Who would be out here at night on horseback?” I curled my upper lip exposing my teeth as I realized I could tell some of the men approaching were among the wicked. And I felt a bit nauseous about something else out there.
Her eyes widened, and she said, “There's something unnatural following behind the horses.” She felt it too?
Were they being chased by something? Or were... We were both in motion when the first gunshots rang out. She leapt and landed halfway up the ladder, moving insanely fast. I followed her realizing I was keeping pace. I've never been this fast before.
We saw the scene below us like it were still twilight. A dozen men on horseback were riding at the camp, firing automatic weapons into the air. And there were moving shadows on their heels that I couldn't quite make out even though I could see everything else just fine. Whatever they were, they weren't anything that was natural, I could feel it in my bones.
We started running for the camp as the workers all came out of the tents to look out into the darkness. They couldn't see the men bearing down on them yet in the dim light of the fire. Professor Harmon was calling out as he stepped out, “What's all this ruckus?”
Olivia caught my eye and pointed right, toward a rock outcropping that rose behind the camp that was used for shade in the hottest part of the day, which is why the camp was positioned as it was. She cut left at almost blinding speed.
What was I doing? These men were armed, and I was charging in. But I felt strong, fast... I could feel my jackal aspect smiling as she looked through my eyes as I let her instincts drive us. Why was she smiling? I swallowed, knowing it was the thrill of the hunt.
The riders split up, eight riding straight into camp, firing their rifles into the air as our men started arming themselves with shovels and breaker bars. Two peeled off to circle around left as two went right. They were going to come in from all directions. That feeling of wrongness seemed to fall back, waiting.
“Predators!” My jackal hissed into my mind. I still couldn't focus on them for some reason. It was as if that sense of wrongness with nature was causing some sort of feedback in my vision.
I ran and leapt, it was exhilarating when I soared through the air to land halfway up the rock formation.
I saw two of the riders sweeping around, they would pass below the overhang in a few seconds. I poured on the speed, still not entirely sure I knew what I thought I could do. But my heart was racing, and I could feel a smiling snarl on my face.
The main group of mounted raiders arrived and started forming a semi-circle around our guys who were starting to stand back to back. They were shouting in Arabic to, “Drop your weapons! Give us all your artifacts and your woman!” Black market antiquities smugglers? Human traffickers? They wanted me.
The two riders came to a stop by the outcropping, and one raised a rifle that wasn't anything a raider should possess. It looked like a sleek sniper rifle, and I could see a camouflage shirt sleeve poking out from under the long robes the men were wearing. These weren't raiders!
Albert was calling out as he strode forward responding in Arabic, “Now hold on here. We don't have anything of value. We are scholars, not prospectors.”
I saw Olivia cutting toward the other two riders, running like a shadow, a hunter forgotten to time, swift, silent.
The leader of the group said, “If you will not cooperate, we will make an example of you.”
My lungs were heaving as I poured on the speed, my heart beating in panic when the man pointed at Professor Harmon and made a hand signal. The man with the sniper rifle started to raise the barrel up toward the man I saw as family, they were going to kill him... shoot him in the back like cowards.
I growled and dove into the air as time seemed to slow like it had at the University, and I let my jackal burst forth and take control like she was urging me to. My leap covered at least ten yards, sending me vaulting off the rock formation to hurtle down twenty feet to the mounted men.
I felt liberated while power coursed through every cell in my body as I became something... more. I spun through the air in a graceful pirouette I could only have dreamed of before. And as I spun, my hands reached to my back and pulled forward a metal staff which was strapped there. It had an oddly formed hook at one end. Where the hell had that come from?
As if it were part of the aerial spin, in a move that was beyond the grace of mere humans, I slashed down with the staff when I slid past the man as I landed on the ground on my feet beside the horse with a bone-shaking thud.
I didn't even look back at the man as he slumped from his horse to land in a heap on the ground, screaming and cradling the bloody stump where his hand used to be. I heard the two pieces of the sheared rifle fall beside him as I roared, spooking the two horses, the other man trying to stop his horse from rearing up.
The man on the ground, if he lived, had a chance of changing his life, he was not fully wicked and irredeemable yet, so I had no use for him. He was no threat now.
I focused on the other man. I smiled, as I looked down my obsidian muzzle. This other man was mine, his soul so black it would feed the underworld denizens well.
His true name was clear to me. I dove, and one long arm slashed out, my claws gashing his
chest and pulling him off his horse, which charged off into the night with the other. We rolled onto our feet as he drew a sidearm, my staff was held out across my arm pointing over my back in some sort of fighting stance. Dear lord, I was a ninja or something.
Before he could pull his trigger, I seemed to slide through the distance between us like I was made of smoke, and as I drifted up to him, cheek to cheek, I whispered in a language so ancient there was no contextual basis for it, yet I knew what I was saying, “Ahmad, the fool of many faces.” I snarled as power wrapped around him, stripping the wicked from his bones, leaving nothing but a husk behind, the darkness of his soul retreating through me like I was a doorway to the damned. It was sickening and vile, and I never wanted to feel it again... but I knew instinctively that I would this night.
Then I was in motion, dodging left and right as I advanced on the mounted men who were firing blindly into the dark in my general direction, where they knew their men were supposed to be.
I looked to the other side to see only the blur of a woman with a falcon's head, bearing down on the main group of raiders. Two heaps lying in the desert sand behind her. I smiled. “Mine.” She moved like a spirit, deadly and beautiful.
As we closed in on our men, I felt something building, a sense of power and nature that was exhilarating. Olivia curled a hand in the air and a dust devil appeared in the camp swirling frantically as it settled over the campfire and increased in speed. The vortex created a vacuum that had a spire of flame reaching up into the sky, extinguishing the fire and shrouding the camp in complete darkness except for the stars above and a couple flashlight beams from workers who held them.
She could do that? What else could she do?
I could hear a high-frequency hum coming from the leader of the raiders as well as the man to his right. I realized it was likely beyond any human hearing and it was coming from the night vision goggles they wore. The leader, sitting tall in his saddle, turned to our men and lowered his weapon. I knew this had all turned into a clusterfuck and he was likely instructed to leave no witnesses if things went crossways like this.
I poured on the speed, my wide, clawed feet gaining purchase in the sand as the camp blurred in my peripheral vision. The man's weapon was pointing at the professor, and I saw him starting to squeeze the trigger. I screamed out, “No!” as I slid between them, throwing the staff at the mounted man, the end opposite the hook had tines leading.
But my eyes widened when the staff dissolved in mid-flight as soon as it left my hand. I blinked as I realized that my hesitation had cost me as the first of the bullets slammed into my gut. The man was screaming out a challenge as he emptied his magazine into me. Was this it? Was I going to die? It sure felt like it as I was knocked back by the force of the bullets, each hitting me like a runaway truck.
When he stopped firing to reload, I gasped. My chest and stomach were on fire, and I looked down to see a couple flattened bullets, which hadn't quite punctured the smooth black porcelain skin under my bullet-riddled shirt, fall off my chest. But I could see the other shots that had gotten through, blackish red blood seeping from the wounds, staining my favorite shirt, which looked like a child's shirt on my new form.
On instinct, I reached to my back to find that the staff was there again. What the hell? I pulled it out, wincing at the pain in my chest. If I was going to die here and now, I'd do it protecting my family, my people. I started forward, and the man looked up as he slammed a new magazine home. I could tell that this man, whose true name was, Thomas Cline, speaker of untruths of Texas, was suddenly afraid, seeing I was still on my feet, if barely.
Then he twisted to the piercing cry of a bird of prey to my right, and we saw a blur that could have been the wind itself, as Olivia literally flew past two mounted men in a graceful leap. One moment they were in their saddles, the next they had been pulled away by the sexiest wraith I ever did see.
The leader grunted in frustration as he looked around, then he called out in English as his horse reared up in fear as I approached, pushing the pain aside, “Retreat! Send in the Hybrids to sterilize the place!” He pivoted the horse and started to gallop away from me, just as a shadow slammed into me from the side, sending me tumbling and skipping along the sand as I heard a savage, inhuman snarl.
I gasped for air, either the impact or the bullets may have cracked some ribs or bruised them heavily at the very least. I staggered to my feet to find myself beside one of the fleeing horsemen. But with a hissing flash of scales and reptilian fangs in my vision, he was gone, his horse galloping off in terror.
I looked between the horrific beast charging at me, and the back of my tent, where I saw what looked like a serpent's tail as the legs of the rider was dragged behind it. Was... was one of these abominations helping us?
I concentrated on the shadowy beast that was hurtling toward me faster than any human could move, this close I could finally make it out instead of it causing that odd feedback in my vision. The thing that horrified me most was that I could taste its damaged soul that was nothing but an echo under the unnatural power of the thing. It had once been human!
Now, it was anything but, with its cloven feet and half human, half head of a bull, one bull's horn lowered at me as it charged, the other horn a twisted, deformed mess like the human parts of this nightmare of a minotaur. What had they done to the poor man?
He had a heavy collar around his neck which had blinking lights on the clasp. And his anguished cry, half human, half creature of some sick twisted fantasy echoed through the desert around us, reflecting off the stone outcropping.
Instinctively, I knew I should have been terrified, especially since it was quite possible I was dying on my feet after being shot so many times, but I found myself smiling instead. I charged right back and snarled out a howl of adrenaline-fueled rage. But it was a rage at whoever had done this to him since they had perverted his soul so much that I couldn't even find his true name in it.
I swung the staff up between my hands as we collided. The ground shook, and I could see the sand around us ripple out in a shockwave. We had both stopped dead, evenly matched in strength, his horns blocked by the staff. I stared into his eyes, and behind the rage, all I could see was fear and pain.
He dropped into a roll swinging out one of those heavy cloven hooves which I caught in one hand before flinging him back. He turned it into a flip, landing on his hooves and then raising his hands in some sort of martial arts stance. Whatever he looked like, he had once been someone trained in combat. Was he some sort of soldier? Had he volunteered to have this... this abominable act committed upon his body and soul?
He lowered his head to charge again, and I thrust the tined end of the staff out. Surprising myself that I stopped it just as it touched his forehead, daring him to commit to the charge and run himself through.
Instead in a flash he slapped the staff away, surprising me and I lost hold of it and it dissolved into the shadows of the night. And he was on me, striking fast with his hands and cloven hooves. To my surprise, I was countering just as fast. Spinning and kicking and striking as I slapped away his blows. He looked shocked even though it was just as shocking to me as to him, how was I doing this?
I was slowing, and he knew it. The pain and exertion was causing my wounds to seep more of that dark blood. He huffed out with a smirk on that disfigured face of his, “I can do this all night girlie. Looks like you've hit your limit.”
I sighed loudly and reached to my waist and pulled my Walther and fired a single shot at his forehead. He was dead before his body hit the ground, but I had already started turning away. “Don't call me girlie.”
I holstered the gun and started running at another of the shadowy creatures that was mauling one of the workers. I saw the good Doctor flipping through the air like an acrobat as she slammed feet first into the third one over by the main tents. Good, she was still alive. I couldn't say the same thing about me. I put my hand to my chest and pulled it away
to look at the slick sheen on it. Blood no doubt, as I couldn't differentiate it from the obsidian skin on my clawed hand.
I whispered, “I'm sorry, Olivia,” as I charged in to get the beast off of the man whose cries had ceased.
Her head swung instantly toward me. Shit. She had heard that. She didn't need to be distracted with something she couldn't help. I snarled as I dove. Seeing this creature was a half-formed raven like being, with a malformed beak on its partially human face. One human eye and one midnight black eye locked on me as I slammed into the beast.
It swung one wing at me, the other appendage was an arm with a malformed, club-like hand. The wing hit my waiting hands like a baseball bat in my palms, I grasped it and tossed with all my might, hearing the bones in the leading edge of the wing snapping and splintering from the torsion.
She hissed out a gurgled caw of pain and rage. I dove at her, and an electric jolt leapt from her collar to my fist as I hit her. Were... were these people being controlled? I staggered back when she kicked me with what felt like a wrecking ball. If I had been human, every bone in my chest would have caved in. I only staggered back.
I heard a growl in my head and my voice telling me, “You're reacting too slowly, let me do this.” I blinked and then tried to give myself over to the animalistic presence inside me. I was moving much faster then, much more gracefully than I thought I could as I almost danced around this bird woman. Blocking every blow but not attacking. What was I doing?
Then when the woman overextended her broken wing at us... at me, I swung with more might than I thought I was capable of, especially injured as I was. It hurt when my fist impacted the collar, it shattered at the same time it started to pump what I instinctively knew would have been a lethal dose of electricity into the woman. She screamed then flung the broken collar away.
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