Dark Changeling

by Margaret Carter

  “You're right, we can't take any chances. I'll check with the D.A.'s office and talk to a friendly judge.” O'Toole brightened up and shook Roger's hand. “Thanks, Doc! I knew you'd come through for us.”

  What have I done, though?Roger asked himself as he struggled home through downtown traffic. Sylvia would say he'd betrayed one of his own kind. Again Roger wondered whether to tell her what he'd learned. Though aware of his own cowardice in evading the confrontation, he decided to wait until the police ar-rested the supposed vampire. Until then, what he'd discussed with O'Toole was confidential. Smiling grimly at this ration-alization, Roger pigeonholed the subject.

  * * * *

  LIFTING A CORNER of the living room curtain, Sylvia stared at the figure under the street lamp three stories down. Roger, curse him, was right; she never should have given Rico her address. When the boy had come to her apartment, they'd shared a delicious hour together. Excitement tingled through her at the memory. She had brought him to climax three times. No older man, even goaded by the stimulus of her hypnotic seduction, could do that. The third time, she had allowed Rico to penetrate her, a new experience for both of them. No danger of pregnancy existed, since Sylvia hadn't reached her fertile stage.

  Thinking of Rico's lovemaking made her lightheaded. Too bad she had to blur his memory of the union, for her own safety. After that one encounter, she had ordered him to stay away. The order hadn't stuck. If she'd had better sense, she knew, she would have wiped her address from his mind. In the four nights since then, the boy had shown up each evening promptly at sunset. At first he had lingered in the lobby to waylay her. When the doorman evicted him, he turned to skulking outside.

  Watching Rico, Sylvia pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a moan.Dark Powers, I want him so badly! She'd been warned about this kind of addiction but never experienced it before. Its intensity took her by storm. What made this boy different from other donors? Because he pursued her with such abject devotion? Poor child, she was his first sexual partner, and he thought he was in love with her. Sylvia felt hollow inside, and the idea of stalking some other victim made her queasy. Imagining the joy that would burst from Rico if she invited him in demolished the last of her judgment. Even from this distance she felt the tug of his passion. She allowed it to draw her down to him.

  When she reentered the lobby, holding Rico's hand, the doorman frowned as they walked past. The man disapproved of Sylvia's allowing “riffraff” into his domain. Well, this was one intruder she didn't want protection from.

  Upstairs, she led Rico to the couch and wrapped her arms around his waist, her hands massaging his chest under his T-shirt. His flesh seemed to scorch her palms. Already she couldn't restrain herself from nibbling his earlobes, licking his face and neck.What's wrong with me? Slow down, girl, what's the rush? Four nights was a long time to go without, but she shouldn't be starving quite yet.

  Just before she submerged him in an erotic waking dream, Rico said in a voice hoarse with arousal, “I'm getting hassled a lot by Tony—you know, my cousin, he lives with me and Mom— he keeps bugging me about where I go at night.”

  Half drunk on Rico's lust, without having tasted a drop of his blood, Sylvia took little notice of the remark. “What did you tell him?” she asked unconcernedly, working Rico's arms out of his shirt.

  “Nothing.” The boy sounded faintly offended. “Hey, what do you think I am? You're special—I wouldn't go shooting off my mouth about you. But Tony, he's worried, he thinks I'm still a little kid.”

  “Well, you certainly aren't that!” She silenced Rico with a kiss, and within minutes neither of them had energy to spare for talking.

  * * * *

  THE SIGHT OF the man looming in her doorway hit Sylvia like a blow to the chest. “How in the name of—how did you get up here?”

  The tall, broad-shouldered, red-bearded man laughed, “You think I couldn't handle that uniformed clown in the lobby? Well, are you going to let me in, or risk your neighbors hearing this?”

  She retreated a step. “Oh, all right, come in.” After closing the door, she said, “Neil, I told you in no uncertain terms that I never wanted to see you again. I don't like the way you operate.”

  “Not liking it is your privilege. Turning me in is something else.” No longer laughing, he radiated anger like heat from a furnace.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” She sat down. Neil didn't; he paced around the room, narrowly avoiding her books and stereo equipment, as he raged at her.

  “I'm talking about losing my home—losing mycar, for hell's sake—going underground! You think you can drive me into hiding and get away with it?”

  Sylvia clutched the edge of the sofa to keep from trembling. “I haven't done anything to you. All I wanted was to stay as far away from you as possible.”

  He bared his teeth at her. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It's the truth. Why would I suddenly betray you, after all this time?”

  “The cops came to get me four days ago. I was asleep, I barely woke up in time, I had tofight them!” His fist slammed into the nearest wall. “They saw me, they know what I look like! I've had to hole up in abandoned buildings.” The scent of his anger made her stomach lurch.

  Noting the hairline crack in the plaster where he'd hit the wall, Sylvia armored her mind against the fear seeping through her vitals. In a hand-to-hand struggle she would have little chance against Neil, older, larger, and more experienced. “Sit down and take it easy. If you'll just listen to me—”

  “Listen!” He whirled to face her. “All right, little one, if you didn't tip off the police, who did?”

  “I don't know. We're the only ones in Boston.” A sudden thought struck her.Roger—who else? She couldn't guess how he had stumbled across Neil's identity, but that had to be the answer.

  Neil's quivering alertness showed that he had caught her shift of mood. “You do know something. Who is it?”

  Sylvia reinforced her psychic shield. Older than she, Neil could probably force Roger's name out of her unless she kept her guard up. “I don't really know. I have a good guess.”

  Neil bent over her, his hands pressing on the couch on either side of her head. “So tell me. Why won't you let me read your emotions? What are you hiding?”

  Sylvia sat rigidly still, visualizing those hands compressing her skull. “I won't say any more. I wouldn't turn you in to the police, but I certainly won't betray him to you, either. Especially when I'm not sure.”

  Neil straightened up. Sylvia couldn't help letting out a relieved breath. “I think you're lying. You're inventing this third person just to make me believe you're not a traitor. If there were another of us in Boston, I'd know.”

  Sylvia said nothing.

  His eyes bored into her. “Then open up to me.” When Sylvia shook her head, he said, “Just give me a name—then I might believe you're not guilty.”

  Standing up, she said, “Neil, this conversation is over.”

  He relaxed the pressure on her mind and headed for the door. “The conversation may be over. What I'm going to do to you sure as hell isn't.”

  Chapter 7

  In the passenger seat of Sylvia's car, Roger stole wary glances at her. Since leaving her apartment earlier that night, she'd hardly spoken to him. Nor had she stopped to claim a vic-tim. He felt her anger but couldn't guess the reason for it.

  Finally, on an expressway deserted except for the speeding Mustang, Sylvia said, “I guess I'm cooled off enough to talk now. Roger, does the name ‘eil Sandor’ mean anything to you?”

  He went cold. “So you really do know him.”

  “What I'm asking is, how do you know about him?” Her anger felt like an ice pick between Roger's eyes.

  “I helped the police in their investigation of the serial murders, as a consultant to the prosecution.”

  “So somehow you unearthed his name—and yougave it to them!” She gunned the engine. “How in the name of all the powers of dar
kness could you do something so stupid?”

  Now that the jolt of hearing her mention Sandor had re-ceded, Roger felt indignation rising in him. “Stupid? Turning in a murderer? What would you expect me to do, shield the man?”

  "Yes!”She screeched the word, and her fingers worked spasmodically on the wheel. Calming herself, she said, “You never, never betray one of us to ephemerals, no matter what he's done.”

  In no mood to cater to Sylvia's fantasy, Roger said, “You know I don't believe there is an ‘us.’ And even if there were, I'd feel no obligation to protect a killer.”

  “You still need convincing? Well, stand by to be convinced.” Taking an off-ramp two exits further along, she drove into a rural area, unlit two-lane back roads overhung with trees. She cruised with the headlights off. Some twenty minutes after leaving the freeway, she pulled the Mustang off the road into an open field. “Looks good and deserted.” She killed the ignition and stepped out.

  Roger followed her a few hundred yards through damp weeds. “Pleasant night for a walk, but I don't see the point of it.”

  “Just watch.” She lifted her face to the sky, spreading her arms to test the wind. With her back to Roger, he could see her muscles undulating beneath the skin as the outline of her body blurred and re-formed. The glow of her aura intensified, and the energy she radiated ruffled the hair on Roger's arms. Her skin color darkened from white to glossy blue-black, sprouting velvety fuzz.

  Petrified with disbelief, burrs clinging to his trouser cuffs and gnats buzzing around his head, Roger stared at what unfurled from Sylvia's back.

  She had wings.

  Veined like newly-budded leaves, they spanned over ten feet from tip to tip. When she spread them to full extension, they quivered in the cool breeze. She glanced over her shoulder and laughed at his astonishment. He noted that her ears had become pointed, her face more feline than human. She took a running start for a leap into the wind that reminded Roger of a child trying to launch a kite twice her own size. She kicked off her sandals as she left the ground.

  Catching an updraft, Sylvia glided toward the trees, her body arched like a bow. She barely skimmed the highest branches before attaining a safe altitude. Not much of one, around fifty feet. In a gradual spiral she managed to ascend another twenty or thirty. Recovering his powers of observation, Roger noticed that the motion was more of a glide than birdlike flight. The wings flexed only to restore balance or to steer.

  After a few minutes she spiraled down, drifting to the ground a few yards from Roger. Her aura crackled with energy, as if she'd absorbed electricity from the atmosphere. She combed her tangled hair back from her face with both hands, arching her neck with a wordless purr of delight.

  Her elation infected Roger. He stepped up to her and gave her an exuberant hug, half disappointed that the change was already reversing. Holding her at arms’ length, he gazed into her glowing eyes.They're red, like live coals! "My God, that would be worth a lifetime of lurking in the shadows!”

  Pulling away, she said, “You should be able to do it, too. If you're like me—”

  “Give it up, Sylvia.” Momentarily his head swam with vertigo. At the thought of changing—dissolving—like that, and breaking loose from the earth, he felt as if he were falling into an interstellar void.

  “You're afraid to let me teach you.”

  He shook his head, snapping the world back into focus. “If it'll satisfy you once and for all, you may try.”

  Her blazed with eagerness. “Wonderful! Look at me, con-centrate.” He allowed her to lure him with her eyes, draw him into the maelstrom of energy spinning around her. The wings erupted from her back. When she clasped his hands, hers burned his skin like dry ice. “Now, Roger,” she whispered. “Come with me, soar with me!”

  For an instant his vision misted over, and he lost all awareness of Sylvia's touch and the ground beneath his feet. A second later, the dizziness faded, and he saw and heard only the mundane spring night. Again Sylvia looked fully human.

  Her disappointment pressed on him. “Try again,” she urged.

  “No, thank you, once is enough. Accept it, Sylvia, this knocks out your assumption about me.” He felt a grim satis-faction in the failure.

  She withdrew her hands from his. “Let's go back to my place. We need to talk.”

  “Yes—we certainly do. Why did you choose to show me that now?”

  “Because I was fed up with your stubbornness, thinking I was crazy. You see where it got us?”

  In the car, easing it back onto the pavement, she remarked, “I can't figure out why you don't have the power.”

  Maybe because this notion that I'm like you is a friendly piece of wishful thinking.

  “No human being can do that,” said Roger.

  Sylvia shrugged. “I'm not human. When are you going to admit that you aren't, either? Our psi powers include limited control over our physical forms. We can shift our molecules into an alternate configuration, a shape that's—imprinted on the genes, I guess—for a brief time. Except for the oldest ones, it takes a pretty big expenditure of energy. What the observer sees partly depends on what he expects to see. Oh, Roger, I can't explain it, not the way one of the elders could. Can't you just accept, for once?” Accelerating down the highway, she launched into a falsetto crooning of “Little Old Lady from Pasadena.”

  A few minutes later she said, “I think I know why you couldn't change. You don't want to badly enough.”

  “You're fantasizing again.” The subject made him physi-cally uncomfortable, constricting his lungs with anxiety. “Would wanting to be a fish make me able to breathe water?”

  Back at Sylvia's apartment, Roger felt her mood shifting to grim apprehension. He asked, “How did you know I'd turned Sandor in?”

  “He came here,” she said, handing Roger a glass of wine and sitting on the floor with her own drink. “First time I'd seen him in months. He had a clash with the police and barely got away.”

  “I know about that,” Roger said. “The detective in charge told me about the suspect escaping.” O'Toole had described one arresting officer's broken neck and the multiple fractures sustained by the other. “He said they later found Sandor's car abandoned a few miles south of the city.” The Lieutenant had also told him about Albert Warren's hysterical terror upon being told of his imminent release. The judge had committed Warren for a ten-day period of psychiatric evaluation, probably for the best with Sandor on the loose.

  “Neil threatened me.” Roger sensed Sylvia's fear. “He thinks I gave him away. I guessed it must've been you, but of course I didn't tell him that.I have a few principles.”

  That stung. “How could you expect me to adhere to the ethics of a group I didn't know existed?”

  Sylvia bristled. “I told you often enough. You should have listened. Anyway, you know now.”

  “I know that you are something—not human. It seems plausible that Sandor belongs to the same species—though his habits are radically different from yours—if there is a species. For all I know, you might belong to a family group carrying a unique complex of mutations.”

  Putting down her wine glass, Sylvia plunged both hands into her hair. “I give up—I absolutely give up!”

  “Am I supposed to take your word for all this? Prove it by introducing me to your people.” He didn't know whether to hope or fear that she would take him up on the dare.

  “After what you've done? I told you, I'm not allowed to pass out indiscriminate information—and you are a menace!”

  “What do you think Sandor will do? If he's on the run, maybe he won't have time to harass you.”

  Sylvia hid her face in her hands for a moment before staring up at Roger. “There's no telling what he might do. He's a renegade; rules don't mean anything to him.”

  “Renegade? Then surely your group—if there is a group—doesn't approve of his crimes.”

  “Killing ephemerals conspicuously is against the rules,” she said. “Betraying one of our own is acr
ime . The worst thing any of us can do, besides murdering one of our kin.” She tossed her head, brushing tangled hair out of her eyes. “But you don't think any of that applies to you.”

  Roger finished his wine, fortifying himself for what he intended to say. “Sylvia, I know this isn't worth much, but I apologize for doubting your—difference.”

  “My inhumanity, you mean. Thanks, I guess.”

  “May I—would you demonstrate that shapeshifting again? I was too shocked to notice the details.”

  “All right.” He felt himself blushing when she peeled off her sundress. Amused at his discomfort, she turned her back to him. “You'll get a better look this way, and I can change more fully. I'm nowhere near advanced enough to include clothes in the transformation.”

  Again Roger sensed the air around her vibrating with elec-tricity. Here she hadn't space to extend the wings completely. They were as light as parachute silk, yet aglow with the vitality of her aura. “I still don't believe what I'm seeing,” he murmured. “I've had to accept some forms of ESP, but changing the very shape of your body—that's a whole different order of impossibility.”

  “Not so much as it seems,” Sylvia replied. “My mass and internal organs don't change. It's all on the outside.”

  He ran a fingertip along the satiny surface of one wing. A velvet layer of hair covered it, as well as her shoulders and arms.

  She started, with a hissing intake of breath. “Careful—when my molecules are in flux, I'm super-sensitive.”

  “I won't hurt you.” He lightened his touch but didn't break contact. The membrane's delicate strength fascinated him. It quivered under his caress as it had in the night wind. Sylvia's breathing and heartbeat quickened. Turning to face him, she reached up to grasp his wrists, but if she'd intended to remove his hands, the will to do so deserted her. She leaned against his chest as he continued stroking her wings, his arms encircling her. Now her whole body trembled—excited, he sensed, by his touch on her transformed flesh. Their lips met. The cool caress of her mouth titillated without violently arousing him. He broke off the kiss when her nails dug into the nape of his neck. “Sheath your claws.”