The Renegade Shifters

by Cheryl Rush Cowperthwait

  Before long the jeep made a rapid turn to the right. Tree branches scraped against the side of the jeep. Their shrill metallic noises grated in her ears like nails on a chalkboard. The drive was softened by layers of pine needles and other fauna underneath the tires. The light was swallowed up, the deeper into the trees they went. Then out of nowhere, Geoff stopped.

  “What? Flat tire? Do we walk from here?” Bailey rapid-fired her questions.

  Marlow grinned. “Just wait.”

  A low whine was heard. It sounded like it was coming towards them. Bailey looked on with disbelief as a platform raised in front of them. Geoff let off the brake and inched onto the slightly raised platform. Once all four wheels were on, it lowered them down to a concrete parking area. Geoff drove off the platform and parked the jeep as the steel form rose back to seal them in.

  “Now, that’s impressive.” Bailey climbed out of the jeep.

  From the outside, the house had a modern look, like the Frank Lloyd Wright designs that so impressed Marlow. As they approached the door all the glass windows along the front illuminated a soft glow. When they entered, Bailey noticed how large and open the living room was, like out of a Hollywood movie.

  Geoff waved his hand in front of him. “This room is mostly for business.”

  Marlow chuckled. “What he means is, on the rare occasions we decide to go over the top, we’ll invite some people over. It’s a one-way trip for them, of course. We can’t have anyone know where we live. We simply choose our targets and tell them we’re giving a party and bring them here. We hit the clubs and find our catch of the day. It helps us to break loose once in a while.”

  “And?” Bailey asked, spellbound.

  Geoff picked up the conversation. “You’re going to love it here. The area we parked the jeep goes on for a great distance and leads into the mountain where the drive dead ends, but there are tunnels just perfect for a dragon.”

  “So, you bring recruits or—"

  “No,” said Linken. “We bring entertainment. Think of it as a game of tag. They run, we chase. We get exercise, let off some steam so we don’t go ballistic at large, and get a nice warm dinner for our efforts.”

  “Don’t people start wondering what happened to them all?” Bailey’s curiosity was piqued.

  Geoff answered, “Well, we keep it down to a minimum, the parties that is. And we choose our ‘guests’ carefully. After all, L.A. is the hub for wayward wanderers.”

  Bailey’s eyes sparked embers. “I’m going to like it here.”

  “Yes. You will. Matter of fact, we have planned a special welcome home for you. Tomorrow night we’re going to go hit the clubs.” Geoff announced.

  Amid the yells and howls, Bailey felt something in her soul leap. Finally, feeling relaxed and welcomed into the pack, so to speak. The rebels, the outlaws, the untouchables. She would dance in the flames and give into her true nature.

  The next evening they were on the prowl, each seeking a challenging ‘guest’. The music pounded and shook the ground as much as the gyrations of bodies did. The air was thick with musk, music and desire. Bailey looked up to see him. Jet black hair clinging to the back of his leather jacket, piercing ice-blue eyes. His jacket should have been embroidered ‘Trouble.’ The sea of writhing bodies mysteriously parted.

  He walked over to her, his height towering above her. He leaned down and spoke. “I think I’ve waited my whole life for you to find me.” She tried to turn away. She didn’t want him to be chosen as her ‘guest’. Too late. The group merged with them, announcing the private party. They poured out of the club and into a waiting limo. The music drowned out any chance for words. Bailey wanted to warn him, to say something, but his eyes held her words captive.

  The music blared and shots of alcohol ran down their chins, not satiating the hunger running through their bodies. No one realized they had made it down into the hidden garage. They continued to drink, sing, and dance for several minutes before Geoff announced their arrival and threw open his door. Noise of the inebriated echoed in hollow rings. First Geoff, then Marlow, shifted as into vampire and wolf. Surfer dude Linken burst through his shirt and jeans. Fangs dripped saliva as he ripped the dress of his date.

  Bailey roared. Her date said, “Do whatever makes you happy. Do anything at all.” He stood next to her, ignoring the screams around them. The night stood still.

  It was a disorienting moment when the chaos around Bailey grew quiet. Her awareness was drawn to a single sound. The thudding of heartbeats in time. Her massive blue-veined wings surrounded this fearless man, now so tiny he would fit underfoot. Who is he? Why does he stand there, unshaken?

  Chapter 3

  The torment in her soul stood between wanting to know his nature and taking a talon to his throat to watch him bleed out. She shifted without planning to, back into her human form. Sweat poured down into her eyes, her chest swelled with her panting as her body tried to extinguish the heat in which her dragon body thrived.

  “Who the—hell are you?” She panted in broken words.

  “The one who has loved you from the beginning.” His eyes never broke from hers.

  “You don’t know me. We’ve only just met.” Bailey tried to rationalize.

  He stepped within inches of her face. “Have we? Can you look into my eyes and believe we have only just met?”

  She shook her head sideways. “I don’t—know you.” Even as she said those words, there was flickering inside her. Remembrance?

  He tilted his head and cupped her chin in one hand, lifting her face. “Karmin. Have you forgotten your soul name? No matter how many names you go by, you will always be Karmin.”

  Her lips moved to mouth the name. Karmin. Something rippled under her skin of flesh and scale. An ancient knowledge on the fringe of forgetfulness. Is this a truth?

  “Who are you?” She asked for the second time.

  His index finger reached out and traveled across her cheek as his eyes consumed her. He uttered a single word. “Rhyzel.”

  She gave an involuntary gasp. That name, she thought, a flash before she passed out.

  The maddening, deafening commotion returned. Growls and howls filled the air above the last screams of the humans. Geoff was the first to notice Bailey on the ground with the towering hunk of a man leaning over her. He called out, “Linken and Marlow! It’s Bailey.”

  Rhyzel looked up to see he’d been circled by the friends of Bailey, in their alternate forms still dripping and smelling of the blood sport. Geoff, the vampire, stared down with red-veined eyes, a snarl rose from his throat. Pacing with hackles raised on the far side of the reclined Bailey, Marlow in her wolf form. Linken, still werewolf with yellow glowing eyes studied Bailey for signs of injury.

  Geoff pushed Rhyzel aside and lifted Bailey into his arms. “I’m taking her inside. Take care of him.” His words spat out his contempt of the unharmed human. As Geoff neared the front door, the air filled with the precursors of attack. Bailey’s head rolled off of Geoff’s arm and she screamed.

  Marlow and Linken turned to look at their friend.

  Rhyzel called out, “Tell them who I am.”

  She struggled to get out of Geoff’s arms, rocking back and forth until he released her. “Wait. Don’t harm him, I know him.” She still gripped Geoff’s arm for balance as Rhyzel walked towards her. “He is from Selzor,” she said in a whisper-soft voice. “Is it really you?”

  By the time her words tumbled out, he was next to her. “You remembered! It is I, Karmin. The Alpha 1 experiment gone bad. You saved me once, will you again?” His smile permeated every atom in her body.

  “Rhyzel—I thought—I thought they had hunted you down. They told me you were dead.” She shook her head trying to grasp all that was pouring through her brain.

  “Karmin?” Geoff scoffed. “Why does he call you Karmin?”

  “That is my soul name, before the experiments. It was who I was—before. I won’t try to confuse anyone. I don’t use my soul name, but you sh
ould know this, only Rhyzel knew it before now. Please, everyone, Rhyzel can be trusted. He is on the run too.”

  The group didn’t like surprises, especially when they were brought to their home. If it weren’t for Bailey, whoever this stranger was would have been shredded by now. It went against all their rules, all their protection, to let an outsider in to their tight circle of shapeshifters, but they knew Bailey. They knew her in the richness of all her shed names. She they trusted.

  One by one, they shifted to their human states and drifted off to the showers. Bailey had lost her wig in her shifting. Her auburn locks fell loosely around her shoulders. Rhyzel gently pulled a lock of hair close to his nose and inhaled the scent of her, all of her complicated blending, turmoil and excitement wafted up and filled him.

  “Come inside Rhyzel,” Bailey invited. “We have some catching up to do.”

  “Yes, dear Karmin, we do.”

  “Please, call me Bailey. What do you go by?”

  “Rye. Just Rye.”

  Chapter 4

  There he was uncomfortably close to her, spinning her thoughts like her hammering heart, out of control. The last she had seen Rhyzel was the night of his escape from the experimental lab in space. Now, all those memories rushed over her at full throttle.

  She had been a forced pseudo-technician in the lab when they dragged in the handsome specimen they pilfered from a recent hunt.

  He was having none of their assurances of his release after taking DNA samples. He could read it in their soulless eyes and the vast laboratory they brought him into. His ice-blue eyes took in everything, including the woman who didn’t resemble his captors in the least. She had a vacant look in her eyes, yet they responded when he fell into her view. They’d begun to water while the rest of her body language was non-existent.

  Long, bony fingers strapped Rhyzel onto the table. A loud piercing noise screamed through his head.

  As his eyes shot wide open his mouth drooled a cascade of bubbling spittle. They placed round metallic disks on his forehead, down his neck to his chest. Tube-like wires were hooked up to his muscled arms and legs. He had passed out or was sedated, it was difficult to tell which.

  The time Karmin had been held there didn’t make his treatment any easier to witness. They labeled him as Alpha-1. She’d seen the images of what they hoped to accomplish in manipulating his DNA. She had even learned how to interpret their language. It sickened her. This was no scientific exploration. This was purely evil, what the creatures did to the human specimens. Karmin felt in her heart these things were done solely for their entertainment—to see what they could invent, adapt, or change.

  She was used as a lab assistant because of her dexterity of digits. It was found she could extract the samples they required far more efficiently than they could. She had been modified too, but it was on her traits. They removed any moral sense she had carried of humanity. They had also designed a cocktail of medications she would have to self-inject. At first, she’d been told if she didn’t take the medication she would die. It didn’t take her long to figure out it caused a virtual shell, stripping away her emotions... at least, so they’d thought.

  Karmin remembered the succession of popping noises when it directed her attention to her tormentors. She had learned that sound blended with their quickly shifting eyes were of a heightened state of excitement. They plunged the vials into the tubing that was attached onto the man’s arms and legs. They flicked on the monitor to look at the idea of the blending they had chosen. A condor-type bird that had a wingspan of over twenty-two feet, a bald head, and black shiny feathers.

  Karmin had battled within herself, to break free of the chains that reduced her to this shell. She decided that day, if given the opportunity, she would switch the vials from which she had to inject herself. They were marked by having pictures attached to the vials indicating plants, humans both male and female, animals, etc. She simply switched the medicated vials to the ones marked female human.

  After the Alpha-1 was injected, he went through a week of torture as his metamorphosis took hold. They both were given cells next to one another of shiny metallic bars with narrow spacing. Through this window of vision, Karmin watched the torture Alpha-1 went through. Their tormentors, these alien demons, would come and watch them through the bars, waiting for the experiment to take hold. Karmin did her best to keep the tears from her eyes as they came in to poke and prod Alpha-1. Their popping sounds and excited movements made her want to rip them limb from limb.

  They did not come into the lab the next day. Karmin believed they were on another excursion. It was during this time Alpha-1 screamed out. “Help me! Stop this pain, please. Hear me, I am Rhyzel. I know you must hear me; you must still feel. They have done something to you too, I know it, or you wouldn’t have helped them.”

  Her eyes couldn’t hold back the dam of tears. They rushed down her face in a torrent. She felt a strength unknown climb up from the pit of her stomach and rush to her arms. She peeled the bars apart that separated them as he watched in amazement. Then, he shifted. He became this beautiful black-winged man. He stood transfixed, looking at his enormous wings. Karmin ripped the bars open so he could squeeze through and motioned him to go.

  “Come with me! We’ll escape.” Rhyzel said quickly.

  Karmin could only stutter out her words. “N-no. Can’t move quick. Escape.”

  “Tell me your name. I’ll come find you. I promise, wherever you are, I will find you,” he said. Ice-blue eyes devoured every detail of her face.

  “Kar-min.” She forced the word up her throat and out her quivering lips. “Find pod. Escape.”

  Before he turned to go, he could see a rippling of her skin as it was changing. She screamed and fell backwards. Between her screams, she yelled, “Go. Go.”

  He turned and fled the laboratory.

  Shaking the memory from her vision, she turned to him. “Somehow, I knew you escaped. I felt it as a hope that kept me alive.”

  “What happened to you, after I left? Did they hurt you?” Rye asked.

  “They didn’t know I still had traces of emotions left since I switched their medicine for vials marked ‘human female’. They tried to attack me saying they killed you as a bad experiment. Then they laughed in their strange way. One brought the vial to me from the row of vials marked human female. They grabbed me and dragged me to the monitor and showed me what was in those vials. It was different vials of dragons. Their popping sounds of laughter must have been what caused my first complete shifting. I felt the rush of heat travel through my body and I felt a strength I’d never known, well–except for when you needed help.” She smiled softly and looked down for a brief moment. “I think I surprised even them as I shifted because their spindly legs suddenly backed away. I reacted, just as they’d encoded me to do, without thought or morals or fear. I ripped their bulbous heads off and threw them against the wall. The scent of their blood made me wretch at first and then–a hunger set in. I found their pod and escaped. I crashed down in the mountains of Kentucky. Since then, I discovered a whole network of Shifters. Not all of them were experiments.” She paused and ran a shaking hand over her hair. “How about you, where did you go?”

  His eyes never left her face. She could feel the heat of them sliding over her as if it were his hands. Her breath came in quick bursts, as she tried to ignore what his eyes did to her. “I was in Italy, Rome actually. But I always heard the most beautiful women were in L.A. So, I came here—to find you.”

  Chapter 5

  You could have gotten yourself killed, back there. I’m still not sure how safe you are. Shifters aren’t trusting souls by their nature, so much has been done to us without our permission. You need to keep your eyes open around the Shifters. I’m new here, too, but at least I’ve been in the network for a while and have earned their trust.”

  “I’ll be watchful. I’ve got you on my side, don’t I?” Rhyzel’s hand reached over and brushed sweat-drenched locks away from Karmin’s
face. He watched the pulse in her neck hammer against her flesh, her eyes half-closed with his touch. He thought, this is dangerous grounds for a birdman and dragon shifter.

  Wings and scales were itching to erupt from adrenaline. One finger slipped down her cheek and traveled the rapid pulse just under her chin, drawing her in closer.

  Bailey issued a soft sigh.

  His lips parted, touching her neck as gentle as a rose petal. She trembled. Deftly, his arms scooped her off the sofa as his wings erupted from the spot behind his shoulder blades. He took her through the doorway and out into the cavernous underground area of concrete roadway and jagged mountainside. Raven-black wings strummed the air and climbed, circling with her in his tender embrace. He found what he searched for, the opening into the chiseled form and he plunged forward.

  Within the mountain were various nooks wide enough for dragons to reside. He found the one that had been freshly prepared for Bailey, his Karmin. Surely, she was meant for him. He knelt upon the bed of ferns and feathers, still caressing her in his arms. Rhyzel took her face into his hands and lifted her lips to his, first tenderly brushing her plump lips then parting them with his tongue. His heart hammered in time with hers, becoming entangled in their passion.

  Bailey moaned and writhed against him, whimpering. “No… oh no!” She pushed away and stood at the edge of the lair as she burst into her dragon skin, a roar slashing out from her throat. Rhyzel hungered for her, even as she towered over him, complete in her shifting to dragon form. “Oh Rye, oh no. I can’t control my shifting. It—it just happens,” she moaned.

  “I have spent years searching for you, Bailey, who will always be my Karmin. For that was who you were when I first fell into your eyes and became lost in them. What those creatures did to us is unforgivable. We will find a solution, a cure. I’m sure of it.”

  She turned her back and ripped her dagger-sharp talons against the cave’s wall. Her shapeshifting always brought on a raw mixture of power, hunger and angst fighting against her knowledge of self, compounded now by having Rhyzel near. “Rye? I never expected to see you again—and I’ve, well, I’ve gotten used to my life as a Shifter.” Her face dropped, her eyes clouded both in desire and an inner rage that fed her dragon fires.