by Melle Amade
Iona steps off a trolley and spies me immediately. Her hair is pulled up and tied back in a long, tightly woven braid and she’s wearing black leggings and a black hoodie. She seems slightly more prepared than I am in my jeans and T-shirt. I feel like I’m supposed to be leading, but all of a sudden without my friends I’m relying on Iona.
“Are you nervous?” she asks as she walks up.
With all my heart, I want to say, “No.” I want to be brave, but I also want to be honest. I raise my head. I just want to get it right, like I want to get everything right. But I’m so afraid I won’t be able to do that. But of all the things I need to get right, rescuing my dad is one of the things I absolutely have to do correctly.
“Do you ever think maybe the script is written?” Iona asks.
I look at her with surprise because that might be almost exactly the last thing I ever expected to hear come out of her mouth. “No,” I answer honestly.
“So, you think you have all the power?” she asks. “To control the outcome?”
And it makes me cringe because the way she says it makes me sound so stupid. She makes it sound so obvious that I can’t control anything.
“I want to control the outcome,” I say. “I want to control it completely.”
“This is normal,” she says. “But it’s also mostly impossible.”
The last thing I need right now is a lecture from Iona. I tap the concrete bench. “How do you feel about me being with Callum?” I try to turn the tables on her to get her focused on her own issues rather than mine. I inhale sharply and look away. Maybe I’ve overstepped and said the wrong thing. Maybe this hurts her more than I should have.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
But to my surprise, she laughs. “You don’t see anything beyond yourself half the time,” she says, and the words burn against my ears because I’m so afraid they’re true.
“Discovering Callum was in love with you was a relief,” she says. “Because it gave me time.”
“Time?” I ask. “To find another partner? Another husband?”
“No.” She looks at me sideways. “It gave me time to figure out how I’m going to tell my truth to the people who are going to care.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Being a Nuverling is not the only thing against the rules in the shifter world.”
And I feel like I’m dense because I know she’s trying to tell me something but I don’t quite understand what it is.
She stares out to the Mississippi river flowing in front of us. “But I think there’s something worse than upsetting people,” she says. “What’s worse is if you go to your grave without living your truth, regardless of the outcome.”
I let out of nervous laugh. “You’re not going to your grave anytime soon.”
“Well you never know,” she murmurs, her gaze shifting to the ground and I know she’s thinking about the prison we’re about to try and infiltrate. “But yes, in the scheme of things, you would expect we both have a lot of life left in us. The only question is how we choose to live it.”
Her words settle over me and in the dark light of the evening. There’s something in her she wants to share and if I speak, there will never be an opportunity for her to get the words out. I feel like I would almost be breaking some moment she desperately wants to have. And for once, I feel like maybe I’m not being selfish as I sit here quietly, waiting for her to find the words to express herself. We are held in a bubble of silence and nervous energy, but for once it is not my nervous energy, it’s hers.
I wait in the silence.
“You saved me,” she finally says. “From doing something I would forever regret, because I would have married Callum in front of El Oso and everyone. I would’ve taken a vow and been required to hold it for the rest of my life. And I would’ve made a terrible wife for him.”
“You’ll make a great wife,” I say, feeling like there must be something I can say to lighten up her mood. I’ve never seen her so vulnerable.
“I hope someday I will,” she says with a smile. And then she takes a deep breath, as if she’s bringing the entire world into her and trying to gain some strength to get something out. It is almost as if the air around us is absorbed into her, filling her with strength and power and light that expands her. “But I will never make a good wife to a man. I don’t like them, I mean, not in that way.”
Iona finally exhales all the air she took in and relaxes in a way I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her relax before.
There seem to be no words for this moment, so instead I reach over to her and hold her hand in mine and grip it strongly, letting her know I love and accept her exactly as she is and will stand by her through anything she faces, because, well, she is like me. She is different. She is a shifter, but she doesn’t fit into the shifter world. She is an outsider. And I know exactly what that feels like.
22
Chapter 22
“We interrupting something?” Roman asks as he walks up with Darko by his side.
I glare at Darko. “No way.” I shake my head. “No way is he coming with us. I don’t trust him.”
“Now you don’t trust him?” Iona scoffs. “Seems a bit late for that.”
“I didn’t hand them over to the Order if that’s what you’re thinking.” Darko raises an eyebrow at me.
“You’re the only one who knew we were there.”
“Not true,” Roman shrugs. “Don’t forget Lord Mubarak. Bet he’s one dangerous crocodile for all his ‘Switzerland’ rhetoric.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Iona says. “We’re going to pair up.”
“You’re with me.” I nod to her. The truth is, Roman is the only one I truly trust of these four, so I rather we split up. This way we’ll be able to keep an eye on the other two. “You two stay out here and keep a look out.”
“Seriously?” Roman rolls his eyes. “What do you think this is? Some old western movie? We have phones and eyes in the complex.”
“Our phones aren’t going to work that far underground,” Iona says. “We’ll have eyes but we won’t be able to communicate.”
“We’re not splitting up,” Darko says. “The only real strength we have against them is to act together.”
“Fine,” I mutter. “Come on, it’s this way.”
I take them down a small set of side steps that lead to seemingly nowhere, except at the bottom there’s a sharp right turn and we end up in a tunnel under the main road. A full metal door stands halfway down the dingy tunnel.
“So how are we getting in?” Iona asks.
“The plan was always to use Roman’s poison.” I point at Roman who’s holding up Jazz hands and giving Iona a wink.
“How are you going to stop them from seeing us?”
I’ve been putting my mind to it for a while and hadn’t come up with much. We could take the cameras out, but they would get suspicious. Without Zan’s programming skills it’s not like we can substitute the live video for an old video stream where nothing is happening.
“We’re going to avoid the ones we can avoid an cover the ones we can’t,” I say.
“Okay,” Roman nods. “Sounds good. I can get the door open.”
“We’re not going to use the door.” I smile.
I point up to a small mesh two thirds of the way up the wall. “It’s a ventilation tunnel here that leads in to the complex. We’re can’t get in them as humans but we can get in as birds.”
“And bats,” Darko nods.
“And frogs,” Roman nods.
I roll my eyes. “Yes. All of us can get in.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Iona raises her arms and shifts, flitting up to the ventilation tunnel and tearing the mesh off with her talons.
It’s an awkward process, crawling into a tunnel as a bird. The idea of being a bird is that you can fly freely in the sky and now we’re in a tunnel. It only goes a few feet forward and then it goes straight down. Iona winks at me and
disappears. I follow immediately. If the tunnel were any wider I would be tumbling, but this is just a long straight tube, like being inside a fireman’s pole with no control.
It’s claustrophobic.
We land in a stacked pile. I’m glad Iona is on the bottom because man, that has got to hurt. She pries herself out from under me and crawls down the tube, which now moves horizontal. There’s no way we can shift in this location. It’s way too tight. But at least here we are safe. For now.
The ventilation tubes are set up exactly like the radiating cells. I peck at Iona’s tail feather, getting her to stop when we come to a nexus of tubes. I close my eyes and visualize the map, before prodding Iona the other direction.
It takes us about another twenty minutes, but it feels like two days before I finally stop them and we look through the screen into a cell beneath us.
There is my father.
I gasp and almost shift in the tiny tunnel, but Darko pokes me with a talon as Iona rips off the mesh from the ventilation shaft.
“Dad!” I cry as the four of us quickly drop down into the cell.
My dad sits up, startled and aghast as Roman hops onto the camera, placing a webbed foot on it. Smoke starts to rise as his poison begins to disintegrate the camera.
“No,” he murmurs. “No. What are you doing here, Shae?”
“We’re busting you out, Dad,” I grin with a giddiness that might be slightly crazy.
He wraps me in a massive hug holding me close and burying his face in my hair. “You shouldn’t be here. They’re coming soon. We have to go.”
“No, you’re coming with us,” I say.
Dad frowns and for a minute I think he’s going to say no, that he’s not going to come with us. “We need you,” I say. “Henry needs you.”
“Can you still shift?” Darko asks, and it’s only then I realize my dad is cut up and bruised.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he says, his gaze gaining resolve. “Let’s get out of here.”
Everyone shifts, but I realize my dad can’t fly. Something is wrong with his arm. I shift back into a human and reach over picking him up and placing him in the ventilation chamber with Iona, Darko and Roman.
An alarm goes off.
“Get him out of here,” I say. Roman pokes his head back in the cell, but I shove him back into the shaft. “Don’t stay. I got this. They won’t even know it’s not him. And if they do, I’ll just burn their faces off.”
Even with his big orange frog eyes, I know Roman doesn’t want to listen to me.
“Please, Roman,” I plead. “Do it.”
He disappears and I shift into a dove, feathers white as snow, as the doors to the cell slide open and two massive Berzerken enter. They have to come to crush whatever mischief there is going on here, but they don’t know what they are up against.
23
I look at the bears dubiously. One is particularly fat with a hook nose and holding a black box. The kind Darko had. It’s pointed straight at me and he’s shaking his head.
“I told you something weird was going on down here,” he says.
“I have no idea why you trust that box, Jake, it’s a Hunter device,” the other growls.
“Because, some of their technology is so cool. Look, the third column is going off,” he says. “So, we got a Passief.”
The other Berzerken shakes his head. “I can see it’s a Passief.”
“Right,” Jake says. “But this, Eli, this is the weird bit. See that?” He points at the other two columns. “This one is making the other scales go off. The dove wasn’t doing that before.”
I shift into human form and start throwing fire balls at them. “It’s because I’m not the same Dove.” It’s a massive risk, but I have better control over the fire in human form.
It’s a mistake.
The cell is too small and they are too large. The fire burns at them but it bounces off the walls and singes me also. The three of us are caught in a cell of flames and I’m the one starting it. The only way they can stop it is to crush me.
In a single motion, they are both on me.
An electric bolt flies from the metal box zapping me into a stupor.
The drag me out of the cell and down the hall to a door off the main axis of the prison. I’m unceremoniously pushed down into a chair on one side of a table. I slowly raise myself and find I’m staring at a one-way mirror. Above the table is a low hanging light, and a tape recorder sits in front of me. Jacob sits across from me at the table while the other bear stands ominously by the door.
Jacob hits a switch on the recorder. “This session is being recorded,” he tells me in a gravelly tone, as if this makes it legitimate. “Name?”
I glare at him.
“It’s for the record. Please state your name.”
Without warning he pulls back his hand and smacks me upside the head. Pain and stars shoot through me as my head whips around.
“I guess you’re the bad cop,” I mutter.
“Name?” He raises his hand again, but this time he closes it into a fist.
“Shae,” I say.
“Your full name,” Marcus says.
This is going to be a long interview.
“Shae Bradfield,” I try to quell the shaking inside me. He found it pretty easy to slap me in the face. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the interview. I’m not sure how much of a battering I can really take. It’s one thing to get hurt, it’s another thing to be systematically beat for information. “Don’t I get a phone call?” I ask.
“I’ll be asking the questions,” Jacob says, her upper lip curling so I can just see his small, yellow-stained teeth.
And then the questions start. The same questions over and over again. How long have I known Aiden? How did I find out about the shifter world? When did I first know I was a shifter? Who are my parents? What are my parents? Do I have any siblings? Where are they? Where do I come from? Where is my mother?
I try to protect everyone as much as I can, but I also want to protect Henry. I would do anything for Henry. He is such an innocent in this world. But still, half the questions I really just don’t know how I’m supposed to answer them. Many of them I don’t answer. I just stare at him sullenly.
“We have all are Berzerken and Lynx out searching for your father,” Jacob finally says. “But El Oso will be just as satisfied with you.”
I smile. They don’t have any shifting restraints on me. It only takes me a second to show them what is really going on. I shift into a black raven and stand there cawing my laughter at them from the table.
My father is free. That is all that matters. And they can’t use me for the ritual, at least I don’t think they can. I’m not a full blood dove. But the glowering look Jacob gives me, leaves me in no doubt, I’ve just made another mistake.
“Get me the needle.” He glowers as I look from one Berzerken to the other and try to move away. But Berzerken are some of the fastest shifters here are. He’s across the table and pinning me down in seconds. He injects a giant needle into the back of my neck and the world goes hazy and dark.
I wake up shivering and in a cell of the prison. The temperature in the cell feels like ten degrees Celsius. must have dropped about twenty degrees. It feels like the south pole. I want to cry, or scream, or something, but I lay shivering.
What did they do to me?
Pain surges through me as I twist onto my back. My ankles, knees, and elbows clatter against the metal bench. I can see two cameras in two corners of the room. I raise my hand slowly. It’s shaking but doesn’t stop me. I get my arm fully extended and then I smile and slowly give the camera the finger.
Screw them.
I know what they’re trying to do. This is a simple form of torture. I’m guessing it’s going to get worse. I’m guessing they have a lot more worse in store for me at some point.
But, screw them.
I saved my dad. I stopped the ritual that is going to make all the Ber
zerken magic.
Now, I’ll reap the consequences.
The door slides open and I can’t stop myself from shifting, and tearing out the other shifter’s eyes. I have to control my animal nature. A lot.
It’s hard.
I can feel my animal-self rising, screeching for blood, demanding freedom, ready to attack at a thousand miles per hour. I try to take a deep breath and calm down.
But I can’t stop it. As the door swings open I feel my whole-body shift and I’m up in the air with my talons raised and I’m flying at the face of whatever’s coming through the door.
“Shae!” Roman yells, huddling down and staying out of the way of both me and the cameras. I halt in midflight and land on the ground, shifting back into my human form.
I sob as I get up and hug Roman. Darko is behind him.
“We have to move fast,” he says, as if I didn’t realize that.
“How are we getting out?” I ask.
Roman shifts into a frog and nestles up on my shoulder. “Get in the bag,” Darko says holding open a satchel he’s carrying. It’s only then that I realize he’s wearing a white doctor’s coat.
“A Doctor?”
He holds up a badge. “All access pass.”
“How can you even pull that off?” I ask.
He smiles and points into the satchel. “I’m still a vampire, Shae. I have a few powers of persuasion. Now get in the bag before I have to use them.”
I nod, suddenly feeling weak. I lurch forward, falling against him as I shift. I land in Darko’s hand as a dove and he places me in the satchel, snapping the lid tightly closed above us.
24
I awaken with bile rising in the back of my throat. My eyes pop open as I clutch for the edge of the bed, knocking over a lamp on the side table as I lean over. Whatever contents I have in my stomach push their way up through my throat. Somebody clutches my hand and pulls me forward. They steady my head as my stomach rises and I vomit into a bucket held before me. I heave and retch, my stomach seizing in great waves of cramps until my body suddenly stills and rests and my hair hangs limp around my face. I try to breathe and steady my body and calm the wracking muscle spasms moving through me.
