Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  Muni turned. Her face pulled back and nose pointed. Hair turned into feathers. She fumbled something into my hands. My mind clouded over as the bed they’d strapped me to fell over. Clattering noise echoed in my senses.

  Sharp heels dug into the ground adding more sounds. The yowls of large angry cats crawled. I heard the fluttering of a bird as black feathers spun across the room.

  All I could consciously register was that Muni hated cats. Lights flickered above. Shadows cast about. Wings obscured the lights along with heat, long tails, and red feathers.

  I stared and attempted to understand what the hell a red feather was doing in with all the black ones. It burned away, releasing heat which caught bedding on fire. My hand reached to put out the flame before it spread.

  Then I saw what Muni had passed me. Dozens of ribbons laced together with beads woven between them. She’d given me a charm. It might be protecting me from the others.

  Cawing mixed with yowls. I managed to kick a gurney at the cat shadows. It skittered across the room and slammed into one of the cat people.

  “Unacceptable,” a wheezing male said.

  “Undesirable,” a female responded. Their voices were both scratchy and high pitched.

  My eyebrows wrinkled. An open window let in gusts of night air. Fresh feathers scattered around. Red burning ones were everywhere, catching pieces of the room on fire. I turned and attempted to delay one of the suits Agent Brand had brought with her.

  Don and Dee both landed nearby upon all fours. One had paws anchoring on the counter. They had huge muscled shoulders that tore through their suits. Their legs were equally enlarged, more so than any wolf in battle form.

  They were fucking cat people. Or something. The sight made me pause in utter confusion. I’d seen a lot of different creatures masquerading as humans over the years, but feline versions of wolves were utterly new.

  Don, or Dee, wiggled and prepared to pounce. Glass shattered. Agent Brand, still out of sight, yelled, “No!”

  Bandages, padding, blankets, and more flew across the room. I turned and caught a glimpse of Don and Dee pulling themselves through a narrow window with disturbing ease. The noises grew distant.

  They’d ignored me completely and gone after Muni.

  I struggled to stand but could only flop. All my strength meant nothing under the face of drugs meant to take down wolves. My metabolism didn’t burn like theirs.

  Wolves had different gifts. We had different costs. The nature of my burdens included a heavy desire to sleep. If a drug put a normal wolf to sleep, it could put me into a coma. That twist was tied to burning and storing energy.

  Leo and Tal paid a price too. They were stronger than average humans. They were natural born warriors who dominated any strength based field. The pattern was clear, humans were a baseline. Everyone other race gained a little and lost a little.

  There were dozens of black feathers all about, which made me ask an equally important question. What price did Muni pay for her memory powers?

  I struggled to find focus. The world drifted in and out and I lost time. It was impossible to tell how much.

  A lighter weight shuffled. It felt human sized, thin, tiny, and I jerked my head around, searching for the source. My senses honed in on the room briefly before going wide again. The rapid changes caused me to lose focus.

  “Who’s there?” I asked, without expecting an answer.

  My senses reported shuffling feet. They were stiff, bare calloused toes. I followed the sensations around the medical ward to figure out where the person sat.

  Someone sat in the dark corner, rocking. The blurred form grew more distinct as I focused my senses upon the shape. Human, thin, and white skinned under perfectly black hair. With each detail the haze grew more defined.

  Muni sat in a corner near the window, huffing wildly. Her hair was matted and sweat poured down in rivers. I couldn’t tell if she was terrified, exhausted, or both.

  “Are you?” I managed to get myself to a kneeling position. The room spun.

  Muni put up a finger and found the strength to back up another foot. Her legs worked better than mine but the sensation of stiffened foot lingered. Like crows’ toes. Jointed, rough, tough. She stood on wobbling limbs, turned and a pulled a cloak of feathers over her body.

  Moments later a raven stood on the frame of a battered window. Its head tilted leaving one beady eye facing my direction. Muni, or the raven, cawed softly and flew off into the night.

  This time, the corner had nothing remaining.

  I sat still, wondering how much of what I saw was real. Or maybe they were simply memory charms messing up my perceptions of what had happened. The latter felt familiar, like she’d done the very same mind tricks to me more than once over the years.

  Muni did not return to offer enlightenment. I had to trust she could take care of herself against that trio. If she couldn’t, then I’d have to find the energy and strength to help protect her by fighting a red feathered creature and two cat shapeshifters.

  I could think myself in circles. Hell, I’d been doing exactly that for almost two months or more. No, we were closer to four months. That’s how long I’d been at Atlas Island and I hadn’t noticed. Time moved wrong as the past swallowed the present.

  Going insane would have to wait. There was some large monster off shore that probably came up for this “quelling” event Warden Bennett had mentioned. I could only imagine what that implied. It was beyond time to leave this jail, island, and find someplace new to settle down.

  Leo, Muni, and even Stacy had to come with me. Leo was like a nephew I hadn’t really paid much attention to. Muni, a long-lost cousin. Stacy would help me keep Ms. Sauter working for us. We, the other Hidden and me, needed something more legal to be allowed out in public. Everyone relied on a shady backroom deal the Western Sector agents had cooked up for acceptable risks.

  Someone nearby hacked. I turned to see Nathan Simms. He stood in an open doorway with a crutch under his arm, his hands clutched tightly around its edge. His body curved badly and leg repeatedly slipped.

  “Mr. Fields?”

  “Simms,” I responded. My own body wanted to crumple like his, but weaknesses displayed could be taken advantage of. That wonderful tidbit of information came direct from my father.

  “Thought they’d sent you over with your friend,” he said. “Everyone else has. The Caretakers have been finding excuse after excuse to give people strikes.”

  Nathan shuffled past overturned objects and unfolded towels, straight to the cabinets with prescription bottles locked away. He rattled the door then winced. A crutch slipped and down he went.

  “Anything broken?” I asked.

  He eyes tightened and lips curled. Nathan pointed to a brace on his leg. “Leg, and a bone in my foot, if you’d believe that. I should be getting a cast next week, assuming this place holds together long enough. Or one of Spike’s remaining minions doesn’t just kill me. If there are any left.”

  My cell mate’s arm shook. He repeatedly propped up the crutch but couldn’t keep it firm on the tiling. His rubber stopper on the bottom had worn to the wood. Nathan gave up and lay back, casting a listless gaze toward the ceiling.

  I struggled to stand. My body’s limits were fully defined with years of practice. This wasn’t the worst I’d been hurt. Everything healed eventually.

  “Again!” Tal yelled in my ear. Only he hadn’t. “Get up and do it again!”

  “I’m getting up,” I muttered.

  “You do that,” Nathan responded. He waved an arm in my direction and turned back to the cabinet. “Maybe get me some pills.”

  I stared blankly. The past reared its ugly head. A sudden voice from the past made me jump.

  “What do we do when we fail?” the old man yelled.

  “WE TRAIN!” Roy yelled back.

  “We train,” I agreed.

  Neither figure sat in the room with me. They were ghosts of the past causing me issues. The figments were right
. I’d failed plenty in these recent years. The answer would be to get back up and train. At this stage in life, there was no time to practice. We were down to do or die time.

  “Some fighters go in to win, others not to lose, some settle for just a single punch. Whatever works for you, just pick a goal,” Tal’s dead ghost whispered.

  Pick a goal and go for it. That’s what Tal had taught me.

  “Punch them all in their faces,” I muttered.

  “Whatever does it for you,” Nathan said.

  My eyes crossed as the past and present blurred. Separating out times didn’t matter. Getting up fit in line with what Tal and Roy had beat into me over the years. Quitters were to be reviled. Tal died with a humongous number of wounds, because of me.

  For all my loose morals, I still felt guilt. It kept me cold at night and rose the fires of rage at past failures.

  Leg muscles ached as they stretched. One arm helped me brace myself. Steps were unsteady and my lower back hurt even more. Lying down for days came with side effects of sore muscles, stiffness, and dizziness.

  “You can just lie there. Someone will come by and put you back in a gurney. Or maybe they’ll call it strike three for being disorderly.” Nathan sniffed. “Might be a few hours before anyone notices.”

  “Where’s the nurse?” I asked.

  “Most staff went to the mainland. Anyone who can use a gun is on the fences. Anyone who can’t, got shipped home yesterday. There was one nurse who said she’d stay to take care of us. Some black-haired woman,” Nathan drifted off, and whimpered.

  He might mean Muni. I couldn’t remember what the clothes had been, but as always, what I remembered meant absolute shit compared to reality. Not to mention whatever the hell had gone on with Muni and her pursuers.

  No, the second task would be to get Nathan his drugs so the man would stop complaining. Then I could help myself to the cell, check over my stupid belongings, and work to track down Leo. I remained undecided on the giant serpent in the water. It could have been a mixed up memory but that felt, literally, unlikely.

  I found myself braced against the locked supply cabinet. The framing was tough on the outside, but there were weaknesses in the material. I felt a spot where they’d poured in super glue. On another side they’d put in long bolts. One corner had less reinforcement.

  I moved to the back, wedged fingers in between the shelf and wall, gathered a small amount of strength and pulled the shelving. Glass crunched. Pill bottles clattered around the room. The bolts they’d driven in were exposed and stuck out at funny angles. Metal framing had been warped.

  Nathan stuck out his crutch and used it like a scoop to pull back bottles. He went through a dozen before finding the one he wanted.

  “Pain killers?” he asked, holding out the bottle.

  I shook my head. My crutch fit in a different sort of bottle. Liquor dulled my senses, which had its uses. I debated finding a drink to help keep my senses reined in. Right now it would be a waste of sanity, assuming one of the inmates or guards would spare me a drink.

  “Suit yourself. Us mere humans can’t compete.”

  Nathan was already heavily dosed with pills. His body felt sluggish and eyes dilated. He popped another pill then swallowed it dry. Soon he’d be full on loopy.

  If he wanted to overdose, so be it. I hoped he’d keep his sister somewhere in the back of his mind. He’d been sent here because of her, or so he said. Maybe Nathan moonlighted as a vampire slayer on a mission.

  That meant nothing. He felt like a broken man and barely moved as the pills set in. Nathan pulled in a towel from Muni’s earlier battle and used it as a pillow. He grunted and turned to one side.

  “You going to be okay?” I asked, while not actually caring.

  “No.” He stuck out a tongue and licked dry lips. “Should take a few more of these. Maybe some of the other bottles. Better than joining them over there. You know…”

  The hallway felt empty but I still doubted my own senses. My head shook again as I slowly walked toward the door. Nathan flopped behind me.

  “It’s ironic. That’s the word, right? Ironic, they broke my leg because of you. They got sent to the other side first. Now none of them are around, but you’re still here.” He gave a few weak chuckles then banged the crutch. “And none of it means shit because that asshole finally finished the job!”

  My heart skipped a beat. That asshole probably meant the burnout he’d been protecting his sister from.

  “She dead?”

  “Tactful fucker, aren’t you? All those muscles must be pushing out your brains. Yeah. My sister is dead. What’s the point of this now? I should have staked him.”

  “You should have,” I agreed.

  “Fuck you.”

  I was smart enough to know his words were a mix between bitterness, anger, and lack of hope. I stood there trying to absorb how this fit in, and came to the conclusion that it meant nothing at all to me.

  “So you didn’t. You came back here how many times, and now you’re thinking about overdosing to escape? Glad I’m not a human.” I shook my head and proceeded to throw his own insult back at him. “At least all these muscles keep me from thinking of stupid shit.”

  It wasn’t true. All these muscles didn’t do crap to stop me from dwelling on stupid crap. Suicide wasn’t the answer, but part of me wished to crawl away from all this insanity. Doing so was impossible. Dozens of people entrusted their lives to me.

  “Fuck you, meat for brains,” Nathan said. He banged the crutch against the ground and smacked bottles.

  He’d lost his sister. I’d lost Julianne. She’d been close enough but those memories stayed thankfully distant. Being swept under the tide wouldn’t do any good. Right now, I needed Tal’s lessons over the years.

  “This man I knew, raised me like his own.”

  “Boo-hoo,” Nathan said.

  “He beat the shit out of me nightly. His own son, too. Said it was to make us stronger.” One day Roy beat the heck out of Tal back. The entire dynamic of our household changed after that. Tal actually thanked him.

  “Lovely.”

  How weird was it that Roy’s race actually relished a strong leader? They fought for it. That had been the whole point of Tal’s abuses. He needed someone to be stronger than him and to know his son could be a leader. He needed it like I needed to stockpile treasures.

  “Being human would have been easier,” I said.

  I knelt next to Nathan and pushed the crutch. He leaned back and flared his nostrils.

  “I hated him for those abuses. I loved him for taking care of me. And I needed to fight. I still do. But we never gave up fighting back. Never. Not after the first year, or second. Not until ten years later when we finally beat the old man.”

  Roy had known. He, Tal, and his brother had fought to help me release pent up pressure. That’s what I was, good for only three tasks. Fighting, fucking, or sleeping. And I needed the combat.

  Nathan searched my face for signs of whatever interested the man. I stared at him and used my senses to count warm bodies on the island. They moved too fast, but there had to be hundreds on the other side.

  “I ain’t a priest,” he said.

  “And you’re not dead, either. Your sister may be. But you aren’t. Fight, or give up.”

  Consoling wasn’t my strong point. Putting up with someone else’s whining wasn’t either. I had enough of my own issues. At the very least, I knew enough of my own nature to realize that giving up had never been an option.

  Maybe I should simply transform and go burn the entire forest to a crisp. The idea was tossed away. I could sense a looming conflict that would require me to be on top of my game. Transforming took energy.

  Plus, Nathan was roaming free and this set of rooms hadn’t had another soul in it. Muni could be blamed. Her memory charms might have made people forget the room existed. Outside there could be a nurse walking the halls trying to find a room that didn’t seem to exist.

  “I do
n’t know what you intend to do, Nathan. And I mostly don’t care. But I, for one, plan on making fewer mistakes.”

  Being a drunk upon returning home had been one of many errors. I aimed to right myself from here forward. That’d been one nice perk to reliving huge swaths of my life, all the places I’d fucked up were happily highlighted.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means a lot of people are about to have very bad days. So for you, get out while you can.” About a hundred people were in the jail that used to house five times that. I counted boots and vests since their material stuck out with more distinction than jail clothes.

  “Find a boat. Swim. Hide. Or live and find the piece of shit vampire and kill him this time,” I added.

  “Can’t,” he mumbled. As our conversation went on, I felt improved and less sedated. Nathan sank further under.

  He was still here. Nathan Simms had the devil’s own luck. Cursed enough to be sent to this hell hole repeatedly. Somehow he’d also managed to survive without being killed or sent to the other side despite being bunkmates with me.

  “You haven’t been sent over,” I said.

  I could feel them. Hundreds of footprints, lost in the jungle. They were like ants crawling across my skin. The sensation irked me, and once my memories were under control, the powers which were equally wild should be straightened out.

  I hated the armies of man. My lids drooped and head shook. That wasn’t my thought, not entirely. It was an imprinted one from generations of my forefathers. I couldn’t follow that rabbit hole of thoughts or I’d never come out.

  “I told you. Everyone’s gone. Spike’s friends. The wolves. The vampires. There are more guards than inmates now. Makes me wonder who’s a prisoner here. “

  “You haven’t been sent over. You know what that means?”

  Nathan rolled his eyes.

  “It means even Warden Bennett thinks you’re not a barbarian. You’re not a monster. But you could be. A reformed man would have been sent home. That’s how it works.”

  Fuck him. We’d been talking and I’d managed to inspect every corner of the nurse’s room. My wounded side had healed. There were no signs of food. Nathan could drift off peacefully and I’d go do what I did best.