by Ann Gimpel
“She wants it for her lab,” Aura said.
Juan hunkered to Ketha’s level. “I’m cleaning this deck. If you want to hang onto any of this shit”—he waved an arm wide—“for souvenirs or experiments, you have five minutes.”
“Hold up on the cleaning project. We’re not done.” Aura angled her gaze skyward where Rowana and Viktor were chivvying the pterodactyl back toward the boat.
“Daide!” Juan yelled.
“Yeah?” He trotted over, blade dangling from one clenched fist. His dark eyes shone with fascination. “As horrible as this is, I want to know how these cross-mutations happened.”
“Ketha wants lab samples. She almost bit my hand off.”
“Not even close.” Ketha was human again, naked and shivering. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m dressed. Do not even think about jettisoning so much as one lock of hair into the ocean.”
“I’ll watch over your stash,” Aura told her. “Go before your lips turn blue.”
Ketha pulled open a door and ran inside the ship.
Juan sucked in a tight breath and nudged Daide. “Never saw anything like this in vet school, eh?”
“You’d be right about that.” Daide glanced up. “Here they come. Give me room to maneuver.”
“Watch out for Rowana and Vik,” Aura cautioned.
Daide kept his gaze trained on the tumbling display above. He raised the sword, keeping it poised for action. The raven closed from one side, the eagle from the other. They divebombed the dinosaur, putting out its eyes. Shrieking, sightless, the pterodactyl fell like a stone.
Daide sliced through its neck with the iron saber before it even hit the deck. Scales clattered, and the body burst into the same jell, sticking to Juan’s booted feet.
He smiled grimly. He’d been of two minds about even bringing the blade with them when they left Ushuaia, but Viktor was convinced they might need it. Lucky one of them was thinking ahead. Juan had wanted to leave everything about being a Vampire in Ushuaia. Boris—or was it Ted—had said bullets wouldn’t kill the unnatural animal forms. Driving a knife through scales would have been far harder than beheading them. Plus, it might not have worked, either. Maybe the silver-and-iron imbued bullets would have made some headway.
Viktor and Rowana landed on the bloody deck. The air took on a glistening aspect, and they stood naked, surveying the globs of black gel interspersed with streaks of red.
“Damn. My eagle loves fighting.” Rowana shook silver hair over her shoulders to cover her breasts. Her dark eyes held a satisfied aspect. “Be back once I’m dressed.” She pushed the nearest door open and walked through it.
Viktor jerked his chin toward Ted and Boris. “What happened to those two?”
“They came from the second raft,” Juan replied. “They weren’t any happier about us, once we began shifting, than they were about Stephan and his cronies.”
Viktor took a few steps closer and narrowed his eyes. “Boris? Is that you?”
“Aura froze them with magic once they freaked. He can’t answer you,” Juan replied.
“Fascinating. I’m going to throw something on, and then—”
Juan flapped his hands at Viktor. “Go. I’ll get rolling on cleanup. I’d have begun already, but your wife threatened me with bodily harm if I disturbed so much as a single cell of what’s left of those bastards.”
“Sounds like the woman I love.” Viktor made a noise between a grunt and a laugh. He sorted through protoplasm and clothing scraps, coming up with three pairs of Wellingtons: his, Ketha’s, and Rowana’s.
“We’ll douse them with seawater,” Recco said. “Daide and I will collect samples too.”
Viktor nodded and trotted up one of the flights of external stairs.
Aura joined Juan. “I’m about to release Boris and Ted. Hope they’ll listen to reason.”
“Would magic help?” Juan picked his way around the worst of the debris littering the deck to where Boris and Ted stood.
“Probably, but it’s not allowed. Once a mortal discovers what we are, we have to tell them the truth.” Aura spoke a few words in Gaelic.
Boris shook his head as if he’d been asleep. “What the fuck happened?” he muttered, his gaze canting from side to side. When it settled on Juan and Aura, his face twisted into a horrified expression. “Shit. Aw, shit. I remember. Ted.” He shook the man swaying on his feet next to him. “Wake up, goddammit. We have to get out of here.”
“What? Why? I’m tired.” Ted trained bleary eyes at a distant point on the horizon.
Aura stepped between them. “I apologize for holding you against your will with magic, but I had no choice.”
“Are we prisoners?” Boris balled his hands into fists. “Christ, Juan. We grew up in the same rathole of a neighborhood in BA.”
“Right you are, amigo.” Juan nodded once, sharply. “Which is one more reason you need to listen to what the lady here has to say.”
“We don’t have to listen to anything,” Ted said, sounding marginally more with it. “You’re like Stephan. He and his sick, twisted family have been eating the rest of us. They cull one or two and hang onto them for months, leaving just enough to keep them alive.”
“Interesting. It explains what was clinging to their teeth.” Juan shrugged.
“That’s all you can muster?” Boris rounded on him. “A shrug?”
Juan grabbed the other man’s shoulders and shook him. “Si, amigo. Like you said earlier, ten years is a long time. Things change. I spent most of those years as a Vampire, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t fall all over myself at the specter of eerie, weird, or impossible.”
“Listen to me.” Aura gazed from Boris to Ted. “I’m a mountain cat Shifter. Every woman on this ship is some type of Shifter, but we’re the authorized variety. The ones who bonded properly—”
“As if there’s a proper way to turn into an abomination.” Ted sneered.
“I am not an abomination. Neither are any of my sisters. Our brand of magic is ancient. It’s stood the test of time. Our animals are noble, pure. True bond animals take the mettle of a human before agreeing to link with them. Stephan and his brood failed that test.”
She took a measured breath. “My guess, and it’s only a guess because I’ll never know, is Stephan wanted to be a Shifter. The perverted energy from the Cataclysm provided the substrate he was missing to spin his weak, ineffectual power into an animal form. Because he lacked a true bond animal, the thing he turned into was a product of his twisted imagination.
“Once he figured out how to shift, he talked a bunch of others into trying it. I bet many of them died. When you dabble in things not meant for you, bad things happen.”
Karin joined them. “It’s an interesting theory, but what’s left on this deck argues for another explanation. Once we killed those creatures, they gave up any semblance of form. If they’d been Shifters, they’d have reverted to their human bodies in death.”
“Good point.” Aura nodded, her expression somber. “Beyond where they came from, the other thing I’m curious about is why they hustled out to Arkady.”
“And told us we had to pull anchor and head for the open sea immediately,” Juan added.
“They probably planned to add you to their menu,” Ted muttered. “Easy enough to turn the boat back around once the lot of you were imprisoned.”
“I still don’t get it,” Juan said. “How could they have guessed we didn’t have a full complement of crew and passengers?”
“Because nothing’s been the same since the Cataclysm hit,” Aura said. “They must have been desperate, and desperate men take chances.”
“I’m sure they assumed once they took their”—Boris made a gagging noise—“other forms, everyone aboard would be frozen with fear.”
“It worked for them at the base,” Ted mumbled.
Boris straightened beneath Juan’s hold. “You can let go. Did I hear you right? You were a Vampire?”
Juan lifted his hands from the other
man’s shoulders. “You heard right. It’s a rather involved story, but I’m not a Vampire anymore.”
Boris squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before zeroing in on Juan. “Vaya por dios.”
Juan wrapped one arm around Aura. “I’m a Shifter like her, now.”
Boris flinched as if Juan had told him he’d signed on with a devil-worshipping cult, but he didn’t say anything.
Juan thought about the discussion he’d had with his cat about Buenos Aires. His bond animal had been quite clear Juan’s family would never understand. Boris’s reaction hammered the point home.
Aura met his gaze with her clear, green eyes. Her calm acceptance centered him, and he turned back to Boris and Ted. “Stephan said there were twenty-three survivors at Arctowski. Did it include his band of freaks?”
Ted frowned. “Six of us managed to outwit them. We were double that number, but Stephan and them killed the others. I have no idea where he got twenty-three.”
“So four of you are back on the base?” Aura asked.
“Sort of. The others are in an ice cave thirty feet under the base. Something about it repelled the monsters. It was pure, blind luck Boris and I were aboveground when your ship arrived. We’re in better shape than the others, and we were making a run to scavenge food.”
“Do you know anything about the other research facilities scattered around this island?” Juan asked.
Boris nodded. He edged closer to Ted, and something about their postures suggested they were more than friends and colleagues. “We had radio contact until we ran too low on gasoline to waste what was left powering the generators.”
“How long ago was that?” Aura asked.
“Maybe two years,” Ted replied. “Back then, the only manned bases were the Argentine and German ones. The others were either empty to begin with, or everyone died. We were one of the best-stocked bases here. It’s the only reason any of us are still alive.”
“I need to oversee cleanup,” Juan said, “but Aura can take you inside. We have hot water for showers. Clean clothes. Coffee. Whiskey.”
Boris smiled. “You’re making it damned hard to be afraid of you.”
“I’m not being nice.” Juan didn’t smile back. “Once we have the ship set to rights, we’re taking the rafts to Arctowski, and we’re not leaving until every one of those imposters—the ones who leveraged and perverted Shifter magic when they had no right to—is dead.”
“Don’t jump to hasty conclusions.” His cat was back. “Evil lurks there, but I don’t believe it has anything to do with Shifter ability gone bad.”
It was almost exactly what Karin had suggested, and Juan filed it away as fair warning they had to be prepared for anything. He focused his next words on Boris and Ted. “When we launch for Arctowski, you’ll have to come along so we can locate your companions.”
“Damn straight we will.” Boris clacked his teeth together.
Aura herded them inside along with the beginnings of a lecture about Shifters’ proud, powerful history.
By the time Juan returned to the battle site, it was 90 percent cleared of debris. Viktor sloshed another bucket of seawater across the painted concrete. It had blistered and scarred in places, but at least it was clean. Straightening, he gave the bucket to Juan. “A couple more of these, and we’ll have it. I’d forgotten you and Boris were old mates.”
“Hell, I nearly forgot myself. Until I laid eyes on him and even then, he was almost unrecognizable. Ketha get what she needed?”
“She and Recco and Daide and Karin were chattering like a flock of magpies.” He rolled his eyes. “They’re in the lab now doing whatever lab rats do to preserve biologic material. Damn, I could use a drink.”
Juan elbowed him. “What? And miss the showdown on Arctowski?”
Viktor shook his head. “Is this what it’s going to be like every single fucking place we drop anchor? Some hideous manifestation of evil waiting to pounce?”
Juan didn’t waste breath answering, just trudged to a bilge outflow and turned the tap to fill his bucket.
Chapter Seventeen: Let Me Go
Aura crouched in a Zodiac as it sped across the bay. Boris, Ted, Juan, Recco, Zoe, and Karin were in their boat. Since the rafts from Arctowski were already in the water, they’d used them rather than launching their own. Viktor, Ketha, Rowana, Daide, Tessa, Moira, and Becca were in the second raft right behind theirs.
“Thank you for helping us,” Boris said.
“Yeah. Apologies for the meltdown,” Ted added.
“Understandable,” Recco said. “You should have heard Daide and me when the totality of Vampirism sank in. Before, we figured we’d be able to sidestep it, somehow.”
A bitter laugh blew past Juan’s lips. “Not the time to shamble through memory lane. As soon as we land, Boris and Ted will make a run for the ice cave and retrieve the four people hiding there.”
“And then we’ll take a raft and return to the ship,” Boris said.
“Is there anything we can salvage from the base?” Karin asked.
“Like what?” Ted asked.
“Scientific instruments. Chemicals. This was a research station. Presumably, you studied something.”
“Mostly geology and archaeology,” Boris replied. “There’s a decent microscope and years’ worth of journals detailing our findings. We do have barrels of biodiesel, though.”
Juan made a chopping motion with the hand not wrapped around the tiller. “We’ll take the fuel. The rest isn’t critical. Did you ever try to alter your generators to run on diesel?”
“Of course. It gummed up their carburetors,” Ted replied. “We’d have needed bigger jets.”
“Figures. Once we land, everyone but Boris and Ted remains together. Six of those perversions are left, and we only have one blade.”
“Which is why I brought the Remington,” Recco said. “Maybe the silver and iron bullets will kill them.”
Aura turned to Boris. “What do the other creatures look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Aura peered at him and wiped spray out of her face.
“They’re different every time they show up.”
“Yeah,” Ted chimed in. “We’d never seen those particular beasts before today. The seal one was bizarre. So was the Gila monster with wings.”
“The thing that caught my attention,” Karin spoke up, “was what they turned into once they died. No bones. Only things left were clumps of unrelated DNA. I didn’t have enough time to tease through it, but in the one sample I stained, I found genetic patterns from birds and fish. Nothing even remotely human.”
“Does it mean they weren’t human anymore?” Aura asked the doctor.
“Not sure they ever were. My guess is ‘human’ was one more form they wore.” Karin creased her forehead into a mass of worried lines. “DNA is a nucleic acid. Once you loosen the links between the monomers, the four bases—adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine—become fluid. They can form anything, but getting them to hang onto any one shape for more than a short time requires a big energy output.”
“What exactly are you getting at?” Juan asked and swung the boat around preparatory to landing on a rock-and-ice studded beach.
“Maybe they revert to puddles of goo in between.” Karin turned her hands palms upward. “If we could capture one of them alive, it might go a significant way toward—”
“Forget it.” Juan cut her off. “No fucking way am I letting one of those things on my ship.”
Karin snorted. “Aha! The time-honored friction between practicality and science rears its head. We’d have beaten the Black Death in the 1600s, if the fuddy-duddy officials hadn’t insisted on burning the bodies in mass graves.”
“Fuddy-duddy, is it?” Juan cut the engine. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my ship safe.”
“Same thing the magistrates said about their cities and the plague.” Karin made a sour face.
The second raf
t drew alongside them with Viktor at the helm, and both vessels scraped against the beach as they hit shallow water. Aura sent her magic zinging wide, but she hadn’t picked up anything from Stephan and his three sidekicks. Maybe their twisted version of being a Shifter wasn’t truly magic, or maybe it was so foreign, she lacked a place to pigeonhole it...
Neither explanation satisfied her. Juan and Viktor sloshed through surf, dragging the rafts by their anchor ropes. Aura tapped Zoe and Karin. “Why couldn’t I sense something off about Stephan and those other three? I looked. They didn’t feel quite right, but nothing alerted me about how bizarre they were. Or how dangerous.”
“Aye, it’s been troubling me as well,” Zoe said.
“Breaking the interconnections in DNA is science, not magic,” Karin said. “The perverse combinations that crop up only appear magical. It’s why they didn’t trip your radar.”
“How in the goddess’s name will we locate them absent magic?” Aura asked, but no one answered her.
Juan stood next to the rear of the raft, stabilizing it while everyone exited. He reached over and plucked the key from the engine, offering it to Boris.
“Nah. Better hide it. Maybe in the wooden box. If something happens to me, you won’t be stuck with no way to flip the ignition.”
“It’ll be right here.” Juan tucked the key in the ridge between a pontoon and a sidewall.
““After a while, Stephan’s associates will surmise the boarding party isn’t coming back, and one of two things will happen.” Boris stopped next to Aura. “It will either drive them to attack or push them into hiding.”
“Any chance they’d retreat to where they came from before they showed up at Arctowski?” Juan asked.
“Remember, we have no idea where that is,” Ted said, “but it’s possible.”
“Nah. Not likely,” Boris cut in. “Their food is here.”
“Could they go into stasis like those Vamps on South Georgia?” Zoe spoke up.
