by Marie Hall
“Oh my god! Who are you?” she wailed, and he jerked her hand forward in front of her eyes so that she could see the blue markings he’d painted on her.
“I’ve painted you everywhere. You cannot change. I’ve blocked your power. You have one last chance, shifter, or else I’ll cut you into a million bloody ribbons and your friends will be next. Now, who the bloody hell sent you!”
Chapter 9: In which our heroine discovers an unlikely ally...
Sable used whatever intelligence she possessed to try and figure out what exactly was going on. She could no longer feel the phoenix inside her.
Whatever crap Alice/Brown hair/One Eyed Jack had done to her had nulled the ancient source she’d always felt like a comforting presence. The absence of it made her want to curl into a ball and suck her thumb.
She’d never felt so helpless in her entire life. Blood hammered through her veins, it would be so easy to give into the blackness creeping in on her. But she fought through the crippling wave and studied the man holding the knife to her throat.
“Answer me.” He shoved the blade in again.
“I don’t know what you want from me?”
He growled. “The truth. Who are you? Who sent you? Who do you work for?”
“I...I work for myself.”
“I don’t believe you.” He punctuated his sentence by shoving the blade in a little more, this time she hissed, feeling the first warm drops of blood.
How dare he tie her up? How dare he cut her? Threaten her? How dare he? She wanted to scream, memories rushed her of being forced down. Shoved down, needles stuck in her. Not again. Never again. Fear turned to fury.
“I don’t freaking care if you don’t believe me! It’s the truth,” she screamed it at him, then spit in his eye. She kicked her legs, trying to wrap them around his waist and haul him off her. But the damn dress tangled her up and she growled.
He narrowed his eye and Sable inhaled when his blade moved a fraction of an inch off her. He seemed confused by her sudden volatility.
“Who are you?” he asked again, but this time there was no heat, no anger and the lack of it made her pause.
“I already told you.”
“No,” he shook his head, the knife slipped even further. “No, you said you’re working for yourself. Do you not fight for the Enigma.” He didn’t sound certain; his words were more of a question than a statement.
He seemed confused. Good. Because so was she. What in the hell was he talking about? Who was he talking about?
“Who’s the Enigma?”
He released her, back crawling off. The knife nowhere to be seen. She blinked. She couldn’t remember him tucking it away, but suddenly it was gone.
“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, “I was so certain.”
“Well that makes two of us.” She rubbed her neck, noticing he’d told the truth. She was covered in swirling patterns of robin’s blue paint. “What did you do to me?”
He blinked and then shook his head like a dog. “I’m confused. I sensed your true nature. Surely you’ve come for me.”
“For you?” she laughed, the sound a little harsh in her ears, “I had no idea you were,” she pointed at him, “whatever you are, until just now. And what exactly are you anyway?”
“Hmm, perhaps we should talk under a more auspicious setting.”
“What?”
But he didn’t answer her. One Eye shifted doing that freaky melt thing again. Now he was Alice.
She cocked her head, Liza’s warnings ringing loud in her ears. Was he trying to put her more at ease? She stayed on guard, not trusting this sudden shift in attitude.
Her hair curled untamed around her face and her voice was no longer the harsh grating sound, but soft and melodic. “After last night I could have sworn, all the questions about the Bandit. I thought,” she shook her head, her brown eyes studying Sable intently, “I thought you knew it was me.”
“Wait.” Sable held up her hand. “You’re the Bandit?” At Alice’s nod she tensed up again, wondering how in the world to strip off the paint so she could shift.
Alice’s eyes grew wide. “I’m not a killer. Not really.”
“Of course you are. You were right there, you heard them accuse you of killing.”
Alice scoffed. “Tall tales, nothing more.”
Sable snorted. “So you never killed anyone. Sure could have fooled me the way you held that knife to my throat. That wasn’t a novice doing it, I can tell you that much.”
“Okay, aye.” Alice got up and walked over to Ari’s bed. She plopped onto it. “I am, but not the way you think. Do you not know who the Enigma is?”
She shook her head.
“It is his people that I’ve killed. He is the black devil of the mountains.”
Sable’s heart started to race. Could she be talking about a Lord?
“Everyone attributes all the deaths to the Bandit, but,” she shook her head, unaware of Sable’s growing suspicions, “I cannot claim more than two souls to my blade.”
“So that I’m clear, you are not the Lord? That’s what you’re telling me.”
Alice wrinkled her nose. “I don’t follow. Who is this Lord?”
Either she was a really great actress, or she was being 100 percent honest. Judging off the blank look in her eyes, Sable was inclined to believe the latter.
“Tell me what you know, and I’ll tell you what I know. Maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle.”
Alice nodded and then settled back into Ari’s bed. “Before I begin, I must know.”
“Yes?”
“Who are you?”
Sable started to open her mouth, to utter the lie she’d been telling nonstop the past two days now, but Alice shook her head.
“The truth. Or there will be nothing from me.” Her lips pressed into a thin line.
Could she tell her? Should she?
Alice, One Eye (whatever), had just held a knife to her throat. It made no sense to trust her. She narrowed her eyes.
“What did you do to me before? Did you drug me? Am I still drugged?”
Alice nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry. I spelled my body with scent that would attract you. I had no way of knowing how sensitive you’d be to it. For that I am sorry.”
She hugged her arms to her body. “I felt compulsed.”
“You were.”
Sable no longer felt that pull to obey her, but she still had to know for certain. “Am I now?”
Alice shook her head so forcefully the curls bounced. “No. But in this, I need truth.”
She took a quick breath. “Hunter will probably kill me.” Nervous energy caused her to stand and pace beside her bed, “but he’s not here. Fine.” She straightened her spine. “Obviously, you know I’m a shifter. I have no idea how, you’ll have to tell me.”
After only a moment’s pause, Alice nodded.
“My friends and I are from the future.”
There, let her chew on that. Funny, sometimes truth really was stranger than fiction. She wouldn’t blame Alice for not believing her and started to tick reasons off on her finger to convince her, but she needn’t have bothered.
“Aye.” Alice shook her head. “You can stop. I knew it already. Saw the brawny fellow with the black hair and blue eyes step out his portal the other night.”
“Wait. What? That was you?” Sable planted her fists on her hips. “But I don’t understand, how did you know we were from the future?”
“He is not my first time jumper. I’ve seen one other. T’was a test and you passed,” Alice said with a very light trace of an Irish brogue. “Had you not told me truth I would have killed you as a spy.”
She shivered when she saw the knife that had disappeared a while ago suddenly appear from thin air. And Alice who’d been sitting with her ankles crossed on the bed was now mere inches from her side.
“Now we talk,” she said, “you might want to sit.”
“I’ll stand, thanks.” Sable scooted around her, still fe
eling the tingles shooting down her back at the thought of how exposed she actually was. Without her phoenix, she was a human. A simple, weak human. She licked her thumb, wetting it and hoping she’d be able to rub some of the paint off, but it didn’t smudge. It didn’t even smear a little. It was embedded deep within her flesh like a tattoo.
Alice was in front of her, again too quick for Sable’s eyes to follow. “Stop doing that,” she snapped, startled.
“It is a spell I cast. It cannot be removed by water.” Alice’s warm hand gripped hers and she began to hum. At first the sound was low.
Something cold and foreign slithered beneath her skin. She shuddered, it felt like maggots rolling and slinking around inside her. She tried to scratch it out.
“Stop that.”
“Feels weird.” The rolling maggots suddenly became a rush of movement, undulations swimming through her blood and bringing tears to her eyes.
The humming was now an angry swarm and just when she reached the point that she thought she might pass out, a shimmering blue veil tore from her flesh and entered like a lightning bolt into Alice. For an instant her skin glowed with tinges of blue.
“How do you feel now?” she whispered.
Sable heated her palms and Alice yelped, releasing her immediately and sucking on her thumb.
“All better. Thanks.” She couldn’t help but smirk.
Alice walked over to the dresser and picking up the water pitcher, poured some over her hand. When she finished she resumed the same sitting position as before.
“What about Long Nose,” Sable asked when Alice was settled. She couldn’t stop wondering about the heated whispers she’d heard this morning.
“What about her?”
“Is she, one of us?” Might as well just tell the truth now. “I saw you guys this morning. She was upset with you about something. Who is she really?”
Alice chuckled. “A Madam. Nothing more. She was angry because she felt I was shirking my duties and disappearing at all hours of the night.” She winked. “Little does she know I rarely leave this place.”
“I thought maybe...”
“No, there are no others here. Too dangerous for many of us to gather in one place. That none of you were detected is a marvel.”
“Why are you here then?” Sable asked.
Alice sighed. “I work for an agency, we specialize in the capture of specials.”
“Specials?”
She talked around the thumb she’d placed back into her mouth. “Those with talents beyond the norm and who’d expose us all to the public at large. You must understand we live in a day and age rife with superstitions, should it ever be discovered that there are humans capable of extraordinary things, we’d be captured, vivisected most likely, and then of course killed to keep us silent.”
Now it made sense what Hunter had told her before, how there’d always been specials around. If there was an agency already in place, dedicated to keeping them on the down low, it was no wonder neither she nor anyone she knew had any knowledge of a world that existed outside what was taught in schools.
“How long have you guys been around?”
She shrugged and her robe slipped off one shoulder. “Since the dawn of man, I’d imagine. Specials have walked this Earth from its inception.”
“Are you immortal?”
She laughed so hard it took her a moment to catch her breath. “Goodness no. None of us are.”
Sable frowned.
“Could you imagine if we were? The sheer chaos we’d inflect. No,” she shook her head, still wearing a lopsided grin, “the good Lord gave us checks and balances. That is not to say however, that we aren’t long lived. I’m presently—” She scrunched up her nose thinking, “well over a three hundred, at least.” She snorted. “Ancient, by our standards.”
This wasn’t making sense. Hunter said he was immortal. And so was Dragden. Or were they? She was trying to recall what exactly it’d been that Hunter had told her all those weeks ago.
“Old enough to recognize a threat should I scent it.” She tapped her nose.
“Huh?” Sable glanced up. “You smelled me?”
“Aye.” She glanced down at the floorboards. “And the others.”
“How?” she asked.
“You smell good.”
She narrowed one eye and lifted the brow of the other. “I don’t understand.”
Alice’s cheeks were a rosy hue and her brown eyes twinkled with mirth. “The essence of who we are,” she tapped her chest, “lies within the scent. Specials smell of the wild. Earth, a gentle spring rain, flowers, fruits...” she ticked the list off on her fingers.
Sable had always smelled these same things, but had never known what it was. In fact, thinking back on it, she’d smelled lots of smells similar to this. How many people had she known who’d been like her and she’d never realized.
Alice blew on her thumb. “You gave me a blister, you did,” she said it accusingly, but without any anger. She looked at Sable. “What are you?”
“The phoenix.”
Alice inhaled, her smile could not have gotten any bigger. “I’d always hoped to meet you. I’d heard the legends, never thought I’d get the chance to know you.” She giggled
There she was again, crowding Sable and walking around her. Touching her wrists, her arms, the base of her neck and running her fingers down the back of her spine before Sable could turn and tell her to stop it. She tucked her hands against her chest.
“Forgive me,” she clapped her hands, “I’m simply amazed to see you. How do you hide your feathers?”
A little embarrassed by Alice’s enthusiasm, she took a step back. “I don’t hide them. I’m me,” she ran her hands down her sides, “and when I call the fire, I’m her.”
“Amazing,” she breathed again, eyes large and roving her body as if trying to peel away the skin to see the bird beneath. “I don’t often come across shifters. In fact, you’re only my second. We’re quite rare, you know.”
She didn’t know. “What kind of shifter are you?”
“I’m the chimera.” Sadness echoed in the last word.
“So you become other people?”
Alice gave a little shake as if stumbling out of an unpleasant memory and nodded. “Aye, but not simply people. I can become anything.” She illustrated that statement by melting and reshaping herself into a brown shaggy dog with a long pink tongue lolling out the corner of its mouth.
The dog hopped off her bed and onto Sable’s.
Sable jerked back, digging her toes into the coverlet not sure what Alice was up to. But a soft, wet nose bumped into her fist and when she slowly petted her silky head, Alice sighed and woofed. Then sniffing her hand one final time, Alice jumped back to the other bed, did a three circle spin around the mattress before finally flopping down and becoming Alice again.
“Now that’s amazing.” Sable clapped.
Alice shrugged.
“Which is your true form?”
Sadness encased her when she sad, “I do not know. I was born under a blood moon, a curse to my people. They told me I was hideous to behold. For the first years of my life they blindfolded me in the hopes that I would no longer remember my true form and therefore could never take it again. Once I matured and was able to control the shift, they released me into the world.” Her gaze was faraway, remembering a different time and place. “Sometimes I think I should like to know. But...” she snapped out of it, voice perky again, “that would necessitate me dying and I’m not quite ready for that yet.”
“Who were your people?”
“The Rom.”
“Gypsies.” Sable remembered the term from the Hunchback. “Maybe you look like Esmeralda?”
Alice giggled, but didn’t say anything.
“Who is the black devil, Alice?” Sable asked, finally getting around to what she’d really wanted to learn all along.
Alice was suddenly very serious. “We’re not certain. All we know is he’s a killer a
nd must be stopped. I’ve been here two years now, with very few leads. He’s elusive and incredibly difficult to track. And it is the most amazing thing to me, I’m quick, hard to imagine that there’s anything out there faster than me. But he is. Almost as if he has some sixth sense to my presence. The past month he’s sent me warnings in the form of scouts.”
Her lips curled into a bitter twist. “He’s taunting me, telling me he knows where I am and can take me anytime he wants.” She pinned Sable with a glare. “I thought you were another warning.”
She shook her head.
“I know.” Alice played with the tip of the blade, the knife having reappeared in her lap again. “That he toys with me and I could not find him tore at me.” A little growl emitted from between her clenched teeth.
Sable’s shoulders slumped. She’d really hoped for better news.
“But,” her brown eyes twinkled, “activity has increased in this last week, he’s growing careless.”
“You think you finally know where he is?”
“I think I do. Tonight there was talk of a vein in the mountains being guarded by the Bandit.” In that moment her grin was reminiscent of One Eye’s. Subtle. But chilling.
“I’m not guarding a vein.”
Sable stopped pacing. “Do you think it’s the Lord?”
“Who is this Lord?” Alice asked with a frown.
Sable told her everything she knew about Dragden and his seven sources. Of the Lord’s posted to guard them and by the end of her tale, Alice nodded.
“I do believe,” she said, “we might be searching for the same thing. I’d like to meet with the rest of your gang, we must talk and plan. Tomorrow is a new moon; my powers wan and wax with the growth of the moon. Tomorrow they will be at their peak.”
“Okay.” She licked her lips. “Let me go find them. I’ll be right back.”
“Bunny,” Alice said.
She grinned. “It’s not actually Bunny. My name is Sable.”
“I knew you were not a Bunny.”
Sable snorted. “No.”
“I debated whether to tell you this or not. I’m not entirely sure it matters, but I think maybe you should know.”
