by Beth Dranoff
But maybe I had it all wrong. Even though I’d been party to it losing a limb earlier this evening, whatever this was just wanted to talk. The head-thwacking by tentacle was all a misunderstanding.
Sure.
Still, better to gamble on my safety over a short-lived future of regret. I tilted my seat back, rolled the rubber mat behind me further to the back, and found the edges of my thumbprint-activated lockbox. A carryover from my days when this kind of situation was normal.
Guess everything old really is new again.
I leaned across and grabbed a couple of hand-to-tentacle combat-friendly weapons. A walnut wood-handled Kukri knife I’d gotten on a mission in Nepal, its arced blade glinting light from overhead. And a machete. Because sometimes you just have to go with the machete.
With my free hand, I hit the speaker on my phone and called it in.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said. “So about that backup...”
* * *
The sound of my voice through the glass woke it up.
I cracked my window. Enough to get some air in and sound out; not enough to get whacked in the head again. My forehead was clammy with something other than summer sweat, as my heartbeat rushed past my ears. Forcing myself to be brave. I clenched the steering wheel with fingers unable to hold their form, my own fur absorbing the sweat of my fear. Focusing on my breath, recalling the sounds of my last yoga teacher; the timbre and tone and texture of her voice. Until my fingers and breath and mind were my own once more.
“Hey,” I said. Did these things even have ears? Then, louder: “Hey! Mind moving a bit so I can get by?” No response. Not even a twitch. Was I really expecting one? Squid D’Lee was chatty, but maybe the larger the octo-beastie, the fewer words it had to share?
One last try. I rolled down the window a few finger-widths more. Oh wow, a breeze. Nifty.
“Excuse me,” I said. This time all the appendages moved at once, the metal creaking and groaning above my head followed by a slithering, then a suctioning. Pop on, pop off. A giant head of a creature that shouldn’t exist on dry land bobbed, upside-down, in front of me. And blinked.
What the hell was it?
“Human.” The multi-limbed creature’s accent was a vague British, as though it was born in the island’s north but had lived here long enough to take the edge off. Weird hearing it coming from that pointy-tooth-filled head on the other side of my windshield. “What do you want?”
“Uh...” I lost my words for a moment, putting the pieces that could fit together in my head. “To leave?” If that was an option, I was so taking it.
“Not yet,” it said. I wondered whether a single one of those teeth would be enough to death-impale me on its own. “We have unfinished business to discuss first. We were interrupted with great rudeness earlier.”
“Oh?” I resisted adding the word “yeah” to the end of that. I got the impression that this creature only responded to being politely addressed, seeing as my “excuse me” approach had worked where the “hey!” opener had failed. Interesting. I inclined my head to convey my curiosity. Poker face poker face poker face.
“We wish to discuss further the mercenary by the name Gustav, or Gus. Blue fellow. Rather nasty.” I think it was watching my face for any reaction. Could it tell if I was lying from its upside-down vantage point?
“Oh?” Like I didn’t have vivid nightmare precision-vision 2 AM sweaty recall on a regular basis of the diamond-and-blue demon who’d almost ended me. Four months was not enough time to forget. Believe me—I’d tried. “How can I help you?” Besides telling Sandor so he could warn his MIA brother, assuming he knew how to reach him.
“Would you be willing to help us?”
“That depends,” I said. “What do you want with Gus?”
“We’re not at liberty to discuss this.” I was starting to wonder if this was a royal “we” situation.
“Could you at least tell me your name? I’m Dana—but you already knew that. And you are—?”
“Oh my,” the giant octopus said. “My manners. I do apologize.” It was hard to tell whether he was being serious. “I am...” I wasn’t sure if he’d said zicorapheto rezmantilus or whether I was language-anthropomorphizing the clicks and squishes and squeaks I was hearing into something my brain could process. “But you can call me Frank.”
“Nice to meet you, Frank. So, could you possibly tell me a bit more about why I should help you?”
“At first we needed the help, and we were willing to compensate you monetarily for your trouble,” he said. “Now, however, you owe us a debt of pain and inconvenience.”
“Pardon?”
“You, and those associated with you, severed one of our limbs. For no good reason. It also hurt.”
“I’m...sorry?” I wasn’t really, seeing as he was holding Sandor as leverage against me at the time, but it seemed like the expected thing to say.
“It will regenerate with time,” Frank said, ignoring my apology along with its insincerity. “Be that as it may, you now have a duty to us that did not previously exist. We expect you to honor our wishes in order to restore balance.”
“And if I don’t? Or can’t?”
“Do your best,” he replied. “Otherwise we might be motivated to conduct comparable limb-regeneration experiments on you next time.” Fuck. “We expect you to contact us should this Gustav reappear. I believe we now have an understanding of the mutual benefits of cooperation?”
“How do I reach you?” Because clearly I had no choice. Even if I didn’t formally acquiesce to the terms.
I’m not sure how Frank did it, but suddenly there was a business card stuck to the bottom left-hand corner of my windshield, followed by a targeted stream of blue ink to make sure the card stayed in place. I guess it was moisture-repellant somehow?
“I look forward to hearing from you, Ms. Dana,” he said. “Good day.” He hesitated until I nodded back, awkward with the pause.
“Good day.”
I watched as the tentacles released my truck, before the oversized cephalopod named Frank lumbered past the brush, headed in the direction of the lake.
And here the Toronto harbor folks thought their biggest issues were Japanese carp and pollution.
Chapter Eight
I turned the key in the ignition again. Hallelujah—not only did it start, but the engine thermostat was back down and out of the red.
I floored it, spraying gravel and weeds and nothing I wanted to pause and examine closely in my wake. The hell with potholes on Lake Shore Boulevard and the damage they were doing to my shocks. Even though I flinched with each rubber-on-ashphalt groan as the frame of my truck complained at its treatment. Suck it up sunshine. It was time to be somewhere very much in the else category.
My lead foot on the gas pedal didn’t start to ease off until I was heading north along sleepy city streets, the people inside just starting to straggle out of bed and reach for that newspaper and morning cup of coffee. There was time before rush hour jammed the streets, lego blocks on wheels clouding the air with exhaust fumes as those stubbornly resisting public transportation idled in stop-and-go traffic. The sun still tucked below the horizon, leaving only the setting moon to offset the overhead street lamplights that flickered at regular intervals on my face and arms as I passed.
At least once I jammed on the brakes, swerving to avoid a dark streak of nothing that darted out in front of me on the road. Unless it wasn’t there. Unless I was so tired I was seeing things. Adrenaline could only carry me so far.
Home was a bit further west than it used to be. Better this way. Apparently my old neighbors hadn’t been big on living next to—in a row house with fully attached walls kind of way—someone whose kitchen mysteriously blew up that one time. My former landlady, a woman with under-eye smudges that matched the grey streaking her
harsh blue-black hair dye, had given me the broken English version of the it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech. Even though it clearly was me.
My new building squatted on the corner of Ossington and Dupont with the train tracks at its back, a cheap gas station to its left, a storage facility to its right and the lake way too far away to see or hear. A former factory, with windows that opened onto the street, it housed artists and students and those like me who lived on the edges of what other people considered normality. My neighbors didn’t care what I did or who I did it with, as long as I returned the favor. Judge not lest ye be judged. Or something like that.
The fact that I’d taken a place even further from the Swan Song was no accident. I’d needed more distance between work and the rest of my life.
Yeah. That was working out so well.
* * *
I woke up thinking about what had happened with Frank. Putting aside the threat—because hello, must be Tuesday—I realized I’d been getting cocky, shifting with the Pack. Overlooking the part where shared energy made the change come on faster, easier. Forgetting that, on my own, I wasn’t quite the control-my-own-physical-form superhero I liked to pretend I was.
I recreated each stage of my earlier intermittent transformation in my head as I ran through my morning Sun Salutation yoga routine. Tried to call up the muscle memory of my claws digging into the steering wheel even as I struggled to regulate my breathing. Stomach crunches didn’t help. Neither did knuckle push-ups. If this was my old place, I might have segued into skipping rope or punching at something; here, the walls were thinner and I couldn’t be sure that repeated pounding on the rotting floor wouldn’t result in me falling through. I flirted with the idea of a jog; rejected it again when the thermostat outside my grime-smeared window informed me it was already 32°C in the shade.
I settled for thirty minutes of kicks, punches and blocks in front of a mirror, monitoring myself for form. Emptying my mind of everything but the flowing sequence of moves, familiar with repetition. This was how I needed my shifts to be.
If my involuntary response to Frank proved anything, I wasn’t there yet.
My phone buzzed. Anshell. He was so retro—what, he couldn’t text?
“Hey,” I said, patting down the sweat with my towel before answering. “What’s up?”
“I wanted to confirm that you still plan to train this afternoon. Or do we need to reschedule?” The word Anshell left off was again. A valid question seeing as I’d canceled and re-booked three times already. I mentally slapped myself on the wrist. Bad Dana. Selfish Dana.
At least Ashell wasn’t giving me guilt. No, he instead was being patient with my ambivalence over becoming a shifter. He hadn’t yelled, given me the silent treatment, or even tossed a disapproving lip-pursing my way. Not over this. So of course I felt even more of a need-to-run urge.
Just because Anshell wasn’t dishing it out didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling it.
“It’s good,” I said instead. “See you in an hour.”
* * *
Funny how the less I knew about something, the more confident I could be in my own abilities. Ignorance and bliss really did make for great drinking buddies.
“Again,” Anshell said, as Sam watched. We were in the backyard of the Roxborough Road house. A mansion by Toronto standards, where a semi-detached in not the best of neighbourhoods had already priced most first-time home buyers out of the city’s real estate market. And this was not a lousy neighbourhood. You could tell by the century-old trees overhanging the grass-and-flagstone mix, blocking what we were up to from anyone who might be curious enough to look over.
Just as well. Did I really need norms with telescopic lenses taking pictures of me as I arched my back and twitched both tail and whiskers that hadn’t been there moments before, wouldn’t be there in a handful of minutes? I was getting faster with my transitions, but not that fast.
The sun dappling my fur through the leaves warmed my now-fully-tufted haunches, and I leaned back to lick my pads and groom the bits of dirt that tickled my chin. Rough pads with sharpened tips scraping along all the right spots. There. Catching my own scent of chai and lavender and vanilla in the pod; underneath it all an underbelly of acrid coffee-bean char.
“Again,” said Anshell.
Pushing down the instinct to yowl my protest, inhaling the fur and feline until it tickled my surfaces from the inside, until I was smooth and pink and blinking up at my Alpha and Sam again. Covered in a thin layer of something viscous that I’d swear was lube if I didn’t know better. Panting from the effort.
Sam crouched down to face level and passed me a Mason jar of water, its beaded moisture sliding through my fingers and onto the concrete slab below. Almost. Sam’s reflexes were faster than mine, with one palm under the bottle to cushion its fall even as his other hand, still dry, held the mouth upright. Of course, to do this Sam had rolled onto his side and was now at eye level with me. He flashed me a grin and waggled his eyebrows. I was covered in some kind of bodily fluid and Sam still found me at least sort of attractive.
Normal in relation to my life had come and gone and left the For Sale by Owner sign behind.
At least he could deal with the Dana I was now.
Sam curled up to sitting—someone was diligent with his stomach crunches—and reached over to bring the jar’s rim to my lips, tipping liquid towards me. I touched his wrist, gentle, steadying myself and helping to regulate the flow of my thirst relief.
“Small sips,” Sam said. “Don’t drink too much. Remember the shape of your stomach changes as you transition. Last thing you want is a stomach ache.”
I nodded to let him know I’d heard, but didn’t stop drinking. My tongue was sandpaper and my muscles were syrup. Surely it was time for a break.
“Again,” said Anshell.
Sam held the glass, a gentle separation of liquid and human-shaped lips, then edged back several inches. Not as far as before, but giving me enough space to do what needed to be done. Lending me his energy by proximity.
“Anshell,” he said, watching the fatigue drip off me as I panted and tried to find the strength for one more shift. “I think she’s had enough.”
“She can’t control her shift unless the muscles have the routine so ingrained she can do it in her sleep.” If Anshell was surprised that Sam was pushing back on my behalf, he didn’t show it. “You know this.”
“Look at her,” Sam said again as I struggled to push the fur back through the flesh, catching the yowl of frustration in my still-too-human (for the moment) throat. “You’re pushing her too hard.”
“Dana missed the last three sessions, then lost control under pressure.” Anshell stared Sam down, as cool as I’d ever seen the Alpha. “You know what happens if she can’t hold it together. There are rules. Dana is new to this, so we can overlook last night’s lapse—for now—but we can’t protect her indefinitely. She’s going to have to stand on her own four legs.”
“Funny,” Sam said, not smiling. “But does it have to happen in the next twenty minutes?”
Anshell didn’t answer, watching me on all fours, my mouth slack and drool pooling at the edges before trickling down my chin. I wasn’t sure I could go through it one more time even if he told me to do it. And then:
“Again,” said Anshell. His voice a steel-tipped whip that burned past my shoulder blades; I arched and yowled and breathed in Sam’s scent and then I was silken fur and pointed teeth and belly rubs and claws digging beneath the surface of anything I wanted. Bumping heads with Sam, gliding along and through and around Anshell’s legs before finding a patch of sunlit heat to stretch across. Purring, my exhaustion released at the sound of the Alpha’s command.
Sam cupped one hand and poured water into it with the other, holding it towards me. When I didn’t respond, or even really notice, he flicked a few drops at my nose.
I growled; he held his hand out again. This time I slunk forward, because I recognized his scent, knew him to be safe. Trust. The liquid smelled of him, even as it mixed with traces of what had been in that jar before it became a vessel of drink; briny pickled green tomatoes with dill and garlic. I wrinkled my nose, but drank, thirst overriding my suddenly delicate nasal sensitivities.
“Again,” Anshell said as my tongue ran rough against the flesh of Sam’s palm, the last droplets of liquid gone. And again his voice was a physical command every cell of my body responded to, pushing my fur-lined id into the superego of human existence. Until it was me, and there was dirt, and the weeds that poked up between the cracks in the stones tickled the small of my back.
I opened my eyes to see Anshell looking down at me. Couldn’t tell if I’d passed whatever his test was, if he was going to force me to change once more. Then he gave me a nod, and said, “Good job,” before turning around to go back into the house.
Guess we were done for now.
I realized, after a bit, that Sam was still here with me. Waiting until I could form words again, until my breathing steadied and my heart stopped pounding so hard. Considerate. Finally I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked over at him.
“Thanks for before,” I said. “Water good.”
“Still thirsty?”
I nodded, saving my voice for the really important words. So tired. Sam passed over the Mason jar from before, miraculously refilled without me noticing. No limits now on how much I could have, and I downed half of it in fewer gulps than I could have imagined even six months ago. Before I became so far from the norm I wished I could go back to being.
“What time do you start at the Swan today?”
Oh. Right. I had to work.
“Uh,” I said, trying to remember, channeling human thought along my still-cat-like synapses. “Five? What time is it now?”
“Two,” said Sam. He angled his head to the side as he took in my sticky, gritty self in all its naked glory. Ha. “You’re going to want to shower first.”
