Betrayed by Blood

by Beth Dranoff

  “What if I told you,” he’d say, when I’d get restless with waiting, when all the puzzles in the world weren’t enough compared with scraps of attention from my father. “What if I told you these were maps to other worlds?”

  “You mean the moon?” At age nine, the world was a literal place for me. There was what I knew, and everything else. The moon existed. Other worlds did not. A simplicity in belief and understanding.

  “Like the moon, yes,” my father had said, changing the subject after that. Maybe he was going to tell me about his theory of alternate dimensions. Classified hypotheses he was forbidden to discuss outside of the lab. Or maybe he’d been wanting to tell me about the dots on my back, and why they mirrored some of the details on the sheets in front of me.

  But then he died, and his stuff was packed up, and I went on with my life.

  * * *

  Except he hadn’t died. He was sitting here, in this room that shouldn’t exist, talking to Sam and me about how he had sold out his daughter to evil in order to ensure his own freedom.

  Me and my future therapist were going to have lots of material to work with. Assuming I lived that long.

  * * *

  “Tell me about your deal with the Cephalopod Order,” I said. Because now, in the present, I couldn’t afford a time-out to deal with my feelings of betrayal or hurt or unresolved daddy issues. “Why is Gustav so important to you?”

  “I’ve been in this holding dimension too long,” he said. “My mind is not what it was. It’s a side effect of this kind of residency. I’ve managed to introduce a mutation into my blood that slows down the deterioration, but it’s not enough. Either I make it back home soon, or I come up with a way to reverse this dimensional damage, or I lose my mind. There are no other options left to me.”

  “So,” I said. “Gus.”

  “Correct,” said my father. At this point I was using the term father loosely.

  “Did it ever occur to you to just ask him for a few specimens to help with your research?” It was hard to keep the emotion out of my tone, and my tongue accidentally slipped too far between my teeth, biting down. I tasted blood.

  “No,” he said. “Mercenaries require payment for all services provided, and I had nothing to give since I was legally dead. No access to my old bank accounts, investments—nothing.”

  “Then how are you compensating Frank and the squid? Freelancers need to get paid too.” Sam wasn’t wrong there. D’Lee didn’t strike me as someone who gave charity time to clients.

  “Easier,” my father replied. “They’re helping me on spec as an investment. If I can find the mutation and fix it, they get a cut of whatever profits I make off it plus unlimited access to the formula.”

  “If D’Lee’s crew was able to bring in their captures still lucid,” I said, “they’d be able to charge premium rates.”

  “Precisely,” said my father.

  “Especially if they were the only ones in the market who could do it. But then what about Ezra?” I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers, but we’d come this far. “You guys were such close friends. Why not work on this together?”

  “Alina doesn’t do octo-pedal seafood,” my father said. I thought maybe he was joking but the delivery was deadpan. “Also my good friend Ezra can’t be trusted all of the time to do the right thing.” My father paused, considering his choice of words and the possible meanings which could have been construed by this sequence. “Perhaps a more accurate phrasing might be that my good friend Ezra, when faced with a choice, can most frequently be predicted to take the series of actions most beneficial to Ezra himself.”

  “So now we know why you guys have been friends so long,” I said. Nobody laughed. OK, maybe it wasn’t funny to anyone but me. “What exactly was the plan?”

  “Trust me,” said my father. Oh yeah. Like that was going to happen. “I wouldn’t let Alina do anything to you.”

  “She wants to skin me alive,” I said. “She and Ezra abducted me and tortured me for information. For fun. She’s trying to force my,” I stumbled, changing the word Pack at the last moment, “friends to spy on me to help her on pain of death and agony to anyone they cherish. She’s a bad-ass demon, or at last something not from here, so I’m guessing less than full-on mammalian but more than your average creature from outer space. How am I doing?” My father didn’t answer. “Last I checked, she had Ezra in her thrall and I’ve seen no evidence that you’re not similarly smitten. So tell me again. How exactly could you prevent Alina from doing me harm, even if you were inclined to lift a pinky finger to help me?”

  “I’m hurt,” said the man whose DNA I shared. “Don’t you know that blood is thicker than water?”

  “So is Jell-O,” I replied. “Still doesn’t explain how you’re planning to protect me.”

  “I won’t have to,” said my father. “I’ve already given you all the tools you’ll need to protect yourself.” And then he started giggling. No longer was it the chuckle of the sociopathic adult with whom I shared biology. Sam and I were now sharing metaphysical space with someone who should really be thinking about padded rooms and possible not-for-recreational-use restraints.

  If this was symptomatic of inter-dimensional dementia, here’s hoping it wasn’t contagious. Did the shared skin suit insulate the wearer from the scrambled brain effect at all? Or was it more of a biological airlock situation, a living and breathing container, connecting realities A and B?

  My Ezra-wearing father pushed himself to standing, launching forward from the crushed velvet chair of fluorescence where he’d been sitting up to this point. Started clapping his hands and stomping his feet to the beat of what I assumed was the music in his head. Spinning closer and closer, his arms held high and bent at the elbows. I could see that same thumbprint tattoo etched into his inner wrist as before. The one that seemed to respond to my touch, an on/off consciousness switch of metaphysical transmogrification. Wondered if I stuck my thumb in ink and rolled it onto paper whether the patterns would match. No time to check. I caught Sam’s attention, motioning towards the insignia with my chin.

  Lightning-quick, my hand was out and gripping my father’s wrist as he danced past. It was good that he’d lost his lucidity for a while. Maybe the speed of my reflexes wouldn’t register.

  I pressed my thumb against the tattooed imprint on his wrist. That jolt of energy again, one I was starting to recognize as a shifter-on-shifter connection, except this time it felt more personal, as though keyed to a frequency only I could access. Was that even possible? Electricity, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck standing to attention; a growl in his throat as Sam neared us. Arms outstretched to catch my father if he ran.

  But he didn’t. Instead, Stuart the Currently Not So Mentally Stable opened his mouth and let out a howling that escalated to a nails-on-metal-siding shriek before leveling off to an in-heat caterwauling. Right. My father had shifter blood in there too.

  And here I’d assumed Ezra had been operating out of a sense of specist superiority all those years. My father was his closest friend—and vice versa. No way it could have stayed hidden for so long. Ezra must have known.

  And just like that, my twenty-twenty hindsight rearview mirror perspective shifted forty-five degrees to the right.

  “Quiet,” Sam said, his voice deepening; suddenly the man I’d seen repeatedly naked was transformed into the man who was second only to his Alpha. Sam commanded attention; I couldn’t stop looking at him, craving his words, needing him to tell me what to do next. Feeling his energy beating against the buzzing hive of my father’s fragmented power even as I stood at the periphery. I shook my head, loosening Sam’s hold. Realizing that, like Jon, Sam could have exercised his will over me at any time—and hadn’t.

  My father was experiencing no such surge of free will. Which was probably a good thing, since it meant that horrible sou
nd coming from him cut off as well. The silence was abrupt, even though it had been there all along; a layer of gooey, sticky peace underlying the cacophony of shut the hell up sound.

  Sam glided in closer, dipping his head down to stare directly into my father’s eyes. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to touch any lingering lucidity, or whether his goal was to push back the long hairy fingerlings of reality gone on walkabout that made up some of the sketchier bits of Stuart Markovitz’s mind.

  My father was giggling again. Submitting to Sam’s dominance without understanding what he was doing, or why. I wasn’t positive he even recognized Sam’s power for what it was.

  Something different. I reached towards the edge of the map table where I’d left my phone; grabbed it and flicked the camera to active. With one hand I held up my father’s wrist and with the other I zoomed in and snapped a series of stills from various angles. Sam watched while I did it, but only with partial bits of his attention—his main concern was my father and what he might do next.

  It was good to have backup.

  Sam’s lips were pressed together and turned down at the corners; a bad taste on his tongue, or maybe a rancid odor disturbing his equanimity. I didn’t smell anything. My father must have bathed recently, or perhaps sweat and mildew wasn’t an issue in whatever reality he found himself stuck. I still wasn’t clear on the hows and whys and wherefores of inter-dimensional travel.

  Was it even travel? Or was it more of an astral projection kind of thing? Remembering that what I was looking at, who I was seeing, might not even be one person. My father, Ezra, Alina—it was getting pretty crowded inside that flesh suit.

  And who was in control?

  I still had my secret. While my father, in his more lucid moments, had probably guessed at my shifter potential, I was pretty sure that whiff of possibility hadn’t made it yet to either Ezra or Alina. But with Alina’s ability to single out and threaten Pack members—and I had no reason to think that my perspective-altering seclude-and-scold encounter had happened only to me—it was a when and not an if scenario now.

  “I’m going to try something,” I said, and in my mind I saw fur and flesh with painted nails and pinkish pads. Felt that now-familiar rushing underneath the surface of my as-yet-still-human skin, tickling, before waves of fur rolled across my forearm from just above my elbow to the tips of what had been my fingers but were now paws. I held up my curved claws, a semi-circle of lethal pins, admiring the patterns they cast against the shadows.

  The inked skin may have been shaped into a human-sized thumbprint, but when I smacked my paw against the spot it somehow expanded to encompass what would have been the heel of my palm in human form. My father’s eyes snapped wide as my claws made contact and pressed into his flesh. Not far. Not enough to draw blood, unless he moved. But he felt it, and he felt me. The glimmerings of lucid thought peeked through the slats of his mind.

  I wasn’t sure, if I was being honest, whether I preferred my father coherent or dementia-addled at this point. Coherent meant the potential for answers that made sense, but that came with a side order of self-interest and uncertain loyalties. Yes, it’s true—even despite all the evidence before me, I kept hoping my father actually loved me and would at some point put my needs and a desire to protect me above himself and his own safety.

  Incoherent was simpler. Like caring for a pre-verbal infant. Harder than a baby because of his size, weight and strength, but the part where I didn’t have to worry about him betraying me simply because he could was a relief.

  I clenched my claws, deeper, going in where blood could be drawn and mixed with the soon-to-be-dead surface layers of skin. Coming away dry. My father’s eyes went rounder, but there was otherwise no sign that he noticed what I was doing. Which made me wonder. Did temporary skins feel pain? Could blood actually flow through veins borrowing their life force from elsewhere? I didn’t want to torture him to find out—hello, yet another reason I’d left the Agency—but this was one of those times it would have been so helpful to be able to check my morality at the door.

  Instead I worked with what I could rationalize. Digging in my claws and pulling, just a bit. Not enough to injure, or even apparently cause pain, but enough that whatever I had a grip on...moved. Twisted. A parchment-thin scarf with pleats and folds that needed to be arranged just so.

  Sam noticed it too. I was relieved to have a witness in all this. Things without sense made more normal with someone else to see. My father shuddered then started twitching. Blinking, rapid, then everything went rigid, his eyes wide and his body stiffening as the fingers attached to the wrist I was gouging splayed out in a starfish formation.

  “Is he having a heart attack? Or a seizure?” My own heart thudded, heavy against my ribs; I retracted my claws and reverted to human again. Reaching out to feel the pulse beside his jaw. Nothing. My own breath quickening as I grabbed his arm to press my index and forefinger against the spot where I’d been claws-deep in moments earlier. Still nothing.

  Did we kill my father? Inadvertently? No. He couldn’t be dead. Not after everything.

  He was still blinking. And breathing, the rise and fall of his chest validating that he still lived.

  I remembered in that moment to breathe as well.

  Sam put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I jumped, then relaxed. Right. I wasn’t alone.

  “Dad?” Whatever he’d planned, whatever he’d done, that pronoun still applied to him. Based on biology if nothing else. And still I didn’t want him to die.

  The blinking slowed and the expression behind them shifted. Crafty where before it had been befuddled.

  “Well,” said a silky voice decidedly not my father’s. “What have we here?”

  * * *

  I dove for the furthest corner of the room. Sam mirrored my actions a beat later, except he went in the opposite direction. A strategic move. We had a better chance of taking someone down if we came at them from different sides.

  Alina, wearing Ezra’s face, seemed unconcerned. Really, by her standards, we were essentially fleas capable of annoying by ankle biting but were otherwise of no concern. Except for me, of course. And whatever those dots on my back and the blood in my veins could do.

  She was peering at the books the way Sam had; apparently the titles were funny because Alina was snickering. A strange sound shaped by the mouth of Ezra and yet not.

  I knew better than to get drawn in. Her sense of humor included electro-shocks and pulling the wings off flies.

  Alina drifted closer to the table where the portal maps were scattered. Shit.

  My palms were sweaty and my fingers streaked moisture across the glass surface of my phone a few times without making technology-responsive contact. Not good. I pressed harder and this time the icons I wanted slid across the screen into place. Swipe, scroll, swipe and press. Hoping that what had worked in my truck would work again up here. Even though I had no idea what the connection was between music and changing the channel on whoever was inhabiting the skin.

  There.

  Guns N’ Roses, cranked to 10. “Paradise City” wasn’t exactly the death metal that had gotten rid of Ezra in flesh suit form the last time, but it was worth a shot. Alina flinched at the sound but otherwise continued her assessing stroll around the attic room. Damn.

  I tried again.

  “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden. Maybe?

  Alina growled at the sound but kept on going, getting closer to that place we needed her not to be.

  This would have worked by now with Ezra. Then again, he was all about the jazz and classical music. Maybe it had less to do with the skin itself and more with the temperament of whoever was wearing it?

  Of course, I had no idea what Alina was—or wasn’t—into musically. So I had to keep trying. Besides, it’s not like she’d given any indication she either cared or noticed
my playlist up to now. Nothing to lose.

  This time I went punk: “Soup Is Good Food” from the Dead Kennedys. I’m not sure how she did it but Alina actually managed to dance to the beat.

  Cycled through my playlist, genre by genre, trying and discarding each after a sample of about ten seconds when Alina didn’t respond. I even tried Justin Bieber. She just started laughing.

  Only one thing left to try.

  I dug deep, and took a breath that was deeper.

  The 1980s power ballad duet between Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand: “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.”

  “Nooooooooo!” Alina’s shriek knotted my nerves and threw darts at my eardrums. But if it meant Alina got gone, it was totally worth it. Except, despite having her hands over her ears, she was still here. Damn it!

  I started humming along; a nervous tic. Alina flinched and drew back, away from the added sound that was me. Interesting. I hummed louder; she closed her eyes. OK. I could totally do this.

  As Barbra’s part kicked in, I added my voice to the mix, motioning Sam to do the same. He shook his head. I gave him Meaningful Look Part 2, hoping he got the urgency. It didn’t have to be amazing. It just had to work.

  And then Sam started singing.

  I tried not to gape. Sam’s baritone was rich and textured and damn but I wanted to roll the taste around on my tongue.

  Instead we flowed the words back and forth. Torturing Alina in our own way as the music wove around and between us.

  Not even noticing, as we neared those final chords, that Alina had vanished and the Ezra Gerbrecht she’d been wearing right along with it.

  Staring at each other. Tears in my eyes. Over-identification much?

  But I didn’t want to tell Sam goodbye. Not now. Not ever.

  “Hey,” he said, stepping out from where he’d been crouched. Looking around; a single nod to confirm that Alina was gone. Coming to stand in front of me, brushing my tears away with a gentle thumb. “What’s wrong?”