Disclosure

by Thais Lopes

  One of then retrieved a dart gun. Predictable, they were using that tranquilizer every chance they had, especially after they found out that it could kill us faster than any wound if they had a big enough dose. But that wouldn’t help them today.

  Huffing, I laid down on the grass, with my eyes still on them. The man fired, and the dart hit the invisible wall surrounding our property. If I were in human form I would be smiling. As a wolf, I only showed my teeth to the men, and they went away. Yes, do that. You won’t be able to get into the compound, anyway.

  I waited a couple of minutes anyway. Better safe than sorry. But the proximity alarm didn’t sound again, which meant we were safe, unless they had figured a way to get invisible and fly into our lands. And they would still hit the wards. Huffing again, I got up and started walking the perimeter. That was my last round, and then one of the cats would be on perimeter duty.

  There, behind the fences and the witches’ wards, we were safe. I didn’t know for how long, but for now people acted as if nothing had changed. It was as if we were living inside a bubble, in a world completely different from what was shown on the television.

  Out there, it was war. The list of missing Otherworld people was growing scarily fast, and so was the list of the ones we knew had been captured. Those who hadn’t made it to the compounds on time were being picked one by one. Not even humans were safe – many of the captured ones weren’t from the Otherworld. But still, we had orders to stand by.

  I sat on the porch of Ivan’s house, my gaze lost in the distance. With each new information we received I got more and more scared of what was to come. Humanity had made their move, but apparently they had forgotten that, when the time came, it would be our turn to act.

  And they would pay for each drop of blood.

  9. Camila

  Eight months later.

  The soft steps of someone coming up the stairs would be inaudible even for me, usually. But I was on the edge and it was 2a.m. On Thursday, that meant there were almost no sounds from the city or from the rest of the building.

  It had been too long since I had slept a full night. My nerves wouldn’t let me. In the last three months I had the same nightmare again and again: people coming into the building, bringing down the apartment’s door and taking me to the cave. At any moment now I would be caught.

  The steps stopped in front of the apartment’s door. All my muscles contracted, while two different sets of instincts fought for control inside me. Fight or flight? My wolf was agitated, especially after so long without being able to run or hunt, and her first instinct was always to attack. But I needed to think, I needed to measure my actions.

  The person moved, her clothes making a soft sound. A second later I felt the power filling my apartment. It wasn’t much, only what I needed to recognize her.

  Dara.

  And there was only one possible reason for that visit. I got up and changed my clothes quickly, taking my twin knives and slipping them into the sheaths sewn into my boots. With near silent steps, I left the bedroom, glancing at the closed door of Luiz’s bedroom. I could wake him up and warn him about where I was going and what was about to happen, but it would be better if I didn’t. If he didn’t know anything they would have nothing to use against him.

  Dara had an impatient expression on her face when I opened the door. In silence, I locked the door behind me before following her. As silently as possible, we left the building. A witch – no, a mage – was waiting for us on the street, and I felt his power surrounding us. Probably something to hide use from anyone who might be looking from the windows or passing on the street.

  Still in silence, we walked through the deserted streets. You had to be crazy to be outside after midnight, as the hunters would arrest anyone. We walked for almost an hour until they stopped in front of a house. It seemed ordinary, with one story and walls stained by many layers of graffiti and a half-assed attempt to paint over them. But I could feel the power coming from it, a warm feeling against my wolf. It was one of the witches’ safe houses. Dara nodded, smiling at me, before opening the door.

  The room had a definitely shabby look, but that didn’t matter. It was a safe house, and Dara was outside of the compound. That was all the confirmation I needed.

  “What are the orders?” I asked.

  Dara’s smile grew and became aggressive. “It’s time the humans learned that they aren’t the stronger ones.”

  There was blood on her voice and on the eyes of the people who slowly entered the room. Smiling back, I nodded. That was what I had been born to. To the fight, not to the waiting.

  “The fairy people are coordinating the attack.” The mage who escorted us told me. “This house will be the main base in the city. And the first thing we’ll do will be destroying the cave and the torture rituals.”

  “Tomorrow is the waning moon.” I whispered, still smiling.

  10. Felipe

  The street in front of the cave’s door was full of people. Once again they had a large screen installed for those who didn’t arrive in time to get a place inside but wanted to watch the executions. In small groups, we spread among the crowd, making sure humans didn’t even guess who we were.

  Camila faced me, with a savage smile. In any other moment that would have been enough to let anyone know that she was a shapeshifter, but that was a normal expression among the bloodthirsty humans. The rest of our group – a witch, a sidhe couple and an elf, the last three using their magic to look like humans and hide the weapons they carried – smiled as if answering her. We could barely wait for the signal.

  Few minutes later, I felt the vampires arrive. I still couldn’t see them, but they were making their way across the crowd, too. And in the next moment the two sidhe raised their heads, looking at something none of us could see.

  “It’s time.”

  Three vampires halted in front of us, nodding lightly, before turning to the people between us and the door. I felt their power rising, so much more of it than I had expected, before people started moving, clearing the way to the door. We moved quickly, one second ahead from the shouts as people realized what was going on.

  But it was already too late.

  The screams started as we were almost to the door. All the groups that wouldn’t go inside were attacking the crowd, and I didn’t bother looking behind. I knew what would be the result. We were the hunters, and humanity was the prey.

  The six soldiers that were guarding the door were already dead when we arrived there. Their pallor and the satisfied expression in the vampires’ face was enough to tell me what had happened. Still smiling, Camila nudged the bodies to the side before taking a running start and kicking the lock. The door sprung open, and her smile got even wider.

  Now it was our turn. The shapeshifters who had reached us waited in formation behind us, ready for the action. We were the best fighters among the Otherworld races, because of our tradition of dominance fights. That meant we would be the first to go in.

  Camila pulled her knives, while one of the sidhe gave me an assault rifle. The vampires had gotten some recordings of the place for us, and we knew exactly what to do.

  With quick steps we crossed the entrance hall. Up ahead it became a walkway that ran along the walls of the large artificial cave, going down. Camila looked down, calculating the height before jumping. I jumped on the railing, using one hand to keep me balanced and the other to hold the rifle and aim while I went down sliding and shooting. More shapeshifters jumped down, joining Camila on the ground, while sidhes and elves ran down the walkway. Witches came after them, and the vampires would keep any human reinforcement from coming down.

  I jumped from the railing before the walkway ended, handing the rifle to one of the witches and shapeshifting. Most of us could shapeshift in seconds, but that would leave our beasts too aggressive for a while. Which was perfect for that moment.

  The soldier didn’t even see what had happened when I jumped over him, biting his neck. The taste of bl
ood filled my mouth and a satisfied growl escaped. But I couldn’t waste time there. I released the man, knowing that he would bleed to death in just a little time. Looking around the battleground that the cave had become, I went after one of the soldiers who was still armed.

  “ENOUGH!” The voice rose above all the noise of the fight, amplified by a microphone. My first instinct was to ignore it all and go ahead with my attack, but the man who had spoken continued. “Otherworld abominations, if you don’t stop right now I will electrocute everyone on the cages!”

  One glance around was all I needed to find the man. He was beside the electronic equipment, perfectly visible. He dressed as a soldier, but was obviously uncomfortable there. A bureaucrat, probably. Did he really think that threatening to electrocute everyone there would do any good? We were there to destroy the cave and everyone who was part of the executions, not to rescue anyone.

  But that didn’t matter, the man was already dead, he just didn’t know yet.

  Camila moved fast, cutting the throat of the civilian who had gone after her, before turning around to face the man. One second later he fell, one of her knives on his neck. I saw when she threw the other knife to one of the elves and then shapeshifted.

  11. Luiz

  One week later.

  I should have guessed what was about to happen when I woke up and Camila had left. Intellectually, I knew that the Otherworld would retaliate, but it didn’t cross my mind that it would be a bloodbath.

  Humanity had imagined it would be easy to teach the supernatural beings to fear them. After all, humans were at the top of the food chain, right? That was what everyone thought until then. Illusion. Now everyone knew that the Otherworld could have destroyed us whenever they wanted.

  The attack to the cave where the murders happened was chocking in many ways. First, no one expected that level of planning and organization. Everything had been planned down to the second, and the soldiers who were there had no chance. The crowd that usually gathered there, then, was easy prey.

  And that was the second shock: the Otherworld wouldn’t bother separating military from civilians. A declaration made by the Witches’ Council made that perfectly clear: anyone who supported the mass murders, even by just watching, would be considered an accomplice and treated as such.

  Besides, no one had imagined the sheer brutality that the supernatural races hid. I guess everyone thought only about the modern versions of the fairy tales, the so-called child story and the romances that had turned magic and all things supernatural into something from a dream. We had forgotten the truth was something entirely different.

  People from the Otherworld where the true predators, not humanity.

  But the scene that made everyone – even the ones who agreed with the eradication of the supernatural beings – stop to think was something else. A woman who had been locked inside of the cage, being carried out by Dara when the fight was over. She was pregnant and had entered into labor in there. They called all hospitals and emergency services, but no one would receive her or send help, even though Dara swore she was human, one of the people captured by “mistake”.

  Many people from the Otherworld got together, trying to help the woman, but no one there had any medical knowledge. They were only fighters. The child was born, a girl, but the mother died there, on the sidewalk, lying on a mattress made of clothes.

  Would she have survived if she had received medical care?

  Later her identity was disclosed. She was full human, just as the child’s father, her husband, who hadn’t even tried to react when a group of hunters invaded their house and kidnapped her. Hearing about that, Dara refused to let him have the child, who was in the care of a woman from the Otherworld. The only information she gave was that the girl had been called Alice.

  It took almost the whole week until the government stopped trying to react. Only then the Otherworld put away their weapons, but they wouldn’t go back to their compounds. No, what they wanted was the freedom to live as they wanted among humans.

  I turned off the television, unwilling to see more about the deaths and damage caused by the weak of war. I was getting ready to leave the apartment when my cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Luiz?”

  And that was a voice I hadn’t expected to hear anytime soon, not after the way she had left in the middle of the night. “Camila, what happened?”

  “Listen, would you like to be one of the intermediaries between humanity and the Otherworld?” She asked, skipping all niceties, as always.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most of us is still too angry to be able to negotiate with the people behind the hunt.” She explained. “Someone came up with the idea to invite a team of trustworthy humans to act as intermediaries and talk for us. People who know us, and who will be able to tell us if this truce is real or just a maneuver to gain time before another attack. We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

  “You could have killed everyone.” I said, voicing the question that had been in my mind since the beginning. “The Otherworld held back. Why?”

  “We just want to live without the need to hide all the time.” I could almost hear the sigh on her voice. “We want to live as equals. If we had used all our strength humanity would fear us so much that we would never be able to do that.”

  Humanity would fear us? We already did. And that meant I didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if they hadn’t held back.

  But I understood her request. I had lived with two werewolves for years, and never had any problem. And I still thought about them as friends. They deserved to live as they wanted, without hiding all the time.

  “Why me?” I needed to ask.

  “Because Felipe and I trust you. I remember your reaction when you found out we were real, and everything you said and did during those years. I know you won’t betray us.”

  A simple answer. She was right, I would never betray them. I had never agreed with the experiments or the hunt, and couldn’t understand the idea of decimating the supernatural races just because they were stronger.

  And I was already wondering what could happen if humanity and the Otherworld worked together.

  “I’m in.”

  Thank you so much for reading this short story. This is just a little background for the main series, and the first book, The Circle of Death, will be available soon.

  I would love to hear your feedback, so please consider leaving a review :)

  - Thais ( www.thais-lopes.com )

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