Trials of a Teenage Werevulture (Trilogy of a Teenage Werevulture Book 1)

by Emily Martha Sorensen

  We reached our destination, which was a boring house in a rundown neighborhood, yet another total failure as a secret lair.

  “Come with me,” Rodrigo said curtly.

  He got out of the front seat and slammed the door, and I saw that he had shifted back to his own face. That was a tiny relief, because at least it was some measure of honesty.

  “If you get a chance to escape and rescue your parents,” Kegan whispered in my ear, “don’t worry about leaving me behind. I can go insubstantial. He can’t do anything to me.”

  I nodded gratefully.

  Rodrigo jerked the back door open and waited while we got out. Then he had us walk in front of him to the front door, which he opened with a key. We stepped inside, and he followed after us.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked nervously, looking around an empty hallway. Nobody seemed to live here. Perhaps he was renting it. Perhaps he rented every house he used, so that he could leave anytime he wished.

  Rodrigo shut the front door and locked it. Then he turned around to face both of us.

  “I need someone who’s on the record as a vulture,” he said shortly, “and who is not a vulture. That’s the only reason I’ve been so patient with you, Lisette.”

  “Why?” I demanded. “Why exactly do you need me?”

  He sighed. “Let me rephrase. I don’t need you, but having you would be very useful to keep my boss from being angry with me once tonight’s over.”

  “Why?” Kegan asked.

  “I’ve gone against his wishes, and he’s not going to be happy about that.” Rodrigo shrugged. “He wanted our ability to control taint to remain a secret. I felt that that was selfish and greedy. As I said, I don’t need you, but it would be nice to have a peace offering.”

  “And why exactly would I be a peace offering?” I demanded.

  Rodrigo smiled. “That’s not something you need to know, Lisette. What you do need to know is that if you agree to let me turn you, and you don’t tell anyone you’ve been turned, I’ll let your family go and never bother any of you again.”

  “But Lisette would be bothered by somebody,” Kegan snapped. “Because your boss would want her to do something eventually.”

  Rodrigo smiled again. “He might. But he might not.”

  This deal sounded repulsive. I wanted nothing to do with it.

  Rodrigo caught the look on my face, and his smile faded. “Let me make myself clear,” he said. “Either you come out of this a taint carrier, which is harmless, or your entire family will be tainted. I’ll also see to it that the werehawk turning stone is targeted tonight.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I hadn’t even thought to call my great-uncle, the werehawk clan leader, and warn him that there were bad people running around tonight tainting turning stones. He kept our clan’s turning stone in a simple lockbox in his closet that would not have been difficult to break into. Valuable as all turning stones were, they were almost never stolen, because there was no value in a stone that would turn you into the wrong species.

  It was rare for new turning stones to be dug up these days. And it took generations for a stone to be programmed properly.

  I didn’t want anybody’s turning stone to be tainted, but especially not the one that belonged to my extended family.

  My mouth was dry. I couldn’t see a way out of this.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “I want you to choose a species,” Rodrigo said. “Werehawk would be fine, if that’s what you wish. And I want you to accept the turning. All turnings have to be voluntary, including the kind I control. If you reject it, you’ll simply be tainted.”

  “You mean, like the two you mentioned?” I asked nervously.

  “Yes,” he said. “I suspect that’s what happened to them. I suspect that’s what causes all failures to turn. The younger a person is, the less likely they are to be absolutely sure of what they want, and so the likelier it will be for the turning to fail.”

  “Lisette,” Kegan said quickly, “you really, really shouldn’t —”

  “Did you not hear what I just said?” Rodrigo snapped. “If you care about her at all, don’t try to put doubts in her mind. Help her be sure that this will, indeed, be something she can accept!”

  “Lisette . . .” Kegan said nervously.

  I shook my head and closed my eyes, breathing in and out. Could I accept being a werehawk? Of course. It was what I’d always wanted to be. If I had the power to go back in time and change what I’d turned into, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it right now.

  Would I?

  I liked . . . I liked my half-form. I liked my wings. I kind of liked the mystery of being unique. I wouldn’t have chosen this on purpose, but now that I had it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it up. In fact, I was sure I didn’t want to give it up. Especially not when somebody was trying to force it on me.

  I opened my eyes. “I —”

  Rodrigo was gone.

  I was just about to open my mouth again to ask where he’d disappeared to when he reappeared, walking back into the hallway from another room. He was holding the pink turning stone.

  My throat tightened. No way. No way no way no way no way no way.

  I’d thought I could accept it, but I couldn’t. That pink turning stone repelled me. Looking at it grossed me out.

  I glanced over at Kegan, who seemed to be struggling to decide whether to shout or not talk.

  “Remember to be sure of yourself,” Rodrigo said soothingly. “Remind yourself of all the reasons why you want to be a werehawk. All it takes is a moment of certainty. Find that moment, and then touch the stone.”

  Could I find that moment of certainty? Yes, I could. All I had to do was remember how I’d felt before becoming a werevulture. Those feelings, those regrets, were still part of me.

  But I didn’t want them to become all of me.

  I could think of only one other option. A crazy, last-ditch, last resort plan that I’d already thought about back at my family’s house and rejected. Because it just wasn’t safe.

  I looked at Rodrigo’s eyes, and then Kegan’s.

  Oh, why not, I thought. What’ve I got to lose? If I don’t try, I’ll probably wind up tainted anyway.

  I reached out my hands and heard Kegan made a muffled yelp, but I tried to ignore that. I needed to concentrate. I leaned forward to make the bottom of my T-shirt brush the edge of the stone, stopping my hands half an inch away from it.

  Rodrigo frowned. “You need to actually touch —”

  I shifted to vulture.

  My clothes, my shoes, and the turning stone all disappeared into me. I flapped my wings to launch up in the air, and —

  Rodrigo screamed and flung himself at me. His arm gripped tightly around my neck, choking me.

  I gasped, flapping my wings and scratching him with my talons, but his grip only tightened.

  He’s going to break my neck!

  Kegan jumped on Rodrigo’s back and started pounding his head with her fists. He paid her no heed. She made her fists insubstantial and pounded them straight through his head. While she made them substantial again.

  The impact shoved her upwards and him down, just enough to loosen his grip on me.

  “Get to the wall!” Kegan shouted.

  I bolted for the wall as Kegan kicked Rodrigo in the stomach, going substantial as soon as her feet had sunk into him, and he went flying back while she sailed towards me. She whammed hard against the wall instead of swishing through it, and cringed in pain.

  I reached the wall, and she made the whole thing insubstantial. I zoomed through, flapped my wings, and launched up into the air.

  It was still night with no thermals, and my wings were shortly aching. I saw a rare car driving, checked to make sure that it wasn’t any of Rodrigo’s allies, and I flopped down onto the roof to rest.

  I had a tainted turning stone inside me. Did that mean that I was tainted? I didn’t feel tainted, but I was guessing nobody did at
first. The symptoms didn’t start right away.

  Was Kegan okay? She’d said she would be fine, but she’d hit her head hard against that wall. What if she was seriously injured? What if she got knocked out? She wouldn’t be able to go insubstantial.

  She wouldn’t be safe.

  I had to get to the police station. I had to give them Rodrigo’s turning stone. Somebody had to destroy it. I only hoped he wouldn’t get his hands on another one immediately, one of the ones that had been tainted tonight.

  I hoped Kegan would keep him busy long enough for the police to catch him, long enough so that he wouldn’t be able to tell his allies to grab one of the turning stones they’d tainted.

  Long enough that he wouldn’t be able to tell them to ruin the werehawk clan’s turning stone.

  Or to kill my family.

  The car I was riding on turned the wrong direction, so I launched myself painfully back into the air. I was close to the police station, so I didn’t wait for another car to ride on — I just flapped the last five or six blocks, my wings in increasing agony.

  I didn’t so much land as tumble out of the air, landing with a crash in the bush I’d aimed for because it had looked softer than the sidewalk. It took a real effort to force myself down, because I didn’t want to move anymore, but I squeezed my feet tightly and then struggled out of the bush and onto the ground.

  The door was shut, so I screamed like a roaring T-rex.

  The door flew open, and I hobbled into the building, looking around at a crowd of people in uniforms who had been busy but now had gone still. I pushed myself back up into my half-form, still keeping the stone trapped within me, though I let my clothes reappear because, well, obviously.

  “I flew here with Rodrigo’s turning stone,” I said. “When I shift back, you’ll need to have a box for me to drop it in, so no one has to touch it.”

  For a moment, no one moved.

  “Hello?” I shouted.

  Three people were immediately moving. Two of them came back carrying a small box together. It looked like it had been meant for reams of paper. The turning stone was about the size of a bowling ball, so it would fit fine.

  I waited until they’d settled it right in front of me. Then I squatted nervously, trying to remember exactly where the turning stone had been when I’d shifted, and leaned forward.

  My wings disappeared into my back, feathers slurped back into my arms, and a turning stone rolled out of my abdomen. It landed in the box and rolled slightly, pushing against the sides as it settled.

  It was green.

  Chapter 22: An Awesome Power

  “Rodrigo’s turning stone?” somebody said. “I thought the one he had was tainted.”

  “It is,” I said, stunned. “I mean, it was. It was when I left with it. I mean . . .”

  An enormous cyclops got up from behind a desk and thudded across the room. He came back with a heavy safe and dropped it in front of me, back to the floor so that the door was facing up.

  He leaned over and twisted the dial back and forth, which looked tiny underneath his huge hand, until the door came open. Inside were seven tainted turning stones.

  “Do what you did before,” he thundered. “We finally caught those four perps tainting the stones, but these were the casualties.”

  I started to reach out, and then remembered that werevultures could be tainted. I looked around for ideas, then seized a box of tissues from somebody’s desk. I held the box out and touched one end of it to the pink stone on top.

  I shifted to vulture, taking it with me. Without changing position, I immediately shifted right back.

  The stone reappeared on top of the pile, now glowing green.

  Gasps rang around the room, and then pink crawled across the stone from the bottom and covered it all over again.

  “Ohhh,” several people moaned in disappointment.

  The ogre woman across from me looked crushed. “It didn’t take.”

  “So it’s only temporary,” the cyclops said gruffly. “Still . . .”

  “If it’s only temporary, why is this one still green?” a nix officer demanded. She pointed at the paper box which held the stone I’d brought in from Rodrigo.

  “Maybe it lasts longer depending on how long she was carrying it?” a kappa man said, leaning forward. His uniform was stiff and damp, which probably meant he’d been in the reservoir less than an hour ago. “If so, this could be of immense value.”

  “These stones might not necessarily have to be destroyed,” the ogre woman agreed. Her lips curled in a smile, revealing her fangs. “If she can untaint them for even an hour at a time, that would be long enough for their clans to use them for new turnings, even if the stones had to be kept under guard otherwise —”

  “Are you all missing the obvious?” a voice barked from behind me. I turned around to see a man with fur all over his face and an obvious air of authority. “She put it back in the safe on top of the other stones. Of course they retainted it. Have her put it somewhere else.”

  Everyone turned to look at me, and I swallowed and nodded. I poked the pink turning stone on top with the tissue box again, shifted to vulture, and hopped across the room. I shifted back.

  A green stone fell about two feet to the floor and crashed, and then rolled across the room underneath somebody’s desk.

  It stayed green.

  “Is it possible?” someone asked. “Can she untaint stones permanently?”

  A buzz of conversation spread across the room.

  I didn’t wait for them to decide what they thought. I was already jabbing the tissue box into the next stone.

  Jab, shift, hop, drop. Jab, shift, hop, drop. Green turning stones rolled across the dirty floor.

  “If it is possible,” the ogre woman said, “why don’t we know about this? This is even more important than the buzzards’ power!”

  The last stone was rolling across the floor. It hit the second one I’d untainted with a slight tink. Both of them stayed green.

  I shifted back to my half-form, watching them with bated breath.

  “I don’t know,” the man with a furry face said slowly. “You’d think, if this were a power vultures had, it wouldn’t have been forgotten.”

  The stones were still staying green. I turned around to check the stone in the box I’d brought originally, and it was still perfect.

  “Maybe not all vultures can do it,” I said out loud. “Maybe it’s just my subspecies. Maybe Benedict Arnold got tainted because he was trying to untaint a turning stone, and he didn’t realize turkey vultures couldn’t do it.”

  “It’s very unusual for subspecies to have different powers,” the furry-faced man said doubtfully.

  “Oh!” The kappa’s eyes widened. “What kind of vulture are you?”

  “Griffon.”

  “Is the wild animal native to North America or Europe?”

  “Europe,” I said.

  “That’s why!” he cried, pointing at me. “In the century before the Revolutionary War, the colonist weres and kapres started to favor species native to North America over species native to Europe! It made it less likely hostile Native American vampires would recognize them and gang up on them during the full moon!”

  I stared at him blankly. I wasn’t the only one.

  “Oh, come on,” the kappa protested, looking around. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one here who reads history books for fun.”

  “Spell it out,” the furry-faced man grunted.

  “You don’t know this?” the kappa asked, looking amazed. He particularly stared at me. “Nobody knows this? Come on, I’m not even that interested in biology, I just read it in a book last week!”

  The furry-faced man cleared his throat meaningfully.

  The kappa shrugged. “New World vultures and Old World vultures are different species. They’re not even closely related.”

  “So it would be only natural for them to have different powers,” I said slowly. “So maybe people did used to k
now vultures could do this, but they started to think it had just been a rumor or something when it turned out turkey vultures couldn’t.”

  “And then people forgot,” the furry-faced man said thoughtfully. “There haven’t been werevulture clans in Europe for centuries.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “The French revolution,” the kappa said. “The French royal family were werevultures. The Reign of Terror was very . . . enthusiastic about destroying every vulture turning stone they could find. Most of the vulture clans that survived fled to North America.”

  Oh, wow. My eyes widened. Not only am I not the same species as Benedict Arnold, I have the same clan as royalty!

  Not that I’d ever heard of the French Revolution, and what was the Reign of Terror? But maybe . . . just maybe . . . I’d look them up when I got back home. Dad would . . .

  Dad!

  “My family!” I shouted. “Rodrigo has them locked up someplace! He might not have the tainted turning stone, but he could still kill them! Vampires are stronger than werehawks!”

  “Where did you fly from?” the furry-faced man demanded.

  “I —” I bit my lip and wanted to cry. “I don’t know!” I wailed. “I didn’t pay attention to the address!”

  “No need,” said a familiar voice from behind me.

  I spun around, and standing in the doorway was Kegan’s mother. She held a bird cage with an angry bat flapping around inside, and had a tremendous grin on her face.

  “Mom,” Kegan fumed, walking through her mother and then turning substantial again, “put a tracking app on my phone so she could see everywhere I went. Did you know that? Because I didn’t.”

  “Good thing I did, too,” Kegan’s mom smirked, shaking the cage so that the bat squeaked and whammed back and forth against the sides. “I was only thinking I didn’t trust the cops, which is why we followed once their car was out of sight, but then there was this loser, who was trying to hurt my daughter . . .”

  “No trust, Mom!” Kegan shouted.

  “Wait a second,” I said, staring at the cage, “is that . . .?”

  “One loser who deserves to be arrested, comin’ right up,” Kegan’s mother said, shaking the cage again with obvious glee. The bat squeaked loudly as it smashed from top to bottom.