Otherkin

by Nina Berry

  “Fiend,” said another, female. “Filth. Perhaps we can wash you clean.”

  The young man who’d shot me walked toward my cage, his gold hair catching the light. He had perfect cheekbones, thick brows, and deep-set brown eyes straight out of a Romantic painting of some implacable archangel. A large gold cross over a snowy white shirt completed the picture of vengeful purity. He didn’t look older than eighteen, but he carried an authority that seemed more man than boy. Something jingled slightly as he walked. Then I saw a ring of keys, half tucked into his right pants pocket.

  Behind him a girl about my age glided in a long white gown that covered her modestly from neck to toes. But it couldn’t hide the luscious curves beneath it. I felt a stab of envy. I could never wear a dress like that. It would show every contour of the brace. Her hair lay stick straight and pale over her shoulders. She had the same deep-set, brown eyes as the boy with her. They had to be brother and sister, bright as morning in a meadow, or the harsh glare of a flashlight in the face.

  “Desdemona,” said Caleb. “Meet our hosts, Lazar and Amaris, acolytes of the Tribunal.”

  The girl, Amaris, glanced over at him, her face shuttered. He gazed back at her, blank. “Does he have to be here?” she asked. “Couldn’t we . . .”

  “When Father gets back he’ll decide what to do with him,” said Lazar. He also had a musical voice, but harsher than Caleb’s. “Until then, he stays in the cage.”

  I saw a flash of defiance as Amaris opened her mouth to argue. But in a heartbeat she crushed it down. I felt an instant of kinship; I knew how it felt to squash down your feelings.

  She came close to my cage, hunkering down gracefully. Her gaze traveled over me as if I were a curious specimen. “The demon is remarkably awake,” she said of me. “Are you sure she can’t shift?”

  So much for kinship. “I’m right here,” I said. “And I can talk.”

  They looked at me as if the couch had spoken. “The silver makes it impossible for her to shift now, just as it keeps Caleb from calling to shadow.” Lazar squatted down next to her, scrutinizing me. “We may have to drug her again before we remove her though. Her system purified itself more quickly than we anticipated.”

  “When I get out of here,” I said, “you’d better run. Fast.”

  Had I really said that? Lazar and Amaris drew back an inch.

  “You heard the girl,” said Caleb. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Lazar. Without Daddy around, you’re not up to the job.”

  “Shut up, Caleb,” Lazar said, his voice deepening into a grand chord of command.

  Caleb’s eyes narrowed derisively. “Doesn’t work on me, remember?”

  “Are you sure Father would want him in the cage?” Amaris asked.

  Lazar’s pure face clouded with anger. “I’m in charge while Father’s away. He trusts me.”

  “You don’t sound like you mean that,” Caleb said. “You sure you’re worthy?”

  “Be silent, or I’ll have you gagged.” Lazar’s face when he looked at Caleb was pure fury.

  Caleb bowed, the corners of his mouth deepening in a mocking smile.

  Amaris moved her face close to the bars of my cage, staring at me. How easy it would be to tear her throat out. I blinked. Had that thought come from me?

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said, in a voice people reserved for infants and the deranged. “We just want to help. We’ll make you all better.”

  Something I didn’t understand growled inside me. “Get me out of this cage right now or I’ll rip your lungs out.”

  Amaris gasped and scrambled back from me, repulsed. Her fear gave me a strange jolt of satisfaction.

  Lazar leaned in close. “You’re helpless,” he said. Something quavered in his voice, and a wave of despair overtook me. “You’re alone. No one knows where you are. No one cares.”

  The gloomy pitch of his words enveloped me like a smothering blanket. Loneliness welled up from a bottomless pit inside me. I had a vivid flash of waking from a nightmare as a child, a nightmare where a horrific weight pressed down on me as I ran in circles in the snow, crying for my family. My birth parents had abandoned me, and sure, Mom had adopted me. But maybe I’d been dumped because I hadn’t been good enough. Maybe they were glad I was gone. If they could dump me, Mom could too. I’m lost. And she’ll never come looking for me.

  In the periphery of my sight, I saw Caleb yelling at me. But all I could hear was Lazar. His every syllable dripped truth, and I was bereft.

  I took a deep, sobbing breath and tried to curl into a ball. But as always when I tried to bend, the brace jabbed deep into my ribs and hip. The jolt of pain sliced through the weight of Lazar’s words, and I uncurled to see him frowning at me. Caleb’s words filtered through; somehow Lazar was hypnotizing me.

  Black rage shredded my despair. This jackass had shot me, put me in a cage, and now he was trying to take my mind from me. How dare he? Without thinking I lashed forward between the bars to grab his wrist. As I brushed against the silver it stung my skin, but I didn’t care. I dug my nails into Lazar’s arm and felt them cut deep, drawing blood.

  Lazar gasped in pain. Amaris screamed on a twin note a half second later. I jerked Lazar toward me with all my strength. Off balance, he slammed into the cage bars. His forehead knocked against them with a clang. His eyes rolled slightly, concussed.

  Amaris shrieked again and grabbed her brother around the shoulders, trying to drag him away from me. I tore at her with my other hand. The skin of her neck scraped beneath my nails, leaving four red stripes.

  “Dez, you don’t need to hurt her!” Caleb yelled. “Just get his keys!”

  Crying with pain now, Amaris shoved herself back, the neck of her white gown stained crimson. “Help!” she shouted, getting to her feet and running toward the door to the outside. “Help, she’s got Lazar!”

  She threw the door open and dashed out. Cool night air poured in. Lazar struggled to loosen my grip. He took a breath to speak, but I heaved again, smashing him against the bars. Blood gushed from his forehead. He moaned and lay still.

  The skin on my arms blazing from the silver, I pulled Lazar’s hips closer to the cage to bring his pocket within reach.

  “That’s it, Dez!” Caleb shouted from his cage. “Hurry. There’ll be more of them here any second!”

  The silver burned my knees through the thin cloth of my dress. Straining against the brace to bend forward, I fished into Lazar’s pocket and pulled out the keys. I felt a surge of triumph, then a plunge of horror. My fingers, holding those keys, brandished three-inch claws, dripping with blood.

  I dropped the keys.

  “Hurry! Unlock your cage. Get out while you can!” Caleb shook the bars of his own cage, trying to get me to focus.

  “My hands,” I said, turning away from him so he couldn’t see the claws. “There’s something wrong with me. I’m . . .”

  “A tiger-shifter,” he said. “That’s a good thing. It’s what’s going to get you out of here.”

  “Tiger-shifter.” I said the words, but they made no sense. Neither did my razor-sharp claws.

  “Listen to me,” said Caleb, and something in the lush intonation of his voice pulled me to take note. I focused on him. His eyes glowed, like obsidian set in gold. I could look at nothing else. “You are strong. You can do this. I call upon you to pick up those keys. Pick them up.”

  My inner turmoil receded, and all I wanted to do was obey that voice. I took hold of the keys. “Put the silver key in the lock,” he said in the same luxuriant tone. “That’s right, reach around outside the bars and unlock the cage with the key.”

  The power in that voice could not be denied. The biggest key on the ring, shiny with silver, scorched my hands as I singled it out. But the pain didn’t matter. It slipped into the lock and turned with a loud click. The door of the cage snapped open. I was free.

  Startled out of my concentration, I looked over at Caleb. The glow faded from his eyes, and they took
on an odd, distracted look. His tan face paled to gray as he leaned heavily against the cage bars. “It worked,” he said, his voice thin. “Shouldn’t have, with all the silver. But it did. Something’s different . . .” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Now get out of here. Hurry.”

  He slumped to his knees. I pushed open my cage door and crawled out, skin stinging. Somewhere nearby a high-pitched alarm sounded. Beyond it I heard the pounding of running feet.

  I ran to the door of Caleb’s cage and fumbled with the keys. “What are you doing?” he said, looking as if he were about to pass out. “There’s no time. Get out of here now!”

  “Shut up. I’ll be damned if I leave anyone in a cage.” I tried first one key, then another, my hands shaking. Shouting voices neared.

  “You’re sweet. I bet you save puppies on death row, but just get out.” Caleb rubbed his face and stared past me, as if seeing a ghost.

  “Yeah, puppies,” I muttered, ignoring the jolt his words gave me. He must be out of his head a little. That thing he’d done with his voice to help me had somehow drained him. I skipped what looked like a car key to try the only remaining possibility. That key slipped into the lock and turned.

  I opened his cage and was next to Caleb in a heartbeat. The running feet would be here any second. How were we going to get past them?

  “Maybe it was the moon,” he said vacantly. “The moon’s almost full.”

  I grabbed him under the arm and hauled up with a strength that surprised me. “Babble all you want, but you’re coming with me.” He stumbled to his feet, and we made it out of the cage to hide behind the half-open door to the outside.

  A sliver of moonlight fell across the planes of his face. He took a deep breath and straightened to his full height, even taller than I was. His color returned as he gave me an appreciative half smile. “Thanks.”

  Lazar moaned, pulling himself up to sit against the bars of my cage, wiping the blood from his eyes. His white outfit was splotched with scarlet. I did that. My hands shook, and I saw that the claws were gone. My hands, still covered with blood, were my hands again.

  Footsteps neared. I held up three fingers to show Caleb that I heard three coming our way. He nodded, saw my fingers trembling, and put his hand over mine. The warmth from his skin brought a rush of heat to my cheeks. His black eyes smiled into mine, and hope surged through me. We might make it. Our fingers laced together as we shrank back against the wall and the first armed guard cautiously entered. I barely had time to register that I was holding hands with a boy, an intense, gorgeous boy. I’d never done that before.

  Lazar moaned again, his eyelids fluttering.

  “Reverend!” exclaimed a guard, running through the door to Lazar. “He’s hurt!” he shouted over his shoulder. The second guard rushed in after him as the third approached more slowly. We’d been lucky. Lazar’s distress had caused two out of three to pass by without spotting us. Now we just had to dart past the third, and we’d be outside.

  I glanced up at Caleb. He laid one hand on the door, stared at it as if looking through it, and hummed, almost imperceptibly. Something sparked in his black eyes, and he grinned. As the third guard edged into the warehouse, just two feet from us, Caleb held up one finger, telling me to wait. His other hand gripped mine hard, and we got ready to run.

  As the guard cleared the edge of the door, we hauled it back and jetted past him. Caleb pushed me before him, and I darted into a blast of cool, dry air to see a large full moon vibrating with light on the horizon. Caleb stepped into a glowing pool of moonlight and spun, his long black coat fanning out behind him.

  The guard had his rifle at his shoulder, aimed at us, about to shoot.

  His shadow long and black before him, Caleb stretched out his hand and said, in a voice sonorous as a symphony, “I call on you, come out of shadow!”

  The man aimed right at him, just ten feet away, and pulled the trigger. Or he tried. A swirl of darkness roiled out from Caleb’s hand and enveloped the gun. The guard stood aghast, now holding a long, smooth staff of wood. The rifle was gone.

  The guard stood there, stupefied.

  The warmth of Caleb’s fingers tangled with mine again, and we ran.

  CHAPTER 3

  We dashed across a small parking lot carved out of the desert landscape. Behind us lay the warehouse and other buildings. Before us sat four cars and a large white van. The guard at the warehouse door threw down Caleb’s stick and yelled, “They’re over here! The parking lot!”

  Caleb headed straight for a large white BMW. “Give me the keys.”

  I was still clutching Lazar’s keychain, its edges digging into my sweaty palms. “Here!” I handed it over.

  He released my hand so he could riffle through the keys as we ran behind the BMW, putting its steel bulk between us and the guards in the warehouse.

  “How do you know it’s this car?” I said through uneven breaths.

  “I’m a knowledgeable person.” He pressed a button on the fob attached to the key ring, and the lights of the Beemer flashed. The locks ka-chunked open.

  There was a loud sound by the warehouse. I caught a whiff of sulfur and warm iron. Caleb grabbed my arm and jerked me down behind the BMW as something whizzed over my head. “Silver bullets, probably,” he said, then held out the keys. “Can you drive?”

  They were actually shooting at us. The sound had been a gun going off. “Kind of, why?” A bullet pinged into the side of the car. It rocked slightly.

  “Just do it. We’re running out of time!”

  “Fine!” I grabbed the keys.

  Caleb opened the passenger side door. “Get in!”

  I crawled awkwardly into the car. The brace bit into my right breast and upper thighs. I clambered over the passenger seat to the driver’s side. Caleb followed, keeping low.

  I jammed the key in the ignition. The car roared to life. Three more shots rang out, and bullets thumped into the side of the car.

  He slammed the door. I shoved the car into gear and stomped on the gas. We took off toward the dirt road at the end of the parking lot. I peered into the rearview mirror as another bullet hit the rear bumper. One guard had his gun trained on us. Another was running toward the other cars. The third had an arm around Lazar, who stumbled to the doorway just in time to see us take off in his car. Then we curved away. They shrank into a distant pool of light. The night swallowed us.

  “Holy crap,” I said. My ears still rang from the gunshots. A slick sheen of sweat coated my skin.

  Caleb let out a free, ringing laugh. “We’re out! I can’t believe it. You got us out.” He grabbed my right hand off the steering wheel and gave it a loud kiss. I blushed all the way down my neck and forced myself to keep my eyes on the road. “Did you know that once you save somebody’s life, they’re yours forever?”

  “Well, you saved mine too, so I guess we belong to each other,” I said, then realized how that sounded and pulled my hand out of his. “You can thank me by telling me what the hell just happened.”

  “Deal,” he said, twisting to look behind us. “Damn.”

  I checked the mirror. Two faint lights moved down the road behind us. Headlights. “They’re coming after us.”

  “Figures,” he said. “We have to get off this road right now.”

  I looked out at the tumbleweeds, cacti, and rocks as they slid past us. “You want to drive over that? We’ll get a flat or something. Besides, he’ll see the headlights.”

  “First thing we do, we turn off the headlights.” He reached across me and clicked the lights off. I gripped the wheel tightly as we barreled down the road. For a moment, the world around us went black, then the desert floor opened up to me again, almost as clear under the moon as during the day.

  “Go faster,” he said.

  I accelerated, squinting out at the faint track of road. “The moonlight’s too strong. He’ll spot us whether we’re on the road or not.”

  “The moonlight works for us,” he said. “And he doesn’t h
ave your eyesight in the dark. No one does.” He glanced over at me, a smirk around his mouth. It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. “That’s why I wanted you to drive.”

  “And that means what exactly?”

  “You’re a cat-shifter. That means that all your life your eyesight at night has been ten times better than a human’s. Your hearing’s even better, and your reflexes are ridiculous. You’ve never known anything else, so you think it’s normal, that everyone sees and hears and moves like you do. Believe me, they don’t. And when you shift, your senses will be even better. You can see the road just fine without the headlights, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well I can’t,” he said. “Time to get off the road. Don’t step on the brakes or they’ll see the brake lights.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not safe off the road. We’ll crash into a cactus or . . .”

  “Too late!”

  He grabbed the wheel and turned it to the left. I almost hit the brakes, but remembered in time. I took my foot off the gas and shouted, “Okay, okay, give me the wheel!”

  He let go. The car bounced into the untrammeled desert.

  We careened over small tufted plants and hillocks where unsuspecting snakes and lizards probably slept in their burrows. Sorry to disturb you like this, guys. I kept my foot off the gas, and we slowed down, silent now except for the bumping and creaking of the BMW.

  He pressed a button to roll down his window. “I need to open yours too,” he said, leaning over me to press another button. My window buzzed down.

  “Why?” The cool air rushed over me, smelling of dust and cactus sap. Moonlight spilled through the open window, falling across my left arm. Gooseflesh crawled up my skin.

  “Shhh,” he said, then hummed a deep, thrumming note.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Calling out to shadow, looking for something out there that can help us. Don’t stop, keep going slowly.”

  I hit the gas gently to keep us moving forward as he hummed once more. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as the sound moved over me. I wanted to ask more, but I could tell from the set of his brows that he was concentrating hard.