by Nina Berry
“But the Tribunal’s everyone’s enemy, right? Think how much safer we all would be if everyone banded together and got rid of them.”
“You’re talking about going against thousands of years of traditional hatred,” said Caleb.
“But I can’t go home as long as Lazar and all of them are there,” I said. “Me and Mom and Richard, we’ll be on the run for the rest of our lives!”
“Welcome to being otherkin,” he said, shaking his head. “Did you find where we are on the map?”
I was frowning in frustration. I didn’t want to live always having to look over my shoulder. More importantly, I didn’t want the fact that I was a shifter to ruin the lives of my family. I forced myself to look at the map and found Coyote Peaks. “We just keep going on this road,” I said. “Do you know where to go after Coyote Peaks?”
“I think so. Mom made me recite it, like, a hundred times.”
He had mentioned his mother a number of times, but all I knew so far was that she had been a caller, and now she was dead. “How long is it since she . . . since you last saw her?” I asked.
“You mean since she was killed?”
“Killed?”
“The Tribunal murdered her.” The muscle in his jaw tightened.
“I’m so sorry.” I touched his arm briefly.
“Feels like a lifetime ago, and it feels like yesterday.”
“So you have no other family? No brothers or sisters?”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. His eyes flicked back and forth on the road ahead, his brows drawn together, as if he was trying to keep some dangerous emotion from erupting. “No,” he said at last. His voice was tight. “No one.”
“Sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
Caleb just stared down the dark road ahead of us. In that silence I thought how I might never see my house in Burbank ever again, that Mom’s and Richard’s lives were in complete upheaval. I was headed into a forest filled with people who could change into hungry animals, taught by a powerful wizard type who could manipulate the very shape and matter of things.
And I had killed a man. I’d crunched his bones and swallowed his blood, and I hadn’t even blinked when I did it. That was the heritage my mysterious biological parents had given me. Maybe it was better to never know them. It might’ve been better if I’d just put up with the damned brace for a bit longer and never shifted into a tiger. But then I’d never have met Caleb.
Caleb craned his neck, staring down the road ahead. “Okay, we’re getting close. Expect a lot of suspicion. It’s how they are with everyone, let alone an abandoned tiger. They won’t like me much either.”
That surprised me. “Why?”
“Callers don’t like to hang out with other callers,” he said. “It gets competitive. So I hope Morfael remembers my mother fondly. The shifters won’t like me either because they hate anyone who might be able to control their shifting ability. Morfael’s school is the only one of its kind I’ve ever heard of.”
“But you said we’d be safe there.” Trepidation jittered up and down my spine.
“Safe from the Tribunal,” he said.
That didn’t comfort me much.
We wound up a two-lane road into the mountains. Trees encroached, blacker than the night, and a thousand stars pocked the sky above. We passed a sign that said COYOTE PEAKS.
Then Caleb drove past a smaller dirt road, barely as wide as the Beemer. “That was it, I think,” he said, and turned the car around. We hadn’t seen another vehicle in half an hour.
The tires crunched over a large tree branch. Leaves scraped against the windows as foliage focused the headlights down to a narrow beam. A faint glow above us signaled that dawn was not far off.
“We have a habit of driving together at sunrise,” I said.
“I can think of lots of better ways for a boy and a girl to spend the night together.” He glanced at me from under his brows. Then he looked back at the road, leaving me breathless.
Shoving down the riot of feelings inside me, I squinted into the darkness. A wall of trees put a stop to the road, with no sign of a cabin or path. “It’s like the road just . . . ends.”
Caleb put the car in park and turned off the ignition. We peered at the silent woods around us. “What now?”
“I don’t know.” He put the keys in his pocket. “Mom said to just follow the road and find the camp there. But I don’t see any camp.”
“It’s probably not far . . .” I began to open my door, but he put a hand on arm, pulling me back inside.
“Wait. If the camp’s nearby, they’ll know we’re here.”
“Oh.” Approaching the secret camp of a hunted group could be dangerous. Out in the dark, bears and wolves probably lurked, waiting to tear us to pieces. “I wonder if this car smells like silver or the Tribunal or anything.”
“It’d be better if you shifted,” he said. “If a tiger got out of this car, they’d know we’re otherkin.”
“Shift here, now?” I pulled as far away from him as I could to my side of the car. “I’d fill up the whole car, break the windows or something.”
“Not if you got in the backseat,” he said, sounding very reasonable. “I could help you out of your clothes first so you don’t tear anything.”
I swiveled my gaze to him, raising my eyebrows. His face was carefully blank. “Oh, you’ll help me get naked, will you? How thoughtful. And then what? I don’t know how to shift, remember? Or will you find some way to piss me off and push me to change . . . some very teenage boy in a backseat with a naked girl kind of way?”
He laughed. “It was just a thought.”
“Scalawag,” I said. “How about we roll down the windows and shout for Morfael, saying that your mother sent us? He knew her, right?”
“I think so,” he said, leaning toward me. “But can we take that chance?” I could smell his scent, like an oncoming storm, and feel the heat emanating from his skin. Up close his eyes were pools blacker than the fir trees against the night sky.
I wanted him to put his strong hands on my shoulders and pull me into him, even though there might be wild animals outside waiting to kill us. Or maybe that thought made me want him even more. I’d killed a man that night, and barely escaped capture myself. Life could vanish in an instant. I moved toward him the barest distance. Our lips almost touched.
Bending at the waist was alien after two years in the brace, and suddenly I felt vulnerable, unarmored, without it. And I remembered my mother, telling me how much she trusted me. How she knew I wouldn’t lose my head during these difficult times.
“Yes,” I said, and pulled away, my head spinning. “We’ll take that chance.”
He breathed deep, looking as if he wasn’t sure where our conversation had been going. “All right,” he said. “But my way’s better.”
“Ready?” I said, not looking at him.
“Here goes.” He turned the car key to give the windows power, and then inched the driver’s window down.
I reached across him to turn out the headlights. My arm grazed his chest, and tension strained between us. I clicked and pulled back. The forest was plunged into darkness. “A shifter wouldn’t need light,” I said.
He nodded, then yelled out the window. “Morfael!” His voice echoed between the trees. “We were sent by Elisa Elazar, caller of shadow.”
Outside, nothing stirred. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I saw nothing but trees and the lightening sky. “Maybe waiting in the car isn’t the right thing to do, etiquette-wise,” I said. “It makes it look like we don’t trust them.”
“We don’t.” Caleb rolled the window down further. “Morfael, we are friends! Elisa Elazar sent us to learn from you.”
Again, only silence came back to us. “Oh, the hell with this,” I said, and got out of the car.
“Dez, wait!” Caleb grabbed for me, missed, then scrambled out of his side.
I slammed my car door, filled with a sudden desire to get
this over with, one way or another. The night had been too long and full of uncertainty. For a moment, I listened. The forest was too quiet.
“I know you’re there,” I said in a normal tone of voice. “We really need your help.”
I walked to the front of the car. Caleb joined me, turning his back to mine, so that we faced in opposite directions out into the forest, ready.
Silent as nightfall, a man moved out of the trees only twenty feet away. Gaunt as a starving man, he stood well over six feet, clad all in black, his bony hand resting on the head of a long wooden staff. I couldn’t see the shapes carved on it, but they seemed to writhe beneath his grip. His long hair lay limp and white against his skull, his eyes, so light a blue as to be almost translucent, took us in. Goose bumps prickled my skin from head to toe. Here was power. It swirled out of him, coiled and unpredictable as a tornado.
A huge winged form arced down from the sky to land on a tree branch above the man’s head. A bald eagle over four feet tall gripped the limb with talons as long as my hand, its yellow eyes focused on me.
Then I saw the others. A wolf the size of a Great Dane, eyes glowing in the dawn light, hackles raised, crouched on the other side of the car. On the other side of Caleb, a mountain of a bear stood on his hind legs, then shook the ground as he thudded his forepaws to the earth. His thick brown fur glistened with dew.
“You are not welcome, caller of shadow,” said the gaunt man. His voice reverberated within the walls of my chest. He turned his strange light eyes to me. “You are not welcome, Amba.”
I didn’t know that word, but I felt as if I should. He aimed it at me like an arrow.
“We mean you no harm,” I said. “And we have nowhere else to go.”
He didn’t answer. Somewhere high in the trees, a lark began to sing a song to the rising sun. The bear shifted his weight, scraping his huge black claws against the dirt, as if eager to use them on us. No one else moved.
Caleb cleared his throat. “My mother, Elisa Elazar, told me I could find shelter with you here. Dez did not know until yesterday that she’s a shifter. We ask your help.”
“I know who you are,” said the man, who had to be Morfael. “Your mother was almost as reckless. Danger follows you. You come here only to escape. You may not stay.”
“Please.” My voice broke as a terrible desperation filled me. “It’s true we’re running away, but we’re trying to run to the right place. And I’ve got information that’ll help you fight the Tribunal.”
The bear snorted. Every muscle in me tensed. If he lunged at us, we’d never get into the car in time. Morfael’s pale eyes assessed me without expression. His thin frame, white hair, and pointed cheekbones gave him an unearthly appearance, like something out of a twisted fairy tale.
“Your heart is not here,” he said. “You will learn nothing.”
He was right. All my life I’d wanted to know more about my heritage, but now that I was here, I longed to be with my mother and Richard, back in the days before any of this had happened. I didn’t want to camp out in some dark woods with people who turned into carnivorous animals and a guy who spoke and looked like someone out of The Lord of the Rings. When I’d wondered about my biological parents, I never thought they’d be shifters or Ambas, or whatever the hell he’d said.
“That’s true,” I said. “I don’t want to be here. But I came anyway, partly because I need somewhere safe, but also because I need to find people like me. I have to accept what’s happening or I’ll go crazy. And we share a common enemy. If we don’t help each other out, they’ll kill us all, one by one.”
Something sparked in Morfael’s pale gaze that reminded me of the gold glow Caleb’s eyes took on when he used his power. “You shall be tried.” He tapped his staff on the ground and something shuddered through the earth, like a noise too low to hear. The ground beside him yawned, making a black hole in the soil, ringed with rocks like jagged teeth.
“Come,” said Morfael, jabbing his staff toward the maw in the dirt. It was less than three feet high, descending sharply into darkness. Behind us, the wolf and bear closed in. To get back to the car we’d have to move past them.
Caleb let go of my hand, moved to the hole, and got onto all fours. “I’ll go in front,” he said. “Follow me.” He crawled headfirst into the cave.
“Good thing I’m not claustrophobic,” I said, getting down on my hands and knees. I looked at Morfael. His thin lips twitched in the specter of a smile. But was he happy in a “you go, girl” way or in an “oh, good, my earth monster will have a nice breakfast” way?
Darkness swallowed me. The dirt was cold and moist beneath my hands. I could still feel and hear Caleb shuffling along in front of me. The rich, loamy smell of earth enveloped us. After moving in a few feet I risked a glance back. There was no break in the blackness, no slice of starry sky or last sight of the Beemer. We were trapped.
CHAPTER 12
The dark pressed against my eyes, as oppressive as a bright light. I usually liked small spaces, but anxiety washed over me when I wondered what weird things Morfael had planted ahead.
“The cave closed up behind us.” My voice sounded oddly muffled.
“Surprise,” said Caleb. His voice also seemed distant, but his sarcastic tone comforted me.
“It’s opening up ahead,” he said, and I felt his movement change. His hand took my elbow and pulled me up as the space around me expanded. I stood, pressing against his lean, warm frame. His arm slid around my waist. I started to pull away, a reflex. But then as his fingers moved over my hip I remembered that I no longer wore the brace. Instead of being hard and unyielding, my body felt smooth, pliant.
“Hey,” he said softly, his breath tickling my ear. “It’s pretty cozy in here. You think Morfael did this so we could make out?”
I laughed, stomach fluttering. “So that’s his nefarious plan.”
His arms tightened around me. His lips pressed against my temple, sliding down to my cheek. A furnace ignited inside me, every inch of me aflame and aware of his skin, his hands, his mouth. So this was what it was like, to have someone desire you, to want nothing more than to keep touching forever.
Something flickered in the corner of my eye, like a reflection on water.
“What’s that?” he said, straightening. His voice sounded thick, reluctant. “Maybe I’m just seeing things.”
“No,” I said, also unwilling but remembering where we were. “I saw it too.”
Something flickered again, and this time I saw a form silhouetted against the light. Then it vanished.
“We’d better take a look,” he said, cupping his hand around my cheek before loosening his hold on me.
“Yeah.” I moved around him to see better, straining against the dark. “How freaky is this?”
“At least we’re together,” he said.
I tried to reach for his hand but couldn’t find it in the darkness.
The faint whoosh of running water hit my ears. “I hear a stream or something,” I said, walking a couple of steps closer to the sound.
“No, it’s wind.” His voice was distant again. “Over here.”
“I swear it’s water,” I said. The sound deepened. “Over here.”
He didn’t reply. I turned around but found only blackness. “Caleb?”
No response. My heart skipped several beats. I swatted the air where he had just stood. “Caleb? Where are you?”
I called out his name as my outstretched fingers hit a wall of dirt. I kept my hand there as I walked around, only to come back to the flickering of light on water and splashing in the distance. Caleb was gone.
“Morfael, you bastard.” The sound of my own voice heartened me. “I was just about to get my first kiss covered in dirt in a mystical cavern.”
No one answered. Nothing to do then but move toward the sound of water and see what came next. Rounding a corner, I squinted into a splash of light and found myself alongside a river, green with white firs and walnut trees. Red
beams of dawn arrowed between the trunks. Behind me lay a sheer rock wall, and no sign of where I’d come from. Nice trick. I would have loved this place, so peaceful, so untouched by man and machine, if it hadn’t felt like a trap.
“Caleb?” I moved closer to the water. A sheer drop plummeted down to a rushing stream at least thirty feet across. It curved sharply to either side, pinning me up against the wall of rock. To get anywhere, I would have to cross the stream.
I paced down the riverbank. The water looked swift, cold, and deep. I was a strong swimmer, but no way could I safely get across. A fallen tree lay across the stream close to where it ran into and under the wall of stone. The trunk spanned the river, resting on opposite banks like a weathered footbridge.
Would it hold my weight? Rubbing my chilled hands together, I bent over and leaned onto it. It didn’t bend or sway.
I stepped cautiously up onto the tree and inched out. The ground dropped beneath me, replaced by gray water. I tried not to look down. One foot stepped slowly in front of the other, my sneaker treads gripping the wood. I was almost halfway across when I forgot and looked down. I laughed and swore. The plunge down into the water looked ridiculously high from here.
“Desdemona!”
I turned my head and nearly fell. Bending my knees, I grabbed the log, regaining my balance. Behind me, her short dark hair tousled by the morning breeze, stood my mother.
“Sorry, honey,” she said, her eyes widening with fear. “Please be careful!”
“Mom? How did you get here?” She looked as solid as the log I stood on.
“Richard and I followed you.” She beckoned. “Come back this way. I’m here to take you with us.”
I looked around the forest, waiting for the punch line. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Desdemona.” Her voice cut at me with a mother’s concern. “It’s far too dangerous for me to explain while you balance like that. Come here, and I’ll tell you everything on the way back.”
