Izzy huffed and seemed to regain her composure as mine began to slide away again. She demanded, “What is it, Z?”
Without thinking I brought my hands to my neck and nearly stabbed myself in the carotid arteries. The scrapes brought blood and I yelped out, “Shit!”
Rowena took too many steps backward and slammed into the closed library doors. The boom of her heel kicking the solid wood brought my attention to the citrine brilliance leaking over the grains in the floorboards. Luminous orange intensified to a near blood red and then ceased as if a switch had flipped.
Torn between checking on Dom and Otis or confronting Izzy about what she knew, I panted in place as the fine cuts on either side of my neck bled and stung.
This was a scene that would have been badass in a movie. I had claws and I was angry enough to use them. The only thing stopping me was my own conscience. Also the fact that I hadn’t intentionally grown them and had no idea how to get my normal fingers back.
I turned my blackened nails to the light and looked them over before focusing on the floating head. “You can’t see the head?” I motioned in the general vicinity of my right shoulder and almost cut myself on the chin.
Iz frowned. “Nope.” She took a deep breath and sighed out, “I’ve gotta bring the Dalah, Zena or those dudes are gonna kill my family.” She dug her phone out of a back pocket. Her top half shrunk in on itself as she straightened an arm to show me the numbers counting down on her screen.
White numbers ticked backward. We had less than two hours.
As far as I knew the Dalah was locked in Cyril’s desk. I could try to open the thing because I’d seen him do it. Pessimism roared inside me like waves crashing against weakened wharves. No, I wasn’t going to break. This could be figured out. Somehow.
The disembodied head rotated in place to gaze at the closed pocket door to the library. Rowena pushed away from the entrance when the door moved.
Wood continued to scrape and it slid aside to reveal a worn thin version of Otis. White streaked through his curls again and great big bags sat under his deep-set brown eyes. He stumbled then caught himself on the doorjamb. It was impossible to read his expression. Otis was a stranger and I wouldn’t know his hopeless displays of emotion from his dog-tired ones.
“Will he live?” I asked.
Otis nodded up and down but raised a hand to forestall any approach. “You will leave him to rest. He is conscious but weak. Let him sleep. If you go to him he will be wakeful and want to move. I would not advise it in his state—it could cause internal bleeding.”
I peered around Otis, straining to catch a glimpse of Dom. “The hell you say. Move!”
Though it pained him, the man straightened and tugged on the tattered cuffs of his trench coat with crisp impatience. “No.” His gaze dropped to my black claws and he sniffed with disdain. “Get yourself under control, Nut. You are no good to anyone this way.”
I screamed. Spittle flew as the words burst outward, “I can’t!”
“You can. Think. How did you become this way?” Otis blinked and his mouth softened.
Izzy whispered, “She was mad at me. Her power kinda crackled around her and then her nails got long. It was fast. I don’t think she knew she was doin’ it.”
Iz flinched as if she’d just ratted me out. Like that mattered now. All things being what they were. I was tired of only being in on part of the story. Screw Otis. Screw Cyril for making me with Neith and then raising me ignorant until he deserted me and Chris. Screw Chris too while I was at it. He’d kept secrets for Cyril. Dom had too. It hurt. So bad.
My insides wanted to be my outsides all of a sudden and I convulsed forward. Muscles pulled taut in my body that I’d forgotten I had. There was so much sensation to take in that I almost missed the burn of transformation in my fingertips.
When I grabbed the line of buttons on my shirt with both hands the nerve endings in my fingertips were so sensitive I could count the threads in the fabric. I dared a look down. White crescent moons topped normal looking nails. My body was back to human.
Dom moaned my name from the library. Otis swept an arm out in invitation and I blew past him so fast I only caught an impression of sweat and heat.
Cooler air wafted against my cheeks and I paused to collect my emotions. Cyril’s desk looked different, softer edged, like it had metamorphosed to accommodate being used as an operating table. Dom’s arm shook as he reached in my direction.
His skull pressed against the skin of his face in a sickly way that made my stomach lurch. My feet felt stuck. Like they were pushing against the possibility that Dom could still die. It felt like a snatch of time crunched under foot as I made my way to his outstretched limb. His skin was cold and clammy.
Dom wheezed through cracked lips, “Are you okay?”
Naked, scarred chest rose the barest amount as he breathed in again. Pink puckered tissue ringed in white lumps over the sealed holes on his abdomen and ribs. It looked damn painful.
I shushed him, “Shut up and be still. I’m fine.”
One side of his mouth lifted in amusement. “So sweet.”
My free arm rose and I found myself tracing one of his thick black brows as I spoke. Light yellow mottled his complexion and made his hazel irises pop with an altogether unhealthy gleam. “You’re an idiot. Let me worry about things, Dom. Sleep like Otis told you to. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Dominic scrunched up his face like he was in pain before he asked, “You trust him?”
I attempted to shake my head yes and no at the same time with a crooked smile.
Color began to drain from the apples of Dom’s bunched cheeks. I placed a palm over his eyes. “Rest.”
Soft lashes tickled my still sensitive skin before I sensed him obey. When I withdrew my hand from over his eyes, Dom was already asleep. His face was slack with exhaustion and a faint snore whistled out of his round nose. Cute.
Multiple intentionally quiet footsteps echoed around the cavernous library. I counted three sets. And now the fun could really begin.
35 NO QUARTER
Otis’s chuff for attention had me turn. A squeak sounded as the ball of my foot protested against the floor.
He had lines around his mouth that were perfectly set up to act as tributaries for future tears. A dimple in his brown chin enlarged as he pasted a wan, flat-lipped smile in place.
“So what are you, Otis?” I whispered.
Calm radiated outward in a palpable wave as he said, “An ally.” He cleared his throat before adding, “Someone your father trusts in times of need.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” The phantom head caught my attention and I flinched in reaction.
Otis misread my expression, probably as stress or impatience, and shifted from one foot to the other before looking upward in exasperation. He didn’t act as if he could see my discombobulated buddy in the air over my right shoulder. I reached backward and stroked Dom’s hair from his forehead as a cover so I could stare at the disembodied blue head more closely.
Holographic in nature, the facial features were impossible to read. They had no specific racial or gender identity I could discern. Neutral was a most fitting adjective. Why was it not visible to anyone else? What was its purpose? And most importantly of all, how could I use it to my advantage—if at all?
A pregnant pause caught my attention and I looked up to see Otis’s expectant expression. Had he asked me a question?
Izzy and Rowena were keeping a wary distance from one another behind Otis. At least they were behaving themselves for now.
Otis bowed his head and scratched at his neck in a way that suggested a nervous tick. Whereas he’d seemed so sure and authoritative during the crisis of the attack now Otis shrunk from a simple question.
He began to speak, “I am a Ptah.” Otis darted a glance over his shoulder at Izzy and then Rowena as he clarified, “That’s P-T-A-H, pronounced Pe’ta.”
Rowena pulled herself together to glower then grous
e, “I don’t give a shit what you are so long as you can help get my Christophe back again.”
Otis continued as if my stepmother hadn’t inserted her unhelpful two cents. “My kind created new cities after conquest and rebuilt old worlds into new replicas of the Masters’ desires. My kind can also heal. There were not many Ptah who fled. I left those in need…it was not a…proud…moment.”
This close and indoors his scent wasn’t as pungent as he looked. Otis’s clothes were straining on the seams still and they certainly had the look of ragged homelessness, but they didn’t smell unclean. Whether he was a true ally or a mentally unstable alien Cyril used for his own gains I guess didn’t much matter. I wasn’t in good enough shape to be picky.
I tried a different tack, “Why does everyone want the Dalah, Otis?”
Izzy made an involuntary noise of protest in the back of her throat as she stared at the digital clock I knew was on one of the bookshelves behind me. Purple contusions above and below her eyes made it hard to tell exactly where she directed her gaze. I knew anyway. Time was ticking away toward her deadline. I’d be anxious too.
Otis sighed.
“I’m lacking in answers, Otis. If you want to prove I can trust you then I need to know why the Dalah is so important.” I pushed without mercy, body taut with impatience and no small amount of anger at the situation.
Just when I thought he might be another dead end he shrugged. Light from the skylight began to fade as a cloud passed over the late afternoon sun.
His irises were almost the same black shade as his pupils and his concentration went inward even though his gaze met mine full on.
“Cyril found the meaning and then he took it from the Masters.”
Rowena and Izzy leaned the upper halves of their bodies closer to Otis, trying to hear his words without getting too near one another for comfort.
Heart beating faster, I took a breath and tried to appear less eager than I was. Maybe, just maybe, I could finally know what all of this was about. Ghosts of clues swam in the mishmash of information distilled from the AI’s prior attempts to educate me. Flickers of related knowledge swam just out of tantalizing reach.
“The meaning of what, Otis?”
He shrugged again and turned away to tug his long coat off and toss it on the couch. Flecks of blood dotted the lapels and sleeves. I wasn’t sure if it was Dom’s blood or the bird thing that had attacked him.
Speaking of that, where was the claw Otis had removed? The too small trash bin by Cyril’s desk provided the answer. The leg was talons down, jammed diagonally in the bin. I blinked and looked away when a chunk of wet flesh fell and rustled some papers on the bottom. I shivered.
Otis sat on the couch with a tired groan. His face settled into his large splayed fingers.
Izzy’s impatience felt like the epicenter of an earthquake as she yelled, “Just spit it out already!”
Dom groaned and shifted on the desk. His lids danced as if they’d open and then he settled once more. Those small movements had caused him large amounts of pain judging by the tightened muscles in the bicep I stroked. Even breathing supplanted the sudden jarring silence following Izzy’s outburst and relief filled me.
From the couch Otis growled with more force than he’d showed in the last few minutes, “Do not yell again.”
Izzy’s tears squeezed out on a wrinkle in the swelling and ran to her jaw. Her mouth opened and closed. Her hands clenched to fists against her rounded stomach. As she pulled her shirt forward long slivers of her hips appeared above the waistline of her dark blue jeans.
I stepped away from Dominic. A deep regret bloomed with each footfall closer to Izzy. My words were hoarse, “First of all, Izzy, get it together. Not because I’m mad at you, but because I need you on your game to help me rescue your family from those creeps.”
Pink hair shone in the light, almost as bright as Izzy’s usual quirky self. Something close to hope made her bottom lip tremble. She sucked in a breath, then another before nodding.
My finger was up and pointed to Rowena before she could speak, “You, stop barking at me about Chris. I can only do one thing at a fucking time. Deal with it or leave right now. If you stay then you do what I say when I say, or get the hell out.”
Generic and bobbing, my blue bodiless head had followed me into the open space in front of Cyril’s desk. It wasn’t causing me problems, but I frowned at it anyway before I turned to Otis.
“Can you teach me to change my shape in about fifteen minutes?”
His mouth went slack at my abrupt change of topic and then humor twinkled into being and his former bumpkin accent resurfaced. “Ya, don’t ask fer much, now do ya, little missy?”
My hands settled on my hips. “I ask for what I need. We’ll get to the Dalah business after. You’re not off the hook about it but I’m all out of time. Can you teach me to look like Iz?”
Otis surged to his feet and took two long strides my way before it registered he’d moved at all. Jesus, he was quick! The blue head surprised the shit out of me by suddenly popping between us. I could tell Otis hadn’t seen it but that he sensed something because he drew up just short of touching distance. Seeing through the flying face and into Otis’s big brown eyes was disorienting. A quick rotation and then the transparent noggin flew right at my face. Poof, it was gone.
Joints stiffened in alarm, I whipped around to peer at the air in a dizzying one eighty.
Otis huffed, “What’d you ask me for? You look like ‘er already.”
Rowena and Izzy gasped together and my pink-headed friend let slip her trademark, “Eff an A!” They looked askance at one another before moving forward in unison. Their curiosity had officially trumped their animosity for once.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t feel anything change!” I protested. My voice was higher all of a sudden and I didn’t think it was panic. I sounded a hell of a lot like Iz.
Come to think of it, my hips did feel different under my hands—round and squishable not muscular and firm. I looked down at two large breasts straining the buttons’ containment limits on my tunic shirt. When I put my attention to it I realized the ceiling felt higher. Otis was much taller than I remembered him being just a second ago.
This was so…odd.
The few times I’d seen Cyril change it had been a painful snap, crackle, pop transformation that required enormous amounts of energy. What had the ghost head done to me and why?
One invasive finger caressed the tip of my new nose. Cartilage moved under my skin. Images around me blurred as I crossed my new eyes at the offending digit. After a moment my vision cleared to reveal Izzy on the opposite end of the touch.
Her expression was clearly wondering, even on her busted up face, though she made time to quip, “You should brush your teeth, Z.”
I swatted her hand down but kept ahold of her warm wrist. “Otis, can you fix her up like you did Dominic?” My question came out as more of an order than a request. I was beginning to recognize the seeds of my father’s personality in my own. Damn. The hits just kept coming.
Hearing his name mentioned in conversation made Dom stir again. Surprisingly it was Rowena who limped over to reassure him for me. Something in the gentle way her murmured words of comfort echoed in the spacious library as she patted his bare shoulder had me pausing to stare—distracted. There was kindness in her—just not for me. I got the jagged, predatory version of my stepmother—always.
Otis’s looming presence put me back in the now. Foreign alarm bells went off as the man bent low to achieve alternating eye to eye status with me and Iz. Phantom chittering burst in my head like a scurry of squirrels warning off a stray cat from their tree. I couldn’t let Otis touch me. My fingers loosened on Izzy’s wrist and I took one step backward and then another.
His beetle-browed concentration was disturbing.
I cocked my head as if nothing were wrong. “So? Can you heal her nose or not?”
Rowena interjected, “It would help i
f you shared your genius plan with the rest of us, Zena.”
I shrugged, “Fine. We give the bad guys what they want. I pose as Iz and bring the Dalah. Izzy knows her house so she can break her family out while I distract the rest of them. Otis and Rowena—you stay here while we’re gone and watch over Dom.”
My stepmother groaned with her head thrown back and the bridge of her nose crinkled, “You’re an idiot. How is taking the one thing everyone wants and giving it away going to solve anything?”
Iz was obscured by Otis’s broad back but her voice piped high, “Wait! Don’t touch me, dude. How bad is this gonna hurt?”
Dom’s thick black lashes fluttered and a slit of iris showed, “Why are you all yelling?”
Heat and a scent of rolling rain clouds burst like an invisible bubble and the same orange light from earlier overflowed around Otis. I wanted to see him in action but by the time I rounded his left side, putting myself between Otis and the desk to protect Dom, Izzy’s nose and eyes had returned to normal. The light faded.
Iz spoke through a grimace, “Have you done it yet?” Her upper body curved forward in a giant wince of anticipated discomfort and her face was tightly scrunched.
Rowena ordered, “Be still!”
I looked over my shoulder to see Dom attempting to push his shoulders and head into the beginnings of a sitting position by his elbows. Rowena fluttered at him, anxious.
Without thought to my altered appearance I said, “Lay back down, sweetie. Everything is fine. Otis said if you move around too much things can tear.”
Forest green eyes already shrouded with fatigue grew more confused. One eyebrow shot up as he grunted with the effort to sit. “Just because I made you breakfast this morning doesn’t mean we have a thing, Iz. Where’s, Zena?”
My arm shot straight upward, “Present.”
In a confluence of timing perfection, the real Izzy drifted next to me, rubbing her temples. “Eff an A, Zena. I don’t know how he did it but my head hurts more now than it did before.”
Dom finished sitting. His ribs were all visible poking up from beneath his skin. Blue and purple bruises spread like landmasses over his stomach then disappeared to continue out of sight on his back.
The Blood Key (The Wander Series Book 1) Page 18
