Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  “That’s not what I’m saying and you know it,” I said angrily. Kane was riling me up on purpose. “What I want is a future where it seems just as insane to think that we once even had an issue between different species, than we used to about different races, or different sexualities. We have to work towards that, don’t we? We’ve come so far already…”

  I withered a little under his stare. “You humans,” he said gently. “Your only true power is the power to deceive yourself. Do you really think your species suddenly became enlightened, Doctor Harkness? That they all suddenly stopped caring about who loved whom, or the colour of each other’s skin overnight, because of some…loving epiphany?” He leaned down over me, his face very near to mine. “No,” he said. “Your species is one filled with judgement and the desire to hate. The only reason racism, sexism and all the other prejudices which you had came to a crashing end, is that you collectively found someone else to hate. Someone even more ‘other’ than all of you combined. Suddenly it wasn’t white people and black people, or straight people and gay people, suddenly all that mattered were people against non-people.” He sneered. “Nothing unites humans like a common enemy.”

  I stepped back out of his shadow. “I don’t share your dark view of humanity,” I said, hoping I believed my own words. “I can understand it, but I have to believe you’re wrong. It’s clear that there’s a lot of prejudice and assumptions on both sides.” I brushed a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “The question is, what do you want? What can I take back to Cabal that isn’t just a simple stubborn ‘no’? Because trust me, Scott will have a powerful and well thought out argument from his side of things, that I can assure you. Digging your heels in isn’t going to work. Cabal like deals, bargains, negotiations. At least give me something to work with.”

  “What I want…” Kane said, after a contemplative silence, his eyes looking around the glasshouse as though for inspiration, “…is GO rights.” He folded his arms across his huge chest. Waiting to see my reaction. He clearly expected me to start spouting Cabal rhetoric about this issue. When I remained silent, he continued. “I want my people to be safe. To be free to work and live as your people do. Only that will satisfy me, and I know it will never happen.”

  He looked out of the wobbly window glass at the misty image of the settlement beyond. “If you have children, Doctor, they could be anything they want to be. They can be teachers, doctors, politicians. They can become wealthy, successful or whatever they wish to do with their lives. They never even question their right to do that. And nor should they.”

  “If we have children, and we do,” he said heavily. “It is not so. They will be born here, raised here, they will serve the pack and then they will die. Where is the future for them, any real future, without emancipation?”

  He glanced over at Griff, who had remained at the table. Kane and I had paced some distance into the glasshouse while we talked. My assistant was eyeing us closely, but he had given us space to speak.

  Kane dropped his voice to a low rumble. “I do not know you, Doctor, but you do not seem like Cabal to me. They say one thing and always mean another. They call themselves servants of the people, but they serve only themselves. And you do not seem like Scott. The man is a viper, a worm.” He inhaled deeply. I was certain he was taking in my scent, his eyes fluttered closed. It was an oddly intimate and unsettling gesture. “And you do not smell like them. You are like us, admit it or not, it makes no difference to me. But you are…other.”

  He stared at me, and I refused to look away. I could feel my jaw working. As alpha, he was clearly not used to having people meet his eyes directly.

  “And so perhaps I can trust you with something,” he said eventually. He seemed to have reached some kind of judgement on me. “There are many Tribals out there, beyond my pack. Many who did not ‘come out’ in the Emergence, who still live and work in secret, masquerading as humans, living in safety, but in misery, denying themselves. They are pariahs to the pack. My people here think of them as mongrels. That they are ashamed of what they are.”

  “I understand,” I said. It was one of those unspoken truths. Everyone assumed that by sheer probability, there must be other Tribals still firmly deep in the furry closet.

  “But I…I cannot abandon them,” Kane told me quietly. “They are still my people, and many have their own reasons, for staying in the shadows. They have good jobs, they have human families even. They would stand to lose much if they stood up to be counted amongst us. I am a…sponsor of sorts, to some of them. To one in particular.” Kane looked very troubled, looking at me sidelong. “If rights could be granted to some, or if…” He cast around frustrated, trying to voice his thoughts clearly. “If I could receive from Cabal some guarantee, something, that they would be safe, if they choose to come to my fold – that they would not lose their jobs, their homes, their lives. Then, and only then, would I consider speaking with Marlin Scott to reach a solution.”

  There was more to this than Kane was telling me. “Your people here, the pack,” I said hesitantly. “They don’t know do they? That you sponsor these Tribals living amongst the humans.”

  Kane shook his head. “I would appear weak to them, yes? To openly support those who have shunned the pack. It is not the way an alpha works.”

  “Then why do you do it?” I asked. “Why support and worry about them if they’re estranged from you anyway?”

  Kane sighed heavily. “Because Doctor Harkness, I have no choice. One of them, the one in particular of which I speak, she is…my daughter.”

  This was interesting news. I had no idea why Kane, the all-powerful alpha Tribal, was confiding in me, a relative stranger. Revealing secrets he could not even tell his own pack. Especially when the information could be used against him so easily.

  “If this information got back to Scott’s camp, he could use it to weaken your position amongst your own people. He could leak the fact that you have your proud and noble pack here, but that behind their backs, you support and assist those who deliberately choose to appear and hide amongst humans, the opposite of everything you stand for. It would make you appear, well, weak.” I shrugged apologetically. “I’m not that up on pack politics, but I’m pretty sure you’d be up for some kind of coup, right?”

  Kane nodded, staring at me intently. Honestly, I’d never met a man who could stare as much. His eyes were locked firmly on mine. Humans don’t do that. We flutter around each other’s peripheral vision, making and breaking contact in bursts, but Tribals don’t. Kane gave me his full and undivided attention. It was a little full on.

  “They don’t know, do they?” I wondered, hazarding a guess. “Your pack doesn’t know you have a daughter out there, one who refuses pack law?”

  I had expected Kane to play the game more slyly than this. “You’ve just shown me your entire hand,” I said, incredulous. “Why would you do that? How do you know I won’t take this information straight back to Cabal?” I was very confused.

  Kane continued to look at me closely, his head moving slightly from side to side. “I don’t know,” he said simply, in a curious tone. “But you won’t. I can’t explain why you won’t, but I know in my bones it’s true. You’re not one of them.”

  A moment of silence passed between us in the shadowy glasshouse. I refused to break eye contact out of some childish sense of one-upmanship, although I was getting I crick in my neck from staring up at him.

  “Because I smell of angry death, you mean?” I said eventually in a whisper.

  His face split into a grin, lightening the mood. “No, because you are a good person I think. I smell more on you than angry death. You have no love for Scott. That much is clear, and from your arguments, you sound like an idealist, a dreamer. A fool, but a noble fool. There are no such people at Cabal. You may be here for them, but you are not one of them. I can trust you with my terms. Assurances for the safety of my people outside of the pack, should they choose to ‘emerge’, and for my daughter. Then…” He
held up a finger, “…and only then, will I consider talking to Scott’s people about my land.”

  I nodded. “I’ll see what Cabal have to say,” I said. “I’ll have to think how to word it, and I can’t make guarantees of any kind. But I have to ask, why the sudden urgency? I mean, you’ve clearly known about the non-pack Tribals for a long time. Why the worry about their safety now?”

  “Because I can only protect my people here. I cannot protect those outside the pack.”

  “Protect them from what?”

  “Something terrible is in our city, Doctor,” Kane said portentously. “Something is killing. Your people have died, and also mine.”

  I stared, wide eyed. The three killings in Portmeadow. There was nothing else he could be referring to. He knew about them? And it wasn’t a Tribal hit squad? That must mean Tribals themselves had been killed too. Cloves was going to shit a brick.

  He saw my expression. “I see you know of what I speak. Good. This will save time. Come, walk with me.”

  I glanced back at Griff and gave him a reassuring nod. He didn’t look reassured, but he stayed where he was nevertheless. I followed Kane into the private pathways of undergrowth.

  The Tribal alpha led me along a few cobbled walkways, strewn with overgrow roots and creepers. We eventually came to another small clearing, surrounded on all sides by tall and thick-leaved vegetation. It was warm in the glasshouse. The space felt small and private, though to be fair most of it was taken up by the hulking man.

  “We can speak here,” he said. “My people have eyes and ears everywhere, something for which I am often grateful, but from time to time a little more privacy is required.”

  “You said something is stalking our streets,” I said. “How much do you know?”

  “How much do you know, Doctor?” he asked, with his smiling grimace again. “You may not be Cabal, but I see in your eyes that you keep their secrets for them. New Oxford knows nothing of what has been happening. The people are kept in blissful ignorance as always. For their own safety of course. But Cabal knows. There have been deaths amongst your people, yes? Bad ones.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t think of a reason to keep the truth from him, and he seemed to know anyway. “Three people, three… humans,” I corrected myself, “have been killed, so far. Brutally slaughtered. We have no idea why.” I looked up at him, unsure how to phrase things without offending him. “To be honest, the leading theory is that…”

  “That it was us?” He nodded in understanding. “Do not look so surprised. Your people have died badly, and to an outsider it does look indeed like the savage killings of a Tribal. I can imagine Cabal’s thoughts. I can practically hear the cogs turning over in South Park from here. The murderous animals, yes? On a vendetta against Scott, or humanity in general.”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “You haven’t actually denied it.” I pointed out.

  “Then let me do so,” he replied seriously. “The pack does not act without my permission, and I have placed no such order. Whatever is killing your people, it is not me or mine.”

  He absently stroked one of the large leaves of the plants between his finger and thumb, looking thoughtful.

  “Although how convenient it would be,” he mused, “if it was us. What opportune timing, when people like the Mankind Movement need a reason to show the world what a danger we are to them, and how much better it would be if we were expelled from the city. How…neat.”

  “Are you accusing the Mankind Movement of trying to frame you?” I asked.

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I am not sure – yet.”

  “What about the other Tribals?” I offered. “The secret ones you told me about, who don’t live here with you, the ones out there in the city? Have you considered that one of them might have gone rogue? I don’t want to say mentally unstable serial killer here, but it’s the elephant in the room, or were-elephant perhaps. It has to be a possibility right?”

  Kane glowered at me. “I would know,” he said with complete conviction. “And even if one of my kind was out there slaughtering yours. They would not target the pack. No Tribal is that stupid.”

  “Target the pack?”

  “Two of my people have disappeared in the last two weeks,” he confided. “Good men, both of them. Strong and loyal.”

  “Disappeared?” I questioned. “How can you be sure they haven’t just left you?” I saw his face darken. “You think they are dead?”

  “I am sure of it,” he replied. “They would not leave. And the only reason they would not return is if they were unable to.”

  “What makes you think their disappearance is linked to the human killings though?”

  “Because I had sent them both to investigate those attacks,” Kane rumbled. “I take an interest in human affairs, even if you humans don’t take an interest in ours. My men were looking into your crime scenes, the ones Cabal have kept so carefully from the eyes of the public.” He chuckled humourlessly. “Trying to find out what had happened, and why someone was making it look like our handiwork. Forewarned is forearmed, or so I thought.”

  “We have no intelligence to suggest that Tribals were poking around the murder scenes afterwards,” I said, shaking my head with a frown.

  “Of course not,” he reasoned. “We are careful, Doctor. The wolf steps lightly on padded feet. It would not help our case protesting our innocence would it, if two suspicious-looking Tribals were seen nosing around in the carrion. We are not entirely stupid, whatever your superiors may think. The problem I face is that the men I sent out into the city, Newton and Kristian, two of my most trusted, they did not return. They did not call. They have gone.” He shook his head gently. “We have been unable to trace them, by any means. Their mobile phones are dead, wherever they are, and their scent trail is cold. Even our keenest noses can find no trace of them.”

  He reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder. It was large and heavy. It was the first physical contact I’d had with a Tribal. It felt very human to me, nothing otherworldly other than the size of his huge palm making me feel like a child. “Doctor, you see now my concern?” He seemed almost beseeching. “Whatever is happening out there, it has taken two of my people – strong Tribals, not men easily overpowered – and it has taken three of yours. I fear for my daughter. I want her here with me, where I can watch over her, but she will not come if she loses everything she has built in the world. Get me Cabal assurance that she will not be penalised for emerging officially, and then I will discuss this land issue.”

  That was going to be a whole lot easier said than done. I opened my mouth to reply, unsure what I was going to say, but I didn’t get the chance to speak, as my phone started buzzing in my coat.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, as he lifted his hand from me. I dragged my phone from my pocket and checked the call-screen. Cloves. Great timing as always. I considered not answering, but for all I knew, there could have been another bomb over at the Liver since I’d been in here. It could be an emergency.

  As it happens, it was.

  “Harkness,” she said in my ear, without waiting for me to say hello. “We have a situation.”

  “I’m with Kane right now,” I replied quietly. “Can’t this wait?” I smiled up at Kane grimly.

  “No, it cannot bloody well wait!” Cloves hissed into my ear. She sounded on edge, more so than usual. “There’s been another, this morning.”

  I stared at Kane in shock. “Another bomb?” I asked.

  “What? No, not another bloody bomb. Another bloody murder. And we can’t keep this one out of the news, press are already on the fucking scene. I’m doing all I can to control things.”

  I felt the blood drain out of my face. Kane was watching me closely. “The body?” I asked, wondering if it was mauled, like the first three.

  I heard Cloves hesitate. “Not body. Bodies,” she corrected me darkly. “Two of them, and it gets worse. As well as the corpses here there are three other people missing from the scene.” I h
eard her take a breath slowly. She sounded as though she might be smoking a cigarette. “This is seriously bad, Harkness. These are students. Seventeen year olds. I have two dead kids on my hands and three AWOL. I’m at the Old Road Campus now. The division of structural biology. There was a break in at the student labs. The place is a mess. We have two corpses and…”

  Without warning, Kane reached down and tore the phone from my hand. I reeled back, shocked. I should have realised that he would be able to hear Cloves’ side of the conversation from where he stood. Tribal hearing is preternaturally sharp after all. He held the phone to his ear. His face was a taut mask.

  “Who is dead?” he demanded, his voice a rumble. I heard Cloves buzzing angrily in his ear like a startled wasp. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I imagined she was asking who the hell this was, only with more expletives. “This is Kane,” he replied. “Now tell me, the Old Road Campus you said. Biology students, who is dead there? Give me names,” he growled. He looked frantic. I had never heard anyone give Cloves commands before.

  To my amazement she must have replied, as I saw his face slacken a little, though not by much. “Thank God,” he muttered. He ran a hand over his head. “The others, missing. Who are they?” he barked.

  Again I heard Cloves protest. Kane cut her off sharply. “I don’t care who you are, woman. You know who I am. Answer me.” His voice had risen, and I felt, rather than heard, unseen Tribals in the undergrowth around us, still keeping their distance, but intrigued by their alpha’s tone, drawing closer. “The missing students, three of them you said,” Kane snapped into my phone. “Names, now! Lieselotte. Lieselotte Wolnosc. Was she…” He trailed off as I heard Cloves speaking rapidly. All animation dissipated from his face. He looked shell-shocked.

  A few seconds passed, and without speaking to her, he passed the phone back to me.