by Beth Dranoff
This time the boot made contact. Who knew that Jon had this kind of controlled violence in him? Not me. But it certainly was coming in handy right about now. If only he could keep from killing Blue out of a sense of misplaced chivalry, we might be able to actually find out what was going on and why I seemed to be at the center of it all. And yes, given that I had just skewered that same Blue’s throat moments earlier, I was getting the irony here. Maybe Jon and I had more in common than I realized. Anger issues. Now there’s a tie-that-binds kind of shared quality you want in an impermanent relationship.
Chapter Sixteen
You’re probably wondering where I learned to fight. There’s a complicated answer to such a seemingly simple question. Ezra Gerbrecht was at the center of it. My professor, my mentor; the punster with an edge of burnished steel hidden beneath a mad-scientist façade.
I’ve always had some aggression issues. Lack of patience, quick to snap, not so much with the frou-frou girly-girl ways. Gerbrecht simply honed what was already there.
As part of my Psych 100 elective in first-year university, I was required to participate in one or more focus group sessions—ostensibly to teach us about group dynamics and how people react to certain stimuli. Depending on how you did, you might be asked to participate in more of these collective emotional button-pushing sessions. The carrot dangled was that if you reached a certain level in the selection process, you would become eligible for some kind of cash prize.
I’d thought the whole thing was stupid. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in yet, but I was pretty certain that Marketing Manipulation wouldn’t rank high on my personal list of life goals.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to sabotage the effort. Not on a scholarship. So I did just enough to keep me ahead of the interviewer’s game, just enough to keep me in the game itself so I could get a good mark.
What I didn’t know was that I was a lab rat, we were all lab rats, and with each rung surpassed we narrowed the pool of potential candidates to the inner circle.
Ezra Gerbrecht was covering for the usual professor, Jasmine Anuk, who had taken a leave of absence around the middle of the year. Gerbrecht’s easy laugh and ever-present sense of humor had us giggling in class despite our best efforts to project cool detachment.
The focus group exercise was his idea.
An innovation in teaching and learning. That was the spin. And really, anything that had us sitting around and talking rather than writing essays or taking exams was good with us. We were soon part of a select group. Down to ten. Then down to five. And then, finally, the core: James Sanderson, Cora Pescatori and me.
It was all very cloak and dagger from that point on. We played it as though it was a big joke. Come to such and such a place, come alone, bring paper and something to write with, turn your cell phones off once you pass a certain point. As if. I’d seen the horror movies. You know, the ones where that hapless female decides it’s a good idea to go for a walk by herself in the woods or down that dark alley. No good comes of it.
So no. I came on my own, but I didn’t leave my stuff at home and I did let my roommate know where I was going. My one concession to the game was that I switched my phone to silent.
There. Who says I can’t be somewhat accommodating?
The meet went down in the basement of Hart House. The men’s washroom across from the Arbor Room. Knock twice. Hold your breath. (What is it with men’s washrooms anyway? Stand and aim. Accurately. How hard can that be?) Last stall on your right. Flush three times in succession.
Normally this bathroom got a lot of action. But after midnight on a Sunday, I wasn’t too concerned about running into anyone. Other than a security guard, and last I checked he was doing his rounds on the main floor heading towards the Great Hall. Away from me being the key point.
I wasn’t sure what flushing would do; apparently nothing save a slight improvement in the overall smell of the place. I was about to flush a fourth time when I felt a hot breath in my ear.
“Mmmm,” it moaned, chills along my back. “Fresh meat. Precioussssssss.”
It sniffed under my earlobe.
I didn’t think. My right hand slapped the wall for balance and my left elbow jabbed, delivering a direct hit just above the solar plexus. I followed with a one-two-three maneuver. BAM—left heel to kneecap and down. BAM—back of my left fist, plowing backwards into that snuffling nose. And finally I twisted slightly to my left and with my right hand grabbed at what hair I could grasp while my left hand reached behind the neck of the ear hisser, propelling its skull into the wall with a satisfying thud.
It went down. Nice bump forming on its... I was going to go with “head” for lack of a better term. Though its second head hissed at me in warning.
Warning of what?
Plop. Plop thud. Thuditty plop. Sssssssssssssssssssssssss.
Snakes.
The hell with this, I thought, trampling the writhing buggers I couldn’t avoid on my way to the door.
Locked. Perfect.
I had my cell phone in hand, ready to dial 911, when I noticed the pipe running across the ceiling to the old-style window, which was slightly ajar. Using the vertical portion of the pipe, I propelled myself first onto the sink and then grabbed hold of the pipe running across the top of the room. It groaned slightly with my weight but held. Hand over hand, I made my way towards the locked door and, more importantly, the open window above it. A quick glance below at the writhing floor was motivation enough to keep going.
Once I reached the exit I started swinging backwards and forwards to build up a pendulum-like momentum. I pushed off the wall behind me with both feet, swung back, and planted a double-foot front kick into that window over the main door. Glass shattered. Swinging back one last time, I planted one foot on the ledge, one leg out the door, and carefully edged out and into the thankfully snake-free hallway.
Followed by the sound of two hands clapping.
Ezra Gerbrecht stepped out of the shadows. I nearly left my skin behind I jumped so hard.
“You did good,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you about a job.”
* * *
Ah, memories. Perhaps not the best time to reminisce. But I couldn’t help being drawn in by the parallels. Working with a crew. Loading a demon into the back of a truck bound for shackles and torture-for-information opportunities.
Wrapped in silver manacles and gagged, Demon Blue landed in my truck bed with a thud. The lid slammed down hard and closed him off from continued view. Yay.
I stood beside the truck bed, tapping restlessly on the stainless-steel edge as I watched Anshell issuing orders to the cleanup crew. Lynna was safely buckled into the passenger seat, twitching slightly but being talked down by Sam’s casual charm as he leaned in to joke with her through the now-open window. The copper taste of blood hung in the air, but I didn’t sense any of it coming from Sam. Or Lynna. So that was good.
“Dana?”
I looked over at Jon, a silent apparition made suddenly solid beside me. He took my hand in his, stroking back and forth with the edge of his thumb, soothing. His coolness was gentle against my edgy heat, and he raised my hand up so I could look.
I gasped at the sight. My hand was more of a paw with elongated digits: part feline, part human. I wanted to slap a hand across my mouth to cover the shock but in the last second pulled back, realizing I could seriously scratch myself that way. Jon followed my emotions with only a slight narrowing of his eyes, but he didn’t let go. I choked out a sob.
“Dana, it’s okay.”
“I’m horrible. Oh. My. God.”
Sam appeared on the other side of me, my other newly sprouted paw in his hand, holding it up to get a better view in the moonlight. He whistled in appreciation.
“Now that is cool,” he said with a grin. “Think you could do it a
gain?”
I gave him a look.
“If I could, would I be wasting my time cleaning blood off my weapons by moonlight when all I’d need is a good manicure?”
Sam turned partially towards me, his profile silhouetted by the moon. He lifted up my paw to the light, then traced the underside where wrist meets palm, so delicately. I shivered, my eyes closing momentarily.
“No,” Sam growled. “Open your eyes.”
I did.
Sam’s paw was larger than mine with shaggy red fur that hung in streaks. Large claws. But not so much more so than mine.
More to the point, holy electricity, Batman. The touch of the heel of his palm to mine felt like the inexorable pull of a magnet. My breath caught in my throat, my heart was pounding. I knew Jon was on the other side of me, cold to Sam’s heat, but the chill was lost in the fires of Sam’s partial change.
Jon gave a growl of his own. Reminding me he was there, warning off his partially furred competition.
Gently, I extracted my paws from the grasps of both men and reached my arms up to the light still glowing in the sky, reflecting off my striped orange and black fur. I arched my back and gave a big yawn, tasting the salt and blood and sweat still hanging in frozen droplets on the air. Sweet and salty mixed with copper-sulfur. I took an extra swipe with my tongue around my lips while I was at it, feeling the texture and pointy pleasure-pain of my slightly elongated teeth. Man, what a rush. My blood was singing in my veins, begging me to turn into something else, something more. I could ride it. Be it. But then there would be no going back on that thing I’d been trained to fear. Present and future warring with a past I kept trying to push behind me. Couldn’t.
So instead I took that sensation, that flood, and thought about a dam, logs building on either side, channeling that energy forward and away. I heard Sam suck in a breath, felt Jon take a step back, sensed Anshell and some of the other fighters drawing closer, moths to my burning, chilling flame.
And then I pulled that energy back, inhaled it deep into my chest. Pushed it down and sucked it back, taking what I had just shared back into my own core. Sun Salutation to the moon. Focusing on my breathing, my paws, the shape of my hands.
It tickled as fur insinuated itself back into my pores, collapsing like a weight-flattened spring. Nails deflating and suctioned back into my skin. It felt like when you take a small wooden nail pick and clean grit out from underneath your nails—except that my nails were remarkably clean for post-brawl, despite my urge to scratch beneath the surface of the pads. Eww. My wrists were a little stiff as the bones re-knit themselves into the smaller proportions of the me I recognized, but it wasn’t the gut-wrenching pain I’d been led to think that shifting could be.
And just like that, my paws were hands again. Smooth with no blood and no bruising from the fight. Mine.
Sam’s paws were hands now too. But my scent was in the wind and now he circled me, slinking, man-form flowing to animal and back once more. An eye blink and Jon was there, standing in his way. Sam took a step forward, a threat in his throat, and Jon stared him down silently. Anshell appeared beside Sam, a hand on his forearm, focusing attention away from a confrontation that didn’t need to happen.
“Sam,” Anshell said. “Back away from this one. Now is not the time.” He caught Sam’s eye and held it.
Sam gave another grunt, softer now, and backed down and away. I took a proprietorial sniff. Like me but not. Another deep breath in and...
“Dana, you need to cut it out too,” Anshell said. “Both of you now. Back off. It’s the moon, the fight. Enough.”
Something about the timbre, the force behind Anshell’s voice pulled me back. It felt like he gripped my skull between his hands, holding it in place, and yet I could see him standing there almost five feet away from me.
What. The. Fuck.
Jon’s arm snaked around my waist, an anathema to the life force Sam and I shared. I gripped him back, anchoring myself to the moment.
“Well, that was fun,” Sam drawled, all mischievous grin now.
“Indeed,” deadpanned Anshell. “If you three are quite done, we have a captive to question. Sam, you’re coming with me. Jon, if you would escort Dana back to the house?” Anshell waited for Jon’s curt nod, Sam’s slower inclination of his head, before continuing. Funny how Anshell didn’t give anyone directions, and nobody asked for them either. Jon and I were going to have yet another talk very, very soon.
Chapter Seventeen
The room was thick with viscous juices. Seeping diamond-studded green goo covered the darkened walls. I saw the ooze dripping, the sheen as it caught the light from a single bulb swinging from the ceiling. A scene from the nightmares I relived almost every night. I clasped my hands behind my back to hide my tremors as I struggled with flashbacks to another time, another room; a scene I’d hoped never to relive.
“Fuck you and the bitch you rode in on,” snarled Demon Blue. His head was thrown back and partially twisted at an angle that wouldn’t have been survivable had he been human.
Sam smiled an evil grin and leaned forward, his paw a single digit now—the middle one of course, what else?—and carved a shallow line of blood down the demon’s cheek.
“Oh come now,” he replied, drawing the claw across the demon’s distended lower lip. “Let’s keep our fantasies in check, shall we? Maybe a little later on we can discuss who gets to ride whom. But until then, let’s focus.”
“Focus on this, asswipe.” Demon Blue spat a great gob of mellifluous blue saliva at Sam. It would have hit Sam just below his left eye, except that he was no longer in range. How could I have missed that otherness of Sam before?
Jon edged forward, a streak of light on shadow. He looked human, but only just. I was surprised not to see wings arcing from his back like some vengeful angel on a mission. Demon Blue paled slightly at his approach. Interesting.
“Name,” said Jon.
Demon Blue just laughed. “I ain’t taking orders from a bitch-slapped, pussy-whipped vampire lapdog.”
“Oh?” Jon raised an eyebrow, remarkable in his restraint. Based on his earlier performance, I would have thought something involving pain was forthcoming. Instead, Jon laid hands on each of the captive’s shoulders and gripped. Hard. Nose to nose. Blue was forming more spittle to spray on my erstwhile compadre; I could see his throat working up enough residual moisture to pull it off. I opened my mouth to warn Jon when he suddenly smacked Blue on the side of the face, stepping back smoothly before the spray had a chance to lay even a drop on his remarkably goop-free self.
“Again,” Jon said. “Name.”
“Fuck you twice, cold boy. And I know that’s how you like it. You keep playing like you’re this girl’s great defender, the perfect lover. She doesn’t even know what you are.”
And then it was the Anshell show. He didn’t need to shift to command the attention of everyone in the room. Jon stepped back and Anshell stepped forward, taking the demon’s chin in his hand and holding it. Forcing Demon Blue to look into his eyes. Blue fought it, trying to rip the chair out of the sockets where it was bolted to the floor, but no luck. Not for the first time, I wondered which flavor of supe Anshell was, exactly, and what his powers were.
“Speak,” Anshell said.
“You know how it is.” Was Demon Blue stammering? Seriously? “Like the song says, ain’t no rest for the wicked. My services were purchased. The Shadow Wraith did a conjuring, handed me a transparency with the girl’s primal deets on it, signed my contract and then dissolved the circle. I don’t know more than that.”
“Terms of the contract? Method of payment?”
“C’mon,” Demon Blue said. “You know it’s all electronic bank transfers these days. I have a few set up in some different dimensions—easier to keep curious government cats out of my business. Easy in, easy out.”
Anshell raised an eyebrow.
“Any clues in the contract about who ordered the hit?”
“No way. Doesn’t matter to me. Not usually.” Demon Blue muttered that last bit.
“And this time?” Anshell prompted.
“This time I wish to hell I had a clue who ordered it, because the last thing I need is more of this shit from you and yours.”
Anshell gave him one long last look, then nodded to Jon. Who stepped up behind Demon Blue and snapped his neck.
“Oowwwww! What the hell? I told you everything I know!” Demon Blue was howling now as his neck dangled even more precariously over the back edge of the scarred chair.
“I think you need some more motivation,” Anshell said. “Sam? Would you mind doing the honors?”
“No problem,” Sam replied, lifting up a remote control from the windowsill and pointing it at the wall, causing a large flat-screen TV—65 inches at least—to descend into view. One click turned it on, a second click activated the Sponge Bob Square Pants marathon playing on an infinite loop. The horror. I swear, I’d talk.
By the screech of sheer terror and pain he let out as soon as the opening song started—“Who lives in a pineapple under the sea / Sponge Bob Square Pants!...”—I was thinking he was going to cave soon.
I didn’t know how parents could stand it...those sounds, that music... I was so out of there.
Fortunately, I had a good excuse: work. I couldn’t keep wearing the same set of clothes indefinitely. I thought for a moment about dropping by my apartment for a change of clothes, then remembered it had been condemned. The insurance adjuster had called me back this morning with the grim news. No, it wasn’t safe for me to go back. Yes, my policy covered standard damages and acts of God. It may or may not cover vandalism. Either way, it was a pretty good bet I’d kissed my security deposit goodbye.
