by Bree Moore
When she had finished, she still had no idea how she could get out. Hopefully, Quinn would come through. She would be ready to run.
She cautiously pushed open the door. The man immediately spotted her from where he stood, handing a cashier his card for the chips on the counter. Becca didn’t think twice; she bolted down the nearest isle, dodging an older man and squeezing past a pack of teenagers to break through the doorway. A bell chimed behind her as she left amid the close shouts of the man from Aberration Management.
“Quinn!” she shrieked, pumping her arms and legs. Black wings flared over the top of the nondescript white van and Quinn leapt out and up. A gunshot cracked and Becca crouched behind a truck parked on the other side of the gas pump. Had they hit Quinn? She popped her head over the truck bed. The man who had stayed to watch Quinn pointed a gun at her. Did it hold real bullets? Would they really kill those they had been sent to collect? Staring down that barrel, Becca froze. Her head swam and her vision flickered. A flash of reddish-blue light, like a thermal scan, flared in her vision, and everything muted.
An arm grabbed her waist and dragged her down.
“What are you doing?” Quinn whispered in her ear.
Becca shook her head and her vision doubled, then normalized. “Escaping,” she whispered back.
“I don’t think so.” The man who had taken Becca inside cocked his gun, standing between them and the gas station. They turned to find the other man between them and the road beyond, his gun pointed at them.
“How bulletproof are you?” Becca muttered.
“I’d rather not test it out.” Quinn drew his wings into his back and they slowly receded from around Becca’s shoulder. She resisted the urge to stroke the feathers as they shrank and disappeared. She closed her eyes against the threatening tears. They had failed. And it was unlikely they would get another chance like this one.
One of the men grabbed Becca’s upper arm, hauling her up. She protested loudly, hoping to draw attention from some onlooker now that Quinn looked more human. They might take pity, call the police. The man’s hand slipped for a moment, and Becca lashed out, catching his shin, but he adjusted his grip, this time grabbing her bandaged forearm.
Fire lanced through her. She screamed in pain. Her mind flashed with green, yellow, and black. Her whole world dilated and narrowed, alternating perspectives until a roiling sickness rose in her stomach.
A muted shout rang out. Becca turned toward it. A bee stung her shoulder.
No, a knife pierced her.
And then the sun sank slowly, fog creeping into her vision and turning everything blurry.
A jolt brought her out of the fog and she awoke groggily. It took longer than last time to get rid of the drowning feeling. Her arm ached fiercely, throbbing. She should take the bandage off and check for infection, but she resisted. She glanced down to her shoulder to check for damage only to see a tiny hole in her shirt, like that made by a syringe or similar. Not a knife, then. Her head ached and her stomach clenched in hunger. The acrid smell in the van made both worse.
Once again, Quinn was already awake. He sat cross-legged and calm beside her, watching her wake up. Had he been darted? What had happened at the gas station with her vision?
“They didn’t cuff you again?”
“I don’t think they have anything strong enough to hold me. But they threatened me enough with your life that they knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere.”
“Think you could get me out of these things?” Becca rolled over and offered her hands, which were connected at her back.
Quinn blinked. “Oh yeah. Sorry.” He grasped the base of the cuffs where the chain attached, then tightened his grip and grunted. Becca bit her lip as the force of his hands pressed her skin into the hard metal. The metal gave out with a snap and her hands flew apart. She brought her arms forward, shaking them out and rubbing the sore skin.
“Thanks for the bracelets,” she joked, holding one up.
Quinn’s mouth quirked upward. She smiled and tilted her head for a kiss. Quinn obliged, offering her a swift peck before he looked around the car.
“I’m sorry the escape didn’t work out.” Becca shook her wrists, trying to get used to the weight of the broken cuffs on them.
“I woke about an hour before you. We’ve been driving the entire time. Do you know where Aberration Management headquarters is located?” Quinn tilted his head.
Becca gripped the edge of the seat beneath her. She pursed her lips thoughtfully as she searched her memory. “Aberration Management is one of the more secluded factions. They keep their locations more secretive than the Naturalization camps, mostly because they have a bunch of illegal practices they’re keeping under wraps—testing, military training, stuff that the general public gets squeamish about. So no one knows where the facilities are unless they work there or, like us, they’re taken.”
“So that’s a no.” He shifted in the tight seat, glancing at her. “What I can’t figure is why they took you. They came for Harper, right?”
“Yeah. Tyson said that Violet called them in to collect her. They had some sort of supernatural reading device. Harper and that orb were behind me. They could have gotten a false reading.” Becca shrugged and stared at her hands. Her gaze traveled to the filthy bandage on her arm. The edge of the wrapping hung limply open. Beneath, she could see a glimmer of green.
She frowned. Wounds should not be green. Green meant severe infection.
But the bright green jewel tone on her arm shone. Gangrene wasn’t shiny.
Quinn made a sound of agreement and settled back against the wall behind him, folding his arms and closing his eyes. Thinking or sleeping? Becca fingered the edge of the bandage, eyes flicking from Quinn to her arm. She didn’t want to alarm him, but she needed to know if her wound required more medical attention than the bandages and antiseptic cream she’d been trying on it. She tugged a bit of the bandaging off and pulled back the gauze.
Some clear, tacky fluid seeped from the wound, but nothing like blood or puss. The skin around it looked healthy. As she unwrapped a section of the bandage above her wrist, the entire patch of skin gleamed back at her, green and scaled.
Becca’s breathing hitched. She reached across with a trembling hand and gently touched the smooth scales. It was like touching the cool, slithery body of a snake.
Transformed. What had that mummy done to her?
Becca covered the arm with the gauze and bandage, the wrapping looser now that it had lost some of its stick. She swallowed the bile rising in the back of her throat and tilted her head back, breathing through her nose so she wouldn’t be sick.
She laid her other hand on top of the bandaging. Another, larger hand covered her own. Becca looked to Quinn. His eyes were still shut, and no other part of him had moved, but his hand stroked across the top of hers. Becca’s insides warmed like a steam vent in the depths of the ocean. She leaned her head on Quinn’s shoulder. At least they were still together. She should definitely tell Quinn about her arm.
Something thudded on the roof and the vehicle rocked on its suspension. It jerked to a halt, throwing Becca sideways and out of her seat. Quinn stood, his partially extended wings keeping him anchored on his feet. He trembled as if holding the half-transformation taxed him. He reached a hand out and caught Becca by the wrist, swinging her around and against him. Shouting and feet running on pavement outside were muffled through the vehicle’s armored exterior.The vehicle rocked again, this time more violently. It creaked and nearly tipped, then slammed down on its wheels. Becca couldn’t help it; she screamed. The vehicle stopped moving, and rapid fire sounded outside. A machine gun? Becca broke out in a sweat.
Footsteps on the roof. A scream, blood-curdling and drawn out. And then, oddly enough, a harsh trilling melody. It sounded like the grating of tires on pavement, a guttural scraping that dug into the depths of her eardrums and rattled around in her head.
Becca curled her toes ag
ainst the sound. Quinn said something about getting out of there, then he grunted and rammed into the vehicle’s doors feet-first.
Becca jerked away from the banging, holding her hands against her ears, but the grating song-sound still lingered.
A hissing sound escaped her lips, which were now coated in a hard, strange substance. She stumbled into the side of the van and struck her wounded arm. Fire flared on her skin and she sucked inward. The edge of the bandage slid off to reveal not skin, but scales.
The shiny green scales crawled up Becca’s skin in a diamond pattern from past her wrist to where her elbow began. The pale, human underside of her arm remained for a moment longer, but as she watched, the scales spread outward, multiplying. Transforming.
“What’sss thissss?” Her words come out with hisses, an extra-long tongue flicking out of her mouth and sending an avalanche of information into her brain. It overwhelmed her human senses. Images flickered in her mind like scenes from a strobe-lit dance party. Her human vision blurred until all she could see was the bright flare of yellow light as the van doors burst open.
“Quinn!” Becca cried out, stretching her arms out in front. “My eyesss!” The visions flickered again as her tongue went out. The red and yellow splotches surrounded with cool blues and greens reminded her of an infrared sensor. Becca’s ears felt stuffed, all sound distant like when her ears popped at different elevations. A vibration moved through her body, centralizing in her jaw. She turned as a mass of red and orange stumbled toward her. She slithered out of the way, toward the back of the van.
She slithered. Her legs were no longer part of her. Instead, they had melded into a single form below her torso. She bobbed up and down in panic. Her altered world spread before her, vibrations shaking her body. Strange colors plagued her vision every time her forked tongue flickered without prompting. Two orangish blobs landed on the ground, the iridescent shapes of wings outstretched on each of them, just like the figure to her right.
One of them raised its arm, holding a long blue-colored tube. A red hole opened where its mouth should have been, and it raised the tube.
Becca heard a slight pop and a sharp sting blossomed against her shoulder. A needle had pierced her skin. She reached with a scaled hand and grabbed the fletched end of the object. She couldn’t see the feathers, but as her tongue flicked out the image became clearer. A dart. Like a poison dart.
Her torso wavered and her head dipped, sending her crashing to the ground. The poison moved sluggishly through her veins, so she lay there, body convulsing, mouth open and drooling onto the pavement. Her mind and body took on a creeping heaviness, starting with the fused form of her legs and moving to her torso and arms. Finally, her face succumbed to the buzzing weight of paralysis.
A figure bent toward her. Becca closed her eyes against the converging and diverging kaleidoscope of infrared colors. The last thing she heard, with a residual tingling in her jaw, was the sound of Quinn screaming her name.
⇺ ⇻
Chapter Three
Quinn
Becca’s long blonde hair splayed on the dark pavement as she twitched with fading convulsions.
“Oh hell. Hell. No, no, no… Oh hell, Becca.” Quinn couldn’t stop saying the useless words as he knelt down next to her on the ground.
He reached a trembling hand out to touch her, then withdrew it in a fist and stood. “What did you do to her?” he bellowed, wings flaring out to either side. He faced off the two men, men he thought were like him until they attacked Becca.
Becca, who had turned into a serpent.
Quinn beat his powerful wings and puffed out his chest, flexing the muscles in his arms. In the back of his mind, he realized that animals in the wild did this when defending a mate or territory, but the primal aspect of his animal self had control. He saw two rival raven-shifters threatening to take her from him. They had harmed her. He would harm them.
He leapt into the air and pumped his wings, then dropped toward the men, legs extended. One man leapt out of the way, but the other waited calmly. When Quinn’s foot came within range, the man grabbed it and twisted, spinning Quinn into the ground. He landed heavily, panting, and stood again, surging forward with his hands ready to strike, to strangle.
“Stop this madness,” the calm man said. He held up a single hand in Quinn’s face. “We do not intend to harm you.”
“Not me,” Quinn growled. He struggled to form words, to fight past the instincts in his mind that said he needed to defend Becca and drive these strangers, these competitors, away.
“You know this namigiak?” the serious-faced man rubbed his crooked nose. His companion stood by him, brushing off the strange vest he wore and sweeping his untied hair over his shoulder. The man with the bent nose spoke to his partner in a fluid language. The words tickled the back of Quinn’s mind with their familiarity.
“I don’t know what you just called her, but that’s Becca. And yes, I know her.” Quinn rubbed his mouth and turned to look at her. A sinuous tail blended into her torso, and as he watched, the emerald scales faded to a dull grey, then to the pale, soft color of Becca’s skin. Quinn glanced away when he realized her jeans had been pulled off during her transformation. Her longer shirt covered her, but he would still respect her privacy.
The crooked-nosed man moved toward the van and Becca. Quinn’s hackles rose and he stepped forward, but the other man grabbed his shoulder.
“We will not harm her. Watch.”
The crooked-nosed man rummaged around and came back with a blanket, which he carelessly threw at Becca. It landed across Becca’s shoulders, mostly, skewed and crumpled.
Quinn growled and the man released his shoulder, allowing him to go to Becca and straighten the blanket. His fingers brushed the cold clamminess of her skin. What had that dart done to her?
“Will she wake up soon?” Quinn asked. Both men looked at him.
The man with the bent nose shook his head. “Not for many hours. She will sleep. We will be away long before she wakes.”
“I’m not leaving her.” Quinn’s face hardened. He clenched his fists, and flared his wings. The man with the crooked nose raised his own wings, meeting Quinn’s posturing with some of his own. His partner barked a foreign word and the man froze, but he didn’t back down or submit to Quinn.
“Where is your sister?” one of the men asked.
“Harper? We were rescuing her from the camp when we were taken.”
“They mistook the namigiak for one of our people?” the man with the broken nose said. “Bah, useless.”
“Our people?” Quinn echoed. He looked at them, then at himself. Same skin tone, same black wings, and that language… he remembered it from his childhood. “Did you know my father and my mother?”
A curt nod from both.
“We do not have time for this,” the man with the crooked nose growled.
“Tarkik is correct.” The other man glanced to the sky. “Soon we will be noticed. You must come with us.”
Quinn glanced back at Becca. The men followed his gaze, and the man with the crooked nose—the one called Tarkik—snorted.
“That namigiak is a danger to us all, Silla. We should leave her here and find the sister.” He glared with undisguised malice at Becca.
“She’s not dangerous! She isn’t like that,” Quinn insisted. But he paused as he recalled the flash of green scales and the fangs springing out of her mouth. How had a simple cut from a mummified corpse caused this?
“Did you know she could take this form?” Silla asked, his voice level and calm.
Quinn shook his head.
Tarkik snorted. “She isn’t important. It is his sister we should concern ourselves with.”
Quinn gritted his teeth. “Harper is long gone. If the authorities haven’t caught up with her, she could be anywhere in Oregon.”
Silla’s wings shrank down. “Your captors traveled quickly, then. Would she follow you?”
&nbs
p; “Yes. But she doesn’t know where we’re headed. She might go into hiding.” Quinn shivered thinking of Harper out there, alone again, with the authorities hunting for her harder than ever. Especially once they heard that the Aberration Management team meant to detain her had failed. Would Tyson have gone with her?
No. Probably not.
“Put up your wings,” Silla said softly. “We are about to have company on the road.”
Quinn didn’t ask any more questions, but withdrew his wings. Tarkik did the same and turned to face the road. No blood marked their backs. How did they manage to protect their skin from the transformation? Had a witch spelled their skin too?
“We can return for your sister,” Tarkik said over his shoulder. “It is essential we get you to the village.”
A van drove past slowly, eyeing the wreckage of the truck, the bodies. The driver rolled down his window.
“You folks all right?” he asked.
Instead of responding, Tarkik whistled. Quinn’s bones vibrated. His mind perked up, hearing the new tune. He tried to follow its complex rhythms, but listening left him breathless, his mind reeling.
The effect it had on the driver of the van was more profound. The man turned to face the front of his car and rolled up his window without another word. Quinn watched as the van drove off, a sensation like awe building inside of him.
“How did you do that?”
Silla merely glanced in his direction. “You have much to learn of our people. The Song is useful for many things. Death, illness, destruction, but also the finer arts of persuasion, forgetting, and camouflage.” He lifted his chin. “Come. We must be away from here before the authorities are drawn in.”
Quinn stepped back toward Becca’s unconscious form. “I won’t leave her here. It isn’t right. She’s alone, and she’s never transformed before. She’ll be scared.”
