Changeling Justice

by Frank Hurt

  She reached her hand toward the buzzard and yelled. Ember couldn’t let him get away. She rolled onto her hip and inhaled a stranger’s blood as she willed her shaky legs to support her.

  The buzzard flew right past her, its wings so close she could almost touch it. She lunged for the bird but caught only air.

  The carrion bird hissed and flapped its massive span as it made its escape. It was over the parking lot, several yards off the ground when a blur of feathered lightning shot from the sky and connected with the buzzard. The wind carried a piercing scream, as the black-winged bird was sent down to the pavement with a sickening crack.

  The turkey vulture flailed desperately, its wing broken as it futilely tried to defend against its attacker. A golden eagle had its claws buried in its prey’s back. It mercilessly pecked its sharp beak at the vulture’s exposed, thin neck as it rode the buzzard through its death throes.

  31

  The Easy Path or the Right Path

  It all happened so fast, Ember’s dazed senses struggled to catch up. The crow changeling, Doug, had become little more than a hood ornament. The turkey vulture changeling was on the parking lot’s asphalt, quickly being shredded by the claws and beak of the eagle who took him down.

  “Stop!” She spat blood that wasn’t her own. “Don’t kill him! I need to interrogate him.”

  The golden eagle had the vulture’s long neck between its crushing, hooked beak. She was shaking it back and forth. Only when the buzzard’s neck snapped did the eagle stop thrashing long enough to hear Ember’s plea.

  The Super Duty pickup driver’s side door opened. Alarik stepped out and hurried over to Ember. “Good god, Ember! What did they do to you?”

  She shook her head, her blonde mane now dyed by blood and the setting sun to turn it a ruddy hue. She looked through Alarik, her dazed, fire-blue eyes not quite focusing on him. “Nothing’s broken. The blood’s not mine. Not most of it.”

  The eagle shifted into its human form. Anna wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then picked up the carrion bird by its broken neck. The thing was a heavy mass of crumped wing and shedding feathers.

  Alarik helped Ember walk, as her legs threatened to collapse. He supported her until she could sit down on the picnic table bench. On the opposite side was the changeling the others identified interchangeably as Matt and Matty.

  Matty wasn’t moving.

  The containment net Ember had cast was weak, as she had so little mana left to send at it. It was strong enough to knock the man off the table, and the elevated position plus gravity had done the rest. The hard, packed earth where he fell, head first, had snapped the man’s neck; he was dead.

  Anna opened the tailgate to her brother’s Ford, hefted the dead buzzard into the pickup box, then spat on its carcass. She and Alarik loaded Matt’s body in alongside his dead compatriot.

  A reflection in the turf caught Ember’s eye, so she limped over to investigate. It was Doug’s knife, the one which slashed a line on her cleavage which still wept and stung. She picked up the knife and walked over to the front of the pickup.

  There wasn’t much left of the crow, but for a mangled body mashed between bars on the chrome grill guard. Using his own knife, Ember picked Doug’s mangled corpse free and deposited both in the pickup.

  The Schmitt siblings watched Ember in silence. Maybe they sensed that she needed to participate in this posthumous exercise. Or maybe the sight of her gave them pause: red shirt torn open, white pants ripped, the clothing and its wearer entirely sullied by wet blood.

  They unrolled a black vinyl tonneau cover, concealing the grisly cargo before they shut the tailgate. It would make an adequate hearse.

  “We shouldn’t stick around,” Alarik gestured with his chin at the sporadic traffic on Highway 2 to the north and south of them. “You want to clean up before we head home? I’ll back the pickup up, get it off the grass before an H.P. sees and comes to take a closer look.”

  Ember didn’t answer. She just stared vacantly at the rear of the pickup. At what she helped load into it.

  “Come on,” Anna said gently. “I’ll come with you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Ember, you’re covered in blood. You’ve got a cut on your lip, your chest—”

  “I said I’m fine.” She said it more forcefully the second time. Her gaze fixated on the emblem on the tailgate. She had a strange sensation that she should be in there, alongside the three bodies, lying inert.

  Some part of her consciousness became aware of Anna wiping her face and neck with paper towels moistened from the restroom sink. Gatorade from a bottle purchased from the vending machine served to rinse her sticky mouth clean. All the beverages in the machine wouldn’t be enough to clean the taste from her memory, though.

  She didn’t know it at the time—couldn’t have known it, really—but later Ember would recognize that she was in a state of shock. One moment she was talking on the phone with her mother, having a normal if comically exasperating conversation with someone she loved. The next, she was brutally attacked, caught unaware and unprepared.

  Unprepared. Never again. I’m no victim, and never will be. The pronouncement was a cold fact. The heated anger she felt was still there but joined by a determinedness that seemed permanent. The switch had been flipped, and there was no going back.

  Anna retrieved her cell phone from the pickup. She transferred Ember’s satchel and purse (minus the car keys) from the Taurus. She would drive it home, following Alarik and Ember in the pickup.

  Home. “We can’t go back to my apartment.”

  “I know, Ember.” Alarik was buckling Ember in. Somewhere along the way, her drenched, torn shirt had been replaced with his jacket, which hung heavily and too large on her shoulders. “We’re going to take you to Plaza. To my place.”

  “The bodies—”

  “We’ll take care of them, don’t worry.”

  They were driving now, though Ember didn’t know how much time had passed. “I can talk to them.” Her voice was monotone. It sounded like someone else speaking.

  “They’re dead, Ember.”

  “I didn’t mean for them to die.” She turned in her seat and stared at the closed tonneau cover, imagining the three corpses beneath. “I would have interrogated them. I could have cast a Memory Wash on them, and let them go. I didn’t want them dead.”

  “If it’s any consolation, they seemed determined to kill you.” Alarik peered at his passenger with his umber eyes. “I for one am glad that they didn’t succeed.”

  Ember continued staring at the rear of the pickup, twisted against the shoulder belt as she was. “I don’t think they were going to kill me. Not until I was questioned. ‘Mister B’ they’d said.”

  “Mister B?” Alarik frowned at the windshield. “Who the hell is Mister B? The Director of Wellness is Elton Higginbotham.”

  Ember turned forward. Her senses were starting to return. “Higginbotham isn’t in charge. There’s someone else. Maybe multiple someone elses.”

  Alarik whistled low. “How deep can this possibly go?”

  She shook her head. Her hair was encrusted with dried blood. Her skin felt gross, sticky, clogged. “They hadn’t told him. Their boss, this Mister B. Whoever the puppet master is, he doesn’t know that you and I temporarily lifted the Deference Spell on Duncan Heywood. They don’t know that the spell didn’t work on me.

  “You mentioned that before. Deference Spell. What is it?”

  Ember considered Alarik and his question for a good minute. “Before I tell you, I need to know how you and Anna got to me. How you knew I needed help.”

  “We didn’t know you needed help.” Alarik’s eyes met hers for as long as he dared to take them from the road. “I…we were worried about you since you said that the spy had followed you to Pembina. The rest stop was the halfway point for the journey back. You said you were going to stop there on the way, so we figured we could meet you there, and convoy back. Safety in numbers, and all t
hat.”

  “But Anna...” Ember’s voice trailed off.

  Alarik’s lips twitched up. “That sister of mine is half crazy. Get this: we were easing up to turn off into the rest area. I have my turn signal on, and she sees her car parked, and then she sees three men surrounding it. She yelled to me to open the window, then shifted into her eagle form right there in the seat.” He pointed at where Ember sat now. “I barely got the window down, and she hopped up to the edge and then launched herself out. I’m just glad I had slowed down enough, or the wind would have messed her up. I don’t think she even gave that any thought. She just jumped without thinking.”

  Ember closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. Her voice was raspy and low. “Anna could’ve gotten herself killed.”

  “My sister’s tougher than she looks. And I know how tough she looks. But you’re right, she could have. But she didn’t.”

  “Her car’s hood is scratched,” Ember said morosely. “The buzzard landed on it. I’ll apologize to her for that.”

  Alarik flashed a grin, then saw that Ember was sincere. His tone was compassionate when he placed his hand on her arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Ember, you’re alive. That’s the only thing that matters.”

  Her eyes started burning when he said that. She looked away, determined not to let him see the tears. She didn’t pull her arm away from his grip.

  Ember told him about the Deference Spell, though she was careful not to mention Barnaby. She told him about Higginbotham—or what she knew about him—and how the rest of the Investigators were under his influence. She told him that there was a cover-up within the highest levels of the Viceroyalty—though she didn’t tell him about the suspicion that this conspiracy extended to the Druw High Council. She didn’t tell him about the Inquisitor lineage, either. Some things were just too dangerous to share just yet.

  Alarik’s response was all of two words: “Holy crap.”

  “Yeah. There’s a lot I can’t tell you, Rik, for your own good. I wouldn’t even be telling you this much, but you’re already neck deep in this bloody mess. I need your help.”

  “No more gallivanting off by yourself, then?”

  “I think I’ve learned my lesson.”

  If she would have had enough mana—if she wouldn’t have been completely drained of her energy—Ember would have brought the ghosts of the three changeling spies back to question them. She didn’t have the mana for such an action though, not tonight. She would need to make time for that, later. There was never any guarantee that the ghosts would cooperate with her, and she had very little leverage over them to compel answers. It was entirely possible that all they knew, they already told her.

  “A cook.” Ember murmured the thoughts aloud. “They mentioned Mister B and a cook. I wonder if those are code names for people.”

  They arrived at Alarik’s farmstead at around one o’clock in the morning. They got out of their vehicles. Ember’s hip still hurt, and she walked with a limp.

  The lights were on in Alarik’s house, and his Uncle Boniface waited at the kitchen table. A mostly-empty carafe of coffee sat on the table. His fingers were hooked around a ceramic mug.

  “Ember, nice to see you again.” The changeling raised his mug and offered a wink. “You look like shit. I hear the other guy looks even worse. Atta girl.”

  Ember stiffened, “How did you—”

  “I called him,” Anna shrugged. “He’s going to help me bury the bodies. Literally. Don’t worry, Uncle Boni knows how to keep secrets. You can trust him.”

  “I don’t have much choice now, do I,” Ember said grimly. She closed her eyes and saw Boniface Schmitt’s fox subform sitting at the table.

  “Young lady, I’m gonna let you in on a secret.” Boniface took a sip of coffee before he continued. “You live as long as I have, you learn that you always have a choice. You can take the easy path or the right path.”

  “My niece told me about what you done today for Arnie. For us. Way I see it, you’ve walked to hell and back for my family, and you barely just met us. Your kind is mighty uncommon to stumble across in the world, and I’ve done a lot of stumbling in my day. Someone who’s willing to walk that hard path for me and mine, well hell, it’d just be damn rude not to reciprocate the favor.” He winked at Ember.

  Ember studied his aura and saw that the wily man was more than capable of fibbing, but in this statement, there was only sincerity.

  “Thank you.” Ember canted her head. “I promise that I’m doing all that I can to help Arnie and the others.”

  “We know,” Alarik said.

  She waved her hands slowly in front of her, her fingers splayed as she gestured at her figure. “Now if you don’t mind, I could really, desperately use a scalding hot shower right now.”

  She ran the water heater until it was cold, letting the pressure flow over her. Steam filled the bathroom, and she used half a bottle of her host’s shampoo. The blood may have been gone, but she still felt sticky, filthy. Only the frigid shift in water temperature finally prompted her to step out of the shower. She would have stayed in there indefinitely and still not felt clean.

  Ember stared at herself in the mirror. The cut on her lip was swollen but felt a lot worse than it looked. Her right cheek was bruised, but that, too, would heal. Her eyes looked grey in the steam-filtered vanity lights.

  The laceration on her chest ran about three inches along the side of her left breast. It would probably scar, serving as a reminder of the evening’s battle and what it almost cost her. The carved coyote face hung on its leather cord, draped alongside the new scar. She lifted the pendant to her bruised lip and gave it a kiss.

  Alarik found the t-shirt he loaned her when she last stayed overnight, along with a pair of denim jeans that were way too large, even with the legs rolled up. The belt he provided would keep them on her hips, but she looked like a child playing dress up in her father’s clothes.

  Dressed in the borrowed, baggy clothes, Ember emerged feeling weary but determined. Her hair hung damp against her back, soaking through the loaned shirt.

  Boniface and Anna were already gone. They had transferred the bodies into Boniface’s pickup and left to dispose of them before daybreak arrived.

  “Rik, where did they take them?” Ember asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. In that case, I’ll ask them when they get back. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use a stiff drink while we wait for them.”

  “I could, too, but that’ll have to be another time.” She claimed his jacket from the back of a kitchen chair and slid her arms into it while he watched, bemused. “We’ve another long drive ahead of us.”

  32

  One More Piece to the Puzzle

  It would be a few hours yet before sunrise. The night outside Alarik’s pickup was clear and cool, and the wind had calmed. The moon was a nearly perfect, full circle in the star-filled sky. Moonlight reflected on the inky, still water of Lake Sakakawea, beneath the concrete Highway 23 bridge west of New Town.

  “What makes you so convinced that this Dominic guy will be useful?”

  “It’s just a hunch,” Ember admitted. “Nobody remembered the time they spent within that fog back in 2001. Everything I find credits some sort of mass amnesia or inexplicable coma. The fact that there are NonDruws who might have been able to escape the effects leads me to believe that they can tell us what happened. Duncan seemed convinced that they knew things, anyway.”

  Alarik pulled a wedge of welder’s soapstone from his pocket as he drove. He used the talc stick to gesture. “Do you think they had something to do with the industrial accident?”

  “That thought crossed my mind.”

  “If Duncan knew, and if he is working for Director Higginbotham—”

  “Not working for,” Ember corrected. “Under the influence of Higginbotham. Courtesy of the Deference Spell.”

  “Okay. Then under the influ
ence of the Director, then that would mean the Director of Wellness is purposely refusing to help Arnie and the others.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to help them. He may know what caused it but doesn’t have it in his power to heal them. He’s a Sixth-Level Healer, but what I felt in Kenny was a different type of energy. A foreign magic, maybe.” She thought of the dark-skinned little girl in Roosevelt Park, how the residue from her mana felt similar when Ember sensed it.

  Traffic was heavier, west of the Missouri River. Tanker semi-trucks and heavy-duty pickups outnumbered passenger vehicles. Though it was after midnight, a steady flow of vehicles traveled Highway 23. When Alarik turned south onto Highway 22, the traffic seemed to increase even more.

  “What are all those fires?” Ember gaped at the tall torches, which illuminated tank batteries and pumping equipment.

  “Those are flares. Methane and Hydrogen Sulfide being burned off. We’re in oil country now, and there’s a boom going on. It’s a modern-day gold rush.” Alarik glanced at Ember. “I’ve had so much welding work, I’ve had to turn projects down for lack of time.”

  She scrunched her nose at the hair-curling scent of rotten eggs that drifted into the cab of the pickup when they drove past the flames. Ember stared out the window, thinking for some minutes. “I’ve taken you away from some of those projects, haven’t I. You’re losing money every time you chauffeur me around.”

  “I’m not gonna lie to you, yeah I’ve had to miss out on some nice bids. But some things are more important than chasing dollars.” Alarik shrugged. “Most things are.”

  “You won’t have to drive me around much longer. Wallace wants to bring me home, due to the potential danger.”

  “Ah. There it is. That’s why you’re being so insistent on getting to these interviews with the witnesses, huh? But if those spies didn’t report you to Higginbotham—or whoever Mister B is—are you still in danger?”