The Skin She's In

by Margo Bond Collins

  Hyenas both hunt and scavenge, I reminded myself.

  Shadow? Not so much. She coiled her anxiety in on herself, pulling it deeper and deeper until she was a spring ready to explode, the quivering kinetic energy she held only barely contained.

  I half expected her to pull that giant ax out of its holster on her back and start swinging it into my office furniture.

  “So then you left Savannah?” I asked, prompting them to continue their story.

  “Until that time, we had no clear idea of why the werewolves had captured us,” Jeremiah said. “Other than disgust at our relationship.”

  “But you found out later?” I found myself falling into my typical counselor’s mode of asking questions rather than asserting facts.

  “Oh, yes,” Shadow practically hissed. “We stopped for fuel in Alabama. By that time, both of our...” She glanced at Jeremiah and frowned as if remembering an argument. “Both our groups,” she continued, “were beginning to look for us in earnest. We had turned our cell phones off in the hopes of avoiding any surveillance.”

  “We wanted to leave the major thoroughfares,” Jeremiah took over the narrative smoothly. “So in addition to fuel, we were purchasing paper maps. We were not entirely certain where we were headed, though I had convinced Shadow that my people were likely to be more accepting of an... outsider... than hers might be.” Again, a twitch on Shadow’s face suggested there was more to that conversation in terms of their interpersonal relationship.

  But right now, I was much less interested in them as a couple than I was in learning about their overall situation.

  Still, I had to force myself not to derail the discussion by asking why, precisely, their two communities might despise one another—especially since I was apparently supposed to already know.

  I’d thought I was the only shifter in the joint with a whole pile of enemies.

  “Jeremiah was inside the gas station and I was outside when an enormous SUV pulled up beside my car.” A faint flush of anger highlighted Shadow’s cheekbones, and her eyes hardened into chips of freezing, blue-white ice at the memory. “It was exactly like the one they had driven in Savannah.”

  “From inside the convenience store, I saw Shadow pull her weapon.” Jeremiah gazed at me intently, those liquid brown eyes of his solemn. “You understand, do you not, that to force a Hunter to draw her ax in self-defense is perhaps the most dangerous action a shapeshifter could take?”

  I was still too new to the entire shifting world to know anything of the sort—someone had clearly forgotten to fill me in on the importance of Hunters—but I simply made an encouraging noise and nodded for them to continue.

  “Despite the public setting, I had to defend myself.” Shadow’s gaze practically dared me to disagree.

  “Inside the store, the single employee prepared to call the police. I stopped him.” Jeremiah’s simple statement chilled me—as a counselor, anyway. As a lamia, if I were entirely honest, it didn’t bother me at all. Since I am made up of some of each, I suppose the final tally was somewhere in between.

  At any rate, it seemed best to ask.

  “Stopped him?” I hoped I wouldn’t have to prod any further for clarification.

  The hyena shifter’s slight smile suggested he knew exactly what I was asking. “He was merely restrained.”

  I nodded and turned back to Shadow’s part of the story. “And then?”

  “I killed the werewolves,” she said simply. Then she ruined the impression of calm precision by adding in tones of irritation, “It was a messy kill. We removed the bodies, but to a location all too nearby. The amount of blood on the asphalt was impossible to clean entirely. And the store clerk is an unfortunate loose end.”

  Jeremiah shrugged. “You would not let me add him to the kill.”

  “He’s human.” Her tone suggested that was the final word on the topic, as far as she was concerned. From Jeremiah’s expression, I’d guess he didn’t agree.

  At this point, my counselor training wouldn’t allow me to let the moment pass. “So let me make sure I have this straight. You two were kidnapped, tortured, and chased out of Savannah. When your kidnappers—or at least a faction of them—caught up with you, you killed them, hid the bodies, cleaned the crime scene, and incapacitated a witness. And yet, Jeremiah is most upset about not having been able to kill the witness, and Shadow is most upset about not having properly disposed of the bodies. Do I have that right?”

  The two glanced at each other then turned back to me, nodding. “That’s about it,” said Shadow.

  I frowned and tapped one fingernail on the desk in front of me. “You still haven’t said anything about how you ended up here in my office.”

  “Two sentences,” Shadow said. “As I battled the werewolves, one of them said, ‘You’re as much a pain in my ass as that lamia bitch. Maybe when we’re done with her kind, we will wipe yours out next.’”

  Chapter 13

  “WIPE YOUR KIND OUT next?” I repeated.

  It was all I could do to resist the instinctual surge of chemicals that statement sent flowing through my body, urging me to shift, to take on the form that would best allow me to decimate my enemies.

  I fought down the desire to change into any of the serpent forms I had available to me. “That one comment was enough to send you running to me?”

  Another of those communicative glances passed between them. Shadow spoke this time. “We were headed this way, anyway, planning to meet with the rest of Jeremiah’s people. The wolf’s words simply refined our direction.”

  My counselor’s façade was beginning to wear thin by this point. But I had faced down more than one patient in the throes of a full-on psychotic break—not to mention a homicidal maniac determined to use me for my breeding qualities, only a few months before. Whatever was going on here, I was sure I could handle it.

  Just as soon as I got hold of even a single thread to tug on until I unraveled all the pieces.

  “And why would his comments particularly direct you toward me—beyond the obvious fact, of course, that I am the only lamia?”

  At this, Shadow stood up straight, like a soldier standing at attention. “We are the same, you and I,” she said.

  “Oh?” I forced myself to do nothing more than tilt my head in mild interest.

  As I expected, Shadow began enumerating our similarities, answering the question. After all, in the end, people were the same everywhere—shifters and Hunters and humans and all.

  “We are both rare among our society. Though the Scyld have never been assumed extinct—”

  “The Shield?” I interrupted her.

  With a tiny shake of her head, she spelled it for me. “It’s an ancient term for the order of my family. It is, of course, the same word—merely a different language. We seek to protect our people, as you do yours. And now, it seems, we face the same foe.”

  I stretched one hand across my forehead, using my fingers to rub my eyes. “Okay. You should be safe here for now. I will bring in the Council members who are on call tonight and see what we can figure out for you.”

  I had barely picked up the telephone receiver and held it to my ear—I haven’t even had time to begin dialing—when Shadow’s hand crashed down to hang it up. My startled gaze flew to her face.

  “Please don’t,” she said, her quiet tones and direct gaze doing more to convince me than loud words might ever do.

  I set the phone receiver back in the cradle gently, then folded my arms over my chest. “What would you have me do instead?” I asked quietly.

  “We debated our actions before we arrived,” Jeremiah said, moving up to take his place in the conversation. “That you were not only here but also alone seems especially fortuitous. We would like to request asylum from you.”

  I shook my head helplessly and ran a hand through my hair, pausing at the crown of my head to grasp the strands in my fingers and squeeze—as if pulling my hair might somehow alleviate what looked like it was about to become
a huge headache. “I don’t know all the forms but requesting asylum from one of the Council branches is a fairly lengthy process.”

  “We are not seeking asylum from the Council,” Shadow clarified. “We’re seeking asylum with you.”

  A hundred gibbering complaints sprang up in my mind. I had a tiny apartment, I was too busy to take care of guests, I couldn’t remember the last time my bathroom had been cleaned, and the list went on and on.

  But in the back of my mind, that cold, calm, logical place—the snake part of my brain that I avoid whenever possible—had begun spitting out counterarguments, ways in which having the two in that apartment might somehow end up being beneficial to all of us.

  Ultimately, I was too tired to come up with any other ideas.

  “I’ll see what I can arrange,” I said.

  A final, quiet glance passed between them before Jeremiah spoke. “And please, do not tell my people we have returned.”

  “In fact,” Shadow said, “please don’t tell anyone we came to you.”

  Her comment gave me pause. I’d worked with enough crime victims to be wary of bringing strangers alone into my home.

  I pulled a single breath of the air in the room into my mouth. Acrid fear—a lot of fear—rolled across my tongue, underscored by the tiniest hint of hope. But no deception flavored their words.

  As a lie detector, it was far from perfect. But through years of working as a counselor, I had learned to trust it, combined with my instincts about people.

  These two might not be telling me everything yet, but they weren’t lying, either.

  Despite my conviction that they were being honest, their need for secrecy was a desire I’d want to examine in more detail later. Why wouldn’t they want the Council to know where they were?

  “You really don’t want anyone else to know where you are?”

  They both nodded, never taking their gazes from my face.

  Blowing out a breath, I shook my head. “Fine. I have a sofa-bed. You two are welcome to it tonight. We’ll sort out more tomorrow.”

  As if on cue, they each blew out a sigh of relief—and on that, I tasted nothing but honesty.

  Great. A hyena-shifter and his Hunter girlfriend—whatever that meant—were coming home with me. Secretly.

  In the meantime, I had another hour left in my four-hour shift. I hesitated for a few seconds, then gave the couple directions and a key to my apartment. It’s not like I had anything all that valuable in there, anyway. All my client records were at the CAP-C, my laptop was in my car, and other than a years-old television and a few electronics, anything else worth anything—which pretty much came down to a couple of nice pieces of jewelry my mother had given me when I graduated from college—was out at my parents’ ranch in the safe.

  No. The only damage these two might be able to do would be to me, and I didn’t think that was going to be an issue.

  Still, I found myself watching them leave my office with more trepidation than the situation truly required.

  This was shaping up to be one hell of an evening.

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. Nine-thirty. I’d get to go home in half an hour.

  Maybe I could get a little extra sleep tomorrow morning.

  Once I was sure Jeremiah and Shadow were settled, I’d double-check to make sure my first CAP-C appointment wasn’t until mid-morning, and I’d set my alarm for later than usual.

  Then my cell phone rang. It was Kelly, one of the nurses in the hospital NICU. “Lindi, has anyone called you to let you know that Serena’s doctor wants you to come in tomorrow morning to talk to him about some possible new care ideas?”

  So much for sleeping in.

  Serena had been in snake form for over a week now, and I knew the doctors were concerned about getting her to shift back into her human baby form.

  Something I hadn’t actually considered before was the issue of going out in public with these infants. Children have no idea of when it was appropriate to shift and when it wasn’t, so even going to the grocery store with them would be an issue.

  I needed to talk to some other shifter parents to figure out how they dealt with issues like that.

  And I was right back to worrying incessantly about how I would manage to take care of all of these children and still arrange to have something of a life.

  WHEN I GOT TO THE HOSPITAL the next morning, Serena’s doctor was already waiting for me. I’d also called Kade to see if he wanted to meet me for coffee after my meeting, but he hadn’t answered his phone—I was guessing there was probably some kind of emergency. I hoped it was a human medical emergency, and not a shifter one.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Dr. Jimson said. “I simply wanted to consult with you about a possible change.”

  A change? My anxiety ratcheted higher.

  “Thanks for calling me in,” I said, clinging to the usual social niceties in order to ground myself. “What’s the issue?”

  “It’s really nothing terribly serious,” Jimson said. “I had an idea about a way to coax Serena into shifting.”

  And you couldn’t find some way to discuss it with me over the phone? I managed to keep the thought to myself.

  “Tell me about it,” I said. I crossed my legs and placed my hands folded over my knees. We sat in his office, a tiny room right off the NICU. It was the same place I had met with all of Serena’s doctors, come to think of it, so probably it wasn’t specifically Jimson’s office—but I had grown to associate it with him since he had taken over Serena’s care.

  “Now let me clarify,” he said. “I don’t necessarily know that this is going to work. It’s nothing we’ve tried before and is therefore by no means guaranteed. Even for a shifter child, Serena arrived very early. And we don’t know exactly what effect the prenatal trauma she experienced when her mother was beaten might have on her development.”

  I nodded and circled my hand in the air, allowing a little of my impatience to show. We had had this conversation several times before. I was ready to get to the new stuff.

  Admittedly, I might’ve also been a little cranky about having to come in early when I had spent part of the night listening for the sounds of my new house guests.

  They might’ve been part of my anxiety, as well.

  “Well, as you know, in her juvenile serpent form, Serena is ready to go home. The problem is that if she shifts back to her human form, she’ll still be relatively underdeveloped. Probably.” He tapped his forefinger on the desk in front of him and looked thoughtful. “At least, that’s our guess. We don’t have much baseline information about lamia development. Most of what we know is through hearsay.” He cut his eyes at me, squinting. “And I understand that you don’t have much to add to that?”

  “No. By the time my foster family found me, I was probably about two years old, at least in terms of development as a human.”

  Dr. Jimson nodded. “We do know that Serena shifted for the first time into her serpent form when she observed you in the NICU during your...” He paused, clearly trying to come up with a word to cover what had happened in the unit.

  “During my battle with the wolves and the bear,” I supplied.

  “Yes, that.”

  “So what does this have to do with your ideas about how to get her to shift again?”

  “We assume that since she shifted into a serpent form that mimicked the one you took during the battle, she has in some way imprinted on you. We want to encourage that.”

  “I come up here every day,” I interjected. “I want to spend as much time with her as possible.”

  “Of course,” Jimson replied hurriedly. “No one is doubting your dedication to making sure that she does well. Far from it. In fact, what we are considering is the possibility of sending her home with you for some extended time.”

  My heart leaped into my throat at the thought. I mean, I had planned to bring Serena home with me—but that home was supposed to be the group home that she would eventually live in with all of the ot
her lamia shifter babies. Originally, the plan had been for me to work as a counselor there, and spend some evenings and weekends as one of several caretakers in residence. In rotation.

  What I had come up with the week before, exhausted from fighting for these babies’ lives, was something much more like what I had grown up with. My parents were loving, kind humans who had provided a stable home and had taught me how to draw on the human side of my nature. My father had always insisted that being a shapeshifter did not negate my place in the human world. His training, combined with my mother’s love and devotion, had taught me how to function as the only shifter, as far as I knew, in the entire world. And he’d taught me how to maintain my connection to other people, too.

  It was why I had become a counselor.

  Now, I wanted to share that kind of upbringing with these other lamia children—babies who, for all intents and purposes, were orphans—their father a cold-hearted killer, and their mothers the victims of a rapist determined to save his own race.

  Worse, the rest of the shifter community viewed them with suspicion, as they were the new representatives of an old race that had fought to subjugate all other shifters.

  I had been reconsidering my plans to take them on as full-time children of my own—I’d been going back and forth over and over between our original plan to keep them in a more typical group home foster setting and taking them on as if they were all my own children.

  This plan of Dr. Jimson’s threw that quandary into high relief.

  I glanced up from where I had been staring down at my hands as I twisted my fingers around one another and found the shifter pediatrician watching me interestedly.

  “I know this was not in your original plans,” he began.