by W. J. May
It wasn’t asked as a question, but one was there nonetheless.
Rae froze very still, considering it for a moment, then decided to lay yet another card upon the table. “Do you know my tatù?”
Her father blinked and it took a moment before he answered. “It’s like mine, isn’t it?” There was pride in his voice. “Kraigan, too.”
“And yours was not like your father’s, was it?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. Both my parents were inked.”
“I know,” Rae said quietly.
More cards were on the table. Now where did they go?
Simon cleared his throat. “Tell me about your ink.”
She almost wanted to stand up and turn around to show him. Ask him if he recognized it. She held back, though. He, of anyone, would understand her ability and the curse that came along with it. He was sorry he’d let his darkness into her life. That meant something. Maybe together they could figure things out. Learn to control it better. Show the world that a hybrid wasn’t dangerous. Maybe…
This moment should feel epic. Two massive powers in one room, and both completely powerless. “Half my tatù is like yours. I can mimic any ability I come into direct, tactile contact with.” She saw her father nod and try to lean forward in his seat, clearly interested but unable to move because of the chains.
“So you keep the abilities? Never lose them when you touch someone else?”
She shook her head.
“Fantastic!”
“Well, I’m not indestructible. Kraigan can take my abilities away.”
“What?” Simon blinked in surprise.
“Kraigan’s ability is like ours. He can mimic as well. Except where I can copy and retain, and you can mimic one ability, he steals them. If he touches someone, he takes their ink until he touches another person’s.”
“Really?”
Rae could see her father’s mind turning. He probably would have loved to have stuck around to see these talents in action. A strange thought crossed her mind. Would he be able to mimic her ability or Kraigan’s?
“What tatù is Kraigan using now?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you know what ink he’s using?”
“Why?”
He tried to shrug. “I’m just curious.” He smiled. “And proud.”
“He’s… He’s got Cromfield’s tatù.”
His smile faded. “Wh-What?”
“Well, one of them. Cromfield was a hybrid as well.” She rushed her words, sure her father already knew. “Kraigan’s got the immortal tatù. I had it. I didn’t want it…” Her voice grew quiet as it trailed off. He didn’t need to hear what they had gone through. If Simon Kerrigan was about to be judged and charged, he deserved to know his kids would manage alright. “We’re okay, Dad. Don’t worry about us. We’re Kerrigans.” She remembered why she’d come and shifted in her seat. “I have your tatù, but unlike yours I can retain those abilities for an unlimited amount of time. Call each one up at will. Any of them.”
Simon was on the edge of this chair, hanging onto every word. “Yes?”
“I’m not sure if you ever knew him,” Rae continued, “but a man named Andrew Carter was actually president before me.” She didn’t miss the way Simon startled at the name. “His ability is rather a unique one. It gives you instant access to a person’s every thought. Allows you to travel down into their very consciousness and view it as an ongoing reality. Kind of like stepping inside a movie.”
A rather odd expression shadowed across Simon’s face, and he nodded stiffly. “I’m aware.”
Rae hesitated curiously, then pushed forward. “They want me to use this ability to delve into your thoughts. To tell them exactly what I see. For all I know, they want me to take a representative with me like I did with Kraigan, to keep me at my word.”
She didn’t end with an actual question. But there was one implied.
“And you want to know what it is that you’re going to see.” Simon lifted his head and looked her square in the eye. “Rae, what exactly have you heard?”
A full-body tremble shook her from head to toe, and she pushed to her feet. She began pacing back and forth inside the tiny cell. “You know what I’ve heard,” she answered quietly. “I just don’t know… I don’t know how much of it is actually true. I don’t know what exactly I’m going to walk in on—”
“Everything.”
The pacing stopped. So did Rae’s breathing.
She turned to look at him in what felt like slow motion, her mind reeling back in horror.
He stared back at her, calm and all chained up.
“Everything?”
It couldn’t be. Not now that she’d met him. Not now that he’d smiled at her, and made ginger tea for her friend, and teased her about vocal activation codes.
Not now that he was a real person, not just a fading memory. A person who’d pulled her out of an explosion. Shielded her mother from the same blast.
Not now that he was her father. Come back from the dead. Come into her life. A man who was looking at her now.
That person…that person could not have done all those things. She refused to believe it.
“Everything you’ve heard is true.”
Or maybe she could.
That was where the conversation ended. As abruptly as it had begun. They stared at each other for an indeterminable amount of time, until a sudden shouting echoed in the warehouse.
There was a crackling over the loud speaker, as the PC guard’s voice filtered through.
“President Kerrigan? There’s a…we’re having a bit of a situation out here.”
Rae looked around for a button to press to talk back, but found none. Fortunately, the man wasn’t finished.
“It seems that you were followed here. We’re having a hard time restraining the press…”
She found the button at the last second and clicked it down. “I’m on my way. Hold tight.” She turned to leave without making eye contact. Without turning back around. But at the last second, something stopped her in her tracks.
One final question she needed the answer to.
“The day that you were arrested, right before the explosion…” She trailed off, feeling almost afraid to go on. “I’ve been going over and over it in my head, every new person I came into contact with. Every tatù I might have absorbed. But there’s nothing. There’s no one who could possibly explain it…except you.”
“Explain it?” Simon repeated, looking confused. “Explain what?”
Rae stared him right in the eyes, searching for the truth. “Do you have a tatù you never told anyone about?”
For a moment, they both froze. Living and dying with each passing second. Then, before Simon could open his mouth to answer, there was a frantic pounding on the door.
“Madam President,” the voice was manic, “it’s turning into a full-fledged riot out here!”
A riot, huh? Waiting for another headline? Something I’m perfectly willing to avoid…
“Madam President, I’m going to open the door. Is that alright?”
With a quiet sigh, Rae glanced back at her father.
“I’ve got to go.” She slipped her sweater off and tossed it on the floor. “I’ll see you in court, I guess. If not sooner.” The shoes followed the sweater.
“Please come by anytime.” Simon tilted his head curiously as she removed her belt and dropped it as well. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me…”
They shared another long look. Both wishing things were different. Both knowing they could never be.
Then Rae shifted into a wolf.
The second the door opened she bolted through, knocking down the guard who had come to retrieve her. There was a flash of black fur and then she was through the crowd, racing so low to the ground that no one even saw her. They were all too busy pointing their cameras at the door to bother to look down and see what had barreled past their legs.
A minute later, she was f
ree.
Sprinting through the English countryside. The wind in her fur, the crowd at her back.
Her eyes fixed on the horizon.
Chapter 8
The first-time Rae met Andy, there’d been a glitch in the sprinkler system at school. Wide, powerful arcs of water were shooting across the lawn, preventing everyone from getting to class unless they wanted to do so dripping wet. She and Molly had been hovering on a nearby sidewalk, trying to gauge the distance between themselves and the science building, when Andy flew past.
She still remembered the look on his face, perfectly. The unbridled joy. The boundless energy. The wild, feral bursts of laughter that tore from his mouth as he sprinted and somersaulted across the grass, bowing to the raucous applause of the incredulous crowd.
Later that day, when she’d found out his ability was to shift into a wolf, that reaction made a bit more sense. And now?
Now she understood it perfectly.
The pounding of earth beneath her velvet paws. The feeling of the icy winter wind as it rippled through her silky fur. The sharp focus with which her new eyes saw the world, taking in exquisite details she’d never thought to look for before. Things so dulled and normalized to the human eye, they no longer even registered.
The sparkle of morning dew on each individual blade of grass. The glint of iridescent feathers on the wings of a passing bird. The ethereal glow of sunlight dripping off the trees.
So. Freakin’. Beautiful.
She had intended to shift back. Intended to circle around to her car and slip inside the second that she was past the crowd of reporters. She had even decided what clothes she was going to conjure the second she drove away, something easy to slip over her head, like a dress.
But that was before. She was a wolf now. And a wolf she would stay.
With a high-pitched yelp of freedom, she pushed herself forward with a fresh burst of speed—stretching out all four of her legs as fast as they would go.
Too fast! Waaaay too fast!
For a second the ground tumbled out from under her, sending her spinning and somersaulting through the air. She was a tangle of legs, and fur, and panting gasps of frigid winter air. But as fast as she’d lost her balance she was on her feet again, streaking towards the horizon with the delight of someone who had been cooped up inside for far too long.
That’s right, world. Try and catch me now.
Faster and faster she pressed on. Feeling the weight of her human life suspend temporarily above her, allowing her to breathe freely for the first time since she’d kicked down the door to that last cell.
Suddenly exempt from the constraints of the traffic laws, she ran in an almost straight line back to Kent. Leaping over fences. Sprinting across roads. She even went so far as to wink at a young girl strapped into a safety seat in the back of her father’s car.
Yes, being a wolf definitely had its perks.
The feeling was utterly euphoric. A freedom Rae hadn’t felt since the first time she’d tried Rob’s eagle power and taken to the skies. Of all the tatùs in all the random combinations she’d ever tried, there was really nothing like it. Shifting reigned supreme.
With a burst of canine laughter, she tilted back her head and howled at the sun. The fur on the back of her neck stood up in sheer delight. The entire world was like a gigantic playground. Why the hell did Andy ever shift back? The scenery blurred past, and she was sure she’d already covered half the ground it would take to get back to the mansion in Kent.
Sure enough, only about twenty minutes later she saw the top of the long driveway. It was here that she finally slowed, coming to a contemplative pause as she tried to determine what she might say.
She hadn’t been expecting Simon’s confession to come so quickly. Or to hurt so much.
It was almost as if he was committing those sins all over again—just through the act of saying them out loud. For the first time since seeing him in person, she was forced to imagine him not as he was now but as he had appeared to so many other people, all those years ago.
As a brutal man. A cruel man. One who had sacrificed the lives of countless others simply to satisfy his own warped curiosity. One who had murdered and tortured and butchered for his own greed, agenda, and gain.
It was a nightmare all by itself. No two ways of seeing it. But the problem she was having now, was that she simply couldn’t picture it.
Not that she couldn’t remember him cruel. Life with Simon Kerrigan had never been easy. Every childhood memory she had of the man was soaked in screaming temper tantrums and her own fear. But to imagine him actually hurting someone? Lifting his hand in violence? Ending a life?
It completely eluded her.
Well, it won’t elude me for long. I’m about to see it for myself. Get firsthand experience of every horror in the book. I doubt I’ll be forget that any time soon.
It was that sense of dread that propelled her forward, towards the house. Her impromptu escape-from-the-press/hour-of-careless-freedom had come to an end, and it was time to put the fur away and become a person again. Accept the responsibility. Shoulder the burden once more.
If only it was so easy.
She came to a stop behind a clump of trees. One that had limited window access to the house in case anyone happened to be watching. With a burst of strength she stood up on her hind legs, already imagining the outfit she would be momentarily conjuring. Then she closed her eyes and let her body morph into the change.
Except… nothing happened.
At first, she simply thought it was a mistake. She forgot about the conjuring, closed her eyes, and tried again, really focusing this time to make it happen.
You’re a human, not a wolf. Become a human.
Again—nothing.
Oooooooh crap.
A feeling of panic started to close in, quickening her pulse and shattering her breathing as she dropped down to the ground and tried yet again. No part of this was supposed to be hard. She had transformed before, many times, with Rob’s eagle. She knew the basic premise well enough that she should have been able to shift back now with no problem.
And yet… something wasn’t letting her.
The panic doubled, then tripled as attempt after attempt failed.
I can’t believe it, she thought hysterically. Can’t believe it! After everything that’s happened, all the crap we’ve gone through… and I’m going to spend the rest of my life as a freaking dog!
In a way, it was chillingly poetic. At least she wouldn’t be a Kerrigan anymore.
A frantic little bark escaped her lips, and the next thing she knew she was running once more. Leaving her house in the dust and sprinting towards the distant cityscape like the ground behind her was on fire.
I can’t go inside like this! What if they don’t recognize me?! What if they try to put me on a leash? Or worse, what if Molly starts freaking out about fleas and carts me off to the humane society?!
An organization Rae suddenly worried wasn’t very humane at all.
No. I just need to get somewhere isolated. Somewhere no one will think to look. A place where, no matter how hard people try to reach me, I can barricade myself inside until this mess is sorted.
All at once, the solution hit her.
Fortunately, a good friend of hers had recently had the exact same idea, only for wildly different reasons. The premise was sound. The plan was set. And she knew exactly where to go…
* * *
It was hard enough to navigate the downtown bustle of London without having to do it on all fours. Three times, Rae got her nose slammed by an opening cab door. Twice, she had to freeze and pretend to be a statue so people wouldn’t call the police. On one of those times, she had to endure an excited toddler sticking his slimy fingers in her fur.
Needless to say, by the time she got to Gabriel’s apartment she had witnessed far more of the literal underbelly of the city than she’d ever wanted to know.
His flat was up on the second story, but fortu
nately for Rae the complex was equipped stairs as well as an elevator. She waited until the guy manning the desk had his back turned before streaking across the checkered tile, her claws clicking and scrambling away.
Of course, from there it was a series of awkward bounds as she tried to navigate the curving stairway, followed by a quick dash to his door. Tall, grey, and looking exactly as she remembered it from the last time she was there. The night that Devon had broken up with her for kissing another man, and she felt like her entire world was falling apart.
Truth be told, she wasn’t sure which of the two visits would be the worst.
Okay, no problem, she tried to steady herself. You made it here. That was the hard part. Now all you have to do is conjure the key to let yourself in, and…
She trailed off as the obvious problem hit home.
How was she going to conjure the key, when she was currently a dog?
A wave of mindless panic rushed through her, and she cocked her head to the side with a high-pitched whine. Her tail shot back and forth across the floor as she stared up at the door, realizing for the first time how wonderful it was to have been born with thumbs.
Why does Gabriel lock his door to begin with? With his powers? So untrusting…
She sat there a few more seconds, wallowing in canine self-pity. Her mind raced as she tried to come up with a plan, but the longer she stayed in wolf form the harder it was to think like a human. It didn’t help that one of Gabriel’s neighbors was cooking steak just one flat over, and the smell of it was making her mouth water with delight.
Think, Rae! Think!
… about steak?
NO! About getting the hell out of here! Unless you want to spend the rest of your life staring at everyone’s knees, I suggest you—
But at that moment, fate took the decision out of her hands. The elevator at the end of the hall dinged loudly, and in what looked like slow motion the doors began to slide open.
It was now or never. Doors were replaceable. Kibble be damned.
With a burst of feral strength, she leapt straight at the center of the door, bursting through with a mighty cry. Huge planks of wood shot into the air as she touched down on the floor, shaking out her ebony fur and pulling herself up to her full wolfish height with an unmistakable air of pride.