Elise nods.
Adahy switches to Iroquois, “We are safe—but not happy. It is time to leave this place. The Men of the Tree offer sanctuary but their ways are not ours. I belong with the tribe, Chasing Hawk—that is the way of my people.”
Elise palms his face, her small hand barely reaching his cheekbone. “And my way as well—with you.” Her fingers feather along his face. “It is dangerous.” She does not say this as a reminder, for Adahy is well-aware. Elise restates her concern more as a regurgitation of facts. It has been simple here within the Tree. What they discuss for the future will take that away.
“Jim will survive or not. It will not depend on our assistance or presence,” Adahy continues in his native tongue.
Elise knows he is right. But it pains her to leave the clan. Adahy infuses her with a subtle confidence. She feels as though she can try for anything—reach for the stars with him by her side. However, fear has ruled her for so long that its tenacious grasp is reluctant to release her. She feels the presence of her past like fingerprints on her brain.
“What of Philip and Calia?”
Adahy's beat of silence is both answer and relief. “They come,” he resolutely replies in swift English.
“And if they do not wish to leave?”
Adahy's lips curl, his eyebrow rising slightly. “We go.”
Elise struggles with the loss of Jim. Who was so instrumental in seeing them through the journey to the sea, protecting them when it was clearly not in his best interests, and sacrificing everything to save beings who were not even the same species.
Adahy is right. Jim would want her to go, find happiness and safety far away from the threat of the Fragment. Even Jim had been having trouble reconciling staying within the Tree Clan.
If Jim could change back to human—he would.
Now he has been taken by the new Fragment and they do not know it is him—cannot know it.
Elise startles.
“What?” Adahy asks, misinterpreting her realization for trepidation, performing a quick scan of their small tree dwelling.
“They cannot know that Jim is Jim?”
Adahy searches her eyes, his silence belying the fine wheels of his mind turning over her statement.
“Jim is Stone Giant.”
Elise slowly nods.
Adahy's sudden grin is startling in his normally stern face.
“Fragment get surprise.”
Elise thinks upon his statement. Eventually, her smile matches his own.
“You are right, Adahy. They think they are taking a tree man, yet what will really prevail upon them is—”
“Jim.” Adahy puts his hand above his heart, in the exact way he had illustrated to Jim earlier.
Jim is Jim.
And right now, the new Fragment are none the wiser.
“He will be fine,” Elise announces.
Adahy gives a short nod. “Time to find Philip and Calia.”
His hand slides to her wrist, squeezing once before he laces his fingers through hers.
Elise could be making the wrong decision to leave a protected environment. She places her free hand on her belly.
It is not the environment for her.
They hop the rail at the same time, Adahy's powerful arms swinging them the short distance to the treehouse of Philip and Calia.
Chapter 22
Jim
Jim jogs through the trees, the shredded flesh of his ankles burning with the healing power of being an ape guy.
He throws himself through the densest part of some bushes and streaks into the daylight.
The sun strikes him like a brand of fire.
Like he laid out in the sun and just forgot—you wake up five hours later and you're cooked like an egg on pavement. Yeah, that's what this is like.
Jim chooses to ignore the getting-your-goose-cooked sensation.
Hand held above his brow, he squints—sighting Adira immediately. Unharmed.
Then Simon.
They smile at Jim. The wrongness of their expressions takes about three seconds for Jim to reconcile.
Fuck. It's a set up.
I knew I didn't like her for a reason.
“Told ya,” she says.
Nothing wrong with Jim's hearing. Another great perk of apedom.
Simon nods. “You were right. Now let's get a bead on that Pathway, and get the fuck out of here.”
“Adira?”
She rolls her eyes at his words, her gaze moving with precision to his location.
Jim raises his hand, getting a load of the tapered fingers, oversized knuckles, light hair covering most of his upper hand.
Still a monkey.
Hmmm.
Simon glares at him, Jim returns the expression.
No love lost there.
“Here's the thing, Doctor—we need you—dead or alive, to return. You had the gizmo to get these guys back to earth, our earth.”
Adira stops about five meters away from Jim, giving him an imploring look.
Jim notices his skin trying to smolder, glancing first at Adira, then to Simon. Jim's keen new sense of smell also detects humans approaching.
Lots.
“I'm not going to stick around to be tranq'd again. Why didn't you just ask?”
Adira smirks. “Oh—like you'd just volunteer to get me back to earth?”
Jim studies her while his skin continues to simmer at a low broil. “You're a Dimensional? I could have helped. I don't know if the disc is still present to navigate or not—not now.” Jim sweeps an arm down his body. “But he,” Jim stabs a finger in Simon's direction, “shot me, and left me for dead. I wouldn't help that douche on a bet.” Jim snorts, and his facial structure forces the sound into a growled chuff. Cool.
“Knew it.” Simon raises his ceramic gun, and points it at Jim's chest.
“Wait!” Adira yells.
Jim's gaze scans the options.
Can his bullet move faster than me?
The Fragment he scented earlier have begun to leak onto the field, hemming Jim in from all sides. He shifts his weight, flicking a glance at his bare feet. They're burnt. So he can tolerate the sun—but not forever.
His eyes move to the barrel of the gun.
Obviously Adira was only holing up with the tree guys until some Frag came along.
What a bitch. Capturing him only to lure him in?
Simon lifts the barrel and Jim flinches, uncertainty clawing at his insides. Sweat drips down his face, the hair covering his body soaking it up.
“Why should I wait—you said once we were in the Pathway, his pulse disc would give you the direction.” Simon gestures with the gun.
The same gun he shot me with.
A simple bit of exclusionary dialog would have helped. Jim could've told Simon, as lead, that Jim was the only one with the programming for the return trip. If he even has the disc. Jim figures Simon's not big on listening. Especially to the part where he's not sure about the disc even being a part of him anymore. Can't they just track the signal again? If it remained behind in the woods, it was purged when he was turned by Ulric.
Instead, Simon thought he'd grab all the paranormals of this world—leaving Jim here to die.
Stellar dude.
Until plans changed because Ulric got handy and turned Jim into an ape guy. With fangs. It was really kind of perfect in the poetic justice way.
But it'd be a whole lot better if the Fragment weren't closing in.
Adira asks with slow precision, “Won't you get something extra if he comes back all changed?”
Oh boy.
Bargaining chip because I'm a gorilla guy now. Perfect.
Simon's greed is unmistakable as it oozes out of his pores. “Yeah,” he offers in short answer, he lifts the barrel of he gun up a notch, as though it's nodding its agreement. “Tons more. The old HC will love his ass.”
Jim takes a stab in the dark, “Listen, genetically, the extraction process might not work. Also—I'm not enti
rely sure about my travel within the Pathway in this form.”
“Aren't you like—vampire or something? Can't you just—” Simon chuckles, and Jim has the insane urge to rip out the bottom of his face (maybe not a fantasy) “—change back, like a werewolf or something?” Another guffaw bursts forth.
Or something? “It's gorilla, you stupid man,” Jim seethes at him. “And what you don't understand, and our dearly departed Hank was a dim bulb about as well, is I am a doctor of Genetics, though that small fact escapes you. You of the double-digit IQ. Which sadly, I can't fix.”
Simon's mouth hangs agape.
Jim feels so much better for expounding until Simon levels the pistol at Jim's chest again. “Bet my bullet will equalize all that brain matter you're bragginʼ about. Can't think too well with it all over the ground.”
He grunts in satisfaction at his perceived wisdom.
Jim springs to the left at the twitch of Simon's thumb.
Fisting the ground as he lands, he punches forward, giving it everything he has.
As it turns out, he has quite a bit.
He reaches Simon in another leaping push, batting the gun away like a child's toy. Simon shrieks, turning to escape Jim.
Jim growls in fierce primal joy, landing on the fleeing man's back, crushing him as he does. Jim doesn't stand and beat his chest like his cousin the gorilla, but the restraint to not do so is ugly.
He raises his leg up high, bringing his foot down hard on Simon's skull.
Splat.
Jim roars. The noise startles the birds from the open fields that bleed into the stand of pine trees, their small bodies fleeing fear on wings.
Simon's brains and shards of skull pierce the earth beneath Jim's feet, squishing between his toes.
It feels good to be a gorilla.
“Jim?”
Jim whirls, stepping off the dead body of Simon.
It's Adira. But not.
She's all apey.
Jim pauses, a sort of a brain stagger hitting him between the eyes.
Fangs gleam between her full lips.
“Get him,” she says with quiet intensity.
Get me? Uh—no. Jim backs away from the encroaching Fragment.
Their forms waver, like a mirage in the high desert. Their criminal flesh slides off their bodies, brow ridges develop, taking hold over eyes that round. Their arms lengthen—shoulders that broaden and grow more powerful. They change into creatures like Jim.
Jim's heart begins to pound. They're Men of the Tree.
However, they don't remind Jim of Ulric and his people at all. They're like the Fragment—but with the gifts of being a gorilla with fangs.
Jim hisses and they hiss back.
They move forward en masse, a wave of menace. Long arms swoop in to hold him. Jim breaks whatever limbs move within reach. Howls reverberate his eardrums. He headbutts—chopping with hands more dexterous, and capable than the ones he learned martial arts with.
One thing Jim discovers when he kills the first ten?
He's Alpha.
And Adira didn't know it.
Jim dumps the last of them at his feet and races after her—she's more nimble than he thought possible.
He tackles her as they reach the border of the woods.
She screams high and tight inside her throat, throwing up her arms to fend off his abuse of her face.
If it were to come.
Jim looks at her with all the disgust she deserves for her part in the deception. “I'm not some woman beater.”
Her arms slowly fall, her lip trembling. “Don't kill me,” she whispers.
Jim's hand easily encircles her wrists, capturing them and pulling them above her head. His anger's a red veil covering his vision as effectively as sunglasses on a bright day.
“I want to—God do I,” Jim whispers, soaked in lust by her proximity.
But his instincts begin to fire, there's something wrong here. Off.
Don't know what it is.
Jim's never hurt a woman in his life. Never had it occur to him as an option. Even though he's sure that Adira is an underhanded little.... Jim takes her in beneath him, chest heaving, fragile wrists constrained by his hands. A feminine version of what Jim is.
I can't. Hurt. Her.
There's like a directive in place to protect his own kind.
Check that: Females of his own kind.
Jim obviously had no problem ripping out the throats of the other ape dudes.
It'd been kind of fun, he thinks wistfully.
“Why?” Jim asks, his grip tightening shy of bruising. Why shouldn't I kill you? Convince me.
“They—they made me,” she answers a little breathlessly. “They made me—turn them,” she admits in a voice sick with regret.
His nostrils flare. Truth.
Shock almost makes Jim let her go. He hangs on through sheer will alone. “Who—” Jim almost shakes her. Doesn't.
A fat tear the size of a beetle crawls down her face. “The Fragment. They found me, told me they'd let me go if I'd turn them into Men of the Tree.”
Jim can tell by her expression she sees horror in his. “But they're not! They're like fucking imitations. They have none of the culture, true genetics—” Jim pauses in his rant, sick realization filling him up like a cup running over.
She's a carrier.
And the Fragment used her to become what I am.
Chapter 23
Ulric
Ulric and Tab pace each other easily. Their half-forms scenting Jim and Adira in a clear trail just ahead of their position.
“I detect a strange undersmell,” Tab comments, trotting in the loping gait of their kind.
Ulric's head swivels in Tab's direction, noting the powerful arms punching the ground and hurling him forward in a swinging charge—as Ulric performs the same rhythm in mirror image.
When the forest approaches at their left, Tab springs into the nearest tree, bark shavings floating into Ulric's upturned face like rain smelling of pine.
He shoots to the left, scrabbling up the tree like a muscled spider and finding the first vine of many that are in succession.
Ulric's powerful arms grab the first, a blur to his left signals Tab's tandem movements beside him. Reflections of each other, they make rapid progress.
“What do you scent?” Ulric asks, instantly defensive for his lack of keen smell. He'd always found it interesting that sometimes Alphas did not possess superior tracking abilities. It seemed to be a deficit of nature's lack of provision. However, Alphas possess other attributes.
In abundance.
“I smell an artificial fragrance.” Tab swings hard, bringing his legs up ahead of him and tossing himself toward the next tree.
Ulric grins at Tab's free flight. In his enthusiastic abandon, he barely hits the next vine, narrowly missing the trunk.
Ulric smoothly sails the vines, slapping one backward, as his palm strikes the next and asks, “Like that of the gas-o-line?”
Tab's face turns toward him, his mouth an O of surprise.
Ulric yells, “Tree!” Tab's eyes widen as his torso glances off a knot, spinning him as he continues to fly between the trees without direction.
Ulric dives toward him, going low. He pushes a spinning Tab from behind, and through a narrow alcove of tree branches.
Ulric drops to avoid a trunk and grabs another vine, swinging his body high and catching a trailing group of vines and catching up to Tab.
“Thank you, Alpha,” Tab says, a rueful grin affixed on his embarrassed face.
“Do not look at me, concentrate on grappling,” Ulric says as though speaking to a youngling.
Tab scowls at the reprimand but manages to answer the question about the gas-o-line, “No—not similar to the fire starter the Band used against your clan. But something not indigenous to here—not of nature.”
Ulric hits a final vine as the woods thin and releases the meaty feel of twined vegetation, landing softly, the undergrowth of th
e forest springy beneath his feet.
Tab falls beside him, inhaling deeply of the fragrant night air. “Whatever clings to Jim is not natural.”
Ulric does not like hearing that. Obviously, the Fragment are involved in the first incident of strife that has ever occurred at the hot spring with Ulric's clan. The Keeper of Words has recorded each Fragment insurgence, and their history is free of the nomadic's criminal transgression in that place. Until now.
Natasha and Elise were unharmed—though they admitted they hid while Adira and Jim were taken.
What had Elise told him? That Jim had some kind of weapon used against him, that he had staggered and fallen unconscious. She could not be sure enough to identify it more precisely.
“There might be more to just rescuing Jim and Adira.” Ulric is thoughtful, hesitating beside the border of the trees. The night has helped them by shrouding the sun so they may move freely.
Ulric will shadow skip and manage. But Tab cannot. And if they were to have a chance against any Fragment, the moon at their back assured more success, than its cousin the sun.
“We have to assume that.”
Neither comment on the possibility that Adira has been defiled, auctioned—killed. Or that Jim, with all his intellectual mobility, will not be able to escape the intent of the Fragment—a group who is evil for its own sake.
Tab scents deeply then whips his head to Ulric. “I smell males of the tree.”
Ulric is instantly on guard. He knows of no clans in this travel path. His and Tab's clans are the sole clans of their region. The Men of the Tree are too few in number to not be aware of one another.
Tab's face leans forward, his nose peeking out into the night like a lone flag.
His broad nostrils flare once. Then again. His brow drops, his nose wrinkling in distaste.
“They do not smell right.”
Ulric has never wished for a better sense of smell than he does at that moment. His eyesight is keen, and he uses that altered sense now, gaze boring deeply into shadows which no longer appear benign.
He catches movement in the periphery.
It is Jim.
And Adira.
Tab exclaims softly, “She is of the Tree.”
Ulric shakes his head stubbornly. “No. It cannot be Adira—it was the first thing we attempted. To change her through the vein.”
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