Death be Charmed

by Epstein, Katie

  The mountains themselves were vast. With crevices and caves inhabiting the different reptile shifter clans, they stood high and proud on their landscape. The dragon shifters—and other shifters who could fly—lived higher up on the crest of the dark, rocky hills. And the snake shifters, or lizard shifters like Torroro and his family, lived down below. They liked the soil to nest in, and they liked the dampened dark.

  The base of Giant’s Pass was visible when The Crossroads Inn came into view. That would make it a great place for people to do business from the valley and Portiside City. But I wouldn’t have thought it to be a busy place. Not when the risk from the shadows and quiet terrain would be too great for some. It didn’t appear as if it was struggling though.

  As we neared, the inn slowly came into focus. It reminded me of the old traveling inns I’d seen in some Earthside movies. Low thatched roofing, criss-crossed timber, stables and a low swinging sign that creaked when the wind hit it. There were carriages and wagons parked up near the rear, and a pair of thoroughbreds nibbling at a bale of hay. Obviously there were a few patrons already inside, resting on their route to somewhere. There were no cracks in the windows or holes in the roofing. The wood was sleek with varnish and the stables were well kept. Maybe they had more travelers stay here than I thought?

  When we entered the inn, a barmaid caught our eye. She said nothing, merely summoning us forward. We followed her through a narrow corridor.

  No one had been in the bar from what I could see, but it looked like the barmaid wasn’t taking any chances. It was evident she didn’t want her patrons mixing with us.

  Oak paneled walls hung with paintings of horses were illuminated by candles set in adorned sconces along the corridor. No windows were present, but we passed several doors that I assumed led to rooms where people could board for the night. Some of the lower rooms in many of the inns I’d been in before were also let out for private meetings or luncheons of some kind. And in some of the more disreputable inns, well … let’s just say they were reserved for private parties of a different kind.

  It didn’t look like that kind of establishment here though. Everywhere was clean and shiny. No cobwebs in sight. And the wood had been kept well. It was more of a family place and was managed as such. The barmaid in front of me looked like the no-nonsense type who wouldn’t stand for anything that tarnished that image.

  We finally came to a halt outside a wooden door that would be more fitting in a cottage or barn.

  “I’m Melayna,” the woman murmured in lowered tones. “I own this place. And Nuo is a good friend of mine who is in a fragile state right now. If I think for one moment she is in danger from you two …”

  I placed a comforting hand on her arm, but it became rigid beneath my hand. Okay. So this was a woman who didn’t like to be comforted. She was someone who was ready to stand guard for her friend, who I presumed was on the other side of that door.

  “Melayna, we’re Enforcer Field Agents from the city. We’re not here to cause her any harm.”

  “It’s about her boy, isn’t it?” Melayna asked, her lips pressed together. The steeliness in her eyes paired with the lines on her face told a story. This woman had seen trouble throughout her life, and had chosen the defensive road to rise above it.

  “Yes,” I told her, “but we only want to know more about him. We don’t want to harm him.”

  Melayna nodded and put her hand on the iron doorknob. “Don’t push her too hard. I mean it.”

  “We’re only here to do our job, ma’am,” Kaleb told her. “And part of our job is to protect the innocent.”

  His voice was calm and full of understanding. It was a side of him that always seemed to surprise me when I saw it as it defied his usual carefree attitude.

  Melayna seemed to respond to it though, and she pushed the door open.

  The room was dark due to the heavy drapes drawn across the windows, blocking out the daylight. Melayna moved in and lit a few candles for us. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting.

  As the flames eradicated the darkness, I could see a small room come into focus with a table and chairs situated at its center. A brick fireplace broke up the theme of wooden walls, floors and, well, everything else situated at the back of the room. A carriage wheel had been treated and mounted on the wall above the fire, and beer kegs and empty tankards sat in the corner. A scent of ale reached my nose as we walked deeper into the space, but it smelled fresh and welcoming, rather than the stench of old ale that could often seep into the woodwork and forever stain the room with a stagnant smell. Not here though. Here the rushes on the floor were freshly laid and the place kept as clean as the rest of the inn.

  A person waited in one of the chairs around the table, their head cloaked so I couldn’t see their features. They finally emerged when the last candle was lit, and, suddenly, a female’s face came to life in front of us.

  Amber eyes with oval pupils stared back at me, wide and worried as they shone out from the green tinted skin of Nuo, Torroro’s mother.

  “I’ll leave you be,” Melayna said after giving Nuo a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. Then she was gone.

  “Thank you for meeting with us,” Kaleb said as he took the seat furthest away from her. It was up to me to take the other, but I understood why he did so. Out of the two of us, his physical presence was more threatening.

  Nuo nodded before removing the cloak hood from her head. Waves of green fell around her face. She didn’t look above twenty, but there was a mother’s worry in her eyes all the same.

  “Thank you for coming.” She played with her fingers, the action betraying how nervous she truly was. The long nails hadn’t been painted green. They were green.

  It surprised me still that many shifters remained true to their animal, even when in human form. They were the complete opposite to wolf shifters who only gave away their shifter heritage when angered.

  “We have some questions, if you don’t mind? About Torroro?” It was Kaleb who asked the questions, and I let him lead.

  “What would you like to know?” Nuo asked as her eyes slowly met Kaleb’s.

  “Have you heard from your son at all? Since he’s been in the prison?”

  A look of knowing registered on her face, but it was gone in an instant. “No. I haven’t. Why would I?”

  She flattened her hands against the table to keep them still, but it was a conscious move—one to distract us. I shared a look with Kaleb, and he pressed on.

  “We’re running through some profiles of certain people in the prison to see if they would pose a danger to society. But there are some things we can’t access,” he continued. “I was hoping to understand whether you believe your son would still be a danger to society if he was to leave the prison.”

  Tears filled Nuo’s eyes, and she became very interested in the flame of the candle before her. “My son will always be a danger to society. Even I know that.” She sniffed. “He doesn’t know right from wrong. And when he’s hungry, he eats. He’s following his natural instincts, and he can’t rein them in. He doesn’t understand …”

  “I thought he enrolled in the Evolver Program?” I asked, referring to the information we’d read in Torroro’s file.

  “He did—I mean he has. But there is only so much they can do. He needs meat to survive. Everyone of our kind does. But he doesn’t understand the difference between livestock and citizens. If he can’t eat one, why can he eat the other? He was beginning to starve himself, so the prison contacted us and asked us what we wanted to do. I told them that I wanted my son to live. They were planning on putting him into the Territorial Shifter Hold soon.”

  “They were?”

  She blinked rapidly. “I mean they are. They are planning to put him into the Shifter Hold. Soon, I believe. Please, you must excuse me. I’ve changed my mind.”

  My arm reached out to touch her when she stood up from her seat. But as I did so, images came through to me, hard and fast.

  A
whine. A loud roar. Sobbing. Then the chomping of flesh. I saw Nuo’s tears. I felt her heart breaking. Then I saw her fitful in sleep, as she reached out toward nothing.

  A maze flashed before me. I felt fear. A fear of the unknown. Too much information. Too much happening. I was confused. So confused. And so hungry. Then I saw the blood. A lone man. He was walking in the dark, but I could see blue lanterns behind him. Noise filled my ears. Then I saw the man being attacked. A building flashed before me. I recognized it from the Indicium Quarter on the northern border. It was on the same track that led from The Crossroads Inn if you walked the border of the city. It was a Currency Hold. A place where people kept their valuables to transfer to currency until they could afford to buy it back. It acted like a pawn shop found on Earthside, but a high end version. It was called The Mutuari.

  My heart raced at the man before me. I was suddenly hungry. I needed to eat. The shadows around me urged me on. I wanted my mama. I wanted my home. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to feel this way inside. I was bad. I was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad …

  The words thundered around my head as my resolve weakened. Then the tears came as I sank my teeth into the flesh. The blood ran down my throat. And whereas I personally wanted to gag, whatever I’d connected to in the vision felt only relief. It tasted so good. So good …

  “Terra?” I heard someone say as I realized it wasn’t real. I wasn’t eating anyone. I wasn’t hurting anyone. Relief and sickness swirled in my stomach as I came back around. Kaleb’s face swam before my eyes.

  “Kaleb?” I muttered, blinking my way back to reality. Nuo was standing next to him, concern written over her face.

  “You’re connected to him?” I asked Nuo as I put the pieces together. Half slumped in my chair with tears staining my cheeks, I watched her carefully as I tried to get my breath back.

  Everything I’d seen and felt, she had done so, too. And even if I didn’t think for one moment she had been with her son when this had happened, either way she knew. She knew what had happened during my vision, and she knew her son had escaped.

  Nuo closed her eyes as if in surrender. When she opened them a renewed strength highlighted those amber eyes.

  “We have a telepathic connection with our young until they’re old enough to stand on their own two feet.” A tear ran down her cheek. “The rest of the clan think the connection broke with Torroro when he came of age. But it never has. Not truly. I still get flashes. Dreams … I think it’s because his mind has never fully grown. He never broke free from me. Not properly.”

  “What did you see?” Kaleb asked me, his hand resting on my leg as if he needed the connection. He looked worried.

  “He’s frightened. Confused,” I explained. “And whoever is with him forced him to attack and eat a citizen. They want him for some reason.”

  Nuo nodded at my explanation as more tears escaped down her cheeks. “I knew he wasn’t in the prison anymore after seeing that but I didn’t know what to do. When you contacted me …” She glanced at Kaleb. “I knew I could no longer ignore it. If he’s out there, hurting people …”

  Pushing my hair back from my face, I sat up straight and put a reassuring hand on her arm. “He hasn’t gone of his own accord. We knew that when we read the files. It didn’t make sense that Torroro was part of the group who escaped.”

  Nuo sat down, letting out a long, deep breath. “He’s so scared. And they’re treating him like an animal. Like a guard dog. Whoever they are, I felt their evil intentions. And my boy is with them. Frightened and confused …” She hesitated. “What can I do to help?”

  There was no need to tell her what else I saw. I wasn’t sure if I had seen it from the dreams she’d experienced or if I’d unwittingly connected to Torroro through her. Whatever it was, there was no need for her to worry any further. Or to think she needed to be part of the chase. We also weren’t certain what her clan would do if they discovered she was helping us. The less she knew, the better.

  “Sit tight,” Kaleb said to her in my stead as if reading my mind. “If you feel or see anything else, anything at all, contact me like you did before.” He sat deep in thought for a minute then rustled around in his pocket. He pulled out a card. “Here. Have my transmission code if you prefer to contact me on that.”

  Nuo looked at him with gratitude, taking the card from him. “Thank you. I will take the code. But I prefer to meet with you here if I have anything. I do not …” She hesitated then drew herself up firm. “I do not trust the inventions of this world.”

  “You didn’t fail him,” I couldn’t help but say as the feelings of what Nuo had felt still shimmered within me. “You didn’t fail him by putting him in the prison.”

  Nuo faced me head on. “I should have done what my clan chief said and had him killed long before he took out his first victim. That’s where I failed him. And that’s where I failed the innocent people he attacked. That will lie with me forever. It has from the moment they told me that he could not be reformed.”

  “But he would have been put in the Hold if those assholes hadn’t gotten to him first,” I retorted. “He would have been like the other shifters; living in a world where he could have been safe.”

  Nuo studied me for a time, then her eyes drifted away to a place behind me. “Part of me wonders what this world would have been like if we’d just left all alone when we stepped through the portal all that time ago. But then would any of us have survived? I’m not sure.” She let out a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter anyway. My son didn’t fit into the ways needed to civilize our society. In that, he was doomed from the day he was born.”

  I wanted to ask why she hadn’t kept him with the clan. Why hadn’t they guarded him? Protected him? Protected others? But then that would make me the one pointing the finger. Maybe they had tried to protect him. Maybe they liked to disown the weak. Who knew? But one thing was for certain; Nuo had suffered greatly.

  “We’ll find him,” I told her, not knowing what else to say. Nuo pulled her cloak hood back over her head and moved for the door. Before she exited, she turned to me.

  “The kindest thing you could do for my son is to take his life away.” Her voice broke. “Maybe you will succeed where I failed.”

  She opened the door then walked out, leaving me and Kaleb with the silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I TAKE IT from that look on your face that you saw more than you let on from your vision,” Kaleb said once we’d left the inn. I nodded and told him about all the other things I’d seen about the maze, The Mutuari and the blue lanterns. I also provided the details of what I’d seen in regards to the others egging on Torroro to bite the man I’d seen.

  “We need to see if The Mutuari has security cameras,” Kaleb decided once I’d finished. “It’s on the border of the portal strip where the trees of the Fey forest run behind it. They may have something we can use.”

  Checking my watch comms I said, “I’ll come with you. But after I buy my gown. Otherwise I’ll be backtracking on myself.”

  “I’m so not coming with you to buy a dress.”

  He visibly cringed at the thought of doing such a thing, so I tucked my arm through his and dragged him along.

  “Yes. You are. And you know me. I’ll be in and out in five minutes. It’s not like I have any style.”

  Kaleb groaned out loud but let me tug him in the direction of The Rail. Fifteen minutes later, I was eating those words with relish.

  “The man is a tyrant,” I said to Kaleb out the side of my mouth as I stood on a small podium with my arms out like a starfish. Kaleb chuckled while he took pleasure in my misery.

  As soon as we’d walked into Lavani’s, the owner of the same name had pounced upon me. I vowed I was going to kill Bernard for this when I arrived back at Darkwood.

  I’d been poked, prodded, yanked, insulted, and that had all been during the first five minutes. Now they were trying outfits against me after Lavani’s explanation of how he needed to assess my
coloring, whatever that was. As a Water Fey with spiky, pale blue hair and white-framed glasses, Lavani took this fashion business way too seriously.

  Even Kaleb had tried to get us out of there after he’d laughed several times at my expense. But he’d been no match for Lavani. Oh no. Lavani was as slippery as the element he was banded under.

  “Bring me the gold one!” Lavani shouted to his assistant who came running over with a shiny piece of material. The assistant placed the gown against me but it barely touched my skin when he told her, “No. No good. It’s that hair. We need to make it pop. She needs to own it.”

  “How about the dark twilight gown that came in yesterday?” his assistant asked, and his hand paused mid-air. He put a finger to his lip then he shook it.

  “Yes. Yes. Bring it.”

  The assistant raced off and threw the gold gown at the other assistant on standby. The way they were both behaving was as if they were in competition for Lavani’s attention. They were like two eager puppies fighting over a treat. The other assistant caught the gold gown as it smacked her in the face. Then the one who threw it at her returned with another gown in her hands.

  “This really needs to be the one,” I said, a lot louder than my previous attempts. If Lavani didn’t let me go soon I would be sticking my badge up his backside.

  “Let’s see. Let’s see,” Lavani murmured. Kaleb grabbed my arm from behind me as I took a threatening step forward in the Water Fey’s direction. “Perfect!” Lavani exclaimed, ignoring me as he clapped his hands together. “Try it on.”