An Unhuman Journey

by Candace Blevins

  I looked over the heavy wooden staff he’d chosen and told him, “No, I just wanted to see your choice before I made mine.” I held eye contact with him as I manifested a quarterstaff of light into my outstretched hand, and his eyes grew wide as he looked from it to me.

  “You said you can grow a limb back if you lose less than sixty percent of it, right?”

  He didn’t say anything, so I added, “What’s the matter, babe, getting cold feet?”

  “No, you little bitch. I’m not. Are you ready?”

  I flipped the staff up and caught it with my preferred grip, “Bring it on, feiren.”

  I don’t make a habit of calling people names in another language, but it was the only thing that fit. Fei ren basically means useless person. There really isn’t a way to call someone that in English as a put down, and it just kind of popped out.

  Mordecai gave a half chuckle, as if it came out before he could stop it, and I had to focus on Martin to keep from grinning at my teacher.

  “Did you just call me a fairy?”

  Ohhh, someone was testy. Time to explain.

  “No, it’s a Mandarin term that means useless person — has nothing to do with fairies. I’ve never accused a fairy of being useless before.”

  “You think I’m useless?”

  “I think you have an ego problem, which means I can’t imagine trying to work with you in the kinds of fights I usually end up involved in when I go after the bad guys. I wouldn’t trust you with my back, that’s for sure. Now, are we going to do this or are we going to call each other names?”

  He glanced at my staff and met my gaze again. “This won’t be a fair fight.”

  “And it would’ve been with me holding a normal staff? No, but the difference is then it would’ve been stacked in your favor. You’re still a foot and a half taller than me and three times my weight. Not to mention faster and stronger.”

  “I want to be able to use feet and fists as well as the staffs.”

  I heard Nathan taking a breath so before he could speak I said, “Feet, but not fists. And no knees, either.”

  Martin nodded once. “Okay.”

  “Fine, I prefer not to strike first, so it’s up to you to get things started.”

  “Gladly.”

  He came at my knees, flying through the air. Damn, he was fast. I half-jumped-half-levitated up, and while I was up there I did a forward twisting somersault and came down behind him, facing his back.

  “Too bad I don’t want to kill you. I could do it now.”

  He spun, holding his staff up to block a blow to his back, and I just grinned at him while staying on alert. He swung the staff low and I moved to block it with my staff, which would’ve cut his staff in two when they hit, but he faked it and a half second later his foot was headed towards my head.

  My reflexes worked as they were supposed to and I jerked the staff up as protection. His ankle went through my staff, arterial blood spurted out of his leg, and his foot fell to the floor with a sickening thud.

  Martin’s short scream echoed back from me off the raftered ceiling, but he landed gracefully on his other leg and I stayed alert.

  A split second later his fist was rocketing towards my face in a blur, and once again I used my staff to block. Never mind he’d agreed not to use fists.

  I’d managed to keep his blood out of my face when he’d lost his foot, though my clothes were soggy with it. Now, though, his fist split in two like a log being turned into firewood, and his blood sprayed in a wide chaotic pattern I couldn’t avoid.

  I wiped my face with my left forearm as I levitated up and hopefully out of his reach, and I implored, “Please, Martin — shift and heal yourself. We’re done and you have to know it.”

  He fell to his knees and the next thing I knew a beautiful, regal, tiger stood in the midst of the blood.

  It seemed wise to stay out of the tiger’s reach, so I levitated higher, into the rafters of the old gym, and sat with my legs swinging below me. The entire room gave him a wide berth, and within a few moments the tiger paced the length of the old gymnasium, his long tail swishing behind him.

  He was beautiful. And deadly — I couldn’t forget how deadly a tiger with a human brain could be. Especially a pissed-off cocky asshole of a tiger.

  Finally he stopped and shifted back to human.

  He looked up. “You can come down. I acknowledge that you won the match.”

  I’d already absorbed my staff back into me, so I very slowly levitated down until I was facing him — my feet two feet above the ground so I still looked down at him a little. He was naked so I looked at his face and nothing else. “Tiger. You’re a beautiful tiger, Martin. For that matter, you’re a beautiful man.” I smiled, hoping I could lighten the mood. “Not my type, but that’s probably a relief to both of us at this point.” I held my hand out. “Truce?”

  He shook it, firm but not painful this time, and said, “Truce.”

  Apparently, Mordecai wanted to show more of my skills to the people present, because he stood on the other side of the gym with his own wooden staff and said, “Grab a towel and wipe your face, and then I’d like to spar with you.”

  I’m not sure why, but I’m really good with a quarterstaff — though it was called something else when I learned it, because I was taught by a guild of monks in China.

  Perhaps it comes so easily because of the years I spent learning to twirl a baton when I was a child, or maybe it’s a past life thing. Whatever the reason, I can kick ass with one.

  Someone had put another wooden staff just outside the circle, and I picked it up and looked at my teacher a few seconds before crossing the line.

  Mordecai struck as soon as I entered the circle, but I’m used to him trying to catch me off guard and within seconds I was completely in the moment because sparring with this god of old requires every bit of my concentration.

  Both of us moved fast as a blur, and the strikes of the staffs, wood on wood, took on the rhythm of our crazy dance. We both spun and flipped and used every fancy move at our disposal.

  Or I did, anyway. I knew Mordecai wasn’t operating at full speed because the supernaturals all had to slow themselves down and not use their full strength when they sparred with me, but that was okay because I really enjoyed being able to spar full out and not have to worry about hurting the person I was sparring with. When I work out with humans, I’m the one who has to hold back.

  When Mordecai was ready to stop, he increased his speed and tripped me up, and I laughingly managed to get out, “Uncle!”

  As I walked to Nathan and Martin, I deftly caught a bottle of water Nathan tossed my direction. I used to be a professional juggler and could toss six things back and forth between me and another juggler. I’d once been a part of a large group juggle with twenty-seven people, which meant there were eighty-one juggling pins flying around all at once. Having one thing tossed at me was nothing, and I said, “Thank you,” as I twisted the top off and took a drink.

  Martin was looking at me differently, and I wasn’t sure what was up so I stopped drinking and returned his look, waiting for whatever he was about to say. Finally, he said, “I assumed you only had your magical stuff and that was what gave you an edge, but you have other skills as well.”

  “And this surprises you?”

  “Yeah, I guess it does. I’m still not convinced you’re a hundred percent human. I’ve never seen a human with the reflexes you have. Not just when fighting, but you didn’t even look at the water bottle coming at you.”

  “I used to be a professional juggler — one thing flying at me is nothing. As to my reflexes, though, there’ve been questions about whether I might have something else in my bloodline, but so far nothing has shown up in my ancestry. As far as I know, I’m all human.”

  Chapter 20

  Tyler picked me and a few others up the night of the op, as Nathan didn’t want the parking lot to have more vehicles than normal. When we arrived, Tyler walked us downstairs to the
room they’d turned into a massive control room. As a fellow human, apparently it’d been decided Tyler could do the most good in the Drake security basement as well.

  “All of your teams are in their trucks,” Tyler told us, “situated a short distance from their assigned Celrau nest. Lou has worked with each of you one-on-one to explain how the equipment works, but he’s close by in case you need help. Talk to your teams, use the video equipment, test everything out. You’ll each have from fifteen to forty minutes to speak with your team before they need to drive to the nest, as they’re all staged a little differently and we want to be sure the strike happens simultaneously in all locations.”

  As I went through my checklist, Randall was all business, Lewis seemed totally relaxed, and Martin was silent except for the bare necessity needed to verify the equipment was working. I had seventeen people on the radio in all, but each man used a number instead of a name. Randall was wolf-one, and each of his people was wolf-two, wolf-three, etc. Lewis was B-one, and Martin was M-one — and their people were numbered after them.

  The communication devices used in the field would broadcast to the truck, and the truck was sending the signal to me. Lou had explained everything was encrypted and it was impossible for anyone not part of the op to hear the transmissions, though I already knew Aaron was a stickler about everything being encrypted. For someone not just old but ancient, the old dragon had a surprisingly good grasp on technology.

  And I missed him, and worried about him, but I couldn’t focus on that right now.

  When our equipment checks were finished, I listened to Randall and Lewis go over the high points of the op to the team one last time before everyone went silent as they were driven to the house. I heard faint breathing as everyone exited the vehicle and spent five to ten minutes making it to their posts — I checked them off as they checked in, and let Tyler know when all of our people were in place.

  A few minutes later, I got the signal from Tyler and counted down the time from ten, my heart racing as if I were in the woods with my team.

  I watched and listened as wolves and bears in various forms thundered through doors and windows all over the large house, screaming and yelling and just generally adding to the chaos in any way they could. Some were in human form, others in their half-form, and one bear was completely shifted.

  Their orders were to disable all Celrau but to try to avoid killing any humans. I wasn’t sure how they could tell who they were taking out with the speed they took people down as they methodically searched the huge mansion.

  I hadn’t expected to hear from Martin, but about three or four minutes in, he reported people trying to escape the perimeter.

  Within seconds, Martin’s people were engaged in more of a battle than the team inside the house, and Randall sent Lewis and his people out to help.

  Several of the team members wore cameras set to night vision, which meant I could see a little of what was going on in the woods outside, but no details.

  I didn’t need to see details to know what I was looking at when Martin faced off against someone wielding a sword of light, much like the kind I make. The man brandished it once and a fairly large tree branch fell as the light melted through the wood, and my heart rose into my throat.

  “B-one, and anyone else close, M-one is in trouble in the southeast quadrant.” I might piss Martin off by saying it, but he needed help and I’d risk his anger to keep from watching him die. Martin’s number three guy was wearing the camera I was watching this through, and luckily it was mounted on his chest so I had a good view. “M-one, you’re going to need someone to come up behind this guy to take him out. He isn’t moving like a Celrau, can you tell what he is?”

  Someone else said, “Smells human,” and Martin grunted in pain as I watched the sword slice him across his lower abdomen. They’d been on a hill, with Martin higher than his opponent, else the strike may have hit Martin’s heart — and I wasn’t sure if that would kill a tiger or not.

  As it was, Martin rolled on the ground in pain and didn’t shift as I watched blood and intestines spill from a large, open gash.

  I apparently suck at being an operator, because I screamed, “Martin, you have to change! M-two, you are now in charge of your unit. M-three, get to M-one and do whatever it is you have to do to help him change.”

  “Can’t change,” Martin gasped. “Need to talk my guys through taking the human down. I’m the only one of us who’s fought control, and now him.” Control, that was me. Martin was going to stay in human form no matter how much pain he was in, because of the slim chance he could talk his guys through fighting this human who wielded weapons like mine.

  “I’ll talk them through it, M-one.”

  “He’s gone,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “The human seems to have disappeared. His scent trail just… fuck, I smell brimstone. They have a gateway out here somewhere.”

  At that, Martin morphed into a tiger, shredding the clothes he’d been wearing. One of his men reported on gathering Martin’s weapons and radio, another grabbed everything else, and I typed a note to Tyler about the likelihood some people at our location had escaped through a gateway to the Hell realm, and then listed Martin has having been injured and forced to change on the shared spreadsheet.

  I kept an eye on the board as well as my monitors, and as soon as the information went up, I told my team, “A huge contingent of Celrau and at least one human male just arrived in New Orleans. They went back to the Hell realm as soon as they realized that location was under attack as well, but it’s possible you may get people coming out of the gateway there, so stay prepared.”

  It was another hour and a half before my team had everyone in the trucks and I could finally freak out about the fact there was another human out there wielding a sword of light.

  They’d all arrived in one truck, but Nathan had staged another vehicle and driver close by in order to bring bodies and captives back. They had seven Celrau bodies, some of which might be able to be reanimated, and Randall assigned two wolves and one bear to ride back with them, while the rest were in the other truck. At least eleven people at our location had escaped through the gateway to the Hell realm. It turned out there was a tunnel in the basement that led to the woods, and the gateway wasn’t far from the tunnel’s exit. From what I gathered, many of the other nests had the same setup, so we hadn’t taken out anywhere near the number of Celrau we’d hoped.

  Martin had shifted back to human within about fifteen minutes, so at least they didn’t have to figure out how to transport a huge tiger home, as well.

  Tyler came over our channel to tell my people, “Your team’s the closest and will debrief first, so be prepared to come to the conference room before you change clothes.”

  * * *

  Nathan had been with the team in Charleston, but he made it back in time for the debrief. He must have taken a shortcut through Faerie, or perhaps he’d had Drake’s fastest chopper close by — I didn’t ask because I was thrilled he’d be here to help figure out what the fuck was going on.

  “Is there always a counterpoint?” I asked him, with just the two of us in the conference room. “I mean, if there’s a good vampire, there has to be an evil vampire of equal power? Is this nature balancing out the fact a human has gained so many skills?”

  “Not in my experience. It’s true that Olympus and Hell are supposed to stay in balance, but the scales have historically shifted back and forth on Earth.”

  “Have you seen the video? The man with the sword of light?”

  He nodded and I felt tears forming, but I inhaled deeply and forced them to stay back. I didn’t have time to fall apart yet, and I forced my voice to stay normal as I said, “He materializes it from a handle and treats it more like a Star Wars saber.” I’d watched it dozens of times, and had slowed it down and brightened the image until I could see better details.

  “Come on,” he said as he took my hand and walked me out of the conference room. I went with him beca
use he didn’t give me a choice, but as we hit the hallway I protested, “I’m fine, Nathan.”

  Something in my voice must have convinced him, because he stopped and looked at me a few seconds, and I’d swear he sniffed me, too.

  He gave a curt nod and let go as he motioned me back towards the room. “So I see. Sorry I jumped the gun.”

  “It’s okay, I wasn’t okay for a few seconds, but there’s still too much to do before I take luxuries.” We stepped back into the empty conference room and I walked to the coffee pot and started loading it. Aaron buys good coffee, thank goodness. “Shouldn’t the team be here by now?” I asked as I filled the reservoir with water. The truck had pulled onto the lot nearly five minutes ago.

  “Everyone who got Celrau blood on them shifted to animal and back before they left, but they’re still all going by the mechanical sniffer to be sure no one will trigger a Concilio sensor. They should begin arriving in the next couple of minutes.”

  Tyler and a few others walked in with huge boxes they put on the table, and I chuckled as they opened the boxes to show dozens of barbecue sandwiches. How do you keep shifters happy? You feed them.

  Nathan sat and lifted a sandwich, took in half of it in one bite, chewed, swallowed, and pointed to the other end of the table. “Smells like your fries are in that box.”

  Martin and Lewis walked in as Nathan spoke, and I ignored my fries for the time being. “Martin! Are you okay? Are you sure he was human?”

  “I’m fine, and I’m sure.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me see your stomach? So I’ll know for sure you’re okay?”

  “You and I aren’t that close. Why do you care?”

  “You were part of my team.”

  It seemed like a no-brainer to me, but perhaps not because Nathan told him, “She’s like a mother hen with members of her team. Silly human takes all kinds of risks to keep us safe in the field. It probably killed her to have to watch you take someone like her on when she couldn’t be there to protect you herself.”