by Ann Gimpel
She and her sister Shifters had guessed wrong about the Cataclysm. They’d ignored the slender window right after it happened, a span of days that might have allowed them to leave Ushuaia.
Yeah, we were waiting for something more auspicious. Except, it never happened.
“Your mind is busy,” Juan observed.
“We’re stronger with all of us in the same place,” she repeated, not wanting to go into how each of them had failed because they’d miscalculated.
She sent her magic ahead, hunting for wrong spots, places the warp and weft of the ether was off. It would be easier to examine ley lines, but she should have thought of it sooner. When she deployed her third eye, her other senses weren’t as sharp.
The gangway creaked as Viktor lowered it to water level, but Aura had completed her scan. Nothing set off her internal alarms, and she breathed a little easier. Maybe Ketha’s anxiety had contaminated her trance state.
When she peered over the edge, the raft had already tied off to cleats, and its occupants had their eye on the slowly descending gangway. The roar of a second Zodiac drew her attention, and she saw another raft on its way from the pier. This one held two additional occupants.
“What the hell?” Juan turned to her. “Those rafts can hold twelve. Fourteen in a pinch. Why didn’t the first batch wait?”
The gangway clanked into place, and the raft’s four occupants hustled up it. The first, a man in his fifties with silvery hair and dark, frantic eyes said, “Who is your captain?” in a voice with a heavy Eastern European accent. He was dressed in poorly tanned seal skins stinking of rancid fat. Even his boots appeared to have been made from seal hide, and they laced to below his knees.
“Me.” Viktor stepped forward.
The man bowed formally, but straightened fast. “I request sanctuary for myself and my companions. You must raise the ladder and leave this place.”
Meanwhile two women and one more man had crested the gangway. They all looked like refugees with tattered clothing and deeply lined, grimy faces. Aura guessed fuel to heat water for bathing was in short supply.
“Who’s in the other Zodiac?” Juan asked.
“I—I can’t reveal anything,” the first man replied. “Please. You must do as I say. We will answer all your questions once we are safely away from here.”
Aura scanned the newcomers with magic. They seemed human, but when she looked a second time, traces of a subterranean shadow teased her. Were they shrouding magical underpinnings? She couldn’t tell. The harder she tried, the more elusive the undernote became.
“Why are you so frightened?” she asked the man who’d exhorted them to leave. “You’ve been living in the settlement with whoever is in the other raft.”
The man didn’t answer, and one of the women stifled a low, terrified moan.
The other Zodiac had almost reached them. Its driver was yelling something, but Aura couldn’t hear him over the roar of the raft’s outboard engine. Viktor hit the button to draw the gangway out of the water.
“Thank you.” The man who’d requested aid gripped Viktor’s arm, but he shook him off.
“I only did it to give us time to sort things out. The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators requires me to offer aid to polar settlements in need.”
Juan sent an incredulous look arrowing right at Viktor. “Maybe ten years ago, amigo, but—”
Viktor waved him to silence. “Talk,” he ordered the man who’d begged them to leave. “Nothing extra. Focus on bare-bones facts.”
Meanwhile, the second raft circled below. “You must let us aboard,” the driver shouted. A parka shrouded him from the top of his head to hip level. His English carried a hint of a Spanish accent, so not everyone at the Polish research station was from Eastern Europe.
“You’re in grave danger,” the second man on the raft yelled.
Aura peered over the side and then at the four men and women standing in a tight circle at the top of the gangway and opened her Shifter magic. Only one of these factions was telling the truth. How hard could it be to figure out which one?
Chapter Sixteen: Monsters on the Loose
Juan played the pros and cons of lowering the gangway one more time. At least if they had all six people aboard, they could listen to what each group had to say. He caught Viktor’s eye. “We need everyone in one place. Shouting over the railing is ridiculous and counterproductive.”
“Please,” one of the women spoke up. She had a thick Eastern European accent exactly like the man and could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. Matted black hair hung around her face, and her dark eyes were smoky holes in her grimy face. Her lips trembled. That kind of emotion couldn’t be faked.
Or could it?
“You have to say more.” Aura reached for the woman, but she shied away.
“Are we the first ship you’ve seen since the Cataclysm?” Viktor asked.
The man who’d begged for asylum appeared surprised. “The thing that held us prisoner has a name?”
Juan ignored his question. “How many are on this base? Is Boris still in charge?”
“No. He’s dead,” the man replied. “We number twenty-three. How do you know about Arctowski?”
“We sailed these waters for years,” Viktor said.
The men in the raft had disappeared from view, clearly hunting for another way aboard. Juan jerked his head toward the boat’s port side. “Bet they find the rope ladder. I’ll return once I have them in tow.”
“Nooooo!” The man in sealskins clawed at Viktor. “We must leave now. Right now. If they come aboard, all will be lost.”
Viktor stared him down. “You will let go of me immediately, or I will order you off my boat. Are we clear? You claimed there are twenty-three of you. I count six. What happens to the other seventeen if I sail away from here?”
The man dropped his hands to his sides. Something flashed from his eyes. It might have been defiance, but Juan had other priorities. He took off at a run for the other side of Arkady.
Aura followed him. “This seems very odd,” she said. “I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but none of those four feel quite right to me.”
“How about the ones in the second raft?” Juan asked.
“Can’t tell.”
Juan glanced over the side. Sure enough, the raft was heading straight for where the emergency rope ladder dangled over the side. He could reach it first, yank it beyond their reach, but was that the best course of action?
Aura saved him the trouble, sprinting ahead until she reached the handles designed to draw the heavy rope farther up the ship’s side. “We might want them aboard,” she said, “but I thought of something that might determine what’s going on. I asked my cat, but it hasn’t answered—yet.”
Juan gave the pulley system another couple of turns. He regarded Aura. “Beyond demons, Vampires, and Shifters, what other manner of magical creatures are out there?”
“You’re smart. It’s one of the many things I like about you. That’s almost the same question I asked my cat. More specifically, I wanted to know if it sensed something odd about the four folk standing over on the starboard side.” She pressed her lips together. “Shifter history includes other forms of magic, but not in any depth, which was why I didn’t know much about Vamps.”
The men in the Zodiac were yelling, but Juan tuned them out.
“What did you ask your bondmate?” Juan pressed.
“Back at the beginning, when mages first breached the borders of the animals’ world, some animals disagreed so vehemently they left. What I don’t know is where they went, or if they ever returned.”
“Are you thinking there might be a second type of Shifter out there?”
Aura shook her head. “Not exactly. Our bond animals are powerful. Their magic is strong. You’ll appreciate it as you spend more time with your cat. Even if they didn’t choose to ally themselves with human mages, they might have gone another route.”
Juan tho
ught about it, shuffling possibilities. “They didn’t bond with Vampires.”
“No, they didn’t, but there are other possibilities. You’d asked about magical beings. A small subset of humans holds magic. Only a bare handful of them become Shifters. Some are Druids. Some Freemasons. Some run cults. Some are witches—”
“Drop the ladder,” blasted from below.
Juan glanced over the edge. Both men had shoved their hoods back. One was dark, the other fair. Tangled hair caught in a brisk breeze. Juan narrowed his eyes, peering more closely at the dark-haired man. “Boris D’Costa?”
“But the other fellow said Boris was dead,” Aura protested. “Or were there two with that name?”
“No. Only one that I know of,” Juan replied.
One of the men in the raft shielded his eyes against the glare of daylight bouncing off the surf. “I’m Boris D’Costa. Who are you? I can’t see.”
Juan bit back a surprised grunt. The dark-haired man’s identity had been a guess on his part. The Boris he’d known was always impeccably turned out—by research station standards. The fellow in the boat was gaunt and dressed in tattered rags with a ratty beard spilling down his chest. Juan searched for a question only the real Boris would know and asked, “What did you and I do last time Arkady was in port here?”
The man’s lean, whiskered face broke into a smile. “Arkady. Of course. I was so excited to see a ship—any ship—I didn’t bother checking which one it was. Juan, right? Juan Torres?”
“What did we do?” Juan pressed.
“Played poker.” Boris grinned up at him. “You lost, but you kept right on hoping. Must’ve been dawn before you gave up.”
Juan chuckled. “You cheated. I still haven’t figured out how.”
“I’m dropping the ladder,” Aura said. She made a funnel around her mouth. “Why’d the other man say you were dead?”
Boris’s pleasant expression shattered, replaced by grim determination. He tied off the raft to a metal stanchion, grasped the rope ladder, and hauled himself up it, hand over hand. The fair-haired man followed.
“You didn’t answer me,” Aura said as soon as Boris tossed a leg over the rail and landed lightly on the deck.
“He wants me to be dead. Then no one will know about the evil haunting him and his ilk.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. You never had a superstitious bone in your body,” Juan said, followed by, “This is Aura Mackenzie.”
Boris shook her hand but angled his words at Juan. “Ten years is a long time, amigo. Things change.”
“Who are you?” Juan asked the other man.
“Ted Rogers,” he drawled in pure Brooklynese and held out a hand. Juan shook it. “Shit, but I’m glad to see your ship. I figured we were all going to die here. We’ve been out of ammo for a year, and those seals are smart bastards. Tough to kill them with knives.”
“And they bite back,” Juan said.
“We discovered as much,” Ted said. “Seal bites get infected like nobody’s business.”
“Why are there still seals here, and not on South Georgia?” Aura asked.
“There aren’t many left,” Ted said. “Leopard seals had a big breeding ground in the center of the island, but it’s thinned out to almost nothing.”
“This island is close to the Antarctic continent,” Juan said. “Only about seventy miles. Seals probably swam across the channel.”
“Not if the sea was in as bad a shape as it was around Ushuaia,” Aura muttered.
“Mmph. Not going to solve that problem. We need to get back to where the others are,” Juan directed.
“Not a good idea,” Boris said. “There’s something wrong with Stephan and his followers. Weird, wicked wrong.”
Aura leveled her gaze at him. “Weird wrong, how?”
An uncomfortable expression rippled across Boris’s stark cheekbones and bearded chin.
Juan snapped his fingers beneath the other man’s nose. “I don’t care how bad whatever this is creeps you out. Spill it.”
Ted cleared his throat. “Ten of us weren’t here before the monstrosity closed in and trapped us. Only good thing about the force field—or whatever it was—was it herded seals onto shore. We ended up with a pile of fish the same way, and a couple of beached whales. Good thing we were proactive curing the meat, otherwise—”
“Focus.” Juan made his tone harsh.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’m rambling.” Ted raked fingers through his windblown tangles.
Boris glanced at Ted. “Maybe a couple weeks after the mother of all storms left an eerie barrier around King George Island, Stephan and nine others marched out of nowhere. Said they came from the other side of the island, except it’s not that big.”
“Lots of countries have research stations here,” Ted cut in. “Russia, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, to name a few, so their appearance didn’t seem strange.”
“Not at first,” Boris said, “but when we got a free moment to question them, some pretended they didn’t speak any language I’d understand, which is bullshit since I speak Russian, Chinese, Spanish, German, English, and about ten others.”
“Stephan was evasive as hell,” Ted agreed. “Didn’t seem to know anything about the other research installations, but when we asked if he’d been on a ship that foundered, first he said no. Then he said yes—”
Outraged shrieks sounded from the far side of the ship. Juan grabbed Aura and ran hard for the group he’d left behind. If anything happened to any of them because of the freaks they’d let aboard, he’d rip Stephan and the others to shreds with his bare hands.
“Claws,” his cat snarled.
“Ha! You’re back. Do you know what we face?”
“Abominations. I wasn’t certain until just now, but they only look like men. They’re not what they appear.”
“Did you hear my bondmate?” he asked Aura who ran next to him.
“Yes, but I have no idea what it means, and my cat still hasn’t answered me.”
Juan skidded around a corner. Shock hit him in the guts, but he kept on running. Four creatures out of a nightmare hissed, spit, snarled, and screeched while the Shifters fought back. Blood sizzled where it contacted the deck, stripping paint from the concrete. Scraps of clothing that had apparently ripped when the four faux humans altered form blew everywhere.
Boris and Ted came to a stop right behind Juan. “Yeah. This. Welcome to my world,” Boris muttered.
Viktor was locked in combat with something like a cross between a dinosaur and a bat. At least twice Viktor’s size, it had thick silver scales the size of dinner plates. Two pairs of red eyes were placed laterally on either side of a pig-like snout. Its mouth was open, displaying triple rows of razor-sharp teeth with disgusting bits of flesh trapped between them. Midback, wings slanted outward, except they weren’t big enough to lift something that heavy off the ground.
Ketha launched herself onto the thing’s back. The air around her thickened and glistened. Amid staunch ripping, her clothing tore, and her wolf formed, closing its jaws around the monster’s neck.
“What kills them?” Juan shouted to Boris.
“Not bullets.”
“We don’t know,” Ted said.
Recco flew into the fray, clutching the iron blade. “Ketha!” he screeched. “Jump down.”
The wolf let go, and Recco leapt into the place she’d been, blade swinging. It hesitated when it came in contact with the brute’s scaled neck. Zoe chanted like a madwoman, and the blade glowed with bright-white light. The magical charge, or whatever she’d done, brightened still more, and the blade sliced cleanly through hide, bone, and everything else in between.
The abomination’s head flew from its body and over the railing, landing in the water with a splat. Water boiled around it, turning red-black. The headless torso spewed hideous-smelling black blood before it lost form, becoming an amorphous mass of jelly-like protoplasm running across the deck with Recco in the middle wiping gunk off his face and head.
“Thanks.” Viktor was breathing hard. Ketha ran to him, nuzzling his side with her snout. He dropped a hand on her furred head. “Love you, darling, but we’re not done yet.”
“Jesus Christ and all his bloody saints.” Boris fell back, gape-mouthed.
“You’re exactly like them,” Ted’s blue eyes rounded until white showed all around them. He backed away from the tableau, horror streaming from him in dark waves.
“We are nothing like them,” Aura snapped. “And you’re not going anywhere. You will remain until this is over.”
Light flashed from her fingers, and Ted and Boris froze mid-step.
“What’d you do to them?” Juan asked.
“Snared them with magic. Last thing we want is for them to run back to the settlement and sound the alarm. We’ll end up with torches and pitchforks aimed our way.”
“God but you’re gorgeous when you’re—”
“Fighting for my life.” She smiled wryly. “Three to go.”
“More like nine,” Juan said. “According to Boris, ten of those fuckers showed up, which means six are still back at the base.”
“Three? Eight? Who cares? We’ll get it done. They dabbled in magic they had no right to. Or maybe something is behind this controlling them. Regardless, death is too good for them.”
Juan surveyed the battle. Recco had beheaded a hundred-pound Gila monster with the head of a sea serpent. It had the same nauseating red tissue bits stuck in its teeth. Shit! Had this bunch fed recently? If so, from what? Not dried seal meat, that was for sure.
The other two monstrosities, a seal body with a shark’s head and a pterodactyl with a long, sharp beak and an eight-foot wingspan, seemed to have given up after their companions were killed. The pterodactyl spread its wings, likely intent on leaving. With a wild shriek, Rowana shifted to her eagle form and met the thing in midair, her beak aiming for its eyes. Viktor shifted too, and his raven joined the fray.
While the seal stared upward, mouth hanging open with what might have been apprehension, Daide grabbed the blade and came around behind, neatly beheading it. More black blood joined what flowed freely across the deck. Juan reached for the head, intent on chucking it into the ocean, but Ketha raced to him, growling, hackles at half-mast.