by Jasmine Walt
“Ma’am,” I said as Noria’s bike pulled up behind me – she’d grabbed a protesting Comenius and insisted on following me here. “My name is Sunaya Baine, registered member of the Enforcer’s Guild. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Please!” the woman shrieked, grabbing my arm with bruising force. Her powder blue shifter eyes were crazed with fear, and my nose told me she was a rabbit shifter. “My babies are still in there! You have to get them out!” Tears poured down her raw cheeks as her body trembled.
“Can you tell me what’s in there with them?” I asked, my heart pounding. “What kind of beast?”
“It’s a rhino shifter,” she sobbed as the house shook behind her. “He charged in, all wild and crazy, and went for me and the children. I couldn’t get to them, so I came out here for help… but…”
“Naya.” Comenius dropped to his knees beside me, his voice urgent. Compassion flickered in his eyes as he took in the sight of the woman. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a rampaging rhino shifter inside the house, and there are children in danger.” I rose to my feet slowly, dread weighing down my movements. I wasn’t equipped to handle a rhino shifter by myself, especially not one who was crazed with anger. But there was no one else around to back me up. “I have to go and get them.”
“Are you crazy?” Noria snapped. “He’ll kill you!”
“There are children in there,” I said firmly, my gaze fixed on the house. “Com, you heal the mother. I’m going in to rescue her cubs.”
“Like hell,” Comenius snapped, rising impatiently to his feet. “You’ll never make it out of there. I’m going in with you.”
“You should help the woman –”
“I have some spells that could calm the rhino down.” I shut my mouth at that. “If you can distract him long enough, I’ll cast a sleeping spell on him that should stop him in his tracks so you can get the children to safety.”
“Fine.” Much as I didn’t want to involve my friends with this, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I needed magic, and I couldn’t use my own. But there wasn’t any time to dwell on the irony – I needed to rescue the children.
I charged through the door first, my crescent knives clutched in my fists in case the rhino was on the other side. No, they wouldn’t do much good, but I was a little more confident with the weapons in my hands. I brandished them like talismans as I followed the scent of the baby rabbits, creeping through the war-torn living room and down the hallway. The walls had been reduced to little more than rubble, so there wasn’t much cover, and I had a clear sight of the rhino hard at work demolishing what had once been a very nice dining room.
Creeping across the tile floor as silently as I could in my boots, I followed the scent across the room and beneath the remains of a dining room table, where two baby bunnies were huddled together in beast form. They were absolutely adorable, little black fuzz balls the size of sugar melons, their eyes wide with panic above their little chins and pink noses. “Shhh,” I whispered soothingly, reaching for them with outstretched arms. “I’m here to save you.”
I reached for the bunnies, and the rhino shifter chose that moment to swing his head around. I froze in utter terror as his crazed eyes made direct contact with mine – blood was flowing freely from his flared nostrils. What the fuck was going on with this guy?
“Time to go!” I shouted, more to distract the rhino than to tell the bunnies. Thinking fast, I flipped the table in the rhino’s direction, then grabbed both the bunnies by the scruffs of their necks and tossed them out the window and into the backyard.
The rhino bayed so loudly the sound shook the remaining walls of the house and made my eardrums throb. He charged me, his huge horn splintering the glossy dining table I’d thrown up as a makeshift battlement, and I dodged out of the way and raced down the hall, past Comenius who was frantically putting together a spell in the living room. I couldn’t run outside, not while the mother and babies were still on the lawn, but I could lead the bastard on a chase until Comenius finished concocting his sleep spell.
“Any minute now, Com!” I shouted over the deafening sound of the rhino’s crashing footfalls. The sound of crumbling drywall told me that he wasn’t far behind, his huge body knocking down the walls, and I ducked inside the nearest bedroom, hoping that his momentum would carry him straight past me.
I was wrong. Somehow, the hulking bastard managed to make the turn along with me, and his huge snout crashed into the middle of my back. I went flying across a little girl’s room, with lacy curtains at the windows and dolls covering the shelves, and slammed face-first into the pink wall.
Stars burst across my vision as I slid to the floor, flopping onto my back. The whole world felt like it was shaking apart around me, though really it was just the floor rumbling as the rhino charged me again. Fear choked me in its cold, vice-like grip as the beast reared up on his hind legs to trample me, having no other way to attack me in the small space. I threw out my hands instinctively, as if my comparatively twig-like arms had a chance of stopping the rhino’s tree trunk legs.
But just before the rhino’s legs came down on me, a surge of energy ballooned in my chest, rippled down my arms and blasted out of my hands in the form of a huge ball of blue-green fire. It crashed into the rhino, who bayed so loudly that my teeth rattled inside my throbbing head. There was a sizzling sound, like meat cooking, and then the rhino disappeared in a flash.
I lay there as flecks of ash rained down on my face, the edges of my vision darkening. Shouts and footfalls echoed in the hallway, and a horde of people came crashing in through the doorway, Comenius in the lead and Noria close behind.
“Naya!” He skidded to his knees beside me, his eyes wild. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” I wheezed.
“Where’s the rhino?” My fuzzy vision managed to pick out Brin, the Enforcer who’d responded to my call at Roanas’s house, as the source of the question. He stood just inside the door, his burly arms crossed over his chest, a suspicious scowl on his face.
Curling my lips back in a sardonic grin, I slid my hand through some of the ash coating the ground, then lifted a fistful of it into the air. “Right here.”
“Oh Naya,” Comenius whispered miserably, taking my filthy hand in his. “This is so very, very bad.”
He was right, of course. I had just used my magic to kill a shifter. While responding to a distress call. In front of a whole lot of witnesses. I was royally fucked no matter which way you looked at it, and the silver murders didn’t have a chance in hell of being solved if I was executed. But as they all stood over me, arguing about whether I should be jailed, sent to the hospital, or crowned Queen for a Day – Noria’s idea – the last bit of energy that might have allowed me to care left my body, and without it to anchor me there I sank into a blissful sea of darkness.
4
The next time I woke up, I found myself lying on a cot that must’ve been made of concrete, it was so damn uncomfortable. And that wasn’t even counting the aches and pains running through my face and body from being smashed into a wall by a four-ton rhinoceros.
Was I in the hospital? Where was my damned nurse?
Opening my eyes, I twisted my head around and catalogued the iron bars surrounding my little room on three sides and the concrete wall behind me. Fear sprang to life in my gut as I confirmed that I was, in fact, in a jail cell and not a super-shitty hospital room like I’d hoped. Fuck. How was I going to get out of this mess?
“Naya? Are you awake?”
Noria’s voice startled me from my state of semi-awareness, and I jolted upright and looked around for the source. My heart sank as I found it – she was sitting on the cot in the cell next to mine, her pale face pinched and her coffee-colored eyes round with concern.
“Shit,” I muttered. My friend’s little sister was in jail with me and a throbbing tattoo beat against the inside of my skull. “Noria, what are you doing in here?”
Noria smirked a little
. “That asshole Brin threw me in here, to teach me a lesson after I punched him in the nose. But don’t worry; I’ll be out on bail in a little bit. I’m just glad you woke up before my family gets here.”
Yeah, well I’m not, I thought grumpily, biting the words back as they would only hurt Noria’s feelings. But by Magorah, I was so not looking forward to having her mother shoot death glares at me through the bars of my cell when she came to pick up her daughter. The idea was almost scarier than the fact that I was in jail.
Almost. After all, there’s little else in this world more terrifying than an impending execution.
“So,” I sighed, slumping against the concrete wall and trying to ignore the panic skirting the edges of my mind. “What’d I miss?”
“Aside from me punching Brin in the face?” Noria said proudly. I sent her a death glare of my own, and she deflated a little. “Oh, alright, alright. Nothing much, really. Com and I tried to argue with those other Enforcers about letting you go on account of the fact that you were just doing your job and you didn’t hurt anyone aside from the rhino. The rabbit shifter lady defended you too. But unfortunately you Enforcers don’t seem to have any respect for each other within the ranks, so they tossed both of us in here.”
I winced at Noria’s cutting words. “Yeah, well unfortunately the Enforcer’s Guild is a highly competitive workplace. The less competition, the better your docket.”
Noria was silent for a long moment as she pondered this. She’d declared a long time ago that she wanted to follow in her sister’s footsteps and become an Enforcer, and I hoped my words would help dissuade her from that treacherous career path. Even though I loved what I did most days, I also didn’t have too many other career options given my skill set and secrets. Noria, with her smarts and techie skills, had the entire world as her oyster. I really, really didn’t want her to end up on the same path I was.
Especially since, at the moment, my path looked like it was coming to an end a lot sooner than I wanted it to.
“Would you do that?” Noria finally asked.
“Do what?” I blinked.
“Turn somebody else in who didn’t deserve it, just so you could eliminate the competition.” She bit her lip as she studied me.
“No. I wouldn’t,” I admitted with a sigh. For the most part I actually believed in justice, true justice. Not the half-assed, corrupted version practiced in society today.
As expected, Noria rewarded me with a huge grin. “That’s exactly what I thought,” she crowed. “You’re way too far above that crap.” The grin faded a little as a troubled look entered her eyes. “Naya?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you really think you’re about to be executed?”
I sat up straight at the sound of her voice, so small and scared and unlike the brash, confident girl I knew. She was clutching the bars, staring at me with wide eyes, and I reached out, wanting to touch her hands and reassure her. But before I could, the door at the end of the hall opened, and a guard marched down the hall with Noria’s mother in tow.
I sighed, slumping back against the mattress again. So much for companionship. I silently endured the expected death glare from Noria’s mother as she collected her daughter, then gingerly lay back on my rock-hard cot. It was wrong, but I missed having Noria in the cell next to me. It was comforting to have a comrade in here to distract me from my fear, especially since I knew that when I next emerged from this cell, I would be walking to my death.
Without Noria to distract me, my aches and pains made themselves known, increasing from a dull ache to sharp, throbbing pains in the bones of my face and my ribcage. Dread pooled in my stomach as I realized that my injuries were more severe than I’d thought. I was going to have to shift to heal them.
Normally, shifting was no problem for me. Because I was half-mage and had more natural magic at my disposal than a regular shifter, I could change forms faster and more frequently. But I’d just used a boatload of magic disintegrating that rhino shifter, and I’d already been short on sleep and food then. I was past the point of exhaustion now.
Is there even any point in healing myself? I thought despondently, my eyes tracing the cracks in the concrete ceiling. If I’m going to be executed tomorrow?
Of course there is, a voice in my head argued fiercely. You’re the only one who gives a fuck about solving the silver murders. You can’t just give up and die. Don’t allow your fear of what could be to put you into an early grave.
Tears sprang to my eyes at that last line – it was something Roanas told me often, especially when coaxing me into trying a new maneuver early on in my training. He’d taken me in when I was still a cub, after my mother died and my aunt had kicked me out of the clan, and of all the things he’d taught me that phrase stuck with me the most. It was his way of saying not to give in to my fear of the unknown – just because something could go wrong didn’t mean that it would, and if you didn’t try at all you’d never reap the rewards.
Magorah, what was I supposed to do now that he was gone?
The door at the end of the hall opened and footsteps rang across the concrete. I sat up, swiping the tears from my face in case I had a visitor. Sure enough, a hulking thug of a human with a bulbous nose and a shock of red hair dressed in leathers stopped in front of my cell. His wide mouth stretched in a grin, displaying the gold tooth that winked where one of his canines should have been.
Oh lucky me. It’s my favorite person in the world.
“Deputy Talcon,” I said coolly, sitting up straight. The pain in my ribs flared, but I ignored it, unwilling to show him any sign of weakness.
“Sunaya.” He dragged the last syllable out, then made tsking sounds as he wagged a meaty finger at me. He was built like a troll, nearly as wide as he was tall, the bulging muscles of his arms displayed by the sleeveless black shirt he wore. “I heard you were cooped up down here, so I thought I’d come down and see how my favorite Enforcer was doing.” He raised a long, paper-wrapped package clutched in his fist. “Want a sandwich?”
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but my stomach growled so loudly in response to the food that he laughed before chucking the sandwich through the iron bars of the cell. It landed in my lap, and I fell on it greedily, the shame in my gut unable to trump the gnawing hunger in there.
“Good little panther,” he cooed as I ripped open the wrapper and inhaled the sandwich. My nose told me it was safe, a simple if unimaginative combination of turkey and cheese, so I wasted no time in chowing it down. I had to swallow my pride if I wanted to have my strength for tomorrow.
“Got any water to go with that?” I asked nonchalantly, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
His eyes narrowed at my blasé response to his goading. “You always were an ungrateful little bitch,” he said darkly, his lower lip curling.
“Sure, and you always were a disgusting, fat fuck.”
His eyes bulged, and he lunged toward me before he remembered that there was a row of iron bars separating us. I watched with satisfaction as he stood there, taking in deep breaths through his flaring nostrils, a vein pulsing in his temple. Good. The bastard deserved to stew a little, especially after all he’d put me through.
“So,” I said, folding my arms across my aching ribs. “What brings you down from your cushy office upstairs? Got tired of jerking off to my ID photo?” I’d been down here enough times to know I was in the holding cells in the basement of the Enforcer’s Guild. Shame burned the lining of my stomach as it occurred to me that my peers had likely all watched Brin and Nila haul my unconscious ass down here, but I forced myself to push it aside. There were more important things to worry about than my bruised pride.
“As a matter of fact, I did.” His lips stretched into a cruel smirk as he regarded me with his beady eyes. “It’s been awhile since you last came in, so when I heard you were in the building I decided to come and see that pretty face of yours in person again.” His eyes gleamed with lust, and a small shiver crawled down my
spine. “So much better than a picture.”
“You know,” I drawled, doing my best to cover up the disgust coating my throat, “if you pull out your dick here and try to shoot a load at me now, you might actually be able to hit me since I don’t have an amulet to incinerate you with anymore. Why don’t you try it and see what happens?” I bared my fangs, daring him – if he whipped out his dick now I had a real shot of reaching through the bars and ripping it to shreds with my claws before he could react. After all, it wasn’t like I had anything to lose now, and I partially blamed him for the situation I was in.
Talcon’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You’ve got a real smart mouth for someone who’s facing execution, hybrid.” I flinched as he spat the word, the contempt in his voice so much like my aunt Mafiela’s that my heart shriveled inside my chest. “Don’t pretend that little trinket is what saved your ass today. We both know what really happened, and you’re going down.”
I lifted my chin, refusing to let him see the fear churning inside my gut. “I look forward to seeing the look on your face when the mages test the amulet and are forced to vindicate me.” Not that that was going to happen, of course – in fact, I sincerely hoped the Mage’s Guild decided not to test the amulet when I spun my bogus story for them tomorrow, because if they did I was most definitely toast.
Uncertainty flickered across Talcon’s face for just a moment, and then he scoffed. “Yeah, right. You were always good at bluffing. But you know,” he said, a sly smile curving his lips. “I could help you escape in exchange for a little something-something.”
I arched an eyebrow. “What, you want your sandwich back? I don’t think it’s any good to you at this point, but I’m sure I can figure something out.” I stuck a finger in the back of my throat and pretended to gag.