Fury

by Rachel Vincent

  Lenore nodded. “That’ll work.”

  We’d discovered that it was much easier to find people carrying cash near businesses that only accepted cash, which was the case with most of the food trucks.

  “Let’s go.” I drained the last of my decaf, then gripped the back of my chair to help push myself to my ungainly feet.

  “Delilah.” Zy’s fierce whisper seized my attention, but it was her grip on my hand that held it. “Look.”

  Chill bumps rose on my arms in spite of the sunlight shining through the coffee shop window as I followed her gaze to the table behind ours. The nosy and disapproving woman had been replaced by a man in khakis and a polo shirt, watching a live news feed on his coffee shop tablet. He was wearing earbuds, so I couldn’t hear what the newscaster was saying. But the image on-screen was clear, and the headline even more so.

  Mirela and Lala, Rommily’s sisters, had been captured.

  August 24, 1986

  “And they were asleep when you got home?” the detective asked, studying what he’d already written in a small spiral notebook as flashes of red and blue light washed over the entire neighborhood from the tops of a dozen cop cars. “Still covered in blood? They didn’t even change their clothes?”

  Rebecca understood his disbelief. The truth didn’t make sense to her, either, and the longer she stood outside her house, surrounded by cops and barricades and flashing lights, the less real it seemed.

  Her parents hadn’t even tried to run when she’d barricaded herself inside Mrs. Madsen’s house and called the police. They’d just headed home. To wait on the cops.

  Her mother, evidently, had brewed a pot of coffee.

  “Yes, they were asleep. I could hear my dad snoring. But I didn’t know about the blood. Not then.” Rebecca hardly even heard what she was saying. Her focus was on little Erica, who sat on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, being checked out by a paramedic who’d given her a small stuffed bear to hold.

  The woman squatting in heels next to the stretcher had introduced herself as a child psychologist working with the police.

  Beyond the ambulance and the cop cars, the whole neighborhood stood gathered on the sidewalk, behind a length of yellow crime scene tape. Some of the women had pink foam rollers in their hair. Most of the men were smoking cigarettes, the ends glowing like tiny coals in the night, as red and blue lights continued to flash over them all from the tops of the police cars.

  They’d been awakened by the sirens and hypnotized by the scandal. Not that they actually knew what was happening. The police weren’t answering questions, and the crowd was kept out of earshot of the detective questioning Rebecca.

  “Did your parents say anything to you? Did they tell you what happened?”

  Rebecca shook her head.

  “And your sister? Did she say anything?”

  “Not about...what happened.” Mrs. Madsen had given her a glass of milk and two Oreos while they’d waited for the police, and Erica had eaten her snack as if that were a normal thing for a six-year-old to do at one-thirty in the morning at a neighbor’s house. “But I can ask her, if you’ll—”

  “That would not be a good idea.” Rebecca turned to see the child psychologist, Dr. Emory, heading toward her. “Being made to talk about whatever she saw could be psychologically damaging.”

  “I wasn’t going to make her...”

  “Questions would best be left to the experts, in a controlled environment,” Dr. Emory insisted. “Where her statements can be recorded for the investigation.”

  Rebecca nodded, but all she’d really processed was that she wasn’t allowed to ask her sister any questions. The rest was lost to exhaustion and encroaching numbness—an oblivion she welcomed.

  Dr. Emory gave her a concerned frown. “I think that’s enough for now,” she told the detective. “Let’s let the girls rest. You can ask the rest of your questions later, at the station.”

  The detective’s jaw tightened, but he gave the psychologist a curt nod.

  “Come on.” Dr. Emory put an arm around Rebecca’s shoulders and led her toward the ambulance, where Erica sat on the end of the stretcher, swinging her chubby little legs. And her bloodstained feet. “You’ve been a rock tonight, Rebecca. You saved your sister’s life.”

  But had she?

  Rebecca forced her thoughts into focus as Dr. Emory lifted Erica from the end of the stretcher and set her on the ground. Their parents had left Erica sleeping peacefully in her own bed. Untouched.

  If they’d wanted to hurt her—

  “Becca!”

  Startled, Rebecca turned to see Cindy Ruger and her volleyball friends huddled on the sidewalk in a cluster of curious neighbors, and a monstrous “what if” snuck up on her.

  What if she’d stayed at the party? Would she have come home in the morning to find Erica dead, too? Or would her parents simply be making weekend pancakes in bloodstained pajamas, setting the table for four, instead of six?

  Why Laura and John? Why not Erica?

  If Rebecca had been at home, would they have killed her, too?

  “What happened?” Cindy called from the sidewalk, where she and the rest of the neighbors were being held back by yellow crime scene tape and two uniformed police officers. “Are you okay?”

  “You don’t have to talk to anyone.” Dr. Emory put her arm around Rebecca again and guided both girls to a police car, where another uniformed cop opened the rear door for them. The Essig sisters climbed into the back of the car, while Dr. Emory got into the front passenger seat.

  Minutes later, Rebecca watched through both the rear window of the police car and a film of her own tears as her parents were led out of the house in handcuffs. Their feet were bare and they still wore blood-soaked nightclothes.

  An audible gasp echoed from the neighbors gathered on the sidewalk.

  “Where are they going?” Erica leaned forward to peer around her older sister, while police loaded their mother and father into the back of another car.

  “To jail.” For the millionth time in the past hour, Rebecca wondered what her sister had seen. She’d clearly walked through the blood, and there’d been small streaks of it smeared over her nightshirt, but she hadn’t been drenched in it, like their parents had been.

  Maybe Erica hadn’t actually seen anything. She might not even know that the footprints in the carpet were made from blood.

  But she hadn’t asked about Laura or John. Not even once.

  “Jail?” Erica shifted onto her knees on the bench seat for a better view out the window. “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Not exactly. You’re going to the police station.” Dr. Emory twisted in her seat to face the girls through a metal mesh barrier separating the front of the car from the back. “The police need you to answer some questions. Then your grandmother will pick you up and take you to her house.”

  “Grandma Betty or Grandma Janice?”

  “Grandma Janice and Grandpa Frank,” Rebecca told her. “Grandma Betty lives too far away to get here tonight.”

  Erica pouted and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t like Grandma Janice. Her house smells funny.”

  “Why don’t you lie down and try to get some sleep,” Rebecca suggested. “This might take a while.”

  Erica resisted the idea for about ten minutes. Then she got bored and curled up on the bench seat with her head in her sister’s lap. Minutes later, she was snoring softly.

  Rebecca brushed hair back from her baby sister’s face, over the shoulder of the clean nightshirt one of the female cops had brought out for her when they’d taken the bloody one she’d been wearing as evidence. They’d also taken swabs from the bottoms of both girls’ feet, to test the dried blood in a lab, for all the good that would do. All of the Essigs had the same blood type.

  In the house, more cops were gathering evidenc
e, taking pictures and dusting for fingerprints. But their efforts seemed pointless to Rebecca. She knew what had happened.

  What she did not know was why.

  Rebecca leaned her head against the back of the seat, but the moment she closed her eyes, she was right back there, in the doorway of her twelve-year-old brother’s bedroom. Staring in horror at John and Laura.

  At what was left of them.

  The driver’s door creaked open, startling Rebecca from the beginning of a nightmare she would have over and over in the coming years, and a uniformed cop leaned down to look in at her, his arm propped on the roof of the car. He had eerie yellowish wolf eyes with pinpoint black pupils, as well as wickedly pointed canines. But his smile was kind.

  “Okay, girls, we’re going to take you to the station in a couple of minutes, and after you’ve answered a few questions, your grandparents can take you home.” The cop grimaced when he realized what he’d said. “Well, to their home.”

  Rebecca rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms, smearing eye makeup she’d applied ten hours earlier. “Erica’s out cold, and it’s the middle of the night. Can we just let her sleep for now?”

  “I don’t...” The cop gave the sleeping child a sympathetic glance. “I believe that’s up to Dr. Emory, but usually we like to get information while it’s fresh.” He stood again and called to another cop over the car. “Edwards. We clear to go?”

  Footsteps pounded against the pavement as another cop jogged closer, and through the windshield, Rebecca got a good look at his shocked-pale face. “You’re not gonna believe this, but they need Dr. Emory across town. We got another one. Just like this.” He gestured at the Essig house.

  “You’re shittin’ me,” the werewolf cop swore. Then he glanced at Rebecca and closed the car door.

  “What does that mean, another one?” Rebecca asked. “Another...murder?”

  “I’m not sure. Just a minute.” Dr. Emory stepped out of the car and closed the door.

  Rebecca tried to open her own door, determined to ask more questions, yet there was no handle. She and Erica were locked in. But the cops’ voices carried through the door.

  “...call just came in. Four-year-old drowned in the tub. Parents drenched in bathwater.”

  “And why do they need me?” Dr. Emory asked with a concerned glance at Rebecca and Erica through the closed window.

  “There’s one surviving sibling. A kindergartner, found naked and soaking wet. Guys on the scene think he was in the tub with the little one when it happened. They think he saw the whole damn thing.”

  Delilah

  “Where were they arrested?” Stationed at the scarred, uneven table, which had been draped in black plastic, Claudio pulled the skin from the first rabbit with skill that spoke of experience, though if he and his daughter, Genni, had been on their own, they would have eaten their kill raw, in wolf form, in the woods. The shifters had brought the meat back to help feed the rest of us.

  Lenore lined up the last of the potatoes on the counter, where Gallagher was on chopping duty. “In a town about an hour north of here,” she said. “Initially, Miri and Lala were held in the local police station’s cryptid containment cell—because we all know how vicious and deadly oracles are.” She rolled her eyes. “But before we fled the land of free Wi-Fi, we checked for an update on the story and the police had already handed them over to a research lab in the cryptid biology department at the University of Maryland.” She shrugged and began rinsing the carrots. “No trial. No court order. Nothing.”

  “That’s how I wound up in the menagerie after I was arrested,” I told her. “Most states leave those decisions up to the police or sheriff’s department.”

  Gallagher lifted the cutting board and scraped cubed potatoes into our big, dented stew pot. “UMD is just under two hours from here. Which means Rommily was right when she led us here. To the cabin.”

  Although “led” might be overstating things a bit. It had actually taken us several days to interpret the oracle’s vision, which had eventually sent us to the general area, then to the cabin, and I hadn’t been sure we’d interpreted her correctly until this very afternoon, when Zy, Lenore and I had seen Rommily’s sisters on the news.

  My gaze strayed to where Rommily was curled up next to Eryx, the minotaur, in front of the large front window, his huge hand slowly stroking her long, dark hair down her back. She was staring out at the woods, but her eyes—though not cloudy with a premonition—looked unfocused. I couldn’t tell that she was processing anything we were saying, or that she was even listening, and for the millionth time, I wondered what she was seeing, when she was obviously not seeing us.

  Eryx, meanwhile, seemed to see and hear everything, which made the fact that his bovine face left him mute that much more tragic and frustrating. He glanced at the whiteboard Genevieve was drawing on in front of the unlit fireplace, and for a second, I thought he’d reach for it. But then he wrapped his free arm around Rommily instead, in silent comfort.

  The bull could read and write better than any of the other former captives, other than Lenore, but his thick, strong hands had crushed every dry-erase marker he’d tried to use to communicate with us. Eventually, he’d given the board and the remaining markers to Genni, who used it to practice her own handwriting.

  “What kind of lab are we talking about?” Zyanya asked from the couch, where she sat sideways so she could see the rest of the room.

  “It’s a research lab, where they do biological studies and experiments in an academic setting,” I explained. “Miri and Lala are better off than if they’d been sent to a product testing lab, but not by much.”

  “Okay, but that’s good news, right?” Claudio’s cleaver thunked through the skinless rabbit into the cutting block. “Surely Mirela and Lala will be easier to get to at this lab than at the police station. Or prison.”

  Lenore nodded as she began peeling the carrots over the trash can. “In theory. I mean, it’ll be easier for me to talk my way past a university cop than a real police officer, assuming we even run into any, but the real problem is visibility. With Kevin’s conviction and the oracles’ arrest, we’re all back in the news again, and half the country seems convinced that we’re to blame for every human who commits a heinous crime.”

  “There was a riot in town today,” Zyanya explained. “People think we’re responsible for that aquarium shooting. Or maybe for that teacher who served poison milk. Or both.”

  “I suspect it’s both.” I shifted in my chair at the table to take some of the pressure off my bladder. “And it was more like a demonstration than a riot. Though there’s definitely enough tension for things to escalate.”

  “Wait.” Claudio frowned at me from across the table, his cleaver in a loose left-handed grip. “They blame us specifically? Or cryptids in general?”

  “The latter,” I told him. “If anyone knew we were here, they would already have dropped a bomb on the cabin.”

  “It sounds to me like more paranoia about a second reaping,” Lenore assured him. “‘Don’t trust your neighbors. Report suspicious activity.’ People seem convinced that the bogeyman is coming for them, even though they rounded up all the surrogates thirty years ago. But paranoid or not, this tense fear is making it riskier than ever for us to appear in public.”

  I shrugged. “Then I propose we not show up on the steps of the lab in broad daylight, carrying bolt cutters and wearing ski masks.”

  The siren broke off a chunk of carrot and threw it at me with a good-natured frown.

  “Seriously, though...” I tossed the carrot into my mouth and spoke around it. “Everything we do is a risk. But Rommily is family. Miri and Lala are family. We owe them our best effort.”

  Genni looked up from her whiteboard and gave me a firm nod.

  Eryx made a bovine snort of approval.

  “I’m not arguing otherwise,” Leno
re insisted. “I’m just saying...we need a pretty solid plan. And maybe we should be ready to abandon the cabin immediately afterward, because once they find out we’re in the area, they’ll knock down every door in a three-state radius to find us.”

  “They might even be expecting us at the lab.” Gallagher chopped into the first carrot, and even after nine months of living in close quarters with him, it still seemed strange to me to see the notoriously fierce fear dearg warrior—my sworn champion and defender—slaughter vegetables, rather than enemies. Though I was grateful that true enemies were in such short supply, at least within the relative security of our cabin. “The police could have transferred Miri and Lala to a lower-security facility specifically to draw us out.”

  “I guess that’s possible,” I conceded. “But that would require virtually unprecedented cooperation between multiple branches of the US government and local authorities. Which I’m going to label as highly unlikely.”

  “All the same...” Gallagher dumped his chopped carrots into the pot. “You should stay here, just in case.”

  “That’s not your call.”

  Gallagher grunted. “Delilah, be reasonable—”

  Zyanya crossed the room and plucked the knife from Gallagher’s hand, then nudged him out of the way with her hip, though he was nearly twice the cheetah shifter’s size. “Why don’t you two take that discussion into the other room?” Her suggestion sounded more like an order.

  I rolled my eyes and followed Gallagher to the bedroom, where he had to duck to keep his cap from hitting the top of the door frame and angle his broad form to the side to fit his shoulders through the opening. “Delilah, I swore on my life that I’d protect you but—”

  “Then come with me to the lab.” I pushed the door closed behind him.

  “—but it’s not just you anymore. It’s the baby. Our baby. You can’t make decisions for her unilaterally.”