by Grace, A. E.
A Change To Bear
Last of the Shapeshifters
By
A.E. Grace
* * *
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Table of Contents:
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
License
Terry Spencer stormed down the street, each forward step building up her confidence. A drop of cool water rolled down the bridge of her nose and then dropped straight off it. This was the right thing to do. She told herself that over and over as her flats slapped against the pavement.
With her hair worn in a high ponytail of wavy chestnut-brown, it bobbed up and down with her steps, every bit as turbulent as the tremors of doubt and insecurity she had welling in her stomach. Hearing the rain-smudged grumble of a car behind her, she flicked her umbrella to the side, angled it against the wind, and all just in time to catch a filthy spray of drain water. She had saved herself the boredom of being cross and unable to do anything about it, except of course for her wet feet and shoes. But that was why she had worn the oldest, grubbiest flats she had, ones she reserved for the Sundays when she helped her father weed the small back garden.
With a rush of victory at having shielded herself against the driver’s inconsiderate broadside, she wheeled around, focused on the blurred red brake lights of his car, and put up her middle finger.
“Prick!” she yelled. She resumed her course, feeling quite happy with herself, and saw a young mother holding her toddler in one arm and an umbrella in the other barely two meters away. Terry bit her teeth together, exchanged an embarrassed glance with the woman, muttered a quiet apology as she put her head down and sidled past her. Terry was no stranger to foot-in-mouth moments, and so her well-practiced ego recovered with ease.
She rounded the corner at the end of her street, saw a great corridor of gray mist kicked up by the traffic, and ducked her head down and crossed the road. She could almost imagine that she was tasting the tarmac, garnished with a bit of tire.
Her feet, now completely soaked, squelched all the way up the high street. She found the nearest (and only) travel agent, and proceeded to whip herself inside as quickly as possible. She stepped onto a mushy carpet, felt it depress like a half-flat tire, and in a flurry of movement, her coat was off, the umbrella was in a blue bucket placed near the door, and strands of her hair that has loosened themselves were tucked behind her ears.
“Horrible outside, isn’t it?” a young man said, walking toward her with his hands clasped together. He looked underfed in a bad way, which distorted his ill-fitting suit. He looked too young, and Terry, consequently, wasn’t too convinced.
“Yes,” she agreed, smiling. She looked around the small office, but all she saw were empty desks. “Where is everybody? And why is it so warm?” The heating was on, but someone had fiddled with the temperature controls with excessive bravado. It was a rainy day at the tail end of spring, not mid-January.
The young man – boy, to be fair – scanned around, and paused, unable to think up a suitable explanation to either question. “Is there something I can help you with?” he asked, apparently deciding to abandon the attempt altogether.
“I need to book a flight, after which I’ll be switching onto a couple of trains,” Terry said. No, she stated. She nodded afterward once, a bold and decisive punctuation point. It was more for her own benefit. She was about to turn her life upside down, after all. She had to at least look and sound confident, if only for herself.
“Okay, that should be fine. If you would please?” The boy gestured at an empty seat at one of the desks. She peered at him for a moment. He did look young. His voice was a little high-pitched and tinny, too. If she bumped into him wearing a school uniform, she wouldn’t blink.
“Are you an intern?” Terry asked. She noticed that the boy recoiled slightly, and she decided it would be best to soften the question a bit. “I only ask because it’s very urgent, and I need to make sure that everything is done correctly.”
“I understand,” he said, putting up his hands a little below his chest. “But you’re in very good hands. Trust me.” He smiled at her, blue eyes wide.
“Okay.” Terry took a deep breath, tried her best to calm her nerves, but found that she couldn’t manage to do so. She pulled out the black metal chair, sat down on a cushion that did little to soften the seat, and put her elbows on the desk. She leaned forward, resting her chin onto her two balled fists, and peered at her unadorned fingers. “Well, you see,” she began, speaking first at her hand, before looking up to direct her speech at the young travel agent. “I’m planning on going to Vietnam by way of Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and to then walk across the border at Pingxiang, which should plop me out pretty much right into Hanoi. Does that sound like a good idea?”
The young man blinked. “Yes,” he said. “Miss?”
“Spencer. But call me Terry.”
“Tom,” he said, and he pointed at himself. “Is my name,” he added, realizing the unnecessary clarification a step too late.
Terry offered a brief smile. “Okay, so what do I need to do to make this happen?”
“Well,” he said, switching into work-mode. “Let me take a look here. When were you planning on leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” he echoed in surprise. “Okay, well, I can get you on a flight to Hong Kong tomorrow evening, but it’s a late flight, last one out of Heathrow.”
“Great.”
“And you wanted to get to Guangzhou by train?”
“Yes.”
“And how long were you planning on staying in Hong Kong for?”
“I don’t know,” Terry said. She extended a finger toward him, her chin now resting on her two thumbs. “What do you suggest?”
“A few days might be quite fun. Lots of shopping to do?” he tried.
“I’m not going to shop, but thanks for the thought. I’m going to be backpacking through Vietnam, so the less I carry, the better.”
“Ah, I understand. Well, then, I would suggest a couple of days, take in the sights, and then you can move on.”
“Wonderful. Let’s do that.”
Tom paused for a moment, humming. “And what sort of accommodation did you have in mind?”
Terry looked at him, and was beginning to realize she hadn’t really thought this through. “Something cheap, not too far away from everything-”
“Nothing’s too far away from anything in Hong Kong,” he interrupted.
“Oh, you’ve been?”
“Stopped off on my way back from Melbourne, which was where I went to university.”
“Ah,” Terry murmured. So the boy was at least twenty one. It didn’t fill her with confidence. “Well, something two star-ish would do. My budget isn’t huge.”
“Okay,” he replied, pecking away at his computer. He presented a tablet to her, and on it was a glossy digital world map. Hong Kong was highlighted in a vibrant red, barely a pinprick, a dot on the south eastern coast of the enormous mass of land that was China. A line extended from it leading all the way to London. It was almost like a tether, Terry thought, and that was something she didn’t want. “This will demonstrate to you your route.”
“Well, you can see reviews of hotels we pull up and things like that. It’s quite fancy, but newly introduced, so we’re all still getting the hang of it around here.”
“Right,” Terry said, ignoring the thing. “And after Hong Kong I’ll be catching a train up to Guangzhou where I won’t spend any time, as I want to get on a connecting train straight to Pingxiang, so I can be in Vietnam the same day.”
Tom clicked about on his computer for a bit. “Well, the good news is that getting to Guangzhou is easy, and there’s no particular need to make advanced bookings, but you can if you want.”
“I do.”
“But getting to the border will take you on an overnight train. So you won’t be in Vietnam the same day.”
“Really?” Terry asked. She hadn’t remembered reading that bit.
“Well, it is quite a long way.”
“Can I get my own cabin?”
“Well, singles aren’t available. There are two-bed cabins and four-bed ones. You could always buy both beds in a two-bed room if you want the privacy.”
Terry thought about it for a moment. Did she want to share an overnight train ride with a stranger in a foreign country? The answer to that came quickly to her. “Let’s do that,” she said, nodding.
“Right. Well, that leg will be from Guangzhou to Nanning.” He pointed down at the tablet, and Terry could see the red line extend up into southern China, and then weave west toward Vietnam. “From there, you’ll catch a connecting train to Pingxiang – and that’s only a couple of hours – from where you’ll be able to walk across the border. So you’ll be in Vietnam one day after you leave Hong Kong.”
“Fine,” Terry said. “Let’s book it.”
“Did you want to arrange accommodation for Vietnam, too? I presume you’re going to Hanoi first?”
“I am, but I don’t,” she informed him. “I’m going to organize that when I get there. You know,” she added, smiling. “Have a bit of an adventure.”
“That sounds fantastic,” Tom said. He looked at her for a moment too long, and Terry rapidly blinked at him a few times. “Oh, yes,” he said, snapping out of whatever thoughts he was having. “Were you planning on flying back to the UK from Vietnam? Do you want to book those tickets now?”
“Eventually,” Terry said. “But I don’t know when that will be.” She noticed that she stumbled over the words a touch.
“Oh,” Tom murmured.
“Yeah. So can we do all of that?”
“Of course, that’ll be no problem. I’ll just need to go over some things with you, including our policies, insurance, and of course our fee, which is the lowest of the five major-.”
“Yes, alright.”
“We can also arrange traveler’s checks for you here,” he said, recovering from the interruption well enough.
“Sounds good.”
“We can’t do currency conversions-”
“Obviously.”
“But we can recommend certain banks or converters with the best rates.”
“Perfect.”
“Alright,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m just going to get all the relevant information printed, and we’ll go through it together.”
“Good,” Terry chirped, watching him as he got up from his desk, his suit hanging awkwardly off his meatless body.
“I think what you’re doing is very brave,” he said a moment later.
“Sorry?” She looked up at him and then back down at the nail she was nibbling on, seeing its roughened edge.
“Leaving like that, just going away.”
“How do you know that’s what I’m doing?”
Tom shrugged. He waited for the printer to finish. Terry tapped her foot to the sound of the printer’s ink cartridge zipping across the paper, stopping every now and then to gather itself. It sounded a bit like her brothers when they reloaded their paintball guns.
And when everything was sorted, relief coursed through her. She knew she wanted to do this, but she didn’t think she’d have the guts to actually see it through. Now she had her one-way ticket booked. Now she had her train tickets booked. Now she had paid for it all. The simple truth was that now she just had to get on with it. The sense of direction calmed her turbulent doubts, and she smiled at the young man.
“Thank you for your help, Tom.”
“It’s no problem at-” The sound of the door to the back office opening cut him short, and out walked an older woman, hair graying, and a severe face dotted with freckles. She was obviously the manager.
“Tom, you were supposed to buzz back here if someone came in.”
“It’s alright, Mrs. Peterson, everything is sorted.”
“Everything is sorted?” the woman repeated. She was quite annoyed, and Terry figured that it was probably time to step in.
“Everything is fine,” she said, looking between them. “Everything is actually sorted.” She nodded at the woman.
The manager stopped her warpath-like advance on Tom, and forced a strained smile at Terry. “Are you sure you don’t want to go over everything with me?”
“Quite sure,” Terry replied. She wasn’t going to give herself the chance to cancel it all. “Thank you again, Tom. You did wonderfully.” She looked at him as she turned, put on her coat, picked up her umbrella, and opened the glass door.
Beneath the howl of the wind, and the drum of the rain, she could hear the manager scolding the young boy. The last thing she heard before the door swung shut behind her was: “You’re just an intern!”
*
Liam felt a stab of revulsion for the umpteenth time as he looked at the grotesque form of Leon before him. The thing, Leon, existed in mid-shift, and only barely resembled something human. And no matter how often he saw him, Liam could never get used to the sight. At nearly seven feet tall, Leon looked like a monster straight out of fiction. His muscular, vast, and naked body was long, almost stretched, like he was the walking reflection of a carnival funny mirror. His stringy, vein-riddled arms ended in large and padded palms with dagger-length claw-tipped fingers. Out of his narrow waist jutted a wide hipbone, and extended two muscular thighs, oval in shape, and beneath perpetually-bent knees were rhomboid lower legs with an odd curve just before the ankles, which was broken-bone body horror enough to make anyone gag. Long, matted and shaggy gray hair growing down the back of his entire body gave off the impression that he was wearing some kind of camouflage suit, or that he was a vagrant who had chanced upon a designer fur coat. The half-snout jutting out in front of diminutive yellow eyes, high pointed ears which each had chunks of missing cartilage, was the visage of a wolf.
Unmistakable, but grotesque.
“Don’t look so disgusted,” the creature said with a slight lisp. His voice was deep and hissy, more of a snarl than proper enunciation, and Liam had to struggle to make sense of the words. He continued to be surprised that the half-wolf, half-man was able to form the sound of words at all, especially the common, everyday clusters of consonants. It seemed highly unlikely that that Leon’s tongue could work properly like a human’s, especially not with the inch-long shards of yellow killing enamel that protruded from his gums.
The hot and sticky jungle humidity seemed to hang thicker than usual, as though the air itself was congealing. “You look disgusting,” Liam responded. “So I look disgusted.”
“You think so?” the beast asked him. “I think I look quite fantastic, myself.” He strutted toward Liam before executing a playful pirouette. For such a large and hulking thing, the creature had surprising agility. Even grace, Liam had to admit.
“Did you really forget how to change?” he asked. His narrow eyes grew narrower. “Or are you just doing this for my benefit?”
“Your benefit?” Leon said, shaking his wolf-head. “You spoke to Keegan yourself, did you not?”
“I did.” Liam had met the angel-faced boy in Brunei, had seen him party it up in one of the city’s most happening bars. Keegan
had told him that night, through a fog of blacklight-stained cigarette smoke, above the din of thumping dubstep, and amongst the throng of drunk and high half-naked men, that in the jungle, wandering aimlessly up and down the border, there lived a monstrous thing, half a man and half an animal. The drunken rambling had, of course, been of great interest to Liam. He had set off the very next morning, ignoring the warnings of a stubborn typhoon approaching.
“And didn’t he warn you of my appearance?”
“He did.” Liam had no problem remembering, all those years ago, that he hadn’t believed Keegan.
“He was my lover.”
“I already suspected that, from the way he spoke of you.”
“Oh?” Leon’s was quite interested. “And what did he have to say about me?”
“That you were worse on the inside.”
“Ha!”
“I saw him in a bar. He was drunk.”
“Yes? And what were you doing in there?”
“Research.”
“Research?” Leon repeated, before a look of understanding broke across his face. “You were asking about someone, though I suspect it was not me. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Liam admitted. He was surprised that even though Leon had a half-snout, and a wolf’s eyes and ears, he was still somehow capable of emoting, and not just the basics, either. There was a remarkable degree of facial expression.
The beast spoke after a pause. “It is the truth. I have been like this for longer than you know. Trust me, dear Liam. I am not putting on anything for you.” Leon’s eyes twinkled.
“Right.”
“But I am a little saddened to say that it is not the same, being like this. In some ways, it’s better. But in many ways, it is also not. Such is the way of life, am I right, boy?” He didn’t wait for Liam to respond. “But I suppose you could say there are some regrets, yes.”
“So if you could, you would remember the shift?”
“I have been this way for longer than you can fathom,” Leon said. “The people here tell legends about me. They carve my grandness into the bark of trees, as warning signs that I’d been sighted, maybe a glimpse through leaves and vines, maybe a blur in the blackness of night.”