Otherkin

by Nina Berry

  Astonishment filled me. It’s got to be a trick, or a mistake. I felt for the edge of the examining table for support.

  Mom sat down hard in her chair. “But that just doesn’t happen.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “At least, not until now. I’d like to take some photographs of Desdemona’s back and have my colleague Dr. Jessup come in and examine her as well, if that’s all right with you both. We need a second and perhaps a third opinion on this situation, and it needs to be monitored very closely.”

  “That’s why the brace felt so awful today,” I said faintly. “Since last night it felt wrong.”

  Dr. Mwesi nodded. “It doesn’t fit you anymore. We’ll need to make a thorough list of all your recent activities and probably do some more tests. This is—this is most unexpected.”

  For the next hour a parade of doctors came in and looked at my spine. They poked at my muscles, prodded my vertebrae, took blood, urine, and several more X-rays. Dr. Mwesi finally sent us home with the brace in hand, telling me I wouldn’t need it for now. He worried that my muscles would be too weak from years in the brace to support my newly straight spine and arranged for a generic elastic support for me to wear whenever I wasn’t sleeping. The nurse would be calling to set up physical therapy sessions to build up the strength in my back to prevent a possible relapse.

  But my back didn’t feel feeble. Without the brace I felt light as a feather. In the car on the way home, Mom and I sat in silence as her favorite opera played on the radio.

  I twisted to look at the backseat. There sat the brace, leaning to one side, lonely as a skeleton. And here I sat, wearing only a soft elastic band around my waist, able to twist. I ran one hand down my side and rested it on my stomach, something I hadn’t done in two years. My big dress draped over my flat belly and the points of my hip bones. They looked unfamiliar, as if my body belonged to someone else. This body had no sharp edges, strange bumps, or squared-off shapes. I was soft, slender, strong.

  “How do you feel?” Mom said.

  “Weird,” I said.

  “It is pretty strange.” We headed down Kenneth Street toward home. She looked in the rearview mirror at the brace. “I’m afraid to get rid of it.”

  “I know. What if I relapse or something?” I said. “It happened so fast. Let’s wait a little while. Do you think it would burn?”

  “Probably melt, if we could make a fire big enough.” She smiled. “How about next month we have a big, poisonous plastic bonfire at the beach?”

  I laughed. “We could roast marshmallows over it and die.”

  “Best Christmas plans ever,” she said.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, honey.” We turned into the driveway.

  I plucked at the fabric over my torso. “Do you think maybe I could get some dresses that have waists?”

  “Of course!” She turned the key, then patted my knee. “We’ll go shopping this weekend. You’ll need new jeans, new skirts. I think I’ve got a dress that’s too long for me that would look good on you. Come on, let’s go see.”

  The afternoon passed with no thought of homework as we raided Mom’s closet and dug deep into mine, looking for clothes that would flatter my waist, tiny thanks to years of being squeezed by the brace. When Richard came home, I greeted him wearing Mom’s green wrap dress. At the good news, he danced me around the living room, his hand lightly on my waist. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt anything other than plastic there.

  It wasn’t until after dinner that I remembered that Caleb was supposed to call me. I double-checked my cell phone and tried to pay attention to my biology homework. But the words swam before my eyes. My mind kept zooming back to how I’d left him by the tree to hunt down the Tribunal’s hard drive all by himself. Had they caught up with him? Maybe he’d tried to steal a phone and been caught by the police.

  I volunteered to take the trash out. I rolled the bins out to the curb, then walked a block up and down Kenneth Street, looking for the white BMW.

  The stars looked cold and lost in the vast sky above me. I stared up at them and tried to summon the feeling I’d had in the school bathroom that afternoon, to tap into the creature that lay hidden inside me. I imagined my senses coming alive again, my hearing sharpening, my nose able to distinguish the smallest odor.

  I inhaled deeply and caught the scent of warm pavement cooling in the night air, the sharper tang of the cypresses, the exhaust of a car as it rolled by. But it was nothing like I’d sensed earlier that day. My ears caught the rustle of the wind in the trees, the bark of a dog down the street, my own heartbeat. But they didn’t sound any different from any other night of my life.

  I scanned up and down the street again, saw a skunk walk unhurriedly across the road, watched a neighbor draw his curtains, and the faint light of the not-yet-risen moon rim the edge of the hills. The night was beautiful. A longing to venture out into it, to make it my own, stole over me.

  By eleven o’clock I wished Mom and Richard a good night and forced myself to lie down in my bed. After a minute I got up and stared out the window. It was my first night in two years sleeping without the brace, now shoved into the back of my closet. I should be rolling around in the blankets, enjoying the feel of the soft mattress beneath me, able now to lie on my stomach and not just my back. But I couldn’t enjoy it. I picked up a book. Enough streetlight spilled through my window to allow me to read No Exit for English class without turning my lamp on. I’d often read late into the night this way, so that my mother didn’t see the light under my door. Did other kids read like this? Or had it been my tiger night vision at work all those years?

  I must have dozed off at some point, because I woke up and looked at the clock. 3:18 a.m. I stretched and noticed the window screen fluttering.

  Then I saw the figure at the foot of my bed pointing a rifle at my heart.

  I gasped, electrified by fear. Then I rolled. Something whooshed past my shoulder and thunked into the mattress. I fell to the floor on my back. The figure, all in gray with a ski mask over his face, aimed at me again. I spun to my feet, faster than I thought possible. Another missile punched into the floor. It was a dart, just like the one they’d used to kidnap me the first time.

  “Demonspawn,” said the intruder.

  My mother’s scream echoed down the hall. My whole body vibrated as something thumped hard against the floor next door. My parents’ room. Behind the tiny mouth hole of the ski mask, the man was smiling.

  He pumped the long gun to prime another dart. I dove at him low, catching him at the knees. He stumbled back, arms flailing, and crashed into my dresser. I grabbed the butt of the gun and wrenched it from him. He scrambled away from me as I aimed it at his chest.

  “You can’t escape,” he said.

  “I was just about to say that,” I said, and pulled the trigger.

  He grunted as the barb stabbed into his stomach. So much for my aim. He pulled it out, but his eyes were already closing, and he slumped to the floor. I eyeballed the gun. No more darts. I flung it at the man’s head and missed.

  My mother shrieked again from the other room. I leapt over to my nightstand and grabbed my phone, dialing 911. The phone beeped. The display read “Call Failed.” My phones were always mysteriously breaking, so I redialed frantically, but got the same message. Had they knocked out the cell tower?

  I threw down the phone and hurtled out of my room. Over my rapid breathing I heard a struggle in my parents’ bedroom, my mother’s third cry suddenly cut off.

  I crouched at the closed door to their room. A man whispered, “Hold her still, you fool!”

  I pushed the door open. In a second I took it in: Richard lay unmoving on the floor, the sharp smell from the tranquilizer darts coming from his neck; a blur of two men fought with my mother, her head covered in a black hood. Her arms flailed at them, her legs kicking wildly. One man turned his head as I entered. Behind the gray ski mask I recognized his brown eyes—Lazar.

  White heat p
oured down my spine, fueled by a furnace in my heart. Something ripped across my shoulders and down my arms. I fell onto all fours and shook off the shreds of my pajamas. Power coursed through me, flexing the great muscles in my hind legs, forepaws, and jaw. My claws dug into the carpet as my whiskers fanned out, assessing the currents of the air in the room. What had been blurry and dark before now came into crystal-sharp focus. I could smell the hot blood near the skin at their necks. Nothing would stop me from sinking my teeth into them.

  I leapt as Lazar’s eyes widened. He shouted “Shifter!” He let go of my mother to spin out of my way.

  The other man holding her was not as fast. I landed almost on top of him, grabbing his shoulders with both front paws. He screamed as I dug my claws in. The screaming stopped as I sank my teeth into his throat. The blood ran hot and sharp over my tongue. I let him go and he flopped to the ground like a rag doll. A syringe rolled out of his lifeless hand. It smelled like Richard’s neck.

  My mother scrambled away from me, ripping the hood from her head. Her eyes bulged in terror. But I couldn’t worry about that now.

  I turned to Lazar. Something thudded into my side. Searing pain slashed down my body. A guttural yowl escaped me. I smelled more blood, my own.

  Lazar held a shiny pistol, exactly like the one we’d found in the BMW. Smoke rose from its barrel. He’d shot me with a silver bullet. As he raised the gun to fire again, I saw that he was fast.

  But he was human. I was not. Silver or no silver, I was faster.

  I lashed out, claws extended. He yelled in pain, and the gun flew out of his hand. Dark blood ran down his fingers.

  He stared at me, backing up toward the window. “You will go back,” he said, and I felt the deep harmonic thrum in his voice. “Go back to the demonlands . . .” He raised his arm to point at me, and I realized he was going to send my tiger-self back into shadow.

  Pushing back the agony of the bullet the way I had shoved back the pain of the brace for two years, I dug my back legs deep into the carpet and launched myself at him. My head and left shoulder slammed into his torso, and we both flew backward. We crashed through the window behind him, smashing it to pieces. The ground came at me fast. Instinctively I spread my legs out, bending ankle, knee, and shoulder joints as we landed.

  Lazar lay beneath me, eyes closed. I smelled more blood oozing from new cuts on his back and legs from the broken window. I butted my nose against him, sniffing. His breath came shallow and fast. He didn’t flinch as I rolled him. He was out cold. I bit gently into his backpack and lifted him as a cat lifts a kitten. He was heavy, but nothing I couldn’t manage.

  I paused to look around, ears cocked. A light went on in the neighbor’s bedroom. Better for them to see just a broken window than a tiger with a man in her mouth. I put my forepaws on the windowsill and dragged Lazar back inside. Maybe if we kept the lights off, no one would notice the broken glass. Some of the shards sliced through my fur. None of it hurt like the silver bullet. Fiery bursts of pain spread outward from where it lay in my side, sickening me.

  I dropped Lazar onto my mother’s rug and bounded over to Richard’s prone body. When I looked up, she was standing in the doorway. She stared at me with a mixture of fear and wonder.

  “What have you done with Desdemona?” she asked, but not as if she expected an answer. She lifted her arm and pointed the shiny gun at me. Her hand shook, and the muzzle of the gun wavered. She must’ve checked my room, seen that I was gone, and grabbed Lazar’s gun.

  I needed to tell her who I was, but all I could do was utter a sort of growling whine. She swallowed, and I wondered why she didn’t just shoot. Her eyes flickered down to Richard’s body, lying beneath me. She didn’t want to miss or wound the tiger further, in case that tiger took it out on her husband.

  I leaned my head down to Richard and licked his face. Mom inhaled with fear as my tongue rasped over his cheek. Richard’s breath warmed my whiskers. I could hear the blood still pumping through him. He was only unconscious. As I lifted my head, I saw her eyebrows come together in a question. Then I backed away from Richard. She kept the shaky gun trained on me.

  I stopped to paw the backpack off of Lazar, not worried if he took a few more scratches. I picked the pack up in my mouth and tossed it toward Mom. She stepped back in shock as it landed at her feet. I turned my back to her, walked to the far corner of the room, and lay down. The bullet in my side throbbed with every breath. Blood oozed down my leg.

  Mom stood there for another long moment, the pack at her feet, the gun trained on me. “Goddess help me,” she said, her voice wobbling more than the gun. “There’s a tiger in my house.”

  The pain in her eyes made me desperate to speak to her. But I couldn’t. I shut my eyes and thought about my human arms and legs, my long red hair, my green eyes, hoping my coiled tiger form would shed itself to reveal me beneath. But nothing happened. I had no idea how to change back.

  Mom was looking down at Richard, tears in her eyes. Then she glared at me. “I need to call for help, but I can’t leave him here with you.”

  I nodded my head. It felt unnatural in this body, but I did it.

  Mom’s eyes widened. “Did you just nod at me?”

  I bobbed my head up and down.

  “This is insane,” said Mom. I couldn’t shrug my tiger shoulders, but it was so true. “You attacked those men, but not me, not Richard. And you threw this pack at me. Do . . . do you want me to look inside?”

  I nodded again vigorously. “Okay.” Mom wiped her free hand across her eyes and crouched down by the pack. “I’ve gone totally crazy and I’m taking orders from a tiger.”

  I dipped my head again. She shook her head in disbelief as she unzipped the backpack and reached in. “Drugs.” She pulled out a bottle and peered at the label. “Some kind of tranquilizer, and syringes!” She pulled out a syringe in a tube. “Is this what they put in Richard? What they wanted to do to me?”

  I nodded, very low and emphatically.

  “But why?” she said. “And where did you come from? Where’s my daughter?”

  Bam, bam, bam! A fierce pounding on our front door echoed through the house. Mom startled to her feet, forgetting to point the gun at me.

  “Dez!” It was Caleb’s voice, shouting at the front door. My heart jumped; my ears pricked. He was all right. And he had come back to me. “Desdemona, it’s Caleb, let me in!”

  “Caleb?” said Mom. “Desdemona’s Caleb? What is he doing here?” She raised her voice. “Call the cops! Get an ambulance! We’ve been attacked, and there’s a dangerous animal in here with wounded men!”

  “Mrs. Grey?” Caleb’s voice came down in volume, but was no less urgent. “Mrs. Grey, let me in. I can help you. I can explain everything. Don’t worry about the tiger, she won’t hurt you.”

  “How did he know . . .” She looked at me in astonishment, then yelled louder. “How did you know about the tiger?”

  “I told you, I can explain everything.” Something moved in the lock on the front door. Caleb’s voice became smooth and soothing as a velvet blanket. “Dez showed me where you hide the front door key, so I’m going to let myself in. I’m a friend, don’t worry.”

  Mom took a deep, calming breath. “Okay, but move slowly. I’ve got a gun on the tiger, but it’s already wounded and I don’t know what it’ll do.”

  “Wounded?” The front door burst open, and I heard feet moving swiftly toward us. Before I could see him, I heard the unique beat of Caleb’s heart, the determined pattern of his footfalls. Maybe I would live through this night after all.

  CHAPTER 10

  Caleb stood in the doorway of my parents’ wrecked bedroom. I’d never seen anything more wonderful. His black eyes took me in. I got to all fours slowly, torrents of agony rippling down my side from the silver bullet still lodged there.

  As I moved, my mother aimed the gun at me again, glancing back at Caleb a few feet behind her. “Be careful. It’s wounded, and it killed one of those men.”

/>   But Caleb’s eyes didn’t waver from me. An awestruck smile lit his face. “Magnificent,” he said, walking toward me. “My God, Dez, I should have known you’d be this glorious.”

  His voice warmed me. But my mother shot him a look you’d give a crazy man. “Don’t get any closer! I might have to shoot it.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, eyes fixed on me. “She saved you, didn’t you, Dez?”

  “Stop calling it that!” Mom’s voice hit an edge of hysteria. I couldn’t blame her.

  “No,” Caleb said, in the most reasonable voice in the world. “No, because you see, this is your daughter. This tiger is Desdemona.”

  Mom frowned, incredulous, as Caleb edged toward me, reaching out his hand. I walked to him, my head as high as his chest. He flinched backward involuntarily, eyes wide, as I got close. I knew then how terrifying I must look if even he could not contain his fear.

  I sat and bowed my head, to show him he had no cause for alarm.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . instinct,” he said, and knelt in front of me.

  I let out something like a meow. Caleb leaned in and rested his forehead against mine. We breathed each other’s breath. Calm flooded over me. We would get through this together.

  My mother cleared her throat. “Is this your tiger?”

  Caleb laughed, tracing one of the stripes on my left front paw with his finger. “Tigers don’t belong to anyone,” he said. “But this is your daughter. She has a special gift, and we need to get her back to her human form so we can help her.” To me, he added, “You’re wounded. Let me see.”

  As my mother shook her head and mouthed “No,” I lowered myself with a groan to lie down on my unwounded side. Caleb examined the oozing hole in my flank.

  “Looks like the bullet is still inside her,” he said, looking up at my mom. “Is that the gun that shot her?”

  She looked blankly at the gun in her hand. “Yes. But I didn’t do it. He did.” She pointed at Lazar, still lying unconscious on the floor. “And they shot some kind of tranquilizer into my husband. There’s another man in gray in Desdemona’s room, but he’s out cold.”