Otherkin

by Nina Berry

  London cocked her head toward him, as if wondering what that meant. He sprinkled salt over the objurer as I backed up toward the warehouse, watching. He’d lived with these people, the same people who had murdered his mother. He hummed, calling to shadow as the salt erupted into a gluey yellow mess. The woman wouldn’t be moving for a while.

  Voices cut through the darkness from beyond the nearest buildings. The people in the residences behind the warehouse would soon be here to find out what had happened to the generator. Caleb looked in that direction, catching the sound a moment after me. We needed to move fast.

  London stood by the door into the warehouse. Her ears pricked forward, and then something inside crashed. A man cried out.

  The door was locked. Killing the generator hadn’t disabled the deadbolt. As glass splintered inside, Caleb tried a key from the batch we’d stolen from Lazar. But none of them fit. They had changed the locks. So I fumbled in my jeans pocket for November’s lockpicks. Caleb swiped them from me, inserted one into the lower part of the keyhole, then jiggled the other at the top. Two heartbeats later, the lock clicked open.

  “I knew you were good, but . . .” I shook my head at him.

  He flashed me a grin and threw the door open. “There’s a long list of things I’m good at,” he said. “And I’ve had you in mind for numbers six through twelve for a while now.”

  I didn’t have time to react as London charged in. Then I got in the doorway first, blocking Caleb. “I see better in the dark, remember?”

  He bowed, and I stepped inside, my pupils opening to take in the cavernous space. To the right lay a familiar squat, shiny cage. My skin crawled at the sight, and even at this distance, the pain all that silver had inflicted on me echoed through my body. Now a bulky prostrate male with dark brown skin in a too-short hospital gown filled the cage. His long, straight black hair spilled out between the bars. Siku, still unconscious.

  Along the far wall lay a table, an overturned camping chair, and a man in white, lying on the floor. He wriggled and grunted like a kid with poison ivy who couldn’t reach the itchy spot. A foot-long bump moved under his white shirt, slithering down toward his belt. November. One of his bleeding hands looked useless, but the other was plucking at the lump under his shirt. Then a streak of gray lunged, and London sank her teeth into his arm.

  He screamed. London shook his arm, and his whole body flailed helplessly.

  “London’s got it covered,” I said to Caleb. “The cage is over here.” He relocked the door behind us as my hand slipped into his to pull him over to Siku’s prison. Even getting within a few feet of the silver made my skin itch.

  “Now I see it,” said Caleb as he got right up to the bars of the cage and hunkered down near Siku’s head. “Looks like the silver’s keeping him unconscious.” He cast a glance back at me. His mouth tightened as he registered my pain. “Don’t come any closer.”

  I backed up a step. By the overturned chair, something thumped. London let go of the man’s bleeding arm. His head slumped to the side, eyes closed, a bloody bump on the side where it had struck the wall. November’s head poked up through the neck of the guy’s shirt, nose twitching.

  “She’s the rat from hell!” I said. “Can you guys guard the door? They’ll be coming in any second.”

  London trotted to the door, ears up, as November climbed up my legs to stand on my shoulder. London yipped. Someone was approaching.

  “Did the guard here have any weapons?” I asked November, turning toward the unconscious man on the floor.

  She cheeped and ran down the line of my body as if it were a racetrack, then bounded over to a long, lean silhouette propped against the wall. I strode over and recognized it—a tranquilizer gun, loaded with several darts coated with tranquilizer that would quickly send anyone, otherkin or not, to sleep. I picked it up, grateful that the gun itself was not made of silver. Grabbing the table by the back wall, I pulled it over the floor, then turned it on its side. The shiny metal surface stood between us and the door. I crouched down behind it, ninety percent of my body covered, and rested the barrel of the tranquilizer gun across the top.

  “Okay, we all cover for Caleb, keeping them back until he gets Siku out,” I said. “Only one of them can get through the door at a time. They’ll have seen the two objurers we disabled outside, so they’ll be ready for us. Don’t give them a chance to fire.”

  London barked agreement and pressed herself against the wall next to the door as keys scraped in the lock outside and voices spoke urgently to each other.

  Caleb grabbed the tranquilizer gun from me. “The lockpicks are taking too long. Use the Shadow Blade.”

  Of course. I knelt down by the door to Siku’s cage as Caleb took my place, covering the door with the tranquilizer gun. Trembling from the silver, I drew the blade. My skin calmed, as if doused in cool water. With the blade in my hand, I felt as if no metal, not even silver, could hurt me.

  The door trembled as a key rattled in the lock. London crouched, ready to leap. November was climbing up the doorframe and made it to the top just as the door flew open. The muzzle of a rifle flashed as London leapt for the throat of the man wielding it. Bullets sprayed across the floor to my right before he fell under two hundred pounds of wolf.

  The man behind him stepped in, aiming at London, but November dropped down onto his head, rat claws extended. He yelled out and swiped at her, giving Caleb a chance to fire at the person behind him, a woman with another automatic weapon. His dart hit her in the neck. She winced, staggered, then fell. Caleb sighted down the barrel at the man trying to keep a rat from crawling down his pants and shot a dart into his leg. He gurgled and slumped. The door was now full of prostrate bodies in white. No one else stood in the doorway. Yet.

  I lowered the blade’s foggy edge onto the block of metal that housed the lock on Siku’s cage. The faint hum I always heard coming from silver turned into a hiss. The knife cut through it like pudding and came out the other side darker than before. Its edge, normally blurry, had sharpened, as if pleased to have taken such a large bite.

  “Awesome.” Caleb handed the air gun to me, opened the cage door, and dragged Siku out of the low-ceilinged enclosure. I didn’t want to sheathe the blade. I wanted to cut that cage to pieces so that no one, shifter or otherwise, could ever be held captive there again. But there wasn’t time. I slid the blade back into its scabbard and felt somehow that as long as it was in my hand or at my side, it would remain a knife and not become the brace. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. I made myself leave the blade alone and checked the air gun. Three shots of tranquilizer left.

  Caleb laid Siku on the cement floor, away from the silver of the cage. Siku stirred and coughed. Caleb pulled out a big blue marble from his duffle bag and hummed a wavy tune. Water trickled out of it, and he held it over Siku’s mouth. The big guy’s eyes opened and he swallowed eagerly.

  Over by the door, November was chirping like a canary. She scampered to Siku and crawled up his shoulder to sit on his chest, rubbing her whiskers on his chin.

  Siku raised one hand to cradle her round body against him. “Hello, chitterbox,” he said.

  I grinned down at them. “How are you feeling?”

  Siku sat up, grunting and holding November so she didn’t slip. “Better,” he said. He lifted his eyes to mine, then to Caleb, not smiling. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  Caleb put the blue marble in his bag. “We still have to get you and Amaris out of here.”

  “Amaris?” Siku lumbered to his feet.

  It was time to tell them everything, now that Siku understood we would never abandon him. “Caleb’s half sister is being kept here against her will.”

  Siku pursed his lips and considered Caleb. “Okay, then.”

  London gave a vicious bark that sharpened into a painful whine. Over by the door, someone was humming.

  “I command you, return to shadow,” sang a familiar male voice, strong and certain. Lazar stood in the doorway, his blo
nd head haloed in the moonlight, pointing at London. She tried to leap at him, but her legs shuddered and collapsed as the outline of her form shifted, and human once more, she fell flat on her face right in front of him.

  Lazar placed the muzzle of his pistol against her head. “Move and she’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Caleb stepped forward. Lazar’s finger tightened on the trigger, and London winced as he ground the point of the gun into the back of her head. She lay in the doorway naked and facedown, her hands gripping the floor with white knuckles. “I’d love to kill one of your friends right in front of you, brother,” Lazar said.

  Caleb checked himself, and we all stood frozen in a strange tableau. Only November, perched on Siku’s shoulder, let loose a stream of ferocious shrieks.

  “Didn’t he tell you?” Lazar smiled with blue-white, even teeth so like his father’s. “He’s my half brother. He lived with us. But he couldn’t hack it as an objurer and turned traitor.”

  I could see the resemblance to Caleb now. He had the same tall, broad-shouldered frame and handsome, high-cheekboned face, with a voice like steel encased in velvet, bright blond day to Caleb’s night.

  “Caleb.” It was Siku who spoke. “I hope you don’t mind if I tear your half brother to pieces.”

  “Save some for me,” said Caleb, his eyes burning. “I can send the pieces to our dear father.”

  “So you don’t care if she dies.” Lazar straightened, his pistol still aimed at London. “Did you feel the same way when you left your mother to die alone?”

  Caleb lurched forward, an ominous, low note vibrating in his chest. I put my hand on his arm. “Not yet.” I could feel the effort it took him to stop moving.

  Behind Lazar, another man came running up. “Sir! Your father requests you bring any survivors to the lab.”

  “Good,” said Lazar. He motioned to London. “Cover up this demon’s shame and get her up. As long as we’ve got her, they’ll do as we say.”

  “Yes, sir!” The objurer took off his jacket, threw it over London, wrapped his arms around her, and hauled her to her feet.

  Her dull black hair half covered her face. Next to the ivory-colored coat enveloping her, her lean legs stood out pinkish white. But her glacial blue eyes were as fierce as ever. The objurer seemed to know he was holding a wild animal, leaning his head as far back as he could from her face, his mouth a grim line.

  Lazar made sure his pistol never wavered from her head. “Now,” he said, backing up a step, with the objurer following his every move. “Follow us, otherkin.”

  We moved forward. Siku rumbled something under his breath and advanced with November on his shoulder, followed by Caleb.

  Lazar smiled, backing up outside so that we could follow. He would have been dazzlingly handsome if he hadn’t been such a self-satisfied ass. “How happy my father will be to see you all. We appreciate you walking right into our hands.”

  As we stepped into the cold night air, a sweeping shadow fell across Lazar’s face, blocking the moonlight. He glanced up, and a fury of wings and talons fell upon him. Arnaldo descended, one wing thwacking the man holding London across the face as his claws grabbed at Lazar’s head and shoulders, drawing jagged lines of blood. Lazar cried out and threw his hands up to protect his face. The gun no longer pointed at London.

  That’s all it took. In a blur of gray fur, London shifted. The white coat slipped to the ground. The man who had been holding her stepped back, pulling his gun from its holster in one smooth move. But she was on him. The gun flew from his hand as she pushed him to the ground and sank her jaws into his throat.

  Near me, Siku roared, spreading his arms wide, and shifted into a grizzly bear the size of a truck. November scrambled to the floor as he shook out his thick brown coat of fur, dropped to all fours, and charged. Envy flashed through me. Would I ever be able to shift again?

  Lazar screamed as he fell under the bear’s attack. Arnaldo winged up and away. Caleb moved ahead to protect me in case there was anyone else outside. I saw the woman he had bound with saltshaker glue, now goo-free and aiming a rifle at Siku. Lazar must have shoved the sticky stuff back into shadow and freed her. The man who’d been afflicted with insects was lying very still not far from her. There was no sign of the swarm. It, too, must have returned to Othersphere.

  “Put the gun down or the bear kills Lazar!” Caleb shouted.

  “Siku!” I hissed at the bear as he worried Lazar’s arm. Guttural sounds of pain leaked from Lazar, his white shirt streaked with blood. “Siku, don’t kill him! We can use him against Ximon.”

  Siku placed one huge paw on Lazar’s chest and lifted his head, blood on his snout, growling deep. Next to him, London had made quick work of the man who had held her.

  “Put the gun down!” Caleb ordered the female objurer again. Siku pressed his curved black claws against Lazar’s neck. The woman hesitated, then lowered the gun. I thought better of trying to shoot her myself and handed the gun to Caleb. He aimed and fired. She crumpled. Two darts left.

  Arnaldo landed on the warehouse roof to overlook us as we all took a deep breath. Lazar lay gasping under Siku.

  “Nice timing there, Arnaldo,” I said. He cackled. Nearby, November clambered up Siku as if he were a hairy mountain, standing on his shoulder again, her beady eyes glaring down at Lazar.

  Caleb gave me back the air gun, then ran to the unconscious woman, grabbed her rifle, and came back, pointing it down at Lazar. “Let him up,” he said.

  Siku backed off, and Lazar sucked in air, as if the bear’s weight had kept him from breathing much.

  “Abominations!” Lazar spat blood. He bled from several gashes in his scalp and one long scrape down the cheek from Arnaldo’s talons. His arm, where Siku’s teeth had bitten down, was punctured, oozing, and hanging wrong, as if the bone was broken. He sat up, took another deep breath, then tottered to his feet. Pain wrote lines on his face, but he made it and stood, swaying. He was a murdering bastard, but he had guts. With his high cheekbones, broad shoulders, and tousled blond hair, he looked like a bloody, vengeful angel. Only his eyes gave away the poison inside.

  “Where’s Amaris?” I asked.

  He uttered a one-note laugh. “Did you wish to congratulate her? Enoch took her to wife tonight. The ceremony concluded not long before you arrived.”

  “What?” Caleb looked around wildly. “Liar.”

  Lazar shrugged painfully. “Father thought the ceremony could mark the beginning of her reindoctrination into the light. A way to detoxify her after so much contact with her half brother the demon.”

  “Thanks to your father, she’s starting to realize who the real demons are,” I said. “Now where is she?”

  One corner of Lazar’s mouth curved up in a smug smile. “I’ve lost too much blood to remember.” His voice deepened, softened. “You’re too lost to care. You all are. Too far away from your parents, too far in over your head, too certain to lose your friends, your families, and your lives.”

  Despair washed over me. My limbs felt heavy. Siku hung his head and November’s whiskers trembled. A small whine escaped London. She wasn’t snarling at Lazar anymore. Why snarl? Nothing we said or did mattered anymore.

  Caleb shoved his gun into Lazar’s face. “Stop that or I’ll stop it for you.” The sharp, light tone in his voice cut through the thick mantle of desolation surrounding me. I snapped back to myself, as did everyone else.

  Thank the Moon for Caleb.

  “Do you remember what I did to you the last time you tried your little voice trick on me?” I said, wishing I had claws to brandish. “One more word out of you, and it’ll be the last time you speak.”

  He sneered, looking suddenly very young, like a boy who thought acting like a man meant behaving superior all the time. That must be what Ximon had taught him. Pity for him touched the edges of my wrath. With a father like that, he’d never stood a chance.

  “In front,” Caleb said to Lazar. “Walk toward the lab. Amaris won’t
be healing you this time, bro.”

  Lazar’s jaw muscles tightened, but he said nothing. He paced toward the lab, Caleb right behind him, with me, Siku, November, and London trailing and Arnaldo overhead. I eyed the body of the man lying on the gravel nearby. We’d dealt with him and four other objurers so far. “How many do you think are left?” I said quietly into Caleb’s ear.

  “Maybe five,” he replied. “Ximon, Enoch, Amaris, and probably two more.”

  “There are six of us,” I said.

  “Don’t underestimate Ximon,” Caleb said. “He’s equal to ten more.”

  “The real question is,” I said, allowing my voice to become loud enough for Lazar to hear. “Does he really care about the son he raised? Will he give up all his ambitions to save Lazar?”

  “My father does not surrender,” Lazar said through gritted teeth.

  Caleb cuffed him lightly across the back of the head. “Quiet.”

  The moon shone bright upon us. I thought I could feel its light touch my skin, like a cool hand telling me to keep my head, to stay sharp. The greatest challenges still lay ahead.

  “The first room as you enter is a sort of reception area,” Caleb said as we neared the door to the lab. The cameras above it lay dormant without power. “The door to the right leads to a doctor’s office, so don’t bother with that. I haven’t been through the other door, but it’s larger and has an electronic lock. So that’s where we go. Without power we can’t open the lock, so Siku, you may need to bash it down.”

  Siku grunted, sounding the same as he did in human form.

  “It might be a good idea if November scouted ahead and made sure no one else surprises us,” I said, thinking how her small form could easily be missed in a melee. I looked over at her, crouched now on top of Siku’s broad head as he lumbered along on all fours. “That okay with you, ’Ember?”

  She squeaked once and nodded.

  “Arnaldo, stay back until we see how much room there is inside,” I went on, glancing up at him as he circled overhead. The eagle’s long wings might have difficulty beating through doorways or crowded laboratories. “I like having you as kind of our secret weapon. People don’t look up much, do they?”