by Beth Dranoff
I left soon after. I didn’t know what I would have said to him if he’d pushed the conversation further before I’d been able to escape. So, stab anyone good in the back lately?
* * *
The sun hung low in the sky with that heavy, midwinter feel when the edges are bright but there’s a pit of cold so deep your skin goes numb regardless of how many layers you’re wearing. At least it wasn’t snowing.
I turned my cell phone back on to discover I’d missed several calls and texts from Anshell. He left me detailed directions on where to meet him.
It was good to be behind the wheel of my truck again. I felt pathetically grateful. It was bad enough I had to rely on the kindness of others until I could get back into my place; at least this way I didn’t have to beg a ride too.
Anshell had arranged to have it fixed—not as good as new, but at least as good as it had been before. I tried to take it for what it was. Anshell was being a good guy, and this was proof of the kind of treatment I’d get as a member of the Pack. Tried not to think of it as guilt money for having been used as bait.
So I sang along with the default retro rock station, whacking the steering wheel to the beat, as I poked along in traffic going 30 km/hour in what should have been a 70 km/hour zone.
I didn’t make it up this way often, and as I stopped and started and stopped again, I tried the area on like a spring jacket in a designer outlet store. You know it’s not really your style, or your color, but the buttons are kind of nice and isn’t it time you made a change?
But the rows and strips of big-box stores and warehouse outlets did little to spice up the greenery lining the pseudo highway. The food was burgers and fries, the restaurants either chain-processed deli meat establishments, sports bars or all-you-can-eat MSG-laden Chinese buffets. I swallowed thickly at the fumes. No cafes or bookstores or screen-printed T-shirt places. No health food eateries or micro-batch bakeries. The houses had me humming that song about little boxes made of ticky-tacky that all looked just the same. Aside from the random clumps of Canadian Geese flocking together, this was not my place. Not my people.
Yeah, okay. I’m a bit of a city snob.
Then I saw the sign for the park and water reservoir area. I checked the text on my phone against the map I’d sketched out on a napkin. Anshell wanted me to meet him in a park?
A few of the oversized grey, black and white birds stared as I passed, turning to hiss as they caught my scent. I stared them down, swiping my tongue across my lips; they backed off with a startled chorus of honks. Predator and prey. Maybe they were supes too—magic and otherness were hardly exclusive inner city phenomena. Might be time to start paying closer attention to my surroundings.
I followed the road, lined with white-painted rocks that seemed due for a fresh coat, and bumped over the speed rods covered with asphalt.
The winding ribbon of pavement gave way after a couple of turns to a gravel road and then, finally, snow-packed tracks with bits of dirt and brown grass mixed into the white. At the second cracked wooden post, I turned right. A raven, black and shiny with a streak of robin’s egg blue on its wing, watched me pass.
I was hoping there was nothing Hitchcockian about its presence. Or the fact that I couldn’t see it in my rearview mirror when I looked back to check.
But then it landed on the hood of my truck with a squawk and I almost jumped out of my skin. I slapped my door as I got out, hoping to scare it away even as my stomach growled and I had a sudden craving for chicken. Go figure.
I scented Anshell before I saw him and followed the trail of overly large boot prints to a house. Despite its incongruous placement in the middle of what I’d assumed to be a city-owned park, it looked like a completely normal house. One of those 1950s ranch-style bungalows found in the suburbs before the invasion of pre-fab monster homes. With painted white shutters, a yellow front door and flower bed pots under the main floor windows, it felt like a piece of idyllia leftover from another place and time. The blackened pit with a grill still drifting the vague aroma of recently charred beef did nothing to dispel it.
My stomach was growling again.
I found Anshell around the side of the house, leaning against a large metal gate, his black leather glove-encased hands clasped together.
I was struck by the coiled energy twined around him. Even in the semi-wilds of the outer city, Anshell was a heartbeat away from being muscle in action if the situation changed. One of those things that made him a good pack leader, I realized.
I had to pause for a moment to admire his clean, lean lines. Just because my plate is full doesn’t mean I can’t eye dessert, right?
“Like what you see?” I could hear the grin in his voice.
I grunted. Anshell took the sound as an affirmation and chuckled.
High ground, Dana. Find the high ground here.
“So I’m guessing you didn’t call me all the way up here to check out your ass,” I said. Whoops.
“No, I did not,” Anshell replied. “I wanted to show you something,” he said, motioning for me to come closer. I couldn’t see what he was watching from my current vantage point so I moved beside him.
On the other side of the gate was a pasture. Bounded by snow at the edges, the wooden fence posts lined with wire and log splits marked the border between Toronto in February and someplace else, where brilliant emerald-green grass was being nibbled on by some of the most beautiful horses I’d ever seen. They were magnificent, all shining fur, rippled muscles, solid-looking forelocks and...big shit-eating grins.
Okay, I know enough to recognize what I don’t know, but were horses supposed to do that? I don’t recall reading about that in Black Beauty.
“There’s something you need to know,” Anshell said.
“That you’re full of manure?” I know. I couldn’t resist.
Anshell shook his head. What, no smile?
“Old joke,” he said. “If you’re quite done?”
I nodded, barely controlling my urge to keep going with the puns. The more tense I get, the weirder my sense of humor gets. Hoof in mouth disease, anyone? A problem I need to rein in? Forced myself to look around again instead: hello grass, trees and horses. Suburban nature.
“So,” I finally managed. “Why did you want me to meet you here?”
“Well,” Anshell said. “You’ve been targeted—we know that. But why?”
I shrugged, waiting for him to go on.
“Exactly,” he said.
“I’m not the only one,” I pointed out, joining Anshell in his leaning-on-the-gate activity. “Your pack name keeps coming up every time I get imprisoned, especially if torture is involved. And I haven’t even officially joined. What’s up with that?”
“That seems to be one of the questions we need to answer in a fairly immediate manner,” Anshell said. Then stopped again.
Was he waiting for me to fill in that auditory space with something?
I tried to oblige. I watched the horses cantering about and chewing on grass, hoping the patterns of brindle, ebony, chocolate and grey would somehow shift the clues around in my head and reflect a pattern of clarity back to me.
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing,” I said finally. “You’re going to have to tell me.”
“Let your mind go,” Anshell said, the sound of his voice a rumble. “Don’t try to force it. What do you see?”
I scented the cooling grill mixed with the sick-sweet smell of manure and the sharp tickling tang of grass, too green and too fresh for this time of year. I rubbed my eyes to look again, but the smells hit me again instead. A pressure on my chest as I drew in the sweet, heavy smoke.
I looked around but the scene wasn’t one I recognized. Clouds rolled in and there was mist at ground level. The horses were still there, chewing, seemingly unconcerned by the sudden shift in my worldview.<
br />
“Let it go.” Anshell’s voice, a breath in my ear. “What do you see? What are your senses telling you?”
“I see horses,” I said. My voice sounded muffled, the sound penetrating only so far. “Clouds and fog. Summer grass that shouldn’t exist in Toronto in February.”
“We both know this,” Anshell replied. “Relax into it. What do you feel? Sense? Taste?”
I opened my mouth, parting my lips with my tongue, tasting the air. Blood. Salty, coppery, metallic.
“I taste blood,” I said.
“Good,” Anshell replied. “Keep going. What do you hear?”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, mentally angling my ears like antennae—even as I knew, with the small part of my brain that still held logic, what I was doing wasn’t possible.
“I hear pain,” I said, because I did. “Over the chewing and the horses eating, there’s screaming.” I opened my eyes. “Why? Who’s in pain and why aren’t we helping them?”
When I opened my eyes, the screaming stopped. The scene was as it had been before I started reaching outwards with my senses. Normal. Except, of course, for the strangely green grass. I could have sworn it was painted on if not for that smell of July with grasshoppers and cicadas and lying on your back in a field, the pointed shafts prickling the back of your neck and the sun so strong you have to shield your eyes against it.
Anshell was still there as well, looking out at the pasture that shouldn’t exist. The only sign he might be at all restless was in the way he rubbed the tip of his nose with his gloved thumb.
“Are you willing to go back in?” He spoke without turning to look at me.
I thought about that a moment. You mean I had a choice?
“You have a choice,” Anshell said, echoing my thoughts yet again. “There are some things you need to see, know, and this is one of the only ways to explain. I don’t know all the details myself.”
I snorted my incredulity, releasing a puff of frosty steam from my nostrils.
“I’m serious,” Anshell replied. “I can hold this plane open for you for a bit longer. Perhaps it will help you find some of those answers we all need about you. Now that you’ve had a taste, you know what to expect next. It’s your choice.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. “What did you do?”
Anshell looked away; apparently something was fascinating there on the edge of where the grassy knoll met the snowy embankment.
“Sometimes it’s helpful to be able to see things from an alternate vantage point,” he said. “The first peoples here, they have a tradition of spirit walks. You’ve heard of this before?” I nodded. “It’s similar to that. Altering perceptions. Accessing memories buried in our synapses. Some people use hypnosis; I prefer this.”
“Is it a pack thing? Can everyone do this?”
“No,” Anshell replied. “But I can.”
“Why me?”
“I believe you have power,” he said. “The partial change you do?” I nodded. “It takes most shifters years of practice to master it. Some never do. But you started with it, even though you haven’t managed a full shift yet. You can’t quite walk, but already you’re climbing the stairs backwards wearing a blindfold and balancing a teacup on your head. You’re something different.”
I shook my head. No words.
“Do you want answers?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You have to know,” said Anshell. “Decide. If you want to try to find those answers, I will stretch it open for you once more and we will see what you can find.”
I hesitated.
“Decide,” Anshell repeated. “I will count to five and then we’re done—we’ll find another way.”
I nodded. Counted in my head even as Anshell spoke the numbers aloud. I let him get to four.
“Okay,” I said. “Open up.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The scene stole over me more easily this time. Maybe because I knew what to expect.
This time, what hit me first were the sounds. I closed my eyes to make them stronger, trying to block out my other senses.
Again with the screaming. Many voices, layered one atop the other, threads of pain weaving together in a braid of sound. I followed and found, surprisingly, that I could make out individual differences in those layers.
One voice sounded particularly familiar. Female. Like mine but not like mine.
I was able to make out murmuring as well. Low and soothing, a stream over pebbles. A man’s voice, calming. Threads of tension through the bursts of pain.
“Hannah,” the voice said. “Ssh. It’s okay. Not much longer now.”
“Stuart! Easy for you to say.” A female voice I knew yet did not know. Panting.
“It’s okay,” he replied. “You knew it would be like this. It will be over soon.” Another grunt, distinctly female. The sounds seemed to be coming on more frequently. Consistently? Definitely closer together.
“How much longer?” The woman’s voice, softer now, hoarse. “Soon?” Her voice rose, hopeful.
“The baby’s crowning,” the voice of the man who answered to the name of Stuart said. “We’re almost there. C’mon, Hannah,” he said. “When you feel that wave coming on, you have to push.”
More clouds; the scene changing with the breaths I was taking in and releasing.
“Danyankele,” said the man. The voice tender. That voice. I recognized it with a shock that made my head jerk and my eyes do a little twitch.
“Danyankele,” the woman replied, warmth and love like liquid chocolate. I wanted to run my fingers through it and lick off the tips, rolling droplets of sweetness around on my tongue.
And then the scene of my birth was gone, replaced with snap-click precision by scenes from elsewhere in my life.
Swaddler to toddler. My first puppy. A mistake—we never really bonded, no matter how hard I tried. For some reason, Sunshine was always a little bit scared of me. My parents finally gave her away to a nice family with normal children who didn’t scare the crap out of the dog.
Gingy the cat was my ninth-birthday present. She was a keeper. She followed me around and we carried on full conversations. She slept with me at night, staying close by me during meals in case something “accidentally” fell from my plate.
Then the funeral. One of the worst days of my life. Numbly standing through all of the kind words, the prayers, the formal military salute, the draped flag. The pomp in no way diminished by the circumstance. My mother, equally numb, nodding at the well-wishers, her hand gripping mine. A man stopped to speak with her—I didn’t see his face—and the pain spiked as she squeezed my hand harder. My mother who would never hurt me on purpose. She released me as I gasped, horrified at what she’d done, cupping my face between her hands as tears streaked the dirt I’d rubbed into my cheeks from when I’d thrown a handful on my father’s coffin.
More moments, clicking by faster now like a series of slides propelled forward by remote control.
Click. My mother and I, coming home after the funeral, closing the door behind us and locking it, not sure what to do next.
Click. Grade 8 graduation. My mother sitting with her parents on folding plastic chairs in the gym. Me, standing on the podium in my pink pleated skirt, lacy white and pink rose-covered blouse with matching ballet flats, blinking back tears and wishing my father was there to see it.
Click. Him. With the questions that made my stomach clench sickly sweet bile. The touch I needed a shower to get off me. Haunting me. Until. And then.
Click. High school graduation. This time I was dressed in black with a dark pink streak in my hair. My mother sat alone in the auditorium; my grandfather had passed away two years earlier and my grandmother was living in an old age home. I sauntered over
to get my diploma and caught my mother’s eye. She winked her approval, dabbing at her eyes with a shredded tissue that left flecks of white dotted across the tips of her lashes. I wished my father had been there yet again.
Click. University.
Click. My first class with Ezra.
Click. Recruited by Ezra.
Click click click. It all came whirring to a slow-motion rendition of my admissions process into the Program. Sitting in a chair, trying to ignore my blood filling vial after carefully labeled vial. The cute lab technician I couldn’t convince to crack a smile.
Cut to me and the cute lab technician grappling in the laneway out back. Suffice it to say I got him to crack a smile. I had a pretty good time as well. At least until he bit me.
Fluorescent lights. More blood tests. Lab technicians speaking with men in long white coats, conferring. Low-voiced exchanges in the hallway outside my room, words like “infection” and “incubation period” and “strange” and even “quarantine.” Drifting in and out of consciousness.
And then there was Ezra.
Everything narrowed in focus and relative time shifted to an approximation of real time, minutes and seconds proceeding at the speed of normal.
“Hello, Dana,” he said.
It took me a moment to place this younger version of him. Oh. Right. Preternatural Biology 200-level.
“Hi, Professor Gerbrecht,” I replied.
“You’re probably wondering why you’re here,” Ezra said.
“Yeah.”
I was back in my body from seven plus years ago. Having the same conversation. I wondered how long Anshell would be able to keep the window open.
At least now, terms like “subcutaneous sanguinicity” and “goreal vissimilitude” barely made me blink.
“Hang on,” I said, interrupting a script which had already played itself out. “What do you mean by subcutaneous sanguinicity?”
It was clear from the surprise that blinked behind Gerbrecht’s eyes from one moment to the next my question was unexpected.