The Shifter’s Hostage

by T. S. Ryder

  Within anarchic states, the final long-term arbiter of permission belongs with the community. If the community in which the gangs live does not support their gang, then there is no public buy in and there can be no secure future for the gang. Many have tried to secure the means of force within a community. But the fact is when sheer numbers of people simply refuse to have you live among them any longer, even force pales in comparison —this is why one of the unspoken rules of the underworld was as follows:

  1) Don’t bring your Neighbors into a Barfight.

  Of course, a full-scale shootout, on church property, complete with civilian casualties doesn’t exactly toe the line of rule number 1.

  To wrap this one up, the pastor lost his cool and shifted into a beast. He killed twenty-nine thugs, including the leader of the gang who had assaulted his church. As if propelled by the life-force of a demon, the pastor ripped through the aluminum siding of box vans and slit the throats of most men who were audacious enough to shoot a bullet in his direction.

  Eventually, the pastor came up on a handful of shifters that the gang boss had brought with them. There was a showdown, four against one. The pastor, in his wisdom, focused his attack on the leader of the group. Once the leader had been taken down, the morale of the entire assault had ceased. But the pastor’s injuries were too severe. Without mercy, one of the other shifters destroyed the pastor and left him to bleed out the remaining minutes of his life in his precious sanctuary.

  The shifter who took the pastor’s life looked back at the cottage before leaving the property. He wanted to gloat in his victory. He wanted to see the faces of the Pastor’s loved ones. He wanted to know their grief and to bolster his own victory. He saw the mother weeping on the ground. He saw his young son consoling the mother. He also saw his young daughter in the arms of another young man. The last young man was different — he was a shifter — the thug could easily pin down another of his own kind.

  “I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one,” he thought to himself, and then fled.

  The shifter who killed the pastor at Oak Street went on to form his group called the Triage —a gang that would go on to become the largest player in the inner slums drug trade.

  The property continued in perpetuity to be officially listed as a sanctum for shifters, however, none would go there because of the hauntings that had been reported in the neighborhood for the last twelve years.

  The pastor’s wife, Menora, and her children Edin and Clarice continued to live in the sanctum, with free rent and literal sanctuary being more valuable than the outcast nature of their social life. Thank God, the pastor’s genes had been recessive in both Edin and Clarice. The mother had her say in that factor while they were still in her womb.

  Both Edin and Clarice had left as soon as they came to be an age where they were able to attempt an escape. Menora, knowing that there could be no escape from this place —not until death, chose to stay.

  Now you know a bit of family history.

  Chapter Four: Haunted

  When Clarice arrived home, her mother was waiting for her there. Edin had informed Menora of her Clarice’s arrival, and she had prepared a small Christmas dinner for the two of them to enjoy. Long moments of silence were the theme for the evening, as Clarice didn’t have anything in particular that she wanted to share, and Menora was simply feeling a sense of calm having her daughter and granddaughter back home. There was something about having a child at the table once again that lent an air of hope, of return and rejuvenation to the whole household.

  Menora stole glances at her throughout the meal, noticing the subtle similarities and differences between herself and the child, and between the child and Clarice. It was a bittersweet game that the woman undertook, surprising and alarming her in turns. There was very little that she did not recognize as her own despite the fact that she had barely seen the child beyond what little Clarice had told and shown her over the years.

  “I love you dear, both of you,” Menora said, “It’s good to have you both back home. I’ve made a space in the loft for you to sleep later on.”

  Menora pointed to a space covered in warm blankets, suspended by oak support beams just to the left of the fireplace. Clarice had slept there when she was a teenager. She looked at the loft with a sense of comfort and peace in her eyes.

  Once dinner had been finished, Clarice laid her child into bed. It had been a long day and she was asleep within seconds.

  Back in the living room, Clarice looked up at her mom to find her smiling silently at her from across the table.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t make it on my own,” Clarice offered, obviously feeling a bit sullen and not wanting to be a burden on her mother.

  “You’re always welcome here, my dear. Christmas or not.”

  “I saw Thomas when I arrived at the train station,” Clarice told her mother, offering to her the first thing on her mind.

  Her mother’s face grew dark for a moment and Clarice paused for a moment before continuing.

  “He looked haggard and there was some trampy younger girl that he was hanging out with,” Clarice said, her expression matching that of her mother’s.

  “We can’t be in control of what others do with their lives,” her mother responded, simply.

  “I know,” she replied. “I guess I was just hoping that the first thing I would see when I got off of the platform might be something a bit more hopeful. Thomas was getting onto a darker path before I left —in fact, that was one of the main reasons I couldn’t stay here any longer.”

  Her mother looked at her with sympathy in her eyes and listened patiently to Clarice as she explained her feelings.

  “I remember loving him so much and then when he ended up getting involved in the same bullshit that killed dad, I just remember hating him so much,” she said, tears coming into her eyes. “It’s like he didn’t care about what happened at all. Now that I’ve seen him doing the same things over all of these years, I just feel betrayed.”

  “We can’t control what other people do,” Menora reiterated. “Thomas has his own path to walk and because of what he is, his path is likely to be a bit more difficult for many of us to understand.”

  “That’s a terrible excuse to be a thug,” Clarice spat, her emotions finally breaking out of her silence.

  Menora nodded, sitting up. She walked over to give her daughter a hug. She pulled her daughter close to her chest and rested her chin on Clarice’s coarse black hair.

  “Don’t let it eat you up, child,” Menora whispered. “Neither you nor I have any idea what it is like to walk a mile in Thomas’s boots. Honestly, I feel like we might be better off for it. Your father had to deal with a lot of those same problems, because of his condition.”

  “Why?” Clarice burst out from her tears, trying to keep her voice low as not to wake her daughter. “Edin didn’t have to deal with any of that, and neither did I, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “I don’t know the answers to those questions, dearest,” Menora said, bringing her daughter closer to her, holding her firmly.

  “I miss Dad,” Clarice cried, “and I feel like the one chance I had to break out and start over is ruined. I totally blew it.”

  In her wisdom, Menora decided that now was not a time to offer any more advice. Clearly, her daughter had some issues to work through and Menora knew better than anyone else how difficult those problems could be. If it hadn’t been for the faith her husband demonstrated throughout the time she had known him, she probably wouldn’t have been equipped to come to terms with the misfortunes that life had brought her. Instead of offering any sort of response, she simply nodded in acknowledgment of her daughter’s sadness and continued to hold her close into the late hours of the night.

  “Sometimes, all we need is a good cry in order to bring about a new perspective,” Menora said, offering her presence and consolation to Clarice.

  “Thanks for letting me come back home,” Clarice replied.

  The
y held one another for a while longer, until Menora walked her daughter to the loft. She then lit some sage and stayed up into the early hours of the morning, staring into the fire —lost in thought.

  Chapter Five: Dark Refuge

  After seeing Clarice at the train station, Thomas’s mind was thrown for a complete loop. Usually, he felt like he had it all together. He knew how much energy he had in a day and he knew exactly who he needed to swindle, sweet talk, intimidate, steal from, or fight in order to get what he felt he needed.

  Being a non-integrated shifter meant that on a daily basis, he had to contend with his inner beast. The problem was that when there were unanticipated aspects of life that came up and caused trouble in his mind, he lost track of the precarious balance which he had made of his life. He always resorted to binge consumption of splin in order to get through the more stressful periods.

  If you know anything about addictive patterns of behavior, you are aware that after blissing out for 24 hours, if you haven’t taken care of the problem you were attempting to run away from — that same problem will be there when you return. Problems, as a general rule, are mostly just conditions of our lives which do not fit within our current operating paradigm. They cause us to seek change when there is, generally speaking, not that much desire to change in the first place.

  What ends up happening is that the problems that we go to in order to solve the other problems, tend to swell up in proportion. This happens since we do not have the resources necessary to manage both the new problems we create, as well as the issues which served as a catalyst for our dysfunctional coping mechanisms.

  Thomas was no exception to this rule. In fact, one might as well call this the Law of Addiction.

  Not having the resources necessary to pick up an extra dose, Thomas knew that he would have to beg, borrow, or steal his way into temporary, drug-induced relief. Under normal circumstances, a casual user would have no trouble acquiring the funds necessary to serve his drug addiction. All he would need to do is exchange some social capital (beg or borrow), for some drugs. Then hope that either the relationships were not really that useful in the first place, or that he could somehow scam some people who were not his friends (steal) and then transfer a viable amount of resources back to the friends, so he could rely on them another day.

  Unfortunately, Thomas was fresh out of social capital, and had been for about three years; this meant that he had only two options. He could either give up and confront the reason for this heightened form of anxiety, or he could cross some people that he didn’t feel much like crossing, in order to score a bit of relief. The relief sounded better at the time, so for better or worse, he made his way over to a part of The City where he hadn’t gone in years.

  ***

  The City of Crows slums were divided into two sections.

  The first section was designated to people who had little money and little means to make a difference. However, these people were happy enough to live outside of the central form of the city and were more interested in the goodwill of their neighbors, than one upping one another. A correlative type of scenario one might imagine would be a ghetto where all of the inhabitants of that part of the city were friends because they felt as though there were little other choices. They felt that you might as well join in with people who were with, you rather than internalize the poverty mindset and compete with all of your neighbors.

  The second part of the slums was the opposite. They were steeped in both hopelessness and competition. This caused them to see one another as enemies who perhaps simply had not been engaged yet on some eternal battlefield. The second part of the slums was actually closer to the central platform of the city, which made sense because they were both closer to distribution outlets for major substances and they served as a type of buffer zone for police interaction.

  Line 48, a street which basically designated the end of the upstanding citizenry and the start of the inner slums was a living hell. The reason people continued to live there was not because there weren’t housing options available in the outer slums —it was because they preferred the lifestyle afforded to them by involvement in some of the most vicious gang activity present in the City of Crows.

  Something about being present in that part of the city made it feel like you were either a potential victim or a dark agent in service, of whatever sort of scheme had been concocted by the elite class of thugs which ran that part of the city. The inner slums were the home base for the Triage —the biggest distribution network for Splin in the entire city.

  In all reality, there were no competitors. Naturally, they had their dirty little claws in every part of the major city, as distribution efforts and weapons funding required the support and financial backing that only the central city could afford. The one place they didn’t have any support was in the outer slums, where people had grown tired of the endless violence, theft, and callousness of those who became involved in the Triage’s gang activity.

  Today, Thomas found himself knocking on a large metal door where he hadn’t dared to go in years. As you can imagine, the owner of the warehouse where Thomas visited, had more than a little something to do with the raid on the Oak Street Church, twelve years ago. These sorts of cyclical events are all tied to the karmic wheel of the lives in the City of Crows.

  Knock Knock

  A gruff, ugly looking man opened up the door and greeted Thomas with a pistol in his hand. Trust in this part of town was next to nothing and anyone who visited this particular warehouse was met with the same form of introduction.

  “Thomas…” said the man with the pistol. “Didn’t figure I’d see you around here again, you must be hurting bad…”

  The man laughed, as though the pain of another shifter was something that brought him great pleasure. Thomas bit his lip and then hardened his disposition so he would fit in with the cold, cracked landscape that surrounded him.

  “If you know why I’m here, then our conversation should be kept short,” Thomas replied, darkly.

  You had to speak like you didn’t give a fuck when you came to a place like this. Cold killers, thieves and all kinds of power brokers lived in this part of town and if you weren’t a threat, then you were a mark —that’s just how things worked in the inner slums.

  “Too bad you’re not feeling well,” the man laughed. “Unfortunately, the boss is out of town today. I don’t think we’ll be expecting him tonight. It’s Christmas.”

  “Well maybe you can help me,” Thomas replied.

  “Help?” the man laughed. “I help my friends, Thomas, but you…Let’s just say I haven’t thought of you as a friend in a very long time. You had your time with us, but then you stopped coming around —inconsistency means a lack of trust.”

  In truth, the man didn’t actually have any friends. More a series of acquaintances with whom he held a favorable working relationship. The actual context of the working relationships varied, but they were all in debt to him. That’s how he liked things to work. He found it easier to connect with people who were subservient to his desires. Being close with the boss meant he had a closer supply to splin than most. As a result, he was able to leverage that access to personal power over as many people as he could manage.

  “Put your fucking gun away and give me a job,” Thomas said, sharply.

  “HA!” the man laughed out loud. “I like that…I like that a lot.”

  His fist shot out from next to his side and he nearly caught Thomas square in the jaw. Knowing that the man he was dealing with was of a volatile temperament, Thomas was prepared and ducked to the side long enough to dodge the blow. While the man’s arm was outstretched and his weight was off balance, Thomas drew a knife, flipped it in his hand so that the blade faced his own body and thrust the handle toward the man’s neck.

  The man was caught off guard. His eyes widened and he raised the pistol to shoot Thomas, but the pistol was intercepted by a raised knee, which expertly pushed the firearm to the side. A shot rang out and a b
ullet sprayed the pavement just to the left of Thomas’s body. Enraged that the man would fire on him, Thomas reversed the stroke of his knife and brought the blade down sharply on the man’s hand. The blade struck true and sank into the skin between the man’s hand and the pistol.

  With a cry, the man released his grip on the pistol and brought his hand to his chest. Blood was everywhere, but Thomas managed to hold tight onto the handle of the blade. The man’s sharp movement backward caused a gaping cut in the man’s hand, which bled freely, clutched against his chest. Without hesitation, Thomas brought a knee into the man’s testicles, causing him to bowl over in pain. While the man’s head was down Thomas brought another knee upward in a sharp jump, connecting squarely with the man’s nose.

  The doorman was out cold and a good thing too, because he and Thomas shared a similar problem. A shifter fight was the last thing that Thomas needed at a time like this.

  “Fucker…” Thomas spat, bending down to pick up the pistol.

  He thought about shooting him right there, but then he took a deep breath and realized that he was likely in enough trouble as it was. Nobody entered the Triage hideout by beating up the doorman.

  Nobody.

  If the boss had been in, likely the rest of the gang would have been around. Instead, there were likely only a handful of stragglers in the warehouse.

  Thomas’s eyes shifted, as rage swelled inside of his body. Whenever he was far behind on his dose, even the slightest bit of anger caused his spirit to go wild within his body. Actual engagement like what had just occurred —well, let’s just say Thomas was lucky to retain any of his humanity at all.

  With a feral glance into the warehouse, Thomas began to sense the infrared spectrum of the inhabitants of the building. Two large forms were approaching quickly from behind an office door. They appeared to be in human form and were making their way toward the central area where they could engage Thomas.