by Ramy Vance
Justin, I thought, why do you do this to me?
"I won't go," I promised.
But that was exactly what I did. I disappeared amidst the sounds of the water and Justin scrubbing himself clean of my magical scent.
Wouldn't be the first time a man has done that, I thought on my way down the stairs. But of course, the first time a man had scrubbed himself clean of my scent had been for different reasons entirely.
CHAPTER 8
I shielded my eyes from the setting sun as I stepped into Montreal’s terminal. The next bus out of the city would depart in a half-hour, which meant I’d be traveling at 60 mph away from all this.
That was probably faster than El Lobizon could run. Probably.
I purchased my ticket to Quebec City, took a seat on one of the empty benches with my purse set in my lap. I hadn’t brought anything except my wallet, my phone, Professor Allman’s book on creatures of Amazonian lore and a single change of clothes.
I had disappeared with less before.
The sky shone pink and yellow through the tall windows of the terminal, and I was shivering again. At any moment I expected the glass to cave inward, El Lobizon’s giant form to come barreling into the center of the terminal and for it to sink its incisors right through my head.
And every moment that it didn’t happen, I felt a little tighter strung, like a drum so taut it would barely produce any vibration at all.
I pulled Professor Allman’s book out of my bag, continued reading the entry on El Lobizon. To defeat the creature, it read, the prey must find and confront El Lobizon’s summoner.
Just as I suspected. It was as simple as that: confrontation. Which also happened to be my worst skill.
“Anyone sitting here?” came a soft voice.
I jumped, pulled the book to my chest. When I looked up, an old woman’s face stared back down at me. White-haired, lined cheeks, a close-lipped—sincere—smile on her face. A bulging bag hung off her shoulder.
Not the Brazilian woman. Just an old woman.
She was homeless. And she had deep crow’s feet at the corners of both eyes. Harmless, I thought at once.
I glanced at the long swath of empty bench. “Please.” I gestured left of me.
She deposited her bags, sat closer than most people would have. Except she didn’t press me for money or conversation. She just wanted to be seen, I realized. Just to be seen.
I lowered the book back to my lap, where the dark portrait of El Lobizon stared back up at me. And then I diverted my eyes to the woman beside me. “Where are you going?” I asked her.
“Nowhere. Just here,” she said, her hands now folded in her lap. She was staring out the windows ahead of us. “Where are you going?”
“Quebec City.”
“Visiting a boyfriend?”
“Leaving one, actually.”
“Oh.” She nodded. Something about her voice came clear and lucid and calming, which I hadn’t expected. “I did that a few times.”
“It’s not like that,” I said quickly. “I care about him.”
“But you’re leaving.”
“I have to leave.”
Her eyes shifted to me. “Why do you have to leave someone you care about?”
“It’s hard to explain."
“Is he good to you?”
“Yes. But there are a few reasons I have to go.”
She let a small exhale of amusement. “There always are, aren’t there?”
“What do you mean?”
She turned toward me in full. “How old are you?”
“I, well …” How to explain my age? I had been alive for over five hundred years, though only a few as a mortal. “I’m twenty-one,” I said finally. That was sort of true, since the gods had only left a few years ago, and I had usually taken the illusion of eighteen- to twenty-one-year-old women.
“I was twenty years older than you when I realized I was the constant.”
I stared. “The constant?”
“I kept leaving people behind, and I always thought I had good reasons." She pointed at herself, and her eyebrows went up. "But eventually I ended up alone, and I was the constant in every situation. Do you see what I mean?”
I slow-blinked. “No.”
“Once you have enough history behind you, you will."
“Is this like that saying, ‘if everyone around you is an asshole, then you’re the asshole?’ ”
She laughed a little. “I guess it is.”
I sat back against the bench, staring through the windows. The sun had dropped fully out of view, and shades of blue were slowly sapping the color out of the sky.
In my purse, my phone vibrated once. A text message. I lifted it out, found two lines from Aimee: elisa’s not around and I don’t have a key. I can’t afford a hostel, so I’m going to sleep in the lab like that one time. I’ll be sure to lock it behind me … That should be OK, right?
No, I thought. No, no, no. Walking between Elisa’s and the lab where I did my research would take Aimee through Old Montreal, by the river.
that’s not far enough, I texted back. where are you?
walking back from her place. will be there soon, came the reply a minute later.
She was already outside, walking through the campus in the dark. I mentally traced the route from Elisa’s to the lab; as I’d thought, the walk would take her right along the river.
get to the nearest underground entrance, I texted, and stay down there until I find you.
I threw my phone and the book in my purse, looked over at the woman beside me. “I’m the asshole,” I said as I stood.
She watched me stand. “What?”
I grabbed my wallet, pulled out all the cash I had—about fifty dollars—and handed it to her. “I’m the asshole,” I repeated. “Please, find some place to sleep tonight.”
She stared at the money, then at me. “Do you think I’m homeless?”
I half-lowered my hand. “Uh, well, I … ”
She let a bark of a laugh. “Oh, dear. You’re very sweet, but I have a home. I just like to people-watch.”
Tinder sparked in my chest. “So even though you were the asshole, you didn’t end up alone.”
“No,” she said. “I had to work very hard at changing, though.”
I nodded. “I’m going to try to do that tonight.”
“You’re going to stick around?”
“I’m going to confront the woman who summoned El Lobizon, and I’m going to protect my friend from being attacked or killed by his deadly claws and canines.”
She nodded, and her eyes took on a particular glaze. “That’s good, dear. Be safe walking outside in the dark.”
She thought I was drunk or high. Maybe both.
I smiled down at her. Before I turned and darted through the terminal doors, I set my hand over hers. “I’ll do my best.”
↔
I SET out into the night, my phone clutched tight in my hand, waiting for Aimee’s text.
My breath came in white puffs, and tiny flakes of snow began to fall on the already frozen earth. Above me, the sky had turned to the deep azure preceding nightfall.
I walked fast through the campus toward the biology building. If I took the right route, I might be able to intercept Aimee on her—
A howl pierced the night like a knife. I froze in place. Around me, nothing had changed: people walked huddled on the sidewalks, cars left slushy tracks in the street, and the moon cast its yellow glow over the city.
The moon. My eyes lifted to it on the horizon, where it sat as round as an orange, and I wondered if it was all just coincidence.
Becoming Katrina Darling. El Lobizon. The Brazilian woman who wanted me dead. All of it converging on this night, when the moon happened to be as round as an eyeball.
The howl had come from the east—the direction of the river. That was where I needed to go, but I remained stuck in place. If I went that way, I sensed everything would happen quickly. And I might not survive the ni
ght.
After all, I wasn’t Katrina Darling.
I wasn’t a fighter. I was a runner.
My phone buzzed, and I lifted it to find a text from Justin. everything ok?
I stood on the sidewalk, yanking off my glove to write back. yes. did you leave town?
Almost instantly, the reassuring triple dots popped up. I couldn’t. kat, I heard the howl. tell me where you are
what?? just go! I wrote back.
if you don’t tell me where you are, I’m going to drive in the direction i heard it with your hat on my head and the windows down
I had forgotten my hat? My hand went to my head, where I found only Aimee’s earmuffs. I had put on my own beanie when I left the dorm, and then left it sitting in Justin’s bedroom like a doofus.
you wouldnt, I wrote. it’s dangerous, justin
i love you, kat. i couldn’t just leave you here alone, knowing what you’re facing
He loved me? He loved me. Well, he loved Katrina, but the words struck me with the same resonance as if he had written my own name. Because right now, I was Kat.
i’m walking to Old Montreal, I wrote. Aimee is by the river.
A few seconds later, a one-word reply: coming.
He was coming. The knowledge terrified me as much as it warmed me. Now, the two people I cared about most were in the exact place I didn’t want them to be.
I pulled my glove back on and started into a jog down the street, staring at every face I passed in the hope that it would be Aimee’s. But none were her, and it wasn’t until I neared the river that I heard a scream.
Her scream.
Followed by a snarl.
I came around the bend, and the scene before me couldn’t have been more nightmarish.
The Brazilian woman, her white hair floating around her like it had caught a breeze. (There was no breeze.) She faced down Aimee, who stood twenty feet away, both hands up as if she was being mugged. (She wasn’t being mugged.)
It was worse than being mugged.
Between them stood El Lobizon, head lowered, hackles up. He stalked toward her with the slow assurance of a predator whose prey was already caught.
None of them had seen me, and none would unless I announced myself. I could watch the whole scene like a play and then slip back the way I had come.
Then, an irritating thought: What would Katrina Darling do?
Where had that come from? Was I becoming religious in my mortality? Why was Katrina Darling whose actions I wanted to emulate?
Then, the response: Because you admire her.
Not just the way she dressed or her hair or her boyfriend. I admired her bravery, her guts, even her GoneGodDamn quips at the worst moments in English class.
I surveyed Aimee, the woman, the wolf, the frozen river running beside them, and after a time, a wild, unlikely thought came to me.
Katrina Darling would come up with a plan.
I stepped up to the sidewalk, lifted a mittened hand and pointed at El Lobizon. “Hey, you son of a bitch! (That would offend a dog, too, right?) Get away from my friend.”
That should have done it.
El Lobizon spun, his black pupils locking onto me. The Brazilian woman turned. Aimee’s eyes lighted on me.
And then, the last thing I wanted to hear: the old woman let a careening laugh. It was the kind of noise a person with nothing to lose might make, and I realized I was in way, way over my head.
CHAPTER 9
“Ela é sua presa!” the old woman shouted, her bare hand rising toward me, one finger emerging from the folds of her dress to point at the center of my chest.
El Lobizon half-lowered before he sprang toward me, his claws raking divots in the sidewalk as he began his hunt.
So I did what any encantado would do.
I let out a shriek and turned, running down the sidewalk as fast as my heeled boots would take me. I’m sure, with my hands swinging and my slip-sliding on the ice, I looked ridiculous.
And later, when Aimee asked me about it, I would say I meant to look ridiculous. But I hadn’t—I was actually running for my life in the best (most absurd) way I knew how when running down an icy sidewalk.
But I did have a plan.
I only needed to take El Lobizon far enough from Aimee that she wouldn’t get hurt. But I wasn’t sure if I could run very far before he caught up to me.
I glanced over my shoulder; El Lobizon wasn’t fifty feet away, and he would close the space between us in just a few seconds.
I stopped hard beside the river, turning toward it. As I did, floodlights illuminated behind me, sending the frozen river and the far bank into relief. What the hell was that? But I didn’t have time to consider it; I would be dead in a moment.
I ran down the side of the bank and squeezed my eyes shut as I leapt in. Magic poured out of me, sliding over my body in a warm, enfolding wave. When my feet hit the ice, they sank right through and I slipped into the fantastically cold water beneath.
I opened my eyes for an excruciating second beneath the water—just as a massive form crashed through the ice beside me. El Lobizon, plowing into the canal like a missile.
A moment later, my body had reverted to its truest form. It’s natural form. The encantado form.
I was in my element.
↔
GONEGODDAMN WAS IT COLD. But I could handle it for about a minute, which was long enough.
Even as a creature of the Brazilian rainforest, the encantado’s natural form was highly resistant to heat or cold. Like dolphins, our lower bodies had an extra layer of adipose tissue and a slick skin that would encase it.
Which El Lobizon didn’t have. His great, black coat of fur absorbed the cold water like a paper towel as he clawed ineffectually under the surface, those red eyes glaring like they could burn holes in me.
But he couldn’t draw himself any closer to me, where with a little flip of my tail, I could have easily maneuvered myself well out of his reach.
“Hunt this!” I said—except in my encantado form, it was really more like a series of dolphin squeaks —and angled my tail to thrust a strong current of water toward him.
A second later, the current pushed him back, and I saw the bubbles rise from his mouth as he growled. Already his pawing had slowed as his fur dragged him down, the cold seeping into his massive muscles.
Another minute and he would freeze under here, and that would be the end of El Lobizon.
I had just begun swimming toward the hole in the ice when a second, smaller form burst through next to the creature.
A human. Black-haired, tall and muscular.
Justin Truly, that idiot, had jumped into the freezing canal to save me.
↔
AS SOON AS he’d entered the water, I could tell Justin regretted his choice. He took one brave look around before he spotted El Lobizon, and then me. I saw him blink once, and he began an air-breathing mammal’s familiar, desperate scramble toward the surface.
But he wouldn’t make it; he was wearing jeans and a sweater. And Justin had jumped in right next to the creature, who was still trying to get to me—his prey. The creature paddled like a dog, one terrific paw knocking Justin in the process, who sailed toward the darkness at the bottom of the river.
“No!” I screamed, and with a single flip of my tail, I pelted through the water toward him.
The cold was already affecting my ability to swim, but I burned magic as I raced toward Justin, and the familiar warmth of it sailing over my body gave me just enough energy to veer past El Lobizon and reach Justin.
I took hold of his sweater in my rapidly freezing arms and, with the most exhausting tail-flip of my long life, brought us both toward the massive hole El Lobizon had created when he’d leapt into the river.
We surfaced together, and I had just enough energy to get us halfway onto the icy surface. Justin had fallen unconscious—whether from the blow from the creature’s paw or from shock, I couldn’t tell.
I gasped as the night air
touched my human half. I didn’t have long before I would freeze to death. I kept hold of Justin’s sweater, trying to pull the two of us out onto the surface, but I didn’t have the strength.
I gave a final flick of my tail, but I was too weak—I had exhausted everything.
“Encantado!” came a familiar voice. Ahead of me, the old woman had picked her way to the edge of the water, and was sliding across the ice toward us. I didn’t know what her intentions were, but none of that mattered to me right now.
I only wanted to get out of the water. Needed to get out.
She dropped to her knees, crawl-sliding toward my outreached, shaking arm.
When her hand grabbed mine, I hardly felt it. My other arm was still around Justin, and she pulled us the rest of the way out of the water and onto the ice with amazing strength.
I lay there on my back, unable and unwilling to move anything except my eyes. Above us, the night sky, and in my periphery, the old Brazilian woman knelt beside us. Staring at me.
Why? Why did she want me dead so badly?
“Watch out,” I tried to say to Justin, but it came out as a faint exhale. I was going into shock, I realized, as the moon and stars faded in my vision.
The last thing I heard before the darkness took me were the faint sounds of knocking. El Lobizon under the ice, still struggling, still seeking his prey.
CHAPTER 10
I woke to a woman’s soft humming, a candle’s light and warmth. It issued around me like a blanket, and I realized I was feeling heat from a vent.
Ah, modern living was a remarkable thing. Humans sometimes voiced a little fondness for it, but they couldn’t appreciate it like a once-immortal Other could.
Wait, where was I? The memories returned to me with a start: El Lobizon, the river, rescuing Justin from the water, the old woman sliding across the ice. And at the end, her face over me, blocking the moon.
My hand went to the amulet at my neck, found it still there. I rubbed it as my eyes traveled around the space. I was in a kitchen. Or, more accurately, on a chair with a blanket wrapped around me. I peeked inside the blanket and discovered Katrina Darling's naked body—my body. At some point in my semi-unconscious (or maybe completely unconscious) delirium, I had shifted back to her. My hair was wet, and when I wiggled my fingers and toes, I found them functional, but I couldn’t get up.