by Ramy Vance
It was self-defense against Others.
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I STARED THROUGH THE WINDOW, my mouth open. At the head of the group, whistle in hand, stood a man you could have pegged for a drill sergeant. Tall, blocky, shaved head and a muscle tee. He set the whistle between his lips, and a shrill noise filled the room. All motion ceased, and the twenty O3 frat boys—Justin among them—straightened, turned toward him.
The World Army’s local cadet trainer.
And it was in turning toward him that Justin spotted me through the door. His face registered surprise before he swung away. One by one, the trainer passed down the line of them, retrieving their training swords. He directed them to a wall fitted with a series of bows and quivers of arrows.
“Minatours have blind spots, just like bulls,” he explained. “Try to stay directly in front of them and you just might have an edge. As for a cyclops, there’s only one target you should aim for: their eye. And when fighting a wendigo, go for behind the knees. That’ll send them tumbling.”
“What about a dragon?” one of the cadets asked.
“A dragon, son? Well, if you’re up against one of those, there’s only one effective strategy that I know of … run.”
Laughter echoed through the room.
That was when I spun away and walked over to the nearest bench. It was where I was still seated when Justin and the other cadets walked out of the training room.
At the back of the group walked Justin and the trainer. They stood by the door, and the World Army man clapped Justin on the shoulder. He grinned back. I didn’t hear everything, but I did make out, “Good job, son,” before the man turned away and proceeded down the hall in that smug, militaristic style.
Justin, his grin still wide, came over to me, hands finding his jeans’ pockets. “Hey, Isa. I didn’t think you’d—“
“You didn’t think I’d come here.” I knew exactly what he would say, because it was what every vaguely ashamed lover says. As an encantado, I knew how the back-and-forth went better than anyone. And right now, I didn’t have the patience to let the whole script play out.
He shrugged, nodded. “I’m glad you’re here, though.”
I turned my face up to meet his eyes. “Oh?”
“I saw you peeking in through the window. Pretty cool stuff, huh?”
“Which part—slapping a guy in a cerberus costume with your wooden sword, or the brainwashing?”
To his credit, he didn’t say anything. If he had—even one word—I might have launched into a rant in Portuguese. When he sat down next to me and took my hand, I felt myself easing toward him against my own will. He stroked my fingers.
“Why are you a part of that?” I whispered. “It’s a hateful group.”
“We’re learning to defend ourselves.”
“What about self-defense against other humans? Why a cerberus?”
“Come on, Isa. You know that whoever committed those two murders wasn’t human. There’s an Other running around campus killing people, and I want to be ready.”
Well, he was right about the murdering Other, which pissed me off even more. Because even though I had come here to tell him to take care of himself and explain everything I suspected about these crimes, everything I said would only add to his burgeoning beliefs. I would just confirm his feelings about Others.
Others were the “other.”
I stared down at our touching hands and sighed. Whatever his feelings, I still knew my own feelings for him. “I came here to warn you. I did some research, and I believe whoever is doing these killings is targeting young men—specifically at night.”
“An Other,” he said. “Like Sergeant Johnson thought. Do you have any ideas about the species?”
His name is really Sergeant Johnson? If everything about a man ever screamed rah-rah-xenophobic-nationalism, it was that World Army recruiter. And his name suited him to a tee, but I didn’t think Justin would appreciate me saying so.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said, “but I think it’s a creature from Greek mythology. I discovered today that those birds are called stymphalian birds, and I believe they could be controlled by someone.”
“You said Greek mythology?”
I nodded.
“Isa, you’re brilliant.” I glanced up into a pair of blue, lit eyes. His mouth was so close I could feel his breath. “We need to go.” He stood, pulling me up.
“Where?”
“Well, we’re not going to narrow down the candidates for murdering Other from Greek mythology in the weight room, are we?”
And as much as I wanted to object, to be mad, something melted in me as he led me down the hallway, my hand clasped in his. Thoughts of being taken and ravaged by his strong hands flowed into my head as we walked, and all my frustrations with him were shoved to the attic of my mind.
He glanced back at me. “You want to save a young man’s life, don’t you?”
And all I could do was nod. Well, there you have it—the encantado weakness. GoneGoddess Yemoja help me.
CHAPTER 17
T wenty minutes later, we stood outside the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum. Was this another attempt to show me how cultured and liberal artsy he was? A few days ago he’d taken me to a local art exhibit, where he’d spent the whole time with his fingers on his chin.
I turned to him. “Justin, I don’t think …”
He held a finger to his lips. “Just trust me.”
Trust him. Well, after everything we’d been through with El Lobizon, nearly drowning and a decades-old grudge that had nearly resulted in catastrophe, I could do that. Easily. So we walked into the museum and he paid for our tickets.
Five minutes later, we stood at the entrance to an exhibit on Greek mythology. Before us sat artifacts and old books laid open and every creature from Greek legend and lore documented on the walls.
Or at least, that was what the placard claimed.
“How?” I whispered, stepping up to the display on Artemis. Before me sat an intricate series of pots and plates painted with depictions of the huntress. Along with a detailed description of her importance to the Greek pantheon. “How did you know this was going on right now?”
“Believe it or not, I did some research of my own.”
I glanced up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I had the same suspicions as you about the birds, and I did some Googling based on their characteristics. But I hadn’t made the connection to an Other from Greek lore controlling them.”
I grinned at him. “And here I thought of you as a frat bro.”
He set one hand to his chest. “Isabella, dost thou stereotype? I am a human unlike all other humans.”
“Touche.” I turned away. His point was well taken: mentally, I had lumped him in with all of Greek life. Just like I was accusing him of doing to Others.
We walked through the exhibit, examining every god and creature and ruling them out one by one. We passed by Scylla the sea monster. “It can’t have been something too big or crazy—people would have noticed on Saint Catherine,” I said. “It probably looked human.”
“What about this one?” He pointed to a creature known as Lamia.
I stepped close, inspecting her placard. She seemed a likely candidate, but … I shook my head. “No—she only killed children as revenge for Zeus killing her own.”
Justin’s fingers slid over mine as we moved on to the next placard, and he slowed us to a stop. “How have you been feeling—you know, since everything happened last night?”
I lowered my face. I hadn’t taken much time to process anything that had happened in the last day. Did I even know how I was feeling? Bad, I thought as I listened to my gut. I felt really, really bad. Just a swirl of icky, black badness.
“Not good,” I said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dead man.”
“Really? What about your lovers? I thought you had all sorts of men you loved.”
I sighed. Was I about to deliver an important life lesson? �
��Love and lust rarely align for long,” I said. “And men usually couldn’t get past the mermaid-dolphin thing, which meant we didn’t often grow old together.”
“You said it had been a long time, but not never.”
The last time I’d seen a man die was when Marco left the world, but I didn’t know if I wanted to go there. I had only just recently been able to study birds again with the same joy I’d used to feel.
He led me toward one of the low couches in the middle of the exhibit, and we sat on it. Around us spread the entirety of Greek lore and legend. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
Did I want to talk about it? Not really. Right now, I felt a strong compulsion to scour this entire exhibit until we came across the “aha!” creature. The one we could peg as the murderer. It was a scientist thing; we got no greater thrill than from a solvable mystery, one with a definitive answer.
And then I remembered that I was expected to start working for Dr. Russo tomorrow … and on into the indefinite future.
“Justin,” I said, “there’s something else we need to talk about. Remember that grant I mentioned?”
He nodded. “To support your research on Others.”
“Well, this woman who’s my new lead, Dr. Russo, is expecting me to spend basically all my free time—“
He held up a hand. “Did you say Russo? As in, Serena Russo?”
“Yes …?”
Justin looked like he’d just seen a celebrity. “You met her?”
“In the olive-skinned flesh. Why—what’s up?”
“Sergeant Johnson mentioned she was on campus, but I never even thought I’d get a glimpse of her. And you’re going to be working under her! Wait until I tell the O3 guys.”
I set my hands on Justin’s shoulders. “Hold up. What are you talking about? You don’t give a flip about biology.”
He looked wounded. “In the sense that I am a biological creature, I very much do.”
“Fine. But how do you know about Dr. Russo?”
“She’s one of the World Army’s top scientists.” A small grin spread across his face. “Leading the way toward a brighter future.”
Oh boy. It seemed the koolaid was plentiful, and Justin was drunk on it. And then his words fully processed: the World Army’s top scientist. I shrank away, staring at my own fingers in my lap.
“What is it, Isa?”
The buzzing in my ears drowned him out. I was working for Dr. Russo. By extension, I was working for the World Army. Why was the World Army investing in Other anti-extinction research? Didn’t they want to see every Other wiped off the Earth?
I squeezed my eyes shut. Now I had two puzzles in my head, and as much as I wanted to focus on where we were right now, my brain would never stop trying to navigate both until I had gotten through one and then the other.
Maybe I should quit my research at the lab. The last thing I wanted was to be a pawn of the World Army. But then again, they were doing important work, and Dr. Russo hadn’t just “made it rain,” as they say—she’d brought a thunderstorm of dollar bills and planted it right over my head.
My timeline for mapping the triple helix was about to get much, much shorter. Maybe if I just hung on for a while …
Justin was trying to get my attention. His hand was on my shoulder now, shaking it.
“What is it?” I snapped, flaring on him.
He pointed at the far wall. “That.”
My gaze followed, and my anger died. All my attention zeroed in on the image on the far wall, and the two of us stood together and crossed over to it. We stood in silence as we read the placard.
“Merda,” I whispered after I’d finished reading. “That’s the murderer.”
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Empusa. She was the daughter of the goddess Hecate and the spirit Mormo, and she feasted on young men. She was a shapeshifter who played on your fears, often taking the form of that which frightened you the most. Notably, she always appeared to be missing a body part.
Heart. Eyes. Was she harvesting these boys’ parts?
As I stood in front of the exhibit, I understood why I hadn’t heard of her; she was only mentioned in a few pieces of literature: two of Aristophanes’ plays and a biography, Life of Apollonius of Tyana.
“But both of those men were killed at night,” Justin said. “It doesn’t say anything here about her being a nocturnal huntress.”
I set a finger to the placard. “She attacks young men while they sleep. Nocturnal. The one they found in a tree on campus … that tree was right next to his dorm.”
“The one we found that night hadn’t been sleeping, though.”
I glanced up at Justin. “Are you sure about that?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are apartments above some of the buildings on Saint Catherine Street, aren’t there?” I turned away from the display. “And think about the way he was slumped against the wall. Remember how his leg was bent under him?”
“You think he fell from a window?”
“Or he was thrown.”
He nodded. “She’s probably not done, either. She’s still out there.”
I thought back to Professor Allman’s advice about not talking to the cops until I had a specific suspect in mind. Well, now we did. “We should go to the police. Let them know our suspicions.”
He nodded. “And I’m going to see Sergeant Johnson. I think the World Army would be very interested to know such a dangerous Other is wandering around the city, picking off students.”
I made a face.
“What?” he said.
“It’s just … getting the World Army involved is worse than the police. They’re not very Other-friendly.”
“Uh, in case you hadn’t noticed, Isa, this Other isn’t very human-friendly. And as soldiers, we’re training to deal with situations like this.”
My eyes widened on him. “You’re a soldier now?”
I could tell he hadn’t wanted to deliver the news to me this way, here in the museum. But a certain pride burned in his eyes as he stared back at me. “I am.” He paused. “At least, I want to be. Need to be.”
“Why?” I said, though I suspected I knew.
He sighed, lowered his face. “This is embarrassing to talk about.”
I set a hand on his leg. “What is?”
He mumbled something too quietly for me to understand, but it sounded like …
“You were possessed by a demon?” I repeated, leaning closer.
His head seemed to hang lower. “That’s right.”
“How?”
And he explained the whole story: dybbuk’s box and speaking when he shouldn’t have—”so stupid of me,” he said—and ending up with the demon inside him. How he’d tried to kill everyone he knew. In the end, Katrina had saved the day.
“Just like she always did,” he ended. “Once again, my girlfriend saved me.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s—”
He raised his face, that flame now returned to his eyes. “I’m different now. I’m not weak like that anymore.”
“You weren’t weak, Justin. You’re only human.”
“Only human. It’s a shame being only human, isn’t it?”
I blinked, shook my head. “No.”
This was shaping up to be our first fight, and even as I felt ashamed and embarrassed and wanted to end it, I also felt a certain anger flaring in me. Anger at his anger. Frustration at his choice to become a soldier for the World Army.
It must have shown on my face, because he reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. He held it out to me. “Can you flick this off your thumb? Straight up?”
I took it. “Of course I can.”
“Good. Do it.” He closed his eyes and waited.
“What’s the point of this?”
His eyes remained shut. “Just do it.”
So I set the coin on my thumb and launched it into the air. As it reached the height of its arc, Justin’s hand flicked up and the fingers
closed around it. He lowered his closed hand, extending it between us. When his palm opened—the coin at the center—so did his eyes.
I swallowed. I knew he had good reflexes, but pulling a coin out of the air with his eyes closed? “How did you do that?” I whispered.
“I’m not weak anymore,” he repeated.
“What does that mean?”
He pushed the coin back into his pocket. “It means I’m being trained to handle myself. I’ve been pushing myself to learn all sorts of new things.”
Justin couldn’t have been a cadet for more than a couple weeks, and as a biologist, I knew as well as anyone that muscle memory took time. More time than he’d had. But I kept my thoughts to myself; Justin looked so happy.
Still, this made me uneasy.
“Wonderful,” I said. The word lingered in the air, and I felt it again: that wedge between us. It had grown. “Well, I can cover the police front, and you can handle the World Army front.”
He glanced back up at me. “You don’t want me to come with you to the station?”
“I …”
The truth was, I did want him to come with me. I’d felt completely uncomfortable around Tremblay, and having Justin there as my human ambassador would probably help to grease the groove. At the same time, I hated thinking I needed an ambassador just to talk to the police. Principle and my own pride made me want to go it alone.
We stared at each other for a while, and my gaze finally drifted to the image of Empusa behind him. She might be out there still, somewhere on the campus. I shivered, crossing over to Justin and setting my hand on his forearm. As soon as we touched, that iciness dissipated. “Until this is resolved,” I said, “I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”
He smiled at me. “Does this mean I get to sleep on the floor of your dorm?”
I blinked. “Actually, that’s a good idea.”
His smile grew, and a name popped into my head.