by Molly Harper
Maybe it would be better if I didn’t tell her I was alive after all. I could make a fresh start. A new life, maybe in the Southwest, where no one knew me.
I sighed. That was the fatigue talking. I knew I would eventually have to make contact with Mother. I just wanted to do it on my terms. So much of our relationship had been on her terms, her rules, her refusal to see boundaries. I felt safer at a distance.
Somewhere, in the distance, I heard a branch snap, and not just in a “broke under the weight of a chubby squirrel” way. Someone was moving behind me. Was it Finn? Would he call out to me, or was he so upset about my abandonment that he was stalking me through the woods like a deer? Or maybe the branch snapper was a deer, and I was just overreacting.
I moved faster, lifting my legs in an odd ostrich walk to keep my shoes from sticking. The sounds grew louder, closer to me, and I broke out into a full run, stumbling over fallen logs and dodging branches that whipped at my face.
I clutched my bag to my chest to keep it from dragging on loose limbs. I tried not to panic, but now the noises sounded like they were coming from every direction, and I felt like a trapped animal. I stopped at a small break in the trees, suddenly aware that the only noise I could hear was the ragged sound of my own breathing and my pounding heart. I turned in a slow circle, listening intently and scanning the fading light for predators.
I would not be the girl in the horror movie who called out “Hello?” when she thought she was being followed. That girl always died first.
My hand slipped into my bag and searched for my pills. If ever there was a time for antianxiety meds, this was it. As my fingers fumbled for the empty plastic prescription bottle, I remembered that the ashes of my meds were in a pile of flaming wreckage. I wondered what was going to be worse, my impending bone-shaking, brain-muddling anxiety attack or the dread of its arrival, which was almost as debilitating. Oh, and given that I’d been using those pills for a while now, I might end up suffering from withdrawal symptoms on top of everything else.
What were the chances of death for horror-movie heroines who cried in the fetal position in the dirt?
Suddenly, the smell of burning leather and mud assailed my nose, and I was tackled by a swift, smoldering shape. My yelp was cut short when I hit the dirt, knocking the wind out of me and making my lungs ache. Finn was on top of me, his skin black and flaking like burnt birch bark. I could hear him sizzling as the last of the sun’s dying rays washed over the areas not covered by his undershirt. His shirt was tied around his brow like a sheik’s, shielding his head and neck, but his hands and chest, oh, his poor chest. He was roasting alive as we rolled through the underbrush with the momentum of his speed.
Just then, I heard a sharp whooshing noise and saw a long, dark streak fly over us. It struck the tree just over our heads. Someone had fashioned a spear out of a long stick, duct tape, and a black ceramic kitchen knife. And then they’d flung it at us and damn near killed us.
Finn shouted something, but I couldn’t make it out over the shock of having a freaking spear thrown at me.
“What?” I barked.
“Move!” Finn yelled, as the white noise of panic cleared my ears.
I heard rustling in the distance, a heavy shape moving through the trees. Finn rolled us, keeping me pinned to his chest as he moved us in the underbrush. The shape stopped, and so did Finn, freezing above me, panting softly as he scanned the tree line. I wriggled out from under him, eased off my sweater, and arranged it around his shoulders to cover more skin.
Finn didn’t speak but held a finger to his lips. I nodded frantically. He rolled to his side, letting out a wheezing “uhf” as he landed in the dirt.
I crept closer to the tree and pulled the makeshift spear free from the bark. It was no small task, as the blade had sunk deep. I balanced the stick in my palms, marveling at the weight of the knife, crouching close to Finn’s prone form. It had to be Ernie the pilot. How many people could there be roaming the woods with black ceramic knives?
He’d found us. I’d mostly doubted that the pilot had survived. Even with the parachute, I had serious doubts that he’d made it. But he’d been tracking us all day, it seemed, and the idea of him finding us while we were sleeping under the tree made me shudder. Yes, Ernie was chubby and a bit boozy, but he clearly had some survival skills. Maybe he was former military? That would help my pride a little bit, knowing that he was somehow trained to do this sort of thing, and we weren’t just terrible at surviving.
If Ernie came near us, would I be able to use the knife? I looked down at Finn, who was suffering because he’d tried to help me.
Yes, I could.
“I’ve got your knife, Ernie!” I yelled, mustering bravery I didn’t have into my voice, praying it didn’t quaver as I heard trees moving in the distance. My fingers shook as I tightened my grip around the stick. “And you’ve pissed off my vampire friend pretty bad! So you probably don’t want to come any closer.”
After a long moment, I heard something moving toward us. I bared my teeth, though I’m sure it looked more like a terrified grimace than a warrior stare. I moved to stand over Finn, gripping the stick so hard that my knuckles ached. Where was he? Where was he?
Part of me wanted to scream at him to hurry up and attack, anything to end this horrible waiting. And the other part wanted to yell that I gave up, that Ernie could have the book. I was tired of running and hiding when I clearly wasn’t very good at it. And I’d never even been in a fistfight before, much less a knife fight. Who was I kidding?
My eyes landed on a distinctive shape in the distance, a darker patch in the irregular pattern of green leaves. The patch came into focus, and I realized it wasn’t a patch of leaves. It was a face. A rounded, florid face with angry dark eyes and a sneering mouth. Ernie was either unhappy to see me or way too happy to see me. My whole body seemed to seize up. I thought back to nightmares I’d had as a child of looking out a darkened window and seeing some evil face looking back at me, smiling, trying to figure out how to get in my house.
I could see Ernie’s face, see the intent in his eyes. This man wanted to hurt me, and there was no hiding from it, no looking away.
Finn groaned, pushing to his feet, drawing my gaze. He wavered, his skin still smoldering as the sun faded over the horizon, but he stayed upright. I glanced back at Ernie’s position, but he was gone. Gasping, I gripped the spear tighter.
I heard movement edging slowly away from us, eventually disappearing altogether. I waited for what seemed like an eternity before I felt my shoulders relax. My grip on the spear loosened, and I stumbled away from Finn, bending at the waist and gritting my teeth against the urge to toss up the granola bar. I couldn’t spare the calories.
I couldn’t believe I’d just done that. My life was in danger again. And I’d invited a confrontation with someone whose daily to-do list seemed to include an agenda item labeled “Murder Anna Whitfield.” Again.
I wasn’t built for this sort of thing. I was built for my cozy at-home office, the guest room lined with shelf upon shelf of valuable and obscure old books. Before I’d boarded that stupid plane, a really exciting day for me consisted of finding a new blend of herbal tea at my local Whole Foods. Or maybe that time Rachel tried to make me get a tattoo for my birthday and I had to employ every “urban escape” tip I’d ever read to hail a cab back home before she realized I’d bailed out through the tattoo shop’s bathroom window.
How much more was I expected to take? Every time I went through one of these face-offs with Ernie, my probability of survival shrank. So far, I’d slid by on luck and unlikely failures of physics. If I survived, I was never going camping. Not that there was much chance of it before, but those tiny fractions of a chance had definitely been smashed into nothingness in the past twenty-four hours.
All for one stupid job, a job that while important and potentially reputation-building—not to mention remunerative—was just a job. I couldn’t spend money or enjoy a good reputation while I
was dead.
If I’d expected Finn to be sympathetic or calming when I finally emerged from my one-woman pity party, I would have been sorely disappointed.
“What were you thinking?” he growled, shrugging out of my sweater and his shirt. The raw, ash-covered patches of skin were only half as angry as the sound of his growls as he hunched over me. He looked as if portions of his face were composed of cigarette ash. His lips were red and bleeding, and his eyelids looked so dry they could crack. Mr. Magazine Perfect looked like he’d been ridden hard and hung up disheveled. A flutter of sympathy rippled through my belly. “I told you I would help you. I told you I would get us out of the woods. Why would you try to walk away?” Finn groaned and flopped on the ground. “Kitten, if you’re not convinced by now, I don’t know what to do for you.”
I would let him get away with “kitten,” for now. I picked up my sweater and did my best to knock the ashes off of it. (Ew.) “I’m sorry about your skin. Is there anything I can do?”
“Got a pint of blood to spare?” he asked, his eyes closed.
“Nope.”
I looked down at the spear in my hand. I could go and hunt . . . something, I supposed. The chances of me actually killing an animal were pretty damned slim, but I could at least try. Come to think of it, I had a much better chance of spearing myself while trying to hunt down an animal, which was part of the reason I didn’t own a gun.
“Relax, Anna. I can see how you feel about that, even with my eyes closed.” He opened said eyes and squinted into the canopy of leaves over us. His eyes panned as if they were tracking some movement I couldn’t sense. He rolled toward the tree and slammed his fist against it. A moment later, a squalling, hissing ball of gray fur tumbled out of the branches above. Finn caught it just before it landed on his face.
“That’s a possum,” I said, pursing my lips and nodding while he wrestled the marsupial into submission.
“Yes, it is,” he rasped. “And as an omnivore, it is nutrient-rich.”
“You’re going to eat a possum?”
“Technically, I’m going to drink a possum.”
“OK.” I winced as he considered the best place to sink his teeth. “No judgments, but I’m going to go over there.”
“That’s probably for the best,” he said, nodding. I rounded a larger tree, still clutching the spear. I examined the weird black blade, flicking the surprisingly sharp edge with my finger. I’d read up on ceramic knives when I’d outfitted my kitchen. And while I could see the appeal of blades that never went dull, I found the number of chemicals involved in treating the blades off-putting. I didn’t want something with so many “oxides” touching my food. Ceramic blades were nonmagnetic; this wouldn’t have shown up when Ernie walked through security at the airport. All he had to do was tape the knife inside his sleeve or pant leg, and he would be golden.
“Ernie, you clever douchebag,” I muttered to myself.
From the other side of the tree, I heard a screech and a crunch-slurp. I knew Finn was only doing what he had to do to survive, but honestly, that was pretty gross. Once the slurping stopped, I came back around the tree. His skin was healing, the scars seeming to evaporate as he slowly sat up.
“That is freaky.”
He blanched, and a shudder ran up his back. “I could say I’ve had worse, but that would be a lie.”
“I am not sorry for you.”
“Want a bite?” he asked, offering me the mostly intact carcass. He was already looking better. The burnt patches of his skin were knitting themselves back together, the tendrils of tissue reaching out to recreate the smooth surface. His color, such as it was, was better, returning to the pale pearlescent sheen natural to vampires; though the worst areas hadn’t entirely smoothed out, his mouth no longer resembled an open wound. Still, I could resist the lure of possum tartare.
“So how are you?” he asked.
“Sore,” I told him. “Like I was thrown out of a plane last night.”
“Not going to let go of that anytime soon, are you?”
I shook my head. “No, I am not.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to try to eat this?” he said, holding up the possum. “We can roast it over a fire or something.”
“Not with Ernie still out there. The smoke will lead him right to us,” I muttered, though I wasn’t sure if my disdain was really for the possibility of discovery or the idea of eating an overgrown rat.
“Is that really his name?” he asked, wiping at his mouth. I nodded. He sneered in disgust. “Terrible name for an arch-nemesis.”
“And no thanks on the possum. I’m a vegetarian,” I told him.
“You are?”
“Very recently,” I said. “As in within the last five minutes.”
He rolled his eyes as he stood. “You’re going to need to eat eventually.”
“And when that time comes, I will let you know. Besides, the less I eat, the less appealing my blood will be to you.”
“Eh, your attitude would make it all sour, anyway,” he told me, as we headed away from the last location of Ernie’s trampling sounds.
“I don’t have an attitude!” I cried, pausing before I added, “I am not making a very good case for myself, am I?”
“No, you are not. And don’t do that again, Anna. Please. I can’t help you if you run off. I told you, we need each other if we’re going to get out of this.”
I nodded.
“Good, now that we have that established.”
He seemed to have recovered his vampire speed, because he was at my side, snatching my bag from my shoulder and the spear from my hand, before I knew what happened.
“What are you doing?” I cried, lowering my voice so Ernie, wherever he was, wouldn’t hear me. “Give that back.”
“What is your deal with this bag?” he demanded. “Are you carrying around uncut conflict diamonds? Exotic bird eggs? Mummified organs of former boyfriends? What?”
“Don’t!” I cried, trying to grab for the bag, but he held it out of my reach.
“I’m not going to take it. I just want to know what’s in your purse. You’ve been cradling this thing like a baby. I want to know what was worth the pilot trying to mug you as he hijacked our plane.”
“Stop it, please,” I begged. I cringed as he pulled the package loose from my bag. The plastic bag, battered and cloudy as it was, glistened in the moon’s weak early light.
“A book?” he gasped, sounding truly insulted. “All this over a stupid book?”
“Yeah, just a book,” I told him, my voice too tremulous to convey the casual tone I was aiming for. “I don’t know what all the fuss is, really.”
“I mean, I would understand if it was mummy parts or a huge brick of cocaine,” he said. “But a book? And it looks like it’s been beaten all to hell.”
Finn examined the worn brown leather cover that I now knew as well as the back of my own hand. The pages were thin as onion skin, delicate, almost translucent vellum, hand-lettered with iron gall ink. It had to be made from metal to have survived for so long.
Friar Thomas, who’d been considerate enough to write the book in a mix of Latin and Old English despite his Spanish roots, also had a talented hand with illustrations, the heavy woodcut style marks depicting the various stages of transformation for shifters from human to animal.
It had been a shock when Jane sent me the book for verification. Friar Thomas was considered the J. D. Salinger of supernatural researchers, reclusive and not exactly prolific. After being ejected from his order for his heretical ideas that vampires, witches, and other “demonic entities” were not inherently evil and perhaps deserved a conversation or two before being burned at the stake, he didn’t have much motivation for writing. Finding one of his books, especially a previously unknown work, was like finding the Hope Diamond at a rummage sale.
Jane had some idea that the book could be useful to the shifter community, but she’d come across so many faked and/or academically flawed volumes in her s
hop that she didn’t want to assume anything. Having never heard of the obscure Franciscan scholar, she’d asked me to determine whether this was authentic or faked by someone who was, as Jane termed it, “banana-balls crazy.” It had taken months of calls, e-mails, and burying myself in old dusty church records, but eventually, I determined that A Contemplation on Shifters from the Old World and the New was not a “banana-balls crazy” fake but possibly the most definitive work on shape-shifting ever written and a bit of a literary Holy Grail. (Turned out there weren’t that many works written on shape-shifting.)
I hadn’t come to accept that shapeshifters actually existed yet, because I was a “seeing is believing” type when it came to the supernatural. But honestly, if vampires existed, why not werewolves, zombies, sea serpents, and other monsters? I was rooting against zombies, though, because I had come to accept that I would be among the first eaten in the zombie apocalypse.
Having spent years researching supernatural texts, I’d heard stories and rumors, both about Friar Thomas and about the shifters, their odd skill sets and social structures. While were-creatures were supposedly very pack-oriented and communicated freely with other packs, shifters were supposed to keep to themselves. From what I’d read, shifters were supposed to live in small communities, very separated and insular. They didn’t talk to one another, and they definitely didn’t share their secrets with other shifters. Having this kind of history text could help them understand themselves and overcome the pack separation by tracking down the regional families listed by Friar Thomas. It would also make whoever held the book very powerful. They would have more information about their condition, the best times to shift, the diets that could make their shifts easier, and how far they could stretch their forms—something that apparently could go very wrong if a shifter overreached. And they would obtain the “final chapter”—the element that made the book a scary story shifters told their kids before bedtime.
Friar Thomas had written a “cautionary chapter” to end his magnum opus, detailing his visit with a dying shifter clan in the northern reaches of Siberia. There were only three elderly members left, something they blamed on the use of a home-blended herbal tea that was supposed to make their shifts last longer. While the herbs helped sustain the shifts, long-term users lost their ability to shift or pass on the trait to their children. Friar Thomas posited that the prolonged shifts “burned away” the shifters’ magic prematurely. My pet theory was that the herbal concoction was toxic enough that it altered the shifters’ DNA and deleted the bits that allowed them to transform. Because most of Russia seemed to be scary, why not its plants?