Run, Kat, Run and Encantado Dreams (Mortality Bites: Publisher's Pack Book 4)

by Ramy Vance

  “We really don’t know as yet,” the officer said. He was being vague because we were civilians, but I sensed he agreed with Justin. I knew from my long history of interacting with humanity that they were capable of doing every depraved thing imaginable to their own species, but since the gods had left, perceptions had changed.

  By default, Others were held responsible for such depravity.

  And in that moment, I discovered my temper again. “Does it matter?”

  Justin’s eyes flew to me with a certain surprise. “Absolutely,” he said. “If it’s an Other, they operate by different rules, protocol, motivations—“

  “Right at this moment”—I held his gaze—“does it matter?”

  Justin studied me, and after a moment the hardness in his jaw softened. He understood, and his arm came out. I leaned into him, my head on his shoulder. “No,” he said. “Right at this moment, it doesn’t.”

  So I still had more sway over him than the World Army’s teachings, at least. A small comfort. He didn’t speak again until we arrived at my dormitory, but that thing still hung in the air between us … the stickiness of a wedge, future problems.

  After all, I was one of them—the Others, the depraved.

  When we arrived at my dorm and I stepped out of the police car, Justin leaned out after me. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  I turned back, pulling my coat tight. “I have a meeting with Professor Allman.”

  “After?” His pleading blue eyes did 90% of the work. “I’d like to talk about this whole Army cadet thing. I could tell the effect it had on you when I mentioned it.”

  I sighed, panned my gaze around in the night. The street was unusually empty on account of the alert, and an icy wind hurt my ears and nose. I felt a strong urge to be inside. “After.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Great.” I turned away, heard him pull the door closed. Why had I been so brusque? I understood it, in part—he was a cadet for the World Army, an organization whose very mention made me feel a little violated—but it was something bigger.

  It had to do with the blackness of the evening. The birds, the murder, the human whose heart had been perfectly carved from his chest. Somewhere nearby lurked a creature capable of such things.

  Back in the dorm, Aimee nearly accosted me at the door. “Isa,” she cried, clinging to me, “I was so worried about you. I heard about the birds, and then the campus alert about the murder—”

  “Woah,” I said, stepping away. “Sharp metal object on board.” As I pulled from her grasp, I untucked the metallic feather from the recesses of my jacket, the whole of it still wrapped in Justin’s coat.

  When I revealed it under the fluorescent light, it shone like a piece of glass. As Aimee and I stood over it, our faces reflecting back at us, she opened her mouth. “Is that …?”

  “It’s a feather.”

  She reached out, tapped the flat of it with her nail. It made a clinking noise. “OK,” she said. “OK. I think we’re going to need more weed.”

  Chapter 15

  In the night, I dreamed of him. The blond boy missing his heart.

  I woke in the early dawn, my own heart thudding so hard against my chest I set a hand there. Through the window, cumulus clouds hung low and gray. And that same blackness pulled at my mind. It pinched with two fingers, wouldn’t let go as I dressed, pulled on my coat, set the metallic feather in my purse.

  I had six hours until my meeting with Professor Allman. That gave me six hours to figure out what the hell kind of creature this feather had come from.

  I clomped down the stairwell as the feeling percolated inside me. Here was the thing, I thought as I stepped into the frigid morning. The birds hadn’t killed anyone, even though they could have. And simultaneously, a student had been murdered not two blocks from where they’d flocked.

  I inspected the high branches of every tree I passed. Bare, bare, bare, all of them devoid of regular birds, the birds I’d so often hear chirping through my dorm window in the fall, even in the winter.

  Even as recently as two days ago.

  Around me, the campus spread silent and empty. Normally I’d spot a few early-risers, but not this morning. In fact, I felt more alone than I had since arriving at McGill.

  As far as I knew, a suspect still hadn’t been brought in for the murder. Which meant he, she—it?—was still walking or crawling or flying. Still at large. And I didn’t have a single clue who or what to be looking for, which raised every hair along my spine. And everyone knew that in the scariest movies, not seeing the monster made for an infinitely more frightening time. Because everyone’s imagination catered to their own fears, their own scariest monster.

  So I just about ran to the Other Studies Library, and when I pushed through the doors, my cheeks had nearly frozen from the wind. I doubled over in the warmth, my purse clutched to my side.

  “Oh dear.” The librarian at the circulation desk eyed me over her glasses. “What’s wrong?”

  I straightened, shook my head. “I just got spooked walking here. A student was murdered last night.” And I saw him after he’d died.

  Her aged eyes grew wide. “An awful thing. I heard a few of those World Army cadets found him in the tree.”

  “No, he was—” I stopped hard. “Wait, what tree?”

  “Just outside his dorm, in one of those red ash trees. A sophomore, maybe twenty.” The librarian stood, appeared now about to cry as she leaned over the desk toward me. “His eyes were gone. Both of them.”

  Heart. Eyes. I just stared at her, my body running hot with fresh adrenaline.

  “You meant another murder,” she realized.

  I nodded, both hands on the strap of my purse.

  “A student as well?” she asked.

  “On Saint Catherine Street,” I whispered.

  Her eyes reddened, and the librarian slumped back to her seat like she’d been hit in the solar plexus. “What a GoneGodDamned thing.” She glanced up at me. “Sorry for cursing, dear.”

  I waved a hand through the air. When I turned away, started toward the stacks, I realized the noise in my ears from last night had never stopped.

  The screeching continued in my head, reduced to a thin ringing.

  ↔

  I got myself together in the bathroom, tried not to look in the mirror. I knew I’d imagine myself eyeless, with a hole in my chest; my imagination was overactive that way.

  Twenty minutes later, I flicked on a reading lamp and sat with a stack of books on birds. Given my knowledge of them, it didn’t take me long. Birds with metal feathers weren’t terribly common throughout history, or in lore. The second book I opened—Creatures of Greek Mythology—contained exactly what I’d been looking for.

  “Stymphalian,” I whispered, finger tracing the lines. Birds of prey, except unlike regular birds, these preferred to eat humans. And they were well-equipped to do so. Beaks and feathers of bronze, the impossibly sharp talons. They had destroyed the ancient countryside like swarms of locusts, devastating crops and villages. And ultimately they had been subdued by Hercules, who had shot them down with arrows tipped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra.

  Ancient Greek birds of lore. Where had they come from? And why had they attacked Montreal? And the most baffling part of all: Stymphalian birds were man-eaters, and yet they hadn’t killed or eaten any of the slow, sedentary Canadians. Why?

  I closed my eyes, both hands set to my face. Last night, it had seemed like they were attacking, but from my studies of birds of prey, I knew they weren’t. They had been diverting. Distracting. All that noise, dive-bombing people—it was theater. If they’d been intending to kill, they would have waited for the right moment to swoop in, silent and lethal.

  But distracting from what? I stared off into the empty stacks, my ears ringing. Two murders had occurred last night. The heart removed from one victim, the eyes from the other.

  What was the story? From everything Justin had told me about his girlfriend, I had
a fleeting sense that if I were Katrina Darling, I would be able to piece it all together.

  But I wasn’t Katrina, and I never would be—even if I’d once looked like her. I was Isabella, and maybe, just maybe this was a problem that didn’t need Katrina Darling to solve.

  After four hours of research, I pushed the stack of books aside; I needed someone else’s mind at work on this, and I knew exactly whose.

  I glanced at my watch. By the GoneGods, when had it gotten to be nearly noon? I was going to be late for my meeting. I grabbed up my bag and jogged through the stacks and up to the main floor, passing by the librarian I’d spoken to on my way in.

  When I dashed out of the library and came around the corner of the building, I stopped short.

  Before me, one of the bare trees on campus was full to the gills with a flock of stymphalian birds, their bronze beaks gleaming in the wisps of light between the clouds. At this distance, I could gauge their true size: as large as pure black cranes, talons longer than my fingers wrapped around the branches. They sat silent, immobile, their dark eyes surveying me from twenty feet away.

  I took one step back, my boot barely tapping on the sidewalk. As I did, one of the largest birds jerked to stare at me straight on, its wings parting to reveal a terrifying span, a series of serrated bronze feathers stretching to six feet at either side.

  I took another step, not taking my eyes off it, then another. It rose to its full height, legs straightening, and let a screech so tremendous I clapped my hands to my ears, bracing myself. All at once, I felt wind across my body, and I looked up to see the entire flock pulling toward the sky, thirty of them airborne at once.

  My lips parted in silent awe as the black cloud swept over and past me, traveling north toward Mont Royal. They hadn’t attacked me, and I realized as I watched them disappear over the buildings that I hadn’t sensed real malice from them.

  Not this time, at least. My eyes lifted to the sun behind the clouds. Were they nocturnal? I hadn’t seen any mention of it in the mythology book, but it was, after all, ancient mythology. Another reminder of how, given our newfound coexistence, we knew frighteningly little about Others and monsters. Even I, as an Other, didn’t know much about most species of Others.

  But right now, I was out of time to ponder stymphalian birds. I ran toward the Stewart Biology building.

  Professor Allman’s office door was shut. His door was never shut, and right now we were supposed to have a meeting. I knocked, but it didn’t open. So I spent five minutes sitting on the tiled floor, my back against the wall. I felt tired, colorless after yesterday, and encountering that flock of stymphalian birds again hadn’t helped.

  As soon as I closed my eyes, his excited voice echoed down the hall, and a woman’s returned. Their shoes clicked on approach, and I pushed myself up the wall. Twenty feet away, a fabulously tall woman in the kind of professional getup I’d thought was the sole realm of magazine models—red heels, black, fitted slacks, an equally black blazer with a white undershirt peeking through—walked in animated conversation with my professor.

  When he spotted me, the woman followed his gaze. “Ah, Isabella,” Professor Allman said. “Sorry to be late.” He wrung his fingers—a gesture I’d become familiar with over the many months we’d spent working together. It was a nervous tic. But this time it was also paired with a faint line of sweat on his brow.

  Something about this woman made him nervous.

  “This is Isabella?” The woman turned crystal blue eyes on me. I swallowed. Did I ever mention that I prefer men? Well, I’m a bit of an anomaly among encantado, who tend to be equally equally enchanted by both genders. But right now, this woman’s hair looked like a black waterfall.

  “Yes—the one and only.” He gestured between the two of us. “Isabella, this is Dr. Serena Russo, who I’ve been showing around our research facilities. She’ll be the lead scientist on the Other triple helix mapping project, and specifically asked to meet you today. Serena, this is Isabella Ramirez, the undergraduate who’s been studying Other DNA since she arrived at McGill, and a brilliant biology student.”

  It was only when I processed her extended hand that I realized I’d been staring at her hair. “Isabella,” she said, and as we shook hands, I didn’t even have time to consider all the implications of Dr. Russo’s sudden appearance on campus; I was still overwhelmed by her presence. “I’m so much looking forward to working with you on this critically important project.”

  “You’re not a professor here.” The thoughtlessness of my statement didn’t hit me until I glanced at Professor Allman, whose gray eyebrows had gone up.

  Dr. Russo laughed. “No—I’m employed by the Other Anti-Extinction Initiative. As part of the grant afforded to the biology department, I’ve been asked to head up the research here.”

  “Serena would very much like to see the work you’ve been doing, Isabella,” Professor Allman’s hand touched my back. “If you wouldn’t mind showing her now.”

  “Absolutely.” I set both hands on the strap of my purse. I started walking, my eyes glazed. What was the Other Anti-Extinction Initiative, and why did they have so much money to funnel into my work? After all, PR for Others hadn’t exactly been great ever since we’d come crashing—as in, some Others had quite literally fallen from the sky when the gods left—into humans’ lives.

  We came to the lab where I’d been spending half my free time for the past year and a half, and my hands went clammy. Only Professor Allman had really shown any interest in what I’d been doing up until now, and what if he’d only been trying to encourage a naive, short-sighted undergrad? How could I possibly contribute on the level of a woman like Dr. Russo?

  We stepped into the lab, and I brought the two of them over to my workstation. “Here it is.” I swept an arm out. “All of it.”

  Dr. Russo stepped forward, surveying the array of equipment. “Tell me what you’re trying to do here, Isabella.”

  I took my deepest breath, set my hands together. Even though I’d spent mountains of time on this work, I hadn’t prepared for this moment at all. “As you know, while human DNA forms a double helix, Other DNA forms a triple helix. I’ve been attempting to map this strand to gain a better understanding of Other DNA.”

  “To what end?” Dr. Russo asked.

  “It’s theorized that the third strand on the helix is what allows Others to tap into magic.”

  Those blue eyes surveyed my face. “But you don’t believe that, do you?”

  “No, I believe that when the gods made Others, they used the third strand as a way to mix traits of all of creation into one being. The simplest examples are centaurs, minotaurs and sphinxes—the half-human, half-animal beings.” I paused. “But it goes beyond that. A popobawa has spider-like features, but is somehow human, too.”

  She appeared impressed. “Human? Yes, I’ve heard the theory. Human emotions, human logic, the human capacity for love, and hate. ”

  This was my favorite subject, and I couldn’t stop myself. “Maybe it’s humans who have Other traits. After all, we were created before you.”

  She chuckled. “I see what Professor Allman meant about you. Sharp, passionate. Determined. But also reserved.” Then, “Isabella, what I want is the real reason why you’re mapping the Other genome.”

  “For the same reasons scientists mapped human DNA—to learn more about the species.” Though that wasn’t exactly true, and I didn’t meet Dr. Russo’s eyes as I said it. But I wasn’t willing to divulge the full truth. Not yet, at least.

  “That’s awfully altruistic of you.” A faint smile had appeared. “But that’s not why scientists mapped the human genome. And forgive my forwardness, but an encantado doesn’t come all the way from Brazil to the frigid north to conduct her research at McGill just out of curiosity.”

  My eyes darted to hers. A clear-eyed one, this Serena Russo—probably in more ways than one.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear the real reason,” she said, blue eyes clos
e on me. “Why are you studying the DNA of your fellow Others?”

  I discovered my lips moving—words coming out of them—before I’d even fully processed her question. “Because we’re dying out,” I breathed.

  GoneGodDamn, I hadn’t meant to say that, but something about her compelled me to share my true motives.

  One of her coal eyebrows went up. “Ah, so you know. Well, the ‘Other Anti-Extinction Initiative’ isn’t exactly off the nose, is it?”

  “We need to cure Other cancers.” The words spilled out of me now. “And alzheimers, and multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s.” That was the hard truth of my research: now that we were mortal, Others had become vulnerable. As members of our species now aged and died, we would slowly go extinct.

  All of us.

  “And of course,” I said, nearly out of breath, “we need to be able to procreate.”

  There it was. My truth. I—and every other Other alive—couldn’t have babies. We couldn’t perpetuate our species, and as soon as the last of us died of old age, we would all be gone.

  After the gods left, it was this knowledge that had led me to study at McGill. Because more than anything else, my mortal life’s desire was to have a child. To know the possibility of motherhood.

  But to do that, I first needed to map the triple helix.

  Dr. Russo was nodding at me; her smile had grown, her eyes lit. “There it is. That’s why we funded your work, Isabella. It’s that passion you feel that earned you a grant for your research, and it’s why I want you here Monday through Friday, four to nine. Can you do that?”

  Five days a week, five hours a day? I ran through my schedule in my mind—eighteen credit hours of classes, eating, sleeping, Aimee, Justin (wait, was I already including Justin in my schedule? What did that mean?)—but my thoughts were cut short.