Cabal

by David Delaney

  Outside the ring, spectators silently stepped in to fill the gaps between the trees. Some of the kids actually scaled the large pines, perching on branches for an unobstructed view. I didn't know the exact number of people living at the compound, but I was certain they were all present to witness the fight.

  I followed Tommy's lead and stripped my shirt off, handing it to Elyse. I stepped out of my shoes and set them neatly to the side.

  "I don't care what those a-holes say," Lucy whispered. "If you get into trouble, we're out of here. Wyatt, you be ready to go at my signal."

  "Lucy," Mr. Kelly began, but she cut him off.

  "I'm sorry, Richard," she said. "We have important things that need doing, and Tommy's petty vengeance isn't on the list."

  "Hey guys, I got this," I said with a confidence I didn't totally feel.

  In my time as a shape-shifter it had become obvious that I was fairly indestructible. That said, my fighting skill was a work in progress. I'd won almost all the real fights I'd been in because my opponents didn't know what I was capable of, and I had relied on the shock and awe approach. It had been very successful. Tommy was a trained fighter and while I’d never seen him in a one-on-one fight, I'd witnessed both Elyse and her parents in action, and they moved like greased-lightning ninjas. I had no doubt that Tommy's skill at least matched the Kelly's ability.

  "Any last minute pointers?" I asked.

  "End it as quick as you can," said Mr. Kelly. "The longer the fight goes, the better chance Tommy will find an opening and exploit it."

  Elyse pulled me into her arms. She didn't care that her parents were standing right next to us. She kissed me long and hard. The calming effect of her lips on mine was instant.

  "Kick his ass," she said.

  As I stepped into the circle my friends locked hands, prepared to blink if needed. In that moment the loyalty and love I felt pouring from them filled me with a power stronger than any magic. I absorbed it all, letting it surge around my body. Yes, I was a shape-shifter and so I belonged to the community of shifters, but Elyse, Lucy, Wyatt and Maddie—they were my family and I would die for them if need be.

  But not today.

  Agreed.

  I growled, loudly.

  Every eye turned to stare at me.

  I waved at Tommy.

  He may have been an expert in hand-to-hand combat, but I'd seen every action movie on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, so my Wiseass-Fu was strong.

  "Dork," I heard Elyse whisper behind me.

  Daniel stepped into the clearing. "Thomas has invoked the right of sásamh. As the governing council of the compound we have decided that the fight will be contained to human form only. The fight will last until only one man remains living." Daniel looked from me to Tommy. "Do you both understand and accept these terms?"

  I nodded.

  Tommy grunted.

  Daniel returned to his spot outside of the circle. It dawned on me that keeping the fight within this small clearing was going to be impossible. This wasn't the All Valley Karate Championships and there were no referees standing ready to blow a whistle if we stepped out of bounds. I should have known better than to worry, I was living in the supernatural world now. Roxanne held up a wooden staff that was carved with runes. After pausing dramatically for a moment she slammed it down on the ground and I felt the wave of magic as a shield formed around the circumference of the arena.

  Neat, the shifters had a magic fighting bubble. I glanced at Wyatt and he winked at me. There wasn't a magic barrier in existence that the kid couldn't blink through, and I grinned at him.

  That's when Tommy rushed me.

  I heard him coming and so was able to plant my feet. It didn't matter, Tommy tackled me at top speed, and the force sent us pile-driving into the barrier behind me. I was crushed between Tommy and what felt like a solid steel wall. The air whooshed out of my lungs and I heard a rib crack. My head was spinning and the only thing I could focus on was Tommy's chest.

  Oh well.

  I reached out and gave him the world's nastiest purple-nurple ever.

  Seriously, I almost ripped the nipple from his body.

  Tommy screamed and danced away from me, blood dripping down his chest. He wiped at his torso and stared at the red on his fingers. The look he gave me was beyond murderous rage. Good, I had his attention. I circled toward the center of the arena, away from the shield. I didn’t want to get tossed into that thing again. For the moment Tommy was keeping his distance and I wasn't about to run at him. But I needed him to stay angry and out of control, I figured it was the best chance I had at surviving. So, I pursed my lips together and made kissy noises at him.

  Stop toying with our adversary and finish him.

  Hey, that's what I'm trying to do. And unless you have any bright ideas, pipe down.

  Tommy roared in anger. "Face me boy! Or are you afraid?"

  "I'm standing right here, dude." I held my arms out wide.

  Tommy took the bait and flashed toward me. Interestingly, Hollywood's effects wizards got this part right. When two people who can move at incredible speed fight each other, everything kind of looks like it's moving in slow motion. I waited until Tommy was two finger-lengths away and I spun to the right, swinging my balled fist in a fluid arc toward Tommy's face. It was a classic spinning-back-fist. It was one of the first fighting moves I had mastered and so was a favorite of mine. Apparently Tommy was familiar with that particular move, because he was able to duck under my blow and use his momentum to snap a kick at my back.

  If I had been anyone but me, the kick would have shattered my spine. I tumbled forward, somersaulting and jumping back to my feet just in time to catch a flurry of punches to the face. Tommy struck me three times before I even realized I was being hit. I felt my nose break, ouch, but I didn't have time to think about it. Being the Ollphiest gave me a size advantage over other shifters. I was a little taller and wider than Tommy, and so I stepped into his next punch, wrapping my arms around him in a bear hug, pinning his arms between us. Without hesitating I head-butted him, once, twice, three times and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch as I fractured a few of the bones in his face.

  I felt Tommy start to go limp.

  Holy crap, I was winning.

  That's when Tommy ignored the ancient, sacred shape-shifter rules of sásamh and shifted.

  One second I had him crushed tightly to my chest, beating his face to a pulp with my thick skull, the next second he was in beast form and shredding me with his claws. I was able toss him off me, and get clear, but he had done some serious damage. My chest and stomach were sliced to ribbons and I was losing a lot of blood.

  What a big fat cheater.

  I knew Tommy was a dick, but this surprised even me.

  I could hear my friends and the rest of the crowd screaming at Tommy's disregard of the agreed-upon rules. I expected the shield to drop at any moment and the council to rush in and clamp one of those anti-shifter bracelet thingies on Tommy.

  No such luck.

  Roxanne's voice found me through the onslaught of noise. "Orson, the shield only drops when one of you is dead. You must shift and protect yourself."

  I wasn't going to break the rules, no matter how stupid they were. I looked at my friends and shook my head. No blinking. I was going to finish this.

  Hey, Crazy, are you awake in there? I could use some advice right about now.

  Let them all witness who we are.

  Okay . . . um I was hoping for something a little more specific.

  We are Ollphiest.

  Yes, I know that, but I refuse to shift. I want them to see that I have honor and that they can trust my word, always.

  There is no need to shift. There never was.

  What? I don't know what that means.

  Trust in our instincts.

  Tommy was roaring defiantly at the crowd of shifters. He didn't care that what he was doing would probably bring a death sentence down on his head. His giant wolf-man head swiveled to l
ook at Carmen, who urged him on.

  "Kill him! Kill the abomination that ruined our son," she screamed.

  Tommy turned to me, claws out, and this time he didn't run at me. Instead he moved toward me methodically. He was growling and snapping his jaws. He wanted me to shift, he wanted a good old-fashioned sásamh.

  "It sucks to be you," I said quietly.

  Following the advice of the voice in my head, I trusted in my instincts and switched on my sight. With the shield surrounding us the magic energy was bright and active. I stared at Tommy, examining his nightmare-inducing wolf-beast form. Something about his aura caught my attention. I'd seen other shifters while my sight was active, but I'd never really studied them. Tommy's aura looked double-layered, like one of those Russian Nesting Dolls. He had an aura within an aura.

  And then I knew.

  It was so simple.

  Shifters were hybrid creatures created by ancient magic, and I now understood that the magic manifested as two auras—one for our human form and the other for our animal. And both auras worked in perfect synchronicity allowing us to shift effortlessly from form to form.

  Tommy was getting closer. Another two steps and he would be able to reach out and tear my head off. The crowd was screaming at me to protect myself. I scanned Tommy's aura one more time looking for . . .

  Do you see it?

  Yep.

  I reached out, not with my hands but with my own aura, and when my energy connected with Tommy's I clenched my fists. I seized his animal aura and yanked, stripping it from his human aura.

  Without access to the magic of his animal Tommy instantly snapped back into his human form. And tearing his magic from him in such a violent manner must have been physically traumatic, because Tommy wobbled for a moment before collapsing onto the dirt, unconscious.

  I realized I could see Tommy's animal—well, a translucent representation of his wolf form floating in front of me.

  "Now that's wild," I said to myself.

  That's when I noticed the clearing had gone completely silent. Only the background noise of chirping birds and other forest sounds broke the quiet. I looked at the crowd of spectators, but they weren't looking at me, they were staring at the ghost-wolf shimmering in the air. All of them could see it. I switched off my sight and sure enough the wolf remained hovering above Tommy. I poked at it with my finger and it broke apart like smoke.

  I stared down at Tommy. He wasn't dead, and I wasn't going to kill him. I walked across the silent arena as all eyes tracked my movement. I stopped in front of the Cranes and the rest of the council.

  "Shifters snuffing out other shifters in some ancient gladiator game is really, really stupid," I said. "We all need to stand together, because I've got a feeling we're going to need all the help we can get in the not-too-distant future."

  I shifted my hand into a claw and swiped at the shield Roxanne had set with her fancy magic staff. When it disintegrated the silent crowd started jabbering excitedly. I smiled at a stunned Roxanne and Daniel, and walked back to my friends.

  I could hear the whispers all around me—Ollphiest, legend, monster and unfortunately chosen one.

  Wyatt made sure my ego stayed in check when he patted my shoulder and said, "Dude, you're such a drama queen."

  Elyse slipped an arm around me.

  Maddie hit me with some heals, which felt great and did wonders for my bleeding chest.

  Lucy stared at me for a moment before saying, "I'm glad you're not dead. But would you mind explaining how you managed to cast a spell?"

  "What? That wasn't a spell," I said.

  "Um, it was the exact definition of a spell," said Lucy, hands on her hips.

  Hey, I shouted at my inner baddie, did we just cast a spell?

  Yes, we are Ollphiest.

  Oh boy.

  Chapter Five

  Nobody wanted to leave the arena. The crowd was just milling around, but all eyes were on me and it was making me antsy. The Cranes and the other council members joined Carmen and a woman who Elyse described as a shifter-doctor as they checked on Tommy's limp form. I could tell, even from this distance, that the jerk was still breathing. I switched my sight on, curious about the permanence of what I'd done to Tommy. Was he no longer a shifter? Had I stripped him of his animal for good?

  In the magic spectrum Tommy looked a mess. His aura was a jagged, jumbled mass. It was very weak, but I could just make out his second animal aura. It was in worse shape than his human aura but it was there. It looked to me like he would make a full recovery, although it might take a while. I guess the shifter-doc came to the same conclusion because she expressed that exact opinion to Carmen, who looked extremely relieved. The doc instructed a few of the council members to help her carry Tommy back to his cabin.

  "Do you think he'll recover?" asked Wyatt.

  "Orson pummeled him," said Maddie. "But yeah, he'll live."

  I looked over at Maddie. As a healer she must be able to see things a normal mage might miss.

  "Is that good or bad?" asked Wyatt.

  I turned to my friends. "I meant what I said to the council. Shifters, all members of the Society actually, need to stop the bickering and infighting. We're all going to need to pull together, to stand against our real enemies."

  "We agree with you," said Lucy. "But before we all start holding hands and singing songs, I think you need to explain some stuff."

  "I didn't know I can do that, I swear," I told her. "All I knew was I didn't want to shift, I didn't want to break the silly rules. That didn't really leave me any options, but then Crazy told me to trust my instincts."

  Lucy's eyes narrowed. "And who exactly is Crazy?"

  I grinned. "That's what I call my animal, because sometimes he's a little on the psychotic side, but I think we're finally coming to an understanding."

  Elyse frowned at me. "I think we need to take this conversation indoors."

  "What's up?" I asked. "Is conversing with your animal not a thing?"

  "No, it's not," she said, glancing around at the gathered shifters. “And you need to stop talking," she whispered.

  Elyse took one arm and Lucy took the other. I thought that would cause a problem, but when Elyse glanced at Lucy she only nodded a thank you. What the hell? Wyatt and Maddie followed behind, keeping within grabbing distance just in case a blink was called for. I thought it was a bit of overkill. The entire compound had just witnessed me yank Tommy's animal from him, and so the cat was definitely out of the bag where I was concerned.

  We went straight to Elyse's cabin. It was next to her parent's place. For some reason she hadn't explained yet, Elyse wanted it to be just the five of us. She closed the door and pulled the curtains closed.

  "What's the deal?" I asked. "Everybody out there can hear what we're going to say if they want to.”

  "Maddie?" said Elyse.

  Maddie closed her eyes to concentrate, her lips silently moving. I felt a tiny ripple in the magic energy around me.

  Maddie opened her eyes. "It won't last long, but we'll be ignored for a few minutes."

  It was the same spell she had cast outside of Marcus' mansion when we were in the memory construct, a sort of temporary camouflage. Lucy had done something similar in the restaurant when she'd spelled the table. I looked at Lucy—she didn't look upset at not being asked for the privacy spell, just impressed that Maddie could pull off something similar.

  "Okay, spill," Elyse said to me. "When you say you converse with your animal, what do you mean exactly?"

  "He's a voice in my head."

  Wyatt's eyes got really big.

  Lucy wanted more information. "So, a voice in your head told you how to cast that spell? Because stripping a shifter of his animal, I've never heard of such a thing."

  "From the reaction of the crowd, I don't think anyone has," said Maddie.

  "You hear actual voices in your head?" asked Wyatt, still stuck on my admission. "Because that's padded cell kind of stuff. Do these voices all sound like
you, or do they like, speak in accents?"

  I rolled my eyes. "It's not voices, plural, it's one voice," I said. "And I don't know what it sounds like. What do thoughts in your head sound like?" I was getting agitated. "Elyse, you're telling me that your human and animal sides never speak to one another?"

  "I've told you before, that there is no separation. You are your animal and your animal is you. There are no separate thoughts, there can't be, because there is only one consciousness."

  "What else has this voice told you?" asked Maddie. "You said that your nick-name for it is Crazy, that doesn't sound good."

  I threw my hands up. "I don't know, he's quick to want to attack when threatened. He likes to remind me that we are the Ollphiest. And he blabbers on about destiny, a lot. He knew I'd be able to beat Tommy without shifting and kind of pointed me in the right direction."

  "I need to sit down," said Wyatt.

  "Orson," said Lucy. "The way you're describing it . . . it almost sounds like the voice has information not available to you. Is that what you think?"

  I didn't know what I thought. I hadn't exactly had a ton of time in the past month to sit and contemplate the implications of what it all meant. I dropped down onto the couch next to Wyatt and leaned my head back.

  "Yeah," I said. "Sometimes it feels like he knows things that I don't have a clue about. For instance, when Tommy talked about the shifters and the Society wiping out others like me in the past, he wasn't surprised."

  "Whoa, that's heavy," said Wyatt.

  Maddie snapped her fingers. "Genetic memory."

  As if that explained everything.

  "Genetic memory?" said Lucy.

  "We covered it in psych class," said Maddie. "There are experiences that over long spans of time can encode themselves in our DNA. There've been experiments with mice, where they were trained to fear a specific smell and then passed that fear on to their descendants. The new mice were afraid of the same smell even though they'd never experienced it before."

  "So, the Ollphiest part of Orson remembers what happened to the other Ollphiests?" said Wyatt. "Or is the plural Ollphiesten?"

  Lucy wasn't convinced and ignored Wyatt. "I get inheriting a trait to be afraid of something, but that's a lot different from a voice in your head telling you stuff."