"A discarded quarry."
I raised my nose. "Granite," sniffing, "And…children." I smiled.
Exiting my near-death experience, I saw that it had been a two-story shed. Though, so close to the quarry, the main floor flooded years ago.
We slunk in the cloak of shadows to the large tool building. Standing so close, our shoulders brushed. A large scar was very noticeable across Nash’s chest.
"What’s that from?" I whispered.
He looked at the pale, raised slash. "A sword fight."
"Who the fuck attacked you, Blackbeard?"
"I wish."
Inches from the door, far off voices and violence broke out.
"Check on the children." Nash was gone into the night, fighting a fight that wasn’t really his, making me think that maybe I hadn’t given vampires their proper due.
Moving through the large shed, the smell of dust, granite, and blood was thicker than syrup. Tools of all makes and models lined the walls. Blood coagulated on most of them. Some old, flaking like baked paint under a scorching sun. Some so fresh I stopped thinking altogether.
A faint rustle came from behind a barred door.
I flung the gargantuan steel rod to the floor and exploded through the door. Small bodies winced and tucked into themselves. "Oh my God." The overwhelming smell of feces and vomit assaulted every humane quality my mother instilled in me.
Rachel, Genevieve, Ena, and Brian huddled together, banding into a quivering wall of terror. They looked up and it didn’t register, at first, that it was me. That someone was here for them. Tears lined my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. I blamed the dust.
Squatting slowly, I checked to make sure no one was behind us before I asked, "Are you okay? Did they…hurt you?" I tried to emphasize 'hurt' because I was a coward. I didn’t want to ask if these children, babies in someone’s arms at one point in time, had been violated. The girls, no older than sixteen, knew what I was asking. What did that say about our lepe, our society, that they already knew they were someone’s prey before the monsters actually came and took them? I was disgusted.
Brian was oblivious and yelled back, "Yeah, they motherfucking hurt us! They didn’t invite us here for a birthday party. If so, where’s the cake?" Under the layers of slashes and oozing punctures, his voice cracked. "Where’s my fucking piece of cake?"
Ena, Brian’s girlfriend, shushed him gently before answering, "No," shaking her head over and over again. "They didn’t hurt us…like that…"
There was a "but" locked behind years of therapy and a lifetime of night terrors sure to keep the experience as fresh as an open wound dipped in salt water.
Rachel, the youngest in the room, couldn’t stop shaking. Not much louder than a breeze, she stuttered, "I told them—told them the people in my family don’t sh-shift until they’re sixteen. I told them I’m only thirteen, Fray, and-and they didn’t care." Tears welled in her eyes. "Why didn’t they care?"
Her chin felt so tiny in my hand as I met her fear with hard facts and reassurance. "Because some people are born to hate or worse, not care. Don’t worry, Rachel. You guys are leaving now, and we're going to kill them for you. I promise you."
The edge of her lips drooped all the way down, but she whispered back, "Thank you," like a little child.
"Do you need help?"
We all jumped, and Genevieve let out a squelch.
Lucy smiled apologetically. "I did not mean to scare you."
The far off voices broke out again. This time, they were much closer.
"It’s okay. Can you take the kids?"
Ena’s back straightened. "You want us to go with her? But she’s a vampire." Days ago, her outrage would have mirrored mine. Now it just seemed annoying.
"Ena, she will not eat you. Go with her. Go silently and you’ll live to tell everyone how crazy I am to trust a vampire."
"Thank you," Lucy said warmheartedly, which was still unsettling. "The shadowshifters are waiting to conceal us."
Unsure, but sure unwilling to stay where they were, the children huddled together and followed Lucy out of the bowels of Satan’s toilet. Ena spared a final glance, and I shook my head to reassure her. Worry tattooing her expression, she snuggled Brian closer, turned without further complaint, and followed a vampire into the dark unknown. She would make a good leader one day.
Still standing under the small bug light by the tool shed, an unnatural roar tore through the night. I rounded the corner to see Nash, the Menendez siblings, Darien, and Blaire tearing into a multitude of Dissenters in the distance.
"Fancy meeting you here, said the spider to the fly."
Chapter Thirteen
I turned and smiled into those empty eyes. "You’re early."
"I apologize," said the man who tried to drown me. "But I brought something for you." He pulled a board from behind his back and slapped me across the face with it. "I’m not a candy and flowers man. I hope you’re not disappointed."
I slid over smooth, convexed granite, but rolled and bounced to my feet as if my life depended on it because, well, it did.
"I’m going to beat your pilgrim ass!"
We charged one another. A surge of great satisfaction overcame me when his nose crunched under my elbow. Almost as swift, however, he knocked my feet out from under me with a blow to the stomach.
"We are much older than you think…Madison." A patronizing element accompanied his tone. "Puritans were so easily manipulated. Such puppets." He drew out every sound until each was somehow deranged.
"I don’t give a shit if Mary and her lambs chartered your little cult. I’m not here for a history lesson. I’m here to end it."
"And you actually think you can. How cute."
I hit him a few times in the jaw, delivering the moment of silence I needed. Sprawled over him in a killing position, however, he said, "Ask me how I know your name." Ignoring his request, I raised a rusty shovel, readying to slice and dice his head from his shoulders. "Trust me. Time is of the essence. Ask."
Begrudgingly, I did. "How do you know my name?"
A smirk bragged, "Little girls don’t keep secrets." He moved and held out a large set of pliers that must have been tucked under his shirt. "For long."
There was blood on it. One whiff made me think Marisa, Tatum’s fourteen-year-old sister.
I picked out her scent from the rest of the blood on the wind and tossed the shovel. Running over granite slopes, past conveyors, shakers, and other machinery, I reached the bulk of bloodshed. Everyone, good and bad alike, started running towards me—no—past me when a small explosion rocked the night.
Jose yelled, "It’s going to blow!" but he wasn’t running like the rest.
"What’s happening?" I asked Darien, because he was the only shifter in human form.
Blaire was in the middle of a pile of broken bodies, snarling. His leopard eyes darted to each man standing, inviting more. An untamed thrill spiraled up my back to see him so wild and ready to eat anyone who stood in his way. He was in his element.
Nash had gone vampie, tearing into chests and slashing throats. Even Shane manifested into the force of a ghostly anaconda, squeezing the life out of a Dissenter.
Oddly, most of the Dissenters remained in human form. The few that did change were…not right. They didn’t resemble one specific animal, yet they didn’t take on any type of ‘were’ form. They looked malformed, misshapen, deformed. Not. Fucking. Right. Something was definitely troubling their genetics, but I wasn’t stopping to map their genome.
Two jumped me from the side. Their fighting techniques sucked, so it didn’t take long to snap a neck and break a back. I wasn’t taking rain checks. I wanted them to pay with everything they had.
Darien grabbed my arm and pointed to a small lean-to. "Old dynamite caps! Get away!"
The side of the building caught fire.
"Who’s in there?"
"‘Were!’"
He tried to resume running, but I whipped him around and shoo
k my head. "We’re in this together. There is a half to all of us that’s human. Let’s think with that half, okay?"
Hesitating for a moment to acknowledge his shame, we ran to the aid of the Menendez siblings. And it was a sight.
Jose granted our entry and remained at the door, guarding for Dissenters. Rose and Dominick stood in front of…Mira? It was after midnight, Mira’s eighteenth birthday, and it was quite apparent that their history was no joke. Listening to bones crack and pop out of joints, I was sorry for ever doubting their curse.
Mira, no larger than a sixth-grader, was bound by silver chains. She screamed into the air and convulsed as her flesh writhed and rippled from shifting particles beneath the surface. I watched her kneecap dislocate itself and shift. Bile rose behind my tonsils when her chin quivered and tears streamed over sprouting hair and bulging cheekbones.
Dominick’s skin burned repeatedly as he tried to break Mira’s shackles. Rose, engulfed in loud sobbing, reached out to her sister. Flames flickered behind them.
Darien and I grabbed some discarded rods and leapt to help Dominick. Sweat laced his brow, and the stench of burning flesh made us cringe. A second cap on the far end of the building exploded. Metal shards and miscellaneous shit flew everywhere. Rose jumped in front of a large disc, deflecting it from Mira’s head. We worked twice as fast when the flames engulfed a whole new area. An area closer to our tender flesh.
Together, we broke Mira’s bonds. Her siblings snatched her up and we hauled ass. Clearing the building, we instantly smacked into a wall of night the color of blood and death. Surrounded by dead trees and crumbling buildings, I’d never felt such Hell on earth.
"Follow me!" I yelled to Darien and started running, even as the other dynamite caps took off like shooting stars. We ducked behind a dump truck when the roof shot off, but I didn’t wait until it landed to take off again. Darien scrambled to keep up.
When we reached yet another decrepit repair building, I started screaming, "Marisa!" and charged through the doorway. The actual door was long gone. Hinges, too. Taking a deep breath, her scent led to a back room. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the low light. Someone moved in the corner, hiding behind a three-legged table.
The quiet was too unnatural. It was hard to tell there was a war raging outside at all.
"Marisa?" A short echo followed. "Is that you?"
I knew it was. Blood doesn’t lie. But the scent of fear had strengthened when my feet crossed the threshold. Signaling with a low, flat hand to Darien to stay out, he decided to keep watch for trouble.
I maintained a low, even tone. "Marisa, I know that’s you. I’m here to take you home."
"I can’t go home," a timid voice replied.
"You don’t want to stay here."
"I can’t go home," she repeated. I thought she was responding to me, but I realized, after a few ginger repetitions, that she was chanting under her breath.
Creeping closer, I asked, "Can I sit next to you?"
"No!"
I settled on the floor at the end of the table and pleaded under the dying low-wattage bulb. "Please, Marisa, please come with me. Your mom’s waiting for you to come home."
Tears wove through the shadows. "I don’t want her to see me like this." Sniffles hiccupped as she tried to silence them.
"Show me, Marisa." I took a deep breath, though none could push away the dread. "Show me what they did to you."
"How long have I been here?"
"Twelve days, I think."
"Is that all? It feels longer."
"Show me, please." I couldn’t stand waiting. A tightness formed in my chest, anticipating so many horrors.
Still in her nook, two shaky hands appeared halfway in the light holding something. "They told us everything they were going to do before they did them."
"What is that? I can’t see."
"They said it was for research, but we could see how much they liked our fear."
"They’re nuts, Marisa. What is that?" The spike in my voice paralleled the panic in my heart.
"They said we were abominations never meant for this world."
"Marisa, show me."
"They said there was only one way we could be useful."
"They lied. What. Is. That?" I grabbed her wrists as she thrust her hands into the light.
"My tail," she said so innocently. "That’s why I’m in the dissection room… I changed."
I stopped breathing. They cut off her tail. It would never grow back. When we’re damaged in animal form, we stay that way no matter how many times we shift. It would never grow back. She would never be allowed to forget these bastards or what they did to her.
They mutilated her.
Letting go, I moved a hand over hers, brushing the soft fur with my palm. It wouldn’t shift back because it had nothing to shift back to. There’s no human equivalent for a tail.
"You’re a snow leopard, like me."
"See why I can’t go home?"
I pulled her into my arms. Brunette hair stuck to her head in a pile of sweat and worse things, and her hazel eyes never met mine. "Our lepe will never turn its back on you. You’re too precious to lose." She cried in my arms for a few minutes before I reminded her that we needed to leave.
Wiping away tears and cradling her fluffy tail to her heart, Marisa’s dirty hair shifted in a clump from shoulder to shoulder. "We can’t leave without Jack."
"Who’s Jack?"
"A pride boy."
"Where is he?"
She pointed to a smaller room. "They got angry when he tried to help me."
"He shifted already, too?" I knew the answer, but she confirmed it. "Stay here. Darien’s outside, but stay hidden in case someone gets through."
She slunk back into her cubby.
Cautiously approaching the door, I spoke soft and slow. "Jack? My name is Fray. Your leader, Jared Tomas, sent me to help you." No answer. "Jack?" I cracked the heavy door. "I’m coming in," I warned, pushing the door all the way open.
"Jesus Christ!"
I rushed to the nude, thin boy hanging from the ceiling by meat hooks. Blood dripped from a collar around his neck lined with barbed spikes that were designed to burrow into his flesh every time he struggled. His arms bent backward at a sickly angle. The way they were tied tightly together suggested the Dissenters used his own body weight to break them. And the weaker he grew, the more they’d pull until something sensitive gave.
His flesh was supple under the pressure of my fingertips as I pushed him upward in an attempt to free his body. Blood trickled over my face. It was still warm.
"Darien, help me!" I’ve never screamed so desperately. "Help me! Jesus, help me!"
I thought his eyes fluttered open. "Jack! Jack!"
Darien rounded the door. "What the fuck is going on?"
"Get him down!"
He slipped in the giant pool of blood and grabbed a stool lying to the side. "Hold him higher, Fray." Darien worked as fast as his hands would move.
I pushed with everything I had to give. Suddenly, Jack’s slack weight fell on top of me, driving us both to the floor. I rolled him over and cradled his head in my hand. "Jack? Do you hear me?" Frantically, I felt for a pulse. His neck, his wrist. His chest…
Were quiet.
Someone was weeping softly. Marisa stood in the doorway. "They punished him for helping me. I killed him."
"No," Darien placed an arm around her. "It is a great honor to die for someone. He chose to take your place. That will mean a great deal to his pride."
Holding Jack in my arms, we wrapped Marisa’s tail in an old piece of cloth and emerged to find Blaire, naked in human form, holding Conrad by the throat. Bodies littered the old quarry around them.
"Look who I found," he seethed. His glare warned of carnage.
"Don’t kill him." Everyone turned like I had sprouted twenty heads. "There’s somewhere he needs to be."
Blaire tilted his head, trying to hone into that level we clicked so we
ll on. Maybe he saw my thoughts as clearly as I did. Or maybe he couldn’t see past the blood staining my hair and the dead boy in my arms. Either way, he packaged Conrad up so well I expected a bow.
Blaire and Nash stayed to burn the bodies. Darien had brought my car to the quarry since it was already a rolling parts store, which worked out. Blaire gave him the use of his car to return most of the children to their parents. I took Marisa home. She wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet. Her mother cried when we showed her Marisa’s severed tail, but she cried more out of pure euphoria that her daughter was still alive to hug at all.
Once again, I found myself idling in the pride neighborhood. Before turning the engine off, I reached my hand to the backseat and rested it on Jack, wrapped in a clean white sheet Blaire had pulled from the trunk of his car.
I anticipated the emotional reception of a lynching.
Chapter Fourteen
When I opened the back door, I noticed how pale and dirty Jack’s forever-young face was under the streetlights on the empty lane. Sitting on the doorframe in front of the floorboard, I wet a tissue under a bottle of water. The early morning air should have been soothing, but I found myself crouched over the boy, babbling as I compulsively cleaned his face.
I tilted my head, speaking low. "We failed you, Jack. I failed you. If I had gotten to you sooner, a minute earlier… Did you open your eyes and see me? Did I imagine it?" Grabbing the sides of his cheeks, I closed the distance between us save an inch. "Did you look at me, Jack?" Nothing. Did I expect an answer? For him to sit up and speak? To actually see those brown eyes and golden hair animated? Exhaling, I sat up and resumed wiping smudges from his brow. "You saved Marisa. She'll remember you until the day she dies; the pride boy named Jack who showed her loyalty and empathy. Quite the legacy, right? I’m sure it’ll keep you warm in your grave." I shut my eyes to trap the tears. "God, I wish you could answer me."
Someone’s foot scuffed against loose gravel and I looked up, met by a wall of people staring at me. They were everywhere, standing in yards, the middle of the street, doorways, peeking from window curtains.
It was Jared Tomas who scuffed the gravel, standing almost an arm’s length away. I had been so focused on Jack that an entire neighborhood snuck up on me.
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