FAMILY OF TURNERS II: Bring Out Your Fangs and Claws"
FAMILY OF TURNERS II - Get Out Your Fangs and Claws
6/14-6/15/2013
I.
It was just getting dark outside. Albert Turner walked into his living room as if he were carrying a five-ton weight on his shoulders. He had stopped trying to hold his belly in, his shoulders were slumped and his face seemed to have aged twenty years since that morning. His glasses were folded in the pocket of his plaid shirt, making his face seem unfamiliar even to his family.
Sitting on the white leather couch in front of the gigantic projection TV, which none of them were watching, were the three surviving children of the Turner family. Parker was the oldest at nineteen, a studious girl with long straight black hair and black-rimmed eyeglasses almost identical to the ones her grandfather wore. Seated right up against her was Amelia, a year younger, slender where Parker was busty, wavy-haired and more made-up. She was wearing a short denim skirt and white short-sleeved blouse where Parker had on a loose purple sweatshirt and baggy jeans as usual.
Chauncey Turner was not on the couch itself, but sitting on the floor with his back against it, near his two cousins. He was chubby and unattractive with a buzz crewcut that just emphasized his round face. Only thirteen, but acting and speaking as he thought a middle-aged man would, he struck most people as pretentious. Right now, the open grief on his face struck his cousins hard and Amelia kept reaching down to rub his back.
"Kids..." began Albert, then had to stop to gather himself. "This is not going to be easy for any of us. We've managed to get Zane into the RV. Gil and Blair and I are going to drive to the Pennsylvania border to a spot where we camped once. There's no towns nearby. There, we will.. we will bury Zane and come back."
"Oh my God.." sniffled Parker, trying not to start crying again. "No services? No notice in the papers? It's like we're ashamed of Zane!"
Albert held up a hand to still her voice. "We live the way we have to, honey. If Normals learned about us, they'd hunt us down without mercy. We have no choice. Our totems reflect our personalities but they also influence us. Zane was like me. We're both apex predators and sometimes we just have to take prey or explode. Chauncey, you're the same way. As you get older, you'll need to hunt once in a while."
"I've been thinking," Chauncey said, raising his head for the first time. "School is out for the summer. We have no real friends among the Normals. Maybe one or two classmates will try to text Zane but that's it. No one needs to know that he's dead."
"We've tried to prepare for this," Albert answered. "Before September, we'll have to relocate. Gil and I have new identities ready to go for everyone, fake IDs and backgrounds that will stand up to most checks. I don't know.. maybe we'll move out West. Start over." He straightened up with an effort. "I'm going now. Gil and Blair and I will be back by early tomorrow morning. You kids stay put. Eat everything if you want, watch R-rated DVDs, it's okay."
"So long, grandpa," Amelia said, biting her lower lip. "I wish we could go with you. We want to help."
"I know you do, sweetheart." The grandfather turned and left the living room. A moment later, headlights could be seen moving past the windows toward the driveway.
Parker held up the remote and started going through channels absently. "Give them half an hour to make sure they won't come back for something."
"We're going to do it, then?" asked Amelia. She straightened up on the couch and brushed back her hair with one hand. "We all agree?"
"I'm more than eager." Chauncey got to his feet, hitched up his pants and watched the big screen flicker from one station to the next without any of it making an impression. "This Sheng bastard used some sort of grenade. He'd never have a chance against Zane in totem otherwise. I won't give him that chance."
"All we can do is distract him so you have an opening," Parker said. "Sometimes I wish my totem was a bison or something formidable, but we don't choose them. They are what we are."
"Let's change," Amelia said. "I wish our clothes transformed with us but no such luck." They each went into their bedrooms and returned within a few minutes. The girls were wearing light summer dresses which could be whipped off in a second, and Chauncey had on a loose black T-shirt and khaki shorts which reached almost to his calves. They all wore flip-flops.
"I bet your dates wish you always dressed like this for easy access, Amy."
Amelia gave Parker a withering glare. "Ha ha. Extremely hilarious."
"I guess we're ready," Parker hurried to change the subject. "Amy, you got the keys to the Honda?"
Holding them up with a clinking, Amelia gave the faintest smile. "Mom actually thinks hiding the spare set under a rock by the back door is clever. She's so obvious."
"Let's go then. Grandpa is going to be furious at us, Mom and Dad will be, too. But we have to do this. They'll understand after a while."
"Zane would have avenged any one of us," Chauncey declared dramatically as he followed his cousins to the door.
II.
"Reporting in pajamas as ordered," Sheng Mo-Yuan said. He was indeed wearing dark blue flannel pajamas, slippers and a gold-colored bathrobe. The soft cast on his right forearm showed at the edge of the robe sleeve.
Behind her desk, Sable grinned at him. Her slight overbite gave her an appealing smile. The KDF captain waved a hand toward the chairs in front of her. "Thanks. My order is for you to stay that way until tomorrow morning."
"I feel back to normal," Sheng objected. "I could go to my office if I'm careful not to bump my arm. Or ribs." In fact, he did look better than when he had been brought into the headquarters emergency ward earlier that day. His skin was its normal tawny bronze rather than the ashy pale color that had alarmed everyone.
"Dr Wright thinks otherwise." Sable was still smiling but affectionately. "With our healing factor from Tagra, we've gotten used to ignoring injuries but you were really banged up, Sheng. If you had been a little bit worse, Ted says he would have sent you to a real hospital no matter what the risk of exposure."
"Next time I'm facing a tiger, I'll bring a gun. A big gun." Sheng got up off the chair an inch and adjusted his robe. "So what's the situation with this Turner family?"
"Right now, Josef is going to confront them. I'm concerned with the one who turns into a weasel, Morgan Turner."
"A lawyer who turns into a weasel...!" laughed Sheng.
"I know, I know." Sable leaned back in her chair and made her face turn serious with an effort. "But aside from enjoying the obvious irony, I do want to have him under protection. The other members of his family may think he's about to expose their existence. The ones who turn in squirrels are not much of a threat, but you saw that boy transform into a full-grown tiger. Who knows what the others can become? A gorilla? A rhino?"
Sheng had noticed that his captain was wearing the black boots, snug pants and crewneck shirt of the field suit. Her waist-length jacket with its inner layer of armor hung over the back of her chair and her visored helmet sat on a shelf behind her. "You're going to keep watch over him yourself?"
"Tonight I am. Timothy will relieve me in the morning and Haley will take over at five the next day."
"Captain... are they ready? I'm just saying. I know you and I dove right in as soon as we were accepted, but still these new kids seem so young," Sheng said.
"Remember when we started the Second Team?" she replied thoughtfully. "You were nineteen. I had just turned twenty-three. My God, it seems like a long time ago."
"You've got a point. All right. When am I going back in action? Soon?"
"Unless Ted says otherwise, I'm putting you on active duty in two days. Say, eight o'clock Thursay morning. Until then, I want you to hang around this building. You can catch up on recent events. And tonight, while I'm babysitting your weasel client, you will be on monitor duty relaying messages. If anything really critical comes up, I trust you to call in Unicorn or Megan. They're on reserve and said they could be here at once."
Sheng stood up and winced at the twinge in his cracked ribs. "Ow. Maybe Ted is right. I have my Link on me, captain. I can take any incoming calls from our team."
"Great, good to know you're watching the fort." Sable also got to her feet and tugged on the heavy field suit jacket. "I don't like leaving the headquarters completely empty."
"I'm going to make a couple of sandwiches and go to the conference room. I might as well read over recent cases these new kids have handled. Good luck, captain."
Tucking her helmet in the crook of her arm, Lauren Sable Reilly walked to the hallway with him. "I know being idle is difficult for you, Sheng, but I count on you to follow orders and stay here. I'll call if anything happens."
The Chujiran turned away from her to head toward the kitchen at the rear of the front hallway. "I'll be here with the PBJs," he said.
III.
At eight fifteen that evening, the Turner kids had left their parent's Honda Accord three blocks away from their goal. Located on lower Canal Street, the Hartwicke Building had two gift shops with Asian and pseudo-Asian merchandise on the ground floor, as well as the manager's office. Stepping into a foyer with rickety wooden stairs going up at the rear, Chauncey studied the line-up of mailboxes on the wall.
"Seems like the top two floors are rented out as apartments," he announced. "The second floor has an insurance company and the SUNNY DAY massage spa. How tacky."
"Who are you kidding?" scoffed Amelia. "If you looked a few years older, you'd love to visit it."
The chubby boy did not respond. "It's the third floor that seems interesting. Two chiropractors in a joint office, something called 'Travel Funds Management,' and 'Argent Investigations.' That's the Chinese detective, all right."
"We were HERE, remember?" Parker interrupted. "Just this morning! Why do you have to make everything so drawn-out and dramatic?"
A few minutes later, an adorable orange-and-white kitten poked its head up from the stairwell onto the third floor. No one was in sight. There was a bench by the window that looked out on lower Canal Street, a fire extinguisher behind a glass panel and a large potted plant by the stairwell but aside from that, the hall was bare wooden floors and white plaster walls. Old-fashioned glass bulbs in the ceiling glowed with the subdued light of low-watt bulbs, showing two closed office doors and a plain wooden door that read JANITOR in black metal letters.
The kitten turned its head back toward the stairs and mewed. Instantly, a grey squirrel darted past it and headed straight for the door which said ARGENT INVESTIGATIONS on its frosted glass panel. Both small animals appeared agitated. A second later, Chauncey Turner came up the stairs, carrying two plastic supermarket bag which he set down on the floor near the Argent door. The bags were filled with clothing.
The heavyset boy cautiously approached the Argent Investigations door, turned the knob and found to his obvious surprise that it was unlocked. "It's open," he whispered to the squirrel and kitten. "Shhhh. Let's take a peek."
"Don't bother," came a cold voice from the other end of the hall. "No one is in there."
Chauncey froze in place as if paralyzed. In a Human mannerism that was almost comical, the two small animals near him did the same. Standing twenty-five feet away near the open janitor's closet door was a tall lean man in a black commando suit. Short sandy blond hair and angry blue eyes marked a bony face. Strapped to his back was a Y-shaped leather quiver from which the feathered ends of a dozen arrows protruded. In the second that the three Turners were petrified with surprise, the stranger thumbed a button on the hoop-shaped device he held and it snapped open on its central hinge to become a longbow.
"You came here to find Sheng," Josef Jubilec announced in his quiet tones. "I hope I'll do."
"Where is he?" shouted Chauncey Turner. "You're protecting the bastard that killed Zane!"
"Worry about your own safety." Josef pulled up an elastic black band from around his neck so it tightened to form a blindfold. The Blind Archers of Chujir were greatly feared in the worlds of espionage and international crime as well as the Midnight War. None of them were literally blind. By covering their eyes, the sect brought out gralic perception that fastened on lifeforce so that they had perfect accuracy even in darkness, fog or rain. Their arrows were dreaded for never missing.
Chauncey knew none of this. He tugged off his shirt, whirled it around his head and threw it at Josef with the apparent intent of tangling him up in it. The shirt got nowhere near the Blind Archer. Kicking off his sandals and dropping his shorts to the floor, Chauncey fell to his hands and knees and transformed. His pudgy body darkened into a furry doglike beast five feet long. The Spotted Hyena opened its jaws to display teeth that were easily capable of crunching through any bone in a human body.
As the hyena lowered that head, in the instant before it could launch itself down the hall, there was a thwip-thwip-thwip noise and three arrows were sticking out of its chest. All three slid into the animal almost simultaneously. Across the hall, Josef waited, not seeing with his covered eyes but feeling the life processes stop in the hyena as abruptly as a candle flame being snuffed.
By the Argent Investigations office door, the calico kitten howled and dove at one of the bags holding clothing. The tiny orange and white animal expanded outward into the form of a nude teenage girl with wavy brown hair. She leaped back up and swung around with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol in both hands but even as she was raising that gun, an arrow thumped home just below her left breast. Amelia Turner gasped and fell wheezing to the floor. Her expression showed only disbelief, as if she had never thought anyone would do her harm. Her head sagged so that hair covered her face. Just before she died, for some reason she managed to change back into her cat form and the arrow stood straight up as the kitten went limp on its side.
Without turning his head, Josef whipped his bow to one side and loosed a final arrow. The shaft slid entirely through the squirrel in mid-air, making it spin across the floor. An observer would have found it eerie how the bowman could shoot like that without even trying to look in the direction of his target.
Of all the assassin cults in the Midnight War, from the Night Gorillas to the White Web to Furious Buddha, none were more respected and feared than the Blind Archers of Chujir. It was only the fact that no more than a handful were ever in the real world at one time that kept them from toppling empires.
After a few seconds, Josef unstrung the collapsible bow and folded it again to clip it to the back of his quiver. He tugged down the black blindfold and studied the three dead forms in front of him. He felt nothing. No regrets, no dismay, not even satisfaction. Being raised from infancy by the sect had left him emotionally dead in many ways. The bowman moved toward the dead animals quickly. The entire encounter had only lasted a few seconds and had made little noise, but there was no telling when a tenant above might walk down the staircase and discover the scene.
Opening Sheng's office door, Josef picked up the dead hyena bodily and brought it inside. The animal weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds. Next he snatched up the bodies of the kitten and squirrel and tossed them unceremoniously through the door, then brought in the two plastic bags. Chauncey's clothing were gathered up next. Only with the door closed behind him did he feel as if he could loosen up a little. The Blind Archer dug through the supermarket bags and found two print sundresses, two pairs of panties and bras, two pairs of sandals and a wallet with car keys stuck in its fold. The Turner girls had probably ditched their clothes while in the tiny foyer at the bottom of the stairs before coming up here in their animal totems.
Josef unfastened his leather quiver with the collapsible bow attached and placed it carefully on Sheng's desk. He could not sense any living things on this floor. Going into the bathroom, he soaked a washcloth in cold water and went back out to painstakingly wipe up the few drops of blood that had been spilled on the bare wooden floor. It took him twenty minutes before he was satisfied no traces of the incident remained that an untrained person would detect.
Back in the office, the bowman examined the three dead animals and unscrewed the arrow heads to replace the shafts in his quiver. He was a little surprised that none of the bodies showed any signs of reverting to their Human forms, but then shape-shifters were notorious for having exceptions to every rule. He shrugged and went over to sit on one of the chairs in front of Sheng's desk, taking out his Link to call the KDF headquarters.
IV.
Three hours later, the Honda Accord came to a stop in front of the fenced-in home of the Turner family. Behind it, a red Jeep Cherokee pulled up as well. They were at the end of Riverside Drive in Norwich, New Jersey. Josef got out from behind the wheel, leaving the keys in the car and glanced once at the back seat where three dead animal forms were wrapped in blankets. He was wearing latex gloves.
Staying in the driver's seat of her Jeep, Megan Salenger waited for Josef to climb up beside her and close his door, then she put the Jeep in gear and went up to a gravel spot overlooking the river so she could turn around. Heading back down Riverside Drive, the Trom Girl asked, "How are you doing, Josef?"
"Me? I'm fine. Why?"
She allowed the faintest of smiles to break her reserve. Megan had turned thirty-four but the sharp-nosed face under the tousled black hair still had an inquisitive eagerness that made her seem younger. "I must admit that I am relieved to have that task over with. Wrapping the bodies up and bringing them out of that building into their vehicle was a tense experience. We would have had trouble explaining our actions if an officer had seen us."
"Everything went smoothly enough. Thank you again for coming to help. I know Sheng was annoyed at not being allowed to come along but he is under Sable's explicit orders."
"Glad to pitch in," Megan said, making a right turn onto Highway 207 and back in the direction of Manhattan. "I only come in two days a week to do maintenance on the CORBY, but I am still a reserve member. Call me in anytime. Once a Tel Shai knight...."
Josef was staring straight ahead at the traffic. "By my count, there are only four hostile members of the Turner family remaining. Only two of them have the factor for shape-shifting. We have cut down their numbers dramatically today."
"You know," Megan said, "I'm not criticizing you, don't take this wrong. But don't you feel a little bad about what happened? They were so young. Almost children."
He did not react except to say, "They were trying to kill me, Megan. I've dealt with hyenas before during the year I spent in East Africa. Very dangerous predators. The girl, Amelia, was pointing a pistol at me. Anyone who threatens me with a firearm has forefeited his life."
"And the squirrel?"
"What about it? She was attempting to escape to report back to the family. She was a willing party to an attempt on my life." He turned to regard his teammate with some curiosity. "I am an assassin, Megan. You know that."
"Maybe I should not have brought it up," she said. "You know I had an unusual childood, too. I was raised from infancy by a council of Trom specialists. They did not expect to entirely erase emotion from my makeup but they certainly tried. I'm glad it didn't work. My relationship with Archie has awakened me to so many things I couldn't see before."
Josef shrugged. "Congratulations. I don't mean that sarcastically. Back to the case at hand. It's open war with the surviving Turners now."
They had another hour before reaching New York City. Megan snaked a hand into the net pocket on the back of her seat and came back with a water bottle. "I brought one for you, too," she said as she took a healthy swig.
"Thank you. In a while. So, since we first met the Turners, all four of their children have died at our hands. Only the grandparents and parents remain. I expect them to grieve for a day, maybe two, then they will come after us not caring if they survive or not."
"I agree," Megan said, not sounding at all happy with it. "I think Sable has reached the same conclusion and is planning our next move."
They drove in silence for the next ten minutes, then Josef turned on the satellite radio to a world news station. "You don't mind? There's a touchy situation in Belgium I'm keeping tabs on. I have a few clients there."
"Oh, not at all. I have some thinking to do," Megan replied.
Eventually, they came out of the Lincoln Tunnel near 42nd Street and rolled through a midtown Manhattan as nearly deserted as it ever became. It was three-forty in the morning and traffic was minimal. At 38th Street, Megan hung left at Lexington and swung into a dead-end alley. A very sharp turn that the Jeep barely squeezed through led them down a concrete ramp into the underground garage. There was no other car there.
As she got out and stretched gratefully, the Trom Girl said, "Where are the cars? I believe Timothy has the Toyota but where is the Subaru?"
"We'll find out," Josef said. He reached into the back seat of the Jeep to retrieve his quiver and bow. "The lights in the front office were on."
They walked down the narrow corridor between the arsenal and the vault, up steep stairs that opened to a sliding panel in the rear of a walk-in closet and then out into the front hall. Sable was outlined in the office doorway by light spilling out from behind her.
"Please, fill us in right away," she said, ushering them in. "It has been a busy day. I called Timothy to relieve me from watching Morgan Turner's house so I could take your reports."
Sheng Mo-Yuan was seated in front of Sable's desk, still wearing pajamas and bathrobe. He wave a hand in greeting. "Yeah, we're naturally a little curious. What happened?"
The debriefing took forty minutes as Josef related a concise account of everything that had happened since he had arrived at Sheng's office on Canal Street. Sable asked for clarification at a few points. When he had finished, Megan added some details from her point of view.
"I've some research today," Sable said. "In the past three years, four people have disappeared without a trace in the immediate area around Norwich. Five dogs have also been found chewed to bits, including a formidable pit bull. The police have downplayed the situation because they frankly are getting nowhere."
"Well, I think we can reach a reasonable conclusion about what happened to those people and the dogs," interrupted Sheng. "These Turners have been giving in to their beast natures for a while. Which reminds me of something else. As long as the Turners are running loose, I shouldn't go to my office. The other tenants in the building wouldn't be safe. What if little old Mrs Marino had come down from her apartment on the fourth floor when the Turners were there? That hyena would have eaten her."
Sable placed her hands palm down on the desk in front of her. She seldom raised her voice or tried to sound threatening but there was understated finality in her tones. "Keeping civilians out of harm's way is our first priority, of course. That is why we are now taking the fight to the Turners' territory. I have assignments for each of you...."
V.
Nine o'clock the next evening. Haley Lawson was uncomfortable in the apartment belonging to Morgan Turner and his roomate Sam Meacham. Everything was so pristine and spotless. She felt as if she were in a museum exhibit where a dozen people had scrubbed everything in sight all day. It didn't help that Sam gave her a venomous glare when she had headed to sit down on the pale yellow couch with its color-coded throw pillows and protective cuffs on the arms. She had taken the hint and gone to the light green recliner facing the couch instead.
At eighteen and just out of high school, she was the youngest of the four interns being accepted in the KDF. Calling herself Windcatcher, she had already been using the ancient Air Gem as a self-proclaimed super-hero in her home town of Gleville, about thirty miles away from Riverhead, where this apartment was. Mostly, this had involved rescuing people whose boats ran out of gas out on the Sound or the like, but she had put out one major building fire, stopped a knife fight involving three people and a few other serious incidents. Last summer, she had encountered Gelydrim raiders led by a warlock. That had been when she had first met Jeremy Bane and been introduced to the Midnight War.
Haley's most notable features were the beautiful lime-green eyes under bangs of thick chestnut hair. She was tall at five feet eight and slender, wearing a long-sleeved white jersey and snug blue shorts that admittedly were meant to show off long legs. She wore a leather utility belt with flap pouches and had brought a rolled bundle of blue cloth. Sheng Mo-Yuan had phoned ahead to let his client Morgan know she was coming to explain the situation. She had explained Sheng's injuries fighting Zane Turner in tiger form.
"So, our team has divided up to cover all the bases," she said. "Josef is standing watch outside of Sheng's office building in case the family comes there. Our captain Sable is waiting outside of the house on Halcyon Street where Gil and Blair live, while Megan is sneaking around the Riverside Drive house where Albert and Aurora live. And I came out here to keep an eye on you."
Sam Meacham was a heavy man with a double chin and round torso, but he was dressed fastidiously in tan slacks and a black V-neck sweater over a white dress shirt. "I am flummoxed," he announced. "Are you telling us that YOU are the flying girl of Long Island that we keep hearing wild rumours about?"
"That's me," she replied cheerfully. "For whatever reason, the media acts like I don't exist. I wonder if someone high up in the government has ordered them to ignore me. The amazing Windcatcher seems to be nothing but an urban legend except to the folks in my town who have seen me in action." She raised both hands palm up and made a wry face. "Go figure."
Sitting a bit too closely to Meacham for Haley not to notice, Morgan Turner had brought them all fresh ground coffee in dainty china cups that had a thin gold ring around the rim. Haley had taken one careful sip and then placed the cup on the matching saucer that had been provided on the end table by her elbow. She wanted to finish the coffee but she was horrified at how this Sam Meacham might have a meltdown if she accidentally spilled it. He was watching her as if she had come to the apartment specifically to wreck it.
"As it happens, I've learned a bit about your Kenneth Dred Foundation," Morgan put in. "Your group's work is not public knowledge, but I know lawyers from various firms socially and I hear things. Especially about your founder, Jeremy Bane, the one they call Dire Wolf. He has had an interesting life."
"Oh man, understatement of the year," Haley chuckled. "His career reads like the plot of every horror movie ever made except he's in them to kill the monsters and maniacs." She crossed her left leg over her right at the knee. As her sneakered foot got within inches of the coffee cup, she saw Sam Meacham's eyes bug out in alarm. That was it. She couldn't take the tension with him any longer.
"You know what? I'm going to circle the building and make sure no shape-shifters are skulking in the doorways. Then I'm going up on the roof to keep watch for a while." She rose to her feet, not adding she wanted to say that Meacham was making her a nervous wreck.
Morgan got up also, seeming conflicted but finally asking, "I'm sorry for even mentioning this, but you don't have a gun or taser or anything. As far as I can see, you're a teenager who might be facing people who can turn into dangerous animals. Is this really a good idea?"
That made her smile. "I have a power that's literally supernatural," Haley said. "I can summon air from anywhere in the world. Gale force winds. Freezing blasts from the South Pole or air from over a volcano that's hot enough to melt rock. Watch this." On a choker under her shirt, she wore the jewel ensorcelled by Malberon ages ago. Being already in contact with the Air Gem, she only had to visualize the effect she wanted to manifest.
As she concentrated, a breeze sprang up in the apartment and the air grew chilly enough that both Morgan and Sam shivered and their breath showed. She stopped the effect before frost formed because she thought that would give Sam a conniption fit. "See? I can flip a city bus over with tornado winds under it. I can also draw away all the air from around someone so they can't breathe. I'll be fine."
Sam was hyperventilating. Morgan leaned closer to rub the fat man's back comfortingly. "This is so much to digest," Sam said as he got hold of himself. "I get all flustered when my spice rack is low. And this...! So it seems Morgan's family are some sort of werewolves. They might be planning on killing him, so a young girl has been sent to protect him, but no worries. She can pull storms out of nowhere. Has some one slipped me drugs? Am I having a psychotic episode? Mum and Dad always warned me I was heading for a breakdown..."
Windcatcher came over to kneel in front of him, meeting his eyes evenly. "You. Are. Fine," she said slowly and firmly. "It's a strange world with a lot of strange things in it, and you're just finding out about the Midnight War that has been going on for thirty thousand years." She surprised herself by taking his hands in hers and squeezing them. "Feel better? Trust me. You need to loosen up and CHILL OUT a little!"
"Yes. Yes. I'll be fine." Sam Meachum straightened up and the sheer panic had left his eyes. "You know, I've always thought there was more going on in the world than most people ever found out about. I never thought I would find so much evidence."
"And now you know." Haley stood up again and gave him a reassuring smile. Unfolding the bundle she had been holding, she fastened an ankle-length cloak of bright blue material to a mantle that snapped shut over her shoulders. Set in the front of the mantle was a fingernail-sized gem of a paler blue color. This was actually an ordinary tourmaline she wore so that enemies would think they had the real Air Gem if they captured her; Haley thought she had been incredibly clever to think of this trick. She seemed completely comfortable and unselfconscious in the flamboyant outfit, but then she was young and attractive with all the confidence she could hold.
Seeing Morgan Turner going to stare out of the window, she said, "We're on the fourth floor. Your door is locked, and any visitor has to be buzzed into the foyer by a tenant. Of course you know not to answer the door or let anyone in the building. I'll text you when I'm coming back in."
The outcast member of the Turner family swung around to join her and Sam. He had left the fine silk curtains fully open, and the window showed the hazy illumination of a medium-sized city at night. The main view from their apartment was a young elm standing in its wire cage on the sidewalk. Morgan started to say, "Thank you, Haley, I appreciate--" before he was cut off.
The window shattered from an outside impact. Glass fragments flew inward. As everyone snapped their heads around at the unexpected noise, a thin brown Spider Monkey landed on the expensive rug. Across its chest was a strap holding a holster between its shoulders and it held a .32 Ruger in both bony hands. At point-blank range, it fired twice and sent those slugs directly into Morgan's face.
From where she was standing, Haley Lawson clearly saw a chunk of skull go flying out the back of the lawyer's head in a gory burst. She yelled, "No!" without realizing it and lunged forward to catch him before he hit the floor. From the completely limp way the body sagged in her arms, Haley knew he was dead. "No..." she repeated without hearing herself.
Standing in the open space where the window had been, the Spider Monkey holstered its gun and cackled at them. Its body language was so triumphant that Haley reacted with a blaze of hatred. Sam had dropped to his knees beside her, calling 911 on his phone. Haley lowered Morgan's body to the rug and saw what Sam was doing.
"Don't mention the monkey," she ordered him. "You got that? The shot just came in the window. You have no idea who might have done it!" She leaped up to her feet as the beast hopped out into the night. Haley drew on her talisman. Ferocious winds whirled around the apartment, sending magazines flying and knocking over loose knick-knacks. From a tornado somewhere in Oklahama, winds of two hundred and fifty miles per hour surged up under Haley. She was flung out the window as if shot from a catapult, cloak flapping wildly.
Left behind, holding Morgan up in one hand, Sam Meacham surprised himself by staying calm and non-hysterical. He experienced the strangely numb calm people often reach in genuine crisis. "Hello? Hello? Yes, there's been a shooting. I need an ambulance this second..." But he knew in his heart that no EMTs could possibly do Morgan any good at this point.
VI.
Soaring out over the streets, Haley steadied her flight. Her cloak was weighted at the bottom hem and stiffening material ran along its edges so she could use it like a sail. She rose up over the rooftops in time to see the monkey dive into the back seat of a white Honda Accord that was waiting for it. As someone inside pulled the door shut, the car pulled away and went right past a stop sign at the end of the block.
Windcatcher stayed high enough that there was little chance anyone below would spot her. The street lights created enough of a glare that anything in the night sky would go unnoticed unless a person was actively looking for it. Haley followed the Accord with a cold anger urging her to attack it. She held back. Too much traffic. Better to wait and see if the car went to a less crowded area.
It had been twenty-four hours since Megan and Josef had left the same Accord in front of the Turner house with three dead animals wrapped in the back. Well, actually the three Turner children in their animal bodies. Haley wondered if the parents and grandparents had simply buried the carcasses in the yard instead of going all the way out into the woods as they had done for the tiger. It was difficult not to feel a twinge of sympathy for them having to cope with four dead children within a single day... and having to keep their loss to themselves.
The Honda turned right onto Route 24, rushing past the town of Flanders. Fewer cars were in sight as they went along, and Haley began to search for a good tactical spot to force the Honda off the road. From what she had learned about shape-shifters, these Turners did not have much choice in their lives. Their animal totems manifested and often demanded their predatory natures be satisfied. Many howlers were forced by nature to live the way they did and suffered tremendous guilt when they realized they were periodically killing people.
That didn't change the fact that they WERE killing people, she thought as she swooped down a bit lower to keep the speeding car in sight. All the victims deserved her sympathy, too, and there would be many more of them if the Turners were not stopped hard.
After forty minutes, Haley began to get tired. A great deal of concentration was needed to summon the winds and control them so she was moving steadily just behind and above the Honda. Stable flight required her to hold her body like a diver, arms slightly out to the sides and hands facing forward. The small of her back was beginning to hurt from the strain. She decided she had to end this now. She had been watching the car closely from different angles and concluded there were four people inside. The grandfather was driving with his dark-haired wife in the front passenger seat. Sitting behind them were a couple who matched the description of Gilbert and Blair. As far as she could see, there were no innocent civilians in that car.
Swooping down lower and faster, Windcatcher got ahead of the car and summoned a rainstorm from somewhere in Hawaii, placing the effect in front of the Honda. She almost missed, using her ability for two different effects was tricky. For a few seconds, heavy rain pounded down on the car and then was gone as abruptly as it had appeared. The Honda slowed for a few seconds, she imagined the driver was puzzled by the miniature downpour, but it quickly sped up to eighty mph again. Haley flew faster and got ahead of the car. The road ahead was straight and empty. On both sides was yellow sand and scruffy brush, with the Atlantic visible only a mile away.
Haley descended, dropping her legs below her and hitting the ground with just the barest stumble. More practice, always more practice, she thought. As the white car flashed by her, she drew on the full power of the talisman and summoned a patch of air from Antarctica that was twenty degrees below zero. That was why she had to land. Her control wasn't good enough yet that she could fly and summon different air at the same time.
As the car sped through that zone, the water on the windshield froze instantly and formed a thick layer that could not be seen through at all. At the same time, all four wheels had ice solidify on them and lost all traction. The Honda fishtailed, swerved violently around and rolled over on its side off the road completely. It went right over left twice more before coming to a stop with its driver's side up in the air. The windshield had cracked into a thousand pieces and there were major dents in the body, with the driver's door caved in.
Staying on the highway, Windcatcher threw the blue cloak back over her shoulders and straightened her hair out a bit with her fingers. It was a tangled mess. She never remembered to pull it back in a ponytail before flying. Haley watched the wrecked car with some trepidation. She carried one of the KDF anesthetic dart guns because that was Sable's orders but she seldom used it. She much preferred to rely on her powers and had spent many hours coming up with new applications of summoning air.
For an unbearable two minutes, no signs of life came from the wreck. Then the rear passenger door was forced open from within. Gilbert Turner shoved his head and shoulders up into the opening. He struggled for a moment, climbed out and dropped clumsily to the sand. His face was covered with blood from a broken nose. As Gil tried to recover his senses, a small wiry form scrabbled up out of the open door and dropped lightly down beside him. It was the Spider Monkey, still wearing the holster on its back and clutching the small Browning 9mm in both tiny hands, running toward her.
"You again!" yelled Haley. She drew on tornado winds at nearly three hundred mph. The roar of the air moving past her sounded like a train close at hand. Her aim was good this time. The monkey seemed to vanish as it was picked up and thrown miles out to sea more quickly than the eye could follow. Any cry the beast might have made was lost in the howling wind.
"That's for Morgan!" Haley yelled, shaking a slim fist with the back toward where the monkey had stood an instant ago. "You deserve it."
Fighting to get back up on his feet, wiping blood off his face with the back of one hand, Gil shouted back at her, "You monster! That was my Blair! I've been married to her for twenty-three years!"
"I witnessed her shooting an unarmed man dead not an hour ago," Windcatcher told him coldly. "She was going to shoot ME just now or didn't you notice?"
"We don't have free choices. Animals have to be true to their natures. You can't blame us."
By now, Haley was getting angrier by the second. "I don't have to blame you to stop you from murdering people. Anyway, when the hell was it a monkey's true nature to use an automatic pistol?!"
"Like this one?" he said, swinging up his other hand with the 9mm in it. He had picked it up from where the Spider Monkey had dropped it.
Unfortunately for him, Haley had been watching his every move and knew he had the gun. She just wanted to give him a chance. As soon as he threatened her with it, though, she drew all the air in a ten foot radius around him straight up and kept a bubble of near vaccuum centered on him. At once, Gil sagged and fell to his knees, head down, barely catching himself on his hands. His body fought desperately to draw in a breath but there was no air available. He certainly had not been holding his breath before the effect hit. In only a few seconds, he fell face forward with his head hitting the ground so sharply it was clear he was not conscious.
Stepping closer, Haley watched him warily, then got closer. He wasn't breathing. She bent over and picked up one of his arms and couldn't find a pulse. The Windcatcher felt a cold clenching sensation in her chest. She had intended to make him pass out so she could restore the air and capture him. Instead, both his lungs had collapsed and he had suffered complete respiratory failure.
True, he had been about to point a gun at her and it seemed certain he had intended to kill her. Her actions fell under justified self-defense. But Haley had only turned eighteen a few months earlier and she was far from being the emotionally hardened warriors that Josef Jubilec or Demrak Jin were. This would bother her for a long time, she knew. Haley was too realistic to consider that she could take any vow against killing, the Midnight War was too dangerous to allow that. But she also knew she would never get so callous that she would regard taking life lightly. It wasn't who she was.
As she stood there with folded arms, gazing down at the corpse pensively and wondering about life and death, Haley heard movement in the car. Of course. What was wrong with her? As soon as the immediate threat was stopped, she should have checked on the other two Turners. Some Tel Shai knight she was proving to be. As she stepped back away from the remains of Gilbert Turner, Haley saw the driver's door start to move.
"Okay, let's see what you got," she called. "Get out your fangs and claws. Take your best shot."
Immediately, she felt remorse again as a battered old man in his late sixties painfully hauled himself up out the car and tried to get down on the ground without falling. He didn't make it but landed full on his face and had trouble sitting up. Haley stared at him suspiciously. He did not seem armed, wearing only sandals, baggy Bermuda shorts and a white shirt unbuttoned down the front. Haley glanced over at the Browning and saw it was well out of reach of even the quickest young athlete.
"Albert Turner, right? The grandfather"?" she asked. "Maybe you should think about surrendering."
The old man still had his shattered eyeglasses hanging on by one ear and he brushed them off. He was breathing deeply and rapidly with his mouth open. The whole left side of his face was swollen and bruised and blood was clotted in his hair. He did not even seem aware of the situation.
"Mr Turner? Can you hear me?"
The patriarch of the shape-shifter family managed to sit up. His eyes became less glazed and focused on Haley. "I always thought it would end like this," he said. "We were only safe as long as we kept secret. As soon as Morgan brought us to the attention of Normals, our time was up. Now my family is all dead."
"I'm... sorry," Windcatcher found herself saying. "But they were hunting and killing innocent people. People who had done absolutely nothing to them."
"Little girl, Nature doesn't care about right or wrong. Just survival. You flipped my car, somehow, didn't you? Aurora is dead in there, her neck was broken by the air bag hitting her wrong. She was my whole life. She meant everything to me." He struggled to get up but could not manage it. Starting to cough, he held out a hand for assistance.
Haley almost went closer to help him up, but caught herself in time and backed up a few feet. "Hey, wait a minute. You're the source of the shape-changing factor. What animal do you turn into?"
"The last animal.." Albert said quietly, "that you will ever see!"
In a blur, the Turner grandfather's form erupted out in all directions, doubling in size and tripling in weight. His clothes flew away in shreds. Rearing up eight feet high on its hind legs, an adult male Grizzly roared and dropped down to charge right at Windcatcher. Haley screamed louder than she had ever known she could and shot straight up in the air without thinking. It was survival instinct that made her lift herself ten feet off the ground to hover unsteadily as nine hundred pounds of predator pounced where she had been.
"God Almighty!" she shouted. "If that didn't give me a heart attack, I'll never have one-" Her voice broke off as the Grizzly lunged up and snagged the hem of her cloak with claws three inches long. Haley was swung around in a circle and slammed down on her back to the hard sand. The Grizzly raised a massive paw that was about to take her head off cleanly but again she reacted without conscious thought. It was a basic deep desire to live that spurred her. Her mind summoned a blast of air from directly above an active volcano in Hawaii where basalt flowed like water, and air heated over a thousand degrees Celsius rushed over the gigantic animal.
The bear burst into a fireball as if it was a torch soaked in gasoline. Its fur burned away instantly and the outer layer of its thick hide stayed on fire with the stink of charred meat. The beast howled and hissed with seared lungs, rolling on the ground in extreme agony. It was only luck that the dying animal lurched away from Haley instead of directly on her, which would have crushed her before she would burn too.
VII.
If she had been fully functional, Windcatcher would have dispatched the Grizzly in a more humane way. Even as the animal thrashed around on the beach before settling down with a final rattling wheeze, she would have frozen it with Arctic air or something similar so it would not have suffered so much. Burning to death is one of the most excrutiating ways to die.
Lying on her back and gathering her wits, Haley Lawson was not thinking about any of that. She was just so grateful to still be alive that she felt like crying with relief. Everything had happened so quickly. If she had not reacted instantly with that blast of superheated air, she was sure there would not be anything recognizable left of her. Still stretched out on the sand, Haley got a bad case of the shakes and only settled down when she forced herself to start a Tel Shai breathing pattern. In a moment, her nerves were settled and she began to get up.
Everything hurt. The Trom torso armor she wore under her outfit dispersed most impact over its surface, but it wasn't one hundred per cent effective. Nothing was. She had been slammed down with a force that would have instantly killed an unprotected Human and now her back and shoulders ached abominably. The back of her head was sore, too, from where it had hit the ground and her chest stung when she took a deep breath. Sitting up took serious effort. Haley had not been on the Tagra diet long enough for the healing effect to really kick in yet and she was in a lot of pain.
Reaching to one of the pouches on her belt, she got out her Link. The interior of that pouch was padded to protect the device, which at the moment seemed like it had been a wise precaution. Haley set the Link to an open channel so that any KDF member could answer and they all could listen in. She didn't feel like repeating her story. As it happened, everyone responded, even Sheng still lounging around headquarters in his pajamas.
After hearing everything that had happened, Sable took over. "Haley, how badly are you hurt?"
"Oh, not as bad as Sheng was," she said as she crawled over to the car to use it as support to haul herself up onto her feet. "I mean, I'm all beat up and stuff, but I'll get over it in a day or so. But I sure can't fly right now. That's asking too much. I need someone to come here and get me, captain."
Sable's voice said, "The problem is, we are all out in New Jersey right now. I'm afraid you're looking at a four hour wait, hon."
"Oh. Damn. Well, at least I have some protein bars in my belt. But first I need to get out of sight. When someone sees this wreck and the police start trying to figure it out, I don't wanna be around to explain. A car flipped on its side, one woman dead in the wreck and a man dead with no obvious cause. Not to mention a half-cooked Grizzly Bear...!"
4/20/2017
6/14-6/15/2013
I.
It was just getting dark outside. Albert Turner walked into his living room as if he were carrying a five-ton weight on his shoulders. He had stopped trying to hold his belly in, his shoulders were slumped and his face seemed to have aged twenty years since that morning. His glasses were folded in the pocket of his plaid shirt, making his face seem unfamiliar even to his family.
Sitting on the white leather couch in front of the gigantic projection TV, which none of them were watching, were the three surviving children of the Turner family. Parker was the oldest at nineteen, a studious girl with long straight black hair and black-rimmed eyeglasses almost identical to the ones her grandfather wore. Seated right up against her was Amelia, a year younger, slender where Parker was busty, wavy-haired and more made-up. She was wearing a short denim skirt and white short-sleeved blouse where Parker had on a loose purple sweatshirt and baggy jeans as usual.
Chauncey Turner was not on the couch itself, but sitting on the floor with his back against it, near his two cousins. He was chubby and unattractive with a buzz crewcut that just emphasized his round face. Only thirteen, but acting and speaking as he thought a middle-aged man would, he struck most people as pretentious. Right now, the open grief on his face struck his cousins hard and Amelia kept reaching down to rub his back.
"Kids..." began Albert, then had to stop to gather himself. "This is not going to be easy for any of us. We've managed to get Zane into the RV. Gil and Blair and I are going to drive to the Pennsylvania border to a spot where we camped once. There's no towns nearby. There, we will.. we will bury Zane and come back."
"Oh my God.." sniffled Parker, trying not to start crying again. "No services? No notice in the papers? It's like we're ashamed of Zane!"
Albert held up a hand to still her voice. "We live the way we have to, honey. If Normals learned about us, they'd hunt us down without mercy. We have no choice. Our totems reflect our personalities but they also influence us. Zane was like me. We're both apex predators and sometimes we just have to take prey or explode. Chauncey, you're the same way. As you get older, you'll need to hunt once in a while."
"I've been thinking," Chauncey said, raising his head for the first time. "School is out for the summer. We have no real friends among the Normals. Maybe one or two classmates will try to text Zane but that's it. No one needs to know that he's dead."
"We've tried to prepare for this," Albert answered. "Before September, we'll have to relocate. Gil and I have new identities ready to go for everyone, fake IDs and backgrounds that will stand up to most checks. I don't know.. maybe we'll move out West. Start over." He straightened up with an effort. "I'm going now. Gil and Blair and I will be back by early tomorrow morning. You kids stay put. Eat everything if you want, watch R-rated DVDs, it's okay."
"So long, grandpa," Amelia said, biting her lower lip. "I wish we could go with you. We want to help."
"I know you do, sweetheart." The grandfather turned and left the living room. A moment later, headlights could be seen moving past the windows toward the driveway.
Parker held up the remote and started going through channels absently. "Give them half an hour to make sure they won't come back for something."
"We're going to do it, then?" asked Amelia. She straightened up on the couch and brushed back her hair with one hand. "We all agree?"
"I'm more than eager." Chauncey got to his feet, hitched up his pants and watched the big screen flicker from one station to the next without any of it making an impression. "This Sheng bastard used some sort of grenade. He'd never have a chance against Zane in totem otherwise. I won't give him that chance."
"All we can do is distract him so you have an opening," Parker said. "Sometimes I wish my totem was a bison or something formidable, but we don't choose them. They are what we are."
"Let's change," Amelia said. "I wish our clothes transformed with us but no such luck." They each went into their bedrooms and returned within a few minutes. The girls were wearing light summer dresses which could be whipped off in a second, and Chauncey had on a loose black T-shirt and khaki shorts which reached almost to his calves. They all wore flip-flops.
"I bet your dates wish you always dressed like this for easy access, Amy."
Amelia gave Parker a withering glare. "Ha ha. Extremely hilarious."
"I guess we're ready," Parker hurried to change the subject. "Amy, you got the keys to the Honda?"
Holding them up with a clinking, Amelia gave the faintest smile. "Mom actually thinks hiding the spare set under a rock by the back door is clever. She's so obvious."
"Let's go then. Grandpa is going to be furious at us, Mom and Dad will be, too. But we have to do this. They'll understand after a while."
"Zane would have avenged any one of us," Chauncey declared dramatically as he followed his cousins to the door.
II.
"Reporting in pajamas as ordered," Sheng Mo-Yuan said. He was indeed wearing dark blue flannel pajamas, slippers and a gold-colored bathrobe. The soft cast on his right forearm showed at the edge of the robe sleeve.
Behind her desk, Sable grinned at him. Her slight overbite gave her an appealing smile. The KDF captain waved a hand toward the chairs in front of her. "Thanks. My order is for you to stay that way until tomorrow morning."
"I feel back to normal," Sheng objected. "I could go to my office if I'm careful not to bump my arm. Or ribs." In fact, he did look better than when he had been brought into the headquarters emergency ward earlier that day. His skin was its normal tawny bronze rather than the ashy pale color that had alarmed everyone.
"Dr Wright thinks otherwise." Sable was still smiling but affectionately. "With our healing factor from Tagra, we've gotten used to ignoring injuries but you were really banged up, Sheng. If you had been a little bit worse, Ted says he would have sent you to a real hospital no matter what the risk of exposure."
"Next time I'm facing a tiger, I'll bring a gun. A big gun." Sheng got up off the chair an inch and adjusted his robe. "So what's the situation with this Turner family?"
"Right now, Josef is going to confront them. I'm concerned with the one who turns into a weasel, Morgan Turner."
"A lawyer who turns into a weasel...!" laughed Sheng.
"I know, I know." Sable leaned back in her chair and made her face turn serious with an effort. "But aside from enjoying the obvious irony, I do want to have him under protection. The other members of his family may think he's about to expose their existence. The ones who turn in squirrels are not much of a threat, but you saw that boy transform into a full-grown tiger. Who knows what the others can become? A gorilla? A rhino?"
Sheng had noticed that his captain was wearing the black boots, snug pants and crewneck shirt of the field suit. Her waist-length jacket with its inner layer of armor hung over the back of her chair and her visored helmet sat on a shelf behind her. "You're going to keep watch over him yourself?"
"Tonight I am. Timothy will relieve me in the morning and Haley will take over at five the next day."
"Captain... are they ready? I'm just saying. I know you and I dove right in as soon as we were accepted, but still these new kids seem so young," Sheng said.
"Remember when we started the Second Team?" she replied thoughtfully. "You were nineteen. I had just turned twenty-three. My God, it seems like a long time ago."
"You've got a point. All right. When am I going back in action? Soon?"
"Unless Ted says otherwise, I'm putting you on active duty in two days. Say, eight o'clock Thursay morning. Until then, I want you to hang around this building. You can catch up on recent events. And tonight, while I'm babysitting your weasel client, you will be on monitor duty relaying messages. If anything really critical comes up, I trust you to call in Unicorn or Megan. They're on reserve and said they could be here at once."
Sheng stood up and winced at the twinge in his cracked ribs. "Ow. Maybe Ted is right. I have my Link on me, captain. I can take any incoming calls from our team."
"Great, good to know you're watching the fort." Sable also got to her feet and tugged on the heavy field suit jacket. "I don't like leaving the headquarters completely empty."
"I'm going to make a couple of sandwiches and go to the conference room. I might as well read over recent cases these new kids have handled. Good luck, captain."
Tucking her helmet in the crook of her arm, Lauren Sable Reilly walked to the hallway with him. "I know being idle is difficult for you, Sheng, but I count on you to follow orders and stay here. I'll call if anything happens."
The Chujiran turned away from her to head toward the kitchen at the rear of the front hallway. "I'll be here with the PBJs," he said.
III.
At eight fifteen that evening, the Turner kids had left their parent's Honda Accord three blocks away from their goal. Located on lower Canal Street, the Hartwicke Building had two gift shops with Asian and pseudo-Asian merchandise on the ground floor, as well as the manager's office. Stepping into a foyer with rickety wooden stairs going up at the rear, Chauncey studied the line-up of mailboxes on the wall.
"Seems like the top two floors are rented out as apartments," he announced. "The second floor has an insurance company and the SUNNY DAY massage spa. How tacky."
"Who are you kidding?" scoffed Amelia. "If you looked a few years older, you'd love to visit it."
The chubby boy did not respond. "It's the third floor that seems interesting. Two chiropractors in a joint office, something called 'Travel Funds Management,' and 'Argent Investigations.' That's the Chinese detective, all right."
"We were HERE, remember?" Parker interrupted. "Just this morning! Why do you have to make everything so drawn-out and dramatic?"
A few minutes later, an adorable orange-and-white kitten poked its head up from the stairwell onto the third floor. No one was in sight. There was a bench by the window that looked out on lower Canal Street, a fire extinguisher behind a glass panel and a large potted plant by the stairwell but aside from that, the hall was bare wooden floors and white plaster walls. Old-fashioned glass bulbs in the ceiling glowed with the subdued light of low-watt bulbs, showing two closed office doors and a plain wooden door that read JANITOR in black metal letters.
The kitten turned its head back toward the stairs and mewed. Instantly, a grey squirrel darted past it and headed straight for the door which said ARGENT INVESTIGATIONS on its frosted glass panel. Both small animals appeared agitated. A second later, Chauncey Turner came up the stairs, carrying two plastic supermarket bag which he set down on the floor near the Argent door. The bags were filled with clothing.
The heavyset boy cautiously approached the Argent Investigations door, turned the knob and found to his obvious surprise that it was unlocked. "It's open," he whispered to the squirrel and kitten. "Shhhh. Let's take a peek."
"Don't bother," came a cold voice from the other end of the hall. "No one is in there."
Chauncey froze in place as if paralyzed. In a Human mannerism that was almost comical, the two small animals near him did the same. Standing twenty-five feet away near the open janitor's closet door was a tall lean man in a black commando suit. Short sandy blond hair and angry blue eyes marked a bony face. Strapped to his back was a Y-shaped leather quiver from which the feathered ends of a dozen arrows protruded. In the second that the three Turners were petrified with surprise, the stranger thumbed a button on the hoop-shaped device he held and it snapped open on its central hinge to become a longbow.
"You came here to find Sheng," Josef Jubilec announced in his quiet tones. "I hope I'll do."
"Where is he?" shouted Chauncey Turner. "You're protecting the bastard that killed Zane!"
"Worry about your own safety." Josef pulled up an elastic black band from around his neck so it tightened to form a blindfold. The Blind Archers of Chujir were greatly feared in the worlds of espionage and international crime as well as the Midnight War. None of them were literally blind. By covering their eyes, the sect brought out gralic perception that fastened on lifeforce so that they had perfect accuracy even in darkness, fog or rain. Their arrows were dreaded for never missing.
Chauncey knew none of this. He tugged off his shirt, whirled it around his head and threw it at Josef with the apparent intent of tangling him up in it. The shirt got nowhere near the Blind Archer. Kicking off his sandals and dropping his shorts to the floor, Chauncey fell to his hands and knees and transformed. His pudgy body darkened into a furry doglike beast five feet long. The Spotted Hyena opened its jaws to display teeth that were easily capable of crunching through any bone in a human body.
As the hyena lowered that head, in the instant before it could launch itself down the hall, there was a thwip-thwip-thwip noise and three arrows were sticking out of its chest. All three slid into the animal almost simultaneously. Across the hall, Josef waited, not seeing with his covered eyes but feeling the life processes stop in the hyena as abruptly as a candle flame being snuffed.
By the Argent Investigations office door, the calico kitten howled and dove at one of the bags holding clothing. The tiny orange and white animal expanded outward into the form of a nude teenage girl with wavy brown hair. She leaped back up and swung around with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol in both hands but even as she was raising that gun, an arrow thumped home just below her left breast. Amelia Turner gasped and fell wheezing to the floor. Her expression showed only disbelief, as if she had never thought anyone would do her harm. Her head sagged so that hair covered her face. Just before she died, for some reason she managed to change back into her cat form and the arrow stood straight up as the kitten went limp on its side.
Without turning his head, Josef whipped his bow to one side and loosed a final arrow. The shaft slid entirely through the squirrel in mid-air, making it spin across the floor. An observer would have found it eerie how the bowman could shoot like that without even trying to look in the direction of his target.
Of all the assassin cults in the Midnight War, from the Night Gorillas to the White Web to Furious Buddha, none were more respected and feared than the Blind Archers of Chujir. It was only the fact that no more than a handful were ever in the real world at one time that kept them from toppling empires.
After a few seconds, Josef unstrung the collapsible bow and folded it again to clip it to the back of his quiver. He tugged down the black blindfold and studied the three dead forms in front of him. He felt nothing. No regrets, no dismay, not even satisfaction. Being raised from infancy by the sect had left him emotionally dead in many ways. The bowman moved toward the dead animals quickly. The entire encounter had only lasted a few seconds and had made little noise, but there was no telling when a tenant above might walk down the staircase and discover the scene.
Opening Sheng's office door, Josef picked up the dead hyena bodily and brought it inside. The animal weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds. Next he snatched up the bodies of the kitten and squirrel and tossed them unceremoniously through the door, then brought in the two plastic bags. Chauncey's clothing were gathered up next. Only with the door closed behind him did he feel as if he could loosen up a little. The Blind Archer dug through the supermarket bags and found two print sundresses, two pairs of panties and bras, two pairs of sandals and a wallet with car keys stuck in its fold. The Turner girls had probably ditched their clothes while in the tiny foyer at the bottom of the stairs before coming up here in their animal totems.
Josef unfastened his leather quiver with the collapsible bow attached and placed it carefully on Sheng's desk. He could not sense any living things on this floor. Going into the bathroom, he soaked a washcloth in cold water and went back out to painstakingly wipe up the few drops of blood that had been spilled on the bare wooden floor. It took him twenty minutes before he was satisfied no traces of the incident remained that an untrained person would detect.
Back in the office, the bowman examined the three dead animals and unscrewed the arrow heads to replace the shafts in his quiver. He was a little surprised that none of the bodies showed any signs of reverting to their Human forms, but then shape-shifters were notorious for having exceptions to every rule. He shrugged and went over to sit on one of the chairs in front of Sheng's desk, taking out his Link to call the KDF headquarters.
IV.
Three hours later, the Honda Accord came to a stop in front of the fenced-in home of the Turner family. Behind it, a red Jeep Cherokee pulled up as well. They were at the end of Riverside Drive in Norwich, New Jersey. Josef got out from behind the wheel, leaving the keys in the car and glanced once at the back seat where three dead animal forms were wrapped in blankets. He was wearing latex gloves.
Staying in the driver's seat of her Jeep, Megan Salenger waited for Josef to climb up beside her and close his door, then she put the Jeep in gear and went up to a gravel spot overlooking the river so she could turn around. Heading back down Riverside Drive, the Trom Girl asked, "How are you doing, Josef?"
"Me? I'm fine. Why?"
She allowed the faintest of smiles to break her reserve. Megan had turned thirty-four but the sharp-nosed face under the tousled black hair still had an inquisitive eagerness that made her seem younger. "I must admit that I am relieved to have that task over with. Wrapping the bodies up and bringing them out of that building into their vehicle was a tense experience. We would have had trouble explaining our actions if an officer had seen us."
"Everything went smoothly enough. Thank you again for coming to help. I know Sheng was annoyed at not being allowed to come along but he is under Sable's explicit orders."
"Glad to pitch in," Megan said, making a right turn onto Highway 207 and back in the direction of Manhattan. "I only come in two days a week to do maintenance on the CORBY, but I am still a reserve member. Call me in anytime. Once a Tel Shai knight...."
Josef was staring straight ahead at the traffic. "By my count, there are only four hostile members of the Turner family remaining. Only two of them have the factor for shape-shifting. We have cut down their numbers dramatically today."
"You know," Megan said, "I'm not criticizing you, don't take this wrong. But don't you feel a little bad about what happened? They were so young. Almost children."
He did not react except to say, "They were trying to kill me, Megan. I've dealt with hyenas before during the year I spent in East Africa. Very dangerous predators. The girl, Amelia, was pointing a pistol at me. Anyone who threatens me with a firearm has forefeited his life."
"And the squirrel?"
"What about it? She was attempting to escape to report back to the family. She was a willing party to an attempt on my life." He turned to regard his teammate with some curiosity. "I am an assassin, Megan. You know that."
"Maybe I should not have brought it up," she said. "You know I had an unusual childood, too. I was raised from infancy by a council of Trom specialists. They did not expect to entirely erase emotion from my makeup but they certainly tried. I'm glad it didn't work. My relationship with Archie has awakened me to so many things I couldn't see before."
Josef shrugged. "Congratulations. I don't mean that sarcastically. Back to the case at hand. It's open war with the surviving Turners now."
They had another hour before reaching New York City. Megan snaked a hand into the net pocket on the back of her seat and came back with a water bottle. "I brought one for you, too," she said as she took a healthy swig.
"Thank you. In a while. So, since we first met the Turners, all four of their children have died at our hands. Only the grandparents and parents remain. I expect them to grieve for a day, maybe two, then they will come after us not caring if they survive or not."
"I agree," Megan said, not sounding at all happy with it. "I think Sable has reached the same conclusion and is planning our next move."
They drove in silence for the next ten minutes, then Josef turned on the satellite radio to a world news station. "You don't mind? There's a touchy situation in Belgium I'm keeping tabs on. I have a few clients there."
"Oh, not at all. I have some thinking to do," Megan replied.
Eventually, they came out of the Lincoln Tunnel near 42nd Street and rolled through a midtown Manhattan as nearly deserted as it ever became. It was three-forty in the morning and traffic was minimal. At 38th Street, Megan hung left at Lexington and swung into a dead-end alley. A very sharp turn that the Jeep barely squeezed through led them down a concrete ramp into the underground garage. There was no other car there.
As she got out and stretched gratefully, the Trom Girl said, "Where are the cars? I believe Timothy has the Toyota but where is the Subaru?"
"We'll find out," Josef said. He reached into the back seat of the Jeep to retrieve his quiver and bow. "The lights in the front office were on."
They walked down the narrow corridor between the arsenal and the vault, up steep stairs that opened to a sliding panel in the rear of a walk-in closet and then out into the front hall. Sable was outlined in the office doorway by light spilling out from behind her.
"Please, fill us in right away," she said, ushering them in. "It has been a busy day. I called Timothy to relieve me from watching Morgan Turner's house so I could take your reports."
Sheng Mo-Yuan was seated in front of Sable's desk, still wearing pajamas and bathrobe. He wave a hand in greeting. "Yeah, we're naturally a little curious. What happened?"
The debriefing took forty minutes as Josef related a concise account of everything that had happened since he had arrived at Sheng's office on Canal Street. Sable asked for clarification at a few points. When he had finished, Megan added some details from her point of view.
"I've some research today," Sable said. "In the past three years, four people have disappeared without a trace in the immediate area around Norwich. Five dogs have also been found chewed to bits, including a formidable pit bull. The police have downplayed the situation because they frankly are getting nowhere."
"Well, I think we can reach a reasonable conclusion about what happened to those people and the dogs," interrupted Sheng. "These Turners have been giving in to their beast natures for a while. Which reminds me of something else. As long as the Turners are running loose, I shouldn't go to my office. The other tenants in the building wouldn't be safe. What if little old Mrs Marino had come down from her apartment on the fourth floor when the Turners were there? That hyena would have eaten her."
Sable placed her hands palm down on the desk in front of her. She seldom raised her voice or tried to sound threatening but there was understated finality in her tones. "Keeping civilians out of harm's way is our first priority, of course. That is why we are now taking the fight to the Turners' territory. I have assignments for each of you...."
V.
Nine o'clock the next evening. Haley Lawson was uncomfortable in the apartment belonging to Morgan Turner and his roomate Sam Meacham. Everything was so pristine and spotless. She felt as if she were in a museum exhibit where a dozen people had scrubbed everything in sight all day. It didn't help that Sam gave her a venomous glare when she had headed to sit down on the pale yellow couch with its color-coded throw pillows and protective cuffs on the arms. She had taken the hint and gone to the light green recliner facing the couch instead.
At eighteen and just out of high school, she was the youngest of the four interns being accepted in the KDF. Calling herself Windcatcher, she had already been using the ancient Air Gem as a self-proclaimed super-hero in her home town of Gleville, about thirty miles away from Riverhead, where this apartment was. Mostly, this had involved rescuing people whose boats ran out of gas out on the Sound or the like, but she had put out one major building fire, stopped a knife fight involving three people and a few other serious incidents. Last summer, she had encountered Gelydrim raiders led by a warlock. That had been when she had first met Jeremy Bane and been introduced to the Midnight War.
Haley's most notable features were the beautiful lime-green eyes under bangs of thick chestnut hair. She was tall at five feet eight and slender, wearing a long-sleeved white jersey and snug blue shorts that admittedly were meant to show off long legs. She wore a leather utility belt with flap pouches and had brought a rolled bundle of blue cloth. Sheng Mo-Yuan had phoned ahead to let his client Morgan know she was coming to explain the situation. She had explained Sheng's injuries fighting Zane Turner in tiger form.
"So, our team has divided up to cover all the bases," she said. "Josef is standing watch outside of Sheng's office building in case the family comes there. Our captain Sable is waiting outside of the house on Halcyon Street where Gil and Blair live, while Megan is sneaking around the Riverside Drive house where Albert and Aurora live. And I came out here to keep an eye on you."
Sam Meacham was a heavy man with a double chin and round torso, but he was dressed fastidiously in tan slacks and a black V-neck sweater over a white dress shirt. "I am flummoxed," he announced. "Are you telling us that YOU are the flying girl of Long Island that we keep hearing wild rumours about?"
"That's me," she replied cheerfully. "For whatever reason, the media acts like I don't exist. I wonder if someone high up in the government has ordered them to ignore me. The amazing Windcatcher seems to be nothing but an urban legend except to the folks in my town who have seen me in action." She raised both hands palm up and made a wry face. "Go figure."
Sitting a bit too closely to Meacham for Haley not to notice, Morgan Turner had brought them all fresh ground coffee in dainty china cups that had a thin gold ring around the rim. Haley had taken one careful sip and then placed the cup on the matching saucer that had been provided on the end table by her elbow. She wanted to finish the coffee but she was horrified at how this Sam Meacham might have a meltdown if she accidentally spilled it. He was watching her as if she had come to the apartment specifically to wreck it.
"As it happens, I've learned a bit about your Kenneth Dred Foundation," Morgan put in. "Your group's work is not public knowledge, but I know lawyers from various firms socially and I hear things. Especially about your founder, Jeremy Bane, the one they call Dire Wolf. He has had an interesting life."
"Oh man, understatement of the year," Haley chuckled. "His career reads like the plot of every horror movie ever made except he's in them to kill the monsters and maniacs." She crossed her left leg over her right at the knee. As her sneakered foot got within inches of the coffee cup, she saw Sam Meacham's eyes bug out in alarm. That was it. She couldn't take the tension with him any longer.
"You know what? I'm going to circle the building and make sure no shape-shifters are skulking in the doorways. Then I'm going up on the roof to keep watch for a while." She rose to her feet, not adding she wanted to say that Meacham was making her a nervous wreck.
Morgan got up also, seeming conflicted but finally asking, "I'm sorry for even mentioning this, but you don't have a gun or taser or anything. As far as I can see, you're a teenager who might be facing people who can turn into dangerous animals. Is this really a good idea?"
That made her smile. "I have a power that's literally supernatural," Haley said. "I can summon air from anywhere in the world. Gale force winds. Freezing blasts from the South Pole or air from over a volcano that's hot enough to melt rock. Watch this." On a choker under her shirt, she wore the jewel ensorcelled by Malberon ages ago. Being already in contact with the Air Gem, she only had to visualize the effect she wanted to manifest.
As she concentrated, a breeze sprang up in the apartment and the air grew chilly enough that both Morgan and Sam shivered and their breath showed. She stopped the effect before frost formed because she thought that would give Sam a conniption fit. "See? I can flip a city bus over with tornado winds under it. I can also draw away all the air from around someone so they can't breathe. I'll be fine."
Sam was hyperventilating. Morgan leaned closer to rub the fat man's back comfortingly. "This is so much to digest," Sam said as he got hold of himself. "I get all flustered when my spice rack is low. And this...! So it seems Morgan's family are some sort of werewolves. They might be planning on killing him, so a young girl has been sent to protect him, but no worries. She can pull storms out of nowhere. Has some one slipped me drugs? Am I having a psychotic episode? Mum and Dad always warned me I was heading for a breakdown..."
Windcatcher came over to kneel in front of him, meeting his eyes evenly. "You. Are. Fine," she said slowly and firmly. "It's a strange world with a lot of strange things in it, and you're just finding out about the Midnight War that has been going on for thirty thousand years." She surprised herself by taking his hands in hers and squeezing them. "Feel better? Trust me. You need to loosen up and CHILL OUT a little!"
"Yes. Yes. I'll be fine." Sam Meachum straightened up and the sheer panic had left his eyes. "You know, I've always thought there was more going on in the world than most people ever found out about. I never thought I would find so much evidence."
"And now you know." Haley stood up again and gave him a reassuring smile. Unfolding the bundle she had been holding, she fastened an ankle-length cloak of bright blue material to a mantle that snapped shut over her shoulders. Set in the front of the mantle was a fingernail-sized gem of a paler blue color. This was actually an ordinary tourmaline she wore so that enemies would think they had the real Air Gem if they captured her; Haley thought she had been incredibly clever to think of this trick. She seemed completely comfortable and unselfconscious in the flamboyant outfit, but then she was young and attractive with all the confidence she could hold.
Seeing Morgan Turner going to stare out of the window, she said, "We're on the fourth floor. Your door is locked, and any visitor has to be buzzed into the foyer by a tenant. Of course you know not to answer the door or let anyone in the building. I'll text you when I'm coming back in."
The outcast member of the Turner family swung around to join her and Sam. He had left the fine silk curtains fully open, and the window showed the hazy illumination of a medium-sized city at night. The main view from their apartment was a young elm standing in its wire cage on the sidewalk. Morgan started to say, "Thank you, Haley, I appreciate--" before he was cut off.
The window shattered from an outside impact. Glass fragments flew inward. As everyone snapped their heads around at the unexpected noise, a thin brown Spider Monkey landed on the expensive rug. Across its chest was a strap holding a holster between its shoulders and it held a .32 Ruger in both bony hands. At point-blank range, it fired twice and sent those slugs directly into Morgan's face.
From where she was standing, Haley Lawson clearly saw a chunk of skull go flying out the back of the lawyer's head in a gory burst. She yelled, "No!" without realizing it and lunged forward to catch him before he hit the floor. From the completely limp way the body sagged in her arms, Haley knew he was dead. "No..." she repeated without hearing herself.
Standing in the open space where the window had been, the Spider Monkey holstered its gun and cackled at them. Its body language was so triumphant that Haley reacted with a blaze of hatred. Sam had dropped to his knees beside her, calling 911 on his phone. Haley lowered Morgan's body to the rug and saw what Sam was doing.
"Don't mention the monkey," she ordered him. "You got that? The shot just came in the window. You have no idea who might have done it!" She leaped up to her feet as the beast hopped out into the night. Haley drew on her talisman. Ferocious winds whirled around the apartment, sending magazines flying and knocking over loose knick-knacks. From a tornado somewhere in Oklahama, winds of two hundred and fifty miles per hour surged up under Haley. She was flung out the window as if shot from a catapult, cloak flapping wildly.
Left behind, holding Morgan up in one hand, Sam Meacham surprised himself by staying calm and non-hysterical. He experienced the strangely numb calm people often reach in genuine crisis. "Hello? Hello? Yes, there's been a shooting. I need an ambulance this second..." But he knew in his heart that no EMTs could possibly do Morgan any good at this point.
VI.
Soaring out over the streets, Haley steadied her flight. Her cloak was weighted at the bottom hem and stiffening material ran along its edges so she could use it like a sail. She rose up over the rooftops in time to see the monkey dive into the back seat of a white Honda Accord that was waiting for it. As someone inside pulled the door shut, the car pulled away and went right past a stop sign at the end of the block.
Windcatcher stayed high enough that there was little chance anyone below would spot her. The street lights created enough of a glare that anything in the night sky would go unnoticed unless a person was actively looking for it. Haley followed the Accord with a cold anger urging her to attack it. She held back. Too much traffic. Better to wait and see if the car went to a less crowded area.
It had been twenty-four hours since Megan and Josef had left the same Accord in front of the Turner house with three dead animals wrapped in the back. Well, actually the three Turner children in their animal bodies. Haley wondered if the parents and grandparents had simply buried the carcasses in the yard instead of going all the way out into the woods as they had done for the tiger. It was difficult not to feel a twinge of sympathy for them having to cope with four dead children within a single day... and having to keep their loss to themselves.
The Honda turned right onto Route 24, rushing past the town of Flanders. Fewer cars were in sight as they went along, and Haley began to search for a good tactical spot to force the Honda off the road. From what she had learned about shape-shifters, these Turners did not have much choice in their lives. Their animal totems manifested and often demanded their predatory natures be satisfied. Many howlers were forced by nature to live the way they did and suffered tremendous guilt when they realized they were periodically killing people.
That didn't change the fact that they WERE killing people, she thought as she swooped down a bit lower to keep the speeding car in sight. All the victims deserved her sympathy, too, and there would be many more of them if the Turners were not stopped hard.
After forty minutes, Haley began to get tired. A great deal of concentration was needed to summon the winds and control them so she was moving steadily just behind and above the Honda. Stable flight required her to hold her body like a diver, arms slightly out to the sides and hands facing forward. The small of her back was beginning to hurt from the strain. She decided she had to end this now. She had been watching the car closely from different angles and concluded there were four people inside. The grandfather was driving with his dark-haired wife in the front passenger seat. Sitting behind them were a couple who matched the description of Gilbert and Blair. As far as she could see, there were no innocent civilians in that car.
Swooping down lower and faster, Windcatcher got ahead of the car and summoned a rainstorm from somewhere in Hawaii, placing the effect in front of the Honda. She almost missed, using her ability for two different effects was tricky. For a few seconds, heavy rain pounded down on the car and then was gone as abruptly as it had appeared. The Honda slowed for a few seconds, she imagined the driver was puzzled by the miniature downpour, but it quickly sped up to eighty mph again. Haley flew faster and got ahead of the car. The road ahead was straight and empty. On both sides was yellow sand and scruffy brush, with the Atlantic visible only a mile away.
Haley descended, dropping her legs below her and hitting the ground with just the barest stumble. More practice, always more practice, she thought. As the white car flashed by her, she drew on the full power of the talisman and summoned a patch of air from Antarctica that was twenty degrees below zero. That was why she had to land. Her control wasn't good enough yet that she could fly and summon different air at the same time.
As the car sped through that zone, the water on the windshield froze instantly and formed a thick layer that could not be seen through at all. At the same time, all four wheels had ice solidify on them and lost all traction. The Honda fishtailed, swerved violently around and rolled over on its side off the road completely. It went right over left twice more before coming to a stop with its driver's side up in the air. The windshield had cracked into a thousand pieces and there were major dents in the body, with the driver's door caved in.
Staying on the highway, Windcatcher threw the blue cloak back over her shoulders and straightened her hair out a bit with her fingers. It was a tangled mess. She never remembered to pull it back in a ponytail before flying. Haley watched the wrecked car with some trepidation. She carried one of the KDF anesthetic dart guns because that was Sable's orders but she seldom used it. She much preferred to rely on her powers and had spent many hours coming up with new applications of summoning air.
For an unbearable two minutes, no signs of life came from the wreck. Then the rear passenger door was forced open from within. Gilbert Turner shoved his head and shoulders up into the opening. He struggled for a moment, climbed out and dropped clumsily to the sand. His face was covered with blood from a broken nose. As Gil tried to recover his senses, a small wiry form scrabbled up out of the open door and dropped lightly down beside him. It was the Spider Monkey, still wearing the holster on its back and clutching the small Browning 9mm in both tiny hands, running toward her.
"You again!" yelled Haley. She drew on tornado winds at nearly three hundred mph. The roar of the air moving past her sounded like a train close at hand. Her aim was good this time. The monkey seemed to vanish as it was picked up and thrown miles out to sea more quickly than the eye could follow. Any cry the beast might have made was lost in the howling wind.
"That's for Morgan!" Haley yelled, shaking a slim fist with the back toward where the monkey had stood an instant ago. "You deserve it."
Fighting to get back up on his feet, wiping blood off his face with the back of one hand, Gil shouted back at her, "You monster! That was my Blair! I've been married to her for twenty-three years!"
"I witnessed her shooting an unarmed man dead not an hour ago," Windcatcher told him coldly. "She was going to shoot ME just now or didn't you notice?"
"We don't have free choices. Animals have to be true to their natures. You can't blame us."
By now, Haley was getting angrier by the second. "I don't have to blame you to stop you from murdering people. Anyway, when the hell was it a monkey's true nature to use an automatic pistol?!"
"Like this one?" he said, swinging up his other hand with the 9mm in it. He had picked it up from where the Spider Monkey had dropped it.
Unfortunately for him, Haley had been watching his every move and knew he had the gun. She just wanted to give him a chance. As soon as he threatened her with it, though, she drew all the air in a ten foot radius around him straight up and kept a bubble of near vaccuum centered on him. At once, Gil sagged and fell to his knees, head down, barely catching himself on his hands. His body fought desperately to draw in a breath but there was no air available. He certainly had not been holding his breath before the effect hit. In only a few seconds, he fell face forward with his head hitting the ground so sharply it was clear he was not conscious.
Stepping closer, Haley watched him warily, then got closer. He wasn't breathing. She bent over and picked up one of his arms and couldn't find a pulse. The Windcatcher felt a cold clenching sensation in her chest. She had intended to make him pass out so she could restore the air and capture him. Instead, both his lungs had collapsed and he had suffered complete respiratory failure.
True, he had been about to point a gun at her and it seemed certain he had intended to kill her. Her actions fell under justified self-defense. But Haley had only turned eighteen a few months earlier and she was far from being the emotionally hardened warriors that Josef Jubilec or Demrak Jin were. This would bother her for a long time, she knew. Haley was too realistic to consider that she could take any vow against killing, the Midnight War was too dangerous to allow that. But she also knew she would never get so callous that she would regard taking life lightly. It wasn't who she was.
As she stood there with folded arms, gazing down at the corpse pensively and wondering about life and death, Haley heard movement in the car. Of course. What was wrong with her? As soon as the immediate threat was stopped, she should have checked on the other two Turners. Some Tel Shai knight she was proving to be. As she stepped back away from the remains of Gilbert Turner, Haley saw the driver's door start to move.
"Okay, let's see what you got," she called. "Get out your fangs and claws. Take your best shot."
Immediately, she felt remorse again as a battered old man in his late sixties painfully hauled himself up out the car and tried to get down on the ground without falling. He didn't make it but landed full on his face and had trouble sitting up. Haley stared at him suspiciously. He did not seem armed, wearing only sandals, baggy Bermuda shorts and a white shirt unbuttoned down the front. Haley glanced over at the Browning and saw it was well out of reach of even the quickest young athlete.
"Albert Turner, right? The grandfather"?" she asked. "Maybe you should think about surrendering."
The old man still had his shattered eyeglasses hanging on by one ear and he brushed them off. He was breathing deeply and rapidly with his mouth open. The whole left side of his face was swollen and bruised and blood was clotted in his hair. He did not even seem aware of the situation.
"Mr Turner? Can you hear me?"
The patriarch of the shape-shifter family managed to sit up. His eyes became less glazed and focused on Haley. "I always thought it would end like this," he said. "We were only safe as long as we kept secret. As soon as Morgan brought us to the attention of Normals, our time was up. Now my family is all dead."
"I'm... sorry," Windcatcher found herself saying. "But they were hunting and killing innocent people. People who had done absolutely nothing to them."
"Little girl, Nature doesn't care about right or wrong. Just survival. You flipped my car, somehow, didn't you? Aurora is dead in there, her neck was broken by the air bag hitting her wrong. She was my whole life. She meant everything to me." He struggled to get up but could not manage it. Starting to cough, he held out a hand for assistance.
Haley almost went closer to help him up, but caught herself in time and backed up a few feet. "Hey, wait a minute. You're the source of the shape-changing factor. What animal do you turn into?"
"The last animal.." Albert said quietly, "that you will ever see!"
In a blur, the Turner grandfather's form erupted out in all directions, doubling in size and tripling in weight. His clothes flew away in shreds. Rearing up eight feet high on its hind legs, an adult male Grizzly roared and dropped down to charge right at Windcatcher. Haley screamed louder than she had ever known she could and shot straight up in the air without thinking. It was survival instinct that made her lift herself ten feet off the ground to hover unsteadily as nine hundred pounds of predator pounced where she had been.
"God Almighty!" she shouted. "If that didn't give me a heart attack, I'll never have one-" Her voice broke off as the Grizzly lunged up and snagged the hem of her cloak with claws three inches long. Haley was swung around in a circle and slammed down on her back to the hard sand. The Grizzly raised a massive paw that was about to take her head off cleanly but again she reacted without conscious thought. It was a basic deep desire to live that spurred her. Her mind summoned a blast of air from directly above an active volcano in Hawaii where basalt flowed like water, and air heated over a thousand degrees Celsius rushed over the gigantic animal.
The bear burst into a fireball as if it was a torch soaked in gasoline. Its fur burned away instantly and the outer layer of its thick hide stayed on fire with the stink of charred meat. The beast howled and hissed with seared lungs, rolling on the ground in extreme agony. It was only luck that the dying animal lurched away from Haley instead of directly on her, which would have crushed her before she would burn too.
VII.
If she had been fully functional, Windcatcher would have dispatched the Grizzly in a more humane way. Even as the animal thrashed around on the beach before settling down with a final rattling wheeze, she would have frozen it with Arctic air or something similar so it would not have suffered so much. Burning to death is one of the most excrutiating ways to die.
Lying on her back and gathering her wits, Haley Lawson was not thinking about any of that. She was just so grateful to still be alive that she felt like crying with relief. Everything had happened so quickly. If she had not reacted instantly with that blast of superheated air, she was sure there would not be anything recognizable left of her. Still stretched out on the sand, Haley got a bad case of the shakes and only settled down when she forced herself to start a Tel Shai breathing pattern. In a moment, her nerves were settled and she began to get up.
Everything hurt. The Trom torso armor she wore under her outfit dispersed most impact over its surface, but it wasn't one hundred per cent effective. Nothing was. She had been slammed down with a force that would have instantly killed an unprotected Human and now her back and shoulders ached abominably. The back of her head was sore, too, from where it had hit the ground and her chest stung when she took a deep breath. Sitting up took serious effort. Haley had not been on the Tagra diet long enough for the healing effect to really kick in yet and she was in a lot of pain.
Reaching to one of the pouches on her belt, she got out her Link. The interior of that pouch was padded to protect the device, which at the moment seemed like it had been a wise precaution. Haley set the Link to an open channel so that any KDF member could answer and they all could listen in. She didn't feel like repeating her story. As it happened, everyone responded, even Sheng still lounging around headquarters in his pajamas.
After hearing everything that had happened, Sable took over. "Haley, how badly are you hurt?"
"Oh, not as bad as Sheng was," she said as she crawled over to the car to use it as support to haul herself up onto her feet. "I mean, I'm all beat up and stuff, but I'll get over it in a day or so. But I sure can't fly right now. That's asking too much. I need someone to come here and get me, captain."
Sable's voice said, "The problem is, we are all out in New Jersey right now. I'm afraid you're looking at a four hour wait, hon."
"Oh. Damn. Well, at least I have some protein bars in my belt. But first I need to get out of sight. When someone sees this wreck and the police start trying to figure it out, I don't wanna be around to explain. A car flipped on its side, one woman dead in the wreck and a man dead with no obvious cause. Not to mention a half-cooked Grizzly Bear...!"
4/20/2017