Chapter Three
Once Black Feather’s saliva was in my mouth, I couldn’t stay in my little space. I had to get out. But I didn’t want to go to my room in the basement, either. I stood up and looked around the wild space around me. Just beyond our mountain was the Open Zone, or at least what used to be the Open Zone. I could see lights flickering under the cloth of tents standing out there, and even the headlights of a few cars. Without quite knowing what I was doing, I started walking to the other side of the mountain to where I knew I would find a road. Once I was on it, I followed its zig-zag path down and out into a space I had never been before–on the edge of human territory.
I stood right there, right on the border and watched them for a while. They weren’t all humans; I smelled a few of the lesser animals. A few rats, some moles – was that one a snail? I couldn’t quite tell. The only thing that was completely clear was that everyone was there together; no separation was visible. Taking a big breath, I stepped forward and into the zone, into a new place. The first loud laugh I heard as I walked the straight path through all of those strangers made me jump, but then I realized the laugh wasn’t meant for me.
“Breathe. Just keep breathing,” I admonished myself. My feet slowed down just a little bit more than normal so that I could seem casual. Not that anyone was even taking note of me. They just went about their night, sitting around campfires and cooking food on sticks as they regaled one another with conversation.
As I left the Open Zone, I came to an all-too familiar sight: the old compound. Looking at it that night, I genuinely wondered if someone had gone inside for the sole purpose of tearing it apart. No, it had always looked that way. I simply hadn’t seen it with this new vision. By then, I was accustomed to being comfortable, being able to get out of the sun, having food whenever I was hungry. The intensity of true poverty was beyond me by then, and facing it, I hardly recognized the life I had lived for so long.
That old, slanted shack over there had been my home. That was where I would hear Boris yell for me to wake up every morning.
“Come on, dummy! We have school. I can’t let you get any dumber. Mom and Dad would die if they knew how ignorant you got.”
“Me? The smell coming off your skin would be enough to make them roll over in their graves. Your horrible grammar would kill them all over again.”
We always made horrible jokes about the deaths of our parents. It was the only way we had to deal with our loss. It wasn’t easy parenting ourselves from the age of fourteen, but somehow, we had made it. I always gave our sick sense of humor a lot of credit. If we had just sat around and cried, we never would have made it through the day.
The part of the fence where Boris died was exactly the way I remembered it. No one had touched it, not even the humans. I walked up to it and heard the buzz of electricity, but I had a hard time believing the thing was still electrified. To be safe, I threw a little stick at the wires and, to my complete shock, they zapped the piece of wood to a black crisp. My heart pounded at the sound and the sight of the burnt twig. The fence wasn’t just working; it was more dangerous than ever. I skirted around the edge and continued on my way to the city, completely uncertain what dangers would find me there.
The edge of the city was quiet, but I wasn’t prepared for how quickly the density of bodies increased as I moved further in. I started to see inside people’s apartments. Each little apartment on top of each store or building had at least five humans inside. What did they eat? Where did they go during the day? And why didn’t they want to live in the big, empty houses up on the mountain? I wondered all of this only to shrug it all off. I had tried to understand humans my whole life, and it had gotten me nowhere.
I found myself in a kind of market, but instead of clothes or tools, it was all various kinds of food. I saw odd concoctions I’d never eaten, and I stopped to watch a few of them being made.
“Fruit pies! Real fruit grown in my own greenhouse. Get your fruit!” I looked at the people eating and saw their eyebrows fly up at the taste in their mouths. I had never had anything called ‘fruit’ before and wanted to try one, but my pockets were empty. I wandered up to one vendor and asked if I could have just a taste.
“You can, for half a Bachmann.”
“Sorry,” I gave what I hoped was a cute smile with a head tilt. “I’m all out. It’s just that I’ve never tried–”
“Keep movin’, sweetheart. I’m here for the ones who’ve got some money to throw my way.” He pointed to a pile of garbage. “That’s all free.”
“Thanks.” My eyes rolled all the way around as I walked away. Humans. How did they ever make friends or have fun? They were so…so….
“Hey, watch it!” My musings had driven me straight into the shoulder of a tall, angry man. I immediately put my hands up to show that I was harmless, just like Boris had always taught me to do.
“Sorry about that. Didn’t see you.” Again, I kept a big smile on my face, and this time, it did seem to soften my enemy a bit.
“Well, be careful.” He rubbed his shoulder and jerked his head at the oncoming crowd. “Anyone else would skin you alive for that.”
“Thanks. For the advice, I mean. I’ll be careful.” So, humans couldn’t smell me coming. That was something I would have to keep in mind as I moved around. Shifters almost never ran into one another as our scents worked as a kind of automatic brake-inducer. As soon as I smelled someone, I slowed down or stopped. Humans, it would seem, didn’t function that way.
I watched the guy I had run into walk away from the street and into a doorway. He laughed with the guard and strolled in through a curtain that was pulled aside. I could hear whooping and the sounds of a good time inside, so I followed.
“Hey,” the guard said, hand up to stop me, “where do you think you’re going?”
“Just wanted to join the party.”
He peered a little closer at me. “You a shifter, little girl?”
I shrugged innocently. “Sorry. Just a regular human like yourself.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He peeked through the curtain and looked around, then turned back to me. “All right, you can go in. See what we do here and, well, who knows? You could be on that stage one day.”
The statement was a weird one, but I didn’t ask what he meant. I just figured he was an odd guy and went in. It was a club with several small stages with tables and chairs around them. A band was playing in the center of the floor so the sound of the music could fill the whole space, but no one was watching the band. Every person in the place–mostly men, some adult women, but none of them my age–were all fixed on a nearby performer.
My jaw hit the ground when I saw them. They were shifters dancing on the stages, and every few minutes, they would shift into their animal shape. Then, the tempo or key of the music would change, and they would shift back, the audience gasping and sighing with each transition. I fell into a chair behind me out of sheer shock. The shifters were all females that I recognized, but I couldn’t name them. One of them was a young, female wolf that had kept me out of the big, sumptuous bedroom the night of the fire. Allison. That was her name. If she recognized me, she didn’t show it.
In human form, each of the dancers was completely nude, but that was clearly not the draw. It was the change, the transition that had the human audience so excited. The music went faster, and they began to change one by one, a ripple of transformation that whipped around the room. The people watching all loved this and clapped loudly throughout the end of the song, until soon, they were all out of their chairs and throwing Bachmanns onto the stages. The performers collected the money on their hands and knees, each one doing their best not to look at the people who had thrown it.
“What are you drinkin’?”
“Sorry?” I started and stared at the waitress who had addressed me. She was in her human form, but a black cat’s tail was swaying behind her lithe figure.
“What can I get you, hon?”
“Um, I don’t know.” I looked at my hands, slightly worried they had turned to hooves while I wasn’t looking. They hadn’t. “I don’t really know what this place is.”
She tucked her tray under her arm and looked me over. “You’re a boar, right?”
My cheeks burned with questions. I’d always been raised to never discuss life as a shifter in the presence of humans. Never, ever. This night was a never-ending challenge.
“It’s okay,” she said, tilting her head a bit. “These folks? They’re your biggest fans. They won’t let anything happen to you.” She put her tray back up. “I’ll bring you a Chocolate Storm. You look like you need one.”
I started to protest, but she put up a hand. “It’s on me. One shifter to another.” With a quick wink, she turned and left.
There was a pause in the show, and the band’s singer stepped forward. “Ladies and gentlemen, shifters and watchers, please help me welcome the lovely, the magical, Blue Boa.”
A burst of excited applause filled the air, and everyone turned to the stage just behind me. The light was shining on the curtain in a perfect circle, and I saw a delicate, pale hand reach through the opening and lightly set down its fingers one by one as the first words of the song rang out.
“Come to my island,
My love…”
Several of the next verses were drowned out by the raucous cries of the audience. Clearly, this was who everyone wanted to see. When I saw the mysterious singer come out, I instantly understood why.
She was a boa constrictor. She stepped out in human form, wearing very little. She had some kind of bra over her chest, but it appeared stuck to her skin in little cups that glittered and sparkled in fake, blue jewels. Her hair was black and wavy, pinned back on one side by a blue accessory that matched her breasts. Her skirt was barely on; it was basically a slit that traveled all the way up her legs to her hips, which she swayed seductively as the song continued.
“Come help me bring in that tide,
I need you by my side.
We can dance under the palms and the stars…”
Slowly, effortlessly, her body transformed from her feet up until almost all of her body was a long, strong serpent. Only her breasts, shoulders, arms, and head were still human as she slid down and out onto the main floor.
To my horror, she wrapped herself right around me.
“Hi there,” she hissed in my ear, her tail squeezing my middle. Her hand stroked my terrified face, and then she uncoiled and moved on, leaving me gasping for breath. My waitress friend appeared and gave me a dark-brown concoction in a tall glass.
“I see you met Blue.”
“Yeah. I did.” I was shaking by the time I reached for my drink. My waitress put a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t let her get to you. She’s really just a big nerd. This whole act, it’s just that–an act. I promise if you met her backstage, you’d be very underwhelmed.”
I didn’t answer, just sipped my thick, slushy, chocolate drink. She smiled and walked off, and I watched her go as I tried to imagine Blue saying anything that wasn’t elegant or glamorous. A dork? Sure. She looked real dorky wrapping herself around the shoulders of the guy in the corner.
From my seat, I watched the performance and kept wondering who that person could be, the one she was singing to. Didn’t I know him? Possibly. I took in the rest of the crowd and realized no one was paying any attention to me, not even the security guards. Blue was that mesmerizing. She was gradually returning to her fully-human self and looked even lovelier as she walked on her long legs, taking slow, seductive steps so that everyone could see just how lovely those legs really were.
I was wondering if I could ever have legs like that when I suddenly realized who the man was–Bachmann! President Bachmann was on the other side of the room. He was dressed differently, just a t-shirt and some dark pants, and he’d grown out a beard, but it was him.
My drink suddenly came back up, and I desperately looked around for a place to spit it up. Nothing. The nearest exit was Blue’s stage, and she was just about to step back up to it. I got ready to make a lot of people angry and bolted straight for it. To my shock, she quickly shifted and caught me in her coils before I could get away.
“Well, well,” she intoned, flicking her little snake tongue out at my face in her amusement, “it looks like I caught a stray.”
“Please, Blue,” I whispered, “I need to get out of here.”
“What’s that, little kitten?” She pretended she was listening to a juicy secret, while the audience chuckled. “Oh, you want to go and play with me?” Through her smile, she pushed out the words ‘say yes.’
“Oh. Yes. Please.” This got us more laughs, and she set me free and shifted back in one swift, smooth motion.
“Pardon me, fellas. I have to go and see this through.” She took my hand and led me through the curtain. Once we were on the other side, I let out a big breath.
“We have to get out of here. Bachmann is out there!”
“Oh, Rhett? Was that what had you so freaked out?” Blue pulled on a white, fluffy robe and unpinned her hair. “You don’t need to worry about him. His days in politics are behind him.”
The sound of her nonchalance was more than I could deal with at the moment. I grabbed her shoulders and tried again. “No, you don’t understand. He’s a Bachmann. He comes from a family of tyrants. People like that don’t just let go of what they have. He’s evil. He’ll always be evil.”
She patted my cheek. “Honey, Rhett Bachmann is in here almost every night drooling over the shifter girls like everyone else. I’m telling you,” she took my hand and led me to a hallway, “you’ve got it wrong. Now,” she opened a door, and we stepped into her dressing room, “who are you?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m Emily. It’s my first time in the city.”
“You’re joking!” She sat down and brushed her hair out. “I grew up here. My family and I passed for human for decades. When watcher clubs started popping up, I was a headliner almost immediately. I never wanted to live on some smelly, old compound.” That comment made me look down at my second-hand clothes and dirty nails. Couldn’t say I blamed her.
“Oh, I didn’t mean for that to come out so terribly. Don’t listen to me, Emily. I put my foot in my mouth all the time.” She put her brush down and reached for some clothes folded up on a chair. She didn’t bother asking me to turn around or anything; she just took off her skirt and weird boob stickers and then slipped into some torn jeans and a blouse. “Hey, I’m starving. Shall we see if we can find something to eat? I know a guy who can make us fried mouse.”
I was hungry. I nodded, and she flashed me a big smile. “Great. We can take the back door. No politicians, I promise.” We laughed and headed out, friends already. That was what I loved the most about being a shifter, no one was a stranger. Unless they were human. Humans never felt familiar to me in any way.
We found the food vendor she’d promised and settled into plastic chairs for our food. The mouse was good, and I munched through one a little too fast. I wanted a second but was embarrassed to ask. Luckily, Blue saw the hunger in my eyes and ordered two more after our first round.
“Don’t worry,” she said before I could say ‘no, thank you.’ “They pay me well at the club, and I get extra little gifts from my fans all the time. I haven’t paid for anything in weeks.”
“Wow. Must be nice.”
“What do you do? To keep yourself alive, I mean. Does anyone take care of you?”
I nodded as I stuffed my face. “I used to live with my brother, but he was killed. Now I bunk with a family of bats in the old prison under Bachmann’s old palace.”
“No. Way.” She put her cheek on her hand so that she could stare at me properly. “You live with bats? A whole family?”
“Yup. Now it’s like I have two new brothers. They got under my skin earlier today, and that’s why I came out.”
She sat back in utter shock. “I cannot believe how thoroughly interesting you are.”
“Me?”
“Yes! Of course, you. You’re easily the most interesting creature I’ve spoken with in days. The human guys I talk to only want to talk about my show or my shifting, and that’s all fine. But none of them have anything to tell me. They think I want to hear about their new devices they’ve invented or how big their apartments are, but that’s all just stuff. I like real stories about real lives, you know?”
“I do. I think that’s why I like my bat family so much. They don’t ever talk about things. Well, the kids do, but they’re just kids.”
She asked me more about myself, about Boris and what he had been like. I told her everything. It all came pouring out of me. It felt great to open up to someone. So, when a giant, male human came over with two of his friends and suddenly sat down, I was doubly annoyed. Who invited these jerks?
“Hi, girls.” The leader of the little pack leaned forward, while his friends stood behind him, big smiles on their faces. “Who let you out so late at night?”
“Boys,” Blue interjected, “we’re flattered, but we need you to leave.”
“What will you do if we don’t?”
“Well I know what she’ll do,” I piped up. “She’ll wrap her coils around you until she crushes your lungs. And then,” I put my head down for a moment and then looked up with big, gleaming tusks jutting out of my face, “I’ll gore you in the stomach and let you watch your intestines come flying out of your body.”
“Gah!” The guy leaped back and out of his chair, knocking one of his friends backward in the process–not that he noticed. “They’re a couple of shifter freaks!”
The people around us all turned to look, and Blue and I were instantly in the center of a spectacle. She reached out and touched my shoulder, a warning. I remembered what Boris had taught me: stand back to back. Four eyes are better than two. I stepped around and felt the back of my shoulders touch Blue’s tiny frame.
The humans around us started to move in.
“What did you do with our president?”
“Why are you out here acting like us? What gives you the right?”
“Go back to your compound where you belong. Stop making trouble.”
Our giant, male human–the same who had sat down uninvited–saw a window. “I just wanted to say hello! They threatened me. This one said she wanted to kill me.”
“That’s not what happened.” I stood my ground, tusks still extended and still wet with drool. “You know it isn’t.”
His innocent act would not end. He was determined to play the victim. A hand to his chest, he acted as if he were unable to breathe and sat down in a chair, as if suddenly feeling faint. I fought hard not to roll my eyes.
“Maybe these shifters need a taste of their own medicine,” one of his friends suggested. All around us, people started nodding.
“Maybe they do.”
“I feel like I’m up to giving a couple lessons.”
Fists hit palms, and necks cracked. This crowd was ready for some serious violence. Behind me, Blue tensed, and I started to tremble. We could hold our own with a few guys, but an angry mob was more than we could manage.
“Stop!” A new guy, one I hadn’t noticed before, ran up and put himself between us and the crowd. “Let’s just all calm down.”
“Get outta here, gas boy. No one wants you here.”
“No one wants any bloodshed either, Luis.” He glanced back at us. “You’ve thoroughly terrified them. Well done. Let’s all just take a deep breath and move on with our evening, hmm?”
There was a pause as everyone considered the possibility of not killing us. For a moment, it seemed to appeal to them, but then the big guy called out again.
“You’re going to let them threaten me like that? And we’re not supposed to do anything?” This rallied the crowd back to his side with calls of “Yeah! That’s right!” and on, and on. Did humans ever let anything go?
“Give me a break, Roland.” Our bodyguard shook his head. “You’re three times their size. Even if they were expert fighters, you’d still be able to throw them across the street.”
Big guy didn’t quite know what to do with the compliment. It put him off his game, and all he could get out was a, “Well, well…you can never be too safe with these shifters. Anything could happen!”
Our protector stood firm, feet wide and hands balled into fists. “I know what’s going to happen tonight. You are walking that way, and my friends and I are headed the other way. We’re going to leave each other alone. Got it?”
Roland’s eyes narrowed into annoyed little slits, and he scoffed. “Whatever. I got somewhere to be.”
“I’m sure you’re very busy,” I retorted, and I was quickly pulled away by the new human that was now, apparently, in charge of Blue and me.
“All right, quit while you’re ahead. Come on, I’ve got bottles at my station.” Blue followed him without another thought, but I was angry. Who was this guy? Why were we trusting a human after one had almost gotten us ripped apart in the street? But there seemed to be no answers to my questions at the moment, so I just followed Blue and our new friend down the street. We walked silently down the quiet path and headed toward a small, well-lit building. I looked at his face and wondered at what I saw there. He wasn’t afraid, but he wasn’t confident. “He’s alone,” I thought. “Just like me.”