“Well, for what it’s worth...” Angelica turned on the lights and the little apartment flickered to life. It was small, about the size of a standard hotel room but, she told him with a certain amount of delight, it had its own bathroom and, oddly, the shower was large.
He looked around, trying to get a sense of this place she called home.
There was a kitchenette tucked into a corner and room for two chairs, comfortable, overstuffed antiques from the ‘70s, shedding white fluffy padding from three or four open seams. There was a table that did duty for eating, studying, holding various things that should be kept off the floor that looked as though it was currently being used in each capacity. He reached out and picked up an empty flower pot before discovering the desiccated remains of some sort of a plant.
“It was a welcome gift when I arrived,” Angelica said with a sigh. “Never give a plant to a doctor; we’re never home long enough to water the damn thing.”
He set it back down again. “Mental note, don’t get your girl a puppy.” He smiled, trying to take away some of the tension that had been emanating from her since he’d arrived. He could feel it and hated that she wasn’t in her element. She should be. This place had style written all over it. Just that missing kid...
She walked up to him and wrapped her arms around him again. “You’ve had a very long day and a longer trip. You probably haven’t even seen a bed in, what, 24 hours?”
“Something like that,” he agreed, though he’d been trying not to think about it. The few hours’ sleep he’d gotten on the plane over the Atlantic had hardly counted. He’d woken up with each bit of turbulence, positive that the flying heap that passed for an airplane was going down.
“So, tell me something, oh, great feline: are you tired or hungry? Which is more pressing?”
“Wait,” Taylor said, tangling fingers in her hair to tilt her head back that he might kiss her, “what happened to horny? Why is that off the list?”
“Because asking if you’re horny is like asking a dog if it likes raw steak. It’s a stupid question.” She grabbed his ass cheeks and squeezed. “But in the meantime, let’s talk about things that are actually optional and not necessary. You know, like food and rest.”
“I had a snack on the way in,” he said hesitantly, “but it wasn’t very good.”
“Local food?”
“Very.”
“You need to be careful around here,” Angelica cautioned and made a face. “The food isn’t always fresh out here.”
“Oh, this was fresh.”
Angelica looked at him a moment. He could see the moment it connected in the way her pupils contracted and her face scrunched up. “Ew.” She lifted one hand, scrubbing at her lips with the back of it. “And I kissed you. Ew.” He swatted her backside and she laughed. “All right, let’s see if we can find you something a bit different. Here’s an idea, what if we apply heat and cook the meat? What do you think?”
“I think you’re going to get the other side smacked in a moment.”
She smiled up at him and stuck out her tongue. “Save it for after,” she teased, and laughed as his eyebrow rose.
Damn, he loved her laugh.
She took the bag from him and dropped it on the bed. She took his hand next and left the apartment again, heading down a corridor to a flight of stairs going down, stopping at a door marked STAFF ONLY.
They entered a room with several tables and a window to a kitchen. The kitchen was open on one side and people were serving themselves. These were staff members, janitorial, maintenance, soldiers. In this room the medical professionals were isolated from the rest. Most of them were nurses, though not all, and Angelica introduced him as they wended their way to the window.
“Some of the staff eat out at the mess hall with the refugees. Mostly the locals and a few diehard types who insist that they refuse to eat better than the people they’re treating. It’s absolute foolishness; the food is bad everywhere, though we get more here and need it. We’re working long, hard hours and need to keep our strength up if we’re going to do our jobs,” Angelica explained as she ushered him toward the line that snaked away from the window.
“Melinda,” Angelica called to a middle-aged woman with short mousy brown hair who was drowsing over her stew at a nearby table. “Melinda, this is Taylor, my fiancé.”
“How do you do?” The woman smiled. It was a tired smile, as though she was still half asleep, but it was genuine all the same. Melinda’s eyes were half shut and the bags under her eyes obvious.
“A pleasure, Doctor.” Taylor said, returning the handshake. “Angelica has spoken highly of you.”
“Really?” Melinda seemed to smile a touch brighter, shaking off her stupor and sitting straighter. “Well, that’s very flattering.” She turned to Angelica and placed a hand on her arm. “Thank you.”
“You’ve been here a while, is that right?” Taylor was perhaps being a little too blunt, pressing for information too soon after the introductions, but after the day he’d had maybe he could be forgiven the impatience. Besides, it fit well with his reporter cover.
“Oh, my.” She thought for a moment. “I suppose it depends on how you define ‘a while’, but four years is certainly a brief time in some respects and an eternity in others.” Her eyes took on a sad cast, as though she carried the burdens of the entire refugee camp on her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” Taylor said, and he genuinely meant the apology. “I didn’t mean to touch on a topic that was tender.”
“Oh, no.” She snorted, and waved her hands as if to erase the suggestion. “I do the bulk of the surgical work here and it gets to be a bit of a blur. It’s usually the same problems all the time, lots of injuries and attacks from other people who have been crammed into small living space and lost everything. One’s heart goes out to them, but...” She took a deep breath, “you do as much as you can with what you have and pray it’s enough at the end of the day.” She shook her head. “And what is it that you do, Mr...”
“Mann, Taylor Mann.” He held out a hand for her to shake which she took, pressing cold fingers to his only briefly. “I’m a reporter for the Boston Globe by trade, but I’m here on personal business. I happened to be in the neighborhood.”
Melinda laughed and drew back her hand, letting it linger on Taylor’s forearm. “In the neighborhood,” she repeated. “That’s funny. Listen, though, you should really write something about this place.” She waved her hands again. It was like they were trapped on the ends of her arms and were forever trying to break free of their confinement by flapping around. “A little publicity might get some international attention down here and maybe we can get some actual help for these refugees.”
“Well, I can write it,” Taylor said dubiously, “but I can’t guarantee my editor will print it. There’s a considerable bias here.” He reached over and took Angelica’s hand and kissed it.
“Oh, how cavalier!” Melinda actually squealed like a little girl. “I love it! Doctor, hold on to this one with both hands; he’s a gem.” She got up and patted them both on the shoulder. “Or I’ll take him.” She laughed again and waved, taking her tray and heading out of the lunchroom, pausing only to bus the dirty dishes at the station near the door.
Taylor looked at Angelica, his face a study in confusion.
“I should have warned you...” Angelica murmured.
“Yeah,” Taylor agreed, “that would have been nice.”
“But then I would have had to miss the expression on your face.”
Taylor showed her another expression and she bit her lower lip and went to the window of the kitchen, the rest of the line having already moved through. Taylor was looking for a menu or list of sorts, but a plate piled with potatoes and gravy and meat was dropped down on the sill in front of Angelica. She picked it up without a word, the person who delivered it long gone. Taylor took his place at the window and his own plate landed hard enough to splatter gravy in his direction. He jumped back to avoid being drenched and bumped into someone behind him.
Sometimes he truly did feel much too large for this world.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” he said, turning around to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently squashed a hobbit or something.
“No, no, my fault entirely!” Not quite a hobbit but not far off, a balding, heavyset man with thick glasses jumped back out of the way and then laughed awkwardly when he realized who Taylor was with. He adjusted his glasses before holding out his hand. “I should introduce myself; in fact, I came here for that express purpose. That is, to introduce myself. I mean why I was standing here just now, not why I came to Africa. I’m Tony Webb. Dr. Tony Webb, M.D.” He stuck out his hand and Taylor took it in his, wondering if a Vulcan salute might be more appropriate.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Doctor,” Taylor said, blinking a little and wondering at just how many strange characters were doctors out here.
Or maybe that was a prerequisite for wanting to work in a medical clinic halfway around the world from home.
“Oh, no,” Tony insisted. “No, Angelica has said wonderful things about you and anyone who can turn the head of someone as pretty and smart as she is has got to be someone special. Not that you aren’t. I mean that you are, because you did.”
“What’s your specialty, Doctor?” Taylor interrupted before the doctor found a way to put the other foot in his mouth with the first one.
“Oh, I uh... I study infections and tropical diseases and that sort of thing. This is kind of the best place in the world for jungle diseases because, well, you know... it’s an actual jungle and there’s a lot of it about. Disease that is, not jungle. Although there is a lot of jungle around, too, but that wasn’t really what I meant.” Dr. Webb blinked and licked his lips, as though he only just discovered he’d been talking.
Taylor shot a glance at Angelica and raised an eyebrow.
“I heard that you got called into Manchester’s office,” Dr. Webb said suddenly to Angelica. “Don’t worry, we all get called in once in a while. He tends to forget this a volunteer organization and we can leave anytime we want to. And I’ll have you know, he makes us want to on a regular basis. Melinda and me, that is, not the nurses, although it could be the nurses, too. I don’t really know, I don’t talk to them. Not that there’s anything wrong with talking to nurses. I do talk to them in a professional manner, I just don’t know them off work, I mean not to talk to—”
“Why don’t you?” Taylor interrupted.
“Talk to nurses?” Tony blinked. “I don’t...I don’t know...I don’t...”
“No, I mean why don’t you leave if Dr. Manchester is so difficult to work with?”
“Well,” Tony said, stroking his coat nervously and puffing his cheeks as he thought, “where else am I going to be able to study such wonders as I have here?”
“Wonders?”
“Yes.” He licked his lips and looked between Taylor and Angelica. “You might not think that infections and jungle diseases are wonderful, but I can assure you that I am studying things that—” He stopped and blinked. “I rather like my field of study,” he said finally.
“I meant no offense, Doctor. I know how aggravating it can be to have to work for someone who doesn’t see eye to eye with your vision.”
“Yes. It can be. Yes. But worth it. Worth it. Yes. Excuse me.” He nodded to Angelica. “Don’t take it personally, my dear, it’s just his way, he’s just...” Tony swallowed, as though he literally swallowed words yet unspoken. Without another word leaving his lips, without pleasantries of any kind, he turned and strode out of the lunch room.
“Ok, that I couldn’t have warned you about. I have never seen the man like that before.”
Taylor looked after him, noting the man’s odd gait, like he was being chased. “Think he could have gotten into the medicine cabinet?”
“No.” Angelica seemed a little distracted as she led Taylor to an empty table. When she looked up at him her eyes reflected her confusion. “He’s always been a little chatty, but not like that.”
“He’s a bit... peculiar, then?” Taylor sat down and stared at his plate. “What am I eating?”
“Glop on powdered mashed potatoes.”
“I take it you don’t have a nutritionist on-site?”
“We did. I think she imploded.”
Truthfully, the food wasn’t as bad as most school lunches and only a little worse than Marine Corps survival rations. It was hot, and filling and Taylor played the part of the vacationing reporter through six more introductions. Nurses, an anesthesiologist, an x-ray tech, and a rather disarming phlebotomist.
After lunch, Angelica confessed to showing him off to the people she worked with. “You’re cute!” she insisted as they climbed the stairs. “Of course I’m going to show you off; I want everyone to see what a catch I snagged.”
“What you ‘snagged’?” he asked as they left the stairs and entered the hallway to her apartment.
“Hell yeah,” she said mischievously as she unlocked her door. “I dug the trap myself. Caught me a tiger. OW!” She spun around. “Did you really just spank me?” She was on the verge of outrage and giggling.
Taylor loved that look on her and tried to maintain a straight face. He failed. “No,” he said. “That was a drive-by spanking; I don’t know who that was, but it wasn’t me.”
She stuck out her tongue and opened the door. “HEY!”
“Okay, that one was me. I did it so you could tell the difference.”
“You really think you’re getting lucky tonight after that?”
“Of course.” He smiled and pulled her in his arms. “You’re as horny as I am.”
“Lucky for you!” She pushed him, but it was playful and her heart wasn’t in it. “So I’m trapped, am I?” She looked up at him.
He nodded solemnly.
She rolled her eyes. “I need to wash my hands and do other things in the bathroom. You go and start without me, I’ll be right there.”
He snorted, and kissed her forehead. He watched her go into the bathroom, admiring the wiggle she didn’t even realize she had. When the door closed he pulled off his shirt and stretched out on the bed, listening to the water run in the sink.
Finally.
I’m home.
It was his last thought before sleep took him.
***
TAYLOR OPENED HIS EYES and froze.
For a moment he didn’t know where he was. The room didn’t look familiar. A few seconds later it all came back to him. This was Angelica’s place, the apartment they gave her at the clinic. Her apartment. With her. The fact that they hadn’t seen each other in months and she was right there, and he was—WTF—still dressed?
Just how tired was I?
He sank back against the pillow and smacked his forehead, spending a solid five minutes finding new cuss words for his particular kind of stupid. He checked his watch, but found it wasn’t all that helpful. He had no idea when he’d gone to sleep or what Angelica’s schedule was. Given that the apartment had the quiet echoey feel of a place that was decidedly empty, he figured she’d had probably gone back on duty. He glanced outside. It was dark now. Night-time kind of dark. No, wait. Early morning kind of dark. He’d slept a lot.
CRAP.
He gave himself the luxury of feeling sorry for himself until his body’s needs became known. With a sigh he sat up and stretched. Definitely past time to get back into motion. He went into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face. It helped him wake up but didn’t do much for his mood. Back in the bedroom he walked the perimeter of the room, twice, pacing while thinking. Every time, he tried to work on the questions at hand, things like ‘Where’s the girl?’ ‘What was she, and how could he fall asleep like that?’, he kept coming back to the idea that he needed a good run. Something to clear the cobwebs out and pass the time until she returned. Here he was in the wild jungles of Africa, and though the refugee camp was at the outskirts of a city, on the other side he wasn’t too far away was actual primal jungle. This was one of the few places in the world where he could run and stretch and hunt and spread out over the bough of a heavy tree without someone calling the city zoo to report an escaped tiger.
Which brought his thinking back around to the girl. Someone with her capabilities should be able to disappear into the jungle. Had she simply left? But, then, how had she come to be here in the first place? She should have been difficult to capture in this habitat. Though she wasn’t necessarily used to jungles. Lions lived more on the savanna than in jungles.
Displaced? She is a refugee after all. And maybe new to the lion form?
As a boy, his ability, if that was what you wanted to call it, never manifested. Among his kind it usually didn’t until the body stopped growing, which was once the bones and organs were set to their full growth or something near to, probably somewhere in the midst of puberty. That first change had been horrendous. It’s hard enough growing hair on your crotch and listening to your voice crack and break, but try puberty when you could change into a tiger at a moment’s notice. It was like getting an erection. At first, he couldn’t control it. It would happen at night, or when he was simply hot or cold or eating or drinking or reading a book. It just happened, and it took time and effort to control it.
If this girl was able to wait to change—to hold off the lion—then it wasn’t her first time and she was likely older than she looked. Or she’d started early. Or worse yet, she’d changed so many times in a short period that she was able to control it long before she should have been. The way he and the vanishing few of his kind he knew had gotten through that rough time was by the grace of parents who had prepared them for the change and planned it out long in advance.
This girl had to have the same support system, or she wouldn’t be able to fight the change as she did. If so, where were they now? There’d been no mention of parents or even siblings.
Taylor decided to find a piece of paper and pen to help him think and looked up in surprise when he realized that he was squatting on the back of the couch, perched much as a cat would. He climbed down as deliberately human as he could, stretching one leg and shifting his weight to it while taking the other off the couch instead of hopping down like his body seemed to want to do.
That was... strange. Think people would notice if I started climbing furniture? How about if I shred the curtains? I am way too overtired. What the hell?
A little uneasy and not feeling quite himself, he took a few deep breaths and removed his shirt. He dropped to the ground and fired off 30 pushups as fast as he could and on the last, leaped to his feet. Exercise always cleared his head and made him feel better. He checked his watch and decided to indulge in a small workout, including sit-ups, 50 more pushups, and a couple dozen crunches.
Afterward he took a shower, redressed, and looked at the time again. He’d only killed a bit more than an hour. How long was Angelica working anyway? He knew from experience that her shifts were long. He likely still had hours to kill. He looked over the single table in the room and found a yellow legal pad and an assortment of half-dead pens. One of them was useful and he began writing notes, trying to solidify what he knew.
Item one: Girl appears to be 14-15 yrs. old.
Appears being the operative word.
Well, he hadn’t seen her, but Angelica did. The ability to change shape had never altered anything about age or mortality as far as he knew. Men and women still lived and died at the same rates as anyone else, though it seemed less than fair. If anything, having to be a wild animal once in a while should at least grant you a few extra hundred years on this planet. Not so. Since Angelica was a doctor, and a damn good one, the odds of her calling the girl’s age wrong was unlikely. Assume that the age is correct.
Item Two: She resisted the change.
He circled that one. The body will always fight to heal itself. People who are sick will sleep more, because the body needs it. People who are bothered by dander or pollen will sneeze or sniffle, because the body is trying to rid itself of the intruder. For those who can change forms, the best and easiest way to heal is to change. Taylor had once tried climbing a telephone pole as a teen. It was a warm summer day and he was bored. He was also cocky and thought the stunt would be daring and might earn him a few points with his friends when he told them about it. But a few of the pins on the pole were too loose to hold him. He’d fallen a good twenty feet, and while not critically injured it had broken his arm and twisted his knee quite severely. As he was alone, he shifted and then back again, and all he had to explain was a shredded shirt.
In order for the girl to fight the change she had to have some pretty impressive self-control—or... she was scared to change. Scared enough that she would fight what would have to be incredible pain to not change. She only changed after a) she was given a pain med that relaxed her guard and b) she was in a relatively safe place where only Angelica was there to witness.
Item Three: She was deliberately hurt.
The injuries Angelica described were brutal, but they were specific. They were also pointless. It wasn’t the sort of thing you did to extract information. Interrogation was 90% anticipation and being forced to see the instruments that were going to be used on you. This was a brutal attack from a bully... or from someone who just wanted her to hurt. Why would they want her to hurt? To see if she would heal. Presume that the bone-breaker knew something about shifters; they would know that she would need to change to heal, and that the temptation would be incredibly strong to do so. Break her bones, give her deep bruising, and she would change right in front of you. If you were lucky.
What if they’d been wrong? What if she hadn’t turned out to be a shifter at all? Then what? You have a girl with a lot of broken bones, all of which would heal in time. How did one justify that kind of experimentation? In this particular case the girl had resisted, so whoever did this would have given up, assumed that she wasn’t a shifter, and that this was only a failed experiment. At least until she came back whole, and without any marks on her. Which would tell them, whoever ‘them’ was, that either she had shifted after all or she’d found a magical healing formula from a fantasy novel. Since that was highly unlikely, she’d given herself away when she was able to change finally and heal herself. And that was because Angelica helped her. Then she’d reverted back to human and was visibly healed.
Someone with access to the clinic had been watching for just that.
Who? Taylor circled this and started an indented list.
Doctor
It had to be a doctor. A nonmedical staff member, like a janitor or even an orderly, couldn’t risk lifting the sheets off a teenage girl to check her body for marks. A nurse might, but then they would be limited to their area for patients and would look suspicious if they were off staring at naked teenagers in a ward that wasn’t their own. A doctor, though... A doctor could and would examine anyone he or she chose without garnering attention.
What was it Angelica was saying last night... well, earlier today for that matter. She was angry with her supervisor. One of the things she was spitting out like venom was that he’d “examined her patients without asking.” Dr. Manchester had taken it upon himself to examine the girl who was under orders to be watched for 72 hours and then overrode the medical orders of another doctor and released her back to the camp where she later disappeared.
Taylor balanced the point of the pen on the pad and twirled it. The calisthenics had been good, but he still needed that run. A good, long marathon to stretch and blow out the dust and rust. He sighed. Staying inside left him feeling like a tiger in a cage. It’s why he despised zoos.
What do you think you’re going to do? Go jogging? He sighed. A large American male running along the edge of a refugee camp might draw a few sideways glances. But a tiger in the night, running through the jungle, wouldn’t be seen.
FOCUS! You’re here for a reason!
Of course, there was the stash...
Not knowing how his sudden appearance would be taken, he’d left a bag with a change of clothing and his pistols and ammo stashed at the tree line. Now that he had been accepted into the camp he could come and go with some impunity, trading on Angelica’s reputation and good name. Whereas he’d been searched before, now that he was an established visitor he could just... leave. Especially if he was using the reporter alias. Then he was just a guy walking into the deep jungle for an exclusive story.
At night? You’re nuts. Forget it.
Taylor walked to the kitchenette and foraged around until he found enough coffee to make a pot. The smell and comforting gurgle of the coffee maker helped enormously, and he poured himself a cup before it was complete. He needed the coffee to focus more than anything else. He returned to his paper and his thoughts.
Other doctors?
He stared at the words on the paper. But it was Manchester who had examined her. It was Manchester who released her. What did the old woman say? ‘They’ took all her people; she was the only one left. Assuming this Manchester knew about the shifters, and it was logical that he did, what the hell would he be doing with so many? What purpose would he have? Research? What could he learn? Genocide? Again, why? What’s the motive? He’d said that Charra had returned to her grandmother. The old woman swore Charra was no relation. Had Manchester assumed that they were related?
Therein was the problem. If he was taking all of her people for ‘testing’, then why didn’t he take the old woman? If there was a question about ‘Grandma’ being a shifter, he would have subjected her to the same broken bones test. Unless there was an alternative reason. Maybe he took them only at a certain age, for example. And if that was true, there might be more out there that were too young or too old to fit the profile.
The old woman hadn’t been bothered as far as he could tell.
He sipped the coffee and leaned back in the chair until it creaked. The image of darkness and the vision of cats ran through his head. How he would prowl the back woods of Minnesota as a boy, loping through the trees and hunting rabbits and scaring the crap out of the occasional lost dog. He never hurt them. In fact, he’d wanted a dog all through childhood. But sometimes they jumped when they suddenly saw an almost fully-grown tiger behind them.
Taylor smiled at the memory. There was a German shepherd mix a mile from his house who loved to slip his chain and explore the forest. For some reason, when Taylor tried to spook him the dog had whirled and wagged his tail furiously and lowered his head in a ‘play with me’ posture.
After that they would occasionally meet in the woods and explore and wrestle, and for a glorious summer Taylor had the dog he’d wanted. But in the fall Taylor went back to school, and in the end the dog was just a dog and not his.
“I want a dog,” he announced to the room and threw the pen in frustration. “One day. Not now, but someday in the future.”
Wouldn’t it be grand to go out into the jungle again? Just like the woods. Get the bag with the guns, climb a tree. He looked at his watch. He’d killed four hours. Angelica would be on the clock for at least another four, maybe more if he remembered her schedule correctly from all the times they’d talked on Skype. She was a dedicated and busy soul.
I should be out looking for the girl.
But where?
If she was taken, then she wasn’t in the camp anymore. He wondered if the cat could get a sniff of something...
He brightened. A chance to run after all.
He locked the door behind him and headed outside under the darkening skies. Probably should have left Angelica a note...