Chapter Eleven
Once on the mountain, we felt safe to walk. We made our way up slowly, still in animal (or in Harper’s case, half-animal) form and using all our senses to help us detect any lions, shifters, or humans that might be out for our scalps.
“You’re certain about the palace?”
I nodded my big boar head. “Yes. I have my family and all my friends there. If I ask for protection, they’ll give it to me.”
“Okay.” She took delicate steps next to me as I crashed through vines and kicked aside little stones, squashing worms and bugs. She smelled the mountain and looked all around. “It all smells so....”
“New?”
“Yeah. As if no plant ever grew here before.”
“Maybe they haven’t. For all we know, this mountain could have been completely bare forever.”
“No,” she shook her head. “It wasn’t. Before we came along–the modern humans, I mean–it used to be a mix of the old humans, non-shifter animals, and plants. Every year, it got cold for six months and then warm or even hot for the other part. Everyone used its plants for food. They even added some of their own. They never had to eat from cans, never had to hunt mice. It was an amazing place.”
“Wow.”
Harper’s story had me looking at the mountain differently. Adding plants to a place that was already so green? How did they do it? I tried to picture all these different species living together, feeding one another, leaving each other alone. It must have been a beautiful time. A part of me wanted it back, but the rest of me was very cynical. Surely, it would be a failure and just end in a big fight, right?
I asked Harper for other stories from the past as we walked. She told me about places called zoos that humans used to keep animals. I laughed at her description of non-shifter animals behind bars, but she insisted she was serious.
“Really! Animals were brought in from all over the world to the place called America. They grabbed some of the strangest creatures you ever saw and then just put them in cages. They just, you know, wanted to look at them.”
“Why didn’t they just go and see them where they were? Wouldn’t that have been more interesting?”
“I think,” Harper mused, “that would mean going very far away.” She looked all around. “The world was just bigger then, I guess.”
I snorted in response to such an idea. The world couldn’t have gotten any smaller. Just look at it! It was already endless. How could such a thing have expanded even further, been even bigger than it was right this second? The whole idea was nuts.
We came up on the east side of the palace. My old room, the one that was burned out, had been completely covered in plants. While my room was in shambles, the vines, flowers, and trees growing in my former space were thriving to the point that they intimidated me terribly. They all seemed to stare at us as we approached the building, daring us to disturb them.
We left nature in peace and continued up to what used to be the main entrance, but now was just an arch. The vines had pulled the doors off their hinges and carried them off into the wild so that they could come inside with the shifters. We walked through the green entrance and found the vines went almost all the way across the palace, stabbed into the ceiling, and hung from cracking chandeliers.
“Hello?”
My voice carried down the green space and into a dark hallway. Where was everyone? I looked around for any sign of life, but didn’t see it. Had the shifters abandoned this place as well as the humans? “Let’s check downstairs,” I suggested. We walked across moldy carpets to get to the prison entrance in the hallway. I wasn’t certain I would even be able to open it, but luckily, it was propped open a bit.
“Hello? Tom? Nate? You guys here?” Something like a response came from the other side of the door, so I shoved it open.
There, on the other side, the prison had become almost like a cave. Water had come from somewhere and formed a shallow lake at the bottom. Its presence made the place cold and musty. It seemed to be flowing in and out of the room, so it was much noisier than I remembered.
“Meredith? It’s me, Emily.” We started down the stairs, but we couldn’t see well. All the lights were there, but none of them were on. My hoof extended down to what should have been another step, but instead, it just hung down into empty space. I gasped and then tumbled onto the remainder of the stairway, bumping and rolling the whole way. Harper called after me, but she was too late. I landed at the bottom with a massive thud.
“You all right?”
I responded with a big groan and then just lay there until she could jump over the side and join me. She checked me over and decided I looked okay. “How’s your back?”
I did an internal scan. It was fine. We collected ourselves and had a look around. Harper found an old flashlight high up on a shelf and clicked it on. The beam swung around the big, wet space but revealed no familiar faces. As she slowly shined it on all the walls, I thought I saw something up in a corner.
“Oh! Go back. There’s something just up there. Yes. What is that?”
She moved closer. It was a drawing in Nate and Tom’s favorite part of the ceiling. It showed four bats – two big and two small – flying away from a mountain. An arrow pointed to a circle, and then the animals reappeared inside of the shape. They had left and gone back to the compound. I was certain.
Harper looked at me. “Can you make sense of this?”
“Yeah. They left. They’re at the old compound.”
My fellow shifter pulled a face. “Why?”
I tilted my big, boar head. “Could be any reason. Maybe it’s nice out there now that things aren’t so dry and there’s some actual food around.” A big yawn came out of me. “Why don’t we rest here and then go after we’ve slept? I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”
She stretched her arms above her head and arched her back. “Yeah,” she concurred. “Let’s bunk here. I’m in no shape to run through the Open Zone.”
We found my old bed, but it was so moldy and green we didn’t touch it. We checked the old jail cells and found a nice dry one. There was no bed, but in our animal forms, we didn’t need any. We were asleep almost instantly in the dark, underground space. Any other time, it would have been terrifying, but that day, it felt cozy and safe. I could almost hear my little adopted brothers arguing over a book while Meredith washed the dishes and Ted sang a little made-up song to himself as he fixed some old table or chair. My ear flicked at the memory of their voices, and a little satisfied snort came out of me as I drifted off to sleep. More than anything else, I just wanted them to be all right.
A crash late at night pulled me out of sleep far too quickly. Right away, my heart started pounding crazily, and my eyes were as wide open as I could get them. I listened and heard it again – a crash followed by human voices. I used my snout to nudge Harper who rolled away from me. “Five more minutes.”
“Harper,” I whispered, remembering to keep my voice soft, “someone’s here. In the palace. I can hear them.”
“Hmm?” She lifted her head then quickly put it down as a big creak came from just above us. We looked up to the noisy ceiling of our little dwelling and then back down at one another. It was a group of humans. Were they looking for us?
We waited as their footsteps traveled over us, stumbling and falling over vines that must have grown even bigger and meaner as we slept. Boar hooves and cat paws were wonderful for traversing rough terrain like this, but human feet would be a challenge. They were probably wearing shoes which would make them slip on the big, wet leaves and get tangled up in the green lines. Their journey was a slow one: a few steps, a fall, a regroup, and then a few more steps. The whole palace seemed to be working against them.
They came to the part of the hallway with the door to the prison. One of them yelled to the others. Based on their voices, I guessed they had about four people altogether.
“We should check down here,” a male voice called.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of storage, I guess. Be a good place to hide.”
“All right, let’s go.”
Harper didn’t wait another second. She jumped up, grabbed me, and ran me over to behind the stairs.
We listened and waited as they started their descent. They walked cautiously, already expecting trouble from their treacherous environment. Harper held me close with both hands. I was fairly certain I knew the plan, but I didn’t dare ask. I could already see their feet getting closer and closer. The last thing I wanted was to give them an advantage.
“What is this place?” a female wondered.
“Oh, I know! This was Bachmann’s secret prison. He wasn’t technically allowed to lock anyone up, so he had to do it underground. I heard once that he just arrested shifters at ra….” The female with all the answers wasn’t able to finish her thought. The story had distracted her enough that she went right through the hole in the stairs and crashed to the ground.
Just as she hit the stone floor, we all heard a horrible crack.
“My leg!” she shrieked. Her friends started to follow her, but a second human went through the hole. This one caught herself halfway down, but her legs kicked wildly in the air as her fellow humans tried desperately to pull her back up. Meanwhile, the one at the bottom was still screaming through her pain.
“Please help!”
“We can’t! There’s a giant hole in the stairs. If we go down, we’ll fall, too. We’re trying to figure out what to do.”
I tensed my muscles, ready for Harper to throw me through the air so that I could land on some unsuspecting human and gore them with a big, curved tusk. But I felt something shift in her. Her hands relaxed, her shoulders went low, and then, to my horror, she set me down. Walking forward to the injured girl, she got down on one knee.
“Don’t worry.” She took the girl’s hand. “I’ll help you. But I want all of your friends to promise they won’t do anything to Emily or me. Deal?”
The whole room went quiet. The humans on the stairs had managed to get above the empty space and were looking down over the railing.
“Who’s there?”
“Is it her? What’s happening?”
“Susy, talk to us! Who’s with you?”
The girl on the floor swallowed hard and then took Harper’s outstretched hand. She was crying a little, and she choked on the sobs as she spoke. “It’s her. We found her. And now, I really need her help. I’m calling a truce.”
No response. I walked forward and sat down next to the injured girl, Susy, and looked up. “Truce.”
The crowd on the stairs blinked at us through the dark. I knew they couldn’t possibly see us all too well, but they knew where we were. The male spoke up.
“We’re supposed to take you back to the Alliance and let the directors have a say in what happens to you.”
“Don’t,” I responded. “Instead, come with us to the old compound. That’s where my shifter family is, and we can go there to join them. Then,” I looked at Harper, still holding the human’s hand, “we can all be true allies. Deal?”
They didn’t answer. Susy lost her patience and did the talking for them. “Deal! Yes, deal. Just do something for my leg, please!”
We turned our attention to Susy as the others ran up to look for medical supplies or anything to make her more comfortable. We looked at her through the dark, and she reached out to touch my head.
“Your hair is so wiry.”
“Yeah. It’s a pain.”
“Mine is curly. I hate it.”
“You shouldn’t,” I told her. “It suits you so well.”
She paused. “You can see in the dark, can’t you?”
I shrugged. “So-so. I can’t see details. Just the big picture. Boar eyes are only a bit sharper than human eyes. I can shift back if you need me to.”
“No. It’s cool.” She looked at Harper. “You don’t want to kill me?”
She shook her head. “There’s been too much death around me lately. I can’t take anymore. Besides,” she added, shifting her weight on the floor, “murdering you wouldn’t solve anything. You would just be another body.” She shifted back to her fully human form and smoothed out her hair. “Don’t murder me either, deal?”
“Sure.” Susy propped herself up on her elbows. “We called a truce, right? I was serious about it.” They both smiled a little and then looked up at the ceiling as footsteps thundered over us. “I won’t let them hurt you,” she assured us. “Don’t worry.”
The search party came back with a plank of wood they’d salvaged from the library, a shredded bedsheet, some pill bottles they’d found, and a lamp. They came down carefully, now able to see the missing step.
“Careful,” Harper called up. She stood and positioned herself under the blank space. “Hand the stuff down to me, and then I’ll help you to the floor.”
With some careful timing, we got all the supplies down to the floor and then the other girls, Tiffany and Meagan, and their friend, Carson. Tiffany tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey, um, I hope this is okay. I brought you some clothes. I know that when shifters go back to their human shape, they’re, um, naked. So, if you want, you can use these.”
I nodded. “Thanks. I will.” I got back into human shape so that I could help and then, still standing with the group, got my clothes on. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual, “how well do you all know Alex? The guy who brought me onstage. Is he, like, a good friend of yours?”
“He’s my ex,” Tiffany informed me. “We dated for a long time, but about a year ago we broke up. Things are still kind of weird between us.” She positioned the plank under Susy’s leg, and Meagan wrapped the sheet around it so that it wouldn’t move around. “Why? You like him?”
“I don’t know.” I helped tie off the sheet, and then we checked in with Susy to see how she felt. She was looking very pale in the lamplight. “He and I were…you know, for a while. But ever since this whole secret mission and the lion attack, I’m thinking I need him out of my life.”
Tiffany nodded and sighed. “He’s an intense guy, Alex. He wants so much. Sometimes, I think one life won’t be enough for him; he needs ten at least. And about thirty girlfriends.”
Carson laughed. “Sounds like a living nightmare.”
That comment set all us females off.
“Hey!”
“That’s enough out of you.”
“Would be the luckiest man alive–”
“Don’t you scoff. You know what you’re saying?”
He quickly shut his mouth and focused on his pulley he was concocting. We had to lift Susy off the floor directly and then carry her down the mountain somehow. I wanted to ask how we would take her to the compound, but I pressed my lips together. What if the answer was that we couldn’t? Maybe it was just too risky. No one wanted to leave her behind, but no one knew of an alternative.
All the other parts of Susy’s rescue were going well; the pulley was finished, and she was positioned in the bed of it, ready for her ride up. The girls and I had joined Carson up at the top of the stairs to get her off the floor, and Harper stayed on the lower level in case anything went wrong.
“All right,” Harper said to Susy, “this pill is a very strong painkiller. I want you to take one now. You’re about to go on a very painful adventure.” Susy swallowed the little gel capsule, Harper gave a thumb’s up, and we counted together.
“One…two…three…LIFT!”
Slowly, in fits and starts, a shifter and three humans lifted a broken girl off the floor. Soon, we had her up and laid out on the vines of the main hallway. We lowered more sheets for Harper to climb up to the stairs, and then she joined us.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s head for the garage. We’ve got a group, so we’ll need something big.”
I had no idea what she meant, but the humans around me all brightened up.
“You can drive?” Meagan was beaming. “I thought you were taken everywhere.”
“I did,” Harper said with a big, smug smile. “That’s why I had to sneak out and teach myself. Follow me.”
We made our way to the other side of the palace–much more slowly now that we had to carry Susy–and found the garage more or less unharmed as it was more sheltered than the rest of the palace. We walked in, and a few auto-lights turned on, revealing a huge collection of cars.
I gasped loudly at the sight of all those unused, enormous vehicles just sitting in an empty room. I’d genuinely had no idea that the president was in possession of every car on Earth. Some were extremely old; others looked terrifying and powerful. Some were even extremely tiny, just big enough for one person.
Harper walked up to a big, tough-looking car on giant wheels and patted the side. “This will get us down the mountain, no problem.” She pressed her thumb to the door, and it popped open. She pushed a button inside, and the whole car opened up.
“Come on.” She smiled at all of us and down at Susy. “Let’s go see our friends at the compound.”