Dez

 

I’d sent Balt a brief text, checking in on him and Piper again, then casually asking if he knew anything about SOA in the Northeast. I didn’t want to get too specific in case this all went south and my friends, who were also new parents, got hauled in for questioning.

Sitting back from my computer, I sighed. The last thing I wanted was to get any of them in trouble. I hadn’t banked on how hard it would be to distance myself – especially from Kesari and Roy, who were like the two annoying younger siblings I never had. Both of them were still hounding me, months later, about what had happened in Bear Valley and where I was.

No matter how many times I told them not to worry about it, I knew they were worrying. Chuckling grimly, I stared around my family’s apartment and wondered how I’d wound up back here. It had started with helping Balt occasionally when I lived in LA a few years ago.

After that, he’d tracked me down in London last summer to help him with his family’s curse, eventually leading me down a rabbit hole into Anubis land. Then Bear Valley had happened.

And now I was in Boston, feeling both impossibly young and old. I guess I should be grateful my family was a bunch of snowbirds. There was no way I could have stayed here if they weren’t in Florida for the winter.

Part of me was almost hoping Balt would know something about the SOA being in town. That the woman could become an ally. But the rest of me wasn’t holding my breath. I knew when I’d decided to undertake this, it would be a solitary gig.

Well, except for Beni. But his help was sporadic at best.

I’d been alternating between analyzing what I’d found in the lab and reviewing my stuff for class this week. There was still more to do, but I was itching to get out on the streets.

Among the papers, I'd found last week was a shipping manifest. Reading it again, I began making preparations to go out. Guess I’m heading to the Port tonight.

First, I closed the shades in my room, but left them open and the lights on in the living room. I'd the weirdest sense of being followed a few times this week, although I hadn't spotted anyone.

Even this morning, I could have sworn I saw movement on a roof after I’d gotten my coffee. If someone suspected something, I wanted to at least give the appearance of being home.

Next, I dug out the black gear from my bureau. One of the drawers had a false bottom – my Grams had found it at a yard sale and the lady who sold it to her insisted it was to smuggle jewels into the United States. I shook my head, still wondering if that lady has sensed my Grams loved a good story behind a piece. She’d given it to me, telling me to keep my treasures there, which as a kid had been comic books, candy, and a handful of dollar bills.

Once I was dressed, I headed for the bathroom. Here, there was a window that led out onto a low lip of a roof. As a kid, I’d been forbidden to even think about going out there. Not that I would have, I wasn’t exactly a fan of heights. But now I clambered out without a second thought.

Down on the street, I pulled up the hood of my jacket and glanced around. I wasn’t masked yet, I wanted to look like just another Bostonian intent on keeping out the cold.

Especially since I had to take the train.

It’s okay, though, I reassured myself. Every superhero in a city took public transportation at one point or another. Luke Cage, Daredevil, Spiderman… Maybe not Batman.

Once on the T, I kept my head down and hunched into a corner seat. It was Saturday, pushing 10:30 now, so most people were already out or not going out. Not that I blamed them, it was freezing. The Red Line lurched and screeched underground, bringing me through the heart of the city until we got into South Boston.

“Broadway Station,” crackled a tired voice over the intercom and I stood up.

Up on the street, I was glad to see it was quiet and all but deserted. Once I sensed I was alone, I shifted and darted off through the night. It wasn’t a far run to the Port, the big docks receiving massive shipping containers from all around the world, but I took a circuitous route just in case.

Once there, I shifted back and made my way through the silent towers of stacked metal boxes. The wind occasionally whipped past me, rippling like ghostly hands across the sky as clouds streamed by the waxing moon.

Finding my way to the container mentioned in the shipping manifest, I stopped and leaped on top of the tower closest. Silently walking across it, I climbed up another, until I was a few stories off the ground and staring down at a curious scene.

No wonder why Security is on the other side of this place. They got paid off or scared off.

Two massive bear shifters were guarding an entrance, while masked men quickly brought box after box from three idling trucks to three giant shipping containers. Four to each truck, they were almost robotic in their movements. And the exhaust spiraled up and made it difficult for me to get a whiff of anything.

“I cannot stay, mon Dieu, I have stayed long enough. There is a loose end I need to tie,” a voice below was saying. French, smarmy and currently irritated. Rasoir. One of TLO’s top assassins and a stable hybrid. “You can handle this yourself.”

“I do not see why I have to babysit the Doctor,” grumbled a voice and I shook my head. Altair Kazan, the traitor of the Kazan family. “Can’t Evie handle that alone?”

“Of course, I could, you idiot,” snarled a woman’s voice. “But that’s not the only thing I’m doing, nor the only thing you are doing here. Or have you been paying so little attention?”

“He is more brawn than brain, Evie,” Rasoir replied.

Altair swore in Greek, but then desisted, while the other two quietly talked.

I needed to see what they were transporting. Pulling on my mask, I quietly moved back and pulled out a rock from the pocket on my pants. Simple and useful. Lobbing it as far as I could, it made a hollow plink in the distance and below me, everyone tensed.

“What was that?” Altair snarled, shifting into a lion and moving forward.

“Probably the wind,” Rasoir said in a bored voice. I threw another and he sighed. “I thought I made it clear to those idiots to keep back. Perhaps they are playing the hero. Come on.”

Rasoir, Evie, and Altair vanished, along with two other shifters. The rest of the men began to move more quickly and I made my way down. Keeping low, I darted from shadow to shadow until I was pressed up against one of the containers that had been loaded.

In the split second when no one was looking, I got inside and made my way to the back. There, I carefully and quietly began to open a box, keeping an ear out for any changes in the rhythm of the hired muscle. Then I stopped and stared.

Inside the box was hundreds of bottles of pills. Each one stamped with FP.

Foundry Pharmaceuticals.

Grabbing one, I tucked it into my pocket, replaced the lid and made my way to the front. They were almost done loading, I realized and my heart rate spiked. The last thing I wanted was to wind up getting shipped to South America or Asia.

Shifting, I kept low and managed to once again dart out undetected.

But I’d forgotten about the bear shifters.

A massive claw swiped down at me and I leaped back. My side was bleeding, but the wound was shallow and I managed to make it around the corner, then back up the containers before he could even blink. Feet were pounding in from every direction.

“What is it? What happened?” I heard Rasoir shout in the distance. “I don’t have time for this!”

That makes two of us, I thought, as I took off running.

Something was following me, however. It had gotten my scent and was fast, almost soundless. Moving even quicker, I put on a burst of speed, knowing I was pushing it. I could only maintain my fastest pace for so long.

I made it out of the Port and was moving through the streets. I sensed it stopping, sniffing the air and turning back. Out of curiosity, I stopped and glanced back.

My skin prickled along my spine.

There, moving like a living shadow, was a creature of teeth and red eyes. Strangely, it had some kind of white cloth draped around it. It hadn't spotted me yet and was sniffing along the path I'd just crossed. Then I thought I heard a wheezy laugh.

A new kind of hybrid far more intelligent and deadly than many of its brethren. Its form stable. Whoever it was, they had proven themselves to Lilian Frost.

And I didn’t want to stick around to find out why.

 

Class was Monday and Wednesday, which were my two favorite days to have it.

I had to keep the gestures down to a minimum as my arms and torso were unbelievably sore. The scratch barely hurt, but my muscles were aching with every movement as I walked around the class that following sharp and bright Monday morning. I’d even pulled a Kesari and gotten espresso in my coffee to give me an extra jolt.

None of the students seemed to notice anything amiss.

Save one.

Mysterious Mya. The first day, when she'd come in late and interrupted the flow of the class, I'd been more amused than annoyed. At first, I'd thought she was an overzealous newcomer. Perhaps a transfer from the West Coast, where I knew she was from.

Until I’d seen her face.

She’d forced me to plaster a fake smile on for the rest of that class, doing my best not to show even an ounce of how much she’d affected me. In my mind’s eye, I could still see her unweaving her scarf, then plucking off her hat and mittens.

My breath had caught.

Beautiful, yes, beyond beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Sharp, high cheekbones, a round, sweet mouth and graceful nose. Clear, crystal-like big gray eyes.

And glowing. Filled with warmth, compassion. and gentle humor. Patience and endurance.

She’s around my age, I realized. She may have fooled the students around her into thinking she was in her early twenties, but I knew time alone had ripened those qualities.

Today, she strutted in and I’d managed to not even blink an eye, even as I took in her every detail. Her dark hair was done in four thick braids, which were then woven together to form pigtails, each of which had been tipped by blue-white chalk. I’d seen my younger cousins doing it. She was wearing a white blazer and a long skirt, split up the side and revealing knee-high boots.

Most of the boys in the room went wide-eyed and I got a grip on myself. My age or not, I couldn’t be checking out her out like the rest of them. She was my student. Nor should I be coming to any conclusions based on her appearance. She’d probably dealt with unwanted and unwarranted attention her whole life.

Today, I would retreat to that place where I was a professor and a professor only. Mya would hopefully only register in her thoughtful answers and wry insight.

Yet over the course of the class, she shook me out of that state more than once.

She was a curious woman, not an ordinary student in the least.

There was her name for one thing. Mya Eames. It didn’t suit her exactly. I couldn’t put my finger on why. And, of course, her age, which may or may not be suspect.

Then there was that look in her eyes after I told a myth of the Kikuyu people of Kenya.

Wanjiru, a daughter of the tribe had been sacrificed after a three-year drought. She sank into the underworld but was later rescued by a man who loved her and brought back to life.

While no one could say exactly if this was related to shifter lore, it played into the ideas of animal and ritualistic sacrifice. A warrior or a woman giving their life for the good of their people. Something we still saw today when it came to the strong bonds of the shifter world and family.

I’d looked around the room at that point and met Mya’s eyes. She’d been staring straight at me, but also through me. The light in her eyes had shattered.

She’d looked utterly devastated, staring at something that was breaking her heart into pieces. And I’d found myself moving towards her when another student, thankfully, had distracted me with a question.

Today, I’d managed to take her in several times. She was back to her poised, effervescent self and a sense of relief went through my chest. I shook my head a little at that. Perhaps our closeness in age had given Mya a bit of a different standing as a student for me. I’d never taught someone so close to my own age. That had to be it.

Yet I also knew, whatever she was struggling with, it wasn’t the typical woes of a college student. I’d seen kids with tragedy in their eyes and I’d done my best to help them.

But Mya gave off a certain remoteness. As lonely and as far away as a star, tantalizing and out of reach. She was in pain, but she didn’t want anyone to know, never mind offer condolences.

The classroom was empty now and I was still sitting there, wondering.

Then a bang of books woke me up and I glanced up to see Beni grinning at me.

“Lo, there, Dezzy-lad. I got it.”