There were six bodies in my basement
this time. I’d only known of four. Instinct only just saved me
after I heard the voices. The smell of authority caused me to pause
in the doorway; I barely avoided the hail of bullets. I am fast,
faster than I have any right to be, and dangerous in ways humans
never are.
I can die by bullets. I do not know how
many it would take. I have no desire to find out. So I run, skidding
out of my suit and tie as I move. There are laws. Old, unwritten, but
I know them as surely as I know my own power. I shift form in broad
daylight and break them all. Someone screams. Another throws up. I am
lost in the rending of bond and the twisting of reality.
And moving as the change finishes.
Fast. So quick they don’t have time to hit me. There are traps set
up at home. It should be burning, but I see no fire when I stop. I
find the woods to avoid the stares of humans. I watch. I wait. There
is no fire. My home remains. There is evidence: identities, skins
worn and shed, prints I will have left behind. There are limits to
how well I can hide if I leave too much of myself behind me. There
must be limits to how far I can change and remain sane.
Six bodies. I heard them say six. I
pray the last two are no one I knew, but I no longer know what I pray
to. I move through darkness once the night takes away the sun,
slipping between brush and trees. I can feel the pain rising inside
me, drawing need up with it. To change so fast hurts
and I need food to dull the pain. Food means death. It always does.
There
is a human boy of eleven, by himself and listening to his phone. I
move. He sees a rabbit, not much bigger than others until I lunge. I
have teeth, claws and people forget how dangerous rabbits once were,
don’t realize how big I am
until I let them. Somehow,
the boy evades me. I am hungry enough to lunge again when I should
flee, and the lunge ends with me hovering in the air. The boy smells
human. He looks human. I know the smell of magics, greater and lesser
all, and he does not smell of
them or of the aromas of things Other.
He
sighs. The sigh is heavy. “I said
I could go for a walk without having an adventure and I am almost
back at the hotel and this is really rude!”
“What?”
I speak, in the tongue of
rabbits, and I am somehow unsurprised that he responds in kind.
“Trying to eat a
Jay is very rude. You never even introduced yourself,” he says
crossly, crossing his arms as well.
I am dropped. I
land, and shift into human. It hurts, and then doesn’t as something
– I have no words for it. For a moment it as if I am a stringed
instrument, and the one string that is pain is pulled away. I gasp,
stare.
“And
–.” The boy pauses. His eyes widen. “Honcho
said he was looking for a monster that eats people and you tried to
eat me!”
I am
naked in my human form, but I am still me. Lucky, as rabbits are. I
move, and again I am stopped. I call upon the luck of being what I
am. A dangerous gamble, and one I
will pay
for later.
The
boy doesn’t seem to notice, whatever
he has done far beyond anything I am.
He walks about me slowly, frowning. “You ate people. A lot of
people, and you’re running and planning to do that again.”
“I
am a monster. I was human once, I no longer am!” I snarl, and try
to shift despite the danger,
but somehow the boy stops that as well.
“But that’s not
all you are.”
“It is. I cannot
stop being a monster!”
“Oh. Sometimes I
wonder why people aren’t as jaysome as they can be, when you have
all these bindings you never touch or use at all. Here.”
There
should be pain. It should hurt,
to lose all that I am, but the boy just pulls the monster out of me.
The thing that attacked me, changed me, made me something like a
rabbit and like something else at all. What
became part of me is somehow outside, and then gone as if tossed into
a garbage can.
“You’re
still you. Being a monster is just – just clothing you put on. And
you can take it off. It’s not easy.
I think maybe it should be, but it never is for clothing people
forget is clothing and think is their skin.” He
shakes his head, and for a
moment I think he wasn’t talking to me at all. “So!
you have a name?”
I tell
him my first name, the one I
had almost forgot.
Jay
grins. The grin is so kind
that it somehow hurts more
than everything he’s taken from me. “So you get to be you again!
I can help with that,
and there are others who will help me so it doesn’t be an ooops!”
“Wait. What? I
killed –.”
“And now you get
to not kill. And do what you can to stop the hurts you caused.”
But what if I don’t want to?
The words die on my lips. I don’t know what Jay is, but I know I
can’t hurt him like that. I close my eyes. I am small again. Naked
again. Scared again. “Why?” I whisper.
“Because
if Honcho found you, he might have had to kill you. And you hurt a
lot of people, so I think maybe killing isn’t something you
deserve,” the boy says softly. “Dying is
easy. Living is always harder. And now you get to.”
There is no power
in his voice. Not like magicians have. But somehow I know. “How
long will I live?”
Jay scratches his
head. “I’m not sure,” he says, and then checks his phone. “And
I’m late for supper, so I need to go. You have to go the corner of
Redhill and Desmond. Someone will meet you with ID and give you a new
life.”
I nod. I walk away
with steps merely human, my sense of smell a crippled human thing
again. A part of me wants to scream. A bigger part of me wants to
cry. I know I’ve earned none of those things. I walk out of the
park, shivering under rain. Six bodies. I need to learn about them.
And others. I don’t know what comes after that.
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