First Born (22 page)

“I changed the first time in college. My metamorphosis was not triggered by anxiety or fear, but rather another emotion.” His ears tinged red again.

“Okay. What happened?”

“Date. Thankfully, she went to the bathroom to slip into something more comfortable. When she came out, there I was in cat form. I was starting to talk to her when she came at me. I realized immediately something was wrong when she picked me up. I saw us in the mirror together. Like you, I thought I was hallucinating.

“The good news was that my date loved cats. She thought it had been sweet that I left her a present. We had been drinking so she fell asleep which allowed me to slip out the window. I’d like to say that it was the strangest night of my life, but things got a lot stranger when I met Koko.”

The mention of Koko got Lily’s ire up. She turned to the window again to calm herself. Everything seemed exaggerated: sharper, greener, bigger, smaller, fresher. She wondered if she would ever get used to her new intense senses. It took great resolve to pull herself back and listen to Seth with an open mind.

“What happened with Koko?” Her legs throbbed at the mention of her name.
Honestly, the bitch tried to kill me.

“I don’t think she was trying to kill you, Lil.”

She clenched her teeth. More of her mind diarrhea.

“Koko is more interested in studying things. She was curious, trying to establish dominance, and possibly sensed the power of the crucible.”

Her poor brother had been dealing with Koko so long that he was impervious to her craziness.

“This is where we have differing opinions. She threatened me inside my head!”

“She did?”

The reminder of the threat triggered her hyper vigilance. “You don’t think she’s following us, do you?” Lily checked the sideview mirror.

“I don’t think so,” he said. He wasn’t convincing, particularly because he glanced in the driver side mirror.

“How did you even get involved with Koko?” It felt strange to refer to the terrifying bird lady by a name that was more suitable for a fluffy kitten.

“I was in her class. One day, she asked if I wanted to get a beer.” He shrugged. “I’m not gonna lie. I thought she was pretty hot. One thing led to another. I had less control over
everything
back then. We went out several times—the whole time without me knowing she was a tengu, a shapeshifter. I hadn’t met another one. I didn’t know what they smelled like. I just knew I was drawn to her. Things became weird. She started communicating in my head, reading my mind, and entering my dreams. I never felt so violated. She was the reason I left school. I woke up naked with her in the clinic lab. She called the cops. There was a big hullabaloo and I’ve been trying to get away from her ever since. She’s not bad really, more obsessive...about her research. About certain people.”

“What’s a tengu?”

“My laptop’s in the backseat. I’ll show you when we get to the cabin. It’s a creature from Asian folklore. It’s a very strong warrior bird. Some stories describe them as goblins of the forests and mountains.”

“Lovely,” Lily said, the sarcasm keeping her voice from trembling. Buddha’s belly, she prayed she wasn’t a goblin. “Okay, you think possibly I’m some kind of goblin. Never mind, I don’t want to know anymore about the tengu right now. Just go back to your story. So the police came and you were naked with Koko. I’m asking the obvious, but why didn’t you shift into a cat before the police got there?”

“I couldn’t.” He became very quiet.

Her patience had run out. “Seth, you really need to tell me everything. Things have gotten to the breaking point. We can’t afford to have secrets.”

He took a deep breath. “I was drugged Lily.”

“What do you mean?”

“Peter—”

“What about Peter?” she spat.

“See this is why I could never tell you anything.”

She counted to ten allowing the tingling to subside on her back. Popping out wings right now would be painful.

“Peter and Dr. Hitomi were using Inderal in their research, a common drug used to control blood pressure, heart palpitations, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Also, some musicians have used it to control stage fright.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”
Like I didn’t know about my boyfriend’s research
.

He took a deep breath. She slipped some in my drink that night to see if it would help suppress my shapeshifting. “I blacked out, but then the Inderal did control my shifting for a few days. It was so nice not spending every waking moment concentrating on being in control. Other than the initial rough twelve hours, it seemed like the miracle drug. The oral dose took even longer for its full effect—twenty-four hours. And it had a more pronounced side effect. Don’t ask me why this causes blackouts in shifters. It certainly isn’t a side effect of the medication in humans.”

“She drugged you? And you don’t think this lady is capable of murder?”

“Lily, I don’t know what’s happening. I tried to stop participating in her study. She’s been on my case ever since.”

“God, Seth. I’m sorry. Why would any shapeshifter take that stuff?”

Silence.

Lily felt a sick pull in the middle of her stomach. “How long, Seth?”

“I quit after Peter died, but fell off the wagon after you were attacked by Miller. Haven’t done it since the night before I went to see Mr. Liu.”

She couldn’t look at him. In fact, she had to remind herself to breathe.

“Peter brought syringes of Inderal to me and your neighbor every Saturday when we played basketball.”

Not judging. Not judging. Not judging. Not judging.

“I don’t know what happened to them Lily. Honestly. It wasn’t until Mona died that I got suspicious that one thing had anything to do with the other.”

“Pete?” She couldn’t believe that she lived under the same roof and slept in the same bed with her brother’s drug dealer.

“Lily, it’s not what you think. He and the professor thought they were helping us. Inderal does not normally have an addictive quality. There was no way for them to understand what truly was happening to me or to your neighbor.”

It was all too much to process. The geriatric neighbor next door was a shapeshifter?

“You know what’s really screwed up?” he asked. “I truly didn’t realize how much the medicine had impaired me until you started to shift.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so strong. You can...well broadcast in people’s heads. You can dream walk, like Koko. My life’s consisted of wandering in and out of a fog. I wonder how I would be if I hadn’t been taking this medication all along. Would I actually be a more substantial creature?”

“Uh, Seth, did you miss the turn?”

“What?”

“Never mind, it’s just, we could have taken Alternate 75 and gone around Helen.”

“No way, and miss all this?” he asked. She managed a weak smile.

“What was Mona?”

His eyes widened. “A tiger,” he whispered.

They rode along in silence after that. Lily looked out the window at the roadside signs for Georgia mountain honey, mescadine cider, and sorghum syrup. Every five minutes they passed another handwritten sign for boiled peanuts. Her stomach growled. As they made their way through Cleveland, Georgia, she breathed a bit easier, just another twenty minutes to the cabin. Thunderheads dominated the sky. One looked like an ominous man’s face with his mouth open in a silent scream. She averted her eyes to cast off the nasty vision. Down below was a trio of vultures palavering on a low fencepost of a barren field.
Blood, Violence, and Pain, incarnate.
Her hackles rose.

Ten minutes later when they were outside Cleveland, she exhaled in relief as the granite face of Mount Yonah ghosted through the clouds. Trees whizzed by in a blur. She couldn’t shake the unease, though; it crept over her like a cold sweat.

Who is this stranger in the seat next to me?
Yesterday had been terrifying, but this moment wasn’t much better. She didn’t know who her brother was anymore. The urge to shift to Shih Tzu mode and hang her head out the window was overwhelming. Anything to cleanse herself.
Better yet, I’ll hang him out the window. It would make me feel so much better.

“I’d like to see you try it,” he laughed.

“What?!”

“Hang me out the window.”

“Get out of my head!”

“I’m not doing it. You are,” he said, his hair bristling.

At the next light, Seth swung the truck into a Walmart shopping center. Lily stayed in the truck pondering her new world while Seth stocked up on supplies. Nobody was who, or rather
what,
she thought they were. A wave of nausea hit her. She didn’t think it was the pain meds, but the latest influx of information. She was in a worse mood when Seth returned to the car with scissors and hair dye...for her.

Lily sat on top of the metal table in the interrogation room wearing a pink mini sundress with little daisies on it and white platform sandals. As she crossed her legs, she studied the shoes. Her eyebrows rose. “Stripper shoes?”

Caldwell paced back and forth in front of her which was no easy feat considering the size of the room. He grinned. “What’s wrong with the shoes?”

She twirled a strand of her hair then stopped. “Hey, it’s your dream. Who am I to judge? Knock yourself out.”

Before he knew it, he had closed the space between them, grabbed her jaw in his hands and kissed her soft wet lips. She kissed back. He caught himself sliding his one hand down her arm to rest on her bare thigh. With a jolt he remembered who and what he was. He removed his hand from her thigh and placed it on his forehead. “Sorry. I have no idea what’s the matter with me.”

Lily sat up. Her pouty mouth was open and her eyes gleamed. “Why don’t you sit down in the chair.”

He sat down. The sensible cop in him surfaced from somewhere. “Where’s Li Liu?”

She bit her lip. Her eyes were wet. “I don’t know. They took him.”

“Who?”

“I couldn’t see their faces. They wore ski masks.”

“They?”

“Man and woman. The man was big, maybe as tall as my brother. He had blue eyes, gruff voice. The woman I didn’t see at all. She bashed me in the head with a metal weapon.”

“Jesus.” Caldwell looked her over. There wasn’t a scratch on her. “Am I hallucinating?”

“No. I’m here. Kind of.”

“Why did you run?”

“That’s complicated.”

“I need to know where you are?”

Lily’s head turned to the side. A dark figure stood in the doorway holding a gun.

She screamed.

Caldwell walked past a new recruit on his way in to the office. He shook his head at Tiny who was telling the unsuspecting victim about the time he had been an extra in the
Lord of the Rings
movies. As Caldwell stepped on to the elevator, he heard Tiny delivering the punch line, telling the female cadet he had hairy feet, too.

The doors closed, but Caldwell knew there would be a pregnant pause while the unsuspecting nube considered whether or not first, if there were any black hobbits and second, did he really have hairy feet. Tiny had a vice all right. He loved to make people squirm.

Caldwell tried to shake off his night of distressed sleep. If anyone knew the head case he’d become, they’d send him to a shrink.
I just need some coffee
.

Ten minutes later Caldwell sat in Lake’s office at his round meeting table ready to go over forensic reports. Tiny sat across from him on the edge of the chair, his legs dangling.

“Tiny,” acknowledged Caldwell. “You borrow those glasses from Mr. Potato Head?”

Tiny looked at him. It dawned on Caldwell what it might sound like to Tiny. “I meant the color, not the size.” They were bright yellow. Caldwell’s cheeks burned.

Tiny laughed. “I know what you meant, Simmulator.”

He breathed a little easier.

“You look like you’re makin’ three tracks in the dirt,” Tiny said.

He shrugged. “Losing some sleep over this case.”

“Tell me about it.” Tiny glanced toward the lieutenant. Lake’s eyebrow rose in question.

“Okay, for starters. The scene at Grady High School turned up dog fur and these weird feathers. Despite running the information through the GBI lab and Fish and Wildlife, there is no match with any known bird species,” Tiny said.

“What about some exotics from South America, Africa, or Asia?” Caldwell asked.

“Nothing in the world,” Tiny stated. “The morphologists from the wildlife laboratory say the closest DNA match would be to a peacock, but color and size varies greatly.”

“There isn’t a question in my mind that these scenes are linked. The same unique feathers were found all over Liu’s studio,” Lake said. He stepped up to their victim board and pursed his lips. His face looked like he’d tasted something sour.

“True, Lieutenant. But I don’t get it. This guy comes in packing a forty-five and a bird on his shoulder?” Tiny asked.

“Say hello to my little friend,” Caldwell said in his best gangster voice.

“Hello,” said Tiny mimicking a parrot. They both doubled over cackling. They stopped when they realized Lieutenant Lake was glaring at them.

“You guys done?”

“Yeah, sorry Lieutenant,” Caldwell said.

Tiny cleared his throat and stifled an unmanly giggle with his hand.

“You two are totally inaccurate. You see the size of those feathers? This ain’t some parrot.” Lake smirked. “So, I’ve put out feelers to animal shelters, dog grooming places, and pet stores to track down the Shih Tzu and mysterious bird connection. I’ll check the exotic bird websites as well,” Lake said.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Caldwell said.

Lake nodded before looking to Tiny. “Do we have the results back yet on the human hair from that sweatshirt found in Midtown?”

“It doesn’t match Hitomi. I haven’t seen anything from Harding or Jones yet.”

“When will we get their results?” Lake stood by the corner of his desk squeezing the stress ball.