First Born (33 page)

August 5, 2010

I found her notes. The Vestiges are showing signs of aggression from the steroid injections. Shocking. Instead of backing off treatments or reducing dosage, Dr. H has increased the treatments. Subject V1, in particular, is ‘harboring aggressive thoughts.’ He didn’t divulge his feelings to Dr. H. She learned this through reading his mind. That’s right. She reads minds. She knows my thoughts, doubts, and grave concerns regarding this research. She didn’t verbally threaten me. She didn’t have to.

An interesting development occurred yesterday. Subject V2 expressed his wish to withdraw from treatments. We’ll see what happens from here. The shapeshifter, Subject C, has withdrawn from treatments. I know that she hounds him mercilessly to resume. Tells him, he’s a danger without his medicine.

At this point, I feel the responsible thing to do is learn the identity of the Vestiges and monitor them to see how bad their reaction is and if Subject V1 is not only harboring aggressive thoughts, but acting on them.

—Peter

Lily sat up in bed, screaming. The dawn’s gray light filtered softly through the gauzy white curtains of the cabin. Across the room Detective Simms stood, motionless. His hair was on end from sleep mixed with panic.

He had been on the lumpy couch before she sounded the alarm. Maybe it was a dirty trick putting the Vicadin in his soda, but it had contained him enough that she had worked the handcuffs on him and moved him to the lumpy couch across the room from her in the master bedroom.

Feathers drifted in the air, but they weren’t hers. Scanning the bed, she saw sliced down pillows and torn sheets.

“What the fuck?” Seth asked from the doorway. Balanced on all fours with her wings spread, she perched naked in the middle of the bed. Seth growled. The detective put his manacled hands out in a placating gesture.

“Night terrors,” he suggested. His eyes were intense as he met Seth’s. Lily watched as Seth assessed Simms’s intact sweatpants and makeshift bed on the couch and...the handcuffs. The officer averted his eyes from her. Seth approached the bed, looking down at the floor. Lily sat back and drew her wings in front of her like a cloak.

“Lil?” cautioned Seth. “You need to close your mouth then your eyes. Take a deep breath in through your nose.” She did as he instructed. “Take your time as you exhale out through your mouth.” The heat escaped her, spilling forth into the room. The hot tears on her cheeks began to cool.

“Again,” he said.

Her eyes popped open at the creak of the floorboards. Simms was approaching, concerned.

“Stay back, Detective Simms,” Seth said.

He didn’t look like he liked taking orders from Seth, but he backed up to stand in front of the sofa. The morning light struck his face. Warmth spread down the back of Lily’s neck as she looked at him.

“Lily,” Seth demanded her attention. She didn’t want to tear her eyes away from Simms, but Seth grasped the sides of her head. With much effort, she closed her eyes.

“Get a hold of yourself,” he whispered. She finally understood what he meant.
Whose body is this anyway?
She retracted her wings after Seth threw a warm blanket over her. Opening her eyes, she clutched the blue blanket to her as she scooted back to rest against the headboard. She studied the patterns of the blanket, her face warm with shame.

When she looked up Seth sat scowling at the foot of the bed. “I thought you were going to tie him up with the rope downstairs.” He folded his arms across his bare chest.

“Well,” she squeaked. “He’s injured and we gave him medication. I needed to monitor him and make sure he stayed breathing.”

“Where’d you get the handcuffs?”

“From the Quinn’s bedside table.”

“Ewww.” Seth said. They both looked over at the detective who was eyeing the cuffs in a whole new light.

Lily didn’t tell Seth about shifting to Shih Tzu mode and curling up next to Detective Simms after licking his wounds. The deep gash on the officer’s head was now a blotch of pale pink with a sliver of a brown scab starting. Her crazy saliva in conjunction with the crucible had worked some kind of magic. Now what were they going to do with him?

Seth shook his head. “Lily, next time you handcuff someone, I suggest you handcuff him
to
something. If he wasn’t drugged he could have just walked out of the house!”

“Give me a break. You’ve taken my phone, my gun, and my keys. Don’t yell at her.”

Seth approached him. “Please sit down.”

The cop didn’t move. Lily admired the way his chest filled out her brother’s white Hanes undershirt.

Seth turned his head toward her, his lip curled in disgust.

“What?” she asked.

She glanced at the detective who pressed his lips down as if to suppress a smile.

“Geez, did ya both hear my thoughts?” The detective wore a crooked grin.

* * *

Caldwell thought back to the night before. The room had smelled like cool mountain air. He realized it was her scent. Her thrashing had woken him several times, but he was too drugged to stay conscious for long. He watched from the couch, albeit half-drugged, to witness her body change in her sleep. At one point, he had looked across to see her tiny porcelain feet peeking out from a cocoon of wings that she wrapped around herself in sleep. The feathers were brilliant. She looked like a little angel wrapped in the iridescent wings with her bleached blonde hair framing her round face. Then he noticed fangs.
More like a killer angel who could render him in two with her claws.

Caldwell’s healed hip perplexed him. His head hurt from trying to make sense of things. Perhaps he was lying in a coma somewhere in a hospital and these were his crazy head-injured thoughts.

He had seen them in their animal forms. Now what was he going to do? Were they telling the truth? It sure seemed like it. He also knew that Dr. Gladson knew about them and didn’t tell the police. Lily would be dead if he hadn’t helped them. Now Caldwell understood why Lily had avoided the police. She was a new shifter with little control. No telling what some of his colleagues would have done if she had flashed
those
eyes at them; not call animal control, that’s for sure.

Caldwell tried to make his head stop spinning. He wished he had spoken to Lieutenant Lake first. He wouldn’t be trapped in the Moores’ lair, defenseless if he had waited. Actually, the more he thought about it, he was relieved. If Lake was here, he would have shot one of the Moores last night. They would definitely take his badge. Unless, he could persuade the Moores to trust him. Trust the police.

It would be a bit easier convincing the Moores to come in if the APD had a solid suspect, but they didn’t. However, they did have a lead—a set of tire tracks. Tiny didn’t have those results back yet. There were too many things Caldwell needed to sort out. He knew there was no coaxing the Moores to return to Atlanta with him. The adoption paper work from the Department of Vital Statistics was stuck in some government black box. That plane went down in the Sea of Red Tape and was yet to be recovered.

Light spilled through the skylights promising another beautiful day. Too bad he couldn’t enjoy it. He gritted his teeth. The Moores had slunk outside on the front porch to talk.

“Hey! You can’t keep me locked here forever!” Caldwell knew they could hear him. He’d noticed how they could talk to each from different floors of the cabin. He sat on the steps midway down, handcuffed to one of the metal balusters of the railing. He wanted his phone, his keys...
his gun!

Lily sat on the natural wood porch swing sipping on coffee from a Savannah College of Art and Design mug. It made her think of her friend Katie and the fact that they had broken into her cabin.
God, what must she think right now? Does she think we’re dead...or killers?
Seth rested his butt against the front porch railing in front of her.

“We can’t worry about that right now,” he said. He wore cargo shorts, Reggie’s Nike Air Hoops and an army green shirt so he would be somewhat camouflaged in the woods.

“I wasn’t talking,
thinking,
to you,” she snarked. She adjusted her t-shirt. It was Seth’s idea after she appeared topless one too many times. They cut a vertical rectangle out of the back of a brown shirt, leaving a strip at the bottom that they halved. She then could tie it to tighten the shirt at her low, low back. If she shifted to Bird Light, this allowed room for her wings, but kept her covered. If she shifted to her other forms she was pretty much SOL. Black cargo shorts and lace-less tennis shoes completed her outfit.

It was 7:00 a.m. The weather report suggested record-breaking temperatures for early June along with humidity at eighty percent. Lily was sweating, but more from nerves. They had a cop drugged and tied up. What the hell would their father think? This brought tears to her eyes and she pinched herself.
Get a fucking grip.

She inhaled deeply the scents of the grass, pine, jasmine before exhaling slowly while scanning the woods. Perched in the low branches of a Dogwood tree, a Cardinal sang his
whoit, whoit, whoit, whoit.
Followed by his
what-cheer, what-cheer.
Her ears continued to attempt to localize a low frequency buzzing sound close to them.

“We need to leave here. We’ll go hide in the woods,” Seth said. Lily watched as morning fog rolled across the foot of the pines. Seth ran his hands through his spiky black hair. The pink splotches on his cheeks betrayed his emotions. He was coming down off Inderal. More sensitive than usual, his anxiety swelled while he continued to plead with her about their plan.

It had been almost a week since he started his withdrawal. He spent several sleepless nights stalking the woods. Sometimes it was downright painful for him. She could hear his caterwauling from miles away. He had rebuffed her attempts to ease him with the crucible. His eyes made it clear that he would rather she threw a live grenade at him.

“Seth. What’s that low tapping, almost buzzing sound?” She wanted to enjoy the birds’ song and this, this was not natural to the woods around them. Seth set his coffee on the railing; his eyes suddenly cat—almost aqua with deeper clouds of color surrounding his slit pupil. They both jumped down the steps and stopped in front of Detective Simms’s Explorer.

Seth dropped to his hands and knees at the back bumper and searched the undercarriage. Hair on end, he stood up holding a gray and white device smaller than a cell phone.

“Geez Seth, that could be a bomb,” Lily growled.

His nostrils flared as he pulled the device closer to his face. Lily drew closer. “It’s a tracking device. See. It says security on it.”

Lily stood next to Seth. She smelled the sunny meadow scent she came to recognize as him, but mixed in was the scent of animal and sweat and gun oil—her nightmare, the Dark Watcher.
More like assassin.

In disgust, Seth threw the device violently against the cabin. The force caused it to shatter into tiny pieces. No human could have done that much damage. The buzzing stopped.

They heard yelling from the house.
Detective Simms.
“What the hell’s going on out there?”

Seth sprang up the stairs. Lily ran after him. “Seth. Wait. You don’t know—”

When he turned around at the screen door, every muscle in his body quivered, ready to pounce. “He brought them straight to us.”

Lily tried to breathe as she followed Seth into the front hall. On the oak stairs, Detective Simms sat sweating. He obviously had been trying to kick at the metal balustrade with his bare foot. His slate blue eyes looked deeper blue when he was angry.

“Why didn’t you just shoot us? Or are you getting some money or bonus if you turn us over alive for some sick fucking government agency to experiment with us?” Seth crouched in front of the cop, his face in the detective’s.

Lily stood behind Seth. Her chest hurt. Why did she trust a complete stranger? And why had she expected him to trust them? They’d run from him, drugged him, and kept him hostage. Why would he be on their side? She tried to ignore his scent of musk, citrus, spice, and sweat. The more nervous he got, the stronger it was to her.

She gained her voice, then. “We found the tracking device.” She bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t cry and appear weak.

Detective Simms’s alarm showed in his eyes. “What tracking device?” Seth studied the detective’s face with his cat eyes aglow while Lily locked eyes with the cop.

“The one on your Explorer,” she spat.

He struggled to stand. “Let me see it.”

“Seth took care of it,” she said.

“Jesus Christ. Do you understand what this means? You gotta unlock me. I need my gun, my phone. I need to call the lieutenant. Someone may have followed me here!” The tendons down the sides of his neck bulged. He was pissed.

They all stood on the steps at an impasse. Detective Simms maintained his awkward position, slightly bent over from where his hands attached to the railing.

“I don’t have a tracking device on my personal car. You turned off my cell phone so no one could track me that way, either. No one knows where I am.” He looked down then, as the realization of that statement appeared to wash over him.

Lily took a step backward. When Seth turned to her, he looked frightened. “We need to get out of here,” she said. He grabbed her upper arm and proceeded to push her to walk down the stairs. She pushed back. “No! We need to take him, too.”

“Don’t be stupid, Lily.”

“Lily?” The detective said her
first
name, his voice pleading.

“Don’t look at him,” Seth hissed.

She looked around her brother’s shoulder and knew she couldn’t leave the cop. “We don’t have time for this. They may already be in the woods watching. Would you leave Dad here?” she asked her brother.

He growled at her under his breath.

Both their heads turned at once. Someone was coming down the gravel driveway. In a blur, they ran for their weapons and packs positioned at the back door.