Bryce, page 3
part #2 of Anarock Shifters Series
She didn’t think about where they were going until he plummeted out of the sky dropping at terminal velocity. He stalled under her, folded his wings, and let gravity do the rest. In a fraction of a second, he whipped out of sight. She had to race to catch up with him.
She tilted her nose toward the ground, but she didn’t pull the same move he did. She kept her wings extended. She hauled up level with him a thousand feet up, but he didn’t stop. He aimed for a lake and slammed into the surface with catastrophic force. He plunged into the drink and disappeared.
Alexa landed on the bank and shifted. She held her breath waiting for him to surface. When he did, he shot out and pounced in front of her. The enormous, iridescent dragon strutted around with the sun dancing on his wet skin.
When he shifted back to being a man, he laughed at her. “Chicken! What’s the matter—you scared of a little fall?”
She glared back at him. “I am not scared. I can do it as well as you can.”
“You want to play tag until it gets too rough for you. Then you run home crying to your mama.”
She ran after him. “I do not!”
He came to a river and waded in up to his knees. In a second, he shifted again. He paddled along in dragon form arching his neck above the waves. He gurgled to himself and undulated his spine like the Loch Ness Monster.
She did her best not to laugh, but she wound up doing it anyway. She didn’t join his antics, though. She trotted around the water’s edge and leaped over a narrow neck to the other side. “Where are we going?”
He waved at the trees. “I thought we’d stay here for a while. We can hunt here and maybe build a cabin. No one will bother us. The usual hunting parties don’t come this way.”
She stopped dead and looked around. “Where exactly are we?”
“Attakapas Island Wildlife Management Area. It’s deserted.”
She didn’t take another step. She never really considered where she would go or what she would do. Now that her human brain reasserted itself, the old questions came rushing back.
What exactly was she doing out here with Bryce Griffin? He was a marked man. He might have to hide in the wilderness and avoid contact with everyone else, but she didn’t. Staying here and building a cabin would mean living with him, wouldn’t it?
Did she really want to do that? Did she really want to saddle herself with a man—any man—after just getting out of Anarock?
What was he trying to tell her last night? He never actually came out and said he wanted her to think of him the way she thought of Victor. He implied it, though. He insinuated that he wanted to replace Victor in her heart.
He stopped a few yards away. When he looked back, his flashing eyes gave nothing away. “Are you coming?”
She started forward, but when she reached him, they only covered a few paces when he dropped to the ground without warning. He flattened himself against the damp soil and hauled her down next to him.
“Hey!” she cried. “What are you doing?”
He pressed his finger to his lips and hissed low. “Quiet! Look!”
She strained her senses peering through the trees in the direction he indicated. When she squinted through the foliage, she spied a strange man ambling into view. He wore a greasy, stained blue jumpsuit with an oval name patch above the right chest. Alexa couldn’t read the name from here, but she didn’t look at that. His face took her breath away.
Half of it looked like any normal human man. Long brown hair hung to his shoulder and a bright brown eye scanned the undergrowth. The other side of his face appeared to be a mishmash of different animals. The nose pointed in a sharp, hawkish beak. The chin curved under with short thick sandy fur like a cat’s. His forehead sloped back like a dog’s. The cheek sprouted whiskers and swept upward to a large elephant’s ear flapping in the breeze.
He halted in front of Bryce and Alexa and surveyed the area. When he did, another ten people emerged from the woods behind him. Each one displayed some bizarre disfigurement. One man had a row of seven eyes across his forehead and seven nostrils lined up across his noseless face. A tall woman with flowing red hair and a statuesque figure had her entire face turned upside down. Her eyes were at the bottom and her upside-down nose pointed upward to a mouth at the top.
Alexa caught her breath at the sight of one outlandish oddity after another. In a minute, several enormous, grotesque monsters lumbered into view. More curiosities rode on their backs and steered them with reins and prods. The whole assembly halted in full view of the hidden pair.
The man with seven eyes rolled them in different directions looking at everything and nothing. Then, in plain view of the startled friends, all the eyes converged and stared at one point. A pinprick of brilliant light winked into view. It swelled and grew into a glowing orb of shining radiance.
The others gathered around and peered down at the thing. The woman with the upside-down face said something to her comrades and they pointed in different directions.
“Magic wielders!” Bryce muttered under his breath.
“Who are they?” Alexa whispered back. “They don’t belong to Anarock. I don’t recognize any of them. They don’t look like New Breed at all.”
“They could be rogues,” Bryce replied. “They could have grown up out of the Quag and now they’re just wandering around out here. Who knows?”
Alexa tugged his arm. “Let’s get out of here before they see us.”
“Hold on,” he breathed. “Not yet. Let’s see what they’re up to. If they leave first, we don’t have to worry about them.”
They went back to observing the strange band. Some of the riders dismounted. In an instant, the monsters transformed into people. No trace of their former selves remained and they became far more normal in appearance than any of their associates.
These strange beings conversed for a while. They pointed and gazed into the gleaming light which didn’t fade. In a minute, a grizzled man stormed out of the trees. A long, threadbare coat hung to his knees. Long, stringy grey hair wisped around his blotchy, bald head. He didn’t even bother to look at the gleaming light. He barked orders at everyone and all the strange people scampered to obey him.
At last, he rounded on a young man who used to be one of the lumbering monsters. Now the young man towered over the greying oldster looking fresh and handsome. He wore surf shorts and a tank top that sagged under his muscular arms. His short black hair revealed his olive-brown neck and a casual smile graced his delicate mouth.
He exchanged words with the old man. The old man scowled and nodded. He must have been the group’s leader. He snapped and sliced his finger through the air. The young boy broke into a broad grin. Then Alexa’s heart tumbled into her boots when he turned around and pointed right at her.
She and Bryce froze. The young man cast a fleeting glance at their hiding place, but he didn’t stop smiling and he didn’t stop pointing at them. The old man grimaced in their direction. Then he bellowed over his shoulder.
Bryce’s fingers tightened around Alexa’s arm. “Come on.”
She backed away. He scooted backward, but it was too late. Through the curtain of leaves, she saw the old man call out to his people. Another former monster swung around. This one was a young woman. She broke into a run. In a few bounds, she crossed the clearing and reverted to the most disgusting fiend imaginable. Her rider took a running jump and landed astride her back.
Another thing with two heads and five arms joined the chase. They all took off running at Bryce and Alexa—all but one dwarf with virtually no legs. Three-inch stumps separated his feet from his normal-sized torso. He didn’t run because he couldn’t. He levitated off the ground and sailed in an upright posture to follow the others.
The monsters sprang toward the trees baring countless dripping fangs. Bryce jumped up and spun around. “Fly, Alexa!”
She launched at the same instant….and stopped there. She hovered a few feet off the ground, but she didn’t change. She just dangled suspended staring as those outlandish beings surrounded her. They didn’t even have to hurry.
The dwarf came to rest on his dumpy feet next to Alexa’s head. He smiled up at her. He had no teeth. “Don’t worry. You’re still dragons. My power dampens your ability to shift. As soon as I release you, you’ll be free to fly away, but you must give me your promise you won’t do that.”
She struggled against nothing. “Let me go! You have no right to hold me like this.”
The monster who originally spotted them changed back into the young man. His smile disarmed her. “We aren’t trying to hold you. McCain wants to talk to you. No one will harm you.”
“McCain?” Alexa glanced over her shoulder. “Who’s that?”
“He’s our leader,” the dwarf told her. “You come and talk to him. Then, if you want to go, we’ll let you go. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
She looked over at Bryce, who also waved his arms and legs in mid-air. She sighed. “All right. We’ll talk to him and then you have to let us go.”
The dwarf didn’t move at all. He didn’t wave a magic wand or anything. Some invisible force lowered Bryce and Alexa and set them on their feet as good as new.
Alexa stared at the creatures around her. She couldn’t even call them creatures. They were somewhere between human and changeling and animal and fantasy. She was no stranger to strange. She’d seen it all in Anarock—at least, she thought she’d seen it all.
All the New Breed in Anarock did their best to pass for human. They at least tried to blend in with the wider human population. Those that absolutely couldn’t pass stayed behind closed doors. They worked in jobs where they saw only other New Breed. They didn’t foist their presence on unsuspecting humans if they could possibly avoid it.
These curious entities didn’t even try to do that. The casual ease with which they moved around gave Alexa the impression they didn’t care who they saw or who saw them.
The dark-haired youngster waved toward the trees. They escorted Bryce and Alexa back to the site where they first spotted these beings.
When she came face to face with the old man, Alexa realized for the first time what struck her as so bizarre about him. A swath of scar tissue covered his eyes like a mask. It extended from the hairline of one temple across his nose to the other temple in a continuous band.
His eyes shone of their sockets, but the whole surface of his cornea was featureless white. He didn’t have irises or pupils. The sclera appeared to cover the whole eyeball without interruption.
He faced them as if he could see them perfectly well. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”
Bryce and Alexa exchanged glances before Bryce spoke up. “I’m Bryce Griffin and this is Alexa Weeks. We come from Anarock. Who are you?”
“I’ll ask the questions here,” he barked. “What is Anarock? I’ve never heard of it.”
The pair looked at each other again. Should they tell him? If he didn’t know about Anarock, should they reveal its existence? Why not? These people were obviously changelings like themselves, products of the poisoned waters, even if they weren’t strictly New Breed.
A cloud crossed Bryce’s face. Then he spoke up one more time. “Anarock is a city within New Orleans. It’s a community of New Breed like yourselves. We live side by side with humans, but they don’t know we’re there.”
The old man—McCain, they called him—cocked his head to one side. “New Breed? What is that?”
Bryce gathered himself to answer. “We are New Breed. New Breed are people who have been changed by the contaminated water or who are descended from people who have been changed by it. We’re mutants. We’re paranormals. We’re shifters. We’re all the things that you are. We are New Breed.”
McCain frowned. “We are not New Breed.”
“What are you, then?” Alexa ventured. “What do you call yourselves?”
“We are the Omega Battalion. We answer to no one but ourselves.”
Bryce furrowed his brow. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Soon everyone will hear about us. We’ll go to this Anarock and take it for our new headquarters.”
Alexa’s heart leaped into her mouth. “You can’t do that! There are millions of people living there. You’ll alert the humans to our presence.”
He waved that away. “They will join our Battalion. You will join our Battalion. Everyone will join our Battalion in the end. We recognize no one but ourselves.”
Alexa stared at him. Had he gone completely out of his head? “What if they don’t want to join your Battalion? What if they’re happy living the way they are?”
“Then they’ll die. Anyone who refuses to join our Battalion will die. Any humans who don’t become our slaves will die. We are the next wave of evolution on this planet. The sooner we take over and put the rest of the population in their places, the better for everyone.”
Alexa’s jaw dropped. Was she really hearing this? “What about the military? They want to hunt us all down and kill us. They’ve already invaded Anarock more than once. It took all of us working together to throw them out, but they’ll come back. If they realize you’re trying to take over, they’ll hit you with everything they’ve got.”
“They will fail.” He crunched up his mouth in a twisted line. “We have a thousand times their power and our magicians have foresight and second sight. How do you think we found you?”
Alexa glanced around her. All the wild freaks surrounded her and Bryce. They listened to the interview with interest. The young man who first told McCain where they were hiding smiled his beguiling smile. He looked so harmless and nice in his human form.
None of that meant anything now. These crazy bastards planned to take over Anarock and enslave the human race. She shuddered when she realized they probably had the power to do it, too.
Her mind kicked into overdrive. She couldn’t exactly come right out and tell this moron he was off his rocker or he would kill her. He told her she and Bryce could join or die. That left the options limited to one.
McCain spun away. He called out to his people. “Forsythia! Set up camp over there. Boris, open your window and let me see this Anarock place. We have to plan our assault right away. Jamison, you keep our new friends company and make sure they settle in all right.”
The whole wacky assembly split up. The woman with the upside-down face, the one he called Forsythia, broke through the trees and found a flat piece of ground next to the lake. She waved her hand in the air and a bunch of large white tents appeared. The structures erected themselves in a neat village all facing south.
The man with seven eyes hustled to McCain’s side. In a minute, he created his glowing orb again and he and McCain stared into it taking a mile a minute.
The dark-haired young man touched Alexa’s elbow. “If you come with me, I’ll show you to a tent where you can stay.”
Alexa turned around to find Bryce staring at her with huge eyes. Was this really happening? Did they get taken captive by this weird crew so fast? Now they had to join or die. It was that simple.
Jamison gestured toward the lake. Bryce and Alexa fell in behind him and stumbled where he led. What else could they do?
4
Bryce lay on his cot and stared at the ceiling. He rested his head on his folded arm and considered his predicament. Across the tent, Alexa engaged in a detailed interview with that monster shifter—Jamison. The kid didn’t appear to have any other name. When Alexa asked him his first name, he didn’t have a flipping clue what she was talking about.
“Do you know where you were born?” she asked.
He sat on a low stool resting his hands on his knees. He stared straight at her without blinking. He didn’t fidget or wiggle his foot like a normal person would. “I can’t remember.”
“What’s the first thing you do remember?”
“I remember marching with the Omega Battalion. Blitzer was riding me and we were somewhere near the Homochitto Forest.”
Alexa’s eyes popped. “The Homochitto Forest! That’s hundreds of miles from here.”
He nodded. He gave no facial expressions to indicate this interview meant anything to him. “We’ve been traveling for a long time.”
“What have you been doing between here and there?”
“We came across a pack of wolf shifters in the Kisatchie National Forest. They were so busy hunting they never saw us coming. We captured them and turned them.”
Alexa frowned. “What do you mean, you turned them?”
“We killed their leader and changed four of them into anomalies like us. The rest joined. They had to.”
Alexa blinked at him with her mouth open. “You…what?”
Jamison’s languid eyes drifted toward the tent opening. “Francois can change people into anything. He can transform their bodies and even their abilities. He can make someone a shifter or a monster and change them back the other way when he wants to. When the rest of the pack saw what happened to their friends, they all joined the Battalion. They didn’t have much choice.”
Alexa glanced toward Bryce. He listened with interest, but he didn’t respond. The longer he and Alexa associated with this freakshow Battalion, the more he knew for certain they had to get the fuck out of here before something disastrous happened.
“Then we attacked an encampment in the De Soto National Forest,” Jamison said to no one in particular. “They had several different kinds of shifters working together and maybe one or two magic workers. They shouldn’t have posed much of a threat, but for some reason, they did. They resisted more than the others. They fought back. In the end, we had to kill the whole bunch, which was a shame. It would have been better if we took them in, but they wouldn’t listen to us. They said nothing was worth their freedom.”
Alexa shut her mouth with a click. A shudder ran through her. “Who were they? Can you remember any of their names?”
