Banished To Earth Book Two, Souls Adrift (9)

Chapter 6

 

30

 

   “I feel naked,” Silhouette announced as she exited the living room and joined them in the dining area. It was a spacious, elegant room. It was more suited to formal affairs than warm family meals, a product of Tom Master’s pretentious, ostentatious taste not shared by Trudy.

 

  Trudy rose from her chair, at the head of the oversized dining table, “You look fine to me.”

 

   A meek, uncharacteristic smile barely lifted her features. “Still can’t believe I’m here. You don’t know me, and what little you do know isn’t good.”

 

  “Sugar, welcome to the club.” Trudy’s eyes darted down, then back up. “Your, what do you call them, ‘blacks’, will be out of the dryer soon enough.  Sure hope I didn’t shrink them.”

 

   “Yeah,” said Chase, “They were already plenty tight.”

 

    “Oh. You noticed.” A bit of the old Silhouette was resurfacing.

 

   “No worries.” Tucker quickly added, “They won’t stop a bullet, but if they can withstand the heat of a laser, a little hot air is not about to hurt them.”

 

   “It is good your,” Pry hesitated, “dryer, is still working.”

 

   “Good,” Tucker mused aloud, “looks like the Authority could not take out small engines like your generator. Or they want some sliver of the unchanged to limp on. Whatever the reason, you can bet it's for their benefit, not yours, like maybe revealing our hiding place. A well-lit house energized by a noisy generator would make a mighty fine dinner bell. Or, hopefully, this place is so far out, we’re well off their radar, sure looks that way.”

 

   Chase rose, walked toward the living room and looked down at their precious child.

 

    Neatly nestled on the couch, Nikki was so preoccupied with hopping a cartoon plumber through an endless maze of obstacles that she did not see him.

 

    “We can’t just wait for the Authority to make the next move.”

 

    Beth stood up and joined him, “We are safe. She is safe.”

 

   “For tonight, maybe.” He took her hand. Joy brightened Pry’s face when she saw it. “Tomorrow is always just hours away.”

 

    “And if we fight them.” Silhouette rose staring straight at Chase, “They will kill us.”

 

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   “Then we play their game,” Tucker said.

 

   “And if they’re listening to our thoughts?” Sil turned toward Tucker.

 

  “We’d already be dead.” He replied.  “And what if the contest is not just violence but intellect?”

 

      “So, we have to outsmart them, tall order, but it makes sense,” Chase released Beth’s hand, walked over to Pry and stooped beside her. “I think you were right, Pry. I’m not done. I am a changeling. I think I’m here to change.” He chuckled ruefully. “I turned Hunter, without dreams or gear. They don’t know me. Maybe they can’t.”

 

   “Or maybe they see you and need to see what you do next. You’re an unknown. Could it be they need to learn what you are and where you came from, and if there are any more like you?” Silhouette said with uncharacteristic gravity.

 

    “They are afraid?” Tucker postulated aloud.

 

  “No,” Said Beth, “they don’t fear, they just kill.” She lowered her voice, “They could kill Nikki.”

 

   “You think my being here with you threatens Nikki?” Chase asked, rising as he spoke.

 

  Beth did not answer, only walked away and joined her baby on the couch.

 

    Just then, the dryer beeped.

 

   “Finally.” Said Silhouette. “I look like a frump in this get-up.”

 

    “Frump?” Trudy tilted her head toward her. “Is that what I look like to you. We are dressed alike.” Trudy grinned. “I’m just messin’ with you.” With that. She, Sil and Chase went to retrieve their ‘blacks’.

 

    A short time later. They returned.

 

   “Not leather.” Silhouette declared when they returned to the dining room.

 

   “Yeah, I know.” Said Tucker, “feels like it, looks like it though, don’t it?”

 

   Chase, sporting a perfectly tailored hooded duster, walked up to Pry. “Didn’t shrink in the dryer, but it did shrink around me.”

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  “Yeah, Chase,” Silhouette added. “Its original owner died, so it’s not just yours now. It’s you.”

 

   “What?”

 

 “The ‘blacks’ can read you,” Tucker interjected, “customize themselves not just to fit the wearer, they become an expression of the wearer’s true nature.”

 

    “Yeah,” Silhouette smiled slyly, winking at Tucker. “What do you think my blacks say about me?”

 

    He rolled his eyes. “Rather not say in mixed company.”

 

  She didn’t take offence. She simply embraced who she really was, without apology.

 

   Trudy blushed for her. A flicker of pain flashed across her features. Silhouette pretended not to notice.

  

    It was apparent to Trudy that someone had taken something from Silhouette, something she could never take back.

 

    “Okay, Pry, now we gotta get you,” Trudy stopped and looked over at her new cat-suited friend, “What did you call it?”

 

  “Strapped and blacked, and her long white hair is going to look great tumbling over a billowing black cloak.”

 

   Pry shrugged. “Clothes are new to me, so I suppose so.”

 

   “That’s right, you’re a little bird.”

   

    A puzzled look clouded Pry’s features, then. “Oh, my feather drape. I like birds, thank you.”

 

   Chase and Tucker traded tired looks. Both were thinking the same thing, ‘women and clothes…

 

 

  The night began uneventfully. They did not know Trudy's home had become a haunted house the moment Chase entered. Nor had they any notion that new eyes were even now peering in, separated from them by nothing more than a thin sheet of glass.

 

 34 

 

    After Chase assured Pry that they were not about to kill another Hunter, to get her ‘blacks’, they all settled in for the night.

 

    Lost in slumber, bound in each other’s arms, Chase and Pry could not see the deep greyness that had settled in the farthest corner of their bedroom. It pulsed and undulated, untouched by the moonbeams’ silvery light streaming through the bay window.

 

   Gathering, darkening, growing and twisting into black tendrils, they eventually became writhing cords of filth and malice, fell to the floor and slithered under their bed, unnoticed.

 

  They could have easily been spun from raw sewage. But they were spun from something far more threatening and nastier. They were woven from all the threads of what might have been, had Davin not stolen Chase Gillette's birth. They were Chase, the true Chase. The Hunter, the Transit Authority had selected to defeat every alien beast and destroy every other Hunter, to claim Earth as their bright blue prize.

 

   Now the usurped Master Hunter, Chase Gillette, was, for the moment, little more than a hellish dust bunny. But that would change. Shadows and darkness were not only his refuge but would eventually become his medium to wield and weaponize…

 

 

 

  A light pecking sound awoke Nikki. She stirred, sat up, and giggled at her Mommie’s funny sleep face and turned her attention toward the tiny tapping sound coming from the balcony window.

 

   Easing out of bed, she tiptoed across the room. Something was fluttering just beyond the glass. The tot could not quite see it through the greyness of the sheer curtain. She pushed the curtain aside until a little bluejay came into view.

 

   Tilting its head back and forth, then tapping on the glass, there was no doubt about what it wanted.

 

   “You can’t come in.” Nikki whispered, “Birds belong outside.”

 

   ‘…. Do you not want to fly….?’ The question slithered into her mind on a child’s voice.  

 

   “No wings, gotta have wings to fly. Don’t you know that bird?”

 

  “You want wings. I know you do?” The childish voice faded into a hiss.

 

   Nikki backed away. “This is a nice dream, but…going back to Mommie now, bye bye.”

  With that, she turned and skipped back to bed. Beth had no idea how close she came to losing Nikki…

 34

 

   The sun was only about an hour from the eastern horizon. Stars faintly twinkled in the pinkish

purple sky. Chase, trapped by sleep, Pry nestled against his chest, both still blind to the dark presence coiled and patiently waiting beneath them.

 

    But a more immediate threat was literally cresting the horizon. Something that had never existed ploughed toward Chase. Driven by hate and lust, it tore through cold, dark waters straight into Chase's dreams…

 

  

    Saliva flooded his mouth. The sweet sting of copper assaulted his tongue. Cold encompassed his body. Even Pry’s warmth could not drive it away.

 

    Something jerked against his teeth. Slinging his head and clamping his jaw, his slobbering mouth squeezed blood and life from a seal. Its dead body flopped against his face as the cold sea streaked over his sleek, hairless body.

 

   A golden spear of sunlight struck his face. Glaring into it, Grant Stayner exploded out of the water, bloody seal intestines slapping his half-human face. A roar rumbled over the shifting swell. Stayner twisted toward the beach, spat the seal’s tattered remains into the brine, crashed back into the sea and spun like a torpedo toward the shore.

 

     Chase had ‘awakened’ helpless inside Stayner. Looking through Stayner’s eyes, he saw his werewolf self, an enraged monstrosity galloping toward the sea on all fours.

 

   His eyes were human, but not much else. Three times larger than a dire wolf and twice as shaggy, it boasted a heavily muscled body that mocked humanity with its canine adulterations; it, no, he, was a living ravenous nightmare man thing.

 

    Upon seeing Stayner spinning toward him, he slid to a stop and flung himself back on his hind legs. Its grey fur fringed, ears pressed back, lips curled, fangs long, white, glistening with slobber in the first rays of the rising sun.

 

   Arms spread, feet planted, he waited for Stayner. A moment later, the enraged fish man catapulted from the sea and slammed hard into Chase’s fur-matted barrel chest.

 

   Another piece of Stayner was suddenly lodged in his mouth. Searing pain burned through his neck as Stayner’s razor-sharp teeth, bit and tore into his shoulder…

 

 

 Chase shrieked. Pry leapt straight up, nearly hitting the ceiling just before she flipped away from the bed, landing on all fours a few feet from the balcony doors.

 

    “Chase. Your face!”

 

   He slammed both hands over his eyes, saw fur, felt fur, and tasted blood. “Open the doors, Pry!” he roared. She scrambled across the floor, flung her hands up, grabbed the handles, snatched them down and rolled out of the way. A ‘convenient’ cool breeze blew the French doors open just before Chase leapt from the bed and over the balcony railing.  

35

 

  Trembling and tear-soaked, she rushed out just fast enough to see his fully transformed werewolf body gallop across the open field, jump the corral, race across the pasture and disappear in the woods just beyond the great oak.

 

   “He’s going home.” She murmured a moment before Trudy and Silhouette burst in.

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

  36

 

   “Pry!” Silhouette yelled as she rushed to the balcony.