J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

“In the end?” she prompted when he faltered.

He wanted to pull her up hard against him and bury his face in her hair and beg her forgiveness, beg for a chance to somehow make it right. But that was only wishful thinking. He took a breath and steeled himself for what would come.

“A full-Blood Ikati can stay in animal form forever if we want to because that’s what we really are. It’s our true nature. Our human shape is a disguise, a clever adaptation that’s allowed us to live alongside our enemies, to survive. We can only hold our form as human or vapor for so long.” He drew another slow breath, measuring his words. “Days, weeks maybe if you’re strong enough. But you have to Shift back sometime, and when you do...”

He stood there struggling, remembering.

“Though he was ordered not to, your father Shifted to vapor to relieve the pain after he was tortured on a machine called the Furiant—”

Jenna made a small, horrified noise. All the color drained from her face. She lifted a trembling hand to her mouth.

“He was recaptured as vapor and put in a box, a special steel box designed to seal on entry so he couldn’t escape.” His final words were almost whispered. “It was a very small box.”

Her lips parted. He saw her pulse pounding in the hollow of her throat. “So when he Shifted back...”

It didn’t need further explanation, but he nodded anyway.

She stepped back and stood with one hand over her mouth and the other pressed to her heart and stared at him, swaying, her eyes fierce with unshed tears. It was several moments before she spoke.

“Do you know what I think?”

Her tone was so cold he imagined icicles falling from the shape of her words to shatter into a million frozen pieces against the stone beneath their feet.

“No.”

“I think maybe it’s better to die than live like you do,” she spat, clipped and hard, eyes flashing eerie citrine against the pallor of her face. “Hiding like fugitives, trapped in a gilded cage.” She made a wide, sweeping gesture that encompassed the lawns, the gardens, the smoky forest, and the sprawling mansion behind them. “Turning against one another in the worst possible way for the sake of your precious Law . It makes me sick . You make me sick!”

Pain exploded under his collarbone as if a nail had been driven there. He closed the distance between them with two short steps. “Jenna—”

“ Don’t ,” she said, breathing hard and stepping back. “Don’t you dare .”

Jenna Shifted to vapor just as he reached for her arm, leaving him grasping at nothing but air. Leander watched helplessly as her empty cotton dress slithered to the ground, a castoff ghost curving pink and soft to lie in mournful silence against the dewy grass.

Jenna streaked like a bullet into the cool sanctuary of the forest.

She had never moved like this before, had never thought it possible. Nothing but the sheer animal force of her will propelled her straight ahead through the thicket of towering trees. Sunlight slanted down from above as she flew, a shooting arrow filled with rage and a despair so deep it was bottomless.

Her father. Those bastards killed her father.

She sped on under primal instinct, darting through misty air and dappled shafts of sunlight, startling a family of deer into flight, flashing over fallen logs and mossed bracken, scattering a trail of dead leaves high in her wake. She sliced through a delicate, dew-heavy spiderweb and felt its silken fibers cling to her until they sheared away, one by one, torn off by her velocity.

She was grateful she didn’t have the capacity to cry now, folded in vapor as she was. She was grateful she couldn’t feel her heart throb, feel her guts twist into knots.

She was grateful she couldn’t scream. Because if she started, she didn’t think she would be able to stop.

“If they ever find you, run,” her mother had emphatically said, a few months after her father had disappeared so many years ago.

“Who?” she’d asked, suddenly alert, abandoning the show she’d been watching on television in the living room and turning to look at her mother, who was staring out the front window of their house, her gaze darting this way and that as if she expected someone to jump from the bushes at any moment. A large glass of clear liquid was clutched in her shaking hand, and even from where she sat cross-legged on the floor a room away Jenna could smell the alcohol.

“It was too late for me by the time I found out what he was,” she answered, cryptic, still peering out the window. “I was already in love with him. A real Romeo and Juliet kind of love too, quick and deep and star-crossed, with everyone and everything against us.” She took a long swallow from the glass, ice cubes clinking, then pressed it against her forehead and closed her eyes. “Not that I would change it,” she whispered. “Not that I would go back and change a thing.”

“Mom?” Jenna said, afraid of the incoherent rambling, the dark, desolate tone in her voice. Her mother turned from the window and Jenna saw for the first time the deep grooves around her mouth, the furrow between her brows, the lines fear and mourning had carved into her face. Though frail and ill, she was still beautiful—statuesque and elegant with a mane of long blonde hair she’d inherited from her own mother and passed along to Jenna.

“And no more sports,” she said abruptly, her voice changed from desolate to fierce. “No more gymnastics, no more soccer, no more track. You can’t risk standing out like that. You have to blend in, try to act like everyone else—”

“I won a trophy in track!” Jenna cried, leaping to her feet. “Gymnastics too! I’m way better than those other girls—”

“Oh, honey,” Jenna’s mother said, her eyes welling with tears. “That’s because you’re not like those other girls. You’ll never be like them.”

Those words held a ring of prophecy, and it had struck Jenna speechless. She stood looking at her mother, tall and blonde and pale, just like she was, but broken, and felt the earth turn under her feet.

“Who am I like, then?” she asked, already knowing.

A lone tear tracked down her mother’s cheek. She didn’t bother to brush it away. “You’re like your father,” she said, and the desolation was back. “You look like me, but you’re like him, strong and fast and...different. And like him, you’ll be hunted. So you need to learn to pretend to be something you’re not, because I won’t always be around to protect you.”

There was nothing in Jenna’s short time on earth to prepare her for that. Not only the thought that her mother might eventually leave or die or otherwise cease to take care of her, but also the admission that she was like her father, who she worshipped as something close to divine, and the proclamation that she was going to be hunted.

Like him. Her father was hunted . Her body went cold with horror.

“What happened to him?” she whispered, terrified her mother might actually tell her this time. But she didn’t. She only took another drink from her glass and turned back to the window. It was a long while before she answered.

“He’s gone, and he’s never coming back,” she said, and Jenna had never heard such anguish in another person’s voice. Her mother drained the final ounce of liquid from the glass, set it on the windowsill, and stared at it, through it, as if she wasn’t seeing it at all.

Jenna sank to her knees on the bare wood floor, shaking so badly her legs wouldn’t support her anymore. Her cheeks were hot and wet, and she realized she was crying.

“Why not? Why won’t you ever tell me what happened?”