Evil, Powerful

“Did he not tell you who I am?” Andrev asked. He tossed his head to get his hair out of his eyes, lifted his chin. “I am the most powerful of my kind in over a hundred years.” He nudged Dalinor’s body with his foot, tilted the lifeless head so they could see the three horns on Dalinor. “What you thought marked me as evil has marked me as powerful.”

“We’ll kill you,” Kir said.

“No,” Andrev said. “I shall kill you. Because you killed an innocent girl, and would have killed me out of your petty hate and ignorance.”

Resumed

Andrev leapt free of the twitching, writhing body and changed midair to a hummingbird, wings beating rapidly, darting too fast to be a target.

As he hovered, tiny heart racing, he saw Dalinor convulse on the ground, shifting through a hundred, a thousand different forms, scaled and feathered, leathery and furry, large and small, until he lay dead in the grass, a bare-skinned man, eyes wide with fear.

“The dragon is dead,” one of the hunters whispered.

“Catch him! Catch the monster!” Savva yelled.

Andrev darted out of a hunter’s grip and landed on the ground, resumed human form.

For Dalinor

A snake had coiled around his hind leg and sunk fangs deep, deep into the muscle. Andrev howled, writhed, twitched desperately to dislodge, but to no avail.

Rastaban’s words echoed in his mind.

Bigger isn’t always better.



Another shimmer-change, and the snake collapsed. Andrev crept through the grass, watching with his multifaceted eyes, hairy legs testing the air as he paused, considered his target.

The pulse.

He leapt.

He had his buried deep fangs in Dalinor’s throat before one of the men noticed and began to shriek like a woman.

“Spider!”

The poison was fast, too fast for Dalinor.

Shimmer, Shift, Change

White-hot pain lanced his side, and Andrev snarled, turned. Kir had stabbed him with a spear, and he was drawing back, cautious triumph on his face. Andrev felt the pulse of blood, sticky as it dripped down his forepaw.

“Monster!” Savva yelled.

Andrev leapt. He shimmered mid-air, shifted, changed, and then the pain was gone, and it was a massive dog that landed on Kir, snapping with its jaws. Kir cried out, beat at him with the butt of the spear, but Andrev ignored the pain in his side and went for the throat.

Something bit him. Hard.

No Natural Creature

Andrev bared his fangs, snarled, his heat-seeking senses drawn to the most important part, the pulse, fluttering beneath the tender flesh of a throat, of a wolf.

A massive, black, dire wolf.


Dalinor.

He was still alive.

And speaking in Andrev’s mind.

Step down, little one, lest you lose your life.

Andrev shook his head, confused. Why do you fight me? Fight the humans. The ones who mock us and hunt us, call us demons and wish us dead.

You are a demon, Dalinor said. No natural creature should be that strong.

Andrev threw his head back and roared.

On His Feet

Andrev didn’t think a first attack was supposed to feel this fun, but instead of being shot through with nerves he was running on sheer bliss. The weightlessness, formlessness, freedom of shifting from form to form was indescribable, and as he bounded toward the camp - first an ant, then a beetle; a snake, then a sparrow; a hawk, a cat, dog, wolf, tiger - he realized he had the world at his feet.

Including the people.

Kir screamed first, and he screamed like a girl.

Then something slammed into Andrev’s side.

He hit the ground, rolled.

And landed on his feet.

Beautiful, Unsettling

“Today’s the last test,” Rastaban said.

“I know.” Andrev studied the horizon. Perhaps Rastaban thought Andrev was lost, roaming the plains in so many different forms, wheeling across the sky or scurrying through the grass, but Andrev was a hunter, and these were his hunting grounds.

“Are you ready for this?”

“Are you?” Andrev shot back.

Rastaban’s grin was beautiful, unsettling. “I wasn’t always a Wanderer, you know. I know more tricks than juggling and making scarves disappear.”

“You’ve taught me some of them, perhaps without realizing,” Andrev said. “Even I saw that no mere Wanderer knows so much warfare.”

Too Many Words

“But I’m not human,” Andrev said. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, tilted his head back so the moonlight threw his alien features into stark relief. Five little horns covered with baby-soft skin, nothing like the terrifying protrusions on the deer and rams that roamed the wastelands around them.

“I’m inhuman.”

Kana leaned up, pressed a quick kiss to his temple.

“No,” she said, “you’re superhuman.”

“Perhaps, once their blood stains my hands, I’ll be subhuman.”

Kana sighed. “Too many words,” she said, ran a hand up his chest, felt his pulse at his throat. “Kiss me.”

Making the Man

“I miss you during the day,” Andrev whispered, “but I know you’re not really here.”

Kana stroked a hand through his hair, and Andrev had to swallow hard, because it felt real.

“I miss you too,” she said. “But don’t be so quick to join me. You have work to do, don’t you?”

Andrev nodded, nuzzled closer to her. “I know I do,” he breathed against her skin. “But if I do it - if I kill Kir and Savva and the rest, doesn’t that make me the monster they always said I was?”

“No,” Kana said. “It makes you human.”

Not Pride

“So your plan is to have him kill off most of his tribe, the rest of his kind, and then you’ll train him as one of us?” Kana skinned the rabbit with easy hands.

Rastaban flinched at the flash of steel and blood in her hands. “That’s about the size of it.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“The boy needs motivation. He’s not a killer at heart - he needs a reason to fight.”

Kana arched an eyebrow. “You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure you became a killer first.”

“As a matter of survival, not pride.”

Again

They had to pull apart to gasp for air, and then Kana sank against him, shivering and giggling. She leaned in, brushing her lips along the line of his throat, the shell of his ear.

“Where did you learn to kiss like that?” she asked.

“I - don’t know,” Andrev stammered.

Kana ran a hand up the curve of his spine. “Well, kiss me again.”

He did.

When Andrev opened his eyes, he was tucked into his bed of furs and Rastaban was standing over him holding a torch and roasted rabbit.

“Your turn on watch,” he said.

Andrev nodded, dazed.

Heartbeat

The wind coming off the river pushed through the grass around them, swirling it around their knees. Andrev stared at Kana, surprised and confused. Though he would never admit it, he’d imagined kissing her, if only because he imagined she was the only girl who might let him. But something in her golden eyes was hypnotizing.

Andrev swayed forward, almost against his own volition.

Kana stepped into meet him, and then she was kissing him, brushing her lips against his. She wound her arms around his shoulders and tugged him close, and then he could feel her heartbeat against his.

Like Kiss

“Who are you?” Andrev asked. He couldn’t quite believe it was her.

She just tilted her head to one side and smiled, and Andrev’s heart lurched. He knew that smile. She pressed one finger to her lips and glanced pointedly at Rastaban, then beckoned again.

It was too easy to slide out of the bed of furs and onto the grass, to slip into the shadows after Kana.

“You’re dead,” Andrev said.


“Apparently you dreamed me back to life,” Kana whispered.

“Why would I do that?”

“So we can do what we never got to do,” Kana said, “like kiss.”

Dreams and Miracles

Even though Andrev and Rastaban had discovered that they didn’t need nearly as much sleep as normal people, every few days they had to rest, so they took turns, one sleeping, the other guarding.

When it was Andrev’s turn to sleep, he dreamt of Kana.

At first he thought it wasn’t a dream at all but a miracle, seeing Kana crouched in the shadows beyond the glow of the fire. Andrev glimpsed her just through his eyelids as he closed his eyes, and he had to open his eyes, sit up, peer.

Rastaban was looking away from him.

Kana beckoned.

Still

“Yes,” Andrev agreed. He gazed into the golden depths of the flames and imagined, for one moment, they were the same color as Kana’s eyes had been when she laughed. “There is no one like her.”

“It would seem that there is no one like you either,” Rastaban said.

Andrev frowned. “You saw Dalinor.”

“Yes, but even he agreed you’re not like him.” Rastaban cast a pointed look at Andrev’s forehead where he’d let his hair fall messily as before. “You are much more powerful than him, it would seem.”

“But far less controlled.”

“We still have work to do.”

Like No One

“The Wanderers aren’t really my people,” Rastaban said.

Andrev turned that over in his mind, remembered how the people had looked up to him as a leader and a friend. “They seemed to think they were your people.”

“I led them for a time, but they are not my people. My people are...different.” He levitated a small pebble over his open palm to make his point.

“Are there more like you?” Andrev asked. “There are more like me.”

Rastaban shrugged. “In all my wanderings, the only one I ever found like me was Kana. And she’s like no one.”

With Me

Andrev came back to himself as the sun set - some animal forms cared little for day and night, seeing almost equally well during both. Rastaban sat beside a fire, bed-furs laid out in two pallets, two fish roasting on a spit.

“How long was I out there?”

“All day,” Rastaban said. “You scared most of the local wildlife, I think.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?”

“I wasn’t going to get in the way of a dire wolf.” Rastaban prodded the fire with a stick.

Andrev hunkered down beside him, reached for a fish. “Why did you come with me?”

Human-based

Andrev closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he let the world fade away, he could hear Kana’s voice in his mind, whispering and laughing, Pretty butterfly, pretty boy.

Pretty monster.

The first time he’d done it, he’d been terrified out of his mind, excited and confused. Now it was a mechanical task. It was agonizing, too, the shift of bones and muscle, sinew and tendon. Every time Andrev’s body changed shape, it reaffirmed what he was - a monster.

Maybe a human-based monster, because he had to anchor himself in human form between every change.

Not anymore.

Give It A Try

“What’ll it be today?” Andrev asked.

Rastaban stood on the edge of the camp and watched Andrev limber up. Silvery scars marred the flesh of his back, his limbs, reminders of all the forms he had earned.

“You should work on speed,” Rastaban said. “Can you get from one form to another without having to go human in between?”

Andrev hummed thoughtfully, stared off into the distance as he built his focus. As far as Andrev knew, Rastaban’s talent was little use in battle, so Andrev would have to carry most of the battle.

“I can give it a try.”

Learning To Become

The first few attempts were disastrous and nearly cost Andrev his life. They tracked a large beast across the steppes - Rastaban noticed the tracks first, though Andrev had been dubious that anything that left a mark that big had feet and was not a rolled boulder instead.

They found a giant woolly beast with a snake-like nose and tusks. They found a white-striped tiger and a black-furred wolf. They found snakes and birds of prey that wheeled high in the sky and dropped on prey like lightning from the gods.

Andrev learned to become all of them.

Said And Done

Andrev and Rastaban sat side-by-side, staring into the flames.

Finally, Rastaban said, “When this is said and done, you will be a greater hunter than all of them combined.”

Andrev nodded jerkily, once, and stood up. He rolled up his bed furs and secured them with a piece of twine. “I don’t think Kana would have wanted me to kill them. Kir made her laugh, after all.”

Rastaban studied the taut line of Andrev’s spine. “What does it matter, what Kana would want?”

“Do you think it hurt, when she died?”

Rastaban knew the answer, but he lied.

In One Breath

“What makes you ask?” Andrev asked.

Rastaban gestured vaguely. “You’re not really human. You’re stronger and faster. It stands to reason that you heal faster than most humans and are harder to kill. Perhaps Dalinor, who has fine-tuned his power, survived the attack.”

“I doubt it,” Andrev said. “For all their cruelty and idiocy, Kir and Savva are skilled hunters. They have slain many fierce beasts.” The first of his kind he had ever met, and the people who claimed to have saved him, the people who called him blessed and cursed in one breath - they had killed him.

Quickly

Andrev awoke to find Rastaban tending a fire and roasting a rabbit on a spit. He blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“When did you hunt?”

“While you slept,” Rastaban said.

“It’s early yet. The sun barely shines.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Rastaban said. “Eat. We seek animals today.”

“Animals to use as weapons against Kir and Savva for killing Dalinor?”

Rastaban’s gaze shifted away, and Andrev sensed unease in him, possibly deception.

“You think Dalinor survived?”

“Perhaps,” Rastaban said. He took a deep breath. “When you were injured as a child, did you heal quickly? More quickly than others? Unnaturally quickly?”

Good Way to Break a Man

“Foolish boy will think it’s my spirit looking out for him,” Kana said.

Rastaban shrugged. “It will be you, won’t it?”

“Yes, but...” Kana shook her head. Rastaban had no idea what she meant.

Or maybe he did. “At least he wasn’t in love with you. That would have hurt more.”

“This is true,” Kana said.


Rastaban hummed thoughtfully. “That would be a good way to break a man - make him fall in love with you, and after he loses you, if I pick up the pieces, give him a cause to live and fight for --”

“I’ll go find animals.”

Watching Over

Rastaban glanced over to make sure Andrev was still asleep. “You have to help me,” he said.

Kana bit her lip, but then bobbed her head in assent. “You’re still on point for this. What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to find me animals. Big ones. Fierce ones. Large ones.”

Kana stared at him. “I don’t have his power.”

“But you have power.”

“Not his. Hence this exercise.”

Rastaban huffed. “Go. Find scary animals. I’ll track you.”

“He’ll be able to track me to.”

“Well, maybe he’ll think he has some guardian spirit watching over him.”

Avoiding The Issue

Rastaban awoke when someone clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away from the camp he shared with Andrev.

Kana knelt over him in the darkness.

“So whatever plan you had just went to hell in a handcart,” she said. “Savva and the others kept Dalinor alive long enough to learn that Andrev is the most powerful of his kind to have existed in a hundred years, and Dalinor is summoning his kin to help hunt Andrev. What’s your new plan?”

“Did they give you a proper burial?”

“I had to dig myself out. Stop avoiding the issue.”

Rastaban Said

“What do we do now?” Andrev asked.

Rastaban looked at him for a long time. Then he said, “We chase down some of the biggest, meanest, fiercest animals we can find, and you take them on, just like Dalinor said. And then we face Savva and Kir.”

“What about Kana?” Andrev asked. “Will they give her a proper burial? And what of Dalinor?”

“I don’t know,” Rastaban said.

Andrev stared out at the deep river waters as they flowed past, deceptively still on the surface. “Do you think we can find more of my kind?”

“I don’t know,” Rastaban said.

Everything

They ran and ran until it was light and then until it was dark, and Andrev, who had finally given into the urge to weep, sank down by the side of the river. They couldn’t even see the smoke from the campfires behind them.

“What happened?” Andrev asked. He scrubbed his hand over his face, but the tears kept on coming, and he couldn’t breathe properly, and he realized that the dried blood on his hands was Kana’s.

Rastaban’s face was pale, and his lips were pressed into a thin line. “I don’t know what happened. Everything just went wrong.”

Inexplicably

And then someone launched into his back. Andrev pitched forward. The spear drove toward Kir. Hot wet stickiness, copper-scented, exploded across Andrev’s back. He roared and spun, ready to shake off his attacker - only Kana fell into his arms, and her golden eyes were wide, surprised, and she said,

“Sorry, I had to save you.”

Inexplicably, she died.

Andrev lifted his head and saw one of Kir’s hunters staring, wide-eyed, horrified. Everyone else, even Dalinor the wolf, went still. Andrev turned. Rastaban wore an expression akin to terror.

Then he seized Andrev by the hand and they ran.

Could, Now

Andrev laughed. “Really? Is that the best threat you can manage?” He whipped his spear through the air. “I’ve always been a better hunter than you.”

“Kill the monster,” Savva said, and drew his arm back to throw.

Dalinor tossed his head, howled.

As one, the hunters lunged. Andrev followed. Whatever Rastaban had asked of him, done to him, had awakened something inside of him, and suddenly all of Andrev’s motions were smoother, quicker than ever before.

One moment, Andrev was frozen with indecision. The next, he had Kir on the ground at spear point.

“I could kill you now.”