Page 24 of Throwing Shade
I reached behind me, clutching the railing to bolster my rubbery legs.
The Ohrist reached into a duffel bag, revealing a nasty silver jagged scar that ran halfway up the left side of his back, and pulled on a faded blue T-shirt that said “Bite Me.” This wasn’t a gym rat with a six-pack for show; he was a warrior and his body was his well-honed weapon, in or out of wolf form.
Ohrist magic was based in light and life, while Banim Shovavim powers were rooted in death and darkness. Historically, they’d taken that as clear-cut signs of good and evil. They pitied Sapiens but had hunted my kind into near extinction.
There was even a skipping game sung by Ohrist kids: “Clap for the light, ’cause light is right. All other magic is a blight. How many shadow freaks will we smite?” At which point they’d jump as fast as they could while counting.
I eyed the wolf shifter with a sinking feeling that he’d probably counted pretty damn high.
Maybe he didn’t remember the exact details of his time in his wolf form? Could I bluff my way out of here?
“Did you want something?” he said, impatiently.
My brain short-circuited. “I’m guessing that light magic allowed you to cut through his breastbone and rib cage only using your claws,” I said, “but why isn’t there blood all over the place?”
I could have smacked myself. This was not the time for curiosity or further questions like “How do you have more than one magic ability?” It was the time for well-crafted lies.
“The magic cauterized the blood vessels.” The man rolled his “r’s.” He grabbed a box of table salt from the duffel bag.
“Regular sodium,” I said thickly. “How bland. I prefer Pink Himalayan to balance the delicate flavor of human flesh.”
“I’m not eating him.” He dumped the salt over the corpse. “It interferes with the scent so animals don’t show up before Ohrists get here to retrieve the body.”
“That’s good, because cannibalism can make you sick. You get this brain disease called kuru and—”
“Like mad cow?” He tapped the last of the salt onto the body with a contemplative expression.
I blinked. People didn’t generally come back with follow-up questions to my random facts. “Not quite. People can’t get mad cow disease, but in rare cases they get a form called…” I shook my head because cows, mad or otherwise, were not the issue. “Was Alex human?”
Or was he some other species entirely and did that make a difference to the answer? He had looked human, even if what was inside of him wasn’t.
My moral compass was having trouble finding true north.
“Not anymore,” the wolfman said.
I knelt down beside Alex to close his lids because his lifeless stare felt accusatory, but the shifter batted my arm away.
He lay a hand on the deceased’s forehead and stared into his eyes as if committing him to memory. There was both a gravitas and a resignation in the shifter’s expression, and I couldn’t tell if he did this to honor the dead or torment himself with a parade of his kills. Maybe it was one and the same.
When he was done, I checked Alex’s back pockets for his wallet.
“The man’s body isn’t even cold and you’re robbing him?” Wolf Dude said.
“I’m looking for identification,” I said through ground teeth. There was a cracked phone but no wallet. It must have fallen out at some point during the fight. A vise tightened around my chest and I shoved the Ohrist, banking on the fact that if he’d intended to hurt me, he’d have done it already. “You ruined my chance to get information about—”
“I saved you.” The man stuffed his bare feet into motorcycle boots, which also came out of the duffel bag. “I don’t know what interrogation skills you think you have, but I can assure you that dybbuk wouldn’t have given up shit.”
“Dybbuk?”
“Merde,” he said in perfect French. Ah. “You went after him without knowing what you were dealing with?” His full lips twisted. “Fucking BS.”
He remembered.
I took two wobbly steps back, Delilah by my side, but he didn’t come after me.
He laced up his boots. Okay, he was a derisive son of a bitch, but he lacked the horror others of his ilk displayed upon meeting my kind, nor did he seem inclined to kill me.
I’d take the win.
