First Born (6 page)

In response to the feathers and animal marks at her abduction scene, police were still waiting on lab results before drawing any conclusions. Friends and family were cooperating with the investigation. They explained that her mother, devastated by the news, planned to return from her travels abroad.

Keys jangled in the door lock. Seth slunk in, closing the door behind him. He managed to procure his phone from Lily with minimal eye contact. His body hugged the door.

“Seth?”

“Yep.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with
you?
I just carried my naked sister up three flights of stairs after I found out she’s a dog,” he hissed.

“Okay, I can see how you may be taken aback by that, but don’t be a butthead.”

“You try carrying someone up three flights of stairs. What the hell have you been eating anyway?”

Lily gasped before pulling the blazer more tightly around her midsection. “You calling me fat is not helpful.” She had the overwhelming urge to slap him so hard he’d see Elvis, but with an incredible amount of effort, she controlled herself.

Her face felt warm. “Oh dear God. Please tell me Reggie didn’t see me naked.”

“No one saw you except me,” he said with a pained look. “One minute you were snoring at my feet like a sumo wrestler with sleep apnea. The next, you were twitching like you were having a seizure. That’s how I knew to get you out of the lobby. You changed in the stairwell between the third and fourth floors. I carried you the rest of the way.”

“Okay,” she replied.

“No, not okay. Dis-tur-bing! It started with your toes and then all of sudden everything exploded.” His eyes were enormous.

“Yuck.” She attempted to strike the image from her head.

“Oh, and there was the sound.” He reached past an ancient Eureka upright and scooted a tall box toward him so he could sit. She considered sitting down too then remembered she wasn’t wearing undergarments.

“What sound?” Lily asked.

“Like a long fart.”

“Unbelievable. I’m in serious trauma here and you’re talking about farts like a ten-year-old boy.” A tingling sensation crept up her neck toward the top of her head before radiating back down her spine. Seth straightened his back and cocked his head, waiting, perhaps anticipating that her next transition would be into something cool like the Incredible Hulk.

“Are you done because, Dude, I am totally serious. It sounded like a Guinness Book of World Records fart.”

“Great. Like I’m not self-conscious enough that I’m waking up naked in strange places and that I have a beard. Now I have a flatulence issue to address,” she retorted.

“I didn’t say
you
farted. Just sounded like one.”

“Thank you for the scientific analysis, Dr. Moore. Technically, it’s not a fart. The sound waves created gave the perception of a fart,” she said crossing her arms to mimic him. They both started to laugh, which relieved some of the tension between them.

They took a synchronized breath after their laughing jag. Lily studied Seth’s face. “You’re taking this animal changing thing in stride.”

He shrugged.

“You don’t look very surprised at all.”

He shifted on his cardboard box, which made its own flatulent noise in protest. She was too intent on hearing his answer to laugh. His attention was on the nasty linoleum floor. Following his gaze, she confirmed that there was nothing interesting there.

“You better start talking Sethasaurus,” she threatened. “People are dying and my life is really messed up right now. I’m walking that line between sanity and
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
”

He cleared his throat and looked up at her.

Lily noted the worry lines on his forehead. She waited with her arms crossed, trying to look intimidating despite her inadequate clothing.

“Did anything seem weird to you when we were growing up?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Define weird.”

He sighed. “Remember the police dog Dad worked with?”

“Barney? What about him? I loved that dog. He had such human...”

“Yeah.” Seth’s gaze held hers.

Apprehension fluttered in her stomach. “He wasn’t just a dog?”

“No.” Seth swallowed. The last time she saw such apprehension in her brother’s eyes was during the grill incident. He was okay with the explosion, not so much with the bomb squad and five fire trucks that showed up at their house.

“What?” she asked.

“Think about it, Lily.”

She pictured the beautiful Belgian Malinois that was part of the K-9 Unit for the APD. The Malinois’s head resembled that of a German Shepherd, but its body was sleeker and fawn-colored. Dad’s colleague, Li Liu, was its handler, but Dad partnered with him on assignments.

“So what you’re not saying is that Barney was a man.” She looked over to her brother. “Who was he?”

“Lily, did you ever see Barney and Dad together?”

“Of course they were together. Dad worked alongside Li Liu often.”

“Mr. Liu was the K-9 handler.” Seth waited.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Yes.” Seth said, determined.

Lily’s mind raced. It was true. The times they were around the dog, it was Mr. Liu who was with them, letting them pet him. But there was a picture of the three of them together. “That picture—”

“Was most likely just another dog they grabbed to pull off the deception.”

“How?”

“I don’t know the specifics,” Seth said. “Let’s just say that as a teenager several events led me to suspect and the circumstances of Dad’s death convinced me.”

“Why the heck didn’t you say something to me?”

Seth bristled. “Would you have believed me? Or, would you have told Mom I was cracking up?”

“Thanks for the overwhelming trust.”

“Well, you know now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Let’s just figure out what to do from here.”

She didn’t have time to argue with him, or create any more drama. “We need to talk to Mr. Liu.”

Seth shrugged. “That should be an interesting conversation.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” she replied.

“Fine, I’ll call him.”

“What about me?” she asked.

“You need to stay safe. What’s the deal about the ‘Dark Watcher’ guy?”

Lily bit her lip.
How crazy do I sound saying I saw a man in black then he disappeared, but then I smelled him around my apartment?

“Pretty crazy,” Seth said.

“What?”

“You didn’t say that out loud, did you?” Seth’s jaw dropped.

“What the hell?”

“I think you just talked inside my head.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Try it again.”

Lily sighed.
You are a first class monkey butt!

“Dude!” Seth stayed on his box, perhaps scared to get any closer.

On her feet, Lily held the blazer closed and told herself to breathe. Then she decided to sit down, modesty be damned, because she was afraid she might pass out. She sat on a box slightly smaller than Seth’s, but her entire bottom sunk in since the cardboard was old and the box half empty. At least that’s the reason she told herself.

Normally Seth would have laughed at her, but he looked too spooked still. “Can you...hear what I’m thinking?” he asked with a trembling voice.

Lily closed her eyes and thought about entering Seth’s brain. All that happened was that she realized she
really
didn’t want to know his thoughts. Expelling pent up air, she cocked her head to consider him. “Nothing.” She watched all of the muscles in his neck and chest relax. “Just as I always suspected. Nothing going on upstairs.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Now what?” she asked.

“Don’t bite my head off, but your best bet is to stay hidden until you can control your
condition.
You think you can hang in there for a while at Larry’s?”

“Guess I don’t have much choice.” She kicked the box in front of her, sending it airborne. The force behind it shocked her, particularly because she was still sitting. “I’m eating dog food and going to the bathroom outside.”

Seth grimaced. “Sorry.” He looked like he really meant it. It wasn’t a word he used frequently, and now he had used it twice in one day.

“I just don’t understand what’s going on,” she whined.

“I think it’s called shapeshifting,” Seth said.

Lily shrugged.

He went on to instruct her on meditating, breathing, and getting her heart rate down hoping this would help her relax and learn to control her shifting.

“What the heck, Seth?”

“I used to date a yoga instructor,” he said proudly. Her brother, the Yogi Lama of generation “Dude.” Who knew?

Her mind strayed back to Peter as she considered how alone she felt. “Peter’s dead, my neighbor’s dead...”

“You need to focus on yourself right now Lily,” Seth interjected. He deflected any further discussion that involved Peter. Peter and Seth had become friends, playing basketball together every Saturday morning. Seth put a wall up when anyone tried to discuss death. Wasn’t just any wall. It was the Great Wall of China.

Before she let him go, they discussed her communication issues and clothing. Seth said he would add another touch screen phone to his plan and scrounge up some clothes. He agreed to leave a bag of items on the side of Ansley Park Manor behind the air conditioning unit late that night so she would have some provisions.

Seth’s radio squawked. It was his boss. “Lily, I definitely have to go. I’ll leave this roll of toilet paper as a doorstop so you can get out of this closet if you do change. If I don’t see you sneak out as a dog, I’ll check on you within the hour and we’ll figure something out.”

He made full eye contact with her when he stated that she needed to stay hidden in Larry’s house until they got some answers. It was as if he was channeling their father, Arthur Moore, with the tone of his voice and stern look in his blue eyes. The awkward hug he extended in goodbye unnerved her the most. Was he afraid to touch her? Perhaps he thought she was cursed. She certainly was considering it.

After he left, she sat cross-legged on the floor and closed her eyes, doing her best to think of all things scary: sharks, spiders, and the Dark Watcher. She had ascertained that being terrified triggered her hysterical Shih Tzu side; being relaxed shifted her back to human form. One memory of the man’s scent and she was in canine form again.

Before exiting the room, she gazed down at Seth’s maroon blazer, which she evidently slashed to threads during the transformation. Beside it was a single shiny feather.
What the hell?

Her next thought was to flee the building before somebody found her. She peered out into the hallway before sprinting for the stairwell door that Seth had left propped open.

“Oh, look at you!”

Uh oh, single white female.
A twenty-something woman was leaning down to pick her up.

She considered channeling a pit bull, but her bark was menacing enough as it was. She did froth at the mouth to improve her performance. This delayed the woman long enough for Lily to dart through her legs and make a mad dash down the stairs.

“Stop. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s okay,” she called to Lily.

Great. She gave full-grown men pause, but not this lady. Lily heard the clip clopping of heels behind her. It sounded like a Budweiser Clydesdale pursuing her down six flights of stairs to the lobby. Lily stopped to get a breath before darting across to Seth. It was 4:30 p.m. People packed the lobby, apparently absconding the scene before their bosses caught them in a five o’clock strategy meeting. She hid under the desk.

The woman approached Seth and Reggie at the front desk who were busy giving a man directions to the Westin Peachtree Hotel downtown.

“Did you see a little dog?” she interrupted.

“What dog?” her brother asked, his eyes shifting from the man to the pretty young woman in front of him.

“The Shih Tzu,” she said, placing one hand on her hip. The other hand hovered inches above the counter allowing her to drum her ruby red nails rhythmically on the wood.

Inspired by the voluptuous blonde, Reggie decided to be valiant. “Oh this one, is this your dog?” he asked while dangling Lily in the air for the world to see.

Seth snatched her. “That’s Mrs. Brown’s dog, so glad you found her. We were getting worried.”

The woman looked disappointed, but flashed Seth a knowing smile. Lily had seen that smile used on her brother since he was fourteen years old. Her stalker regained her composure, chatting with the guest and security guards while scratching Lily’s ears with her acrylic nails before making her departure. Seth finished giving the gentleman directions then took the dog outside “to find Mrs. Brown who he believed was sitting by the flower boxes.” Once he went around the corner, he sat down on the edge of a flower box with his back to the street.

“Okay, you need to get out of here Lily.”

“Weah. I wanna make sure I’m home for dinner.” Larry was a good cook.

Seth snorted.

Remembering the janitor’s closet, she paused a moment and thought of a delicate way to express the state of his blazer. “Uh, I left you a surprise upstairs.”

Seth’s face lit up. “Dude, what kind of a surprise?”

“Wour jacket looks like the Incredible Hulk got it.”

“It’s okay, Lone Ranger,” he said laughing.

Maybe he
had
been doing vodka Jell-O shots for breakfast.

“The mask,” he said as if she should have made the connection. “Oh look, you even have a little black saddle on your back.” She nipped his fingertip. Her Shih Tzu markings did include a black mask and saddle, but her sense of humor was gone.

“Ow! Look for that stuff tomorrow and make contact as soon as you can,” he said while nursing his finger. “I’ll try to meet with Mr. Liu.”

She barked in agreement and licked his face before sprinting down Peachtree Street.

“Yuck!” Seth said.

Ewww. I need to stop this licking compulsion.

As she rounded the corner on to the Prado Northeast, she saw a “lost dog” poster on the telephone pole. Larry was probably having a stroke. The thought of him worrying kicked her into turbo drive. There were no cars in the driveway when she reached the manor. She barked and scratched at the front door before running to the backyard. Plastering her face to the glass of the sliding door, she peered inside. No one was visible through the glass.