Under My Skin (Wildlings) (21 page)

"Then why were they so blatant about it?"

"They're the FBI," Desmond says. "A bunch of goddamn all-powerful sons of bitches. They probably were making an example of him—trying to scare Wildlings into turning themselves in, rather than get taken by force. It won't matter about that evidence all over cyberspace. They'll just claim that there's missing footage that shows Josh was a threat. Or that he's a big-time drug dealer."

"I don't know … it's a lot like what happened with Danny."

"Maybe," I say. "But come on. This is Josh, the original good guy."

Elzie gives a slow nod and sits down again. Her shoulders are slumped, but both hands are clenched into fists.

"This Erik Gess," she says. "He needs to have his lights punched out."

"Totally," Desmond agrees.

I don't argue with them. I'm relieved she's directing the brunt of her anger toward Gess. He's the one who started it all anyway.

"We need to focus on rescuing Josh," I say. I turn to Elzie. "Can you get hold of Cory? Like, now?"

Elzie gives me a puzzled look. "What for?"

"Didn't he already break some people out of the FBI's holding facility?"

"Yeah, but because of Cory's little rescue mission, the Feds will have that place locked up so tight nobody's going to get in or out. Hell, they probably didn't even take Josh there. Now that they know the place is on our radar, they've probably already got him on a plane to who-knows-where."

"We don't know that for sure," I say. "There could still be time to get him back."

Elzie gives an unhappy nod. "I hope so. But I'm not so sure Cory will have anything to do with it if I'm involved."

My stomach is in knots. This is taking way too long.

"We need to get help from somewhere and fast," I say. "We can't do this on our own."

Elzie looks away, past the old rides. For a moment I don't think she heard me, but then her eyes meet mine.

"Let's go see Auntie Min," she says.

"Cool," Desmond says. "What kind of an animal is she?"

"Des!" I say. "I don't think that's something you just ask anybody."

"What? Why not?"

"Your animal skin's a personal thing," Elzie says, "and so's the decision about whether or not you'll go public with it."

"So being a Wildling's like being gay?" Desmond asks.

I think for a moment that he's being serious, but then I catch the smile in his eyes. The silly goof is irrepressible. I elbow him at the same time as Elzie does, so we get him from both sides.

"Ow!" he cries.

"You can be an ass now," Elzie says, "but let's see how funny you end up being with Auntie Min."

"Why?" he asks. "Is she scary?"

Elzie nods. "Formidable is a better word. It's not that she doesn't have a sense of humour. She just doesn't put up with crap from anyone." She stands up and turns to look at us. "So let's get out of here already."

Desmond and I jump up and follow Elzie's quick pace down the boardwalk.

Josh

I come to, lying in a fetal position on the floor of a van. The after-effects of the Tasers leave me feeling more disoriented than anything else. My body is soaked in sweat, I have tears in my eyes and both nipples are on fire. My arms and legs are tingling and twitching involuntarily. The tremors seem to be diminishing, but the fact that the agent on my left is still aiming his Taser at me stops any notion I might have to sit up. I'm not sure I could yet, anyway, but I am recovering quickly. I wonder how long it would take if I weren't a Wildling.

I look up at him sitting on a sideways bench in front of me.

"I want to call my mom and a lawyer," I say.

"Shut the fuck up," says the agent on my other side.

I can't see him because of my position, but I assume his Taser is pointed at me, too.

"Stay where you are, you little freak," warns the cop I just spoke to. "Move one hair and we'll fry your ass again."

I can tell he's really hoping I'll move.

I find it hard to believe that the FBI would treat a kid like this. I think about Chaingang and what he might have gone through before he went to juvie. Either the cops treated him better or he's way tougher than I am. Probably the latter.

I have no idea how long I was out cold. I think I read somewhere that loss of consciousness from being Tazed doesn't last very long, so I assume I woke up pretty quickly after being dumped here on the floor of the vehicle.

There are no windows in the left side panel that I can see. I try to use my Wildling hearing to figure out what's going on beyond the vehicle so that I can figure out where they're taking me, but the sounds of the motor and the wheels on the pavement echo through the van. I can't clearly make out other noises. I'm pretty sure they must be bringing me to the naval base. I'll know when we hit the gravel road that they're taking me there. Maybe Cory will be able to break me out.

But a few minutes later the van starts to slow right down and I hear what sounds like a massive garage door reeling up. Judging by the echo, we seem to be entering some sort of cavernous place and then we're driving downward. My body starts to slide forward involuntarily, but the cop behind me jams his foot hard against my shoulder to stop the momentum. Under my skin, the mountain lion wants to tear off that foot, but I remember what Chaingang told me and I play it cool.

The incline levels back out and a few moments later, the van comes to a stop. The cop on the left pulls a black hood out of a bag beside him and tugs it roughly over my head.

"Don't try to be a hero," he says. "Make a move and you burn—got it?"

I feel a little panicked when the bag cuts off my sight, the mountain lion grumbling deep inside, where only I can hear it. I'm trying to make sense of this. How do the Feds get away with this shit? When I get out of this, I am so going to expose these sick creeps and sue their asses.

 The back door of the van clicks open.

"All yours, Doc," says the agent who just threatened me.

I feel him move aside and then there's someone else bending over me, holding my left bicep. The cloth over my head is making me claustrophobic as hell and it's hard to breathe properly. The mountain lion wants to rip into the hand with its claws. I'm seconds away from letting it out when I feel the prick of the injection and sink into oblivion.

Marina

I'm so relieved to be actually on our way to see this Auntie Min. I think about Josh and where they might have taken him. I hope that they haven't put him on a plane somewhere. And I pray that he'll resist the urge to change. I don't know that I could.

"Remind me," Desmond gasps as we jog east through town, "why we didn't bring our boards to school today?"

Elzie and I are having no trouble keeping to a nice stride, but poor Des is really being put through his paces today.

We're almost at our destination now. We went through some chi-chi neighbourhoods along the way, but here, rundown adobe houses with big dusty yards have replaced all pretence at classy residential housing. Yard decorations run to junked cars, broken plastic toys and old appliances. The sidewalk is littered with debris from the unkempt palms.

When we reach the lights at Rio Grande Drive, we cross the four lanes of traffic, then turn south to where the homeless have set up their camp of cardboard boxes and lean-tos below the freeway overpass. I've driven by this place lots of times with Mamá and my step dad, but this is the first time I've been up close.

The smell hits me first. I thought it would be rank—some horrible stew of garbage and urine—but it smells sweet, like walking through one of the fruit orchards up north when the trees are all in bloom.

The other weird thing is the silence. You can hear the traffic, but it's not much louder than the sound of the tide from my bedroom. It's quiet enough to hear the birds and the wind in the ragged trees, and I don't think it's just my Wildling hearing that's letting me notice this.

But the visual chaos is anything but peaceful. As we follow in Elzie's footsteps, we pick our way through old mattresses, rusting appliances, broken furniture, and an acre of plastic bottles, pop cans, wrappers and other litter.

It's odd that the city doesn't haul this garbage away, but my step dad says they leave it alone because the town council likes to group all the homeless in the same place. That way they don't have to worry about them camping out in alleyways or on the beach.

There certainly are a lot of people here today—a couple of dozen, at least. I guess the ones that got away after the police crackdown have all drifted back. They may be unkempt and dressed in raggedy clothes, but they also look tough. I try nodding to one or two, but they just watch us pass by with expressionless gazes. I get Wildling
pings
from some of them, but most are ordinary people—or at least as ordinary as anyone can be who lives in a place like this.

The
ping
's a funny thing—a weird combination of a barely-there scent, a tickle and a tiny bell sound. It's just this little low-key awareness that settles somewhere deep in your head.

So I'm surprised when the
pings
I'm getting ramp up as we approach a sofa at the top of the slope by the freeway's pylons.

Though the sky is still mostly grey, a shaft of sunlight beams down and bathes the old woman sitting on the sofa. A pillow supports her lower back, her legs are propped up on a weathered fruit crate and she looks to be about a hundred years old. But not frail-old. More like some old turtle or elephant that just seems more powerful with age.

Her hair is black, without a trace of grey, and her is face brown, like mine. It looks coffee coloured against her white blouse, but her features are more Native American than Mexican: broad face, a flat nose, wide-set eyes.

Those eyes. Her penetrating gaze tells me she's anything but a bag lady, for all that she sits here on a junked sofa under this overpass, with a red shawl around her sloped shoulders and the folds of her blue cotton skirt falling to the ground.

I don't need the super-
ping
coming from her to know why Elzie would describe her as formidable.

The ground seems strange and spongy underfoot—as though it's not entirely solid anymore—and I feel like a little girl who still has everything to learn about the world.

She gives me a slow smile, as though she knows exactly what I'm thinking and approves of my acceptance of my place in the order of things. That smile says that I can't learn until I've realized my own ignorance.

"Hey, Auntie Min," Elzie says as we approach the sofa.

Her casual greeting breaks the spell. Auntie Min's gaze remains deep, but it's mild at the same time. The ground feels solid again, no give, unless I step on a squishy piece of garbage.

Elzie flops down beside the old woman. I can't believe she'd do that uninvited, but there are so many things I don't know about the older animal people.

Desmond and I look around. Desmond spots a couple more old wooden fruit crates and drags them over for us to use as stools.

"These are my friends," Elzie says. "Marina and Desmond."

Auntie Min nods a greeting as she looks from me to Desmond. Her gaze rests on him for a long moment.

"Why did you bring a five-fingered being to see me?" she asks Elzie.

Desmond looks confused. "Five-fingered being?" he starts, but Elzie lifts a hand and wiggles her fingers.

"Humans," she explains. "Wildlings only have hands in their human shapes, so the old cousins call you a five-fingered being."

"So why's she only looking at me?" he asks. "What about Marina?"

When Elzie doesn't reply, he turns to me. I almost see the light go off in his head. Oh crap. I didn't see this coming.

"
Seriously
?" he says. "You're a Wildling, too? Is
everybody
one except for me?"

"It's not like you think," I tell him.

"How's it not like I think? We're supposed to be friends. Josh told us as soon as it happened."

"And look where that got him," I say.

I want to pull the words back into my mouth when I see the hurt in his eyes, but it's too late.

"I guess you just knew I'd screw up," he says.

I shake my head. "I didn't know that for sure. I trusted you to
try
to do the right thing, but I didn't think it was fair to put the burden of my secret on anyone but me."

"Why don't you just admit that you don't trust me? That you've never trusted me?"

"Because it's not true."

"I noticed you said 'try,' not 'do.'"

"Oh, for God's sake, Des. Get your head out of your ass. It's not about you, it's about me and my own fears."

Elzie clears her throat. We both look at her.

"Not really the time or place to bicker," she says.

"Really?" Auntie Min says with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes. "I'm finding it pretty entertaining."

"I'm sure you are," Elzie tells her, "but right now we've got big trouble."

Auntie Min cocks an eyebrow. "Tell me what happened," she says.

Elzie tilts her head toward us. "Let them tell it. They were there."

Desmond and I take turns relating the story of Josh's capture. I see Auntie Min is paying attention, but she remains expressionless.

"I wish you'd brought him here before this happened," she says to Elzie, when we're done. "I haven't seen one of the Mountain Lion Clan in decades."

"Why not?" Elzie asks.

Auntie Min adjusts her shawl and shrugs. "The more the five-fingered beings intrude on our lands, the harder it is to stay safe from their weapons and traps. Members of the larger clans find it more difficult to hide than the little cousins do. A cactus wren or a lizard blends into the landscape easily, but it's not so simple for a mountain lion or a bear.

 "The world has changed," she continues. "Everybody needs papers now, so the older cousins are no longer safe, even in our human shapes. These days we're likely to end up in jail because we can't prove we're citizens—we, who were here before any of the five-fingered beings arrived."