CHANGELING: Book Two in the Weaver Series Read online

  Changeling

  Vaun Murphrey

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of my imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Vaun M Murphrey

  Cover illustration and jacket design by Nathalia Suellen.

  Editing by Todd Barselow.

  Formatting by Author’s HQ

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author rights.

  Dedication

  For RJ and RB – You teach me about life every single day.

  Acknowledgments

  Along the writing way I discovered a treasure trove of different but like-minded human beings to share in my crazy. I was able to make their acquaintance because I attended the Writers’ Academy at WTAMU in Canyon, Texas in June of 2013. A good dose of the reality of publishing got smashed like a boulder over my head but I learned and I mingled and, best of all, I came away with new friends. Having attended the same academy again in June of 2014, I met more talented, sharing writers and learned even more until my head felt like it might explode. (This is a good thing!)

  Vaun Murphrey

  www.vaunmurphrey.com

  [email protected]

  www.Facebook.com/VaunMurphreyAuthorPage

  CHANGELING Chapter Guide

  Chapter One: Spewing Curve

  Chapter Two: Down the Rabbit Hole

  Chapter Three: Wipe This!

  Chapter Four: Vanishing Act

  Chapter Five: Blind Trust

  Chapter Six: Nowhere to Go but Down

  Chapter Seven: Bully for You

  Chapter Eight: The Road to Hell

  Chapter Nine: Aniy Mating Rituals for Dummies

  Chapter Ten: Awkward

  Chapter Eleven: Bent Out of Shape

  Chapter Twelve: Secrets and Lies

  Chapter Thirteen: Mommy Dearest

  Chapter Fourteen: Plan T isn’t the Plan

  Chapter Fifteen: Cooties

  Chapter Sixteen: Ground Rules

  Chapter Seventeen: Priorities

  Chapter Eighteen: Body Snatcher

  Chapter Nineteen: Mad Scientist, Mad Mistakes

  Chapter Twenty: An Unraveling

  Chapter Twenty One: On High

  Chapter Twenty Two: Mixed Signals

  Chapter Twenty Three: Best Behavior

  Chapter Twenty Four: Time Flies

  Chapter Twenty Five: Think Fast

  Chapter Twenty Six: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

  Chapter Twenty Seven: Cheap Date

  Chapter Twenty Eight: Tyranny for Dessert?

  Chapter Twenty Nine: Clean Up on Aisle Six

  Epilogue: Lost Love

  Chapter One: Spewing Curve

  Space travel might seem glamorous to the uninitiated. I on the other hand know different. Saying goodbye to our Aunt Maggie and Uncle Gerome had been the easy part, even with tears and drama thrown in. Trusting an alien named Kal we’d just met to break us down into molecules and bend me and my sister across the known universe, easy peasy—keeping the contents of our stomach after…not so much.

  The world my twin and I called home dissolved into pixelated pieces, just like our barren prison cell during our rescue barely a month ago. That time our familial connection had pulled us through the Web to Gerome. This time we were merely a passenger, in the side car of our bending host’s spatial jump to his home planet of Axsa.

  Pain didn’t ride us this go around and we retained our consciousness but all of the moist wonderful chocolate cake Maggie had let us devour before we left spewed out to coat our feet.

  Kal shifted at our side making a small dismayed sound. “I should not have let you eat.”

  We craned our head up to squint at his over seven foot tall frame, breathing shallowly through our parted lips before I said, “Don’t get mad at us, you’re the pro at teleporting.”

  Cass admonished me, embarrassed that we’d thrown up as our first act as a guest on an alien planet. “Silver, don’t get smart until we have a feel for things. You remember the whole wolf in sheep’s clothing bit, right?” Irritated she picked up a foot to waggle of some of the mess.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Our shoes were freakin’ ruined now unless they had alien stain remover. We should have worn our boots instead of our white canvas tennis shoes.

  The floor appeared to be made out of a glassy-smooth midnight black substance and what faint light there was came from fuzzy glowing green circles mounted in a straight line on the ceiling. Ceiling could be the wrong word since our environs consisted of a long tubal cavern that ended in a set of embossed metal doors with a burnished copper sheen. Definitely not a place to hang out if you suffered from claustrophobia.

  Cass murmured under our breath, “Obsidian, this place looks like it’s made out of obsidian.”

  Kal’s shaved dome was shining with a green patina as he replied, “We are underground. You are correct in your assessment of this place—it is indeed made from obsidian. Please refrain from speaking until I inform you it is safe.”

  At that pronouncement his ordinary seeming human features melted away as if they’d never been, to be replaced by skin a shade darker than coffee with heavy cream, a wide mouth filled with sharply pointed teeth, and eyes that shone just as glossily black as the cavern in which we were entombed. As we watched a clear lens flicked over the enlarged pupil, bringing to mind a shark or an owl, maybe even an eagle.

  Cass gasped and I thought to her, “Not so much a wolf, but still a predator.”

  I opened our mouth to comment on his new appearance and Kal shot us a warning look with an accompanying head jerk at the doors awaiting us. They seemed untended and lonely in their forbidding massiveness but then again, since Kal’s people could bend light, space, and time, there was always a small possibility a swarm of ninja aliens silently surrounded us at this very moment.

  At that thought my sister rotated our head in a panoramic motion, stretching our neck muscles to their limits and making me wonder if our cranium could do a full turn like someone demon possessed. Not that I believed in demons. Real life had plenty enough evil without adding the supernatural into the mix. We knew that from experience; the spot on our chest still throbbed, tender from the invasion of the foreign instrument that had almost been our end.

  Cassandra reached up a finger to press on the scar to the left of our heart as she picked up on my thoughts. We’d had a close call and death by screwdriver wasn’t exactly a pleasant way to go. Guilt sucked at my sister for our hand in our attacker’s death, not because she felt particularly bad for surviving, but because she’d felt a sense of triumph at his annihilation.

  Placing a heavy fingered hand on our right shoulder, Kal ushered us forward. With his light field gone and his true self revealed our companion looked like a space cowboy from a hokey sci-fi film, mainly because of the brightly colored embroidered snap-front collared shirt he wore. His tan trench coat was stained in spots as if mud had splashed up from the ground over the years, creating a sea shell pattern of red and brown. The jeans he wore were faded and near busted through the knees. Plain black leather cowboy boots so timeworn they had molded to the boats he called feet finished off the ensemble.

  In our head I started to hum a dirge and then it morphed into the wedding march as we walked ever closer to our final destination. Cassandra swatted at me mentally t
o hush but the inner band played on.

  The embossed metal doors swung open when we were about ten feet away and a stronger reddish light leaked out in a line, then a bar and then a fully realized rectangle. A lone figure cut the bottom half of the illumination in two, adding legs to the base. Musical sounds erupted from the stranger’s backlit head we couldn’t understand.

  Kal stiffened at our side and answered back in the same tongue. His grip tightened, digging into our collarbone.

  Clipped hard tones shot back but Kal stayed calm, at least in his stance and voice. Our shoulder was beginning to beg for mercy though.

  Two Axsian’s popped into sight on the left and right of us. Their garb, white vests over matching tunic shirts with loose pants, suggested an official status. The figure blocking the door stepped closer as they continued to address Kal in a rhythmic drone, which made me think they were quoting law. The words had a cadence of unoriginal speech.

  Cassandra thought, “I don’t think we’re as welcome as Kal made it seem we would be. What do we do if they try and separate us from him?”

  Much as it chafed to follow Kal’s barked directions—that would be the prudent thing to do. I thought back, “We watch, wait, and listen. If they try to split us up then we make it clear.”

  Cassandra laughed. “Right, so we bluff. We don’t have enough juice to knock all these guys out, Sister. Not to mention what we use up we can’t replace very fast without Kara and James around.”

  She was right, without our human batteries handy we were at a disadvantage but what options did we have at this point? “Just one good hit should do it. Make sure we really put force behind it, way more than with Malcolm. We need to break bones.”

  That settled, we tuned back into the here and now. Light moved around the Axsian who approached us like a wave of color-filled gnats and when our eyes could focus again we were surprised to see a female. The ‘woman’ stood about eight feet tall and her attire was all white with delicate coppery thread decorating the edges. Her long black hair was pulled back from her face in a tight braid that trailed in a tail over one shoulder. Dark alien eyes sat to either side of a proud nose—twin wells offering tar over water. Full lips curled across razor-tipped teeth as she continued to speak in a musical yet chiding tone. The rhythm of her words changed as her last sentence ended with an inquisitive lilt and our guardian’s name.

  Kal’s eyes went unfocused as he stared off into nowhere but he answered the question, albeit in a dead, mechanical way. His expression was set and stubborn.

  At a discreet hand motion from Her Highness, one of the guards flipped a metallic disk at our chest where it stuck with a thunk right on top of our still tender wound. Kal’s voice rang out in protest as his hand was ripped from our shoulder.

  They were too fast.

  The dim world we currently inhabited blurred and pixelated around the edges to be replaced by bright light so intense it almost made us forget to puke again. Then our stomach heaved and though blinded, we strained our senses as we lost more chocolate cake on what sounded like a hard floor.

  Echoes danced around us as if we were in an empty cavern but the stunning illumination was still enveloping our body to the point that our eyelids might as well have been tissue paper. Cassandra covered our eyes with our hands and bowed our head which caused the sloppy bun our dark brown hair was in to flop forward. Our heart raced as she struggled to contain her fear.

  I thought at her, “We’ve been through worse, Sister. It’s just light.”

  My twin spat on the floor to get the bitter bite of partially digested chocolate out of our mouth then split her fingers on our left hand as if playing peek-a-boo when the brightness vanished. One eye cracked open and when our retinas weren’t singed, she withdrew our sweaty palms from our face.

  We were indeed in another cavern but this one was made of pinkish gray granite with a polished surface. The shape of the space in which we stood made Cassandra think of a wheel of cheese, like a compressed circle. For me the shape and color brought to mind the inside of an organ, like a stomach minus the acidic juices.

  Cassandra thought back sourly, “Gee, that’s a pleasant thought. Getting eaten alive is on my top five ways not to bite it list.”

  I laughed out loud and my sister actually jumped. It wasn’t the echo that startled her but the ease with which I’d used our mouth to express mirth. Determination geysered forth as I thought to my sister, “Now more than ever we have to be versed in each other’s specialties. Let’s immerse ourselves in each other’s roles. I’ll teach you how to navigate the Web and access our parents’ memories and you let me pilot our body.”

  Cassandra considered the request. “It’s not just your coordination or lack thereof I’m worried about. We’re not in the best of circumstances here. If a fast physical response is required will you be able to hand over the reins in time?”

  It wasn’t a dig or a finger of blame, but the fact remained, I had prevented Cass from defending us physically from our attacker today. Time was a funny thing, creating distance from unpleasant things, so that grim interlude had a faraway feel, though just mere hours had passed.

  I mulled over her question then shot back, “Okay, let’s practice switching while we wander around this place. By the way, I hope they have facilities in here because it feels like we need to pee, Cass.”

  The skin around our nostrils tightened as my sister wrinkled our nose in distaste.

  “I’m not ‘going’ in here, Silver. What if they’re watching us? Even in our Warp cell they didn’t have a camera in the bathroom. I don’t see anywhere to ‘go’ anyway…not even a hole in the floor.”

  A pulling sensation on the front of our shirt made my sister look down. The metal disk we’d been hit with in the chest was dragging our collar lower with its weight. It was about the size of a poker chip but much thinner with a blue light around the edge. Some sort of clear adhesive stubbornly stuck it to the cotton. When Cassandra tried to pull the disk off a single electric zap zipped through our fingertips, making her yelp and wave the injured hand in the air. Message received—we were not to tamper with our little tag.

  Instead she yanked the soft cotton over our head and threw it on the floor. Our undershirt was plenty of cover and it was warm, muggy even, in this place. If we had to guess, the device was what had enabled us to be teleported into this cavern without anyone touching us. Her Highness and her two flunkies could just come and get us. I agreed with that plan wholeheartedly.

  We steered clear of the dark brown splash of our vomit and looked up in search of the source of light that had been so blindingly bright just moments ago. An oval skylight with vents let fresh air circulate but that wasn’t intense enough to be what we quested for. Our eyes roved on until we hit pay dirt. Tiny mushroom shaped bulbs about the size of golf balls were grouped on either side of the vent. Maybe they’d sanitized us? Conceivably Cassandra and I could be carrying some form of bacteria or virus that they weren’t immune to.

  What dashes of sky we could see looked almost identical to Earth’s blue atmosphere. Faint chirps and squeals came from the area outside making us curious about what kind of wildlife might be the norm on Axsa.

  I thought at my twin, “Let’s jump up and see if we can peek out.”

  Cass turned our head, checking for windows, cameras, or a door but the only aperture appeared to be the one above our head. She slapped damp palms on the thighs of our jeans and answered, “So we jump together? It’s awfully high. You’re talking about ten feet, Silver.”

  I argued, “Not exactly a ten foot jump. If you take into account our own five feet or so with our arms above our head, technically it’s about a four and a half foot leap at most. Are you game or not?”

  My sister stood us up straight and stretched our arms one at a time over our head like we were limbering up before a marathon then crouched. “On three? One, two, three!”

  This time we were paying attention and the surge of energy was concentrated in our
legs but we were so distracted by the sensation we missed the black metal slat of the vent overhead by a fingertip, crashing down to the floor and landing hard on our tailbone. Cass rolled us onto our side with a groan.

  I sent an encouragement. “We were almost there, dude! One more jump and if we don’t make it I promise we can quit trying.”

  First our hands and then our knees met the floor as she propped us up, panting away the pain. To sweeten the pot I promised, “I’ll heal our bruised tailbone while you sleep tonight if you give it one more go!”

  With a grunt and a reluctant push, our body regained its feet. The room swayed a little as our stomach swam again. A hand rubbed our backside as my twin gazed back up at the hole in the ceiling; eyes squinted as she judged the distance.

  She thought back sourly, “Leave our butt alone, Silver. It’s just a bruise and we need to conserve our energy. Last try on three. One, two, three!”

  This time our legs felt like the coiled springs of a black mamba as our knees bent and the muscles in our thighs contracted launching us upward with the energy of our combined will. Our cheek almost smacked into the vent before our fingers got a good grip. The full weight of our body was yanked down by gravity causing our shoulders to burn as we struggled to hang on.

  We weren’t particularly strong physically but what we lacked in muscle we made up for in determination. Cass turned our head to the side as she pulled us up and our vision blurred as it tried to decide whether to focus close up or far away. Some sort of clear barrier was on the other side. Since we could feel a breeze it had to be permeable but as our one eye watched a bug or a leaf fell onto it, burning up in seconds.