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1. Escape 2. Manticores 3. Confused 4. Alone and Hungry 5. Goblin Hunt 6. The Here and Now 7. Death of a Manticore 8. Captured by Harpies 9. Home 10. Shapeshifting Classmates 11. Desperation 12. Delicious Knowledge 13. Prisoner 14. Hidden Memories 15. A Deadly Attack 16. Something in the Air 17. Rounding Up the Troops Epilogue Author’s Note

Chapter 1
Escape

Thomas waited by the south gate of the village with Hal, Abigail, Darcy, and Dewey, facing the forest and expecting their friends to arrive home any moment. Who would be first back? He doubted Lauren would show with a flock of filthy, grey-feathered harpies, but how about Emily with an army of serpentine naga creatures, or Robbie leading a troop of ogres? And had Fenton managed to release the giant Shadow Demon from the temple on Whisper Mountain?

“Look,” Thomas said impatiently, “I think I’ve shown you that I’m normal again, haven’t I?” He fingered the heavy metal collar around his throat. “Let me out of this thing. Come on, Abigail, give me the key.”

Abigail clasped the small object hanging around her neck. Since Blacknail had given it to her, she’d kept it tucked inside the neckline of her dress, but occasionally it came free. Right now she was perched on the short perimeter fence, leaning forward to keep her balance, and the key dangled enticingly. “Sorry, Thomas. That’s something that will have to wait until we’re all together, Miss Simone as well.”

“And you haven’t exactly shown us anything,” Darcy said, flicking her blond hair aside. “You’ve just been kind of tagging along, complaining about your collar.”

“Well, how can I prove myself if you won’t let me out of it?” Thomas snapped.

He was glad the mission was over. The nine of them—Thomas and the group of friends he’d been reunited with a week ago—had found the so-called Shadow Demon to be a giant lizard just like Fenton, trapped in the elfin temple to protect the centaurs’ secret weapon against humanity, a deadly virus that had wiped out much of the old world.

Now, armed soldiers from that virus-stricken world had found their way through portals to an alternate land where the air was safe. What if they brought thousands of survivors with them? Everyone was worried about the impact such an invasion would have on a quiet, peaceful, magical land. The villagers of Carter were on edge.

Thomas found it difficult to care much, though. He had concerns of his own.

He watched as Abigail tucked the key into her dress. He was tempted to make a grab for it. Maybe he would the next time they were all distracted . . .

She stuck close to Hal’s side as she always did. Her dark-brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, and it flicked around and batted Hal in the face every time she turned her head. He blinked absently, but she kept doing it, probably on purpose because he was just the right height for her annoying games.

Dewey was as short as Hal but much quieter, lost in thought most of the time. Whereas everyone seemed to look to Hal for direction, Dewey could easily be forgotten in the crowd.

A suitable distraction came shortly after. Eight panting goblins, their armor clanking, hurried along the dusty path that circled the village just inside the fence. Hal had to jump aside to avoid being whacked on the shin by the jutting end of a short, stubby sword.

“What’s going on?” Darcy called after them.

But the goblins were gone, a cloud of dust rising in their wake. Moments later, a couple of mean-looking farmers wielding pitchforks sprinted along the trail. Thomas and the others pressed themselves against the fence as the men shot past.

Something was happening.

“Let’s go,” Abigail said, sprouting insectoid wings through the back of her silky dress. They were three-and-a-half feet long, translucent and delicate. She rose into the air and buzzed after the goblins and farmers.

Thomas trotted after Hal, Darcy, and Dewey to the village’s main gate, where a crowd had gathered. The goblins had taken up a defensive stance and were watching a procession that marched toward them.

Soldiers.

They came into view over the rise, trudging along the dusty road that cut through the forest. Thomas counted close to thirty of them, all wearing yellow biosuits and carrying weapons. Some of them pushed two small four-wheeled carts piled high with equipment and supplies.

Villagers exclaimed and argued, but Thomas tuned them out. Abigail’s key had come loose again. It hung there around her neck, ready to grab.

As Hal and the others wondered aloud about where the soldiers had come from, Thomas inched toward Abigail, nodding and agreeing with whatever they were saying. Just then, Miss Simone arrived on the scene, and everyone turned to watch her.

He made a grab for the key and yanked it loose.

“Thomas, no—” Abigail gasped, jerking toward him.

But Thomas was already running, not looking back. He heard his friends yelling and knew they’d be right behind him, so he fumbled with the key in the collar’s lock, trying to make it fit while he sprinted for the woods. He heard a noisy buzz behind him and knew Abigail had grown her faerie wings. A normal-sized, six-inch-tall faerie wouldn’t be a problem, but she hardly ever bothered shrinking down, which meant she could clobber him if she got close. She was tougher than she looked.

His fingers got the key to turn. The latch clicked open, and he threw the collar down just as Abigail appeared alongside and made a grab for his wrist.

Thomas transformed, and she let out a squeal as he flung his segmented scorpionlike tail toward her, knocking her sideways. A second later, he leapt into the safety of the woods, his powerful red-furred feline legs springing him easily over small shrubs and around bushes and trees. With a triumphant manticore yell that came out as a half-roar, he plunged deep into the undergrowth.

He was free!

* * *

Thomas ran for at least ten minutes before slowing to a stop and looking around. It felt great to be among the trees once more, better still that this was his world, the one he’d grown used to and not that dismal, fog-filled island.

He traveled deeper, enjoying the feel of ferns as he pushed through, the soft earth beneath his paws, the scratchy low-hanging branches on his back, even the thorny briars and brambles that humans would balk at. The forest smelled fresh and sweet. He was done with the village. This was where he belonged.

He drank from an ice-cold stream and sat awhile, breathing in the air and listening to the breeze in the treetops. Then he resumed his exploration, padding softly, curious to see how far the forest stretched.

The afternoon wore on, and the sky darkened. He guessed the invading soldiers had established themselves in the village by now, welcome or otherwise. Though he wondered what the other shapeshifters were doing right now, he didn’t dwell on it too much. The only one he felt he had a connection with was Fenton, who was miles away. And perhaps Darcy. She was nice, always sweet. She always had been, even years ago when they’d all lived on the island.

As night fell, Thomas grew hungry. He’d only eaten a few apples recently. He really needed something more substantial like a boar, or a deer . . .

But all that could wait until the morning. Right now he was tired, eager to enjoy a good night’s sleep curled up under a tree. The return journey from Whisper Mountain had taken its toll, and it didn’t take him long to drop off.

* * *

He woke early before the sun was up. His stomach growled, and he again faced the prospect of hunting. Why was this such a burden to him? He’d led a sheltered life thanks to Loneclaw, and now he wished he’d paid more attention to the old manticore’s advice and learned to hunt properly a long time ago.

During his pre-dawn travels, he kept circling back the way he’d come, ending up near the edge of the woods where the village of Carter sprawled farther down the hill. He grimaced, wishing he could admit to himself that he was reluctant to leave his fellow humans behind. Maybe he could live right here on the outskirts and visit his friends from time to time . . .

He heard voices and ducked, then hurried away, not wanting to know who it was. If they were humans, then he had no business being with them. He was a manticore!

But he soon halted and sighed. Who am I kidding? I can’t stand not knowing.

He crept closer to find out.

Two dozen tall figures moved about, their top halves human, swaying from side to side as they slid through the bushes on their thick, snakelike lower bodies. Naga! They were bad news, especially with their bows and arrows. They crowded around what looked like four sleeping figures right at the edge of the woods. Thomas strained to see and eventually recognized them as Miss Simone, Darcy, Hal, and Abigail.

Though puzzling, he figured the naga weren’t a threat. Miss Simone had been warning of invading soldiers for the past few days, hence why Blacknail had insisted on gathering forces on the return journey from Whisper Mountain. Emily had set off on a detour to gather a small army of naga, and this must be it.

More puzzling was the fact that his friends were sleeping among the trees. Had the soldiers evicted them from the village? Or were his friends simply doing a bit of spying? Up on the hill beyond the trees was a campsite that hadn’t been there yesterday. It was probably where the soldiers had set up base.

Thomas felt mildly disappointed that his friends already seemed to have forgotten about him. Admittedly, the invasion was far more of a concern to everyone than a runaway manticore shapeshifter, but still . . .

Hal chose that moment to wake. He didn’t seem too flustered at the sight of so many naga archers staring down at him. He got up and weaved between them, and they did nothing to stop him.

Thomas relaxed. Definitely allies, then. And if the naga were here, perhaps Robbie would show up with the ogres eventually, too. The soldier situation would soon be under control.

He ducked low when Hal approached and stopped just the other side of the bushes. After a pause, Thomas concluded that his sleepy, unwitting friend was relieving himself there. Seconds later, footsteps crunched away on dry leaves, heading back to where the naga waited.

Thomas peered through the delicate, leafy branches to spy on the group. Miss Simone woke just then, and soft voices could be heard. One of the naga snapped, “Del sarau helukah,” waking Darcy and Abigail.

Whatever they were discussing or bickering about, everything seemed under control. Thomas slipped away, not wanting to push his luck and be spotted.

A moment later, he stopped dead as half a dozen red-furred manticores eased out from behind the trees and brambles ahead, their segmented scorpion tails raised high, balls of poison-tipped quills bristling.

Chapter 2
Manticores

Thomas swallowed, wondering what kind of excuse was appropriate after having wandered into another manticore’s territory. He tried to remember what Loneclaw had told him about this, but his memory was fuzzy. Besides, that old manticore had been far more lenient than most, having led a free, serene life on his own away from what he called the exhaustively competitive nature of a pride.

Thomas was certain of one thing: He did not want this small but fearsome pride of vicious beasts sniffing out the group of humans and naga who loitered a short distance behind him. Even though the group hid at the very edge of the forest, with the open fields a short leap away from the enchantment that confined manticores to the trees, the pride still might be fast and silent enough to snatch a victim or two. Thomas literally stood between the predators and their prey.

A small voice in his head whispered that it would be very easy to lure his friends deeper into the woods and make their escape much harder. He could trick them, gesture urgently, say their names so they knew it was him. “Quick,” he could say, “I have something to show you!” If he brought them straight into an ambush, these manticores would surely grant him a pardon for his trespassing, maybe even invite him into their family . . .

No way, he snarled inwardly. I’m not a monster.

The manticores glared at him. A slender female grunted something and moved forward, threading silently through the undergrowth until she stood within striking distance of Thomas. He’d seen very few manticores in his life, and never a female, so she fascinated him with the absence of the shaggy mane common with males. Her eyes were bigger, her face longer, but otherwise she was as big and brutal as the rest of them. Behind her stood four males and another female.

He held his ground, terrified but knowing that to turn and flee would mean his certain death—for him and his friends. But maybe the pride hadn’t seen them yet. Maybe he could distract these deadly hunters, turn them around so that—

“They’re ours,” the manticoress said softly, looking him up and down.

Thomas blinked stupidly. “Huh?”

She nodded over his shoulder. “Those four humans. They’re ours just as soon as the naga move along.”

Thomas felt his insides shrivel up. “They’re by the edge of the woods,” he said, unsure where he was going with this but certain he had to say something rather than stand there looking dumb. “I checked. They’ll be well outside the trees before you get close enough to attack. You won’t get all of them.”

The manticoress stared at him impassively, then raised her paw and began licking at it while she considered. “And I suppose,” she said between flicks of her long tongue, “you have a suggestion as to how we may fill our stomachs this fine morning?”

Thomas nodded, though he had no suggestions at all. He remained silent, his mind buzzing. Maybe his friends would hear the manticores and run away. Maybe the naga would glance over and spot the red fur in the shadowed darkness of the forest. It was doubtful, though. Briars and twisted vines shielded the pride from view, and this manticoress knew it.

“Fine,” she said. “You tell us your foolproof plan, and then maybe we’ll allow you to eat with us—even though you’re in our territory.” She glanced back at the others as if expecting a complaint. None came, so she returned her gaze to Thomas. “Where are you from?”

“My grandfather died.” Loneclaw hadn’t been his actual grandfather, but Thomas had called him that sometimes. “I decided it was time to move on.”

“Oh, you’re a traveler,” she scoffed. “And how is that working out? Very few of our kind stray from their birthplace. Do you find yourself unable to walk in a straight line? Keep circling around to where you started?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Thomas said with a surge of defiance. “This isn’t even my forest. I came from another.”

She frowned. “Another forest? You simply walked from one to another? We all know that’s impossible. You’re lying.”

Despite the challenge, she sounded intrigued, perhaps even impressed. Thomas latched onto that. “Have you ever seen me in your forest before? Where do you think I came from? I didn’t spring from nowhere.”

The manticoress feigned disinterest by yawning, displaying three rows of white, needlelike teeth. When she was finished with her display of nonchalance, she glared at Thomas with her cold, blue eyes. “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“Your name?”

“Thomas.”

She tilted her head. “Thomas, as in ‘twin’?”

Manticores had a thing about names and their meanings. He shrugged.

“Well, Thomas, my name is Soul.”

For a moment, her wide, toothy smile made him think she was someone he could grow to like. Though young, she had to be old enough to command the respect of the pride, which stood at a respectful distance behind her.

“How did you come to be here, Thomas?” she purred.

“It’s a long story,” he said, his mind racing. Since he had no other ideas, launching into the story of his life might be a good way to distract these manticores from the group at the edge of the forest. Then again, his story would sound like nonsense. She might grow irritated, call him a liar, and tear into him.

Soul sat unmoving as he pondered. “I’m in no hurry. And unless the naga go away and those humans come closer, I don’t expect we’ll be able to bring them down. So I suggest we wait right here, quietly, while you tell us your story.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the naga or his friends at the moment, but he knew they were there, hidden among the trees. The simplest solution would be to bolt toward them and shout a warning, and then they’d skedaddle into open land where everyone knew the manticores couldn’t follow.

But then Thomas would have lost the trust of the pride as well as his friends. His freedom would be over. He’d have nowhere to go.

Would saving his friends earn their trust? Probably. Only it would be far easier to side with the manticores, that small voice in his head told him. Do you really need your old classmates? You went all the way to Whisper Mountain with them, and they were annoying most of the time, talking too loudly and—

“What’s that?” Soul asked.

Startled, Thomas feared she’d heard the voice in his head. “What’s what?”

Soul was frowning as she eased closer. “When you turned just now, I spotted something around your neck. Something green, like material. Is it a snare? Did the humans capture you?”

She sounded so indignant that Thomas imagined he could throw himself at her feet and conjure a sob story about how they’d mistreated him for weeks. She’d sympathize with him, tell him it was all right, and turn her fury toward the human and naga . . .

“It wasn’t like that,” he said with a sigh. “And anyway, you don’t want to mess with them.”

“The naga?”

Thomas shook his head. “The humans. They’re not normal. I should know, because . . . because I’m one of them.”

Soul stared at him in silence. Over her shoulder, the five other manticores tensed and rose to their feet.

“Explain yourself,” Soul murmured.

Thomas had dug himself a hole, but an idea was forming. If he could convince Soul that the naga, humans, and others of this world were rallying together to fight a greater threat, one that might endanger even the manticores of the forest, and that Thomas had come to them for help . . . then maybe, maybe, she would leave his friends alone.

First, though, he’d have to prove he was a shapeshifter. His story would be much easier to accept then.

He took a deep breath. “Stand clear,” he said rather unnecessarily.

He shifted to his human form, aware that the silky band of material buried in his shaggy mane quickly and fluidly altered to become clothes, shaping themselves around his puny two-legged frame until he stood before the pride as a fully-dressed human boy.

Soul leapt away in shock, and the others behind her jerked and snarled.

Thomas raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Before you do anything, just listen a minute. I’m a shapeshifter, and so are those humans by the edge of the forest. One’s a dragon. If we attack them, they won’t just run away. They’ll hit back. And that dragon will burn us alive.”

Breathing hard as she crouched before him ready to pounce, Soul gave him a cold glare and licked her black lips. After a while, she relaxed and returned to her regal sitting position, licking at her paw while she continued to stare at him.

Thomas took her inaction as a good sign. “I don’t care about them at all, but I do care about me. And you. Attacking them would be crazy.”

“So you would simply let them go? The naga, too?”

“They’re all working together,” Thomas explained. “Something is happening. There are people coming from another place, soldiers with weapons. They’re dangerous. The shapeshifters and the naga are spying on them right now. We should leave them alone. If we mess up their plans to stop the invasion, then the soldiers will kill us all.”

“Why?” Soul asked.

“Because that’s what they do.” Actually, Thomas knew no such thing, but it added weight to his argument. “They have weapons powerful enough to burn this entire forest if they thought there was a reason to—and a lot of dangerous manticores would give them plenty of reason. It’s best to let the shapeshifters deal with them right now. They have a plan. We’ll all be better off without those visitors around.”

“A common enemy,” Soul said softly. “We should join forces with the naga and humans because we share a common enemy. Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“I am,” he said, trying to keep his voice from trembling.

Soul got up and came closer, circling him, sniffing at him as he stood there on his two human legs. She seemed huge all of a sudden, arching her back high. “And what about you, Thomas? You’re clearly what you say you are—a shapeshifter—but where does your allegiance lie? Are you one of us? Or one of them?”

“I’m . . .” Thomas started to say, but trailed off when he realized he wasn’t sure. Soul continued to circle him, glaring the whole time. “I’m . . . both.”

To prove his point, he shifted into his manticore form. He hardly noticed his clothing rearranging itself as a single band around his neck.

“Yet you want us to accept you into our pride?” Soul murmured, looking him up and down with distaste.

“No. I never asked for that in the first place.” Thomas felt annoyance bubbling up. “I just want you to leave the naga and humans alone, and maybe help out if the time comes. That is, if you’re not too busy!”

If he were still in human form, he’d have clapped a hand over his mouth after his sudden outburst.

“My, you’re feisty for one so young,” Soul said with a chuckle. “All right, Thomas, why don’t you tell us how someone such as yourself came about?” Her menacing tail waved slowly in the air. “How about this: If you can keep my interest for more than five minutes, I’ll help your human friends in battle should the need arise.”

As the rest of the pride edged closer and began to settle themselves in a semicircle around Thomas, he knew his story would definitely keep them interested. Manticores always liked a good yarn, and this was a doozy.

He took a deep breath. “I was born human. When I was six, I turned into a manticore and had no clue how it happened. One minute I was chasing a groundhog through the woods outside my home, and the next—well, I woke up in a puddle . . .”

Chapter 3
Confused

Six-year-old Thomas jerked awake, coughing and spluttering. He lifted his head and promptly heaved up a torrent of salty water, then shuddered and gasped, exhausted.

Gripping squelchy earth between his fingers, he shakily pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and shook his head from side to side. Droplets flew off in all directions. As his vision cleared, he realized he was kneeling half in and half out of a muddy puddle just a few yards wide, surrounded by dense woods.

With mounting horror, he stared down at his bare arms and hands, which were covered in red fur. His shirtless forearms were thick and strong, and when he lifted one hand free of the mud, he saw it was catlike—no, not a cat but a lion.

As the murky water stilled, he saw a hideous reflection. He was indeed some kind of lion, with a shaggy mane of deep-red hair, except his features were still curiously human.

This was impossible! How had this happened? He remembered chasing a groundhog through the undergrowth, and then . . . and then . . .

And then what?

He craned his neck to peer nervously at the rest of his body. He had four powerful legs and a tail—

He wrenched his gaze away. Don’t look at the tail, don’t look at the tail.

Staring instead at his lionlike reflection in the cloudy pool, he tried to calm his thudding heart and jangled nerves. He must have tripped and fallen, banging his head and lying there as water seeped into his mouth. He’d nearly drowned! The rest—turning into some kind of lion monster with a hideous tail—was all just a horrible nightmare.

His attention was drawn to something else toward the center of the puddle, deep down in its depths, an eerie darkness that seemed to pulse rhythmically while oily-black tendrils leaked outward from the edges. Fascinated, he peered closer and closer, remaining as still as possible so the ripples would smooth out and reveal more.

Then a face appeared in that blackness, staring up at him, a woman with flowing blond hair that snaked about in slow motion.

With a yell, he scrambled backward on his four feet, almost expecting someone to shoot up out of the shallow puddle but knowing that couldn’t be possible, not unless it was some kind of pit at least six feet deep.

Only then did he realize he wasn’t alone. He spun around.

Aside from the mysterious woman in the puddle, three sturdy, humanlike but ugly creatures stood there staring at him. They looked like short people with pig faces. He gaped, taking in their gnarled features, beady eyes, deep frowns, jutting teeth, and oddly misshapen, floppy ears. They wore heavy chain mail vests over dirty, grey shirts and dark-brown pants. Their filthy boots were battered and full of holes. Two of the creatures had short swords tucked into their thick belts. The third held an axe.

At that moment, the woman in the puddle emerged with a splash and flung her shoulder-length hair back over her head. Green silk covered her shoulders as she looked around and focused on Thomas. She had vivid gashes across her face, and they leaked blood. She lifted a hand to touch her swollen cheek and winced. But she seemed distracted, again fixing Thomas with another stare, her eyebrows arched.

Her piercing blue eyes broke him from his paralysis. Breathing hard, Thomas stumbled away, looking from the woman to the three stout creatures.

“Don’t be afraid,” the blond-haired woman called to him, starting to climb out of the puddle. Though her green, silky dress was dripping wet, it seemed that her hair was already drying—yet another clue that all this was nothing but a bizarre dream. Her face, still bloody, looked a little less puffy than before, the gashes somehow fainter.

Thomas reversed deeper into the bushes, seeing that he had been on a narrow dirt path that actually ended at the puddle as though it were a revered place of interest in the middle of the woods. The three unmoving, impassive creatures blocked his way, but that didn’t matter—Thomas was quite ready to lose himself among the trees.

He turned to run, and the moment he did so, the woman snapped a command: “Grab him! Don’t let him get away!”

Thomas heard one of the creatures say, “Ma’am? We need nets. There’s no way . . .” But he heard no more because he was already tearing off between the trees in his new, nightmarish body.

Though terrified and confused, just for a moment he felt a thrill of excitement as he ran. This giant, four-legged, catlike body was fast. He dashed this way and that, stumbling a few times as he lost his balance or took a turn too fast.

He quickly realized his tail was just too big and heavy. It either swung around from side to side or kept whacking the ground. If he could only leave it behind! It felt alien to him, something that shouldn’t be there, stuck on as an afterthought. It was segmented much like a scorpion’s only way longer, much more flexible, a bit like a serpent with armor plating. The huge stinger on the end was surrounded by long, sharp quills. He snatched glances over his shoulder as he ran, watching how his tail reared up like a snake about to strike. It had a mind of its own, and it scared him more than anything else. No matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t escape it.

The woods weren’t familiar to him at all. Then again, Black Woods sprawled for miles, and he’d only explored a small part of them by the cliff—without his parents’ knowledge, of course. Where was he? Where was his house? Where was his mom?

And where was the fog?

He skidded to a halt, sucking in a startled breath. Astonished, he looked all around, sure he must be mistaken. He saw no sign of the fog at all. Not only that, rays of sunshine filtered through the trees above, casting pools of bright yellow light on the grassy patch in front of him and flecks of gold on the stiff, prickly bushes all around. The air smelled sweet, and as he slowly inhaled, it made him feel a little giddy.

He became aware of flying bugs, too. Not just the tiny gnats and mosquitoes he was used to; these were much larger, at least five or six times the size, buzzing noisily with a low drone. He spotted a butterfly on a leafy branch just above his head. It spread its wings and fluttered down to land on the mass of long, shaggy hair covering his shoulder. Then it fluttered again, moving down onto his broad, red-furred, muscular back. There the butterfly stuck him with a long, thin, needlelike nose.

Thomas gaped. Was it a butterfly or a mosquito?

He started to feel a stinging sensation a few seconds later, and he tried to swat the thing away with a forepaw but couldn't quite reach. Annoyed, he swept his tail around and squished the butterfly flat, almost jabbing himself with some of his own quills. He lifted the spiky ball high, and the red-and-black needles quivered almost indignantly. Protruding from the middle of them, the shiny scorpionlike stinger oozed a drop of yellow goo, and Thomas stared in morbid fascination, somehow understanding it was deadly poison.

Hearing voices nearby, he jerked around in fear. The gruff, stout creatures were on his trail. Occasionally, the blond-haired woman called out, her voice carrying easily through the trees. “Please come back! I can help you! Don’t be frightened!”

Thomas scowled. Frightened? Him? He could tear her apart if he wanted to. Those ugly people, too. They weren’t a match for his claws, his poison-tipped tail, and his strong jaws full of razor-sharp teeth. He could pounce on them, bring them down, rip their throats out, and—

Blinking, Thomas shook his head. What was wrong with him?

Suddenly frustrated, he bellowed as loud as he could, “I want to wake up now!”

Instead of the roar of a lion as he’d expected, his words came out thin and reedy, definitely human. He was strangely disappointed. Was he a lion or not? The hideous tail said otherwise, and so did his twice-glimpsed reflection in the water. It didn’t seem fair that he had the body and claws of a lion but the voice of a six-year-old boy.

He ran again. His pursuers were getting too close. He could hear them crashing around, muttering and cursing as the woman continued calling for him. One of the creatures shouted, “Ma’am, we ain’t gonna catch him if he don’t wanna be caught!”

She retorted angrily, but Thomas didn’t catch her words. He was too busy scampering through the undergrowth now, staying low, loving the feel of the bushes scraping against his sides. He didn’t like the clearings so much. The sky was wide open above. As blue and clear as it was—something he’d never experienced before—he preferred to glimpse it in snatches through the canopy of branches. He would have been happy with the smothering fog, too, but that was strangely absent now.

Where was he?

No matter how far he searched, nothing looked familiar. He might have gotten turned around. Maybe he was heading farther away from home. If he could only find the familiar cliff edge, then he could get his bearings.

Something caught his eye, and he stopped. He stared suspiciously at the trunk of a tree, sure he’d seen something moving there. He waited and waited, absolutely still, drawing on oodles of patience he never knew he had. Barely breathing, fixated on the tree, he silently dared whatever it was to make its move . . .

When it did, Thomas let out a gasp of surprise. The thing had been there all along, the shape and size of a man or woman, standing perfectly still in front of the tree. When it moved, it was like part of the trunk shifted sideways. Thomas saw faint movement among the bushes, a blur or shimmer as though something partially invisible was passing in front of them. Then it was gone.

It was a while before Thomas let out a slow breath. This dream of his—this nightmarish vision—seemed to be getting weirder and weirder. As if wearing a new body with a rampant tail wasn’t enough, he’d seen piglike people with swords, a woman whose blond hair dried the moment she climbed out of the water, a bloodsucking butterfly, and now an invisible person moving among the trees. Oh, and a complete absence of fog, something Thomas knew was crazy.

At least he wasn’t quite so scared. It was, after all, just a dream. He’d wake up soon, though he had no idea where. He hadn’t heard his mom call at all, but did that matter? If he was indeed dreaming, the house he lived in might not even exist in this fanciful world. To return home, he’d first need to wake up.

He waited.

And waited.

Sitting there in the peace and quiet, watching enormous bugs flitting by, he started to get the gnawing feeling this wasn’t a dream after all.

Chapter 4
Alone and Hungry

Thomas refused to move for hours. He lay low, listening to the breeze in the trees, the buzzing of oversized insects, and his own pitiful sniffling. He glimpsed that strange figure again, the one that blended in so well with the scenery. A screech caused him to glance up through the canopy of branches and stare in amazement as an enormous bird flew by, so impossibly huge he cowered lower and closed his eyes until it was gone.

At one point, he held his breath when he heard a slithering, rustling sound not too far away. Absolutely still, he watched two upright shapes with straggly hair ease through the undergrowth. He could only see their heads and shoulders, but they looked like a man and woman with scaly skin. Draped in raggedy brown material that also looked scaly, they carried bows and seemed to slide rather than walk. The woman spoke in an unintelligible language, her voice low and whispery. The man grunted a reply, then brought up his bow and shot off an arrow with lightning speed.

The arrow made a thwipp sound and thudded into something unseen that let out a shriek, some kind of large rodent. Perhaps the groundhog Thomas had chased earlier!

With a burst of speed, the hunters dashed through the bushes and snatched up their prey—but Thomas was no longer interested in the furry creature they’d killed. He stared open-mouthed at their thick, scaly, snakelike lower halves.

“I want to go home,” Thomas moaned softly, closing his eyes again. When he opened them minutes later, the half-snake people were gone.

His hunger increased as the afternoon wore on and daylight faded. Not wanting to face a night in these horrible woods, he climbed to his feet and stretched. His mom wasn’t coming for him. The blond-haired woman and those ugly pig-people had given up the chase. Maybe he should have let them catch him after all. Maybe they would have fed him!

Yet something in his gut told him the woman was bad news. He couldn’t figure out why, but he felt she was the cause of this horrible nightmare.

He had to seek help. This strange place wasn’t the island he’d grown up on, but if he could just find a row of houses, he could knock on a door and—

And what? Scare the occupants to death? He was a talking lion with a boy’s face and a weird tail! But what choice did have?

He walked and walked, and the woods grew darker. He began to worry he was so hopelessly lost that he was miles from anywhere, and he couldn’t help thinking about the two snake-people he’d seen earlier. They had to live close by, and he didn’t want to run across them again.

To his delight, he spotted the edge of the woods ahead. It was a little brighter there. Perhaps he’d end up on a road, and then he could choose a direction and walk until he found help. He might even recognize where he was.

As he approached the final line of trees that signified freedom from the dark, tangled woods, a sickening feeling came over him. The closer he got, the more the nausea took hold. He stopped twenty feet away, willing himself onward but finding that his feet disobeyed him.

Confused, he searched the open space beyond the trees. He could see a huge, black lake reflecting the moonlight, and tall mountains in the distance. He and his friends had been all over the island, but they’d never been here. Where was he?

He desperately wanted to leave the woods and investigate, but the nausea held him in check. He forced a step, gagged with revulsion, and stumbled to a safe distance.

Retreating seemed to help. As he hurried away, the nausea miraculously passed. He felt fine again less than a minute later, and he stopped and turned to gaze toward the moonlight shining off the lake outside the woods. Whatever had overcome him had to be something to do with the trees or bushes, maybe something in the air. He just needed to circle around and find another way out.

He tried it, taking a wide, arcing route. When he saw the edge of the woods ahead, he hurried toward it, eager to . . . to . . .

He faltered as another queasy feeling swept over him. Sinking low, he breathed deeply and waited for the dizziness to fade. It didn’t, and in the end he turned and crawled back to the woods. As before, the awful sensation faded the farther in he went.

Defeated, he sat awhile in the darkness. “What the heck?” he muttered over and over. “Why can’t I just walk out of the woods?”

Because this forest is magical, an inner voice told him. It’s going to keep you here forever. You’re not going anywhere.

He hunkered down, shivering not from cold but fear. Hungry and confused, Thomas wondered what his mom and dad were doing right now. They had to be looking for him, probably walking through the trees yelling his name . . .

Thomas sobbed quietly.

* * *

He woke and gasped. It was the middle of the night. The woods should be pitch-black by now, only he could see quite well, his vision somehow enhanced. Nearby objects seemed unusually bright as though he were shining a flashlight on them.

His stomach growling angrily, he stood and decided to try leaving the woods again. There might be nothing of help around the banks of the lake, but it sure would be nice to be out in the open air. Maybe he’d see houses somewhere. He wouldn’t know until he made it to the lake’s edge. This time he’d take a run at it. He wouldn’t stop even if it made him really ill.

With a plan in mind, Thomas steeled himself and broke into a sprint, weaving around gnarled trunks and tangled brambles with his target ahead. He saw the welcoming glimmer of light on the water as he dashed toward the final line of trees. Nausea swept over him again, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving even though a terrible, inexplicable fear chilled him to the bone.

He burst out of the woods and onto a gentle slope of long grass. The water’s edge was a short sprint away. Above, the black sky was clear, the stars and moon dazzling—

That was all he had time to see. He let out a strangled cry, then turned and dashed to the safety of the trees, whimpering as he went. He ran and ran, the bushes suddenly comforting on his hide as he scraped by them, the trees big and welcoming like a family of gentle guardians reaching down with long, twisted fingers. The deeper he went, the safer he felt. No longer did he feel afraid of being stuck in the woods at night. Now he longed to be here, and when he threw himself down, he lay there panting and thinking about how relieved he was to be home.

Only this isn’t home, he thought, puzzled. I don’t live here. There’s nothing but trees! I live in a house like normal people!

He wondered what his friends would say in the morning when they found he’d gone missing. Would they come looking? “Of course they will,” he said aloud. “They’ll search and search until they find me. I’ll be home by lunchtime. All I need to do is get through one night in the woods on my own. I can do it. I’m not scared anymore.”

To his surprise, he found that to be true. He sat there looking around, scanning the curiously illuminated branches nearby. As bizarre as everything seemed, he knew his new catlike body was supposed to live here. He could protect himself, too. He had night vision, curved claws, sharp teeth, and a vicious tail. Nobody would come near him. He was safe. He just had to get some sleep and figure things out in the morning.

He settled down again, wishing his belly wasn’t so empty.

* * *

When Thomas next woke, it was to warm sunlight on his face and paws.

He blinked and yawned, pushing himself up. Seeing his paws, he felt a crushing disappointment. I’m still a lion with red fur.

Whatever had happened to him was still happening. He’d hoped and half expected to wake in his own bed, a bump on his head and Abigail’s mom, Dr. Porter, standing over him with a reassuring smile on her face. But the nightmare continued. He was still here in the woods, staring down at the clawed paws of a monstrous cat and not the feet of a six-year-old boy.

His stomach rumbled noisily, and he winced, ravenous now.

“Eggs, please,” he mumbled. “With some of Mrs. O’Tanner’s fresh bread.”

He spoke without expecting an answer. He jumped almost out of his skin when someone nearby replied in a deep voice, “What did you say?”

Crying out and spinning around, he found himself face to face with someone just like himself: a massive, red-furred lion-monster with a half-human face framed by masses of long, shaggy hair.

Gasping and backing up, he shot glances left and right, wondering if he could run for it.

The beast—much bigger than Thomas, his face deeply lined, and his forelegs thick and muscular with claws twice as big—sat calmly ten feet away. His tail swung lazily into view, arching high over his head. Thankfully, the quills remained flattened, partially covering the stinger. “Where did you come from, youngster?” he rumbled.

Thomas stuttered and stammered his reply. “I—I don’t—I don’t—” He took a breath and swallowed, then tried again. “W-where am I? What—what happened? Why are you—I mean, you’re just like me, only—How did I get—?”

The newcomer tilted his head. “Calm yourself. I am Loneclaw, a loner by nature and by name. And you are?”

“T-Thomas.”

“Thomas? As in ‘twin’?”

“What? I don’t know.”

“Well, do you have a twin or not?”

Thomas shook his head.

The huge cat-beast frowned. “This is my territory you’ve wandered into. Where are you from, little one?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas moaned.

Loneclaw’s frown lifted. “You’re lost. What are your parents called?”

When Thomas offered the first names of his mom and dad, Loneclaw shook his head to indicate he didn’t recognize them.

Thomas tried again. “What about Patten? That’s our last name.”

“You have two names?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

The two stared at each other. Though Loneclaw was an absolute monster that no ordinary person would have a chance against in a fight, somehow Thomas felt some of his fear ebb away. Whatever this creature was—whatever Thomas was now—they were the same.

“What . . .” Thomas said tentatively. He swallowed. “What are you? What are we?”

If Loneclaw had looked a little confused before, now he was bewildered. “I don’t understand your question. We are hunters. We are guardians of the woods. We are free.” He paused, then added, “We are whatever we want to be.”

“Yes, but . . . what are we?”

Loneclaw still looked mystified.

Hearing a flutter of wings, Thomas pointed into the trees. “That’s a bird. There are furry things called groundhogs. Outside the woods, there are people. But what are we? What are we called? Are we lions? Tigers?”

He shifted uncomfortably as Loneclaw stared for a long time, his blue eyes unblinking, his segmented tail slowly curling and uncurling.

“We are manticores,” he said at last. “Is that what you mean? You wish to know the name of our species? But how could you not know that already?”

Manticores.

As Thomas allowed the unfamiliar word to roll around in his mind, Loneclaw stiffened suddenly, glancing over his shoulder. The bushes were rustling, twigs cracking, and soft voices floated through the woods.

“Three goblins,” Loneclaw rumbled, his nose wrinkling with obvious distaste. He sniffed sharply. “And a human. Are you hungry, young Thomas?”

Chapter 5
Goblin Hunt

Thomas huddled in the bushes alongside the much larger Loneclaw, watching intently as distant figures moved among the trees. When they came into sight—three stout goblins and one tall, slender woman—Thomas felt his heart racing.

He steeled himself and broke the silence. “Why did you ask me if I was hungry?” he whispered, dreading the answer.

The manticore remained still, speaking from the side of his mouth, his gaze fixed intently on the approaching group. “I sense you don’t like the taste of goblins either. I’ve never met a manticore who does. But the human is another matter. Would you like to do the honors, or shall I?”

Thomas began shaking. “I—I don’t want—I mean, I’m not hungry.” Seeing that the blond-haired woman had paused and lifted her face to look around the woods, he ducked and reached for Loneclaw’s muscular shoulder. “Please don’t kill her.”

Loneclaw’s gaze broke, and he turned to frown at Thomas. It was a while before he spoke. “I think I understand. You’ve never hunted before. Is that it? You’ve led a sheltered life. How old are you?”

“Six.”

“My first kill was at age four,” the manticore went on. “It’s time, youngster. They’re walking straight toward us. I’ll circle around behind and cut them off if they try to flee. Be ready. It looks like the goblins have their swords drawn and a large net at the ready, but we’ll show them, won’t we, Thomas?”

“No, I’d rather—”

But it was too late. Loneclaw had already turned and slipped away, surprisingly quiet for one so large. Thomas spotted his stinger rising among the bushes, but then the manticore was gone.

He turned his attention to the foursome, who were now close enough for Thomas to read the expressions on their faces. They paused, and the anxious blond woman scanned the trees off to one side while the ugly goblins waited impatiently, looking off in different directions with heavy scowls. The woman waved them ahead and followed a few paces behind, her gaze now scouring the woods on her other side.

Thomas studied her closely. Who was this woman? The memory of waking in that pool of water had already become a little confused, his recollection now consisting of certain vivid images like snapshots in his mom’s photo album. All he knew about this stranger was that she’d been there when he’d woken. The woman, with her weird green dress and cloak, must know something about him . . . but as he watched her, a feeling of anger and dread rose in the pit of his stomach. He knew she was responsible for the gap in his memory, for everything that was happening to him. He just didn’t know why.

He spotted Loneclaw’s segmented tail rising high as the manticore made a dash between the trees beyond the approaching group. Even Thomas heard the sudden noise he made, but everything was quiet by the time the woman and goblins spun around. They stood awhile, watching and listening.

Thomas realized he now had the perfect opportunity to leap out and pounce on them. He could feel the muscles tightening in his legs as though his body was reacting to an innate hunting instinct. But he resisted, struck by the horrifying notion of causing harm, even to this woman.

He sank low and buried his face in the dirt. Had Loneclaw really expected him to make his first kill? What was he supposed to do? Claw her to death? Sting her with his nasty scorpion tail? Not a chance! He wasn’t an animal. He was just a six-year-old boy in the wrong body. There was no way he’d sting this woman. Not now, not ever.

He lay perfectly still for a long time, listening to rustling bushes and murmured voices. He heard a goblin grumble, “Simone, we ain’t gonna find a manticore what doesn’t wanna be found,” and she retorted something that he couldn’t catch. The sounds slowly faded, but he waited until they were gone before lifting his head and peering out from his hiding place.

They’d moved on. The woman and her goblins were nowhere to be seen.

Loneclaw raised his head from a distant bush and stared across the woods at Thomas, silent and contemplating. Then he shook himself and weaved between the trees, padding softly.

“What happened?” he said when he arrived at Thomas’s hiding place. “They were so close. You could have pounced.”

“I . . . I didn’t want to,” Thomas said.

“Are you not hungry?” Loneclaw demanded, his voice sharp.

“Yes, but I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“So you expect others to kill for you? That, youngster, is a sign of considerable weakness.” Loneclaw raised his voice and drew himself up. “Are you a manticore or a sniveling cub?”

“I’m only six!” Thomas cried, tears welling up. “I just want to go home! I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not a real manticore, just a—”

“Enough!” Loneclaw snapped. His tail arched over his back, its quills bristling. Despite his obvious anger, the manticore’s piercing blue-eyed glare was directed over Thomas’s shoulder at something else. “Quiet. Perhaps a meal will present itself after all.”

Thomas turned to see a pig. Not a piglike goblin, but a real, brown-furred hog with curved tusks shuffling through the undergrowth.

Loneclaw eased forward, sliding past Thomas with his tail still held high. The quills quivered and stuck up on end. With a sudden thrust, several needles shot out with incredible speed, zipping through the air like darts and jabbing into the hog’s side.

It jumped and squealed, spinning around in alarm. Seeing the manticore, it darted away on four short but fast legs. But it quickly grew dizzy and began to stumble and sway, finally collapsing and struggling to get up again as Loneclaw padded after it.

When the manticore stood over the flopping, grunting, utterly helpless hog, Thomas tried to tear his gaze away but found himself mesmerized by the terrifying stinger that hung low and oozed a drop of yellow venom. Loneclaw glanced at Thomas and said, “Care to put this creature out of its misery?”

Thomas shook his head vigorously.

With a sigh, the manticore jabbed downward, plunging its stinger into the hog’s side.

* * *

Thomas sat trembling as Loneclaw tore into his kill. Between mouthfuls, the manticore said, “Are you sure you won’t eat while the boar is warm?”

“No!”

After a pause, Loneclaw stopped chewing. “You concern me, youngster. I can understand your reluctance to engage in battle with a human and three goblins. They might have fought back and hurt you. I can also understand, to a lesser extent, that you were squeamish about taking the life of a defenseless boar, for it had caused you no harm. In an ideal world, I prefer to feast on those who wrong me, but sometimes we need to put aside our moral codes in the interest of self-preservation. We must eat, young Thomas, lest we grow weak with hunger and become prey ourselves.”

“I don’t care.”

“You must care. Think of it this way: The boar is dead. Nothing can change that. Will you now let its death be in vain by starving yourself? Come. Turn around and eat. The flesh is warm and tender.”

“I don’t want it!” Thomas yelled.

A silence followed, and Thomas feared he’d angered the manticore. If he wasn’t careful, he might become Loneclaw’s next victim!

“I . . . I can’t eat it like that,” Thomas went on, quieter now. He still couldn’t bring himself to turn and look at the mess behind him. “It needs to be cooked.”

“Cooked?” Loneclaw exclaimed, sounding incredulous. “I’ve never heard the like. Cooked? Youngster, manticores do not cook their meals. Cooked meat is ruined meat. Why would you want your meal so dry and tasteless when you can experience the joy of warm, fresh—”

“Stop!” Thomas cried. “Please stop. I can’t eat raw meat. I won’t. My mom always cooks it. I’ll eat it if it’s cooked. We don’t get to eat ham very often because we don’t have any wild pigs on the island, only the ones on the farm. Mostly we eat birds and fish. I’ll eat the meat if you cook it first, otherwise no way!”

Another long silence followed. “What island?” Loneclaw said at last.

Thomas feared he’d said too much. “The . . . the island where I live. It’s foggy all the time. I don’t know how I ended up here. I don’t even know where here is. I saw a lake outside the woods, but when I got past the trees, I had to turn around.”

Thomas heard soft, padding footsteps and flinched as the adult manticore came closer. When Loneclaw stepped into view, he had blood around his mouth, which he licked as he settled himself a few feet away and curled his tail around.

“You left the woods?” he rumbled.

“Only for about ten seconds,” Thomas said, embarrassed. “I felt sick every time I got near. But I had to try, so I just ran until I was out of the trees. Then I ran back in again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Loneclaw stared at him, his brow deeply furrowed. “I was wrong about you. You do have courage—just of an unusual nature. You actually stepped outside the woods? Even for a few seconds? Youngster, I’m old, just a few years left in me, and I’ve never been able to do that my whole life. Very few of us have ever done so.”

Suddenly puzzled, Thomas forgot about the carcass behind him and wiped his eyes. “What? You’ve never left these woods? Not ever?”

“Manticores are unable to. Magic binds us to the trees we were born among. Everybody knows this—except, it seems, you. You’re a curious one, young Thomas. Your name means ‘twin,’ yet you have none. You refuse to kill and claim to eat flesh only when it’s cooked. You speak of an island, which to my mind is a small land mass with water all around. Am I wrong? There is no such island here, not even in that nearby lake.”

“How would you know?” Thomas asked. “If you’ve never left the woods, how can you know what’s outside them?”

Loneclaw smiled. “Because I can see the lake from the trees. Besides, there are a great many swaths of forestland connected by narrow strips that, while terrifying, still qualify as woods and allow us to move freely from one forest to another. I have explored as far as I am able around the banks of the lake from the safety of the trees. Our territory is limited, but we are lucky in this region. There are tales of our brethren in other parts of the world who are not so lucky, being confined as they are to tiny, isolated patches of woodland with no way to reach the greater forestlands.”

“That’s crazy,” Thomas murmured, though even as he said it, he realized his own life had been similarly confining. “The island I live on,” he said slowly, “has water all around it, but the island is in the sea, not a lake.”

“Are you sure? How can you tell?”

Thomas frowned. “It’s saltwater. The island has beaches and a lighthouse.”

“And your forest spreads all the way across the island to the water’s edge?” Loneclaw said.

Here Thomas paused. Should he mention that he was not, in fact, a real manticore? He’d blurted it out earlier, but Loneclaw had obviously not understood. Would he turn on Thomas if he found out the truth?

He decided to risk it. “I’m not . . . I’m not a real manticore. I’m a boy. A human boy. I live on an island with houses and people. There are some woods. My house is right on the edge of Black Woods, and I love playing out back. My mom keeps telling me to stay in the yard, but I’ve always preferred playing in the woods even though I’m human.”

Loneclaw’s frown had returned. “But you’re not human, youngster. You’re very much a manticore.”

“I wasn’t before,” Thomas said. “I turned into one.”

Chapter 6
The Here and Now

“. . . And so I told Loneclaw the whole thing,” Thomas said to Soul and the rest of the pride. “Just as I’m telling you now.”

His throat was dry. He wished he could find a stream to drink from. He’d kept the half-dozen manticores enthralled for at least twenty or thirty minutes now, and in the corner of his mind he wondered if Soul would keep up her end of the bargain and help him if the need arose.

Indeed, Soul had barely moved the whole time. Nor had the rest of the pride behind her, all sitting stiff and regal with their long tails curled around in front.

“And this Loneclaw,” Soul finally murmured. “He accepted your story?”

Thomas shrugged. “Some of it. He could tell I was . . . different. He didn’t believe I was once human, though. Not at first. I couldn’t prove it because I was stuck in manticore form.”

“You’ve already revealed to me your shapeshifting powers,” Soul said with a frown. “You must have shown Loneclaw eventually?”

Shaking his head, Thomas said, “For one thing, I never knew I was a shapeshifter. I was just a boy who’d turned into a manticore and gotten stuck as one. I had no idea I could change back again. I didn’t know anything about shapeshifters. I was lost and confused. I only learned how to transform at will recently. I never got to show Loneclaw.”

He realized there was something very sad about that. If only the old manticore had hung on just a little longer . . .

“And you still don’t recall how you changed in the first place?” Soul asked.

“I do now. It all came clear to me this week.”

“Why?”

“Because I looked into a tiny glass ball.” Thomas realized how ridiculous that sounded and hastened to explain. “It was a faerie ball. The faeries gave it to Abigail, and when you look into it, it lets you see things.”

“Things?”

“Forgotten memories. Things that are blocked.”

She still looked puzzled. Thomas glanced over his shoulder. He could just about see some of the naga moving among the trees, but he saw no sign of his friends. It seemed they’d slipped away. They were safe. Still, he was in so deep with his story, and the manticores so interested, that he might as well see it through.

“Loneclaw thought I was probably traumatized,” he said, facing Soul again. “Imagine if you suddenly transformed into a human. Your brain would have a hard time accepting it, right? It would try to block it out, make you forget all about it. Same with me—I forgot. I remembered everything afterward, but I didn’t remember actually changing. I didn’t know why or how it happened, only that it did. My earlier life as a human became kind of fuzzy, too.”

Soul grunted and got up to pace around, swinging her tail from side to side, the ball of quills expanding as though she were preparing to fling them his way. The rest of the pride unfroze from their regal positions and began yawning and stretching.

Just then, a terrible roar came from above. Thomas glanced up to see a dragon flying over. Was that Hal? He thought he glimpsed someone on his back, a girl with blond hair. Then a gunshot rang out, followed by another, and all the manticores jumped to their feet, tails rising.

“What was that?” Soul hissed.

“It’s what I was warning you about,” Thomas said. “Soldiers. They have guns—metal sticks that shoot horrible pain. That dragon up there is a shapeshifter, the one I mentioned. He’s . . . well, I don’t know what he’s doing right now, but the soldiers don’t sound happy about it.”

They all flinched as a volley of shots rang out. Not long after, the dragon swooped by again, and the cracking of treetops not too far away suggested Hal had landed high up on the branches.

Then, in one sudden movement, the naga slithered out of the trees and into the open field beyond, what had been shadowy figures becoming fully formed serpent people with bows and arrows in broad daylight. Even from this distance, Thomas heard the thwipps of their arrows, and occasional shouts and screams as they found their mark. The battle had started.

“The naga seem to be helping the humans,” Soul murmured. “I was unaware they cared for each other.”

Thomas swallowed. “That’s because of my friend Emily. She’s a naga shapeshifter.”

“Emily? As in she strives to do well? Eager to please?”

Thomas opened his mouth to tell her that many humans chose names simply because they sounded nice and not because of what they meant, but he paused and reconsidered. “Actually, that does sound like her, yeah.”

“And your dragon friend?” Soul inquired.

“Hal.”

“Ah—ruler of the house. The team leader.”

“No, that’s . . . well, maybe . . . Look, how about I just finish the story?”

Soul pursed her lips, looking like she wanted to refuse and stalk off in disgust rather than allow him to impress her with his storytelling. Then she sighed. “Yes, but skip to the present. I have no interest in your past. Tell me how you looked into that glass ball. Tell me how you ended up here in my forest.”

Thomas smiled inwardly. Manticores really couldn’t resist an interesting tale. If he had any advice for humans that might run into one of these dangerous beasts, it would be to talk very fast and spin a good yarn. A silver tongue might actually save one’s life.

He thought for a moment, wondering where to pick up the tale. He guessed Soul wouldn’t be impressed by further stories of his weak stomach when it came to hunting, but he had to include some of that stuff because it led directly to his capture by harpies, which then led to his return to the foggy island.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s skip six years to when Loneclaw died. That was a couple of weeks ago.”

“Was he hunted by humans?” Soul demanded, looking fiercely toward the edge of the forest even though nobody loitered there now.

“Not humans, no,” Thomas growled.

He continued his story . . .

Chapter 7
Death of a Manticore

“I worry about you,” the old manticore said hoarsely as he lay on his side and squinted up at Thomas. “In many ways you’ve become strong and fierce, resourceful and brave . . . but I fear you’ll starve to death simply because you refuse to hunt anything bigger than a groundhog.”

“I hunt plenty of things!” Thomas protested. “Yesterday I hunted a dryad, and you know how hard they are to catch.”

Loneclaw forced a smile. “And did you catch the dryad, youngster?”

“Well, no.”

“Would you have, given the opportunity?”

“Um . . .”

“Thomas, I’m dying. These are my last words to you. I’ve trained you to hunt over the years. You’re fast, and you’re smart. You just lack the inclination, and that will kill you. Do you understand? From the day you first stumbled into my woods, I’ve hunted almost everything you’ve eaten—deer, boars, humans—”

“I didn’t eat those,” Thomas said with a shudder. “I ate the deer and the boars.”

Loneclaw sighed. “I know. Do you remember the human who wandered past our den while I was away? You chased him off, and he should have been grateful to you. A real manticore would have devoured him, clothes and all. But did he thank you? No, he did not. He returned to spear us in our sleep!”

“And you killed him,” Thomas said with a grimace.

“I brought him down with my quills, and I stung him, and I devoured every ounce of his torpid body. But you?” Loneclaw closed his eyes. “You went hungry that day. And the next day. On the third day, you went out and captured a boar. Even then you wouldn’t kill it. You brought it back for me to kill!”

He coughed and screwed up his wrinkled face. Thomas leaned closer, knowing the old manticore’s life was fading as fast as the evening light. “Can I get you something?” he whispered.

Loneclaw shook his head gently. As he did so, a cackling laughter floated through the trees. Thomas ignored the ugly sound, but the old manticore craned his neck trying to find the source. “Harpies again,” he said with a grimace. “They’ve been watching us for a week now. They know I’m dying. They’re like vultures, waiting to pick my bones clean.”

“They’re harmless,” Thomas said.

“Don’t let them make off with my corpse,” Loneclaw said, closing his eyes again. “They could hunt for their own food if they weren’t so lazy. And you could, too.” When he spoke next, he seemed far away. “Tell me, Thomas: Is it acceptable to hunt and kill a dumb, innocent, terrified creature like a boar or deer even though it’s done nothing to you? Or would it make more sense to eat a creature determined to cause you harm while you sleep?”

Thomas gave that some thought. “Well . . .”

With a sudden coughing fit, Loneclaw convulsed and pawed at Thomas, his tail flopping uselessly on the grass. All his quills had fallen out days ago, but it hardly mattered since his ailing health prevented him from walking too far on his wobbly legs. Thomas had been doing all the hunting lately. His offerings were pitiful, but Loneclaw hadn’t been hungry anyway.

When his coughing subsided, Loneclaw forced his eyes open. “Thomas,” he whispered, “promise me you’ll hunt.”

“I promise.”

“No—promise me you’ll hunt a human.”

“I . . .” Thomas said, unable to voice an oath he wasn’t sure he could keep. He knew he must hunt to survive, but humans? It just felt wrong.

Loneclaw took a rasping breath and said, “Do you know what a manticore is, youngster?”

Another of his riddles, Thomas thought. “Tell me.”

“When you first came to me, you spoke of lions, zebras, giraffes, and elephants, creatures that don’t exist in our world. But these strange creatures were around in ancient times. Some say that the name ‘manticore’ is derived from ‘man-tiger,’ a cross between a human and a fabulous, ancient beast known as a tiger.”

“Yes, tigers exist,” Thomas said. “I remember pictures of them in books. I had a zoo book once, and it—”

“Tigers have patterns on the backs of their ears,” Loneclaw went on. “Those patterns look like large eyes, which reduces the chance of an attack from behind. Who would attack a dangerous beast when it appears to be looking directly at them?”

Thomas had nothing to say about that.

“It’s also said,” Loneclaw croaked, “that right before a tiger pounces and kills its prey, it turns its ears to the front, displaying that pattern. The eye of the tiger: death is imminent. As is mine.”

“Loneclaw . . .” Thomas said, trembling.

“Listen to me,” the old one said fiercely. “It’s a nice story, but we’re not tigers. ‘Manticore’ simply means ‘man-eater.’ We are born to kill, Thomas. We devour humans, leaving no trace of their existence. You must embrace this aspect of yourself, or you will die of hunger.”

And with that, the old manticore closed his eyes and gave one last, dying sigh.

* * *

As old and wise as he’d been, Loneclaw’s advice to hunt bigger game than rodents didn’t sit well with Thomas. In fact, a real manticore would have eaten Loneclaw shortly after his death to avoid a terrible waste of good meat. Thomas, however, had no intention of tearing into his old friend. Nor did he intend leaving his body out for the harpies.

He dragged Loneclaw’s lifeless form well away from the den and spent an hour or two clawing a trench out of the earth. He dragged the body into it, managing to hold back his tears until he’d finished covering the grave. Then he broke down and sobbed.

It was well into the evening before he headed back to their den. His den, now. Loneclaw had once lived partway up a huge tree in the crook of a broad bough. He and Thomas had later found a similarly huge tree uprooted in a storm, and the crater underneath formed a perfect, cavelike den. The thick, overhanging root system provided excellent shelter against the wind and rain. They’d tunneled deeper and lived in the den for almost six years.

It felt empty now, though. Thomas lay there in the shadows, hardly able to believe his old friend, protector, mentor, and grandfather was gone.

He pricked up his ears. The flapping of large wings permeated the woods, and he crawled forward until he could see out of the den’s entrance. He saw a flash of grey through the trees, something landing. The harpies again. Two of them.

Keeping absolutely still, he watched with interest as they flapped about low to the ground as if struggling to lift something. They made screeching noises and jabbered angrily.

Puzzled, he darted from his den and slipped through the bushes, staying low, padding softly as he approached the noisy pair of bird-creatures. Apparently they’d caught themselves a boar. Loneclaw was wrong about them being too lazy to hunt! They’d killed it already, but now they found it too big and heavy to lift off. They each gripped the carcass in their huge talons and flapped hard, rising off the ground a few yards, then giving up and dropping it again. Eventually they stopped and hunkered there, whispering to each other.

This was a rare opportunity. Thomas had no intention of pouncing on the harpies, though. He could probably bring them down with his poison quills if he wanted to, but then what? Kill them? He shuddered. Harpies were nasty. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could cook the meat, but whoever heard of a manticore roasting a meal over a spit? That was a human trait, and although Thomas figured himself half human, his paws were way too clumsy to mess around trying to build a fire.

But a freshly killed boar? He had no qualms about stealing it. This was, after all, his territory. He was now the only manticore around; with Loneclaw gone, this part of the woods belonged to him.

He sprang from his hiding place with a roar that came from deep within his throat.

The harpies screeched and flapped up through the trees, hurling insults down at him. Thomas ignored them and stared in delight at the dead boar. This would see him through the next couple of days. He would eat, sleep, and eat some more tomorrow. He would then toss the remainder away, as it would be bad by then. Maybe the filthy harpies would be satisfied with the rotting remains.

It didn’t take long to drag the boar to his den. He tore into it with abandon. This was meat he’d become accustomed to, and there was none of the usual associated guilt either, because neither he nor Loneclaw had done the killing.

He’d eaten a fair amount before he realized something was wrong. He stared at the chunk of meat in his paws and frowned. It tasted . . . strange.

He climbed unsteadily to his feet and out into the moonlight. Sensing something behind him, he swung around. To his surprise, he found the two harpies perched on the roof of his den—and another two farther along the tree trunk. The nearest one grinned at him.

“Good food?” it crowed, and the others burst into laughter.

Unable to remain standing on his wobbly legs, Thomas collapsed and lay there, utterly helpless, staring up at the four harpies. They crouched over him, baring their stained teeth, nudging each other and trying to stifle their giggles.

“Coated it good and proper, didn’t I?” another said. “Told you he’d go for the rump first.”

Everything blurred in and out of focus. The foul harpies had tricked him! They’d smothered something on the dead boar, and whatever it was had paralyzed him. He groaned, feeling like a fool. It was what he deserved for being lazy and cowardly. Only eat what you killed yourself or is offered by someone you trust, as Loneclaw had said on many an occasion.

The harpies had made an awful lot of noise in their efforts to carry their meal away. They’d wanted to attract his attention. They’d set a trap for him.

But why?

“About time that old one croaked,” one gloated, grinning at Thomas. “I used the more deadly stuff on him.” She gestured vaguely to a couple of pouches tied about her waist. “If he didn’t insist on killing his own food, I’d have done him in with one strong dose of hemlock like I got you with my special mushroom mix. But no, he’s a stubborn one. I had to smear it in his bed. He’s been sleeping in poison for a week and licking it off every time he grooms.”

The four harpies burst into laughter.

As they bent over him, Thomas tried to lift his tail and shoot off his quills. Nothing. He was utterly helpless. He felt their hands on him as they hoisted him up on their shoulders. Now he couldn’t even see them. All he saw were the branches above and orange-and-brown leaves fluttering down with every breeze.

“Whaar-yu-u-doo . . .” he murmured, shocked to find even his mouth didn’t work properly. His eyelids felt heavy, the sounds of the forest a dull roar in his ears.

“Now it’s your turn, young one,” the apparent harpy leader crowed. “Time for you to go home.”

I’m already home, he thought, confused. What’s going on?

Aware that daylight was fading, he stared dreamily through the canopy of branches at the sky above while the foul bird-creatures surrounded him and each took a limb. He tried to struggle, but the harpies cackled at his feeble efforts.

Then they launched into the sky.

Chapter 8
Captured by Harpies

Thomas froze, terrified at the sensation of being lifted high into the sky. His stomach lurched, threatening to expel the tainted meat he’d torn from the boar’s carcass. His head lolled, and he caught snatches of upside-down treetops. And all the while, four pairs of harpies’ wings flapped noisily inches from him, causing a terrible draft and sending pungent odors into his nostrils.

He blacked out.

When he woke next, it took a while to figure out he was on a mountainside. Forestland stretched below, faintly lit by moonlight and pinpricks of orange light. He recognized the mountain even though he normally only saw it from the ground, looking up through the canopy of branches. The lights were campfires from the goblins’ outpost, the place he’d avoided for the past six years, the place where that blond-haired woman had come from. She still haunted his dreams.

Even Loneclaw had avoided the outpost all his life. With nothing but nasty goblins to feed on, what was the point in going near it?

The reminder of Loneclaw hit him hard, causing him to forget his predicament for a moment. Grief washed over him, and tears welled. As he ground his teeth together, he suddenly realized his jaw muscles were working better now, some of the paralysis gone. Gritting his teeth, he forced his attention back to his captors.

There were only three harpies now, huddled together in conversation. “What . . . are you . . . doing?” Thomas gasped.

The harpies turned to him and hissed, their wings spreading as they rose to their feet and stood silhouetted against the star-studded sky. “Careful,” one muttered.

Thomas tried to move his limbs. His back legs were numb. His front paws tingled, and he wasn’t sure if he was able to twitch his claws or not. His tail seemed nonexistent, utterly useless. Nausea came in waves, the comfort of the woods out of reach below.

“What’s taking her so long?” one of the harpies demanded.

“If she doesn’t come back soon, we’ll dump him and leave,” said another.

As it happened, the fourth harpy arrived just minutes later, much to the obvious relief of the rest of the gang. They chattered urgently with each other, then surrounded Thomas and each grabbed a limb as they had before.

“Hurry!” one squawked. “Goblin’s on break.”

Once more, Thomas found himself lifted off the ground and into midair . . . only this time they all plummeted downward, the harpies swooping with wings held still and feathers fluttering. They circled, descending fast, and suddenly trees appeared all around. They dumped him hard on the ground, and the jolt forced a gasp from his chest. Still, relief washed over him. He was in the woods, and his nausea was gone!

His ordeal wasn’t over, though. They dragged him roughly across the ground toward some sort of machine that rattled and huffed and whirred. Thomas tried to get a good look at it, but it was a blur of wood and bits of metal, cables and cogs, and leathery bags. A cloud of white smoke billowed from one end, and it was into this cloud that the harpies headed, pulling Thomas with them.

“That goblin will be here soon,” a harpy whispered. “We gotta get in and out fast.”

Darkness enveloped them, but one of the harpies had snatched up a flickering torch, revealing a cave that led to a narrow, smoke-filled tunnel. Thomas had no choice but to suffer every bump and scrape as they dragged him along the rocky floor. Even with the flames from the torch, darkness crowded in—but worse than the darkness was the awful white smoke filling the tunnel. Oddly, it didn’t sting his eyes like normal smoke from a fire would. Instead, it had a musty smell and felt damp.

Just when some feeling crept into his limbs, the harpies began squabbling again, each voice as scratchy as the last.

“This is far enough.”

“No! He might come back. We need to toss him out at the other end. It’s just ahead.”

“How do you know all this?”

“The centaur khan said so. He’s clever.”

“Would have been easier to keep the boar we killed. I worked hard for that.”

“We do this for the centaurs, and we’ll have enough food in our bellies for weeks.”

“But why? What’s his game?”

“Who cares? He just wants it done. Said this manticore is special and should be home with his friends. Called it a ‘cat among the pigeons,’ whatever that means.”

After a pause, one said, “So are we the pigeons? Did he mean a manticore among the harpies?”

“I don’t know! It doesn’t matter!”

“I’m not sharing my prize with the nest,” one said sharply.

“We won’t tell the queen. This’ll be our secret.”

And with that, the four harpies lapsed into helpless giggles. One accidentally dropped Thomas, and his head smacked onto the hard rock floor.

Blackness enveloped him again . . .

* * *

The next time Thomas woke, his head hurt.

He groaned, rolled onto his belly, and pushed himself up. Daylight caused him to squint. When the dizziness faded, he stood and tried to compose himself. At least his paralysis was gone. Whatever those harpies had drugged him with, it had finally worn off. And now he was . . .

Where?

He padded around in a circle, his feet squelching in mud. Ugly trees surrounded him. There was no wind, not even the tiniest of breezes. Light fog permeated the woods all around. Behind him, pure white smoke belched from a ten-foot hole in the ground. He stared at it, guessing that was where the harpies had dragged him from. They’d tossed him down and left. But why?

Cold fury gripped him as he remembered the harpies’ gloating conversation. They’d poisoned Loneclaw. The old manticore hadn’t even suspected, assuming his illness was natural and his aged immune system too weak. He might have lived another year if the harpies hadn’t cut him short.

Thomas took a long, deep breath. He had a more immediate concern.

Trembling, he backed away from the hole. The thick, billowing smoke was silent. The musty, damp smell told him it wasn’t like normal smoke. It came from that strange goblin machine at the other end of the tunnel. It smelled more like . . . like fog.

He glanced around, relieved to be in the woods. He didn’t know which woods, but the comfort of the trees was enough for now. He looked for the sun, but the sky was a white haze through the branches above. He couldn’t tell if it was morning or afternoon.

Probably afternoon, he decided at last. But where?

He paced through the trees, sniffing around. His head still hurt, and he felt woozy. His throat was dry, too. He needed a drink. He listened carefully, picking up the faint trickle of water somewhere close by. He spotted a stream, narrow and meandering, and hurried toward it.

The water tasted good. He drank thirstily, then winced as his head throbbed again. Reaching up with one large paw, he felt a large bump behind his ear where the harpy had dropped him on the rocky tunnel floor.

Anger boiled up in him again. The harpies would suffer for this, and so would the centaur khan who’d hired them for the job—though where he would find centaurs he had no idea. They were a rare sight in his territory. Why would they have sent harpies after him? What was the point? And why harpies? They were vile, lazy creatures, greedy and immoral, the sort who would betray their own kind for a simple meal.

There was his answer. They made great mercenaries and would ask no questions. So the only mystery was what the centaur khan had hired them for. Why dump him in this place? He lay down and closed his eyes, thinking of all the things he’d like to do to the ratty, filthy bird-creatures. He’d tear them limb from limb and tear into their flesh—

He sighed. Who was he kidding? The whole reason he’d eaten that dead boar was because he was too squeamish to kill his own. If he couldn’t kill a boar, what made him think he could kill a harpy, or a goblin, or a human, or even a centaur khan? He was useless.

Apparently, a knock on the head and a night of unconsciousness didn’t qualify as actual sleep. He still felt weary, his eyelids heavy. Sleep overcame him, and he nodded off.

Voices woke him. He blinked and lifted his head, his ears pricked up. Humans, he thought with a shudder of fear mixed with resentment. Two of them. Young. Male.

He got up and peered through the bushes. As he did so, he stepped on a twig and froze as a sharp crack! rang out.

After a long pause, one of the human boys shouted, “Wrangler! Wraaaan-gler! Here, boy!”

Thomas remained still and quiet, unable to make sense of the whispering that followed. A moment later, the same voice came again, sounding quite angry. “Abi, get lost.”

Puzzled, Thomas tried to make sense of the words. What were these boys doing? They were struggling with something now, dragging branches around. “Oh, hold on. There’s one,” one of the humans said as Thomas crept around the bush to watch them.

They looked harmless from what he could tell. One was short with sandy-colored hair, the other tall and skinny with a dark-brown mop. They were dragging branches across the ten-foot hole where the column of fog billowed out. Were they trying to block it?

First the harpies had killed Loneclaw. Then they’d drugged Thomas and brought him here, under orders from the centaur khan. Now these boys were trying to trap him? It was almost like the centaurs, humans, and harpies were working together for some nefarious reason. What could they possibly gain by moving a manticore from one forest to another?

As the boys talked and headed off into the trees to find more branches, Thomas felt his muscles bunching up. A few branches across the entrance to the tunnel wouldn't stop him. The smothering fog and confined darkness were more of a problem, but he'd deal with that later. In the meantime, he would show these boys how foolish they were for sauntering about the woods without a care in the world. He would kill them. This was his chance to be a manticore, a real manticore. He would rip into them and eat their flesh along with their clothes, leaving no trace whatsoever.

Except . . .

Why was he experiencing a sense of familiarity? Was it the woods? He didn’t remember anything specific. The boys? He hadn’t seen any human children in a very long time, and these two didn’t ring any bells. The names? He’d already forgotten all but Wrangler. Oddly, this one struck a chord with him, though he couldn’t figure out why.

What about the fog? He’d never known it to billow out of a hole in the ground, but here it was, hanging in the air as fog normally did. Usually it descended on the forest throughout the rainy, muggy seasons.

Grinding his teeth, he weaved between the trees, leaving the fog-hole behind. A good distance away, he sank low and dug his claws into the dirt. Why was this so hard for him? He should be furious enough to tear those boys to shreds for trying to block his exit from this place, yet he was filled with nagging doubt and anxiety for no apparent reason. He cursed his stupid human sensibilities and wished he’d been born a full manticore rather than some halfling.

He pondered the matter for some time while the boys’ voices floated through the trees. Were they working with the centaurs and harpies? If so, perhaps Loneclaw’s murder would be avenged by the execution of these two boys. All he had to do was raise his tail and flick a few poison-tipped quills. They would go down, and he’d finish them. It would be quick and painless. Well, almost painless.

Taking a deep breath, he stood and turned. This was it. He was going to do it.

He raced back the way he’d come, returning to the fog-hole and slowing as he approached. The boys were still there. The tall one climbed to his feet, his shirt in rags as though he’d gotten caught up on a jagged bush. Thomas growled, his heart racing, ready for the final dash and pounce. He tensed up, his tail at the ready.

The shorter boy said, “ . . . and Robbie, your mom’s gonna kill you when you get home.”

Thomas launched himself through the bushes, stamping in the stream as he went. But at the last moment, he skidded to a halt behind the final clump of bushes that separated him from the boys. His nerve fled, and he peered through a gap at them, his heart pounding. Robbie, your mom’s gonna kill you when you get home. The short boy’s words echoed through his mind over and over.

He couldn’t do it. They had family and friends who would miss them. And something about the name Robbie puzzled him . . .

Before he could stop himself, he leaned over the bush and called, “Where am I? What is this place?”

The tall boy clutched at his friend, both of them turning white.

Thomas tried again. If he didn’t have the nerve to kill these boys, he could at least get some information out of them. “You! How did I get here?”

He could almost see the boys’ knees knocking together. It was pathetic. Maybe he should kill them. It might even do them a favor if he was fast enough. He would be putting them out of their misery.

“Where—?” he started to say, but the boys were no longer listening. The tall one bolted, and the short one scampered after him, both tearing through the bushes at a surprising speed, uncaring of the thorns that snagged at their clothing.

“Wait!” Thomas called. “I just want to—Hey, come back!”

With a snarl of frustration, he hurried after them through the trees, following their scent. He could hear them yelling and crashing about, but Thomas knew he could easily catch them if he tried.

He trotted after them, his head still pounding and his heart not really in it. What would he do with them if he caught up? Could he really kill them?

Still conflicted, Thomas sped up, ignoring the throbbing bump on his head. He’d botched this enough already. It was now or never. He’d take them down once and for all. This time, nothing would get in his way—

Except the edge of the woods.

He skidded to a stop. The nausea was already rising. The boys had bolted into the open field. There was no way he’d catch them now. He’d failed.

But if they ever wound up here again, he’d be ready for them.

Chapter 9
Home

Thomas returned to stare morosely at the fog-hole. The boys had laid branches across it, the start of a patchwork frame. He could easily knock it aside, but the tunnel was another matter. A pitch-black underground passage was bad enough. This one belched eerie white fog.

He supposed the fog was harmless enough. After all, the harpies had carried him through and dumped him here. What puzzled him was why the harpies had used the tunnel at all. Why not fly him here? They’d flown him up a mountainside, waited for the goblins to make themselves scarce, then flown back down and dragged him into this tunnel. Why not just dump him here in the first place? He stared and stared, perplexed.

He needed to find a way back to his familiar forest, but he saw no obvious reason why he should go back the same way he’d arrived. He set off through the woods, following the meandering, trickling stream. To his surprise, nausea rose in him again . . . right before the stream ended abruptly at a cliff edge. He backpedaled hurriedly into the bushes, gasping at his close call.

Fighting the uneasy feeling in his stomach, he pushed forward again, trembling at the sight of the impenetrable wall of fog beyond the cliff. Just for a second, when he’d nearly walked over the edge, he thought he’d seen swirling water below, waves crashing on rocks. The sea. Except there was no sea near his den or for miles around. Loneclaw had told him so. Just how far had the harpies flown him?

He thrust his head over the edge, snatched a glimpse below, then turned and darted to safety. It was true! The cliff had to be fifty feet high, and at its base was the sea, just visible through the white haze.

As far as he knew, not a single manticore in any of the territories near his patch of the forest had ever looked out on the sea. The forest didn’t stretch that far. If he returned home now and spoke of it, nobody would believe him. They’d scoff and tell him he had no idea what the sea looked like!

Only he did. A memory stirred, something from his childhood. He’d been here before. The sea, the cliff edge, the fog, even the stream he’d followed—all of it was familiar, like fragments of a lost dream.

Could it be the same forest he’d grown up in? Could this be . . . Black Woods?

His heart began pounding in his chest. If this was Black Woods, then his home—the big house he’d lived in with his parents—wasn’t too far from here.

He turned and stared into the trees, hardly able to believe where he was, trying to get his bearings. The fog-hole was new to him, but that wasn’t surprising; he’d only explored a very small part of Black Woods. The cliff was another matter; his dad had walked him along the narrow cliff path many times. He turned slowly, putting it to his right side and then trying to peer through the dense undergrowth that lay ahead. His old house had to be somewhere in that direction.

Excitement mounting, he cut through the woods, heading roughly west. It was hard to tell with the fog, but the sun was up there somewhere in the haze, a slightly brighter patch than everywhere else. If it was afternoon as he thought, then he needed to follow that glow or perhaps keep it a little to his left.

The woods went on and on, and he recognized none of it. He finally made it to the outer reaches where the trees began to peter out. He stopped. No sign of a house. He must have come too far south.

Keeping the edge of the woods at a comfortable distance to his left, he marched on, feeling sure he was on the right track. Glimpsing the open fields beyond the trees, he felt he might possibly remember the view . . . but he wasn’t sure.

And then he found it.

He stared in astonishment at the huge structure looming at the edge of the woods ahead. It was almost exactly as he remembered it, a six-bedroom house with a backyard surrounded by a picket fence. The fence was much dirtier than the last time he’d seen it, the yard overgrown with weeds. Ivy smothered the walls, roof, and chimney. The windows looked like they hadn’t been washed in years, thick with grime.

Thomas crept around the back, following the picket fence and staying within the trees. The annoying wave of nausea told him to retreat farther into the woods, but he ignored it, too engrossed in his exploration.

The gate.

Breathing hard, he studied it for ages, thinking of his early childhood. Rather than play in the yard, he’d ventured outside this gate many times despite his parents’ warnings. Black Woods had always been forbidden because of the dangerous cliffs, yet he’d seen it as an extended playground. Now he stood outside the yard looking in, thinking the yard was much smaller than he remembered, the overgrown path leading to the back door far shorter.

He really was home again after all these years. Only it looked like nobody lived here anymore. His mom and dad must have moved away. How long ago? Where had they gone?

Thomas rose up on his hind legs and hung onto the gate with his front paws, reaching over to fumble with the latch. It was fiddly, but the gate suddenly swung inward with a creak, and he hurried inside. The gate creaked shut again behind him on its rusted spring.

He started trembling, his vision beginning to swim. The woods were behind him now, and he suddenly lost control and vomited in the long grass to one side of the path. He felt marginally better after that, and he forced himself onward to the back door, knowing it led into the kitchen. The doorknob was harder to open than the gate latch, but once he got it turned, the door opened easily.

This was the kitchen! The very same kitchen where he’d watched his mom cook meals. There was the table he’d sat at every day with his parents. Everything was exactly the same except for the musty smell and layers of dust everywhere.

The walls actually helped calm his nerves a little. The confined space eased his mind and settled his stomach, and he was able to focus. He padded into the hallway and explored the various rooms. He spent a long time in the living room, even climbed awkwardly onto the sofa and rested there, sinking deep into the cushions, his paws hanging off the edge. He stared around at every small detail. Certain things were missing—small items from shelves and above the fireplace, and pictures from the wall. The rest was untouched.

In the hallway, he bumped a narrow cabinet with the end of his tail and knocked a wooden clock onto the floor. It smashed apart, and as he stared at bits of casing and metal cogs, he remembered how his dad had wound the timepiece every morning. Now it was worthless.

His claws clicked noisily on the wooden steps as he climbed to the upper floor and glanced into each room. He paused outside his own bedroom, then nudged the door open and stepped inside.

Tears filled his eyes as he took everything in: his old bed by the window, the wardrobe, the chest of drawers, the desk, the toy box standing against the wall, the rug on the floor . . . It all looked small to him now, even the room itself, but it was also familiar, exactly as he’d last seen it, only dirtier. He was sure some of his things were missing, but he couldn’t place exactly what.

He climbed up on the bed, and it creaked under his weight. He lay down, marveling at how soft the mattress was. Laying his head on what seemed like a tiny pillow, he decided he could stay right here without moving for the rest of the day and night.

At long last, he was home again.

* * *

He slept well. When he woke the next day with his stomach growling, it occurred to him that he hadn’t felt that awful nausea the whole time he’d been in the house. Apparently the walls served the same purpose as trees, protecting him from the huge, terrifying expanse of open land. If only manticores could put up with the horrible, paralyzing sickness when they stepped outside the forests, they could easily live within structures like these.

Not that humans would ever allow it. What was he thinking? Manticores and humans would never get along in close quarters. But Thomas might. He alone had deep-seated human sensibilities.

He lay there thinking about that. Maybe the reason he could force himself to leave the woods was because he was partially human. Real manticores would suffer far more than a halfling like him. And he’d once lived in this house. As far as he was concerned, its walls held a special kind of power.

Unfortunately, the very same traits that made him different to all the other manticores made it difficult to be alone. He was hungry but found it hard to hunt with the same degree of fervor as the rest. What would he eat? He needed to find a way home—to his den in the forest—before he grew too weak to walk. The alternative was to stay here where food was even more scarce.

When he returned to the kitchen and stared out the back door, the woods beckoned. But first he’d have to cross the yard, a sizeable expanse of open land. Leaving the door wide open, he bolted along the path and leapt straight over the fence gate, crashing down into briars on the other side. He dashed into the woods, pausing only for a last glance at the enormous house.

* * *

He spent the rest of the day foraging for rodents. Maybe he could nibble on groundhogs until he could figure out how he had returned to this place and how to get back to his den.

By the time night fell, he was frustrated with his failure to catch anything. The pickings seemed scarce in these woods. Besides, his attempts were half-hearted because he spent much of the time actively looking for that mountainside the harpies had taken him to. He played the scene over and over in his mind—the way they’d captured him, flown him high up the side of the mountain and waited there, then circled down to the ground and into the tunnel where the machine rattled. The tunnel was long, but not that long. He should be able to see the mountain—any mountain—standing somewhere close to the fog-hole. It should reach into the sky and be visible through the canopy of branches despite the pervading fog. Yet there was no such mountain. It didn’t make sense.

Thinking back to his early childhood, he couldn’t recall any such mountain then, either. He was beginning to think he’d dreamed the part about the harpies flying him up there and perching awhile, looking down on the sprawling forests below.

Nothing made sense.

He spent another night in Black Woods. Despite Loneclaw’s faith in his hunting abilities, he felt overwhelmed by the prospect of having to kill something almost every day just to survive. A rabbit or groundhog wouldn’t keep him fed for long. A boar or deer would, but he had yet to see anything promising. From what he knew of his childhood and what he’d seen over the past couple of days, these woods weren’t very big. He could cross from one side to the other in twenty minutes at a steady trot. There was nothing and nobody here, certainly no other manticores. He was alone with a few measly rodents.

The following day, he set out to circle the entire perimeter of Black Woods just to be sure of his available territory. He passed his old house again, came close to the cliff edge, followed the narrow path and the sheer drop for a long time, then turned inland and gazed out across endless open fields blanketed with fog. He finally came full circle with an increased sense of panic and confusion.

No mountain anywhere. And the woods were isolated. He’d already circled the perimeter and knew the extent of them. His territory was small.

Hunger forced him to break off from his exploration. He drank from the stream and wished it were full of fish. He tried to follow the stream to its source, but it trickled down from a gentle, grassy slope well outside the woods to the south. The fog prevented him from seeing much else.

Settling down, he knew he’d have to be patient and wait for passing animals. Anything would do—squirrels, mice, something.

Alone and starving, Thomas grew more and more despondent. Late in the day, he managed to shoot his quills at a squirrel in a tree, and it dropped to the ground and trembled while he pounced on it. Rather than spoil its taste with the venom from his stinger, he simply snapped its neck and tore into it. As usual when he ate, he zoned out and thought about other things while a darker side of him took over. He didn’t stop until every tiny piece was gone, bones and all.

But it wasn’t enough. He needed more. He needed something bigger.

Two full days passed before something worth eating came along. Thomas was so weak and full of despair that he barely paid attention until a distant shout alerted him to the intruders.

“Robbie! Wait for us!”

Thomas shakily rose to his feet, listening intently to the footfalls and rustling of bushes. Could it be those boys again? He’d thought about them often since figuring out he was in Black Woods. They were about the right age. His age. They might be two of the friends he’d hung out with when he’d lived here all those years ago. He couldn’t recall their faces, but their names flitted about at the edge of his memory.

Some friends, he thought. Nobody cared when I went missing, and now they’re working with the centaurs and harpies and trying to trap me here? Why don’t they all just leave me alone?

Bitterness and hunger gnawed at him. Everything crashed down on him at once—the recent loss of his old mentor Loneclaw; the humiliating capture by filthy harpies because he’d been foolish and lazy enough to chew on a drugged carcass; the confusion of how he’d returned to this dreary place he hadn’t seen in many years; the despair at being so hungry and utterly lost; and now the realization that his so-called friends of old had been here the whole time, probably not missing him one iota!

“It’s time I made a proper kill,” he muttered with determination.

Chapter 10
Shapeshifting Classmates

Thomas waited silently as a lone figure approached. He recognized the tall boy from the other day. The shorter one must be lagging behind.

After the tall boy passed mere feet away, Thomas stepped out and arched his tail over his head, putting some pressure on the tip so that his quills bristled and stood on end.

The boy must have heard because he spun around, his eyes widening. He let out a piercing shriek.

Nothing about that surprised Thomas, but what made him step back in shock was the way the tall, skinny boy began to grow in width and height. His shriek continued, but it changed in pitch, deepening, becoming low and mournful as he grew to three times his usual height, his clothes stretching and tearing.

Dumbfounded, Thomas stared at the transformation, his quills and stinger forgotten. The creature manifesting before him was an ogre! He’d seen a few before; sometimes they tramped through the forest back home. This one was young, only fifteen feet tall but still formidable.

When the transformation was complete, the ogre stared at him with big brown eyes and a puzzled expression.

Then it charged.

Instinctively, Thomas shot off some quills, a few finding their mark and sticking into the shaggy monster’s arms and chest. It hardly noticed, though, and began pummeling Thomas with enormous fists.

Angrily, he clawed at the ogre and swung his tail around, sticking the monster with more quills. It roared and moaned, then staggered, now feeling the effects of the dulling poison. It swung its fists again, then turned and stumbled away, crashing through the bushes and thudding into trees as it went.

Stunned and shaken, Thomas shook his head and composed himself. His first kill hadn’t gone as well as he’d expected. Still, the other boy was back there somewhere, assuming the ogre hadn’t flattened him during its mad, clumsy dash to safety. Thomas set off after it, following in its path of destruction, hunger gnawing at him again.

He slowed when he heard the hushed, excited voice of the other boy ahead. “. . . He has these moments of amazing strength. That’s his secret. Once, he burst right out of his shirt. I guess something must have frightened him, and he changed into . . . into that thing that ran past us.”

“But what frightened him?” another voice said, this one sounding like a girl. “The red-faced monster?”

Thomas scowled, knowing it was him they were talking about now. Red-faced monster? All right, if they wanted a monster, he’d show them one.

He crept closer, circling around behind them. He heard the boy whisper something but couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t matter—they were his now. A boy and a girl, five feet away, their backs turned. He raised his tail to strike, but already they were turning to face him. Both stopped dead, their eyes widening.

Thomas paused with his tail held high. When he saw the girl’s face peeking from behind the boy’s shoulder, a memory stirred, and he held off from shooting his quills for a moment longer. Though he couldn’t remember her name, bitterness swept over him. “Well, well, look who it is.”

The girl whispered something in the boy’s ear, who simply stood there with his mouth wide open. She whispered again and again, tugging on his shirt to pull him backward. Finally, a flicker of understanding registered on his face, and he snapped out of it, suddenly looking like he was about to bolt.

Thomas said calmly, “If you run, you won’t get very far. So don’t even try.” He feigned a yawn, showing off what he knew were fearsome teeth. He shook his tail to make it clear he could shoot quills a fair distance.

The girl whispered in the boy’s ear, “It’s a manticore. Run before it—”

Thomas took three steps forward and shoved his face up close to theirs. It was the girl he was interested in, though. Who was she? He peered at her as she cowered behind the boy’s shoulder. Her hair was dark brown, pulled back in a ponytail. “What’s your name, girl?”

Annoyingly, her speechless friend edged sideways and blocked his view of her.

Thomas scowled. “Let me see you, girl.”

“Stay there,” the boy told her. He was only short, but he had a surprising amount of courage facing up to a manticore like this. For a second, Thomas felt his resolve crumbling . . .

Then the girl stepped into view, still clinging to her friend’s arm.

“That’s better,” Thomas said. He stared at her, more memories surfacing about his classmates. Eight of them, four boys and four girls. This particular girl had been a real pest, always teasing and pulling pranks. His heart skipped a beat as a name slotted into place. “Abigail, isn’t it?” he ventured, putting his hunger aside for the moment. Curiosity was getting the better of him.

Neither of them answered, though their shocked expressions indicated Thomas had guessed correctly. He lowered his tail, wondering what other memories he could dredge up.

“Yes, I remember you,” he said. “Dr. Porter’s daughter.” He looked at Hal, scouring his mind for long-forgotten details. There had been one big boy, kind of overweight, a bit of a bully. A tall boy, skinny and annoying. And two small boys, one timid, the other more adventurous. Still, his recollection was vague. “I don’t remember your name, though,” he said. “Barry? Harry? Howard?”

The boy barely got the word out. “Hal.”

Thomas almost cried out with the sudden recognition. “Haaaal, yes. And who was your friend? The one who was here earlier?”

“You mean Robbie?”

It was like a clap of thunder in his head. “Robbie, yes. I remember now.”

In fact, Robbie’s name had been thrown out a few times—back near the fog-hole a few days ago, then again just a little while ago. The name clicked into place now. The skinny, annoying boy and the short, adventurous boy. They’d always been friends. Hal and Robbie.

“Who are you?” Abigail demanded. “How do you know our names?”

Thomas, his mind still buzzing with revived memories, paced around them in a tight circle, making sure they knew that running away would be a mistake. Would these old classmates remember him even if he told them his name outright? “I lived here once,” he said eventually.

Something else flashed in his mind, almost causing him to reel. He’d fallen off the cliff! He remembered his own squeal of terror as he’d stumbled out of the bushes into midair. After that was a complete blank.

He blurted it out before the memory could slip away. “I fell over the cliff outside the woods.”

It was the girl who spoke first. “Thomas?”

Though his mind spun, Thomas remained calm and continued pacing. “I was Thomas, a long time ago. I don’t remember much.” And, oddly, he realized that was true. Most of it had become a blur over the years, the events only clarifying now. “I was chasing a groundhog in the backyard . . . I felt strange, and then I changed, became some kind of animal . . .” He grimaced at the next part. “My mother yelled at me, and I ran into the woods. She came after me, shouting. I kept running, got lost, eventually saw daylight ahead and ran toward it . . . straight out of the woods and off the cliff. I fell into the water.”

“You didn’t hit the rocks!” Hal exclaimed. “Everyone said you hit the rocks and died. But you missed.”

Thomas paused a second. They’d all thought him dead? He supposed that made sense. It explained why nobody had tried to find him. He’d fallen off the cliff! How had he forgotten that?

Now more details cleared into his mind. Anger stirred in him. It was true he’d missed the rocks, but he might have swum to safety except for—

“Yes, but then something grabbed my feet and pulled me down,” he said. Brief images flitted through his head, but he couldn’t quite make out what had gripped his ankle. A tangled mass of seaweed? Perhaps even a shark? “I kicked and swallowed water, but down I went, and everything got dark . . . Next thing I remember, I woke up in a forest, lying by the side of a lake.”

Actually a puddle, he thought, only that sounded ridiculous. Part of his story still eluded him. He’d fallen into the sea and woken in a forest? It was like a large chunk of time was missing.

“And the fog was all gone,” he finished.

He waited to see if they’d react, but they continued staring at him wide-eyed.

“And now I’m back here again,” he said, watching them carefully. If they were in cahoots with the harpies and the centaur khan, then they’d know all about his foolishness with the drugged boar. Just in case they didn’t, he chose to skip over the details and save himself some humiliation. He sniffed and looked around with distaste. “I went to sleep one night in my den and woke up the next morning in these old woods. Took me a while to realize where I was.”

The boy, Hal, seemed more relaxed now. “Thomas Patten! So you changed too! We’re all changing . . . but you changed years ago!”

“And you’re a manticore,” Abigail said.

Thomas looked them both up and down, hunger flaring again. He’d had enough reminiscing. He needed to eat. “Yes, I’m a manticore. And I haven’t eaten properly in a week.”

“A manticore,” Hal said, nodding like a fool. “Well, I’ve never heard of them. But it’s funny, you’ve got red hair, and you always had red hair, even when you were—”

“Human?” Thomas finished for him.

He licked his lips, suddenly cold with dread at what he was going to do next, what he needed to do. He’d talked for too long. Loneclaw had been able to talk to a human for hours before making the kill, actually enjoying the conversation until he grew bored. After just a couple of minutes, Thomas was finding it more and more difficult to treat these two humans as his meal.

Putting on a bold front, he lifted his tail and puffed out his quills. Was he really going to do this? Could he? He absolutely needed to eat before he keeled over and died of starvation, and he needed to prove himself so he could return to his den with his head held high. Loneclaw might be watching over him at this very moment.

“. . . Well, yeah,” Hal was saying. “Not quite that red, obviously. More ginger-colored than anything . . .”

As much as he needed to feed, Thomas couldn’t quite figure out how he felt about his first kill being these two. They had been classmates, his friends . . . yet here they were, still living on the island as though nothing had happened six years ago. They seemed perfectly content and happy, not missing him at all despite their hurried, frantic chatter. And they’d tried to block the fog-hole to keep him from going home. They had to be conspiring against him. Their pretense was all too obvious.

“Well, it was nice to see you again, Thomas,” Abigail said, pulling on Hal’s arm. “We’d better get going now. We’ll bring you some food, lots of it. We’ll go home right now and see what we can find, then come back in an hour or two. Okay?”

Thomas faced her and couldn’t help grinning sarcastically at the lies spewing from her lips. They’d bring him food? Really? Perhaps some sandwiches and cookies?

“And then we’ll figure out what to do next,” Hal said. “Well, come on, Abi. Let’s—”

“You’re going nowhere,” Thomas said. Enough was enough. He raised his tail again, his quills bristling, the stinger exposed. “Look, nothing personal, but I have to eat. I have to eat properly—understand? Rodents aren’t enough for me. I’m a manticore now, and have been since I was six. I’ve enjoyed this little trip down memory lane, but all I want right now is to eat a good meal and then get home to my den.” He winked. “But I promise you won’t feel a thing. I’ll go easy on you, paralyze you first, and then sting you—much less painful that way.”

“Thomas, don’t mess around,” Hal said, pushing Abigail behind him and backing away. “I’m not sure if you’re just joking with us or not, but . . . I mean, you wouldn’t, would you?”

Torn between a need to tear these humans apart and feast, and a desire to let them run away to safety, Thomas snarled and attacked before he could change his mind again. He flicked his tail and watched dozens of quills shoot over his head, zipping toward his prey.

Abigail screamed, and Hal threw up his arms. Too late. Quills struck them both in the arms, chest, and legs, and they went down almost instantly.

Thomas fought the desire to retreat. They would be fine if he left them alone. The poison would wear off, and they’d recover and escape—if he let them. Right now they were helpless. He had to follow through. He had to be strong.

He bent over the boy and held him down with his paw. As he stared into Hal’s frantic eyes, he felt a moment of great sorrow as though he’d already crossed the line and become a human-killer.

A thick, yellow glob of deadly poison dripped from his poised stinger and landed on Hal’s cheek. “This won’t hurt,” Thomas said softly, trying to hide the shakiness in his voice. Killing would be easier in the future. Manticores did this all the time.

He took a deep breath and jabbed downward.

Before his stinger made contact, something lashed out and clubbed Thomas around the face, knocking him sideways and forcing him to cry out. The blow had been so hard it made his eyes water. Stunned, he blinked and looked around, expecting to see the Robbie-ogre standing over him.

Instead, he watched in amazement as Hal, now on his belly and trying to get up, slowly transformed into something entirely inhuman, something with long clawed fingers, bulging arms, and green, scaly skin. Clothes began to tear apart. A thick tail sprouted with a knobbed ridge. Great leathery wings burst from the boy’s back as he grew and grew, stretching to twenty feet or more in a matter of seconds.

Thomas backed away. What was this? First Robbie, now Hal? It wasn’t fair!

When a fully formed dragon leapt to its feet and turned to face him, Thomas decided his meal would have to wait. Again.

He turned and ran with the howling, scaly monster hot on his heels.

Chapter 11
Desperation

Thomas felt like a failure.

Luckily for him, the dragon had given up the chase pretty quickly, allowing him to hide while the scaly giant crashed around in the bushes and headed back.

He heard the plaintive voice of the girl and several grunts from the dragon, and then they were gone, allowing Thomas to creep out from his hiding place.

He simmered with anger and humiliation. Things were clicking into place, and he didn’t like it. It seemed both Hal and Robbie had transformed into monsters the same way Thomas had, only he’d done it years ago and ended up alone. It wasn’t fair. And he was still hungry, a gnawing pain that made him feel weak and desperate.

He returned to the fog-hole and stared at it for hours from the safety of nearby bushes. He still couldn’t figure out how it came into play. Eventually he decided he would just have to explore it and find out.

Avoiding the branches the boys had laid across, he poked his head into the cavelike opening, getting a face full of fog in the process. He stepped inside and felt around. The floor of the tunnel was a mixture of earth and rock, and he slid a little as he plunged deeper. His heart hammered in his chest, the musty darkness playing havoc with his senses. Just a few feet in, he knew he couldn’t do it. Even with his catlike vision, he saw very little in the pitch-black tunnel, especially with the silent fog rolling past his face.

Spooked, he turned and bolted out again.

He spent the rest of the evening prowling the woods in despair, trying to find something to eat. It seemed the wildlife knew he was hungry because the woods were unusually silent as evening descended. And was the fog thicker than usual despite the fix or six branches lying across the fog-hole?

A storm rolled in, and the trees began swaying and dropping branches everywhere. It rained, then poured, and Thomas ferreted around for shelter under a fallen log some distance from the fog-hole. There he slept fitfully, wishing he were back at his old house.

* * *

The storm was gone by the time morning rolled around. Thomas set out with grim determination, knowing he needed to find something substantial to fill his belly today lest he grow too weak to carry on. His legs were shaky, and he had a severe headache. He drank heavily from the stream, hoping that would stave off the hunger a little.

His foraging for rodents proved fruitless, but later, in the afternoon, he stopped dead when he heard voices.

Could it be . . . ?

Barely able to believe his good fortune, he listened as an entire group of children approached through the woods. He counted at least five or six different voices.

He wasted no time. His stomach ruled.

With a howl, he burst out of the bushes and attacked, not caring that the first thing he saw was the dragon, this time with a blond-haired girl perched on top. He avoided the dragon’s jaws and slid underneath, squeezing beneath its soft underbelly. Almost before the dragon had time to react, he jabbed at it with his stinger.

Gotcha!

Thomas slid out from beneath the reeling dragon, cast his gaze about, and spotted a centaur. He had no time to wonder where it had come from or which of his old classmates it might be. Instead, he leapt at its throat.

Unfortunately, the centaur reared up in fright and clubbed him with flailing hoofs. Thomas jerked to the side, stars exploding before his eyes and pain flaring in his jaw.

He struggled to his feet, aware of a lot of yelling and screaming around him. He glimpsed figures darting from side to side. The dragon flopped down into the mud, and Thomas just had time to grin before a shaggy mass of hair and muscle lumbered out of the trees toward him. The ogre punched him in the face, and he flew backward.

Shaking his head, he sprang back onto his feet and flung his tail around. Quills shot out and struck the ogre.

At that moment, the dragon roared and breathed a sheet of searing flame. Thomas felt the heat and panicked, letting out a cry of anguish as he tried to duck away. In the end, he snarled and ran as the dragon spread the flames everywhere.

He didn’t go too far. Gasping, he hunkered down to get his breath back and steady his nerves. He wasn’t done. He’d bravely attacked his biggest foes—the dragon and the ogre, even the centaur—but there were easier targets, too. He’d spotted a couple of girls clutching each other as they knelt in the dirt screaming. One of those would do.

He headed back. He heard someone yelling “Darcy!” and grinned. Maybe the group had gotten split up. If so, it would be easier to pick one off.

Abigail’s voice floated through the trees. “What are we going to do now? I honestly thought we’d be able to take care of ourselves. I thought Thomas wouldn’t dare attack us with you around.”

Thomas couldn’t resist a loud, fluty laugh.

The babble of voices fell to a hush. He crept closer, listening intently. They seemed to be trying to find the one called Darcy, who Thomas remembered was the blonde. He paused, suddenly troubled. She had always been nice to him.

Then again, so had most of the others.

He still needed to eat. The less he thought about these humans as old friends, the easier it would be.

Seeing figures moving about just beyond the bushes, he remained absolutely still and watched in silence. From what he could see, his old classmates were wearing odd, silky clothing, mostly green. Some sort of camouflage? Well, they couldn’t hide from him. He tensed and prepared to leap out. This time, he’d target one of the girls with his few remaining quills. He’d shoot, then grab her in his jaws and make off. He had no doubt some of the others would come after him, but maybe he could—

Something leapt onto his back.

Gasping, he struggled under the weight of whatever had him pinned down. Something hissed in his ear, and a black tongue slipped out of an equally black, reptilian, elongated snout with white fangs.

Thomas squirmed and snarled, but claws dug into his back. Something as long as a snake wrapped around his midsection and squeezed, making it difficult to breathe.

“No,” he gasped, realizing he was about to lose this fight and become prey to whatever this nasty creature was.

Some of the children stepped out of the undergrowth, each wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

The serpent creature that straddled Thomas’s back opened its mouth and spewed warm, foul-smelling liquid all over his face. He choked and shut his eyes tight as his attacker exhaled heavily. The liquid hardened, and suddenly Thomas found it difficult to open his eyes. His nose was glued shut, and he had to force his mouth wide to suck in gasps of air.

At that point, the four-legged serpent monster released him.

Thomas rolled in the dirt, trying to rub the nastiness from his face to no avail. Blind, he howled and stumbled away.

* * *

Eventually, Thomas found his way to the stream. There he spent ages dipping his face in the water and pawing at his eyes, trying to remove the hardened film that encased them. It crumbled away in pieces, and finally he blinked his eyes open and worked on the rest that covered his nose and face.

His jaw hurt. The side of his face hurt. He felt battered and bruised all over. And he still had not eaten.

“I’m not cut out for hunting,” he moaned. “Loneclaw, what am I going to do?”

Night fell, and as he lay there in the trees ruminating over his latest failed attempt to make a kill, he realized he could see the stars through the canopy of trees above. He stared, puzzled. Was it his imagination, or did it seem less foggy now?

He padded softly through the trees toward the fog-hole. If the fog was thinning, maybe he could brave the tunnel after all. He had to do something. There just wasn’t enough decent, easy-to-catch food on the island, especially confined as he was to Black Woods, and he no longer rated his chances of bringing down any of the humans when they kept transforming into fearsome monsters.

“Thomas!” a voice called. “Thomas! I want to talk to you.”

He stopped, his ears pricking up. The voice had come from directly ahead, very close. It had to be a trap. Warily, he checked his tail and found that a few new quills had already sprouted. He crept forward until he could see the fog-hole. To his surprise, the fog no longer belched from the tunnel. Instead, faint wisps snaked upward from a gap at one side. The rest was heavily covered. Had the fog stopped entirely? Or was it just trapped?

“Thomas!” a lone figure yelled.

It was Hal again. He had the nerve to stand there all alone, even facing the other way as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Thomas glanced around, still fearing a trap. These so-called friends of his thought they could draw him out and—and what? Perhaps shove him down the fog-hole and trap him inside?

He grinned. Right now, that would suit him just fine. It was exactly where he wanted to be, fog or no fog. There was nothing here on the island for him. He had to brave the tunnel no matter what.

He raised his tail and shot off every available quill. Hal ducked far too late, and some of the quills thudded into him. He collapsed seconds later and lay there flailing helplessly.

Some trap, Thomas thought gleefully.

He rushed out and stood over the boy. The partially covered fog-hole was within easy reach, and he was tempted to make a dash for it right away. But here was Hal, lying on the ground in front of him, vulnerable—and no sign of anyone else judging from the silent, unmoving woods all around . . .

When he next glanced down, Hal was already halfway through a new transformation, shifting to that fearsome dragon form again. Thomas watched, amazed. How was he doing it? How was he switching so easily between forms? And why were the poison-tipped quills so ineffective? Loneclaw had once told a story about bringing down a dragon, and he’d said the quills’ poison had lasted an hour. Yet this boy was already getting to his feet as though he’d shucked off the effects.

Thomas retreated. “This isn’t fair. I’ve brought down a dragon before,” he fibbed. “What makes you so special? How do you keep getting up?”

To his surprise, Hal—now in his full dragon form—turned away as if to run. But then the club-ended tail swung around and whacked Thomas on the head.

Everything went black.

* * *

Thomas woke to smothering fog. A lamp stood on the ground just a short reach away, and that lamp revealed a dragon’s face right next to his own.

Any other dragon would have terrified him. But this one was Hal. As fearsome as he looked right now, he was still human inside.

“Where are we?” Thomas demanded, his voice echoing.

Of course, he knew where he was. This was the fog-hole, the tunnel he hoped led to his home. But how far had they traveled? Had Hal dragged him in his jaws? Or pushed him with his snout?

Unexpectedly, Hal let out a bellowing roar that caused Thomas to jump to his feet and backpedal. He knocked the lantern over, and it smashed and went out. The tunnel plunged into absolute darkness.

Thomas turned away from the dragon and staggered along, feeling for the uneven floor and crashing into the smooth, rocky walls. Fire flared behind him, heating Thomas’s rear end. He sped up, fearful he would smash headlong into solid rock but equally scared of the roaring, fire-breathing dragon that raced after him . . .

When he saw light ahead, he put on extra speed and darted out of the tunnel, glimpsing flickering torches, moonlight, stars—and goblins forming a wall before him.

Knowing the trap had been sprung, he had no choice but to try and dash through the blockade and to the freedom of the trees beyond. He recognized his surroundings, knew he was back home, and felt a surge of renewed hope and determination—

And then he plunged straight into a net, which immediately ensnared him and rendered him helpless. He rolled around on the grass while goblins closed in.

Chapter 12
Delicious Knowledge

“Goblins!” Soul interrupted. “Goblins were waiting for you? So you found yourself back in this world?”

“Right,” Thomas agreed.

Soul looked thoughtful. “Humans have many old stories of gateways leading to another world.”

“Holes, yes.”

She gave a slow nod. “I’ve never seen such a hole, but I hear there were once many across the land. It sounds like you stumbled upon one.”

Thomas pondered this as he stretched—not so much the existence of holes but the fact that she knew of them. How could she, being confined to the forest?

Soul had inched closer, and it looked like some of the other manticores had, too. Thomas remembered with some sadness how Loneclaw had always perked up his ears at the slightest hint of a long, interesting tale. It was the main reason manticores waited so long before attacking their victims—because terrified humans would talk for hours if they thought it would save them, and many of the stories that slipped from their trembling lips were highly entertaining. “I always find you can nudge them one way or another,” Loneclaw had commented once. “They can be rambling about one subject, and I can interrupt with a simple query, and they’ll nod vigorously and expound on that detail, eager to please. It’s quite fascinating.”

Oddly, Thomas had never been much of a listener himself, a manticore trait that had eluded him.

“So you were captured by goblins,” Soul said with narrowed eyes. “How did you escape? What about those so-called friends of yours? Why would they conspire with goblins and trap you like that? And what about this faerie ball you mentioned?”

“I’m getting to all that,” Thomas said. “But before I continue, maybe you can explain something to me?”

She pursed her lips and paused before dipping her head. “Ask.”

Thomas had wondered about this for the past six years, and Loneclaw had not been able to answer satisfactorily because he’d been alone most of his life. The information had simply never been passed down to him. Soul, on the other hand, was part of a group and might have a better handle on it.

“How do you know so much about the ways of humans when you’re never around them?” he asked. “You know the meanings of names, the history of the land, and so much more—including holes between worlds. But how?”

Several chuckles and guffaws sounded among the pride. A smile spread across Soul’s face. “If you were a true manticore, you’d know the answer.”

“But Loneclaw didn’t either,” he protested.

“He did. Deep down inside, he knew.” Soul licked her lips as if imagining the taste of human flesh in her mouth. “Listening to humans blather on is fun. But we gather most of their knowledge from their brains when we eat them.”

Thomas sighed. He’d suspected that was the case. Now he knew for sure. Loneclaw had always been the most animated when his meal was human, and he’d often spouted random trivia for days afterward.

“It’s delicious,” Soul said, licking her lips again. “That knowledge is warm and rich. We prefer weary travelers because they’ve seen more of the land, and we get to glimpse what’s out there beyond the trees, those places we can never go. Plus, travelers have no ties. Nobody will come looking for them. Sometimes, when food is scarce, we trap trespassing humans from the village—but we make sure to eat every trace of them, bones and all, including their clothes and digestible possessions. Then there’s no proof.”

“No proof,” Thomas repeated. “Loneclaw told me the same thing whenever he ate a human. One traveler carried a metal pot and a hunting knife, and Loneclaw buried them far away. He said it’s best not to leave any evidence behind.”

“Only fools would. Unlike the naga, who are a fearsome enemy even in small numbers, humans are weak—except when they find evidence that a loved one has fallen victim to the manticores. Then they grow angry, muster an army, and become very powerful indeed. It’s happened before in other parts of the forest. We don’t dare antagonize them. But lone travelers and foolish wanderers? We can simply plead innocence.”

The rest of the pride tittered again, flashing lots of razor teeth and flicking their stingers from side to side.

“Maybe it’s a good thing I’m here, then,” Thomas said. “If you’d attacked my friends, all of you would have been wiped out.”

Soul’s smile faded, and the titters fell silent.

“Let me finish my story,” Thomas said as distant shouts rose from the nearby village. “Where was I? Oh yes—the goblins caught me . . .”

Chapter 13
Prisoner

Still tangled up in the net and dangling from a pole carried on the goblins’ shoulders, Thomas remained silent as he was marched through the woods to what he recognized as the goblin outpost, a miniature village with a collection of small huts and shacks. Behind him, in the moonlight, he saw the towering presence of the elusive mountain he’d so longed to see again.

It was a different world. He knew that now. The air smelled different, sweeter. The woods felt alive, rich with life. The fog-hole tunnel was the key, somehow connecting this world to the island even though the two places had to be far, far apart. The harpies had known about it, though probably only because the centaur khan had told them. The khan had planned mischief of some kind, dumping Thomas on the island so he could . . . what? Devour his classmates? But as it had turned out, he’d been too squeamish to do little more than cause a scuffle.

At least he was home. Or if not home, then in the general vicinity.

His attention was drawn to the group that trailed behind. He recognized Hal, Abigail, Robbie, and Darcy straight away, and guessed the others after some careful thought—Dewey, Fenton, Emily, and Lauren. They were all here, his old classmates from six years ago.

And here he was, trussed up like an animal while they walked about on human legs despite having transformed into monsters earlier that day.

What did it mean? How could they revert to their human forms and he couldn’t?

A woman caught his attention. It was hard to see her in the dim light from various hanging lanterns, but he identified her blond hair and silky green cloak as she hurried past to catch up to the goblins in front. He stared in amazement.

Was it . . . her? The woman he’d seen on that first day in his manticore form? The woman who had, along with three goblins, pursued him through the forest?

He’d never seen her again, not in all the six years since. He’d seen plenty of goblins, though. They’d tramped through the woods plenty of times, hunting him, even calling his name, and it was only when Loneclaw devoured one that they’d stopped looking.

Thomas didn’t get a chance to see the woman again that night. She led the group of children off in another direction while the goblins loaded Thomas onto the back of a wagon. They had no cages, so they pinned his net carefully, making sure it was loose enough for him to move around but too tight to escape from. While they were hitching horses to the front of the wagon, one of the goblins came around to stare at him.

“Hungry?” he grunted.

Thomas pricked up his ears. As much as he wanted to escape these people and run off into the woods, food was foremost on his mind right now. He nodded.

The goblin shuffled away and returned with a cooked leg of boar. He threaded it through the net to Thomas, who took it between his paws and stared at it with a mixture of suspicion and longing.

Then he attacked it, not caring how dry it tasted. If it was poisoned or drugged, he would enjoy it while he was still conscious. For that reason, he devoured it as quickly as possible in case he fell asleep halfway through and didn’t get a chance to fill his stomach.

To his surprise, he was still wide awake when the horse-drawn wagon set off with two goblins riding up front. He remained alert even when they left the trees and headed out into open land alongside a lake. Thomas cringed and hunkered low, finding some degree of comfort from the heavy net that blanketed him. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the rising nausea.

Sometime later, a village appeared on the moonlit horizon with forestland to both sides. Thomas wished he could make a dash for freedom right now. If he did, would he head to the left or right? Both forests looked huge. They might even join together around the far side of the village, but here they were separated by a narrow strip of land and a dirt road, along which the wagon trundled.

The goblins steered the horses through the village’s entrance, and Thomas spotted a sign. It had been years since he’d seen actual human lettering. C-A-R-T-E-R. He struggled with the pronunciation and whispered “Carrr-terrrr” to himself.

The streets were empty and quiet. Only a few lamps were lit here and there. Rather than stop among the stone houses, the goblins drove on through the village to the east side and out into the woods. Thomas smiled with glee. Now, if he could only escape . . .

He was taken to a barn. Inside stood a cage. He assumed it was normally used for purposes other than locking up manticores—perhaps for prisoners of their own?—but tonight it was his. Holding onto the net, the goblins dragged him rather unceremoniously off the wagon and in through the cage door. Once inside, they set about untangling him from the net.

Thomas waited, curious to see how trusting these goblins were. Once the net was off, he could make a run for it. The only snag was that the barn door was shut, and it would take time for him to open it with his clumsy cat paws. Still, if he slowed these goblins down with some of his quills . . .

He realized with annoyance that his quills were all used up. It would be a day before they all grew back. He had the stinger, but that was only useful if he could get close enough, and the goblins seemed too wary to give him that chance.

Before he knew it, one of the goblins threw a sack over his stinger and held on while the other rushed to tie it. Thomas thrashed, but they were strong. He snarled and tried to get free of the net, but he only succeeded in getting more tangled.

“Be good,” a goblin said, out of breath. “We’re only trying to help.”

Help, Thomas thought sourly. By locking me up?

But help they did.

* * *

The goblins, along with a woman named Winifred and her daughter Rebecca, treated him pretty well for the next several days, all things considered. They fed him cooked food on a plate, which he ate hungrily. They gave him plenty of water, which he lapped at from time to time, and offered him blankets and fresh bedding, which he ignored. They placed a bucket in his cage, but he purposefully made a mess on the cage floor in the hopes they would come in and clean it up. They did, but not until he was secured, which meant looping a manacle around one of his feet and pulling it snug to the bars. He resisted this treatment at first, but then they simply refused to feed him. In the end he complied like a good prisoner, careful not to upset them, awaiting his chance to escape.

A very fat man named Eric with a mop of curly black hair often came and talked to him. He seemed to be some kind of head doctor, and he sat in a creaky rocking chair and took his time explaining that Thomas was a shapeshifter.

Apparently, Thomas had shifted a couple of years earlier than expected, at age six, and run away in a panic before anyone could stop him. He’d been lost since. Meanwhile, the rest of his classmates had remained unaware of their shifting abilities until they were twelve—just recently, in fact.

The man also confirmed that there were in fact two worlds. The foggy island was part of the older world, which had been struck by a virus many years ago, before Thomas and his friends had been born. The fog was a manufactured defense mechanism, a filter to block out the virus and keep the air safe. However, only the shapeshifters’ parents were in any danger from the virus. The shifters themselves were immune thanks to their constantly regenerating cells. Also, they healed every time they transformed.

That’s why my quills don’t keep them down for long, Thomas thought.

He absorbed all this information while offering a stony silence to hide his intense interest. What the man said seemed to ring true and explained a lot. But what had him most interested was all the talk about the shapeshifters’ parents.

Where were Thomas’s? He desperately wanted to ask but for some reason felt that to open his mouth and speak would be a mistake. He needed to maintain his silence. Perhaps they would see him as a dumb animal and release him when they thought there was no hope. If he spoke, their interest in him would increase, and his imprisonment would continue.

So he kept quiet, taking in every single detail the man offered and giving nothing in return but a baleful stare.

Until around Day Five. Then, unable to contain his impatience any longer, he spoke. “Where are my parents?”

Eric almost leapt out of his chair in surprise. He puffed and panted his way to the bars and peered into the cage. “Why, Thomas, I’m so glad you asked. Perhaps if you would care to engage me in conversation, I can see my way clear to fetching your parents. I’m sure they’d like to see you again, but . . . well, frankly, they won’t want to see you until they know you’re, uh, human underneath all that red fur.”

Thomas sat calmly in the middle of the cage. He put on a show of indifference, but he couldn’t contain the bitterness that welled up. “They think I’m an animal.”

He lapsed into silence again, turning away from the fat man.

* * *

The next day, Eric informed Thomas that his classmates had returned from some kind of mission dealing with dragons in a labyrinth and harpies on a hill. “They’re heroes,” he said. “Doing the job they were intended for—acting as emissaries between us humans and other intelligent species of this world.”

Thomas scoffed at the idea of them being heroes while he was a prisoner in a cage. Worse than a prisoner—they thought of him as some kind of pet.

He pricked up his ears when the barn door opened and his friends filed in. Turning, he sucked in a breath. It was her again: the woman with the blond hair. The one who had sent goblins after him.

Winifred and her daughter bustled about as usual. The girl named Rebecca smiled at the visitors. “Hi. Be careful—don’t get too close to the bars. We can’t trust Thomas yet.”

Eric chuckled softly. “I know there’s a good little boy in there somewhere. I just need to draw him out of this monster.”

Thomas snarled.

The blond woman stepped up closer to the bars and held something out for Thomas to see. A glass ball and a magnifying glass? What was her game?

“I thought you’d be interested in this, young Thomas,” she said, staring at him with piercing blue eyes. “Would you like to see?”

Thomas glanced at the objects, then turned his gaze to each and every person in the barn. All his old classmates were here, all in human form and wearing the same weird, silky clothing they’d worn in the woods. This was the first time he’d gotten a good look at them all. They stared back, some of them looking curious, others scared.

Rebecca had edged closer to the bars, and Thomas knew he could reach through and grab her if he wanted. But he didn’t. She and her mom were nice enough. Still, Winifred pulled her daughter away. “Careful, Rebecca.”

“He can’t reach me, Ma,” the girl said.

Thomas was much more interested in the blond woman with cold blue eyes. He stared at her as she took a few more steps closer.

“Thomas,” she said. “Take a look at this.”

“Why should I?” Thomas snapped with rising anger. “Take it away and let me out of here.” He turned to his classmates. “Please—you’ve got to release me. I belong in a forest. I’m not human.”

“You’re one of us,” Hal said simply.

Abigail stepped forward and held out her hand for the glass ball. “Let me have that back, please, Miss Simone. Thomas is being rude and ungrateful and doesn’t deserve this gift. I don’t want him to see it—please let me have it back.”

The woman named Miss Simone swung to look at her. Before she could say anything, Hal added, “She’s right. Why should he get to enjoy it like the rest of us? He hasn’t earned the right. Don’t let him see it—quick, take it away!”

Curious, Thomas glanced at the glass ball. What were they talking about? What was so special about it?

He was aware of first Eric and then Winifred muttering something, but he was too preoccupied with the strange object in the woman’s hand. On its own, held between her finger and thumb, it was too tiny to see properly—but seen through the magnifying glass that she also held, it appeared to be swirling deep inside.

Images formed, and he moved closer, entranced . . .

Chapter 14
Hidden Memories

He was six again, the memory as clear as if he were actually there in the past, reliving his happy, carefree childhood—as a human.

Thomas often ventured beyond the fence at the rear of the backyard even though he’d been told a thousand times to stay out of Black Woods. The tangled bushes and low-hanging trees were like a jungle, the ground often wet and treacherous, an ever-present danger of bursting out of the woods and over the cliff edge. The fog didn’t help, perpetually thick and gloomy as it had been every day of his life.

Stay in the yard, his mom had warned him time and time again. And yet here he was, out beyond the fence, giggling as he scampered among the bushes chasing what he assumed was a large mouse or other rodent. Mud caked his shoes and splashed up his pants, and his shirt sleeve snagged on thorns.

“Thomas?” his mom called from afar.

He scowled. Just when it was getting interesting! He felt sure the mouse or bird or whatever it was had taken refuge under the mass of bushes in front of him. He knelt to peer under, listening intently.

Silence.

He grabbed the bush with one hand and shook it. Immediately, something scampered away, and he jumped up and circled around. To his surprise and delight, he spotted his quarry—something much larger than a mouse, something brown-furred and fat. A groundhog!

As it shuffled away and Thomas tiptoed after it, something strange came over him, a thrill he’d never experienced before. He was hunting, as stealthy as Lauren’s cat, suddenly hungry even though he’d eaten lunch an hour before. The plump groundhog would be a tasty meal. He’d rip into its soft underbelly first, then—

“Thomas! Where are you?”

His mom’s tone suggested annoyance. He paused, watching the groundhog slip away out of sight behind a tree. Had he really wanted to eat it just now?

Something stirred in him again. Of course he wanted to eat it. Why wouldn’t he? He was hungry, and the groundhog was an easy meal. He just needed to pounce on it before it got away.

He hurried around the tree, scanning the dense foliage. There! The brown-furred creature wriggled under a rotting log and out the other side, and Thomas bounded after it, hurdling the log and coming down hard on a clump of dry branches on the other side. He reached for the groundhog, but his ankle twisted under him and he stumbled, missing his chance.

When he fought to untangle himself from the branches, he found his shirt was caught up on them. Irritated, he tugged and yanked until something ripped and he staggered backward. Then he was off again, leaping around a huge, moss-covered stump and splashing into a narrow, trickling stream.

The groundhog scampered faster, using the uncluttered bank of the stream to its advantage and distancing itself from danger. But Thomas followed, enjoying the hunt now, knowing he was seconds away from catching and killing the creature.

Another thick cluster of bushes and bracken lay ahead, and the stream ran underneath. The groundhog disappeared, and suddenly Thomas feared it would escape. He let out a cry of frustration as he dithered in front of the obstruction, trying to decide which way to circle around. Neither looked promising. He threw himself straight ahead, confident he could struggle through the foliage. He would be on the other side in no time if he could only—

Again his clothes snagged, yanking him to a halt, and he struggled furiously as his prey disappeared. Another intense feeling came over him, one of hunger and desperation as well as crushing disappointment that he’d failed to catch one of the slowest critters in the woods.

He yelled, stretching his neck as if that might help throw his voice farther ahead. He lost his balance and toppled forward, crashing down into the springy bracken and floundering there.

Some part of his brain was aware of material ripping as branches snapped under his weight. He glimpsed red fur on the back of his hand, but of course he was only imagining that and quickly dismissed it. He pushed up from the bushes and scrambled free, certain he’d left a large section of his pants behind but finding that he didn’t care. There was no way that groundhog was getting away free!

As he started running again, he realized something was terribly amiss. Confused, he slowed and looked down, seeing that same red fur again, this time covering two enormous catlike paws that it seemed he was now wearing like the gloves of a fancy-dress costume. Maybe his mom and dad, along with all his friends’ parents, had had a secret party in the woods, and they’d tossed the costume aside afterward, and he’d gotten tangled up in it, his hands accidentally sliding inside the furry gloves.

Or maybe he’d banged his head and was in a daze right now, daydreaming, seeing things that weren’t there. That seemed most likely.

Yet it felt so real. He sat heavily and held up one paw to study it. The claws were tough and sharp, nothing remotely pretend about them.

Then he noticed that even the way he was sitting felt strange. He could hardly believe his eyes when he looked down to see a thick mane of blood-red fur around his neck, and under that, shorter fur of the same color covering his bare chest and belly.

Terror coursed through him. He stood and danced about on four large, catlike feet. What had happened to him? Was he . . . a lion?

He spotted his clothes lying in shreds in the tangle of bushes along with a trail of broken, flattened twigs and muddy footprints where he’d pulled himself loose. The footprints weren’t human. They were short and fat with four pointed toes.

“Mom!” he cried. Even his voice sounded different, with a fluty, warbling quality about it. “Mom!”

“Thomas?” his mom called back through the gloom. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

Thomas ran through the woods toward her, panic and terror rising with every step. Nothing made sense. Was he dreaming? Had he knocked his head and slipped unconscious? Was this a nightmare from which he couldn’t wake?

He tore around the bushes, following his mom’s voice. He came upon her quicker than he expected and skidded to a halt. He wanted to throw his arms around her, feel her warm, comforting hug as she whispered, “It’s okay, my darling, you’re going to be fine.” But he held back, feeling that he was much heavier than normal, and quite a bit bigger. He didn’t want to knock her down and hurt her. He opened his mouth to speak and—

She screamed.

He flinched and watched in amazement as she stumbled backward. The words stuck in his throat at the sight of her wide-eyed, ashen face. She’d never looked at him that way before.

“M-Mom, it’s . . . it’s me,” he stammered.

Her screams cut off. With her shaky hands to her face, she peered out from between her fingers, tears splashing over them. A deathly silence fell as she stared at him and he stared back.

When she slowly pulled her hands away, a new expression had flitted across her face, one of abject horror.

Thomas realized he was crying harder than she was. He choked back a sob and backed away, wishing she would stop looking at him like that. He was halfway into the bushes when she croaked, “T-Thomas? Is that you?”

He let out a strangled cry. “Ye-e-s!”

Even though the word didn’t quite come out right, she must have recognized his voice because she cried out and clapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes widened even more. She began to shake her head, saying, “No, no, no . . .”

Ashamed and embarrassed, Thomas turned and fled, blinking tears away, desperate to hide.

His mom’s voice floated through the fog. “Thomas! I’m—I’m sorry! Come back!”

But he couldn’t bear the humiliation.

As he ran, he thought he glimpsed someone among the trees, a blond-haired woman. Darcy’s mom? She was the only one he knew with hair that color. The last thing he wanted was to frighten someone else. And if she saw him like this, she’d tell the others, and then they’d all think of him as some kind of freak.

He forged through the trees until he splashed into the narrow, meandering stream again. He stopped and peered down at himself. In the rippling reflection, he saw something entirely unlike his usual self, something that looked like a lion but wasn’t a lion, a catlike head with his own blue-eyed face looking out from it, all framed by a shaggy red mane. He grimaced, exposing long, pointed teeth.

He glimpsed something else, too. Something that arched over his head. He flinched, thinking it was a giant snake about to snap at him—but he quickly realized it was his own tail, long and thick, with a hideous pointed thing on the end, bristling with thin needles. It hung there just above his head, mocking him. Terrified, he swung around and forced it away, and then he stood gawking. It swung from side to side, coiling like a serpent, and he realized the bulbous hook on the end was some sort of stinger, just like that of a scorpion only much, much bigger. The needles looked like porcupine quills, and as he watched, they flared outward, sticking up as if about to explode in all directions.

Screaming with revulsion, he took off running again, crashing through the bushes, wishing he could leave his hideous tail behind. Still running hard, he glanced back to find it thrashing about almost as though it were angry.

When he faced front again, he got a face full of bracken as he burst through a clump of the leafy plant. Abruptly, the woods ended, and the ground vanished from beneath his feet. With a yelp of fright, he tried to turn and scramble for a hold on the cliff edge, but it was far too late. He plummeted fifty feet to the sea below where jagged rocks poked up out of the cold, frothing sea.

Thomas smacked down hard, and cold seawater rushed up his nose. As he went under, the muffled roar terrified him, and all he could see was a rolling wall of white bubbles as he flailed and kicked. He bumped up against something hard—a rock—and grasped for it, but a powerful current sucked at him, pulling him away.

He continued floundering, frantic now, the salty seawater stinging his eyes and forcing its way down his throat, making him cough and shudder. The current took hold of him again, this time pushing him forward and slamming him against the cliff face. He tried to grab hold of something, but again he was pulled away by the unrelenting waves.

The swirling bubbles diminished, and he saw calmer water above. It seemed miles away. Almost overcome with terror, he struck for it with every remaining ounce of strength and determination. And every time he thought he was making headway, the tide pulled him farther down and away from the cliff. He knew he could make it, though. He had to.

Something touched his foot. It seemed to cling on, and he kicked with renewed frustration and terror. His chest was bursting now, his strength ebbing. The last thing he needed was to get tangled in seaweed. But whatever it was snatched and grabbed at him, and he couldn’t twist around enough to see what it was or swipe it loose.

Darkness enveloped him as he sank, and he stopped thrashing, knowing it was all over. The surface receded into the distance far above, and he had a moment of strange calm as he realized this was it, he was about to drown. Whatever had hold of him was dragging him down to the dark, cold depths of the sea.

The last thing he saw before his mind blocked the entire traumatic incident from his memory thereafter was the face of that woman—the blond-haired, blue-eyed woman, her hair swirling around her head, and silky green dress trailing like seaweed, and a scaly fishtail instead of legs. She had hold of his ankle and was pulling him down, drowning him with steely determination.

He couldn’t hold out any longer. Completely against his will, his chest heaved, and he sucked in a great gulp of seawater.

Chapter 15
A Deadly Attack

When Thomas blinked and tore his gaze from the glass ball, he found everyone staring at him, especially the woman named Miss Simone, who stood within his reach.

He looked around. How long had he been out?

Despite the intense clarity of the scene that had played out, he found that other memories had slotted into place as well. Somehow, that tiny glass ball had allowed him to see.

“I remember everything so clearly now,” he whispered at last. “I remember the island, the classroom, Mrs. Hunter, and all of you. I remember chasing a groundhog and changing into . . . into this.” He looked down at himself. Then he looked up again and grinned, suddenly jubilant. It was all so clear now, a veil lifted. “I remember everything!”

He turned away and hunkered down. Why hadn’t he bothered reverting to his human form before? When he’d first arrived in this world, it would have been so easy to step outside the woods. He could have walked across open land and sought help from his own kind instead of spending his life as a manticore, feeding on raw flesh. He didn’t regret meeting Loneclaw, but he missed his parents and a normal life with his friends.

The mermaid woman had stolen that life from him. Why had she tried to drown him?

He changed. It was so easy that he shook his head in disgust. Suddenly, he was human again, curled up on the floor with his back to everyone, naked, the cool air of the barn on his bare pink skin.

“Oh dear,” one of the girls said.

“Get him a blanket,” Winifred said.

Thomas waited. As he’d guessed would happen, someone opened the cage door to come in. He glanced sideways and saw it was her, Miss Simone, the mermaid shapeshifter. She draped a blanket over him, and his heart started thumping. She was so close. The bag that had been secured around the end of his tail had fallen to the floor. And the cage door was open.

“Thomas?” she said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Slowly, he sat up and pulled the blanket around his shoulders. “Is this what you want to see?” he murmured. “You really want me back?”

“Of course we do, Thomas,” Miss Simone said. “Your parents have been desperate to see you.”

Thomas climbed to his feet, finding that his human legs were shaky. “My parents,” he muttered. “Where are they, then? Why aren’t they here?”

“They’re in the village,” Miss Simone said. “They’ve seen you. But I advised them not to talk to you yet. It was when your mom screamed at the sight of you that you turned away in the first place. I didn’t think a reunion at this stage was a good idea, in case you felt . . . resentful.”

“Indeed not,” the fat man named Eric agreed. “A meeting while you’re still filled with hate and frustration? No. But a meeting when you’re calm and ready to communicate in a civilized way, certainly.”

Thomas ignored him and turned to Miss Simone. “I didn’t remember you before. But now I do. The glass ball . . . it showed me who you are. What you did.”

“What I did?”

“Yes, what you did,” Thomas said with a scowl, anger rising again. Now was his chance. He was barely aware of his words as he sized up his chances of escaping past all these shapeshifters. If nothing else, he would give them something to think about. “Pulled me under the water,” he said absently, steeling himself. “That was you, wasn’t it? Pulled me deep down underwater to drown me. I was lucky to get away.”

Miss Simone looked confused. “No, I saved you. That was the only way—”

Thomas transformed.

He found it incredibly easy. Before anyone had a chance to react, he flung off his blanket, pounced on Miss Simone, and raised his tail. With a roar, he swung the stinger down at her.

Everything happened quickly after that. Too quickly. It seemed the entire barn exploded into a menagerie of monsters large and small. The long, black, snakelike lizard with legs spat sticky water at his face. Fire blasted toward him from the mouth of the dragon. The wooden cage collapsed around him as the ogre smashed through. Thomas struggled but quickly succumbed to the ferocity of the attack. He went down in a heap with that horrible serpentine creature straddling his back just as it had in the woods.

While Eric was shouting and Winifred was rushing her daughter to safety, Thomas struggled feebly in the grip of the lizard monster, its tail wrapping around his torso and squeezing tight.

Seconds later, most of the shapeshifters were gone, taking the blond woman with them in an effort to save her from his manticore venom. There was no way she’d survive. Thomas had finally taken his first human life, and his victim couldn’t be a more deserving one.

So why did he feel so bad about it?

* * *

“Let me go,” Thomas pleaded.

He was in human form, sitting cross-legged near the edge of the new cage the goblins had brought in. Two days had passed since he’d stung Miss Simone.

He wore silky green clothes that somehow altered shape when he shifted into his manticore form and back. He didn’t understand how it worked, only that it did. Winifred had brought them to him so he didn’t have to crouch naked under his blanket all the time. When he’d gotten frustrated and transformed, the garments hadn’t restricted him. They hadn’t even torn. They’d just altered, become a single band of material around his neck. And when he’d switched back to his human form, they’d altered again, becoming a shirt and pants once more.

It made no sense, but there was no denying that he liked the freedom of shifting back and forth while remaining dressed.

“Please,” he said again, reaching through the bars to Eric. “I won’t hurt anyone. I promise I’m . . . I’m better now.”

While Winifred and Rebecca had given him the cold shoulder since his attack on Miss Simone, carrying out their clean-up and feeding duties in silence, Eric had remained chatty and positive, seated for the most part in his creaky rocking chair ten feet from the bars. He rocked to and fro even now, his pudgy fingers interlaced.

“What do you mean you’re better?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

Thomas shrugged. “I’m human again. Things aren’t as manticorish anymore.”

Eric stopped rocking. “Are you saying you’re ready to rejoin society? Become a human again?”

Nodding vigorously, Thomas rose to his knees, gripping the bars tighter. “I’m sorry about that lady. Stinging her was like . . . like something I had to do. I couldn’t help it. But now that I’ve done it, I don’t feel the urge anymore. I’m better now.”

Eric nodded slowly. “You had to get something off your chest, so to speak?”

“Right!”

“You had an itch to scratch.”

“An itch to scratch, yes.”

“You had to kill someone to relieve the pressure of being a manticore.”

Thomas paused. “She’s not dead, though.”

“Oh, Simone survived,” Eric agreed, “but only because she’s a shapeshifter, able to heal herself by transforming back and forth a few times. Still, she’s been ill the last few days. She’s in bed now, over at Dr. Kessler’s house. You really did a number on her, young Thomas.”

“I know,” he said miserably. “But I’m fine now. You can let me out. I’ll go say I’m sorry.”

“Just like that,” Eric mused.

“Right.”

After a long, thoughtful silence, the fat man leaned forward and struggled out of his chair. He approached the cage and stared at Thomas awhile before speaking. “What about your parents? How do you feel about them?”

This was something Thomas had pondered over every waking minute. He desperately wanted them to walk in through the barn door, but he was also terrified of seeing them. What if his mom looked at him that way again? If they had even an ounce of revulsion or fear on their faces, he felt that he would curl up into a ball and die of shame. “I . . . I want them to be happy to see me,” he said carefully.

“And if they’re not?”

“Then I don’t want to see them.”

“What if I told you they’re as scared to meet with you as you are with them?”

Thomas grimaced. “They’re scared of me?”

“Not of you. They’re scared for you. Scared that you’re not human anymore. They already lost you once. It would break their hearts to lose you twice. You see, a shapeshifter’s first transformation is a delicate business. You shifted two years earlier than expected, and nobody was ready. When you took off running, when you fell over the cliff and nearly hit the rocks, when you sank out of sight . . . well, everyone on the island assumed you’d drowned. Simone saved you at great risk, dragging you downward because you were flailing so wildly that you would have clawed her to death otherwise, and there was nowhere for you to crawl ashore, just a sheer cliff. She pulled you down through a portal, and when you crawled out of that puddle at the goblin outpost and ran away, there was no stopping you. You were gone.”

The subject of portals intrigued Thomas. Eric had explained them in detail a number of times: black, smoky clouds that acted as gateways between the two worlds. One existed halfway along the fog-hole tunnel, which explained how it had seemed like Thomas had crossed from one world to another. Another existed in the water just off the coast, a hundred feet below the surface, right under the cliff he’d fallen from. It was lucky Miss Simone had been watching his progress. She’d sensed he was closer to transforming than the others, and she’d regularly watched him playing in Black Woods. It was her, not Darcy’s mom, that he’d seen in the trees just before falling into the sea. She’d jumped after him, a simple enough feat for a mermaid.

“I ran away because I was scared,” Thomas muttered.

Eric steepled his fingers. “I know. But it’s very difficult to catch a manticore. It was only a matter of time before you were either torn apart by your peers or . . . or became one of them. You were lost either way.”

“So you all gave up?” Thomas said bitterly.

“After several months, yes, when a goblin was killed looking for you.”

“That wasn’t me,” Thomas said hurriedly. He scowled. “Why didn’t Miss Simone tell the truth? She knew I hadn’t drowned. Why did she let everyone think I was dead?”

Eric moved closer and placed his hands on the bars above Thomas’s. “Your parents grieved. Whether you were physically dead or living as a manticore amounted to the same thing. You were gone. They mourned for a long time. And eventually they had no choice but to get on with their lives. They adopted two little girls, and they—”

“What?” Thomas interrupted, startled. This was news to him. “They replaced me?”

Eric shook his head. “They didn’t replace you. They only tried to replace the hole in their hearts. That hole’s still there, though. And if you can show everyone that you can integrate safely with humans again, then—and only then—will I allow you to go back to them.”

Seeing the first sign of real hope in days, Thomas swallowed. “What do I need to do?”

Eric smiled. “I believe your friends are going on a mission to Whisper Mountain to battle a demon in a temple. Would you like to go with them?”

Thomas gaped. “You’d . . . you’d let me go? Just like that? You’d let me walk around with them after what I did?”

“Well, not exactly,” Eric admitted. He dug into his capacious pocket and pulled out a large iron ring with a lock and key. “Think of this like a collar. Loose enough to be comfortable around your neck, but too tight for you to shift into your manticore form. You’ll wear it for the duration of the mission.”

Thomas wasn’t impressed, but he had no choice.

Besides, he deserved it.

Chapter 16
Something in the Air

“You think you deserved it?” Soul said.

Thomas blinked. He’d been talking for so long now that he’d gotten caught up in his own story, reliving each minute as though it had just happened. Looking into that little glass ball had not only clarified every tiny detail from six years ago, it had also made his mind more attentive to new memories since, as though he was better able to organize thoughts and record events.

Maybe it was a temporary effect, but right now it was serving him well. “I did deserve it,” he said heavily. He fingered his neck, though any soreness from the metal collar he’d worn seemed to have faded. “I wasn’t thinking straight. Miss Simone is the reason I’m here, the reason I’m a shapeshifter, but she’s not a bad person. I’m glad she survived.”

During his long, drawn-out tale, the other manticores had sidled closer so that they surrounded him. He was within easy reach of their quills should they happen to grow weary of him. Soul was closer still.

A number of strange noises had floated around in the air during his storytelling, mostly distant shouts from the village. Whatever was going on in Carter, the soldiers didn’t sound happy. The naga were still around, just outside the forest, holding their positions or perhaps waiting for something.

Deeper in the woods, new sounds arose: the cracking and splintering of branches, the occasional crunch of small trees falling, and multiple heavy footfalls as large creatures passed through.

“What is that?” Soul whispered. She and the other five manticores were alert now, ears turning, noses wrinkling. “I smell . . . something.”

“Ogres,” Thomas said as a faint scent wafted over him.

“There are no ogres here.”

“There are now. I recognize the stink. Robbie’s almost as bad.”

“It’s no worse than the stink of humans,” Soul muttered. “I wonder what ogres taste like.”

“I’d like to see you try bringing one down!” Thomas scoffed before he could stop himself.

She glared at him a moment, then allowed a faint smile to cross her face. “I admit humans are preferable and undoubtedly easier. It’s a shame they are rare treats.”

The pride murmured its agreement.

“Rare treats?” Thomas repeated, his insides churning.

“As I said earlier,” Soul answered, “we are judicious when it comes to pouncing on human passersby.” She shook her head, frowning. “But never mind that. Tell us about this Robbie you mentioned.”

“He’s a friend of mine, one of the shapeshifters. The last time I saw him, he was going to fetch some ogre friends. Sounds like he just showed up.”

“I have to see this,” Soul muttered, and nodded at Thomas to indicate that he should lead the way.

He did so, glad to be stretching his legs. He led the entire pride closer to the edge of the woods where they could see the naga waiting on the open, grassy hills. The forest swept around the base of these shallow hills in an arc, so it was possible to see across the slopes to where the ogres were just now emerging. There had to be a dozen of them, each nearly thirty feet tall and covered with tangled, matted hair, with huge arms that swung back and forth as they shuffled like apes across the grass. They were heading toward the village.

Robbie was out in front, much smaller than the others, a mere boy compared to the giants he led. Thomas felt a sudden swell of pride for his skinny classmate. There he was, shambling along in ogre form with maybe a dozen right behind him, charging into battle to save the village from unruly visitors with guns. He couldn’t believe it had come to this, but the evidence spoke for itself. The gunshots, the shouts, the commotion—things had to be pretty bad.

“You see?” he told Soul. “My friends are shapeshifters, and I’m one of them.”

She paused, then turned to look sideways at him. “You have a dragon for a friend, and a girl who leads the naga, and another who commands an army of ogres.”

“Plus a centaur, a harpy, and a dryad,” Thomas reminded her. “Also a faerie, and a weird lizard monster.”

The ogres advanced. From the safety of the trees, Thomas and the pride could see people running about at the edge of Carter, just inside the pitiful fence. Shouts filled the air, followed by the rattle of gunfire.

Then a piercing shriek cut through all the noise, and it seemed a sudden hush fell. Squinting, Thomas could just about see a blond-haired lady standing there with her hair, cloak, and dress billowing in a breeze that didn’t seem to affect anyone else, even those who stood mere feet away.

“That’s Miss Simone,” Thomas whispered. “She’s a mermaid. She screams when she’s furious. I wasn’t there, but Hal said she blew out some windows at Dr. Kessler’s house the other day.”

The yelling started again, and amid the confusion, a dull thump sounded as a projectile of some kind fired into the air. Moments later, across the fields and in the forest, a muffled explosion rocked the ground, and a tree began to fall, ponderous yet somehow graceful as it crashed down and shook the surrounding forest.

More shouts and shots filled the air, and Soul backed away. “I don’t like this.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Thomas said. “That’s why I didn’t want you to pounce on my friends. They’re trying to help. These visitors are bad news. Their world is sick, so they’re coming to invade this one. Miss Simone said they’ll stop at nothing to make it their home. And that means the forests, too.”

“They made a tree fall,” Soul muttered, retreating farther into the bushes. “From a great distance! They have powerful magic.”

Thomas nodded. “Yup.”

But the felled tree was incidental compared to what happened next. One of the manticores heard it first, and he barked a single word: “Listen!”

They all listened. And then they heard it: the booming, thudding footfalls of something gigantic, something far bigger than any of the ogres. One by one, the squabbling humans in the village paused and fell silent, turning to look all around. The naga in the fields froze, and the dimwitted ogres scratched their heads.

Thomas sucked in a breath. He knew what was coming. “We just got back from a mission to Whisper Mountain,” he said hurriedly as the slow, booming footfalls grew louder and treetops began to quiver. “When Eric released me from that cage with a collar around my neck, I couldn’t shift into manticore form without strangling myself. I ended up going with my shapeshifter friends to some mountains in the south. It was supposed to help me remember how to be human.”

Soul inched forward again, peering through the bushes. “So?”

“So we went to a temple owned by elves. The temple had been taken over by what they thought was a huge Shadow Demon with a deadly stare. It turned out to be a giant lizard just like my friend Fenton.”

“And?”

“And there are two more. Miss Simone said the bull lizards were expected to pass through this way. That’s what that noise is. Giant lizards.”

Almost as soon as he said it, they appeared over the hill. The forest thinned out there, and the monstrous creatures were thumping steadily along the narrow passage between, pulverizing any small trees that stood in their way. Thomas felt his mouth drop open. He’d never seen anything so . . . so massive, not even at the temple. The lizard Fenton had stayed behind to rescue from its prison had been huge, but these males had to be bigger still, each a hundred feet in length not including their incredibly long, thin tails. With narrow snouts, glowing red eyes, dull-black hides, four tree-trunk legs, and crested ridges running along their spines, they looked like something out of a book of dinosaurs Thomas had loved when he was younger.

“I’ve seen them before,” Soul said stiffly. Her companions looked twitchy and restless. “They came through years ago. They won’t do anything. They’re just heading west.”

It looked like she was right. They ignored the village and continued on across the grassy hill on the north side with everyone staring in amazement, ogres and all.

More shouts sounded from the village. Thomas crept forward, craning his neck to see through the trees without venturing too far. It seemed one of the soldiers on the front line was confused about whether to fire on the monsters or not.

Hal, so small among the crowds of soldiers and villagers, shouted a warning: “No! No, he said don’t fire!”

The soldier turned to face front. A second later, his ground-mounted weapon jerked backward, and a dull thump rang out. Last time, the terrible projectile had felled a tree. This one hit the second giant lizard in the side, tearing loose a bloody chunk.

Soul gasped.

At that moment, a dragon appeared exactly where Hal had been standing. It turned on the soldiers, breathing fire toward them and sending them screaming and running.

But the lizards had paused. Furious at the injury to its brother, the leading monster turned toward the village . . .

“I’ve seen enough,” Soul said, again backing up. She turned and began to trot away. “Come.”

The other five manticores followed without a word, looking relieved to be away from this place.

“Soul!” Thomas called after her. “You can’t just leave!”

She paused long enough to look back and say, “If you have any sense, Thomas, you’ll come with us. Leave those people behind. Let them murder each other. It’s not our business.”

She headed off again, and the entire pride was gone seconds later, no more than a flash of red fur in the undergrowth. Thomas stared after her, amazed. That was it? After all his talking, she was done with him?

He supposed he should be grateful. He’d distracted her from attacking the naga and his friends, and they’d left him alone without feasting on him. Mission accomplished. He was now free to do as he pleased. She’d even invited him to follow, which meant she’d granted him permission to wander her territory.

Behind him, a horrendous noise filled the air—roars and crashes, splintering wood, terrified screams, more gunfire. It sounded like the monsters were stamping on the rooftops!

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could reach up and press his hands to his ears. Remaining in manticore form, he hurried away from the cacophony, his head low, following the same trail Soul and her pride had taken.

What could he do, anyway? He was a manticore, confined to the forest. Even if he could enlist Soul’s help, there was no way she’d follow him into the village, especially with two colossal beasts demolishing cottages.

Maybe she was right. It wasn’t his problem.

Chapter 17
Rounding Up the Troops

The cracks and bangs from the village continued until Thomas caught up with Soul and her companions at the entrance to their lair. Then the distant, booming cry of a monster filled the air from the south side of the village, continuing for ten or fifteen seconds before trailing off. It sounded exactly like the giant bull lizards only from a different direction. Had a third lizard arrived on the scene?

The sounds of destruction ceased, and a curious silence fell as though a thunderous storm had finally dissipated. A cheer went up.

Thomas sighed with relief, suddenly understanding what must have happened. Fenton had arrived! He’d tamed the giant Shadow Demon and freed it from the temple, and now he’d brought it here. From the sound of it, Fenton’s new friend had called out to the rampaging monsters and stopped them in their tracks.

Shaking off the distraction, Thomas focused on what he saw around him. The manticores’ lair consisted of a dozen dens. He was suddenly fearful. Soul hadn’t noticed that he’d followed her in, and nor had those with her, but blue eyes glared at him from hidden niches all around—a sturdy, low-hanging branch, a twisted tree trunk lying across a trench, a mass of curtainlike vines, and several dark openings in the side of a rocky hill. There had to be fifteen or more manticores lurking in this place.

No wonder Soul had a strict rule about devouring only passersby who wouldn’t be missed. The forest was huge, but if these creatures feasted willy-nilly on humans, or even the naga, there would be a harsh retaliation. There were probably other prides in distant parts of the forest, too, but none this close to both human and naga settlements. It had to be difficult for Soul to maintain order.

As Thomas stood there gaping, somebody whispered to Soul, who spun around to face him. She tilted her head and came trotting back. “Wise choice, young one.”

“There are so many of you!” Thomas blurted. “I—I lived alone with old Loneclaw.”

“Hence his name,” she said, and a few others tittered. She leaned closer and said in a low voice, “My advice to you, shapeshifter, is to remain in manticore form while you’re here. Knowing what you are is one thing. Having your human stink rubbed in our faces is another.”

“Okay,” he whispered.

She gave a nod. “Well, Thomas, if you’re here to stay, then let me introduce you. But I warn you—newcomers are expected to provide a feast for all, so you’d better shake off your squeamish inhibitions and get busy.”

Thomas felt a great wave of disappointment. This again! “I’ll see what I can do,” he muttered, already knowing he wasn’t up to the task. He had enough trouble catching one boar, never mind enough to feed this crowd.

Another manticore came dashing into the lair, his quills standing on end. “Soul, dinner is served.” He grinned, revealing his three rows of razor-sharp teeth. “A horde of goblins south of here, just entering the woods.”

“Goblins,” one of the others muttered with a grimace. He wasn’t alone; several shook their heads in disgust.

The scout’s grin broadened, displaying his needle-sharp teeth. “The goblins are looking for some escaped humans. Easy pickings.”

“Humans are in the woods as well?” Soul exclaimed, her tail rising high.

“Fugitives,” the scout confirmed. “Nobody will care about them.”

Soul looked again at Thomas. “Well, you’re in luck. Here’s your chance to prove your worth.”

Groaning inwardly, Thomas knew he’d have to go with them. Most of the manticores in the lair were getting up and stretching. One dropped down from a branch, causing it to spring back and shake leaves loose. Another loped out from under the tree trunk and shook dirt from his fur. Others strolled forward and clustered around Soul.

All looked expectantly at Thomas.

Swallowing nervously, he trotted after the scout who’d delivered the news. A procession of fearsome beasts followed immediately behind, walking single file to minimize the chance of being spotted by their prey up ahead.

It was a ten-minute trek at a moderate pace. The farther they traveled through the woods, the more voices they heard. Ugly voices, one man in particular with a sneering, nasty tone. Thomas heard another voice, too—the growl of a dragon.

“See that, guys?” the man was scoffing. “He won’t burn us. He can’t. The kid doesn’t have it in him . . .”

He went on for a while, but Thomas was too busy trying to stay quiet. The scout in front had slowed, walking carefully to avoid treading on dry twigs and leaves.

Thomas thought hard about what he was going to do next. It was the same problem as before—kill or risk being killed. Neither was a good option for him. Soul was right behind. Could he talk to her again? What would he say? How could he prevent her from claiming victims? If goblins were chasing humans, then things must have gone bad for the soldiers, and some had fled. But that didn’t mean they should be slaughtered and eaten.

Still out of sight just ahead, another man was speaking now, his voice deep but wavering as if he was ill. “Look, kid, Hawke’s right. You ain’t gonna hurt us, and we don’t want to shoot you. So give it up. We’re tired and need to restock. We get the message, okay? You don’t want us here. We don’t even want to be here right now. But chasing us out of town with your pet monsters ain’t the answer.”

The scout slowed to a stop and looked back over his shoulder at Soul, who stood by Thomas’s side. She nudged Thomas and leaned close, and he felt a chill as he realized how much bigger she was compared to him. “We’ll spread out and surround them,” she whispered. “You make the first move. Kill as many as you can before your venom runs dry. Let’s see what you’re made of. We’ll be there to back you up.”

“There are too many!” Thomas said hoarsely. He peered through the bushes, catching flashes of bright yellow. Two or three of the group still wore the biosuits they’d arrived in, though they’d ditched the headwear. The rest wore camouflaged uniforms and carried weapons.

“They’re not like the naga,” Soul assured him. “Humans frighten easily.”

“But they have guns! They’re much worse than arrows. When I was little, my dad had a shotgun, and he could shoot down a bird with one single—”

“You’re stalling. Move.”

“There’s a dragon, too,” Thomas added feebly, seeing the reptilian monster standing nearby.

“We’ll take care of it. Dragons are slow and dimwitted, and our quills can penetrate their soft underbellies.”

Thomas knew that to be true, but still he hesitated.

As if to undermine him further, Hal chose that moment to revert to his human form. He did so quickly, and seconds later stood before the soldiers in his silky smart clothes. Some of the group gasped and staggered backward.

“Go, Thomas,” Soul growled. “Don’t fail us.”

She gave him a sharp nudge, and he found himself stepping out into the open, thirty feet from the large group. There were around two dozen soldiers and half-biosuited personnel. A few were women.

They hadn’t seen him yet. They were too busy arguing.

The large man who appeared to be in charge closed his eyes, sweat on his forehead. “Shut it, Hawke,” he gasped, trembling as he clutched his stomach. “You’re not being practical. How long do you think we’re going to hold out here, in a forest? We need to—” But he didn’t finish. Instead, he bent forward and sank to his knees, grimacing.

A curly-haired woman rushed over, carrying boxes with red crosses on the side. “I told you earlier, Hawke, he needs a hospital. He’s been poisoned.”

The man named Hawke, thin and scowling, said, “We all have. It was that food. We—” Abruptly, he stopped and looked back at Hal. “You did that, too, didn’t you? You poisoned us!”

“It was just supposed to slow you down,” Hal said.

Is that what you were doing in the woods early this morning? Thomas wondered. You weren’t spying on the soldiers. You were poisoning them!

“It slowed us down all right,” the woman said stiffly. “What did you give us?”

Hal turned red. “It wasn’t supposed to—Look, my friend used a hemlock plant and—”

As soon as he said that, the doctor gasped. “You poisoned us with hemlock? Are you nuts?”

A hemlock plant, Thomas thought, immediately reminded of the harpies. Anger swelled at the thought of what they’d done to poor old Loneclaw. But he quickly tamped down his emotions. This was nothing to do with harpies. Hemlock just happened to be a well-known, highly poisonous plant.

Darcy must have been involved. She was a dryad, a wood nymph, with a special kind of power over plants. She’d done something with the hemlock plant and fed it to the soldiers up at their camp on the hill. That was why she’d been in the woods with Hal, Abigail, and Miss Simone.

Soul stepped out into the open beside Thomas. “What are you waiting for?” she hissed. “Do you want to be one of the dead?”

He saw glimpses of red fur as manticores spread out in the undergrowth all around. “No,” he moaned. “It’s just that . . .”

“Get me a breathing mask,” the curly-haired woman barked as she leaned over her sick patient.

Breathing mask. Biosuits. People from the other world . . .

Thomas sucked in a breath, an idea forming. How ironic that the answer had surrounded him the whole time. The harpies had drugged him and poisoned Loneclaw; Hal and the others had given these soldiers a dose of hemlock; and here they were, all suited up in protective gear after arriving from a world stricken with a virus. It wasn’t a complete lie to say they were tainted. At worst, Thomas would be stretching the truth just enough to put doubt in Soul’s mind.

He looked at her. “I’ll do this, but I hope you have a strong stomach.”

She jerked as if stung by a wasp. “Me?”

“Yes. These people are contaminated.” He shrugged. “I grew up in their world, so the virus won’t bother me when I chew on them. It probably won’t bother you, either.” He paused. “At least, I don’t think it will.”

“You don’t think it will?” Soul whispered fiercely into his ear. “Will their foul bodies poison us or not?”

“Well, maybe a little bit . . .”

Thirty feet from them, Hal faced the soldiers and said desperately, “But there are goblins headed this way. They’ll be here any moment. You can’t fight everyone.”

Right on cue, the clank of goblin armor sounded through the trees. The horde was on its way.

Thomas looked again at Soul. “Shall we take down the goblins instead?”

As expected, and much to his relief, she grimaced. “Tough and tasteless. Are all of these humans infected? What about your shapeshifter friend?”

“He’ll burn us before we get close. I’ve tried.” Thomas sighed. “Look, I’m as hungry as you are—probably hungrier—but this is bad meat. I have a better idea. Help me bring these soldiers down so they can be captured instead of killed. We’ll let the goblins take them away. We’ll pretend to be allies with the humans.”

“And?” Soul demanded, keeping her voice low.

“And nothing,” Thomas growled, facing her head on. “Like my friend over there said, we can’t fight everyone. And what’s the point if there’s no good meat to be had? But if we help—if we do what’s good for this land and round up these soldiers—then the humans will see our kind as friends.”

Soul glared at him. “And why would I want that?”

“Because you said you’d help me if I kept you interested with my story for more than five minutes,” he reminded her. “And because otherwise manticores will be the only ones who are not friends with the humans. The goblins, the naga, the ogres—they’re all working with Miss Simone. Even Hal works with her, and he’s a dragon! With that many allies, she could sweep this forest clean and wipe out the manticores for good.”

“There are loads of ’em, sir!” one of the soldiers yelled, gesturing toward the woods where the clanking of goblin armor was growing louder.

Thomas could see Soul was confused. “Help me now,” he suggested urgently, “or run while you have a chance.”

With that, he raised his tail and took aim at Hawke, who was just opening his mouth to speak. “Then start shoot—” the man began.

But he got no further, because Thomas shot a bunch of quills toward him and some of the other armed soldiers.

The thin-faced man clutched at his throat where a quill poked out. Eight other men did the same, letting out gasps and yells as the poison-tipped needles jabbed into faces and arms, even penetrating clothing. All the victims staggered and collapsed, moaning.

The rest of the group dropped to their knees and looked around wildly, fumbling for weapons they seemed to have lost in battle back at the village.

Thomas glanced back at Soul, his heart pumping with excitement. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Do you want to be a hero and keep your territory? Or do you want to run away like scared rats?”

He left her standing, hardly able to believe he’d challenged her that way. Any second now, the entire pride could leap on his back and tear him limb from limb. He’d either impressed her with his bravado and good sense . . . or annoyed her.

As he approached the gaping crowd of humans, he heard a murmur from behind, Soul whispering something. He glanced back just in time to see her and other manticores streaming out from the bushes all around. Word had spread very quickly among the pride, and it looked like they were coming to help.

“Lions!” a soldier cried.

“Red lions,” another said in disbelief.

Thomas turned his attention to Hal, who stood there looking dumbfounded but relieved.

“What on God’s clean earth are those?” the curly-haired, half-biosuited woman whispered.

Hal grinned at her. “Manticores. You think hemlock is bad? Those quills are poisoned, but they’re just meant to bring you down. It’s really those big black stingers you need to worry about. Those are deadly.”

Now very close, Thomas raised his tail and showed her his quivering ball of quills. He stuck out his stinger and forced a glob of thick, yellow venom out of the end.

With a hearty battle cry, the goblins burst out of the woods. Then it was all over for the soldiers. Tired, weaponless, poisoned with hemlock, and some still woozy from manticore quills, they raised their hands and surrendered with swords pointing at their throats and manticores growling at them.

Soul and her friends hadn’t needed to do anything but show themselves while Thomas did the quill-shooting. Whether true allies or not, they certainly looked the part, standing over the subdued soldiers and showing remarkable restraint.

Thomas knew he could convince Soul to help escort the soldiers away from this region. She looked flustered, still trying to maintain an air of leadership despite having being forced into action. She would follow through for now, but her assistance would only last as far as the edge of the woods. There, Thomas would walk free of the trees while she and the other manticores stayed behind. He decided to remain in manticore form as he left, no matter how nauseated he felt. That would show the pride just how strong-willed he was and give Soul more credibility in her spur-of-the-moment decision to follow him.

He made a terrible hunter. He’d used his deadly stinger on just one single human in his life, and she’d survived. He'd failed as a manticore. Yet despite the odds, he made a pretty good shapeshifter, able to straddle the fine line between the two species.

Better still, Thomas had proved to Hal—to all the shapeshifters and Miss Simone as well—that he could be trusted. He’d taken a while to get there, but his mind was in the right place now. His home was in nearby Carter with his old classmates.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d get to see his parents again.

Hal was staring at him. “Thomas?” he said. To him, all manticores must look similar.

Thomas shrugged. “Who else?”

Epilogue

Thomas gazed down at the burial mound. He’d propped a slab of rock at one end, a tombstone with a carefully chiseled epitaph that read, “Here Lies Loneclaw, Dear Friend, Mentor, Protector, and Grandfather. R.I.P.” Underneath was the symbol of a staring eye.

Thomas’s dad had painstakingly chiseled the entire thing himself. Together, the family had brought it all the way from Carter and, with the help of several goblins, hoisted it through the woods. Now that it was standing in place, with the grave tidied up and surrounded by smaller rocks, Thomas thought he would feel better about the untimely death of his old friend, perhaps a sense of peace.

But he didn’t.

He stood quietly, only vaguely aware that his mom had taken his hand. “I wish I’d met him,” she whispered.

Swallowing, Thomas blinked away tears and tried to lighten the mood. “He probably would have eaten you.” He sniffed loudly before rubbing his eyes and turning to the two little girls. “I’m kidding. Loneclaw was nice. He would have let you ride on his back.”

Actually, he very much doubted that, but the girls looked relieved all the same. They were only a year apart but much younger than him, thin-framed with long hair, always hanging off each other’s arms, kind of quiet but nice enough. They hadn’t really warmed to him yet, which was fine because he wasn’t sure how he felt about them, either. Returning to his parents after so long had been strange enough, but finding that they’d adopted these girls as well . . . It was all a little awkward.

He shot a sideways glance at his dad. Though tall, he didn’t seem to be the towering giant Thomas remembered. His hair was every bit as bright red, though, and he still had twice as many freckles.

Looking sideways at his mom, he decided she’d aged the most, her face etched with lines and her dark-brown hair streaked with grey. He was as tall as her now. Still holding his hand, she pulled him closer, and he tried to relax. Six years was a long time to be away from his parents. Half his life, to be exact.

They’d shown him nothing but love and affection from the moment he’d stepped up to the front door of their house and tapped on it. They’d practically swept him inside, then almost overwhelmed him with half a dozen years’ worth of tears and regret. The catching up had been interesting, though. They’d talked nonstop all evening and well into the night until their voices had turned dry and rasping.

Thomas had barely gotten a word in, not that he’d wanted to say much at the time. Nearly two weeks later, he’d explained enough to satisfy them, but he still hadn’t truly opened up about his life as a manticore, especially the part about eating raw meat. Even though it had been a daily requirement, it had bothered him the entire time he’d lived in the forest. It was, he supposed, what separated him from true manticores. His body needed the food and processed it efficiently, but his mindset was in a different place. There was no enjoyment. He’d always blanked out while eating.

According to his mom, life was back to normal. He’d even returned to school. A different school, of course, but the classroom was laid out the same way as the old one back on the island—three rows of desks, with Thomas’s at the rear corner.

He still had a lot to catch up on, and it was hard to focus on something as mundane as math when his thoughts kept returning to the forest.

Did he miss it? Sometimes.

Did he want to return to it and resume his manticore ways?

No.

“What does the eye mean?” his dad asked. “You asked me to carve an eye, but you never answered me why. Care to share, son?”

Thomas looked around at the trees basking in the afternoon sun. The faintest of breezes tickled the leaves. He fancied he could sense a presence. “It’s the eye of the manticore,” he said. “A message to anyone who comes by that this will always be Loneclaw’s territory. He’s still here, watching.”

His parents nodded dutifully, though he didn’t expect they felt the weight of the old manticore’s gaze the way he did.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Author’s Note

If you liked this novella, please consider posting a review. Thank you!

There are other Island of Fog Chronicles for you to dip into, and of course the main Island of Fog series is still growing! Check out my website for the full listing of everything.

And if that’s not enough, try the Island of Fog Legacies. This is a spin-off series set twenty years in the future and featuring a new generation of shapeshifters. You’ll bump into all the heroes from the original series (now grown up) as well as their children, who Miss Simone insists on sending on weird, wonderful, and often dangerous missions. Nothing ever changes, right? Except in this series, the new shapeshifters can choose what they transform into...

Thank you for joining me in these adventures!

 

Keith Robinson

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Author

https://www.unearthlytales.com

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