Caged View (5 page)

“Like a cape? Or a tight polyester suit with
a big Z sewn on my chest?” I gazed out of the window, focusing on
the corner across from the middle school where Tango was dealing
Hemo Drop to little kids.

Oya District was named and themed after the
goddess Oya. Every building had bricks in some shade of purple, her
favorite color. It was why Tango was so easy to spot as he hung out
in front of the violet-bricked store.

He wore an all-white linen short set that
matched his ivory-colored shoes and fedora. An auburn beard wrapped
around his chin and was so long, it hung all the way down to the
center of his chest. Every few seconds, he would twist the tip of
his beard.

Watching the Were-wolf had been the most
boring thing that I’d ever done in my life.

For the past five hours, he’d yapped away to
his entourage and chewed on a cherry root stick, which was typical
behavior for a Were-wolf since they loved to gnaw things. He’d
moved from the area only once, and that was to run next door to
Lightning Market for their specialty sausage-stuffed eggplant. Any
time he had to urinate, he would simply turn around, paint the
store’s violet bricks with his piss, and return to his
conversation.

I exhaled loudly.

“Relax, Zulu. We’ll get him.” Ray twisted
around in his seat. “Just wait till it gets a little darker. The
habitat police end their patrol of the school at dusk.”

I can hardly wait.

The habitat police officers, or habbies like
most people called them, didn’t patrol the school to keep the kids
safe. They were out there making sure that no other drug dealers
violated Tango’s territory. The Were-wolf had been paying the
habbies for over a year now. He thought he was untouchable.

We’ll see about that, Tango.

I’d already given him two warnings to stay
away from the kids. The first time, he’d left for a week and then
immediately returned. The second time, he only stayed away for a
day.

You’ll regret that.

Most dealers only got one warning before I
ended their existence.

Tango and I had history. We’d done Green
Goblin together when we were teens. It had been a popular drug that
got most addicted with one spoonful of the lime-green gel. After we
tried that drug, we hung out together, putting any harmful thing we
could find into our bodies.

I’d been clean for three years now.

Tango remained in the drug game.

“You just had to be so hardheaded.” I tapped
my fingers against the window over and over, getting Nona and Ray’s
attention.

They both stared at me.

“What? I’m ready to get this over with,” I
said. “I have things I want to do later.”

“You’ll see your Mixie tonight. Don’t
worry,” Ray said.

“She’s not mine yet,” I murmured.

“By the way, does she know about this?” Ray
asked.

“No.”

Ray sniggered. “Well, then, you better
behave yourself.”

* * *

Dusk approached. The black and yellow habbie
vehicle rolled out of its parking space at the same time it had
every day this week.

I jumped out of my seat.

“Wait.” Ray raised his hand out. “At least
until the habbies turn the corner.”

I slid the van door open anyway, stepped
out, and peered around to see that the streets were empty. Nona
hopped out after me. Ray remained in the van, as planned.

Humid air clung to my skin. Even though the
summer sun had disappeared from the sky, the habitat ceiling’s bars
still retained the horrid heat. The bars wouldn’t cool down until
late in the evening. Sweat leaked out of my underarms, soaking the
thick jean jacket as I headed toward Tango.

I’m going to stuff this blistering jacket up
Ray’s anal cavity when I’m done.

Tango stood on the corner, talking to his
usual entourage, three Mixies that had been tagging along with him
since we were all young and growing up in the orphanage. Brick,
Alt, and Curry were their names. They never truly harmed
anybody—except they didn’t stop Tango from selling drugs.

I won’t hurt them unless I have to.

“I mean her ass was this big.” Tango
extended his hands far out to his sides.

Two little boys walked up to him, maybe ten
years old or less, with brunette cornrows. The tallest one held
money in his hand.

Nona rushed toward them, shooed them away,
and searched around for any other kids. Her job was to clear the
streets of any young witnesses.

“Tango, how you doing, man?” I flashed him a
smile.

He slowly turned around. If he’d been
smiling, it was definitely gone now. His thin lips were formed into
a straight line. His hands shook as he placed them in his
pockets.

Brick and Alt looked at me and ran.

Smart guys.

Curry remained sitting on the ground,
drawing a circle with a stick. He seemed unsure of what was going
on. His eyes went from me to Tango and then back to me.

“Zulu did you come to sing a song?” Curry
asked. “I love kites.”

The rumor on the streets was that Curry’s
mom had worked at Mason’s plant when she was pregnant with him. It
was a plant that casted high-level spells and toxic potions that
pregnant women weren’t supposed to be exposed to. Apparently, Curry
was the top example for why people should follow magic-safety
rules.

“Run away, Curry,” I ordered and kept my
focus on Tango to make sure he didn’t escape.

Curry just gawked at me. “You think I should
run?”

I glanced over my shoulder and noticed Nona
herding several kids around the corner.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “You should definitely
leave.”

Curry jumped up and jogged away, tripping
over his ankles and falling every few feet.

Tango raised his hands in front of his
chest. “Look, Zulu. I wasn’t even selling around here.”

“I’ve been watching you for the past five
hours.” I stepped toward him.

He backed up and looked at the empty parking
spot where the habbies had been located. His lips moved, as if
saying a chant, and then he disappeared into thin air like he’d
never been there to begin with.

I laughed.

He was using fairy glamour to hide himself.
I could smell the familiar sweet fragrance of fairy magic as it
sparked. It was like strolling into a candy store.

“Not a good idea, Tango!” I yelled.

Purebloods always assumed Mixbreeds had no
power, that they could just do whatever and not suffer the
consequences from us.

No one knew what I was mixed with, and I
wanted to keep it that way.

So instead of shifting completely, I changed
my eyes to black and chanted, “Once was hidden. Now is seen.”

Tango’s fairy glamour immediately dropped.
He must have bought a cheap cloaking spell from some desperate
Fairy. His image came into my view as he sprinted down the street,
looking over his shoulder and laughing, confident that he’d
escaped.

Once he turned the corner, I raced after
him.

The cool thing about Oya District is that
each alleyway ran parallel with its nine major roads and provided
great short cuts for chasing after your local drug dealer.

I dashed to the alleyway next to the Dollar
Store, searched around for witnesses, and leaped thirty feet into
the air, gliding to the other end within seconds.

A rush of wind blew past me, raising my
dreadlock bun high above my head. The back of my jacket rose with
the current of air. I dropped to the ground, causing the alley’s
dust to rise around my boots.

A one-legged, red Pixie screeched and hopped
under a dumpster.

I burst out of the alleyway, turned the
corner, and spotted Tango racing across Hurricane Road. Cars
honked. One hit him. He smashed onto a sports car’s red hood face
first, denting the metal.

The car screeched to a stop. He fell into
the street, rolled up, and did a sort of one-leg-at-a-time stumble
onto the sidewalk.

“Hey, Tango! You alright, man? Need any
help?” I asked.

He glanced back and yelped. Shock plastered
across his face.

That’s right. I see you.

I snaked around two cars that had stopped to
watch Tango run off. It took me ten seconds to get to the
sidewalk.

Tango ran, spitting blood onto the ground.
He glanced over his shoulder, spotted me, and screamed again.

I roared.

Just a few more feet.

I mentally called on my power, gritting my
teeth at the pain. It felt like icicles stabbing at my temples and
stinging everywhere they hit with an agonizing twinge. The freezing
sensation spread down my body, trickling to my hands. Each slam of
my feet against the pavement felt like I was stomping barefoot
through broken glass.

I roared in misery.

Tango looked back and crashed into a
trashcan.

Now, barely twenty feet away, I reached out
for his beast, sensing it hiding near his core.

Come here, little wolfy.

His beast, a black-furred wolf, peeked back
at me in distress. The wolf’s transparent head stuck out of Tango’s
back, not used to being seen or felt by anyone but Tango. He turned
his furry muzzle from side to side.

Here I am, little wolf.

The beast’s eyes snapped to mine. He barked
at my presence.

No one could hear him but Tango and me.

Tango frantically looked around for some
sort of escape.

I threw out a mental lasso. No other
Supernaturals, except Fairies and Trolls, could see it. To any
onlooking Fairy that had shifted his eyes, my lasso resembled a
clear liquid rope with silver dots swimming in it.

To any other supernatural, I was just
wagging my hand around.

The lasso hooked onto the wolf’s neck. The
wolf yapped for a while, and then surrendered.

I heaved the rope toward me.

The translucent beast fell out of Tango’s
back and crashed into the pavement with a hard smack. Tango
collapsed to the ground, screaming, his body riding spasms of
pain.

His noise startled the old Troll sitting on
the bench and knitting a maroon bone-holder.

“Sorry for the disturbance, ma’am,” I said
to the Troll.

She stopped moving her knitting needles.
“It’s okay.”

The fear in her eyes told me it wasn’t.

The wolf lay behind Tango, tangled in my
lasso.

I jogged toward them, out of breath and
drained from using my power. I could only take the beast out for a
few seconds, which always gave me an advantage when I fought
Shifters.

By the time I got to them, the beast had
chomped the lasso into bits, charged toward Tango, and hopped back
inside his body.

Tango shot up to a sitting position, gasping
on a new-found breath.

I moseyed on over, whistling a song of doom.
My sharp claws sliced out of my fingertips.

“How the fuck did you do that?” Tango hit
his chest and touched his head as if unsure he was still alive.
“What are you?”

“Ask your god Shango.” I tore into his chest
with my claws, ripping away flesh and slinging his intestines onto
the stony sidewalk. Tango’s lifeless body crashed back into the
pavement. I dug my claws deeper into his chest. Blood pooled around
my hands while I searched for his heart.

The Troll returned to knitting as she
watched.

An Elf on his bike spotted me digging
through Tango’s chest, lost control of his handles, and collided
into a poison berry bush.

A bronze sports car crashed into a large
truck. Both drivers gaped at me. Others saw the drivers and checked
to see what they were gaping at.

And that’s when Supernaturals all over
Hurricane Road started to scream.

“Got it,” I announced against the
racket.

I retracted my claws. The muscle beat in my
hands. I ripped it out and stood up, holding it over my head. Dark
scarlet slime streamed down my arm.

The horde of spectators silenced.

All traffic had ceased. Supes froze in their
spots with open mouths, staring at me and holding their belongings
to their stomachs or chests.

“Enough with the drugs in Mixbreeds’
neighborhoods!” I waved the heart around. “Spread the word! If you
sell drugs to Mixbreeds, then Zulu’s coming for you!”

I leaned down and wrote a sentence on the
sidewalk with Tango’s heart, squeezing the blood out of it to get
more ink. When I finished, I threw the useless organ over the
park’s gate.

A woman jumped to the side.

My sentence read,
Don’t do drugs!

Three beeps sounded, and then a horn blared.
Ray’s white van pulled up on the sidewalk, quickly separating the
crowd. Anger spread across his face as he violently motioned for me
to get in, hitting his elbow by accident on the steering wheel. He
cursed.

Nona arrived at my side.

“You a Drama King, Zulu.” She laughed and
hopped in the van.

“Gob-dobbin sculanch!” Ray cursed in Fey, an
ancient Fairy language.

I climbed in.

“Scramp sculanch! Blux sculanch!”

“I don’t even know what you’re saying,” I
said.

“Every damn thing I asked you not to do, you
did it!” He drove us off. “You don’t motherpounding listen! Not
even since you were a boy!”

I glanced out of the window, smiling and
thinking of tonight. Excitement sparked within me.

“I just wanted to make sure everybody got
the message this time,” I explained.

“They didn’t even hear what you said!” Ray
continued. “You scared the shit out of them, wagging a bloody heart
around!”

* * *

Five hours later, we stood in front of Club
Metamorphosis.

Electronic drums beat in a rhythmic pattern
against an enchanted organ. The Vamp singer’s words sounded mumbled
from where I stood, but I knew he was singing about a love affair
he had with a Human during the Pre-habitat years.

His name was York. It was one of the few
supernatural albums I owned.