Disclosure (3 page)

The glances
exchanged around the table made me almost sure that they had
already discussed that a lot of times before. And, apparently, what
I had just described was a setting they had considered.

“
We don’t
have any other option.” Dara sighe
d.
“Only hope for the best and control ourselves even more than we
usually do.”

Three years
later
.

I had never
imagined thi
ngs would become like this.
But the truck was parked in front of our building, and had just
finished loading all my stuff. Many of our neighbors were watching
from the apartments’ windows, not even bothering to pretend they
were doing something else.

“Get away from here” Camila shouted, from the
building’s doors. “You lying monster! I could kill you myself for
that!”

It wasn’t easy, but I managed to hide my
admiration. Camila had become quite the actress in the last years,
and I really doubted that anyone there would even imagine that all
that was staged. It was necessary.

For three years we thought the worst wouldn’t
happen. Everyone had expected problems, but it seemed that the
Otherworld would be accepted by humanity without any big problem.
Most of humanity was awed and curious about us, they wanted to get
to know us and have us by their side. It was almost like being a
celebrity, and it was nice while it lasted.

We only
realized our luck had run out when the news about heinous crimes
committed by people from the Otherworld came out. They had reports
from all around the world and a number of atrocities to talk about.
Soon there were also some careful declarations about how selfish we
were, and how we didn’t want to share our “gifts” with humanity,
and that’s why no one had agreed to join the scientific
experiments. In a couple of days the mood had completely changed,
and violence started rising.

And then came what became the final blow in
many countries: religions turning against the Otherworld. We were
the embodiment of Evil, sons of the Devil, temptation turned flesh.
In some small towns houses were being burned, and the persecution
had already started. It wouldn’t take long for the madness to reach
the capitals.

Keeping that in mind, everyone from the
Otherworld had new orders: go back to our compounds and safe
houses. Only a few chosen from each people would stay among
humanity, pretending to be like them, to act as our eyes.

The fairy people were the first to disappear,
their wards going up around all the areas they considered their
territory. I was sure some people were really surprised when they
woke up one day and saw a shimmering wall surrounding places they
usually went to everyday.

The vampires were next, and even I was
surprised when their stables had gone with them. But maybe I should
have expected it, the venom in a vampire’s bit was addictive, and
most of their stables were just like that: addicted.

And now the shapeshifters were retreating.
Our compounds had been reinforced, we had several new security
protocols in place, and the witches had strengthened our wards.

We had always
known that if that happ
ened Camila would
be one of the few people left behind, so we had acted as if she had
no idea it was really me who had been recorded shapeshifting those
years ago. Everyone who knew her knew that she almost never watched
television and didn’t believe in most of what was said on the news,
so it wasn’t so hard to pretend that I had deceived her. And now
she made a scene and threw me out of the apartment. Perfect. I just
hoped that it was enough.

She closed
the door with a
loud bang and I got into
the truck. The witch that was driving made a strange gesture, and I
felt his power spreading around us. I didn’t understand the reason
for that, but I wouldn’t complain.

“Monster” I heard the scream and turned in
time to see a tomato splash against an invisible wall a fraction of
an inch from the window. The boy who had thrown it was on the door
of another building, and had another tomato on his hand. But he
didn’t have time to throw it.

And now I
understood why the truck driver was a witch.

“It won’t take long, now.” He said.

“What?”

“
A new witch
hunt.” He shook his head, looking almost sad.

“Aren’t you being too pessimistic?”

“
The
shapeshifters may not remember, but the witches don’t forget. What
do you think happened in the Middle Ages?”

“
The witch
hunts were because the Otherworld tried to show itself?”
I asked, not wanting to believe that we were
living a repetition of the past.

Slowly, the witch nodded.

Camila locked
the apartment
’s door and fell on the
couch, hiding her face in her hands. “I really hoped we would never
have to do something like this. I let myself believe this whole
madness would never happen.”

I didn’t
answer. Say “I didn’t” wouldn’t help at all.
That whole madness, as Camila put it, was what I had
expected since the beginning. Considering what I had heard at
college and at the lab I worked the Otherworld had a lot of time of
peace.

“It will only get worse.” I knew this didn’t
help, either, but I couldn’t keep silent.

“
I know.” She
raised her head.
“We are receiving
threats from the big companies and the government,
again.”

“Again?”

“Why do you think we chose to disclose our
existence?” She sighed, getting up and going to her bedroom.

Blackmail.
Than that had been the reason.
I should
have guessed, considering how people were still raving about the
shapeshifters’ regeneration capacity. It was easy to imagine what
would be their next step. That was probably why the news went on
and on about how selfish people from the Otherworld were. They
would end up in the labs – willing or not.

But I didn’t think things would move so fast
from there.

It had been a
little bit over one month since Felipe had moved back to the
shapeshifters’ compound. I took the bus home feeling a new tension
in the air, as if everyone was waiting to see what would happen
next. I heard the sound of the TV before unlocking the apartment’s
door, and that was enough to worry me. Camila just watched the news
if she really needed to.

She was sitting on her favorite couch, a
completely empty expression on her face. I had only seen that once
before, when Felipe had received the order to go back.

“What happened?”

“
Three kids
disappeared, a boy and a girl from the shapeshifters, cats, and a
witch girl.
They had a mage with them, I
know him, he is powerful enough that people trust their kids to
them. But now he is in a coma. Tranquilizer darts, they say, but
something new, developed to attack the Otherworld.” Her voice
sounded as empty as her face was.

“
Kids?” I
didn’t want to believe it.

She shook her
head, turning around to look at the television, where they were
talking about some fight a couple of celebrities got into. Waiting
to see if there was any news about the kids, I understood.
Something like that would never be on the news, but I could imagine
how desperate for any kind of information she was.

“
We don’t
have rights, we are not even considered citizens.” Camila
whispered, as if she was talking to herself. “We’ll be hunted like
animals.”

I didn’t
answer, and I didn’t need to.
She was
right. People from the Otherworld had even less protection than
animals, which at least had organizations fighting against their
use in experiments.

I found out what had happened to those kids
on the next day. It seemed that was the only thing people in the
lab talked about during lunch. A company with ties to the
government was offering shapeshifter and witch samples for study.
Anyone interested just had to fill a form and wait for their
analysis. And, as I had imagined, no one questions where the
samples had come from. Few people thought it was wrong at all.

One week
later all
the media talked about was the
carnage caused by a vampire and a shapeshifter. The official
version was that they had attacked a group of soldiers in a routine
exercise. I didn’t even need to talk to Camila to guess what had
really happened.

Almost daily
we heard news about “unprovoked attacks” made by the Otherworld,
from all around the world. At the same time, someone “leaked”
information about the possible benefits to humanity that the
preliminary studies with three “volunteers” from the Otherworld
showed.

It took only a couple of days for the chaos
to start.

Three weeks later.

I didn’t want
to believe what was going on.
Had we
really gone back to the Middle Ages? It seemed impossible that, in
the beginning of the 21
^st
century, people were
still capable of so much cruelty. But the bonfires didn’t let me
doubt.

I went home
every day completely on edge.
The streets
full of people going on with their lives could almost fool me, but
nobody was safe. The hunt had started, and the Otherworld was
taking far more hits than I had expected.

For how long could I still pass as human?

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better if you
hid, Camila?” Luiz asked while I watched people run on the street
below the window. A group of people was screaming “Monster!” and
trying to hold a woman that wasn’t even from the Otherworld.
Probably a pagan, I had heard someone scream “witch” a few seconds
earlier.

“It’s too late for that. They know where all
our compounds are.” I turned away from the window before the
temptation to help the woman became too much. I couldn’t do
anything, I needed to keep the charade, keep pretending to be
human. It was my only chance to survive.

Years ago,
when my alpha had asked me if I wanted to leave the compound and
live as a human, I had said “hell yeah!”, even though I knew the
risks. Later, when it was decided that we would reveal our
existence, he asked if I wanted to go back. As the third in the
female hierarchy of the wolves, I was the highest ranking
shapeshifter living outside our compounds and would be asked to
stay behind if the worst happened. Even then, I didn’t change my
answer. I knew it would be dangerous, but living was dangerous. I
would risk it.

But I never expected what was happening.

Those who were captured had two options:
“volunteer” in one of the research projects or be killed. They had
even gotten a special place and built a whole ritual around the
murders. An artificial cave built in the last decades and used for
sensitive tests became a slaughterhouse. People from the Otherworld
were kept locked there, in tiny cages and precarious conditions.
And they didn’t bother to check if the people they arrested were
really from the Otherworld.

And on the
waning moon… Death.

The first
time I heard people talking about what would happen to the ones who
were arrested, I didn’t believe.
I
couldn’t even imagine that they would go ahead and have the
barbarian executions they were planning. It was on the first waning
moon that I realized how naïve I had been.

I didn’t
understand why no one reacted. The Otherworld wasn’t defenseless!
But, for some reason, they had decided to stay in the defensive. If
everyone got together we could stop this madness in hours, and have
humanity apologizing in less than three days! And all the
communications with the ones living as human had been cut, which
meant that I had no idea of what was going on in the
compounds.

At the same
time, there were rumors around that a North American company had
found a way to id people from the Otherworld using some kind of
serum. I had no idea if that was truth, but I knew the lab Luiz
worked at was researching something along those lines. He was still
trying to sabotage the project, but the risk was too big.
Everything was too big a risk.

Almost
apathetic, I sat on the couch, glancing at the
muted television. Blood, blood, and more blood. It was the same as
always. I closed my eyes, trying to keep control, but it was hard.
I wasn’t the kind of person who hid and waited until the storm was
over. But I had no option. Any wrong move would mean my
death.

How long
until the Otherworld decided to act?

The four men
standing
on the other side of the fence
were staring at me with hate in their eyes. It seemed they didn’t
expect to find a wolf waiting for them. Invaders. The wolf wanted
to jump the small barrier between us and attack them, but my human
side needed to stay in control now. They couldn’t come in, the
witches’ wards guaranteed that. But it was better if they knew we
were alert.

One of then retrieved a dart gun.
Predictable, they were using that tranquilizer every chance they
had, especially after they found out that it could kill us faster
than any wound if they had a big enough dose. But that wouldn’t
help them today.

Huffing
, I laid down on the
grass, with my eyes still on them. The man fired, and the dart hit
the invisible wall surrounding our property. If I were in human
form I would be smiling. As a wolf, I only showed my teeth to the
men, and they went away.
Yes,
do that. You won’t be able to get into the compound,
anyway.