Shapeshifter

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Copyright by metajinx. Please do not duplicate or copy without explicit permission. This story is purely fictional. If you don't like violence, stop reading right here - there will be weapons, drugs, manhandling, blood and violent death. I recommend reading all the other parts first, because this is a continued story.

This is actually the next-to-last chapter, but I decided not to publish the epilogue on Lit, because there is too much plagiarizing going on. The plot should be wrapped up nice enough with this chapter. I hope.

Dear non-plagiarizing readers: I'm truly sorry. I wrote this with you in my mind, I'd love to give you what you deserve.

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**Kelaste**

"Noom?"

"Yeah?"

I hesitated, but only for a heartbeat, listening to the strong muscle in my chest jump against my ribs. "Why do you hate my father so much?"

That question had sat at the back of my head ever since we found out who was trying to get me killed. After hearing my father's name in my condo on that first, fateful night, there had been real hate in Noom's eyes, and it had never left them completely. Even now, I could see it lurking in the back of his mind, ready to come out, ready to spill over me like molten rock.

We were lying on the floor of an abandoned construction site somewhere near Mike's house. He had equipped us with camping mats, sleeping rolls, a little butane cooker and camping dishes, enough to make our one-night-stay bearable without impeding our mobility if the need to run came up. It was the only temporary solution we had been able to come up with, but it was better than nothing. I could feel where the bullet was buried in my body, the one that Noom had stalwartly denied removing, but it didn't hurt all that much yet. It would have to come out sooner or later, but we had both decided that 'later' was a good date to do impromptu surgery on me.

Noom's lips morphed into a thin, angry-white line, then he turned away from me, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. "What's not to hate about him? I mean, just look at what we're going through, he's trying to kill his own son. Plenty of reasons, right there," he replied vaguely, twisting his lips into a disgusted sneer.

Yeah, right.

I pursed my lips, trying to figure out how to call him a liar without getting him angry, although I knew how futile that attempt was. Noom was always angry, he just tried to hide it. The few times he had really shown it were the night he had found out who my father was, and the night he had found out I needed— well, had needed, but not anymore— heroin. On those two occasions, Noom had been angry without being too obvious about it. True anger, true hate, not the controlled aggression he so blatantly showed on every other day. Like a peacock fanning his feathers, I thought.

I was ready to poke at him again, to try and get a reaction, any reaction, out of him, when he spoke up again.

"It's a long story," he said hesitantly, glowering at the ceiling.

I didn't reply, but I wormed my sleeping bag closer to him and threw him a curious glance.

Licking his lips, Noom turned his head to me. He watched my face for a few moments, then he sighed and looked back at the ceiling, as if looking at me and talking about whatever was going on with him was too much to bear.

"I had a girlfriend once," he finally began with a soft, low voice, "and a drug problem. She was a junkie, too, but not as bad as me. She got out as soon as we met, you see? Said, I was all the drugs she needed. I didn't. I was happy having her and my snow, and she kept me fed and clean and safe, whenever I was too fucked up to care for myself."

The anger left his face, the more he talked about that girl, and there was an old, all but forgotten spark in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "She was struggling to keep us afloat and after a while, I decided to stop being a whiny bitch and tried to help her," he explained, gesturing to underline the words. "I really tried to help her, but I'd been living on the street most of my life, and I couldn't hold a normal job. Didn't know how a normal person was supposed to go about their life, you see? Robbery was not my style, so I tried my hand in dealing. That worked out much better than I would've thought. She wasn't happy about it, but I brought home money, and I stopped doing four-day-benders, so she actually got to see more of me and that was enough, for a while."

I wanted to touch him, but some instinct told me, if I touched him, he would stop talking. I didn't feel anything when he talked about some girl he had loved once, the pain and melancholy in his voice didn't bother me. Maybe I should have felt envy, pity or compassion, either for him or for her, but there was nothing. The past was the past, and that was that, at least for me. The need to touch him came from the softness he got when talking about it, because I wanted to roll in it like a cat in catnip.

Noom didn't seem to notice my little difficulties. He continued with his story, staring at the ceiling. "Then I got stupid again. Before, I had paid for my own drugs, and I did so for a while when I was dealing. But I was a junkie and junkies are, how do they say,

non compos mentis,

certifiably insane, when it comes to all things monetary. I stole from the very stack I was supposed to sell to get high. At first, nobody noticed. I took a little, only crumbs, and re-sealed the bags, and nobody dared to object. Then I took more and more, lazy fuck that I was, and someone, I don't know who, complained to my boss." He swallowed dryly. "My boss had had some problems with his own boss recently, so this time, I didn't get a beating or something comparably mild to get me back on track. No, he up and went to his own boss, explained to him he had found the thief or something. I didn't know anything about that man, and I didn't know who he was, I swear. Had I known..."

Silence settled over us as I watched Noom once again fight his feelings. The softness was gone from his face, replaced by an expression that held a notion of physical pain, anguish. My fingers itched with the need to reach for him and I made them into fists hard enough to have my nails bite into the palms of my hands. If I touched him, all of this would stop and I would never know what my father had done. I needed to know, needed to hear that I wasn't the only person my father had ruined. That I wasn't alone, that someone knew his real face.

My resolve almost faltered, the longer Noom fought his internal struggle, but in the end, he beat me to it just as I got ready to ask a question.

"I didn't know. I didn't even suspect anything. I came home one night and the door to our house was open, just a gap, but open. She was there, on the living room floor, on a carpet saturated with her own blood. She wasn't whole anymore, but the pieces had been arranged perfectly. Little slices, like cold cuts, like they had put her in some giant egg slicer right there, and left her for me to find. I remember wondering coldly how they had done it. It was so... neat, so orderly, not a print in the giant pool of dried blood, not a piece where it shouldn't be. Then I vomited and passed out. I don't know how much time I spent down on the floor, in her blood, crying and wanting to die myself, but it was still dark when I got up and decided I'd better find my stash and give myself a last high to follow her wherever her soul had gone to. I turned around and there, on the wall right next to the door, was a message, scribbled right on the white paint. It was written with black sharpie, not blood, I find that strange to this day."

When he fell silent this time, I rolled over to his side and all but fused myself to his body. I still wanted to hear the end of his life story, but I'd had enough of denying myself the comfort of his warmth. Nestled against his side and with every breath filling me with the scent of his musky, sharp sweat, I closed my eyes and finally found the will to talk.

"What did the message say?" I asked, a little intimidated by the confusing mixture of my own emotions, and the things I smelled, felt, heard.

Noom laughed. Just once, harsh, not unlike clearing his throat. I could hear the joyless grin in his answer. "It was a confession, my confession. It actually looked like my handwriting, and it sounded exactly like I would have worded it. It said I had killed her because that way I'd clear my debts with the local drug lord, and that I now felt too guilty to live on without her. It even held a detailed explanation of how I would kill myself and even that matched exactly how I'd have done it. Up in the bathroom, in the bath tub, where my stolen stash was. So I went upstairs, still pretty much shell-shocked and out of it. In my bedroom, there were two guys. They didn't say anything, didn't do anything, just watched me stumble past them and into the bathroom."

I tried not to tense up as I imagined myself in Noom's position. The person he loved dead, a set-up so perfectly executed, nobody would ever get suspicious, and two thugs to make sure he did what he was supposed to do; would I have managed to survive? No. I'd have done as I was told. I'd have been broken. I couldn't imagine how Noom got out of that.

"In the bathroom, there was a syringe lying on the cabinet, ready to use, filled and all. It was lying on a white piece of paper, like a note just for me. It was a business card with the business end facing downward, and whoever had done this to my girl had written a few last words on the back. It read, 'we will take the house as a down payment. Consider your debts paid.'"

Suddenly, Noom thrust his arm beneath my body and heaved me onto his chest, holding me to himself as we stared into each other's eyes. There was a wild expression on his face, a twitching grin, too much white in his eyes, and his arms held me like steel cords to him as he continued to speak.

"So I considered my debts paid. I snapped. I had been ready to die for what I had done to my love, ready to take my punishment like a good little felon, ready to leave all this horror behind, but that one little sentence pushed me over the edge and out on the other side of sane. Fuck them, I thought. And fuck them, I would. I pocketed the business card and took the syringe and I went back to the bedroom, where those guys were waiting for me to tuck tail and die like I was supposed to, and I killed them. The first one with the syringe, the second one with the gun I took off the first one. They dropped dead with that surprised look still frozen onto their faces, and I did things to their bodies that I'm not very proud of. In the end, I took another look at that card, then put it onto their bodies for everyone to see. And I swore I'd get the one who had sent me that card. Theodore DeLargo, your father."

He all but threw me to the side, but he didn't let go of me altogether. I landed on my shoulder and hip, his arm still pinning me to him, huffing from the impact and wondering how I was supposed to react. The things Noom had told me still circled through my mind, haunting me with vivid scenes of blood, gore, and violence, but I felt detached from it all, a spectator to a madness that had its own agenda. Above it all, the idea of my father being the one pulling the strings hovered, bearing down on me like a block of lead. The visions weren't the worst thing, no. The knowledge that my father would not only be able, but willing, to employ someone who had crossed the line to psychopathy didn't shock me as much as I thought it should. It felt like I had always known and just been unwilling to see and accept, and that was the worst part about the whole tale. Now, knowing what Noom had experienced, I somehow felt responsible for it all, like I should have known and stopped my father, even as a little boy.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, twitching instinctively because I feared he would take it the wrong way.

He didn't. He just snorted, shrugged and huffed, "I've never told this to anyone. Mike is the only one who knows bits and pieces, because he knew her and because he saved me when I needed to disappear."

I took the unspoken hint and dropped the issue of my guilt. It didn't matter anyhow because I now knew what we would have to do next. Relaxing in Noom's hard grip, I let my head rest on the hard floor and sighed.

"Well, at least now I know where we'll have to go next. But if we want to kill him before he kills us, we need a plan."

~*~

Where would you plan an assassination attempt? I personally had nothing to fall back on to but my movies, and in movies, the protagonists always have some kind of super secret headquarters, with a hacker, PCs and lots of paper and gadgets.

We didn't have any of that. Even the lighting sucked, but as Mike had explained when I had asked the first time, he was in the process of renovating his cellar, so naked bulbs were all he could offer for now. We had started out in his kitchen, but then a brown-haired, dark-skinned lady with yoga pants had chased us out, screaming profanities at Mike. I didn't even get to know the name of Mike's wife, but I dubbed her 'Fury', because that was what she was. Noom had seemed highly amused by the spectacle, but it had left me shaken and profoundly confused. I had little to no experiences with grown women, and I really didn't do well with violence, not even the verbal sort.

So, having been thrown out of the civilized part of the house, we now cowered in a circle around a local street map lying on a dirty concrete floor, squinting at the colorful depictions of my father's neighborhood in the light of a single light bulb. Mike threw glances at me every so often, brows knit together in an effort to stay put. There was some distance between us, but it obviously wasn't big enough to suit his tastes. He did try to hide it, but it was still obvious.

"So the security fence goes all around all of this?" Noom repeated, drawing his finger around the edges of the giant, park-like piece of land my father owned and called home.

I decided to ignore Mike's discomfort, for now. I couldn't do anything about it, anyway, so I instead turned to Noom and planning. "Yes, same height all around, electrified on top, barbed wire and all. There are some trees at the periphery, but they are cut back every second year to keep out the wildlife."

"And there are guards on the property?"

I almost blushed. It sounded so ridiculous, hearing it like this. "Yes."

Noom frowned hard enough to have his brows all but touch each other. "Killing someone is hard enough under normal circumstances, but this is absurd. Even if you manage to distract the guards, I'd have to blow-torch my way through that fence fast enough to get through before they spit-roast and slit you open, given I don't trip the alarm," he groaned, tugging his mohawk in frustration.

I swallowed against the sticky lump of saliva in my throat. "That wouldn't kill me, you know," I breathed, staring down at the map. I could feel his eyes burn into my scalp, could feel his curiosity intensifying.

"Oh, yeah," he uttered haltingly, "I forgot. You're tougher than you look." His eyes roamed over my body with an expression that made me shudder. For a short moment, I had the visions again, how he had described his dead girlfriend and suddenly, his expression became painfully clear to me. He thought about that exact same memory, and he pondered if I would have survived it. If I would survive something similar. If I was safe, in a manner of speaking. Safe to love.

My heart thundered in the following silence, and I found it hard to breathe through all the unspoken words hanging above us. There was so much going on besides what we were planning, with no chance to talk it through or find a moment to breathe. The plan was simple enough: I would go through the front door, draw the guards away from the perimeter and make them march me to my father. There was a chance they'd shoot me on sight, but as long as they didn't put a bullet through my brain, I'd do a

Lazarus

on them as soon as they had me inside the house, which was another good way to draw attention away from the fence. And if they didn't shoot me on sight, I'd make enough of a ruckus to keep them occupied while Noom cut through the fence at the side of the property and made his way inside. We would then both proceed to try and find my father. If I found him first, I was supposed to draw him outside, or at least downstairs and close to the windows, where Noom could take him out. Noom would try to get into the house, evade the guards and shoot my father on sight if he saw him. The moment the guards rang the alarm, or the moment they tried to kill me, I was supposed to run for the hole Noom had left in the fence and save my own hide.

It was ludicrous. At least Noom hadn't uttered something stupid like 'no heroics' yet, because then I wouldn't have been able to hold back my laughter.

But still, it was the only plan we had. It would have to do.

"We'll need a bolt cutter, and I'd like to have ear pieces to communicate, or something similar. I'll add a sniper rifle to my arsenal, just to be sure I'll get the shot in if we're lucky, and I want Kel to have a derringer. The lady-type one, small enough to hide in his boot," Noom stated, scratching his stubbly chin. We hadn't had a chance for personal hygiene yet, and I found myself being drawn to his unkempt exterior. I had to shake myself out of my love-sick stupor to actually listen to what he was saying.

"No ear-pieces, if they find one of those on me, they'll instantly know that you are there," I countered, shaking my head. "We want to prevent you being discovered too soon, that would be counter-productive."

Noom squinted at me. "I don't like the thought of not being able to communicate with you."

I answered with a charming grin, not feeling the need to add words to how romantic his admission sounded. It made him blush and snarl, then turn away. His ears were red.

"It's a long shot, whatever way I look at it, anyway," Mike offered, crossing his arms in front of that massive chest of his. "Might be better off without a means to talk, seeing how much he influences you already."

Noom shot him a scathing look. "Are you sayin' I'm being mushy?" he bit out and leaned forward. I was unsure if he did it instinctively or on purpose, but Mike was quick to wave him off and shake his head.

"Now, don't take this the wrong way, I'm just telling it how I see it. But it's not your style to talk about bugging out and safety and

'communication'

like that, especially not when it's about killing that DeLargo asshole. You've been all about destroying that son of a bitch for years, all but trying to strangle him on the street. The only difference I see is cat-boy there, so how am I wrong in blaming it on him?"

Silence. I shrank into the background as Noom stared at Mike devoid of any expression, almost immobile. I even tried to keep down my breathing, lest I attract the fury lurking behind the quiet facade.

Finally, Noom spoke, or rather, he growled with his street-slang accent thick in his voice. "Ya blaming him for making me soft, or are ya blaming him for making me sweet on him? 'Cause I honestly can't see what's botherin' you about that, 'cept for me actin' like a somewhat normal person again. It was just you an' me for a few years, that's true. Now it's me an' him, and you, and the only person not happy with that seems to be you, my friend. I'm trying to get a life again, but that's my choice, and mine alone. Stop blaming the scrap and get over yourself."

I stared at the concrete floor, afraid to meet anyone's eyes. This was a much too private moment to be had in front of me, but I couldn't just leave the room after what Noom had said.