Page 80 of Hummingbird and Kraken

He turned to see Declan, now in the front seat of the van, and looking nervous.

Maybe he should go stand by the van where he could be closer.

He heard rapid footsteps coming closer as someone crashed blindly through the trees. A tall, skinny man dressed in a white lab coat stepped into the road and looked quickly to the left and right.

Geir kept his position. The man was evil, certainly, but someone else would take care of him. There were dozens of trained warriors available.

The man darted across the road, his run made awkward by something large and bulky in his hand. Geir squinted to make it out in the gloom and finally figured it out when he hit a patch of moonlight just before entering the trees on the other side.

He was holding a cage, and there was a small animal inside it. The animal let out a series of high-pitched squeaks, sounding frantic and afraid. It didn’t sound like May, though.

He strained to make out anything further, but the man was safely behind the first row of trees and any noises he made were lost in the general din. No one was going after him.

Geir considered the animal in the cage. It was bigger than May, he thought. She’d been tiny. Hardly a handful. This one was perhaps the length of his arm.

It wasn’t his battle. Whether that small animal lived or died, caged or free, there were millions of other lives. Millions of other times. Its life was just one among many in the stream of time.

He looked back at Declan, his pale skin barely visible in the safety of the van. Declan would value this small life. He would want Geir to save it.

That decided him. Geir was faster and stronger than the scientist. He would take him down, rescue the small life, and bring it back to Declan before he even realized he was gone. Then Declan would be pleased with him.

He sprinted into the forest, tentacles sprouting from the base of his spine without a thought. With them out, new senses became available to him. The scent and taste of the night. Vibrations as something disturbed the air. The physical shape of the space around him filled in every direction.

He heard crashing to his left and turned that way, letting vibrations in the air automatically guide him around trees and other barriers. He ran fast, ignoring the pain when he stepped on sharp rocks or broke twigs.

The man was in front of him now. He looked behind him, saw Geir, and tried to evade him through the trees. He stumbled and fell, then scrambled back up, the cage jerking and thudding with every movement.

Geir captured him from behind, wrapping his muscular arms around the scientist’s chest and one tentacle around his neck. With the other tentacle, he squeezed his wrist and slithered under his fingers. The cage dropped to the forest floor.

“Please,” the man gargled. “Let me go.”

Geir grunted, squeezing his neck tighter.

“I wasn’t hurting it,” the man gasped out. “They’re not human anyway. We followed all of the regulations for cruelty to ani—”

Geir tightened his tentacle suddenly. The man raised his forearms frantically but couldn’t reach his neck while Geir had him pinned.

He struggled more, kicking and squirming. Geir held him tighter.

“They’re human,” he finally said into the night, as the body went limp in his arms. He could still feel a pulse of pressure fighting to break through his constraint on the large artery in the scientist’s neck.

He waited long minutes until the pressure stopped. The scientist wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone again, and he felt an angry satisfaction. It was what he deserved.

The child who had been imprisoned, however, hadn’t deserved any of this.

He dropped him to the ground, then knelt by the cage and the animal inside scampered back. He saw fur in patches of black and white. A raccoon? An opossum?

“Shhhhh…” he murmured. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

The animal whimpered.

He couldn’t see the cage in the dark, so he felt around it with his tentacles. “It’s alright,” he soothed the animal. “I’m just trying to get you out. This is just me. I’m a shifter, too.” He found the lock on the door, a flat panel with a tiny hole for a key. He tried to tease the tendril of one tentacle inside, but this wasn’t one of the simple, fat locks from a century ago, and he had no idea how to manipulate all the tumblers.

“I can carry your cage back to the truck where there are tools to cut you out, or I can try to break it open. If I try to break it, I might hurt you.”

The animal ran around in a frantic circle, bashing its head against the bars, and Geir could now see its long, furless tail. An opossum. The child’s mind in that animal body had a strong opinion, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Calm down. Um… nod your head when I say what you want, OK?”