Chimera (Parasitology) by Mira Grant

more my species than the human soldiers, after all, and it deserved time to come completely into itself. But if it was a sleepwalker and not a chimera—if it was mindless anddamaged and acting only on instinct, I couldn’t let it go undiscovered inside a compound filled with trapped and frightened people.
    Walking the line between the species I was and the species I was pretending to be wasn’t getting any easier with practice. If anything, it was just getting more complicated.
    “What makes you say that?” asked Lieutenant Robinson. There was a faint warning note in his voice. He didn’t like me taking control of his men, and while I couldn’t blame him for that, I couldn’t take the time to soothe his ego, either. Not with the pheromone tags getting stronger.
    They were increasing so fast that it felt like the sleepwalker was coming closer to us, but even as I thought that, I knew that it was wrong. The sleepwalker wasn’t moving. The tags were remaining at the same level, they were just becoming
more
. More plentiful, more consistent, more steadily drifting in my direction. I took a step back, beckoning for the others to follow me. “Because I think Carrie said the convenience store he was going to was in this direction,” I said. There were enough convenience stores in the area that I knew there would be one in whatever direction we went. “That’s all.”
    My voice broke on the last word as things fell into place, and horror overwhelmed my ability to remain calm—just for a moment, but that was long enough that I was sure the Lieutenant would see the dismay and agony in my expression. The pheromone tags weren’t getting stronger because the sleepwalker was moving toward us.
    They were getting stronger because the sleepwalker was in the process of taking over its human host.
    “If you say so,” said the Lieutenant, frowning as he looked at my face. “You heard the lady, men; we’re following Miss Mitchell. Now, lead the way.”
    I nodded tightly, not quite trusting myself to speak anymore, before I turned and started moving upwind.
    It was easier now that I had a trail to follow, and also harder, because I knew what I was going to find at the end: I knew I was bringing a team of armed men to execute someone who was in the process of becoming my cousin. And I knew I didn’t have a choice.
    The smell was strong enough to make the drums start hammering in my ears like a beacon, or a warning—I was walking into familiar danger, and I knew there wasn’t any other way, even as I knew that whatever waited up ahead was going to break my heart. Then we turned the corner, moving into the narrow alley between two buildings, and I realized that I hadn’t known anything. I had been as ignorant as the men who followed me, and I was going to pay for my blind assumptions.
    Paul was huddled against the wall, his arms wrapped around his stomach like he was trying to hold his insides in place, shaking uncontrollably. The tremors seemed to start at the core of his body and radiate outward, sending his legs jittering and knocking his head against the wall.
    “Is he having a seizure?” asked one of the soldiers.
    “Paul!” I said, and ran forward, dropping to my knees next to my housemate—next to my friend, although that friendship was a strained and stunted thing, kept small and fragile by the circumstances under which we had come to know one another. Maybe it could have been more, in a different world, in a different time.
    But in a different world, in a different time, I would never have existed at all.
    Paul’s eyes flicked toward me, his mouth working soundlessly as he struggled against the tremors that were still rocking his body. It wasn’t the mindless grasping of the sleepwalkers, not yet: Paul was still in there, fighting for control. I couldn’t have said how I knew, just that it was the truth… and that he was going to lose. He had already lost, and all he could do now was struggle against the