Otherkin by Nina Berry Page B

tribes are all scattered, hiding from the rest of the world. None of them is strong enough to go against the Tribunal alone.”
    “But the Tribunal’s everyone’s enemy, right? Think how much safer we all would be if everyone banded together and got rid of them.”
    “You’re talking about going against thousands of years of traditional hatred,” said Caleb.
    “But I can’t go home as long as Lazar and all of them are there,” I said. “Me and Mom and Richard, we’ll be on the run for the rest of our lives!”
    “Welcome to being otherkin,” he said, shaking his head. “Did you find where we are on the map?”
    I was frowning in frustration. I didn’t want to live always having to look over my shoulder. More importantly, I didn’t want the fact that I was a shifter to ruin the lives of my family. I forced myself to look at the map and found Coyote Peaks. “We just keep going on this road,” I said. “Do you know where to go after Coyote Peaks?”
    “I think so. Mom made me recite it, like, a hundred times.”
    He had mentioned his mother a number of times, but all I knew so far was that she had been a caller, and now she was dead. “How long is it since she . . . since you last saw her?” I asked.
    “You mean since she was killed?”
    “Killed?”
    “The Tribunal murdered her.” The muscle in his jaw tightened.
    “I’m so sorry.” I touched his arm briefly.
    “Feels like a lifetime ago, and it feels like yesterday.”
    “So you have no other family? No brothers or sisters?”
    He didn’t say anything for a long moment. His eyes flicked back and forth on the road ahead, his brows drawn together, as if he was trying to keep some dangerous emotion from erupting. “No,” he said at last. His voice was tight. “No one.”
    “Sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
    Caleb just stared down the dark road ahead of us. In that silence I thought how I might never see my house in Burbank ever again, that Mom’s and Richard’s lives were in complete upheaval. I was headed into a forest filled with people who could change into hungry animals, taught by a powerful wizard type who could manipulate the very shape and matter of things.
    And I had killed a man. I’d crunched his bones and swallowed his blood, and I hadn’t even blinked when I did it. That was the heritage my mysterious biological parents had given me. Maybe it was better to never know them. It might’ve been better if I’d just put up with the damned brace for a bit longer and never shifted into a tiger. But then I’d never have met Caleb.
    Caleb craned his neck, staring down the road ahead. “Okay, we’re getting close. Expect a lot of suspicion. It’s how they are with everyone, let alone an abandoned tiger. They won’t like me much either.”
    That surprised me. “Why?”
    “Callers don’t like to hang out with other callers,” he said. “It gets competitive. So I hope Morfael remembers my mother fondly. The shifters won’t like me either because they hate anyone who might be able to control their shifting ability. Morfael’s school is the only one of its kind I’ve ever heard of.”
    “But you said we’d be safe there.” Trepidation jittered up and down my spine.
    “Safe from the Tribunal,” he said.
    That didn’t comfort me much.
    We wound up a two-lane road into the mountains. Trees encroached, blacker than the night, and a thousand stars pocked the sky above. We passed a sign that said COYOTE PEAKS.
    Then Caleb drove past a smaller dirt road, barely as wide as the Beemer. “That was it, I think,” he said, and turned the car around. We hadn’t seen another vehicle in half an hour.
    The tires crunched over a large tree branch. Leaves scraped against the windows as foliage focused the headlights down to a narrow beam. A faint glow above us signaled that dawn was not far off.
    “We have a habit of driving together at sunrise,” I said.
    “I can think of lots of better ways for a boy and a girl