BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (16 page)

“
Do you
believe what I say now?” Kurma asked.
  

Rimselda was too afraid
even to nod her head in reply. “And you say I’m one of these things
too?”
  

Rimselda approached Kurma
and patted the soft hair on her belly. She tapped her feet against
Kurma’s leg and felt rock-hard muscles. She gulped deep. She had
never seen anything like this before. Her life was in the dumps—she
was homeless, always hungry, and young. It was hard being her, and
it had always been that way. Now someone was telling her that maybe
she was different. Maybe she didn’t have to be Rimselda anymore,
the Rimy who was beaten and abused. The old Rimy with the insecure
and malicious mom. The Rimy who had been burned and tortured
because she happened to be pretty. Rimy didn’t want that baggage
over her head anymore. She had run across the country to get away
from it. She wanted this to be real.
  

“
Show me
how,” she declared.
  

Kurma smiled. “You need to
think about it really hard at first. Think about how your body
really isn’t yours, but this other thing.” She looked at Rimselda,
who stood there looking helpless. “You already changed, back at the
café. Don’t you remember?”
  

Rimselda was shocked. The
café seemed so long ago. She had gone in to order breakfast with
the money she had made panhandling around the corner. The café was
her and her friends’ usual hangout in the evenings. Rimselda liked
the night shift waitresses, and had only gone
into
 
the
café early that morning because she was going to meet up with her
friend Millie. Then she had totally forgotten about Millie, the
breakfast, everything. It seemed to Rimselda that she was in
another time zone parallel to that one.
  

She racked her brain,
thinking back to the morning. She remembered the little café,
walking in the door, being pushed by some rude chick, and then her
memory went blank.
  

Then it hit her. “Oh,
you’re that girl! The one who knocked into me and didn’t say excuse
me.” Now she remembered. She gave a sweet smile of victory, tapped
her head, and beamed.
  

“
Try to
remember the dumpster,” said Kurma.
  

“
I know
I wasn’t in a dumpster.” Rimselda smelled her body. There wasn’t a
scent. “I was in a dumpster? What for?”
  

Kurma nodded. “I had to
put you somewhere when you were going through the changes. Try to
think back to when I had us in the air. You still had your wings, I
believe.”
  

Rimselda stood there,
naked with her eyes closed, and tried to conjure up an image of
what she would look like if she were a Raptor as Kurma was. Her
body temperature rose without her knowing it. Rimselda thought
about how she would look if she had wings, scales on her face,
long, thin, muscular legs, claws for hands, and a beak of a nose.
She imagined herself attractive, no less.
  

Kurma watched as Rimselda
unknowingly transformed into a Raptor. Coal-colored hair covered
her entire body except her face, which was hidden beneath thin
scales the color of lilacs. Her lips were ginger, and her nose had
become hooked. The hair on Rimselda’s head was as bright as ever,
though, red and on fire. Kurma noticed she wasn’t as tall as she
had been, but her legs and arms looked thicker. Rimselda’s wings
were tucked behind her arms. Kurma couldn’t
 
make out if there was a
specific pattern on them, as she had, but she approved of
Rimselda’s transformation. The girl looked provocative and
exotic.
  

“
Is
anything happening?” Rimselda asked with her eyes shut
tightly.
  

“
If only
I had a mirror, Rimy,” Kurma replied, trying to coat her jealousy
with excitement. “You look gorge!”
  

Rimselda popped her eyes
open and looked down at herself. “Get the hell out of here. Look at
my feet!”
  

She moved about on her
thin legs, watching her claw-like toes. “I don’t have any boobs!”
Rimselda went to grab her chest, and out sprang her wings, which
were attached to her arms. “I think I’m going to be sick. I have
skin that’s attached to my arms,” she moaned. “Look at all this
hair on my body. When people see me they’re for sure going to die
on the spot.”
  

“
No,
they won’t see you,” Kurma said, hoping it would cheer Rimselda up.
She wished there had been someone to cheer her up when she’d first
turned.
  

“
How am
I supposed to go about my day-to-day activities?” asked Rimselda.
“Am I going to become a nighttime creature, like an
owl?”
  

Kurma laughed at her
outlandish questions. “You look beautiful, babes, seriously. And I
look just like you. We’re now in this together.”
  

“
You
look better than I do. You don’t look as birdish as I do. Your hair
is long and blowy, and your lips look like someone painted them
on.” Rimselda couldn’t believe her luck. “Your wings have this
pattern thing going on. I’m the one stuck with wings the color of
mud.”
  

“
But
that’s not the best part.” Kurma had almost forgotten about her
secret weapons.
  

“
There’s
more?” Rimselda hoped it was something better than mud-colored
wings. Not that her wings weren’t cool; it was just that compared
to Kurma she was definitely lacking.
  

“
I have
these,” Kurma said. Her long, metal daggers lashed out, and she
held them out for Rimselda to see. “We both have
these.”
  

Rimselda’s mouth hung
open. She looked at her own arm and couldn’t see any openings for
daggers. “Are they in my arms?”
  

Kurma thought. “They’re a
part of your arm bones, and whenever you want, the bone can split
off and become metal daggers.”
  

“
So how
do they come out?”
  

Kurma thought for another
second. Her daggers had first shown up when Santino had tried to
attack her. Every time she felt in trouble, she could also feel her
hands itching, as if the daggers were triggered by her anxiety and
fear levels. But then again, if she thought hard enough about them
coming out then they appeared from her skin without too much
difficulty.
  

“
When
you’re in danger they’ll come out for sure. Otherwise you have to
think about them coming from your arm. Try to imagine your arm
growing another limb.”
  

Rimselda concentrated on
her arm where her wrist started. She could feel something there.
She thought fiercely about the daggers for what it seemed like
eternity, but they never sprang.
  

“
I guess
I’m not as good at this as you,” she
said.
  

That made Kurma smile. She
had never really been good at anything either—except this. Now she
felt as if she had a head start in a race…and she was destined to
win. “Don’t worry. It will get easier.”
  

Rimselda looked up at the
sky. She wanted to fly, but didn’t want to fail at that too. “You
think I could try flying?”
  

Kurma wasn’t so sure about
the new girl trying to fly so soon. If she couldn’t get her daggers
out then who knew if she was even strong enough to fly? Kurma
thought about pushing her off the building. Her own wings had
naturally taken over when she had fallen from the window, so maybe
the same would happen for Rimselda.
  

“
Maybe
we should just walk for a bit.” Kurma couldn’t risk losing a
protégé so soon. “We should test out your hearing, smelling… All
these things have been intensified since you became a
Raptor.”
  

“
Is that
what we’re called?” Rimselda asked. She thought that was a
funny-sounding name, but kind of cool in a quirky
way.
  

“
Yes,
that’s what I’m calling us.”
  

“
What
kind of things do we eat? Are we nocturnal creatures? Who changed
us into these things?” Rimselda shot off questions all at
once.
  

“
I
created us!” Kurma yelled, feeling a twinge of annoyance. “There
are no scientists, no formula to change us back. We are this, and
we will never be regular human beings again. Do you understand
that?”
  

Rimselda was taken aback.
“I was only asking a question.”
  

“
No, you
asked several all at once. Get it right.”
  

Whatever
, Rimselda thought. “So what
do we do now, Captain Kurma?”
  

“
We need
clothes. Can we go to your house?”
  

Rimselda hadn’t had a home
since her thirteenth birthday. “I’m homeless.”
  

Kurma wasn’t surprised.
Rimselda seemed to have a displaced vibe. At the café Kurma had
wondered why she was even up at that hour and by
herself.
  

“
I live
at the old train station, the one down by Snowhill. The big
one.”
  

“
Yeah, I
know where that is,” Kurma said.
  

"A couple friends and I
stay in one of the rooms on the top floor. I think it used to be
the head honcho’s office.”
  

“
I heard
there are hundreds of people who stay in that train
station.”
  

“
Yeah,
when the rent prices went up, people had to move out. Either it was
the places like the train station and old bus terminals or out on
the street,” Rimselda said.
  

Kurma thought about living
in the train station with other people, but worried about
contaminating the population. She didn’t know if she wanted that so
soon.
  

“
There’s
running water—not the freshest, but it runs. We have this guy who
turns it on and off for us whenever the city comes out and shuts us
down. It’s a whole community down there. People like us have lived
there, undisturbed for the most part, ever since they put up the
AirTrains tracks.”
  

Rimselda looked at Kurma
and wondered what her story was. “You don’t have a
family?”
  

“
I do
actually, it’s just… This thing that I am. I don’t want them
knowing. I don’t want them looking at me differently or trying to
put me in a lab where they do all sorts of experiments on me,”
Kurma said softly.
  

“
They’re
your family. I’m sure they would take care of you and accept you
for what you are.” Rimselda immediately wished she hadn’t said
that. She didn’t know what a family should do or how they should
behave. Her family hadn’t been that way, so she didn’t even know
where that fantastical statement had come from. She was the last
person to speak to when it came to family
structure.
  

“
We can
go to the train station. I’ll introduce you to everyone. They can
get a feel for you,” Rimselda offered. “But we have to find some
clothes first. The station is across the
city,
 
you know. And I have to change back to regular. I’m not sure
if Alexandria is ready for all of this.” She twirled in a circle
and let her wings flap in the wind.
  

“
Do you
think your friends will be freaked out by you?” asked
Kurma.
  

“
We all
have our secrets, ya' know. I’m not sure if I want to tell them
about me yet. I’m not sure if they’d even believe me. Down at the
station, it’s a different world. What you have, someone wants.
Bringing you with me is a risk. They might just beat you up, steal
the clothes off your back, and send you packing. I mean, I don’t
know, it’s a dog-eat-dog world down
there.”
  

Kurma wasn’t afraid. She
may have been a lot of things, but she was not scared of people.
She wasn’t worried about being bullied. If anything she would turn
Rimselda’s friends into Raptors, and they would be her official
lackeys. Her friends would welcome Kurma into their little misfit
clique if they knew what was best for them.
  

“
I might
be able to find some clothes in the laundry room in my building,”
said Kurma.
  

“
This is
where you live? You actually have a home and a room and a bed. Why
are you giving this all up to stay down at that old, raggedy train
station?”