I barely tasted the questionable food as I chewed and swallowed, hyperaware of the man as he stood up and moved to sit across from me. The quality of his aura had changed from a dim blue signifying weariness to a crackling violet warning of confrontation, yet softened by pink curiosity. My belly clenched and I found it hard to swallow.
“You’re like me, aren’t you?” he said in a low voice. “Or . . . are you one of them?”
My pulse raced as I set down my sandwich and lifted my gaze to meet his. Dark brows curved over his gray-green eyes and his skin was a tawny brown about a shade lighter than my own. His thick black hair fell almost to his shoulders, mussed like he worried his hands through it often. He raked fingers through it, confirming my observation. The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed as he swallowed, and a piece of stone carved in the shape of a musical clef jiggled on its thong.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Am I like you, or like them?”
It wasn’t really a test. I genuinely wanted to know. I was technically human—both my biological parents were human, at any rate—but I’d been ripped from my mother’s womb shortly after conception, then grown in a tank and sustained with ancient nymphaea blood for the first five months of my existence.
Being so acutely conscious of every moment of my life, even from those first glimmers of awareness after conception, should have made it easier for me to understand my own nature . . . to know where I fit in. But it had only made it infinitely harder.
I wasn’t just human—the blood of the higher races that ran in my veins defined me as much as my humanity did—and part of the reason I’d run to begin with was to try to understand what I was. I couldn’t be everything; that was too damn confusing. But at the moment, I didn’t really feel like I belonged anywhere at all. Maybe his observation would help me understand.
He studied me for a moment longer, then shook his head and frowned. “I think you’re something else. But if you aren’t human, you have to be one of them, right? You just look so normal. I mean . . . you’re fucking gorgeous. They’re all beautiful, but, um, you look mostly human.”
I gave him a gentle smile and nodded, barely containing my elation at having this conversation at long last, and with a man as lovely to look at as he was. “I am mostly human. But out of curiosity, what do you see that suggests otherwise?”
His half-eaten sandwich lay forgotten on his tray, though he stared at it blindly for a second before looking at me again. The divine glow that tinged his aura flared, reminding me that though the bloodline was also mostly human, they carried faint genetic mutations that linked them to the higher races. More importantly, they were all carrying blood that linked them to a god. That divine link had been dormant until three weeks ago, the god at the other end of it on the mend after a particularly brutal attack. But he was at full power now, and so the bloodline was now at full awareness of the higher races.
My new friend seemed to struggle for words, and my heart went out to him. None of this could have been easy—first to discover out of the blue that humanity wasn’t the only race with advanced intellect on the planet, and then that whatever traits marked him and the rest of the bloodline as special also made them targets for some invisible threat. But I had to know what it was he saw that identified the higher races.
Over the past three weeks since I’d left home, I’d learned to be cautious when I interacted with the bloodline. We may have been a little heavy-handed with the cautionary aspect of the spell we cast on them to protect our secrets. They avoided talking to anyone about us as a result, even each other, and were downright terrified of any of the higher races they came into contact with. Somehow I managed to fly under the radar. The higher races barely paid any attention to me when I came across them, and the bloodline just gave me odd looks, as if they wanted to say hello but were afraid of looking dumb.
This man was clearly willing to risk looking like an idiot to get it out, and I’d be damned if I was going to discourage him from talking.
“It’s all right,” I finally said, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand. His head jerked up as though I’d just shocked him and he stared at me. His hand tightened into a fist beneath my fingers and the intricate design on his forearm flexed. What looked like scales inked into his arm faded from deep red to bright turquoise.
“Fuck, you are one of them,” he breathed. He relaxed his hand and spread his fingers out, then turned it over beneath mine until our palms touched. I got a view of the rest of his tattoo of a huge fish swimming amid stylized blue-green waves. Warmth radiated from his skin along with a spark of something more that made my breath catch.
The increased intimacy made me want to pull away, but he seemed on the verge of a revelation, so I left my hand in his grasp. Taking a deep breath, he said, “It’s like you all resonate at a different frequency than the rest of us. Like the sunlight bounces off your skin differently, and sound waves travel around your bodies differently. But until a few weeks ago, I just didn’t have the senses that could see and hear you properly.”
Glancing up at the abrasive fluorescent lights, he chuckled. “Guess nobody’s immune to crap lighting though, huh? It took me a few minutes to be able to tell after you sat down, but now . . .”
He slid his palm along mine. An electric charge passed through my hand into his skin. I pulled my hand back and rested it under the table on my lap, uncomfortable with the rising need that simple touch had elicited. I didn’t need my dragon or my nymphaea nature waking up with this enticing stranger. Or at all, for that matter. There was too much at stake.
“What’s your name?” he blurted, his eyes now bright with curiosity, the floodgates having opened up after our touch. “What kind are you? The message said there were four . . . ah . . . races? Are you a dra—”
He clamped his mouth shut and glanced around. The parking lot beyond the windows was nearly empty and the cafeteria was dead, aside from one lonely cashier reading a book near the self-serve stations across the room. At this time of night, the place was a graveyard.
“No, I’m not a dragon,” I said. “Not exactly. My name’s Deva Rainsong. I’m sort of an ambassador from all four races.”
That sounded plausible; he didn’t need to know that what I was, while it had a name, wasn’t exactly definable. I was a chimera, a hybrid of not only the four higher races, but human too. And I was the only one of my kind.
He also didn’t need to know that I had effectively run away from home and was absolutely lost when it came to understanding my own nature.
“Day-va,” he said, smiling as he drew out my name. “I’m Bodhi.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Bodhi,” I said, smiling slightly, but too apprehensive to make it stick. Thanks to his rippling aura and a particular quality to his words, I could sense he was about to ask me something and I wasn’t going to have a good answer for him, which killed me.
“You guys have . . . abilities, right? Mystical powers?” He lowered his voice again as he shoved his tray aside and leaned closer to me. The desperation that had lain dormant during our interaction thus far flared to life, crackling though his aura.
I had to suppress a sigh because I knew what was coming.