Not Quite Human

  Not Quite Human

  Not Quite Book 1

  By Kaye Draper

  2019

  Dedication

  I value every one of my readers and friends who support me in the crazy, wonderful adventure of writing. Thank you to my patrons. A special thank you to Jennifer Sapa for helping me create, and to Frank Boston for the proofreading and constant encouragement. I couldn’t make this dream into a reality without you!

  Chapter 1

  I planted my boots into the black sand, spreading my feet and bracing myself as five hundred pounds of pissed off fiend barreled my way.

  "Sam!" one of the other hunters yelled. "Fuck's sake, move your ass, man!"

  I braced my gun in both hands and forced myself to take my time lining up the shot. The jerk of the gun firing was like an extension of me. Like breathing. The recoil was minimal, for me. I absorbed it with my own inhuman strength and kept moving.

  The thing bearing down on me took a shot to the forequarters. To the chest. Still, it's freaky-assed body just kept right on coming, mad red eyes full of hunger and malice. I aimed, squeezed. If I could hit it in the head, that would be a kill shot.

  But the damned thing whipped its muzzle to the side at the last second and the shot just grazed its shoulder.

  Now I was out of fucking ammo. I'd used it all on the thing's dead friend over there. Hadn't smelled this one until too late. And of course, the stupid humans with me had only been focused on the one they were tracking. This was why I usually hunted alone. Less chance of stupid errors that way.

  I dodged out of the way as the beast barreled past me, letting it go for the other hunters. Their guns blazed. But of course, it didn't faze the damned thing. I crouched and threw my gun at the back of the fiend's head.

  Sure, this time I hit my mark. The handgun bounced off the back of its skull and the fiend whirled back toward me, death in its blazing red eyes. I pulled my knives from the sides of my calf-length leather boots as I stood.

  "Sam!" one of the humans called again. "What the fuck are you doing?"

  I ignored him. I was hunting, obviously. Moron.

  I ran at the monstrous beast, my eyes cataloging as I picked up speed. It had thick skin, almost like scales. I had no idea what kind of fucked up species it was, but it looked like a giant lizard and a mangy werewolf had mated and tossed the resultant offspring into a vat of acid. The snout was full of wicked-asssed teeth. Most of the body had some sort of armor. And there were weird patches of fur interspersed with shiny patches of skin that looked like scars.

  I ran at it. It leapt at me. I hit the ground and skidded, sliding under its belly, knives sinking deep and tearing a long double line through its thick skin as I spilled its guts.

  Rolling, I got my feet under me and crouched again, wiping thick, foul blood out of my eyes. My hair hung about my face in long, sticky clumps, and I raked it back out of the way. The thing still wasn't dead. But it was getting there. It lunged at me and I jumped onto its back, wrapping one arm around its throat and sinking my knife into the back of its head by the base of its spine. It shook me off, dislocating my fucking shoulder in the process.

  I let my arm dangle for now. I had bigger things to worry about.

  "Sam!" a gun hit the ground a few feet away. I ran to it, each step jolting my arm and sending sharp, electric jabs of pain through my body. Scooping up the gun in my good hand, I lined up. Just as the abomination went to lunge for me again, I pulled the trigger. Its head exploded, and it finally fell to the ground, skidding to a stop at my feet, twitching, but not getting back up.

  I emptied the gun into it for good measure, then tossed the weapon back to the other hunter.

  "Son of a bitch, Sam," one of the humans complained, "you know they want the heads. Now we won't get half the bounty."

  I shrugged, then regretted it. Damn it, I hated dislocated joints. What a pain in the ass. "They'll still have a pelt," I said, tossing the guy one of my knives.

  Part of me was glad the head had been destroyed. Humans hated the fiends that had invaded their world. I understood, believe me. I hated the damned things too. But it rubbed me the wrong way to think of some rich guy sitting in his mansion, boasting about the mounted head of a beast like this, when he'd never even handled a weapon before, let alone gotten his hands dirty.

  I went to retrieve my other knife from where I'd dropped it. Wiping it off on my pants, I put it back in my leg sheath. Then I cradled my throbbing arm in my good hand and found a rock to sit on. Leaning forward, I pinched my injured forearm between my knees. Then I jerked my body back, hard, nearly falling off the rock. The arm slid back into place with a loud, wet, pop.

  "Damn, kid," an older hunter said, chewing on a nasty cigar as he handed me a flask of watered-down hooch. "They wasn't kiddin' about you."

  I hadn't bothered to learn the humans' names. Once I was done with this job, I'd never see them again. I took a swig of the disgusting water and stood, cracking my back. After retrieving my gun, I went to help skin the fiend and its brother. Sure, the bounty was less without the heads, but the skins would get us good money from the association when we turned them in.

  The other two human hunters looked me over as I approached. "Dude," the youngest one said, scratching at his week-old stubble. "You should hunt with us all the time. I don't care if you are a cur bastard, those are some skills you've got there."

  I ignored him and shrugged out of my leather jacket, setting it aside and ripping into the other kill, grimacing at the hot blood that coated my hands. "Like I want to be saddled with a bunch of humans."

  The middle guy huffed as he worked at the stinking pelt he was carving off. "You're lucky we're not hunting you. Fucking mongrel."

  It didn't even bother me. Much. Just one more reason I always worked alone. The only reason I was out here with these idiots now was because I needed the money, and someone had cashed in a favor. I wasn't going to get mad and leave before I got my money, much to the human's disappointment. Too bad, asshole.

  Once the skins were off and loaded into the rusty old jeep the hunters used, we burned the bodies and hauled ass across the wasteland and into Westhold to get the bounty. Once that was done, I left the humans behind, thank fuck, and made my way back home.

  Westhold was one of the border towns. It wasn't gated and pristine like the bigger cities, but it did have a wall with an electric fence that sometimes worked, and a few dedicated guards. Not enough to stop any of the truly motivated fiends, but enough to keep out most minor irritations. I made my way out of the business district and toward the seedier part of town, but not quite into the outskirts.

  My sanctuary was an old cannery that had been abandoned after the rift. I let myself in with my keys and a hastily muttered word to release the wards, then jogged up three flights of metal stairs. The place might be dingy and the security mediocre, but at least I had my own space. And I didn't have to deal with a landlord who would sell me out to people who'd murder a mixed breed cur like me in their sleep for a few coins.

  Locking myself inside my apartment loft, I activated the wards to keep any minor magical threat out. Those things had cost a pretty penny, but they were worth it. I wondered what humans had done for security back before the rift breach. How had the weaklings lived without magic?

  I shucked my torn, bloody clothes into the washer before stepping into the shower. They probably lived just fine, I reminded myself. Since they didn't have murderous fiends from another dimension trying to eat their faces.

  Thomas Vega and his team were world renowned for their scientific work and their brilliant theories around quantum physics. Until they opened up a rift that let monsters the human media had labeled "fiends" overrun the world. Now the scientists were considered war cr
iminals. Even if they had managed to close the rift back up. The damage was already done, and the panicked human populous needed someone to blame.

  The fiends were like nothing Earth had ever seen; hundreds of varieties of terrifying creatures fueled by energy that could only be called magic. They bred like rabbits. And they interbred with Earth species, making nasty crosses called "curs" or "mongrels" that were usually even worse than their monster parents.

  Large portions of the globe had been destroyed before the rift was sealed, and guilds of licensed hunters formed, managed by the local government, in order to protect civilians.

  Some curs, like me, weren't bloodthirsty monsters. But that was a rarity. And the human population wasn't inclined to be too accepting of them, since most humans had family who’d been devoured by the original horde of monsters.

  I stepped into the scalding shower and washed away the blood, hissing as the water hit a few raw spots and scrapes. I'd heal faster than a human, but it still fucking hurt. Running my hands through my blue-streaked black hair, I soaped up. I glanced at myself in the mirror as I was drying off. My angular cut hair bumped about my jaw. I should get it cut, but I was just stupid enough to admit I liked it long. My hair was the one physical feature I actually liked.

  Pulling on underwear and a tight sports bra, I tugged on some jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt with a boat neck that wouldn't rub on the healing scrapes that tracked across my shoulder, just shy of my neck. The fucking fiend had almost slit my throat with its damned lizard claws.

  I glanced around my sad, empty apartment, then pulled out a bottle of cheap vodka from the cabinet. I needed booze. And lots of it.

  Chapter 2

  I drove my battered old jeep out of town, following a winding dirt road with potholes big enough to swallow a small dragon. The government didn't put too much effort into making sure the old county road was in good repair, since all it led to was a warren of monsters.

  The road trailed through the one remaining forest between here and the wastelands. The only thing that had kept this particular stretch of towering pines, maples, and ash from falling under the destruction that occurred during the rift was that it had been claimed by a tenacious pack of shapeshifters.

  I smiled grimly as I bounced along in my seat, trying to avoid the worst of the ruts and holes in the road. Humans had dubbed any of the new species who came through the rift and had more than one form "shifters." The more recent human stories about humans who could transform into beasts was about as far from the truth of it as you could get, though some of the older stories came closer. The ones from the dark ages of man, when humans still remembered primal fear.

  Because shifters weren't human at all.

  They were beasts who just happened to be able to wear a slightly humanoid form now and then. Even when they were shaped like humans, they were beasts, dominated by the drive to fight, feed, and fuck to keep their populations up and their territory from falling to other predators. Humans tended to forget that, and tried to make them into glorified humans in their heads.

  That was a mistake.

  I slowed to a stop just outside the pack village that lived in the center of the woods. A ramshackle old cabin nestled under the swooping branches of a truly massive old ponderosa pine. The walls of the cabin sloped slightly, and the roof sagged under about ten layers of shingles. I eyed the front steps, thinking I'd need to fix that railing next time I was out, or Josie would fall ass over teakettle when winter came.

  I followed the sounds of an axe hitting wood to the back of the cabin where I'd grown up. Josie was swinging a massive axe at a log, the arms of her faded flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, sweat pouring down her lined face as she worked.

  She split the log clean through with one solid whack, then set another log up to be split. Swinging her axe, she hit the log too far off to the side and the thing skittered out from under the blade and went flying as the axe thunked into the bigger log she was using as a chopping block.

  "Mangey son of a misbegotten dog, ya bastard!" She bent to retrieve the log, then froze, probably catching my scent. "Sam?"

  "You're going to cut your damned foot off one of these days," I muttered, going to take the axe from her weathered brown hands and reposition the log. I set to splitting wood while she eyed me up and down.

  "Well," she said, going to sit on the back-porch steps and take a swig from a metal cup she'd left there. "Can't really make it through winter without heat, now can I?"

  I swung the axe with more force than I needed to, sinking it through the log I was splitting and well into the chopping block below, then yanking it free with a grunt. "Next job, I'll have enough money for a gas-powered wood splitter." I glared at her as she opened her mouth to complain. "And you'll fucking take it and use it, you stubborn old hag."

  She gave me a look. "And I suppose you'll pay for the gas to run it too, you irritating young cub?"

  According to the humans who had been alive when the rift occurred, resources had been a lot more plentiful back then. Gas-powered things were being phased out at a rapid pace in the bigger cities now, but the relics were still around out here in the boondocks, and they were cheap. Problem was, gasoline was a bit harder to find.

  But I'd do what I needed to do to keep the woman who raised me warm through the winter—without her cutting her damned foot off because she refused to admit that her eyesight was failing and her body didn't work quite the way it used to.

  "You can still move into town with me," I said for the millionth time.

  She grunted. "And leave the forest?"

  I rolled my eyes. A broken shifter was still a shifter. She was born here, and she'd stay on her little bit of territory until she died.

  Once the rest of the wood was split and stacked, I followed Josie inside. I got down an old, chipped cup and got myself a glass of water, slumping into one of the creaky wooden chairs that surrounded the dented kitchen table. Some kind of stew was bubbling away on the woodstove, and it smelled like heaven. And like all my childhood memories, good and bad, all rolled into one.

  One of my parents was a shifter—a beast woman whose animal form resembled this world's snow leopard—only saber-toothed tiger sized. My father was apparently human. He died not long after I was conceived, a short life-expectancy being one of the usual side-effects of being stupid enough to put your dick in a monster.

  I never knew my mother, since she left after my birth—either joined up with another pack or got killed out in the wastelands somewhere. I never put any effort into trying to find out who she was, since she tried to drown me at birth. Josie had pulled me from the river that ran through the edge of the woods a few miles from here. She was an outcast herself, a beast who couldn't take beast form because of some sort of birth defect.

  The pack let us be, as long as we kept to ourselves, out here away from the village. And as long as we paid “rent.” Living in the shifters' forest gave us some protection from humans. I guess it was the best life we could expect.

  I might have been accepted into the pack as I got older, once I could shift to my animal form. But, of course, that was broken too. I couldn’t fully shift into animal form. I was doomed to forever be not quite. Not quite human, not quite beast. Not quite man, and not quite woman. Not quite a civilian, not quite a hunter. I lived in between, hunting my own kind for a living, sometimes thankful that I hadn't turned out to be one of the crazy crosses that had to be put down, and sometimes wishing I had been put down.

  This was the humans' world, and there was no place for others in it. Especially others that straddled the line, like me.

  "Word is, there's a contract on a herd of unicorns," I said as I helped myself to some of the stew. Rabbit, I think. "I'm going to petition for it tomorrow when the association has auction hours."

  Josie sighed. "Unicorns? By yourself? Sometimes I wonder if your damned brain wasn't damaged when you were born."

  I shrugged. "I can handle a herd of unicorns. I've taken on
worse. And the bounty for them is huge. It'll pay my rent for a few months, buy you that wood splitter, and pay for some repairs to the house and food for the winter."

  Josie couldn't hunt for herself the way a true beast could. She had to make do with traps and guns and mucking about in human form. And hauling her into town to shop at one of the markets was a nightmare. She looked too much like a shifter, even in her humanoid form. After the last time I ended up in jail for defending her from a bunch of human dickwads, she refused to go to town. So, I brought her supplies and I always made sure she was stocked up for the winter. It could get harsh here, and she could end up snowed in for weeks at a time.

  She sighed. "I don't know what I did to deserve you, Samantha Forest. But thanks."

  I slurped my soup and winked at her. "You pulled a half-drowned rat out of the river. It was your one good deed, and I'm your reward."

  She scoffed. "Or my punishment. With that mouth on you, some days I wonder."

  We passed the time companionably and I made sure she was good until my next visit. If I got that unicorn contract, I might be gone a while. I watched from the corner of my eyes as she puttered about the cabin. Josie would never admit it, but her eyesight was getting worse. I noticed how she did things by feel more than ever. My heart lurched in my chest as I wondered what the hell I was going to do when she went completely blind.

  If a shifter suffered some sort of disability like that, the rest of the pack just put them down. They culled the weak without a second thought. That was probably why she was playing it off and pretending she was fine.

  Sighing, I made my way out to the Jeep. One thing at a time. I'd get that bounty and get her squared away for the winter. Then I'd figure out how to force her to come live with me when spring came. It was going to be a hard sell. But I was stronger than the old woman, even if I was only a half-shifter cur. I could always just drag her kicking and screaming, if I had to.