Creature of Unknown Origin

36

“Both?” I frowned. My eyebrows quirked in confu sion. What difference did it make, coffee

or good whiskey? Either way, I was certain we were in for a long night, and I wanted to hear about

Spencer and the things he kept from me just as much as he wanted to hear my story.

~ ~ ~

The sun had long since ris en by the time I’d managed to wrap my head around everything.

I could only imagine what Spence’s head was like right now, but I knew one thing: I was pretty

well-blessed to be the one from another world where creatures like me existed and the

“supernatural” once roamed the earth. It certainly made my acceptance of a multiverse and the

possibility of traveling between the dimensions easier to come by. This world apparently didn’t

have that history, and the vast majority didn’t seem to believe in it, writing supernatural beings —

writing me — off as myths and legends.

I had to give Spencer a lot of credit, though. He dealt with my tale significantly better than

I did having to tell it. It wasn’t easy for me, and at times left me choking over sentences— and the

memories the words inspired —I thought I’d dealt with a long ago, like when it came time to tell

him about the first time I’d shifted.

It was so painful, like my body was trying to rip itself apart and shove itself back together

at random. I was only nine, and none of us thought it was possible. Shifting, as in a complete

beastly-transformation, was rare nowadays, as in one-in-a-gazillion rare — or at least it used to be.

I’d had to explain how the bloodlines of our ancient and prehistoric genes became so

entangled and fragmented that the modern humans of my world retained minimal genetic

commonalities with the pureblooded beings of the past. As the pure bloodlines of werewolves,

vampires, witches, and everything in between were diluted through interbreeding and a gradual

domination of some genes over others, we lost the ability to shift… that is until a clinical trial in

the 1970s messed with biology and inadvertently produced a genetic sequence that upended our

recessive and dominant genes, resulting in kids lik e me. That’s when my tongue was struck by a

dumb numbness that Spence and I took a break to make brownies.

The distraction served its purpose, and as we baked, I was able to tell him how my mother

was a participant in the trial, but I would never blame her for what happened to me. That clinical

trial saved the lives of countless others, as it was part of a global effort to study the use of pure

creature genetics to help cure or treat terminal illnesses. After years of studying not only the DNA