The Familiar Read online

  For Michael and Jake

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SNEAK PEEK

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  Whummph!

  BAAAM!

  I slammed the Hork-Bajir into the concrete. Pinned him against the subbasement wall with two massive tiger paws.

  His red eyes burned with hatred. His face was a twisted horror as he pushed back, desperate to free his tail blade from behind his body.

  I strained to reach the scarred, saddle-leather flesh of his neck. To rip out the throat.

  By the way, I’m Jake.

  Can’t tell you much more than that. Like my last name or where I live. I can’t even tell you where I go to school. Here’s what I can tell you: Earth is being invaded by parasitic slugs called Yeerks. Still with me? Pretty hard to believe, huh? See, humans seem to be their latest preference in host bodies. They take thousands a day. Make them into slaves. They just squeeze into your ear canal. Wrap themselves around your brain. Tap into your memories and dreams. And then they take over. You can’t even decide when to blink. No control at all. It’s like your skull becomes a prison. And you’re trapped in your own head. No way out.

  My friends Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, an alien kid we call Ax, and I are the only active resistance. So now you’re asking yourself, “How are six kids preventing the total takeover of Earth?” Well, we were given the power to turn into any animal we touch. To actually acquire the animal’s DNA. To morph. The Andalite technology was a gift to us from Ax’s older brother, Elfangor. After he crash-landed, and before he was murdered.

  So anyway, we’re the only ones fighting back. We managed to slow the Yeerks down a little. But it was getting harder to keep up the fight. Harder to keep it together.

  “Hhhhhrrroooowwwwrrrr!” I roared.

  He faltered and I lunged forward. Missed! His tail broke free and he slashed!

  And carved a hole in my underbelly!

  I watched, stunned and helpless. Those were my guts, spilling from my body! I froze up for one instant too long. He pushed me down onto pipes that …

  Tsssssssssss!

 

  My fur was smoking, my flesh scalded!

  Adrenaline cracked through my chest like a whip. I was up again, face-to-face with a Yeerk-infested Hork-Bajir.

  I had one more chance with this guy. This was it. And suddenly the vividness of the scene seemed to recede.

  Don’t get me wrong. My guts were still spilling out of my belly. Exhaustion still pressed on my shoulders like a granite slab. But I was in a new zone. It was him or me.

  Claws bared, teeth flashing, I leaped.

  WHAM!

  Heaved him into the wall.

  WHAM!

  Plowed him into the concrete. His skull hit hard.

  WHAM!

  His tail dropped. His eyes went lazy, then rolled up into his head. He groaned weakly and slid down the wall.

  We were three floors underground, in the dark, dank subbasement of a downtown high-rise. Pipes and ducts ran close overhead. You could hear cries and growls from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. I wheeled around. And only then did I see how insanely bad things were.

  We were completely outnumbered.

  Cassie was one against two. Marco one on four.

  I had to help them!

  But I’d drawn a living barrier. Five battle-hardened Hork-Bajir, holding their blades like cocky gunslingers, were closing in on me like the walls of a collapsing room.

  Just beyond the Hork-Bajir was what looked like — what I hoped was an exit. A steel accordion door thirty feet away, opposite the stairs.

  I yelled, but the other screams and cries and crashes drowned out my words.

  My best friend, Marco. Every quaking syllable told me he was at the end of his strength.

  I caught a glimpse of Rachel, hobbling toward the sound of shock troops pouring down the stairs. Her voice cracked. Blood gushed from gashes around her eyes, blinding her. She slashed her grizzly bear paws wildly.

 

  Three Hork-Bajir struck. Ran her across the room like a football-tackling dummy.

  “TSEEER!”

  Tobias swooped and plunged, talons first. One Hork-Bajir fell off, clutching his eyes. Cassie clamped on to another’s heel and yanked her steel-trap jaws from side to side.

  Rachel was still helpless.

  I backed up nervously. I was surrounded, closed off from the others by the approaching Hork-Bajir barricade. My butt hit the concrete wall.

  I reared up and roared. Seven hundred pounds of ripping claws and slicing teeth. Fluid strength. Mercurial speed. The male Siberian tiger. The biggest cat in the world.

  But my roar echoed back unmasked. I heard false confidence. I detected despair.

  “Ghafrash nyut!” said a voice like gravel. “Die!”

  The nearest Hork-Bajir lunged, blades flashing.

  Mouth open, I leaped. My fangs sank in deep, past the armor of skin. Into the meat.

  He jerked back and fell under my weight. I rolled off and slammed to the floor. My right ear! Still stuck to his wrist blade! Sliced off!

  Two more were on me. I’d forgotten any thought of victory. Now it was simply a mindless struggle. A blade embedded in my left hind leg … Focus, Jake. Survive.

  FWAAP!

  A tail blade cleaved the air above me. Blue fur.

  It was Ax.

  Fwaap, fwaap, fwaap!

  Two assailants slumped and crumpled to the floor. A third screamed and cradled his knees.

 

  Movement.

  I cried.

  Ax ducked. The bladed body of a Hork-Bajir whistled through the air.

  Then there was a fierce metallic crash and hiss.

  Pssssssssshhhhhtttttt!

  A cracked steam pipe! An explosion of steam! Pressurized fog billowed across the floor. It enveloped the room, everyone and everything. Confusion took over.

  Now or never.

  I ordered. It was impossible to see more than an inch ahead. The scalding cloud burned my skin and eyes and throat. Choking on steam, bodychecking Hork-Bajir, I ran for the parking garage door and slammed my bloody mass on the weight-sensitive panel. The door began to creak open, inching up at first, then rising rapidly. Six inches, twelve inches, eighteen.

  Cassie squeezed out through the opening. Then Ax. Tobias.

  It was Rachel’s voice. Raving like someone possessed.

  Marco roared.

 

  He was breathles
s, but insistent.

  A Hork-Bajir emerged from the steam cloud, saw me, and broke into a run. Time was definitely not on my side today.

  Lose everyone, or lose two?

  I dropped and rolled under the door, sprang up and broke the glass box that housed the emergency close switch. Engaged the switch.

  What alternative did I have? What choice?

  The door ground to a halt, hesitated, then changed directions, descending like a slow but certain guillotine. Cassie’s wolf eyes fixed on me.

 

  The lone Hork-Bajir dove and skidded under the door. I grabbed him, mouth and claws. We tumbled. It was like being stuffed in the clothes dryer with ten razor-sharp kitchen knives.

  I used my weight, my fangs, the last of my strength. When his muscles finally slackened, I stumbled away. The accordion door was almost closed.

  I looked through the crack and there, like a mirage, was Marco’s gorilla form emerging from the steam cloud. He was dragging a roaring, slashing Rachel. And not more than six feet behind them, a dozen Hork-Bajir.

  Ax grabbed a length of pipe and wedged it between the floor and door. The gears shrieked to a crawl.

  Then the pipe began to bend.

  Cassie screamed.

  The crunching metal door was just inches from the floor when thick, black fingers wrapped around the bottom. And with inconceivable strength, Marco heaved it up. Forced Rachel through. She was a bloody mess.

  Marco stooped, crawled under the door, and released the pipe. Four Hork-Bajir dove for the opening. Slid, clattered, reached the door just as …

  BOOM!

  It crashed shut. No Hork-Bajir made it through. In one piece, anyway.

  I yelled.

  We raced up the empty, spiral parking ramp.

  I demorphed as I ran. Orange-, white-, black-, and red-striped fur thinned to a fuzz, then disappeared. My tail shrank into my coccyx. The guts that hung from my belly were drawn back in.

  Bones shifted, rearranged, and threw me onto my hind legs. I tripped and stumbled against the wall. My front legs were absorbed and then reissued as human arms. Back legs extended, paws minimized, claws grew into toes and fingers.

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  We plateaued onto level pavement, our transformations complete. We sprinted, breathless, down a row of parked cars. Shot past a dumbfounded attendant who saw a hawk and five kids in spandex tear into a downtown street.

  A busy downtown street.

  “Look out!”

  Honk! Honk!

  Drivers slammed on their horns. Cars screeched to a halt.

  I jumped back between parked cars on the side of the street. Rachel and Marco ran for the sidewalk.

  “Cassie!”

  She was in the middle of the street, frozen.

  I ran back into the lanes. A driver opened his car door. “Punks!” He shook his fist. “Bunch of no good …”

  I grabbed Cassie’s arm. Yanked her out of traffic. Dodged into the alley where Marco and Rachel had turned in, following Ax.

  “Cassie!” I shook her roughly. She came to.

  “Four of them,” she said anxiously. “I may have killed four back there, maybe five.” She searched my eyes, her usual calm shattered. “Jake!” she whispered. “How do I deal with this?”

  I gently pushed her down along the alley, shushing her, and looking back over my shoulder. The Yeerks could still be on the trail.

  “Every day we’re more like them,” she persisted. “Aren’t we?” Tears welled over her lower lids. “Jake?”

  I didn’t have the energy for this. The doubt, the introspection, the analysis. I just didn’t have the energy.

  “No,” I said flatly.

  Why was she doing this? Why now? Yeah, we’d just had one of the closest calls I could remember. We’d had to scrap the mission and now the new Yeerk-pool entrance would open on schedule. But the brutality was nothing we hadn’t done a hundred times before.

  She began to cry almost noiselessly. I knew she needed to talk things over. She needed to work through the confusion we all feel after a battle and she wanted me to help.

  But I walked away.

  Marco and Rachel were up ahead, farther down the alley.

  “You’re wrong!” Rachel cried, still pumped. “I could have brought them all down.” Her fist slammed the Dumpster. Marco kicked it even more violently.

  “You had blood in your eyes! You couldn’t even see the reinforcements swarming down the stairs. You acted like an idiot. A selfish, crazy, whacked-out …”

  “Relax,” I said, stepping between them like the leader I was supposed to be. Marco didn’t listen.

  “You’re about to blow, Rachel.” His face was bright red, hot from exertion and frustration. “Haven’t you learned anything? You put everyone at risk by hanging back when Jake said to bail. We can’t always cater to your personal need to bash heads.”

  “But as long as we follow Marco’s righteous program, everything’s fine?” She picked up an empty can and heaved it across the alley. “Mighty Marco can just …”

  “Forget about saving your life next time?”

  “I said relax!” I shouted.

  There was a sudden rustling on the far side of the Dumpster. We tensed instantly.

  Around the corner peeked a boy, an oddly good-looking kid.

  Rachel gave a snort.

  It was Ax, in human morph.

  “I have not heard from Tobias,” Ax said to me.

  “Try again. Ask him if we’re clear.”

  I looked up at the strip of late-evening sky visible from the alley. A raptor’s form floated over then disappeared behind a glassy high-rise.

  “Oh, that’s really great! What a guy. So he’s off the clock now?” Marco walked around behind the Dumpster and began to morph. “I’m going home.”

  I kept watching the sky. Rachel, already morphed to bald eagle, powered her body up past the bricks. I knew she was going after Tobias. Ever since a Yeerk sub-visser held and tortured him, Tobias hadn’t been the same. Even more time spent alone now than before. Withdrawn, despondent.

  Not good.

  “Prince Jake,” Ax said. “Should we meet in the barn tonight and attempt the mission again tomorrow?”

  I sighed. Cassie’s sobs were intermittent now. She rose from the pavement, from the shadow of a pile of cardboard boxes, and walked slowly toward the street.

  “I don’t know, Ax,” I said, watching Cassie. “Will you do me a favor, though? Will you make sure she gets home okay?”

  I headed home alone.

  I demorphed in a tree in my front yard. I knew it was risky, being so close to the house and all, but I was drunk with exhaustion. When I dropped to the grass, my legs went limp under me.

  The gravel stabbed my bare feet as I staggered up the path. The porch light was on. The other lights out.

  I paused with my hand on the doorknob and glanced down at my body. Spandex bike shorts and tight T-shirt. I looked like I should be giving a testimonial on a Tae Bo infomercial. I had regular clothes stashed in the garage. I needed to put them on.

  The garage. It seemed so far away. I was so tired, my muscles ached …

  I pushed open the door. Forget about my normal clothes. My parents, if they were home, would probably just think this morphing outfit was some new fashion. You know — something Rachel thought up. Well, she says this is cutting edge or something.

  My brother Tom, my brother with a Yeerk in his head, would never buy that one.

  But Tom wasn’t home. Friday night meant he was at The Sharing. The front organization for Controllers.

  I opened the fridge, grabbed a leftover slice of pizza, and started to stuff my face. I left the kitchen to climb the stairs to bed. One, two, three … I could feel it already, my head hitting the pillow, sleep descending. Dreams would come. No nightmares. Just dreams of …


  “Jake?”

  My head snapped up. A piece of pizza crust lodged in my throat.

  The voice was loud and mocking. “Bare feet? You been riding your bike barefoot? At night?”

  It was Tom. He stood at the top of the stairs. Tall and confident. Blocking my path. Guess it was a quick night at The Sharing.

  I coughed, hacking up the pizza crust.

  “Hey,” I said, forcing a half-smile. “I, uh … I was over at Marco’s. Watching the game. It went into overtime and, well, Detroit scored and Marco jumped up and smacked a Pepsi all over my jeans and sneakers. I left them there to get washed.”

  “Yeah?” Tom said, frown fading. “Well, you look pretty stupid. But that’s really not unusual, is it?” He was smirking now.

  “Whatever,” I ran up the rest of the stairs and jabbed him in the stomach, the way a little brother would.

  He fell to the floor, feigning injury, but hooked my foot and tripped me as I walked into my room.

  We laughed.

  “I’m gonna crash,” I said, recovering my balance. “I’m beat.”

  “Yeah. Fine.” He headed for his room. Did he buy it? Did he believe the lies I’d grown so used to telling? The fake-nice routine I put on for a brother who’s not a brother at all anymore, but the enemy?

  I dropped into bed. Pulled the blanket up to my neck. Began to shut my …

  A noise in the doorway.

  I shot up. Flicked on the lamp.

  “Hey, Midget?” Tom poked his head around my door frame. “Was that blood on your leg?”

  My breathing stopped.

  Sometimes, when you demorph, the blood of battle stays behind.

  “Uh.” My voice faltered. My brain slowed. “You know about my bike. It stinks. The stupid chain catches my skin. I should get Dad to buy me a new one.” I dropped back onto my pillow. Switched off the light.

  Waited.

  Tom let it go.

  But when I glanced once more at my bedroom doorway, Tom’s shadow was still there. Did he have something more to say?

  I was too tired to ask. Sleep was dragging down my eyelids.

  Whatever it was could wait till morning.

  Eyes closed, I saw Cassie. Watched her solitary figure walking down the alley. Away from me. Toward a busy street where cars flashed past.

  I saw Tom’s leery eyes. Always watching. Policing. Scheming. Eyes controlled by the very small, but very real parasitic slug in his brain. The Yeerk. The race of alien invaders, pressing ever forward in stealthy conquest of humanity.