The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-everett

overweight cats swarm up from manhole covers with the same fury as the dog. Shit.
    On instinct, I beef up my leg muscles, jump over the rats and away from the dog. For a second, I hope that the dog and the rats will get into it and leave me alone. Of course not. Three more windows break, and now there are four dogs. Great. Plus more rats every second. I hate rats. I hate little Pied-Piper-of-Hamlin girls that talk to rats and dogs. I run. No real strategy except to get to higher ground. I’m like a demented Dr. Doolittle, with a band of enraged house dogs and street rats forming a vicious tail behind me. Usually I’d just outrun them all. But I expended so much energy on my morphing that it’s all I can do it keep the rabies babies from making a lunch out of my Achilles tendons. Since when do rats attack people? She does something to these animals. I’ll figure it out after I get to surviving.
    That may be harder than it sounds. Every second I have more enemies and fewer options. Ten dogs now. Can’t count the seething mass of bouncing brown and black rodents. Too many. Is this how I go out, a feast for the vermin of London? I survived walking across Africa, damn it! Lions didn’t touch me!
    Right. Lions didn’t touch me. I adjust my pheromones quickly, but I’m tired. Running, changing, Yasmine—too much in one day. I bump up my pheromones again, until I reek of predator, of the biggest, most vicious animal these city-dwelling creatures have ever had nightmares about. I’m what makes them want to grab their babies and run. I’m the biggest dog on the block.
    By the time I round a corner into an abandoned construction site, my own face is back—I’ve got no energy to keep up the illusion—and I smell like Mr. Big Critter. But they just keep coming.
    Somewhere nearby, that girl is still driving these creatures. They’ve slowed down, they’re afraid of me—the pheromones. But she’s pushing them to keep coming; I can feel their brains near seizing from her electrical storm.
    I’m just about out of options. But not quite . . . someone’s done me the solid of leaving a lead pipe here. I grab it. The first rat is a dead rat. The first dog is a wounded dog. After that, I can only promise I’ll go down swinging. Too bad my powers don’t work on animals. . . .
    But they’re not just animals, are they? This girl’s got them on puppet strings. I can even feel them, through her. And if I can feel them, maybe I can hurt them. I reach out with my senses. Affecting them is going to be like trying to give a back massage with a catcher’s mitt, but I think I can do it.
    Fuck it. It’s them or me. I raise my free hand and slam them all with my power. Half the rats die of heart attacks. Three of the dogs let out yelps of pain and spasm on the ground. I do it again. Another quarter of the rats go into spasm. Two dogs go down. If I were stronger, maybe . . . But I’m so tired. Some of the other animals scamper away. Not all. I use the last of my strength to beef up my muscle and reflexes, and bang the pipe against the outlines of a building that will never be constructed.
    â€œCome on, you varmints!” Pathetic epithet, but it’s all I’ve got. They come. I swing. Three rats first. I kick one back, stomp another’s head, and dodge the third.
    I guide the pipe into an arching swing, like I’m trying to reach deep left field. The blow tags the third rat in mid flight, and a German shepherd who just reached pipe’s distance. Never seen a dog stagger before, but it couldn’t come at a better time—he falls onto the mini army of rats that just reached the ankle-biting area. I take advantage of the reprieve and climb. The scaffolding behind me is all metal. There’s a pit bull below me I don’t want to figure out how to deal with. But the rats could get up here, if the girl didn’t stop them.