by Taylor Brown
Here was a king.
Horn watched the big cats circling beneath him. Here were the greatest hunters that had ever lived, predators whose bloodlines had survived some three million years in the killing fields of evolution. Their ancestors had been the strongest and smartest of their generations, each successive line born harder than the last, sharper, more capable of bringing down the mastodon, the cave bear, the antelope. Kings of the forest and savannah, who battled the most formidable prey of the earth to live. They circled beneath him, smoke-breathed, like beasts of fire and light.
Like far worlds, converging.
His wolves raised their voices again, as if keening some loss. He could hear Onyx the loudest, as if the black wolf’s heart had been ripped silver from his chest and hung among the stars. Their howls carried long miles across the water, so that shrimpers and crabbers spoke of ghosts keening on the wind.
The great lion seemed unfazed. He strode proud-chested before the tigress, as if indifferent to the fiery slink of her body, the long whisper of her tail. But Horn knew better. He knew the lion’s heart was thundering bright—the same as his own.
* * *
Her fur burns in the night, firelike. Her eyes so gold. She bellies the earth before him, her ears laid flat. The white mitts of her paws nearly touch. Her tail swishes. Her muscles have marshaled beneath her shoulders, hard as stones. Her eyes track his every move. She might be readying herself to pounce, to tear the throat from a deer. The wolves howl in the distance, in worship or dread.
Mosi approaches, high-chinned and sidewise, wary as a housecat. Closer, closer. If she springs, he will turn his shoulder to the slash of her claws and drive his teeth into her neck, snapping the hot vine of blood that tethers her to the earth. She will run red through his jaws. His own throat is safe, hidden beneath the black of his mane.
He stands unmoved before her, waiting. His body so vast, a golden country of desire. A hot wind pours from his mouth. His blood burns like magma beneath his skin. The wolves howl yet louder, as if longing for flight, to run high among the stars.
She springs for his throat, so fast he can hardly react. At the last moment she lowers her chin and drives her broad forehead through his mane, her pink nose grazing his neck. His throat sings at her touch, as if sliced, and she bolts away, high-shanked and jaunty. Mosi trots after her, open-jawed, following the red zag of her body.
She tumbles onto her back before him, revealing the soft white fur of her belly. She rubs her shoulders against his forelegs and swats at his nose, her teeth clicking in the night. His breath smokes over her. They snarl like battlers through their fangs. Now the tigress rolls upright and hovers on her belly beneath him, haunches raised. One eye slides over her shoulder.
Mosi lifts his great maned head, whose semblance has ridden on the shields and banners of nations. He inhales, swelling his chest, and blasts his roar through the night. Trees bend and shiver. Birds explode to flight. Eggs quiver in their nests, as if they might hatch, and the very stars seem to pulse.
The wolves fall silent.
CHAPTER 27
LEOPARD GIRL
Malaya dropped to one knee, hard and fast, as if anchoring herself against a gale. The roar crashed through the trees, careening seaward. She imagined the surf breaking white-foamed against the sound, as if against a seawall. Shorebirds bursting to flight. Entire shoals of baitfish silvering with terror, darting for darker fathoms.
I am Mosi.
They’d come more than a mile since the clubhouse, directed now and again by crackles from the radio—Lope’s voice, directing them from above. They’d crossed the main east-west road of the island, an oak-lined lane that once led visitors between the ferry dock and the oceanside hotel, then taken a dirt drive past the trailers of the resort staff. The singlewides sat moldering beneath the trees, with busted windows and open doors. Old belongings scattered before them, bicycles and beach chairs and mini-fridges. Cable satellite dishes, green with lichen, still listening for messages from space. The whole place lay beneath a heavy, organic film, growing back into the earth.
They’d passed a giant maintenance warehouse of corrugated metal and a fleet of diesel tanks shaped like submarines, rust-patched with red hazard placards. On the outside wall of the warehouse, a large button haloed with red paint: EMERGENCY PUMP SHUTOFF. An old bucket truck sat in the lot, hood raised, the tires puddled flat beneath their wheels.
Then the buildings had vanished, the road narrowing through the trees, only wide enough for a single vehicle. Anse had bent to the ground, running his hand along the ruts and treads.
“Been a truck through here since the last rain.”
Finally they’d come to a narrow drive, double-rutted with a stripe of grass down the center. A single sign had been nailed to a nearby tree: BEWARE OF DOG.
* * *
The roar died away. The trees unbent and the stars reappeared and Malaya’s ears thrummed, as in the wake of a blast. She looked to Anse, raising an eyebrow.
She was younger than they were, faster. For all they knew, the lion they’d taken as their charge was about to fight a tiger for the roar of ten thousand bettors scattered across the world, bent to tablets or computer screens.
Can I?
Anse curled his bottom lip into his teeth, biting hard. Then he unslung the howdah pistol and held out the walnut club of the grip.
“God forbid,” he said.
Then Malaya was moving fast through the trees, darting over roots and fallen limbs, dodging briars and thickets, her eyes cutting a path for her feet. She could not take the drive itself for threat of traps and alarms. She skirted deadfalls and ducked branches and leapt a creekbed that crossed her path. She clutched the carbine close against her chest, ripping through sweeps of moss and spiderwebs with her free hand, breaking branches at eye level, leaving a trail for Anse and Tyler to follow. She was strong and tireless, as in a dream. Her thighs were sprung with power, buoyant, her breath storming through her teeth. She had trained for this. The predawn runs on dewy streets, the evening wind sprints. The thousands of push-ups and dips and squats.
The moon grew closer, stronger. Thorns raked her face. Slivers of blood burned on her cheeks. She felt freed, loosed into the night. Now a bubble of light rose through the trees and she broke into the clearing of the compound before the giant canopy of a cargo parachute, a secret carnival pitched beneath the moon. The big top of silk billowed in the night, skirling and popping, while the lion and tiger wrestled inside the arena, flashing in and out of shadow, their breath whirling from them in paling blades of smoke. The lion curling on top, biting the tiger’s neck. The tiger rolling beneath him, swatting his face. Their teeth bared white. Bloodless. Their growls whipping strangely through the night, in and out of earshot.
Malaya approached the fence, slowly, stepping beneath the gnarled crown of an ancient oak. She held her carbine against her chest, her eyes wide. These crazed beasts, snarling and smoking, flashing out of the darkness in bright flames of power, as if twisting themselves into a single beast.
Snap—
Malaya jerked her head straight up. A creature dropping from the tree overhead—a man, his arms spread high and wide as a crucifixion. She jumped back and he hit the ground feet-first, straight as a spear, then balled and sprang upright before her, his fists raised on either side of his face. One hand gripped an evil, curled knife. He was shirtless, his torso cut pale and hard as living marble. She saw words scrolled over the heaving planes of his navel:
SOMETIME THE WOLF
Then she looked up, seeing his face.
“You.”
Her heart jabbed in her chest. She drove the heel of her boot into his belly, forcing him back, then raised the barrel of the carbine between them. Too slow. The long-haired man rebounded, leaping upon her like a giant claw. He spiraled around her trunk, torqueing her hard to the ground, cutting the sling of her carbine and kicking it away. She found herself facing the sky, snared in limbs, her head locked in a hard
triangle of arms. The man’s biceps bulged against her neck. A blood-choke. Her artery pinched, the blood slackening to her brain. She clawed at the arm to no avail. Her vision began to dim, tunneling. The stars to bleed. The moon oozing out of round. She had only seconds before she passed out.
Malaya looked down her body, past the pair of legs that ensnared her. The lion and the tiger stood on the far side of the fence, their great ribs flaring with breath. Their jaws hung open, strings of saliva dripping from their chins. The night flooded in on them, lapping over their edges, drowning their bodies. Soon there was only the glow of their eyes, soon to vanish.
Malaya’s hand found the grip of the howdah pistol.
Here was the vision that haunted her.
To uncage fire and light.
Her fingers tightened.
She would not miss.
CHAPTER 28
DAWN
Horn woke. He was lying flat on his back, high from the ground, his bare chest coated in sweat. Dawn light, pale and cool, rifled through the high fence of the wolf pen, seeking his stricken form. The pain throbbed along his femur, hammering at the socket of his hip. He lifted his head to look down his body, seeing the ragged slash of claws in his thigh, bone gleaming through the meat.
Sickness rose in his throat. He leaned his head back on the roof of the shelter, thinking of all the wolves caught in the jaws of iron traps. Century after century. Feeling the same pain he felt now. Knowing they would have to gnaw through their own flesh and bone to escape. To chew themselves free of a limb.
He’d tried so hard to break from the world of men. The world of mothers who died in the night, their eyes clouded with blood, and fathers whose keys rattled from brass rings on their belts, promising cages and locks. He’d found an island apart from their rule, cloaking himself in the fur of a new family.
Now he must go back.
Last night, when the girl raised the double-barreled pistol from her chest, both hammers cocked, Horn had seen what would happen. The long tongues of flame leaping forth, the bright shatter of the gate latch. The door blown inward on its hinges and the lion and tiger wheeling in panic, their eyes burning for escape. They’d come charging for the blasted door, big as battering rams, and Horn was already letting the girl slide unconscious from his arms. He was rising over her, spreading his arms wide, trying to divert their path, when the lion broke first from the arena.
Blazing eyes, a black halo of mane. A roar that filled the night.
Without thought, Horn sprang over the girl, howling into the roar.
In a single stroke, the lion swatted him far across the night, sent him tumbling through the air and along the ground, the flesh raked from his thigh. When he opened his eyes, Amba was standing over him, scenting him, her pink nose just shy of his wound.
Horn had reached up, stroked her chin.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Amba chuffled, a cloud of breath.
“Go,” he said. “While you can.”
The tigress hovered, reluctant to heed.
Horn slashed his arm toward the tree line.
“Go!”
She seemed to dip her head once, revealing the black mark of power on her forehead. Then she wheeled and vanished, quick as a flame winking out. Gone. Horn had turned and begun crawling through the night, making for the wolf enclosure, the shelter of his pack. They would protect him, he thought …
Now he looked over the edge of the roof. The wolves were swimming about the wooden sides of the shelter, circling black and gray, their tongues flopping from their jaws. A dark sea of them, whirling faster. A rising hunger. They could smell the power of their alpha slipping, seeping from his veins.
He who’d been a wolf—he was becoming a man.
Only Onyx stood beside him now, high atop the shelter, his hackles risen black and serrated from his spine. He snarled long-toothed at the others, keeping them at bay. Several had already tried to spring atop the shelter. Onyx sent them squealing and tumbling back to earth, scrambling to right themselves amid the snarls of the pack.
Horn reached out, ruffing the neck of the black wolf.
He knew what he had to do. His only chance. He had to climb down and walk through them, staring straight into their eyes. Never blinking. Showing them that he was still the strongest among them. The fittest, most worthy of their faith. That he was still their alpha. He must walk straight to the gate of the enclosure, showing no fear, no pain or weakness.
The shelter shook beneath him. The wolves were rubbing their ribs against its sides.
Horn closed his eyes a long moment, then opened them.
He descended.
* * *
Mosi strides through wide fans of saw palmetto, high-shouldered, heedless of the thorns and briars of the understory. He loves the scrape and sting of the bush. He was never meant to wear a faultless coat, he knows. The old savannah kings are in his blood. Rulers of the black mane, who wore their scars with pride. Their shredded ears and eyeless sockets. Their coats storied with old battles, never meant to shine in cages or trophy rooms.
The sun is rising, lancing gold through the trees, when Mosi emerges from the woods and crosses a long glade of grass, plowing chest-high through the blades. He feels strangely at home here, as if he might hear the hoof-thunder of the great herds along their migration paths. He pauses, watching a robin perch atop a swaying weed stalk, her breast balled red with song.
Soon he’s trotting down a long hall of oaks. Moss hangs silver-gold from the trees and thrushes drape themselves branch to branch above him. Squirrels freeze spread-limbed, their tails curled bushy, their black-bright eyes watching his passage. Mosi strides through the hush, the watching eyes and tapping hearts. He pauses again, his eyes searching for a flash in the trees.
The tigress burns in his mind. She is prideless, he knows, meant to flicker through dark jungles or snowy forests. Silent, no shiver of brush in her wake. How he would like to feast on the entrails of a fresh-killed deer beside her, their faces blazed warm with blood. Their sandy tongues lapping flesh from bone. How he would like to drowse in a pool of afternoon sunlight beside her, pushing his nose through the white fur of her belly. Their cubs tumbling in the grass. But he’s caught no sign of her, no scent. She’s vanished.
Mosi continues down the hall of oaks, searching.
Soon a structure rises before him, vine-strung and giant, moaning in the wind. He sniffs at the stone pool at the foot of the place, filled only with dead leaves and stagnant rainwater and scattered flecks of copper. He approaches the black maw of the entrance, swiveling his ears. He can hear the scrabble of rats, the scuttle of roaches. The drip of water on stone. Now the wind rises, whistling through the shattered wreck of the place, the empty halls and chambers. Mosi lifts his nose, trying to catch the scent of the tigress.
Nothing.
She’s gone. Retreated to wherever fire goes, leaving no trace.
Mosi hears only the distant crash of surf, calling him on.
* * *
Horn was walking among his wolves, through them, their bodies parting before the bloody stride of his legs. They watched slack-jawed, their tongues flopped out, stood awed by the bloody footprints he left in his wake. They dipped their snouts again and again, scenting the tracks, only to look up at him in disbelief, their heads cocked like dogs.
Horn reached the first of the double gates, yanked up the latch, and slipped sideways through the door. The wolves bunched at his heels, eager to follow, but Horn pulled shut the gate, slamming home the latch. His knee gave out at the clang of the lock, buckling beneath the shredded flesh of his thigh. He collapsed hard in the dirt. The pain, pent so long in his chest, came howling from his throat, raising the rooty veins of his neck. He writhed on the ground, clawing the dirt, his vision gone starry and wild.
When his eyes cleared, his wolves were strung along the fence, their dark bodies quaking like storm clouds. Anxiety pulsed through them, electric. They knew. They lowered their snouts, re
vealing the high razors of their shoulder blades, and stared through the steel waffling of the fence. Their yellow eyes searched him like spotlamps. They were whining now, pleading through the white flash of their teeth. He must not leave them. He was their alpha. Their king.
They curled their lips, showing their fangs.
They would kill him if he left.
Only Onyx stood apart, with his black fur and yellow eyes. He was certain his master would return. His faith unbroken. In the distance, Horn could hear the rumbling of storm, or perhaps the thunder of a helicopter heading their way. The machine-rule of man would converge on this island, he knew. Government boats would arrive at the dock, dispersing state rangers with catchpoles and dog boxes, and aircraft would circle high overhead, carrying men with binoculars. A white cutter would anchor offshore, as if to provide artillery support. His wolves would be wrangled and crated, transported to shelters and sanctuaries around the country. His pack broken, dispersed.
Only Amba might escape. After all, her kind had been known to slip the nooses of hunters and poachers time and again throughout the centuries, leaving no sign of passage. No prints. Horn felt his blood ebb, blackness throbbing in the corners of his vision. He closed his eyes. In the dark of his mind, he could see Amba flickering through heavy drapes of myrtle and moss, her body so unbelievably long, her tail weaving through the maze of fronds. Silent. She was pursuing a whitetail buck who stood beneath a mossy oak, his body propped on the thinnest legs, his flanks raked high from the earth. His antlers knobby and short. The buck stood as if hypnotized by her presence, jacklighted. The tigress bolted from the trees, aiming her jaws for his throat. In this dream, her belly was heavy and round, pregnant with power.