by V M Black
Of course, shifting back would be trickier. Because of the door construction, he couldn’t open it from the inside as a panther any more than the female could, and he needed the door open to carry things in and out. Which meant that she would be able to enter the front room at will.
“I’ll be right there, girl,” he told the panther. He couldn’t stand to call her “bae” anymore. Not now.
Chay threw the bolt between the front room and the spook shop, keeping out any who didn’t have a key, and he booted up a computer long enough to send a warning to his team. Then he crouched in front of the clear door, only a foot away from the female panther. He put his palm out against the plastic as if to touch her. She growled very softly in her throat as she chewed on the thick length of cow femur. The back end of the food tray blocked the slot under the door so that she couldn’t swipe at him, but he knew she would have done so if she’d been able to.
Chay sighed, curling his fingers against his palm as he lowered his hand. Then he shifted. God, but it felt good to be back in his panther body. It was like returning home. Had it really just been a few hours since he’d been this shape? It felt like forever. He stretched luxuriantly, his nostrils flaring, smelling the female and yearning for the earthy smells of soil and rotting leaves and the feeling of dirt beneath his paws.
His panther wasn’t going to get that now, though, so Chay suppressed the desires as he reached up and nosed the door’s lever open. The tray got wedged in its slot at an angle and was dragged with the door as he shouldered his way through.
The female panther hunched more protectively over her bone, gnawing on it with intense concentration. She froze as Chay lowered his head. The panther in him wanted to slap the female aside and take her kill, showing his superiority. But the human in him forced him to merely nuzzle her shoulder, once, twice, a motion of equal parts affection and ownership.
The tenseness in her body relaxed, and she went back to worrying the bone.
Chay left her there and padded into the bathroom, where he was satisfied to discover that although she’d stolen all his clothes, she hadn’t yet destroyed his cleaning tools or knocked over the bucket full of scat. He took the handle in his mouth and trotted out into the front room with the bucket swinging beneath his chin before going back for the other things. The mop was easy enough to drag by the handle, as was the scooper, and even the bottle of disinfectant proved reasonably easy to carry without puncturing it. But the rolling yellow mop bucket presented a challenge.
At first, he tried to bite the edge and back up out of the room. It took several minutes and an aching jaw just to get it inside the bedroom. He tried batting it with his paws next, but it jerked and skittered, the wheels underneath turning every which way. Finally, he resorted to standing behind it and nudging it slowly with his neck and shoulder toward the way that it should go.
The female panther sat back to observe this, her ears cocked with interest at his mysterious antics.
If you wouldn’t eat me, I’d do this as a human, Chay thought at her with a glimmer of humor. And then you wouldn’t be subjected to the sight of a panther being so ridiculous and undignified.
After a couple more minutes, he made it out the door into the main room. His job was done. Now all he had to do was hook the door so that it started to swing closed before he shifted human again to make sure that it secured.
He gave the female one last look. She was carrying the heavy length of femur in her mouth, and as he watched, she dropped it in the doorway. Then she turned away, exuding feline arrogance, and stalked off.
He looked down at the bone, his panther self regarding it greedily. She was making an offering, or as close to an offering as her dignity would allow. The female looked healthier than she had the day before, too. She smelled healthier, and some small amount of gloss had come back into her coat.
Because of him? He hardly knew whether to rejoice or lament. If the panther was healthier, did that mean that Tara would be less able to fight against it? Or had its suffering pushed her deeper into its mind?
The question was unanswerable because there was no one to ask. No one who had been so thoroughly lost had ever been recovered. So Chay had only his instincts to follow.
And his instincts told him to accept the female panther’s gift.
He picked it up and carried it back into the bedroom, sprawling in a corner with it and gnawing it as he watched the female out of the corner of his eye. She pretended to ignore him, but her body language exuded self-satisfaction at his acceptance. She stalked slowly around the room, sniffing everything and rubbing her body up against the edges of the furniture until she arrived in front of him and sat with a smug, aloof expression on her face.
The bone tasted good, too good to Chay’s meat-starved panther. How many weeks had it been since it had brought down a kill and tasted its warm, coppery blood? This wasn’t the same, but it was close, and something primitive and wild inside of Chay woke to it.
They sat in silence, the two panthers, until the bone gave him no more satisfaction. Then he stood and stepped up nose-to-nose with the female. She sniffed him for a long moment, then nuzzled her whiskers against his face and began to bathe him with her rasping pink tongue.
Chay froze even as the panther’s mind whirled inside his brain at the novel sensation. Because he hadn’t been born a shifter, he’d never had a panther family to share such caresses. He had bathed the female on impulse, but to receive the same in return shocked him.
The panther in him was eager to submit to her attentions—almost too eager, he feared, because it roused a welter of feline emotions, feelings he’d never before felt in any shape. A pleasant lassitude ran through him, like a drug in his veins. He could hardly identify the emotions, they were so foreign to him.
Belonging. Warmth. Tenderness.
Home.
After she finished, she curled up next to him, lying against his legs again. Impulsively, Chay lay beside her body as he had the day before, letting her lean against him, feeling each of her breaths where their bodies touched.
Mate. Chay’s panther was absolutely certain that’s what she was. It could smell where her body was in its cycle, and in a few more weeks, he knew that she would come into heat. The panther in him knew exactly what it wanted to do about that—and Chay knew what he could never let it do. Even if it meant killing her. Even if doing that killed him, too.
There was time yet, though. Time to bring Tara back. Somehow.
And if nothing else, time to spend with the panther that had once been her.
Chay rested his head against her softly rising and falling flank, and he lived in the moment, for however long it would last.
Chapter Five
The days flowed together even faster after that because the panther did not understand time as humans did. Chay spent as many of his waking hours in his feline form as in his human one, and with every passing day, the scent of the female’s approaching estrus became sharper, more immediate.
Chay ignored that, just as he ignored the fact that he’d let his smart watch’s battery run out long before, just as he ignored the fact that he hadn’t seen the slightest human glimmer in the female’s eyes for a very long time.
He had stopped speaking to his team on the rare occasions that he emerged from his quarters. He hardly had a reason to leave anymore, anyway. As the panther, he regained full use of his suite because he could enter the bathroom in panther form and shoulder the door shut before shifting to take care of his needs. And he’d been having meals delivered for both him and Tara from the beginning. Only when he needed to clean out the bedroom was he forced to subject himself to the flat, expressionless stares of his people, his former friends.
Usually, the food was delivered by one of the kitchen workers. But one day, when the knock came on the door and Chay strode out of the bedroom to shut the door and shift back to his human form, Annie stood on the other side, wrapped in one of her silk robes with a tray in her hands and a determi
ned light in her eyes.
She pushed inside before Chay could take the tray, and Chay stepped back rather than force her bodily back out again.
“Didn’t even bother to put on pants,” she observed, eyeing the towel that he wore around his waist like a sarong. She shut the door behind her and crossed to the clear door, where the female sat. A growl emerged from the panther’s throat as the spirit fox got close.
“Damn. She still wants to eat me,” Annie said. “What did I ever do to her?”
“Don’t upset her.” Chay took the food from Annie’s hands, put the panther’s on the tray with a fresh bowl of water, and shoved it through the slot in the door. The bloody chunk of ribs and entrails was beginning to look appealing even to his human senses. He was spending far, far too much time in his panther form.
Giving Annie a distrustful look, the female panther took the hunk of bloody meat and retreated into a corner to eat it as far away from the fox shifter as she could while still keeping the woman in her sight.
“Why not?” Annie asked bluntly. “She’s just an animal now. A vicious one who needs to be put down.”
“Not yet, she doesn’t,” Chay said.
Annie flung herself onto the couch on top of the blankets where Chay usually slept. “I’m surprised you even bother to ask for human food. It’s cheaper than big hunks of meat, sure, but given the amount of time you spend as a panther.…”
“What do you know about that?” Chay snapped.
Annie rolled her eyes and looked pointedly at the video monitors.
Chay frowned. He’d turned those off on the first day. Of course, he hadn’t trained his team to be stupid, and in their place, he would have kept an eye on himself, as well.
He knew full well what he would have said about his behavior before he met Tara. Crazy. Unstable. Dangerous to all of Black Mesa.
And never before had he permitted anything that would be a danger to Black Mesa except under the most extreme circumstances.
“You’re acting like a spoiled child,” Annie said. “Selfish, that’s what you are. You’re not doing her any favors, you know. The panther’s miserable cooped up like that. You’ve got to know that. And if Tara’s in there anywhere, not able to get out, you’re just torturing her.”
“I told her I wouldn’t give up.” The words sounded hollow.
“Well, I’ve got a news flash for you. She already has. Wherever she is, she’s not coming back, maybe because she can’t or maybe because she doesn’t want to.” Annie tossed her short hair. “Black Mesa’s falling apart without you. Three of the generators have gone down in the last month. Liam’s fighting with Ophelia—Ophelia, of all people—and no one knows what to do when the money runs out.” For half an instant, her hard, bright eyes went soft. “They’re going to replace you, Chay. And a lot of them are going to leave. People who shouldn’t leave, who shouldn't be out in the world again. This place that you’ve worked so hard for—it’s going to all fall apart because you’re acting crazy.”
Chay realized then why she’d been sent. Despite her normally brash personality, she was from a traditional spirit fox upbringing—which meant that she was fully trained as a courtesan spy, not only with skills in bed but with all the talent for diplomacy that came with it.
She knew which words to choose to persuade her audience whenever she so chose. Annie was choosing now, likely because some of the others had asked her to, but also because she wanted to, because Annie never did anything that she didn’t want to do. Given her usual eagerness to watch a catastrophe unroll—another typical fox trait—her decision to try to help him spoke volumes for how much she cared, however strangely she showed it.
“I hear what you’re saying,” Chay said. “And I know what I’d have done in your place just a short time ago. Give me more time and Torrhanin more time.” He nodded to the panther. “Give her more time. Just a little more.”
Annie shook her head, looking dubious. “Chay, if this keeps on much longer…you have to know that your friends will do what it takes to save you from yourself.”
Chay’s stomach clenched, and he looked at the panther, knowing what she meant. If he didn’t have the guts to give her peace, his team would.
He went to the clear plastic door and put his palm flat against it.
“A little more time,” he repeated.
She just sighed, and a moment later, there was a rustle of silk as she left the room.
Chay’s throat ached, and he leaned forward against the cool, clear plastic, the chaos of his unkempt twists brushing his cheeks. He closed his eyes for a long minute, standing in silence that was broken only by the sounds of the panther, ignorant of their discussion, unconcernedly devouring its dinner.
With a huff of surrender, Chay returned to the sofa, ate his food—and shifted into his panther form, entering the bedroom just as the female panther abandoned the bones.
He rubbed down the length of her body with his own over and over again, nuzzling her. More than anything, he wanted to gather her in his human arms. No, not her. Tara. He wanted Tara back and in his arms, against his chest, to hold safe forever.
But that wasn’t going to happen, and instead, the female panther, not knowing the source of his sudden affection, was torn between enjoyment, amusement, and aloofness. When she tired of his attentions, she mounted the platform bed and curled on the mattress among his shredded clothes.
Chay joined her, his sleek body twining with her increasingly thin one, and he sat in silence as she went to sleep, not daring to think, hardly daring to breathe, because every breath marked another moment passing by never to return.
Even when his head grew too heavy to hold up, he stayed, his mind afloat in a welter of half-formed thoughts and abortive urges. He wouldn’t let himself focus on any of them, so he simply existed in an eternal moment of now. It was easier to allow the panther’s mind to take control. He’d been doing that more and more of late, for the female seemed to be calmer when his cat’s urges were obeyed.
Slowly, so slowly that he didn’t notice it happening, his eyelids closed, and he drifted along a river of unconscious thoughts, toward his dreams.…
He found himself hanging in darkness, and he realized that this was how the panther must feel, contained inside another mind. Except that now the man was the one inside the mind, and the panther was in control.
That realization was enough to break through the weight of lassitude that had settled over him, sending him battling back up through the walls that held his mind in, bursting back into the panther’s brain and beating its mind back. It reared up, and Chay was stunned to see how large and powerful it had become. But Chay had known the panther within himself for too many years to be so easily defeated. He fought back, attacking its weaknesses, blasting it with the force of his mind. And it retreated, back into the space that Chay had allowed it.
This time.
Chay stood, disentangling himself from the female’s slack body, and bounded through the doorway into the front room. He shifted instantly to the safety of his human body and jerked the door closed before the female panther had a chance to rouse. He jerked the lever to the locked position, then leaned his back against the door, his heart pounding in his chest.
He thought he was still trying to save Tara. Instead, he’d nearly lost himself. His weakness could cost his team, his friends, and the hundreds of people who depended on him everything he had fought to give them.
Annie was right. He’d been wrong and selfish, and he had to end this now, no matter what it cost him personally. He had to go on because there were others who needed him. Tara was past needing him now, past caring. He owed her peace, and it was only his cowardice that had kept him from giving it to her.
Numbly, Chay pulled on some dirty clothes that he’d discarded, then gathered up some clean ones and the bag with his toiletries in it. He plugged in his smart watch to charge, and pushed out into the spook shop.
Annie and Luke had been in conversation—he caught th
e snatch of a word as he stepped into the room. But the instant he appeared, they trailed off, and their sudden silence alerted Ophelia to his presence.
His team stared at him as he crossed the room, and he looked at their faces for the first time in weeks to realize that they wore identical expressions of distrust. Distrust he had more than earned.
It was another blow, but he was so numb that he could hardly feel it. He stopped at the outer door and turned to face them.
“It ends today,” he said.
Then he opened the door and stepped through.
Chapter Six
Chay went into the bathroom he’d been using before he began shifting into his panther form to be with Tara, one of many unused locker room-style bathrooms left over from Black Mesa’s original incarnation as a mid-century army base. He left his clothes on a bench, the dirty ones carefully separated from the clean. He looked in the mirror for the first time in…days? weeks? He didn’t even know anymore.
The face that stared back at him was hardly recognizable. He’d been so focused on Tara’s decline that he’d failed to see the same signs in himself. His cheeks were hollow, gaunt, and the muscles that had stood out beneath his flesh were now half-wasted, with a sickly softness around his middle. He hadn’t touched his hair since Tara’s change, and the usually neat twists now stood out in an insane cloud of tangles around his head, while his chin bore a beard that he didn’t even realize that he’d grown.
He grabbed a pair of nail scissors from his toiletries kit and attacked his face with them until the stubble that remained was short enough for his safety razor to rake through it. He started to untwist the mass of matted hair, and then, with a short and bitter laugh, he attacked it with the scissors, too. Whatever rebellion the long locks represented belonged to another Chay in another life. This one didn’t, couldn’t care. Not anymore.
The locks began to pile up in the sink, and still Chay hacked at them without mercy until they all lay in a high mound. His head so light he was almost dizzy, he started to reach for the razor—