“Did you hear that?” the Cat adds, raising his nose. “From outside?”
I didn’t. Then I do. A thick, heavy foot (paw?), much bigger than a Coyote’s, crushes straw covering a fresh grave. I know exactly where it is. Mr. Cruz died two weeks ago of a heart attack. He was a cheerfully grizzled man in his nineties, worked as a greeter at Wal-Mart for thirty-five years after a career in long-haul trucking. His death was sad but not shocking, which isn’t to say that anybody local would tromp all over his resting place.
Well, maybe a couple of the defensive linemen, if they were drunk.
But they don’t smell like . . . what is that scent?
I hear something like a huffing snort, and the fine hairs on my arms contract. “Yoshi,” I whisper. “Something’s coming.”
“Something’s here.” He leans out the crypt door to take a look. “Oh, crap.”
Before I can ask what’s wrong, he’s yanked outside. As I dare to peek, the crowbar goes flying from Yoshi’s hand and he gasps, his body slamming into an upright marble grave marker. That’s when I register the hot, soggy breath on the back of my neck.
Biting my lower lip, I slowly turn my head and find myself confronted with a werebear. Female, I think. It sniffs me and roars in my face, spraying gooey spittle.
My inner girl is screaming at me to run. My inner Cat aches to climb.
But what about Yoshi? He’s lying in a heap in front of a statue of the archangel Michael. What if he’s seriously hurt? God, what if he’s dead? In my hesitation, the Bear wraps a thick paw around my forearm, dragging me fully into the night.
My body takes over, and I wince as fur ripples across my breasts and stomach and my saber teeth and front claws extend.
I take a vicious swipe in the direction of the Bear’s eyes, and it (he? she?) lets go, but if anything, I’m more vulnerable in mid-shift. My muscles are realigning, my bones cracking.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline, but I haven’t experienced a transformation this far out of control in years. I have to get the hell out of these jeans — now. I manage to leap up and backward onto the top of the Bloom family crypt, but, if anything, I’ve made it easier for the Bear to grab me.
“Hey, meathead,” Yoshi calls weakly, crawling to grab the crowbar. “Eat this.”
I’m shocked by the strength of his swing, but the Bear manages to duck in time. That’s when I realize we can’t let it go any more than we could Evan or shouldn’t’ve Darby.
It, she, roars at me again, and, clumsily, I fight to unzip with hands morphing to paws. I can’t imagine half the town didn’t hear that roar.
Staggering back from the Bear’s reach, I break the zipper and shove the denim past my butt as my tail uncurls from the base of my spine.
I feel the prickly sensation of more fur rising and rip off my shirt. The Bear goes down with a woof, and, with my rear paws, I step out of my Nikes. I want to help Yoshi, I do, but I don’t know how to use this body in combat. I’ve never been in a physical fight in my whole life.
“Hang on,” Aimee shouts, newly returned from Austin.
I bound to the edge of the crypt to watch her shoot a dart into the neck of the bucking Bear while a Lion — a gorgeous full-grown male werelion — struggles to keep his claws in the Bear’s enormous shoulders.
Is that Aimee’s boyfriend, Clyde? Could he really be half Possum? No one could tell that now. He’s bigger, heavier than Yoshi’s Cat form or mine. The mane is breathtaking. So are the muscles. Yoshi’s sleeker, sexier, but I can see why he’s jealous, and not just over the girl.
The Bear snaps at him, but it’s no use. Whatever Aimee hit her with is potent. She sways, shakes her snout, and careens over, landing with a thud.
Swooping in fast and low, Aimee herself is decked out for the hunt in night-vision goggles. Smart call; they help her even the playing field.
“Where did you get all that equipment?” Yoshi asks, limping over.
“Paxton owed us the favor,” she replies, tossing a pair of faded black jeans in the Lion’s direction. “Here, Clyde, put these on.”
Yoshi opens his mouth as if to protest when he catches a glimpse of me in animal form and his jaw drops. I don’t know what he’s staring at. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Most of all, I don’t know what to do.
If I retract my shift, I’ll be naked in the company of boys, and if I don’t, I’ll be exposed in Cat form in Pine Ridge city limits — the ultimate no-no.
Clyde doesn’t hesitate to begin his transformation to human form, but he’s at least got something to put on. He’s probably used to changing shape in front of other werepeople.
The scent rising from him is intoxicating — like mud and blood, stirred with desire. I don’t blame Aimee for finding him irresistible.
I still find it odd that Clyde is a white guy who can turn into a Lion. It seems like he should be of African or Asian heritage, but now that I think about it, he’s a distant cousin to Ice Age lions and, from what I remember from the Discovery Channel, lions (and, for that matter, mammoths and woolly rhinos) did roam Europe at that time.
I pace on the roof of the crypt until Aimee notices me. “Guys,” she says, gesturing at the prone Bear, who’s likewise looking more human by the moment. “You get the new arrival secured and see if we can reason with her. I’m going to run back to Yoshi’s car and grab some sweats for Kayla.” She tosses me a grin over her shoulder. “Standard operating procedure. The pants will be too short for you, but they’re better than nothing.”
Thank the Maker. I’ll thank Aimee when I’m able to talk again.
“THAT BEAR KNOCK ANY SENSE INTO YOU?” Clyde asks me, zipping his jeans up. He’ll strut shirtless as long as he can get away with it without looking like he’s making a point of leaving his shirt off.
I rub the already-forming bump where my hard head connected with the harder death stone. There’s not much blood. “I’ll live,” I reply. “Thank you for your concern.” Jerk.
Clyde didn’t even know he was half Lion until this past winter. During his first shift to Simba form, Clyde filled out, bulked up, grew a couple of inches, and became a lot cockier. It’s not just that his skin cleared up and his eyes went from dark and beady to (as Aimee puts it) “burnished gold.” He knows himself better. That unsettled part of him, always longing to be something more, now is something more. Personally, I don’t like it.
Anyway, Kayla took off after Aimee to my car to put something on. She’s shy about her glorious, sleek Cat self and about her naked human form, which is too bad on both counts. I haven’t yet had the privilege of checking out the latter, but it’s safe to say I’d be a fan.
Her modesty is unusual for a wereperson, but I guess that comes from having not grown up around other Cats. At least Aimee came prepared with a few extra changes of clothes.
It’s just as well. I could tell being here at the cemetery was freaking Kayla out, and that was before we began robbing her ex-boyfriend’s casket.
Nakedness on top of it is probably overkill.
“Yo, Yoshi.” Clyde tosses me some chains. “Heads up.”
We made a lot of noise. Or at least the Bear did. The sheriff lives way over on Kayla’s street, so he should’ve been out of earshot . . . which is helpful only so long as nobody calls to wake him up or picks up a rifle to investigate, and, come to think of it, I’m still responsible for getting the necklace off Ben’s dead neck. We should get a move on.
I ask Clyde, “What are you doing here?”
“There was no Lion figure on the carousel,” the Wild Card counters, “so I’m not a liability. I’m not staying in Austin while Aimee takes a getaway weekend with you.”
My grin is full of sharp teeth. “Worried?”
He may be from a long line of jungle kings, but I’m the one who rules when it comes to the ladies.
Meanwhile, at our feet, the Bear’s fur melts off her long, curvy body, and her paws deflate into tapered hands. “I’m worried about her,” Clyde counter
s, and we make fast work of looping the chains around her arms and long legs, waiting to click the locks into place once she’s fully human shaped.
She’s a whole lot of beast woman, and we’re straight teenage guys, but neither of us stare — it’s not done among werepeople. There’s sexy naked and there’s shifter naked. I’m not saying the lines never cross (exhibit my earlier thoughts on Kayla), but now is not one of those moments.
“We packed the tranquilizer gun loaded,” Clyde explains, “but not for Bear or Elk. For your problem Coyote. We didn’t want to risk killing a smaller animal-form shifter with too big of a dose.”
Makes sense. “On the upside,” I say, as the Bear tries, feebly, to push to her knees. “There’s nothing scarier than her that could show up.”
Trusting that Aimee filled Clyde in on why Kayla and I were at the cemetery, I slip back into the Bloom family crypt.
“You think so?” the Wild Card replies. “There’s a snake figure.”
I’d already gotten the casket open when the Bear showed up. Even with the Vicks, I will never forget this smell. I reach inside, briefly fumbling at the — God — gooey neck until my fingertips connect with a leather cord. I extend a claw to cut it, grimacing as I accidentally flick decaying flesh along with it, and slip the cat’s-eye necklace free.
Partly to distract myself, I argue, “There’s no such thing as cold-blooded shifters. Weresnakes are a myth cooked up by religious hate groups to —” Wait a minute. Did Granny Z say that the figures were chosen to reflect shifters who were with the carnival at the time? No, that’s impossible. “There it is.” Fisting my hand around the gemstone, I adjust the lid and book out of there as fast as possible.
I’m coughing as I shove the creaky door shut behind me.
“You reek,” Clyde says like I don’t know that. A human wouldn’t catch the lingering scent, but to us, the odor is almost overwhelming. Then again, so is the scent of the Vicks. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve always heard, too,” he adds, talking about Snakes again. “But if they did exist . . . I’m not fond of anything that lives entirely in secret by choice.”
Right, because even those shifters unknown to humans — like wereparaceratheriums — are still part of the pan-wereperson community.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say. We each take the woozy Bear by an arm and drag her toward the dirt-and-gravel road that wraps around the cemetery.
I don’t even want to think about how we’d explain to the sheriff how we came to be transporting a hot naked teenage girl in chains.
She’s a looker — in a warrior-princess kind of way. Tall, of course — all Bears are — with lush, curly sienna-colored hair that cascades down her broad back.
Just then, Clyde’s comment about “entirely in secret by choice” fully clicks.
I say, “Aimee told you about Junior.”
He’s thinking about our time on Daemon Island. Poor baby. The way I see it, the Wild Card got off easy. While Aimee was forced to play the yetis’ servant girl and I was being shot at and worse, he was kicked back in a hammock, flirting with a Lioness in the next cage.
I suppose it was humiliating.
Fine, it was humiliating. No shifter should be caged. But I’m not in the mood for his passive-aggressive BS. “You weren’t here. You’ve never even met Junior. It was our call.”
I’m not about to admit to him that I voiced doubts myself. “You didn’t have to tell the arctic asshat what was going on,” Clyde replies.
The Bear coughs, stumbling, and we pause for a moment to raise her upright.
The Wild Card adds, “Aimee is a soft touch, but why would you sign off on revealing classified information to one of those furry SOBs when —”
“We didn’t purposefully reveal anything,” I say, trying to block the dull thud of pain in my head and the stink out of my nose. “Stuff was going on, and he was there for some of it. Besides, this isn’t the military, and if it was, you sure as hell wouldn’t outrank me. There’s no compelling reason you need to have anything to do with this. As far as I’m concerned, you could’ve stayed home in Austin. You’re just jealous because Aimee and me are so tight.”
“You need me,” Clyde insists. “You’re acting like it’s no big deal, but you’ve been bewitched — or something like that — which means you’ve been compromised. Face it, Yoshi, you could go off the rails at any moment. You’ve got zero distance, zero perspective. I’ve clocked tons more field experience with spooky magical crap, and I’ve got a werewolf mystic-studies expert on my speed dial.”
Know-it-all. “We don’t need your field experience or mystic werewolf,” I reply as we reach the gravel road, where my car is parked. Kayla has already resumed human form and pulled on a sweat suit, unfortunately. I hate baggy clothes on women. I say, “The girls and I already have a plan to reverse the spell and —”
“The Wolf isn’t mystic,” Clyde says. “His field of expertise is. I don’t think y’all really know what you’re dealing with. I —”
The Bear slams her head into Clyde’s and swings her chained muscular arms — hard and fast — in my direction. I jump back in time, but the Wild Card goes down. I yell, “Aimee!”
She may have learned her shooting skills on the paintball range, but that doesn’t make her any less effective with the tranquilizer gun. It’s already pointed at the Bear’s back.
“Tanya,” Kayla calls. “Tanya Wynne-Jones of Pasadena, Texas.”
The girls found the Bear’s stash of clothes and ID. They’re piled on top of my car.
“Tanya, nobody’s trying to hurt you,” Aimee adds. “I know you must be confused, scared even. That’s only natural, but we can —”
“You!” Tanya points, as best she can, at Kayla. “You did this to me. You’re the reason I feel this way. How dare you pretend to be my friend?”
If anyone had the faintest doubt as to whether the carousel brought Tanya, it’s gone now. She must’ve caught Kayla’s scent at the park picnic area and tracked the Cat girl here.
“How do you know her?” Clyde presses Tanya, pushing up from the muddy ground. “What exactly did that girl do to piss you off so much?”
“She . . . I . . .” Tanya blinks, hangs her head, and mumbles, “I have no idea.”
The silence yawns.
“The necklace?” Kayla asks.
“Got it,” I reply with a nod. I almost offer it to her for safekeeping, but the gesture seems too emotionally loaded after her reaction to Ben’s crypt.
The Wild Card redirects his full attention at Kayla. “So you’re the woman of the hour, the epicenter of this nifty pinwheel of magical fun.” He grins, taking her in. “Aimee says you have potential. I’d like to know for sure. Give us the names of your favorite Catwoman actresses in descending order and showing the math — go.”
Oh, for God’s sake. We do not have the time for this.
Kayla steps right up to him and cocks her head. “Number one: Eartha Kitt, because she slinks across the screen and nobody purrs better. Runner-up: Julie Newmar, for posture, typically the fan favorite, but she pales — literally — against Miss Eartha. In descending order thereafter, relatively new entry Anne Hathaway, followed by Michelle Pfeiffer, Lee Meriwether, anyone nobody has ever heard of, and, though it pains me to say it, the otherwise magnificent Halle Berry. It was a mistake to totally re-conceptualize the character that way. I also feel compelled to add that when it comes to voice actresses —”
“Stop!” Clyde and Aimee exclaim at the same time.
I clear my throat. “They have a pact to always discuss animated series separately.” I may not be able to follow their conversations down every odd rabbit hole of geekdom, but I’ve managed to pick up on most of their rules of conduct.
It gets on my nerves sometimes. Aimee is with him and not me because of crap like this. Not that Catwoman is crap. Catwoman is awesome. So is Halle Berry.
Clyde circles Kayla, nodding as if he’s satisfied. “You’ve got huge potential, kid.”
Kayla tucks in a smile, which, given his sky-high level of obnoxiousness, reminds me how lonely it’s been for her, living shifter solo in an all-human small town.
While Kayla and Clyde use his phone to map the route to Granny Z’s, Aimee gets Tanya into her pants and ties the sleeves of the Bear’s shirt around her neck, creating a makeshift bib to cover her hearty breasts. Then Aimee and Kayla depart for the Morgan place (the longer Kayla’s away from the house, the more likely that her parents will discover she snuck out), and the Wild Card rides with me to drop off Tanya with Evan and Junior at the cabin.
The Bear calms down more once she’s some distance from Kayla, much like the Otter did. The farther we get, the saner she seems. And the more embarrassed by her earlier behavior.
“I don’t know what got into me,” Tanya says for the third time.
“Enough,” Clyde declares. “You’re not yourself. At least not entirely.”
We take a detour to a twenty-four-hour grocery-pharmacy off the highway for provisions. All werepeople have big appetites, but among land carnivores, Bears set the gold standard. Our haul includes blueberries and strawberries, salmon (based on knowledge gleaned from nature documentaries), honey (based on knowledge gleaned from Winnie-the-Pooh), a whiteboard set (that Clyde insists we need), and more industrial chains (just in case).
The Wild Card snaps his fingers. “It’s crayfish season.”
Our five-pound order should keep Evan busy for a while.
The longer we’re gone, the more my mind keeps cycling to Kayla. We still make it to the cabin within an hour, explaining to Tanya what’s going on and what we intend to do about it. “That’s why we need you to stay in Pine Ridge,” I conclude, turning off the engine.
Clyde opens the passenger door. “Rustic,” he says of the woodsy landscape and Granny Z’s water-surrounded abode.
It bugs me more than it should that that’s the exact same word Aimee used to describe the place. “If we unchain you,” I say to Tanya, “are you —?”
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