Claws and Effect

by Amanda Arista

  She had a point. To a bunch of tough bikers, a few dogs would just be sport on a Saturday night. Was that what that poor girl was? Was she just sport to them?

  I looked down and my hand had clenched into a fist. Deep red lines dug into my palm from my short nails. “You can come help me if you want?”

  “Are they going to be there?”

  “Yes. And I’m calling in Myers as well.”

  “I think I’ll just lock myself in tonight.”

  I sighed. “How about you jump over and do a little makeover first?”

  “Be there in two seconds.”

  MYERS’S JAW DROPPED as he slid into my Miata.

  I couldn’t help but be flattered. “Wanted to fit in, just in case.”

  “Um,” he licked his lips. “Yeah.”

  I threw the car into gear and headed toward Arlington. I caught the glisten of my red lips in the rearview. Jessa had done what Jessa does best and turned me into something that should have been on the cover of Biker’s Weekly.

  It was a little over the top. I had the black top, which she suggested I wear with a red bra. Me even owning a red bra was her doing. The jeans were freshly washed and hugged my hips a little too tight, but I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to resort to roundhouse kicks this evening. If I did, then the Stewart Weitzman’s would need to come off. If anything was going to make me more powerful tonight, it was going to be the red patent peep-toed pumps.

  But yeah, I looked hot. Poor Myers didn’t have a chance.

  Myers looked down at his knees, bent up because of the small passenger seat and ran his hands down his long blue-jeaned thighs. “Can you go over the plan one more time?”

  “It’s a simple request. We need to show them that Dallas is not to be trampled on. So you and I are going to go in there, all grrrr, and show them that Dallas is defended.”

  “Defended? Are you seriously quoting Doctor Who at a time like this?”

  I laughed. “You’re quick.”

  “Thank you.”

  TUCKER AND THE boys met us outside.

  “So we all know what the plan is?” I asked

  The men all nodded. Tucker and Tyler looked like twins in their black T-shirts, but Shadow was wearing plaid. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that Shadow always wore plaid. I’d been around him long enough to notice that he had a penchant for plaid. Nash, however, was wearing a gleaming white shirt and by the smell of it, it was also freshly liberated from its package.

  Tucker put on a game face like I had never seen before. “From the intel, these guys look tougher than they are. Their records indicate minor skirmished. They go where the resources are.”

  “And the police? What if it does come to shifting?” I asked.

  “It will be fine.”

  “I’m taking your word on that.”

  I turned to Myers. His doe eyes were particularly wide and his lips were still parted. I pulled him away from the rest of the guys and lowered my voice. “You don’t have to do this. Frankly, this is my fault, and I probably shouldn’t be bringing you into this anyway.”

  “No,” he said as he licked his lips and looked down at my hand still on his arm. “Maybe this is just the kick in the pants that my panther needs to get its act together.”

  “Your act together,” I smiled reminded him of his pronouns.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I grimaced playfully at the term.

  As I turned back to the mutts, I could feel them through the seven layer shields that I had put up. They were open and ready and there was only a hint of wet something. These were not the men that had attacked me four months ago. These were not the men who were blindly lead anymore. Those incarnations of themselves were gone as I looked down the row of solemn faces.

  The growl of a stomach echoed in the silence between us, and I smiled.

  “You guys stay out back and we can go have dinner when this is all over.”

  “So in, like, fifteen minutes?” Tyler asked.

  A joke. Just what I needed. Maybe these guys were getting to know me as well. “Yeah.”

  TO GET MYERS through the door, I wound my fingers through his and pulled him closely behind me.

  The doorman looked me over and then asked for Myers’s I.D.

  Myers’s hand shook as he handed the man, who was the size of the door itself, his driver’s license.

  The man cast his eyes down to me. “Like them young?”

  “Better to train them.” I mustered the most seductive smile and pulled Myers around the doorman and into the bar.

  It was every seedy detail that I had written into a set design. It was the hazy of smoke so thick that I could barely see anything. It was the dim lightening that hid ever manor of sins committed in the dark corners. It was every scrap of leather and studs that the DFW Metroplex had to offer with every speaker in a five mile radius blaring classic rock music.

  “Wow, I feel out of place,” Myers whispered in my ear.

  “Yeah, not exactly my crowd.”

  We moved around the periphery of the club, but I couldn’t get a fix on the guys that we were looking for. There were a hundred men here and so many fragrances of questionable origin that I couldn’t be sure of what was natural or supernatural.

  I slinked over to the corner of the bar and found a stool with an empty one beside it. Myers went to sit down, but I pulled him back toward me. I hadn’t released his hand yet.

  “They could be anyone of these guys,” he said to me.

  “I know.”

  I thought to myself, screw it. And just dropped my borders. That would catch anyone’s attention.

  Myers’s fingers tightened, and I could feel his panther brush against mine, his spicy scent just over my shoulder. My eyes fluttered closed as I took in a deep breath.

  And it was tainted in the feral scent of wild pigs.

  “Guess they found us,” Myers whispered as he stood just over my shoulder, his hand releasing mine but finding a perch on my waist.

  My first thought of the man that straddled the bar stool next to me was that he had embraced his animal form a little too often. His lower jaw jutted out like a warthogs should and his small stone grey eyes were sunk deep back into his large skull. His shoulders were twice as wide as his waist and the caricature of a Warthog running was emblazed on his leather vest. I seriously couldn’t write this guy any more stereotypical if I put a heart tattoo on his bicep that read “Mom.”

  His smell wafted toward me, and I knew that we had our man. His bristly power pushed against mine as he flicked a finger to the bar tender to order a round for us.

  “What’s a stunner like you doing in a dive like this?” His voice was low, like skirting a boot heel on gravel.

  “Just reasserting myself.”

  “Can’t reassert what you haven’t already asserted.”

  I dropped my chin and smiled at him. “I do like word play, Mr. . . .”

  “You can call me Sully.”

  The bar tender slammed two bottles of beer on the lacquered bar and walked away. Had these guys really nested that much that the bar tender already knew them? That was skill.

  “Are you the little cat that everyone keeps yapping about?”

  “Define little,” I asked as I took the beer.

  “Rumor has it that you are shirking your duties as Prima.”

  “I’m not a Prima.”

  Sully smiled, showing his yellowed jagged teeth before he gulped down half the cold beer.

  “And I rarely shirk.”

  The man laughed. “You are a funny one, Miss Jordan.”

  My skin prickled when he said my name. He shouldn’t know my name. There is no reason that a writer from uptown would ever be on these guy’s radar unless someone already here was feeding him information. One of the Barons? A certain wind elemental that needed even more back up?

  “What can I do for you and you’re cub tonight?”

  I felt Myers puff his chest, now pressing against me.

/>   “We know about the girl,” I said simply.

  I was very proud of my ability to actually follow the plan. Remember, a simple statement of request.

  “Would it satiate your bleeding heart if I said it was an accident?”

  “No.”

  Sully turned his grey eyes to me again and took a long swig without breaking eye contact. He set the bottle down almost daintily on the bar. “What do you think you’re gonna do about it?”

  “I want you out of my city.”

  Sully laughed a laugh so full of humor that I thought I felt his animal jump with glee.

  “I’m not joking, Sully. This is not the place you want to be. We have sweltering summers, terrible rush hour traffic.” I leaned in forward and dropped my voice. “And we have a horrible predator problem.”

  Sully just looked down my shirt. “I think I like it here.”

  I sat up quickly and adjusted my shirt.

  He sniffed and looked around the bar. “The business is good. The weather is nice. And so far, I haven’t seen anything that I can’t handle.”

  Now I was just getting mad. My energy flowed out and around us and picked up on at least four more shifters in the crowd around us.

  Four I could deal with. Maybe even five.

  The seven or eight that came into the mix two seconds later, not so much.

  Sully turned quickly and grabbed my knees. He pulled me forward and almost off the stool. We were nose to nose, my long legs around his knees, spread for him.

  When he smiled, my stomach turned over on itself.

  “Listen little girl, you don’t have the balls to issue threats. And I will do what I want and hurt who I want and you won’t be able to stop me.”

  I looked right into his eyes and felt the weight of the stare, let the panther slip into my eyes. “Not by myself.”

  “You think this little cub behind you will be any help?”

  “No, but my pack outside might.” I didn’t know what I was saying. My pack. Like I had the right to speak for them. Like I had the right to get them into fights.

  Myers squeezed his hand around my waist, his supportive heat still there.

  Sully laughed again and made eye contact with someone or something just over my shoulder.

  “Then outside it is.”

  Chapter Ten

  AS I WALKED out the front door and around the back to where I knew the boys would be, I just kept shaking my head. I should have listened to Chaz. Negotiation was not my strong suite and I was thinking that maybe I should just stop talking to people

  “We can do this,” Myers whispered.

  “Since when are you the confident one.”

  “Since you need me to be.”

  We rounded the corner and the boys jumped up from their spots on the abandoned beer crates and lime boxes.

  “So everything went well then?” Tyler said.

  “Frigin Peachy,” I snapped.

  “So they are coming?” Tucker asked.

  “And not to play Red Rover.”

  I slipped off my red pumps and carefully placed them on top of a lime crate. The cement was freezing but bare feet gave me an extra grip. For what, I wasn’t sure of yet.

  THEY CAME OUT in a stampede. Yes. My Lion King references were not for naught. The eight men ran around the corner and immediately shifted into their furrier forms. They ran as a herd, all bacon breath and tusks.

  The six of us scattered like birds to the wind. I was able to leap straight up and out of the way of the first couple and aimed for the back of one of them as I landed. Diet or no, a full grown panther on your back is going to slow you down.

  The hog squealed out into the night as I rammed his head into the pavement. His tusks caught and his forward momentum threw us both head over heels. I rolled and landed on my feet ready for him to start at me again.

  He didn’t.

  One down a little too easy.

  I was behind the herd now. My boys had done what any sane person fleeing from Warthogs would have done. Climbed as high as they could. The Warthogs were only three feet high with little back legs. They couldn’t jump to get a sandwich off the counter.

  Myers leaped up and over the pack and ended up in next to me.

  “What do we do?”

  Big picture Vi. I’d done my research like any good panther and watched a lot of videos on line of lions and Warthogs on the Internet. In the savanna, running and trees seemed to be the only resources that the animals had. What resources did I have here in my very un-thought-out hands?

  “Dogs. Warthogs hate dogs.”

  Tucker and Tyler took the queue perfectly. They shifted and leaped from the tops of the cars barking like I’d never heard them before. Their echoes bounced off the cement walls and made it sound like thirty dogs in hot pursuit.

  The Warthogs backed off and into me and Myers. Now we got to play.

  I slipped down into my four-legged self and played ‘swat the Warthogs’ like I was going for first prize at the Texas State Fair. Between my strength and the fright that made them run panicked, they ran straight for me. I clawed at their snouts and launched them against the cars and walls surrounding us.

  The herd split. And like a well-oiled fighting squadron, each of us took after one.

  In case you’re trying to keep up, that’s six versus seven. Pretty good odds, right.

  Wrong. Three of the men shifted back to two legs, their leather and studs still perfectly in place. They went after Shadow and Nash.

  Three against two wasn’t fair. The Legacy hit me as anger sizzled around me and made every hair stand on end.

  “What’s that . . .” Myers started before two of their numbers launched themselves at his midsection.

  I went for blood. I knew not to attack the beasts from the front, so I went for their hind legs. I turned around quickly and ran after them, snapping and ripping into anything I could get my teeth around.

  Sully turned on me quickly and lowered his jaw almost to the ground.

  I was going too fast to stop and he flipped me like a pancake. He shoved his flat snout underneath my breastbone and reared up. I went flying backward, but still managed to land on my feet.

  If a Warthog could smile, he would have been grinning.

  My next plan required hands. If these guys were going to tag team us, I was going to UFC their asses into the wall.

  I shifted back and thank the heavens, I wasn’t naked. This shifting with clothes thing was pretty important, especially when it seems like you’re the only girl in the group most of the time.

  Sully came at me again, and I leaped over him, springing off the wall like a Parkour expert.

  I spun and landed behind him, facing his rear end. I reached out and grabbed his hind legs and ripped them out from under him. His jaw hit the ground hard, stunning him, the snap of his jaw echoing above the scramble of the other fights.

  Tearing my claws into the tendons behind his ankles, I spun him around in a circle to gather momentum and then launched him against a wall.

  As he went flying, screeching out into the night, I watched his perfect arch and thought that maybe I could make some extra money as a TV wrestler. La Pantera? Where was my folding chair?

  Then I felt it, an excitement in the air, preceding the tunnel of wind power that lifted me off the ground and slammed me back down, my hard head cracking against the cement. Friggin Carlisle.

  Colors swam before my eyes and pain seared across my brain. God bless concussions.

  With me on my back, three of their numbers took their chance and started the stampede. I scuttled back across the rough pavement, grinding rocks into my palms. The first one took a nip at my pant leg; another rammed its tusk up and under my knee, knocking me on my butt for a moment. And in that moment, Sully rammed his sharp—dare I say sharpened—tusk in me and ripped it down the length of my thigh.

  The scream of the panther was echoed by Nash’s own cry of pain. I blinked through the pain-filled spots in my vision to ma
ke out my companions being simply mutilated.

  Shadow was under the hooves of one of them, his furry frame tearing at the belly of a beast three times larger than him. Nash had been slammed against a car and the bright red blood from his abdomen shone against his white shirt.

  Tucker wriggled free from his hogs and ran for me. He was cut off by another column of air from Carlisle and tossed like a rag doll into a truck.

  Myers tackled Little Boy Blew to the ground. Check. The boy’s mettle was tested.

  I would not have this bloodshed. I would not have them bleed for me again. I needed to help. I had the power to make them stronger.

  For me, there was no choice. I would later come to find, that for them, there was. And they all chose me.

  With a deep breath, I pushed power out to them, pushing through the pain in my head and the searing in my leg. As my power connected with each of them, I felt their fur, their fear surround me. I pushed harder, through their power and into their centers. My will to make them stronger filled them. My will to make us stronger filled the night between us.

  For a brief moment, I felt a burning in my core like lava that lashed out to them. There was a pop and a sizzle in the air around us. I felt them grow stronger and faster, felt their muscles rippling and ready. But it was more than that, deeper than that; I felt them feel stronger under my influence, felt them know they could now win. There was more power in that thought than any power I could have given them.

  The Hogs backed off. The three pursuing me trampled backward.

  I jumped to my feet again, stronger, more determined that if they touched my boys, they would not breathe again. My leg would be fine; my head, a distant memory of a bruise.

  Sully shifted to his two-legged form, his jutted-out jaw bruised, and blood on his temple. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

  “But I know what I’m going to do.”

  I ran for him and it was one, two, three, and he was on the ground unconscious. Thank you, Sensei. I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead only to discover that both were covered in blood. As my power was now shared with four more, I was four times stronger with them with me.

  In the quick time that it had taken me to TKO my opponent, the rest of the boys had taken care of their own. Guess the same went for them too.