Scratch

by Skye MacKinnon

  "Oh, you have seen me, my sweetie, but you won't remember. You were far too young for that. "

  The tension inside of me is increasing, but I lazily stretch my arms and yawn. "If I wanted a fairy tale, I wouldn't have come all this way. Tell me who you are and what you're doing here."

  "Now, wouldn't that be nice of me. It would save you so much trouble. But no, I don't think so. You can't make me talk."

  Instantly, I'm on my feet with my knife touching the bottom of her chin. The lower one; she's got a big double chin. While most of her is bulk rather than fat, her face is puffy and lined with tiny red veins, like that of an alcoholic.

  "Rest assured, I always manage to make people talk," I whisper into her ear. "In the end, you will be telling me everything I want to know. It's your choice how much it's going to hurt."

  "I don't think you're going to hurt me," she says, her smile still painted on her face. "Not when you know who I am to you."

  I sigh dramatically. "I've been asking you who you are. Just tell me."

  "Put that knife away and I might."

  I slowly move the blade away from her chin, but not before making a small cut. She flinches, but immediately finds her composure again, looking at me as if nothing happened.

  I swirl the knife in my hand a couple of times, making it very obvious that I wouldn't mind cutting her again. And again.

  When she still doesn't start talking, I sit back on my chair again and wait. I'm going to give her that one chance, simply to make it easier for both of us.

  "You were supposed to grow up here," she says, her smile lessening a little. "You were born in this very building and it was always the plan to keep you here, train you, study you, turn you into who we wanted you to be. Instead, your mother decided to be a rebel."

  "My mother? She brought me here, I'd hardly call that being a rebel."

  The woman laughs. "That was her returning you when she noticed that she wasn't going to survive for much longer on her own. She'd been on the run with you for four years. That destroyed most of our plans for you, obviously, since we missed out on some of the most important years of your development. The experiment turned into a failure before it had properly begun."

  My mind is swirling. Experiment? My mother a rebel? What the fuck is this woman talking about. Nothing of it makes sense, and I'm becoming acutely aware that I'm wasting time. We're here for the kittens and to find out about my clone, not about me. Lennox will be waiting somewhere upstairs, ready to set the building aflame. If we don't give the signal, he might come down to investigate. I should have brought those walkie-talkies. Next time.

  "My bosses thought it would be enough to watch you grow, see how you developed even though we'd missed your childhood years. They didn't give me the funding I needed, not until they realised that you were too rebellious. You weren't of any use for our needs any longer, so we needed a replacement."

  "Kat," I mutter. "The clone."

  The woman laughs. "Kat? You gave her your name?"

  "She gave herself that name," I snap. "Since you obviously didn't bother to give her one."

  "Interesting," she mutters, looking around as if she wants to take notes. "How did you manage to speak to her? The collar should prevent that, unless it malfunctioned?"

  I glare at her. She's driving me crazy. If my rational mind wasn't screaming at me, I'd have slit her throat by now.

  "It didn't malfunction. We took it off."

  For the first time, there's genuine surprise on her face. "And she's still alive?"

  My heart drops. "What does that mean?"

  "Previous clones rarely survived for long without their collars-"

  "Previous clones?" I interrupt her harshly. "How many others were there?"

  "With you, seven."

  "Seven?!"

  Then the penny drops.

  She watches me with a smile as I realise what she just said. She's enjoying this. That's why she's telling me. This isn't about me getting answers, it's about her torturing me.

  "Seven," I whisper. It can't be. I have a mother. I remember her, even though they are only fragmented memories.

  “Was my mother-?”

  “Was she the original?” The woman grimaces. “Yes, she was. One of our best non-collared shifters. I thought she was loyal, but seeing you, her clone, must have messed up her head. She took you and ran off, taking one of my lab assistants with her. The fool. He might still be alive if he’d stayed. We had to make an example of him.”

  My father. Not my father. Now I know why people sometimes faint when they get bad news. I feel light-headed, dreamy, not quite in reality. It’s too much to take in.

  “Why?” I snarl, pushing against my weakness, but the woman never gets the chance to reply.

  A loud meow makes me jump up. Ryker!

  I leave the woman cackling to herself and run into the other room. I never really looked at it earlier, I was too focused on what Grandma Doctor had to say. Now, I regret it. The room isn't as small as I thought, in fact, it's so long that it might be bigger than the lab. Shelves line the walls here at the front, stacked with glasses, vials and boxes. There are things swimming in liquid that I prefer to ignore. I'm not queasy, but this is too close to home just now. My thoughts are all over place, and let's not talk about my emotions. I'm a mess.

  I race through the room until the shelves turn into stacks of cages. Dozens of small cages, each of them smelling of cat piss. Not all of them are full, and the doors of the lower two rows are open. Ryker is surrounded by six kittens, all of them trying to cuddle him to death. Their squeaky meows tear at my heartstrings and let me forget about my own troubles for a moment.

  Ryker isn't looking at the kittens though. His eyes are on a cage at the very top. Pumpkin. The little cat is pressed against the bars of his confinement, crying for his father.

  Ryker snarls at me to hurry, to reach up and get the cage since he can't reach it.

  "You don't want to do that!"

  The woman's voice makes me turn, even though I know that she's still tied to the chair and can't see what I'm doing right now. What an evil bitch.

  "I will do whatever I want!" I shout back. While the kittens seem to be unhurt, my clone has been mistreated in this place. I don't know what happened to the other clones, where they are, if they're still alive, but I doubt they had very happy lives either. I'm going to take her apart for that, limb by limb. But first, I need to give Pumpkin back to Ryker.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see something flying towards me, but before I can react, it slams into me from behind, hitting the back of my neck. I sway, trying to find something to hold onto, but then cold metal touches my throat and everything turns black.

  Burning. Something's burning. Smoke fills my lungs and I cough, trying to get it out, trying to breathe fresh air. I open my eyes, blinking several times as the smoke makes me tear up. Something feels different. Bad.

  My mind is sluggish. What happened? Something about cats. Lots of cats.

  I groan and try to sit up. My body won't move. It's heavy, so heavy, like it's not my body at all. There's no pain, yet it reminds me of my last shift, the one where I almost killed myself through blood loss. This isn't the same, but...

  Meow.

  Soft fur rubs against my arm. I turn my head, every inch a battle. Ryker is staring at me, his eyes filled with fear and worry. Slowly, my memories return. Pumpkin. The kittens. The woman.

  "Pumpkin?" I whisper.

  His anguished meow tells me all I need to know. He's not managed to free his son. Why is there fire? Lennox was supposed to wait until he got the signal. The smoke hurts my lungs and eyes, but I can't even lift my hands to rub away my tears. What happened to me?

  Ryker meows again, but I can't understand him. Not even his intention. No mental images. Nothing. All I can hear is a cat meowing. Yes, he sounds scared, but that's no surprise.

  "What's going on?" I ask hoarsely. "What knocked me out?"

  He takes a step closer
and nudges my chest. No, not my chest, my throat.

  Icy fear floods me. With every ounce of strength I have, I manage to move one hand to my neck.

  Tears spring to my eyes and this time, they have nothing to do with the smoke.

  They put a collar on me.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ryker places his head on my chest, seemingly trying to comfort me. But there's nothing he can do to make me feel better. It's not the fact that I'm going to die that makes me want to scream. It's that I'm going to die a slave.

  I thought I'd found my freedom. Created a new life for me. Now all that is gone, washed away like a dream, leaving nothing behind but the harsh reality. I'm a clone, I was always meant to be a slave. Those few months without a collar were just an illusion. It was foolish to think that I could escape the Pack.

  Now I'm about to die. I didn't imagine it like this. I was always hoping for a warrior's death, killed by another assassin's blades. Going down in battle, adrenaline pumping in my veins, the thrill of the fight the last thing to feel.

  Meow.

  Oh fuck. Pumpkin.

  "I'm sorry," I rasp. "I can't get up."

  Ryker nudges me, presses his head against my ribs, but I think he knows that it's of no use.

  The other kittens have gone; Ryker must have got them to safety. Hopefully, Gryphon and Lennox are safe too, away from the burning building.

  "You have to do it yourself, Ryker. I can't help you, I'm so sorry."

  I may be signing Pumpkin's death warrant, but there's nothing I can do. The collar has got me in its cold grip, sapping my strength, influencing my body and mind. I'm surprised I have any free will left at all. Maybe it takes a while to properly take effect. Not that it does me any good. I'll have to watch Pumpkin die before being killed by the flames myself. Or the collar, if it's faster than the fire.

  Ryker gets up and tries to climb the stack of cages once again, but there's nowhere for him to put his paws. They reach all the way to the ceiling, so he couldn't even jump to the very top either. The howl breaking from his chest breaks my heart. It's the despair of a parent unable to save their child.

  “Shift!” I shout at him, my voice getting weaker with every word. “Think of how you need to be tall, how you need to be human to save your son! You can do it, Ryker!”

  The collar is trying to subdue me, turn me unconscious, but I’m fighting it with everything I’ve got, even though the pain is getting worse and worse. It’s going to kill me, I know that. I learned that when the Pack captured me shortly after Mystery Man had set me free. You can’t put a collar on an adult shifter, even if they’ve worn one in the past. I don’t know how long I have, but I doubt it’s very long. Even if my body will stay alive for a few hours, my mind won’t. Darkness is flickering at the edges of my vision.

  Ryker is shaking, stretching, trying to reach his son, but he’s not shifting. The desperation in his movement is like ice running through my heart, making me freeze from the inside. I want to help him, but I’m useless. There’s nothing I can do but watch.

  More and more smoke is gathering around us and the crackling of flames is getting louder. Soon, we’ll be trapped in a sea of flames. Maybe I should ask Ryker to bite through my jugular before he leaves. Burning alive must be one of the worst deaths imaginable. Unless the collar kills me first.

  Ryker howls in frustration.

  “Think of your human side!” My voice is regressing to a hoarse whisper. It could be the smoke or the collar; either or, I’m screwed. We all are. I just hope the others get out alive.

  "Think of what makes you human. What are the emotions that set you apart from the cats? What has always made you feel different?"

  He turns and looks at me. Really, really looks at me. I wouldn't be surprised if he can see every single secret I hide at the bottom of my soul.

  Then his face begins to twitch. His whiskers shiver, then retreat into his cheeks. His bones lengthen, his fur disappears, making way for smooth, dark skin. He starts to scream when his tail retracts. I avert my eyes, wanting to give him some privacy for some obscure reason. This might be the last time I ever see him. I should watch, share this moment, treasure it in the minutes I have left. But no, I listen to his screams with my eyes closed, hoping that it'll be over soon.

  "Chhhrmm."

  I blink open my eyes and look at the man in front of me. He's so different from what I imagined Ryker would look like. In my mind, he had blond dreadlocks, suntanned skin and blue eyes. In reality, his skin is the colour of my panther's fur, his hair is a dark grey just like the patch of fur on his chest when he was a cat, and his eyes... they're still the same. Bright yellow. He'll never pass as a human with those, but I don't care. They're stunning. He is stunning. Gorgeous. Impressive.

  Since he's naked, I get the full view of toned muscle and lithe strength. Alright, I'm going to commit that sight to memory. He was larger than an average cat before he shifted, and he's larger than an average human, too. His shoulders are broad, his arms strong. Let's not talk about his abs. They might make me faint even before the collar does.

  He looks at me for a second, then turns and reaches up to the cage containing Pumpkin. He doesn't even have to stretch this time.

  I smile as he cradles the tiny kitten in his arms, looking at it with pure love. I'm so glad they're going to get out alive.

  “Chrrrmmmmrrr.”

  He seems to be trying to speak, but this is the first time he’s human, he must be totally out of his depth. I hope it’s just a temporary thing. Even with this strangled, hoarse sound, I can already tell that his voice has a beautiful depth.

  A rumbling sounds in the distance and the floor starts to shake.

  "Run," I whisper. "Hurry."

  I want to say more, so much more, but suddenly, there's a rope around my vocal cords, pulling hard. I can no longer speak. I try to, but not a single word passes my lips. The collar is winning. It's too strong.

  All I can do is give Ryker one last smile.

  Time to say goodbye.

  Pumpkin meows and drums his paws against his father's chest. I wonder if they can understand each other. And does Pumpkin even know that Ryker is a shifter? So many questions that I'll never get the answer to. Dying sucks.

  My vision dims. It's starting. Death. I've never much wondered about the afterlife, but if there is one, I don't think I'll end up in the place where the good people are. And if I end up with bad people... I'll probably come across some that I killed. Will I be able to kill them again? You know, just because?

  My hearing is next to go. I still smell the smoke that's engulfing us, but I no longer hear the crackling of the flames, the groaning of the building. It's very quiet suddenly. I don't think I've ever experienced such silence. It's relaxing. I never realised how loud even my own breathing was. Now that all sounds are gone, I no longer feel that there's any point to fighting. I can no longer hear Pumpkin's meow. I can no longer see Ryker.

  I feel his arms around me just before I can no longer feel my body. Is he carrying me? I wouldn't know. The smoke hides his scent. I hope he's not taking me with them. I would slow them down and there's no point to it, really. I'm mostly dead already. They'd never get me back home, where the collar key is, on time.

  What I really hope is that he's going to kill the woman. Or let her burn to death, that's probably better. She deserves the pain of her flesh peeling off her body. I'm no longer going to feel it. My body is numb, just a piece of flesh that once housed me.

  Is this the time when images should flash before my eyes, showing me memories from my life? If so, it's not happening. Maybe my life wasn't nice enough for that. I don't really want to see any snapshots from the time I was living with the Pack. Oblivion can have them. The only good times I had were those spent with Lennox.

  My wolf. When he left, he took a part of me with him. I should have been overjoyed when he returned. I should have accepted the feelings growing between us. Instead, I pushed him away. Scared of commitment. S
cared of losing my independence, of losing the life I'd built.

  But what life was I even protecting? In the end, I was still doing the same that I did when I still worked for the Pack. Killing, thieving, making money. The only difference was that I did it for myself. How long would it have stayed satisfying though? I was so short-sighted. I put work first, ignored my heart. I guess I never learned how to act differently.

  Lennox. I hope he survives, and I hope his wolf will get over the loss of his mate. If I were given a second chance, I'd change things. I'd give it a go. Be with him, at least for a while. See if I'm able to be in a relationship. And if it doesn't work, I'd still have two other men who've somehow wriggled their way into my dying thoughts.

  Gryphon, a siren with a conscience. I've been attracted to him ever since he first appeared in my bedroom. My hormones get in a knot every time I see him. I've been ignoring it, but right now, it's the time to reveal my cards. Lay it bare. Accept what I feel. If not now, when?

  And then there's Ryker, who's only been a man for mere minutes, yet the connection I've got with him transcends his humanity. I found him interesting and charismatic even when I thought he was just a cat, but ever since I found out that he's a shifter, I've seen him with different eyes. Seen the potential in him. We're so similar. So well suited. And now that I've seen his human body, well, it kind of underlines the point. He's made for me. Or me for him, since I'm the clone.

  I'd laugh if I still had control over my body. I think my sense of smell has gone now too. No more smoke.

  Am I burning already? Would I know? Or maybe I'm dead already and this is just an echo of consciousness. Maybe my mind is trapped in the collar forever.

  Yes, think cheery thoughts, that's it. Positivity in death. Maybe that will make it a better experience.

  I think I'm going crazy. Maybe I should concentrate on something specific to distract myself from dying. Meow. My friends. Bethany, Benjamin, Lily. I see them stand in front of our house, waving at me. Like they're saying goodbye. No, that's not very positive.

  I move on, drawing on memories, but none of them is strong enough to keep my focus. I'm drifting, trapped inside my thoughts. That's enough to get anyone crazy, and I'm already slightly unhinged.