Nine Lives of an Urban Panther

by Amanda Arista

“Dallas isn’t mine to lose. It’s the only good thing I’ve done there.”

  “What? Make them play nice with each other?”

  “I gave them a choice. Gave them the power instead of taking it from them.”

  Spencer reached his hands out before him. “That kind of thinking doesn’t work here.”

  I guessed the time for playing was over when he shot a black cloud of power out at me that followed me around the field. I was faster here, my feet making contact with the ground and springing forward, like running on my high school’s track-and-field track.

  I dropped to the ground and his column of black power whooshed over my head as I stayed low in the grass.

  I crawled carefully back in the direction I’d run. I could barely see Spencer’s blond hair over the green grass. He couldn’t see me.

  But why couldn’t he smell me? The wind seemed to carry his scent to me and I knew his heart was racing. I knew there was more blood on him than I could see. He looked around the field for me, but the breeze kept the grass tops dancing. The wind was at my back on this one.

  “They need to be led, Violet. They need a steady hand to keep them in line.”

  I was within ten feet of him now. I slipped the knife out of my belt.

  “They are just animals after all.”

  I leapt at him.

  Unfortunately, he was faster here as well. He grabbed the hand with the knife pointed solidly at him and yanked me forward and off balance. He planted his other hand in my chest and the air leapt out of my lungs.

  He slammed me down on the ground like I was a limp doll and the knife rolled out of my hand. His hand went for my throat. Why do they always go for the throat? The second thing that Sensei had taught me after how to flip someone over my hip was how to get out of someone trying to choke you out.

  I jammed two fingers into his blue eyes. Sensei had showed me how to fight honorably and how to fight dirty. I had a natural propensity for the later.

  Spencer’s hand without the knife flew up and he covered his face. I hit him in the elbow and he fell forward, his nose somehow managing to connect rather roughly with the heel of my palm.

  Blood sprayed out of his nose, causing him to let me go. I scurried away from him, wiping the blood from my palm onto my shirt. It blended well into the other splatters of blood and dirt that had collected on the green material.

  We were just about to launch into another round of “who’s got the knife” when the ground rumbled around us. It was at least an eight on the Richter scale.

  I stayed on all fours and flinched with the crackle of power through the air around us.

  Spencer knelt on one knee and waited, which told me who was paying us a visit.

  Jovan wasn’t what I expected. The goon squad behind him was what I expected, an amalgamation of every evil-looking thing that you could imagine. It was every single monster I’d ever written: a minotaur; a half man, half snake; and every scary thing I’d ever seen in my head. I would never doubt that I was born and bred into this world again.

  But Jovan. I don’t know why I had a vision of Darth Sidious, all withered and darkly clad, as the demon on the other side trying to take over the world. Guess I really had watched too many movies.

  Jovan was a formidable sized man in a simple suit. Apparently evil had a propensity toward tailored wear. His dark hair was silvered at the temples, his goatee silver from the corners of his mouth down. But his eyes. His eyes were gray, like a storm cloud, and his power swirled around him, making the air around me dense, like a change in barometric pressure.

  “Didn’t expect to see you so soon, Spencer.” His voice crackled against the soft brush of the wind.

  The horde of monsters behind him swarmed both me and Spencer, though they seemed to take more pleasure in handling me than him.

  Slimy hands pulled me to my feet and something wound tightly around my legs. I didn’t want to think about what it could be, but it really felt like a slimy tail. I held in a gasp as the slime began to seep into my jeans.

  I was quiet. Chaz had taught me that my mouth got me into trouble. Right now was not the time to put my foot in my mouth. I had a feeling Jovan had a way of making that actually happen.

  “And Miss Jordan. I really didn’t expect to see you here.”

  But I wouldn’t be rude and not speak when spoken to. “I had to see what Spencer kept going on about.”

  Jovan did something creepy. He smiled. Why is it always so creepy when they smile? “He was supposed to have killed you.”

  “He’s never been one for follow-through. You should know that.”

  Jovan walked up to me and I could barely breathe through his power. He was suffocating me like I’d suffocated Inez. My heartbeat pounded in my ears and my mouth ran dry with fear—pure unadulterated fear. It had been a while since the two of us had met.

  “What is so special about you, Miss Jordan? What makes you fight so hard? Spencer here is the best thing I’ve got, and yet, you’re still alive.”

  “He’s got some flaws.”

  I caught something on the wind, something wild and sharp. Jovan’s eyes darted to the tree line.

  He tugged at the sleeves of his suit. The tug told me volumes. Not how’d he gotten the Hilfiger duds on this side of the Veil, but that there was something in the woods that surrounded us he was uncomfortable with.

  Jovan looked me square in the eyes and my eyes began to water, like looking straight into a dark sun. “I am very old, Miss Jordan. I don’t fight anymore; I win. And I’m not going to win this one.”

  Jovan took a step back. Jovan, the evil demon who was trying to take over the universe, backed away from me, his gaze darting from me to the trees surrounding the field.

  “Though it will be interesting to see how this plays out.”

  The slimy tail and the wandering hands that held me slipped away as the monster horde followed him from wherever he had come from.

  I remained still.

  Spencer went after him, and with a flick of Jovan’s hand, Spencer was thrown across the field by an invisible force.

  “Be seeing you around, Miss Jordan.”

  Jovan was still walking away, a mist forming around him and his horde as he retreated. I had no idea what magic he was using to throw his voice. Or maybe he was just a ventriloquist in his former life.

  Spencer ran at me from behind. Or more to the point: I felt him run at me from behind. His footsteps might as well have been a stampede of elephants, the way the vibrations ran through the ground and up my legs.

  I ducked down and watched him fly comically over me.

  He rolled, jumped to his feet and turned on me again. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Says the lap cat to the Mayor of Evil.”

  “Why do you ruin everything?”

  “Can you sound more juvenile?”

  “I did everything he asked of me, and one look at you and all that work out the window.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  I looked to the tree line. There was something there. Something bigger.

  Spencer’s eyes followed mine. “Crap.”

  Green eyes appeared first, just higher than my head in the trees. Then a tawny pair and then a silver pair.

  Biggers. “Double crap,” I breathed.

  The first one, a lion with a mane the size of a semi truck, broke the tree line at a slow pace.

  “Finally, some justice in this place,” Spencer said.

  I felt him draw on his power but I wrapped mine up and tucked it away, until it was nothing more than my panther. I’d killed one of these guys when Spencer jumped through the Veil the first time and in the dreams, Spencer killed two more of them. They were strong, fast, and twice the size of a Clydesdale. So yeah. Huge.

  I knew them, sort of. If all those origin stories were true, then we were the same spirit. Except they were bigger on the outside, while I was furry on the inside. Where I lived on two legs, they chose to live on four.

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sp; I stood my ground and let the three approach. The lion’s nose was higher than my forehead and the panther’s paws were easily double the size of manhole covers. They smelled like wet fur and earth.

  The wolf, a dark silver gray, stuck his nose into my bloody hip. I remained still, kept my ground, and kept my mouth shut. The moist muzzle went up my side and to my neck and then backed away.

  “Why aren’t you running?” the wolf asked as he slipped to the right of the lion.

  “Why would I run?”

  “Why do you smell like us?” the panther asked.

  “Because I’m just like you. Just bigger on the inside.”

  Their eyes turned to Spencer, whose dark power was beginning to swirl around him.

  “He’s not,” the lion said.

  I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

  Then two of the Biggers went for Spencer. With his slashing power, he fought them off as they darted and chased him around the field.

  The panther stayed with me. We watched the brawl patiently from the edge of the field, her large black head in my peripheral vision. The last time I’d faced down one of these, it was determined to make me a snack. I was hoping that this one wasn’t as hungry.

  “We want him dead,” she growled.

  “So do I.”

  “He has killed many of us.”

  “He’s killed my people too.”

  “Then why aren’t your teeth around his neck?”

  “I talk a big game.”

  “The time for talking is over.”

  “But he’s me. That could have been me.” When the words escaped my lips, I knew it was true. If I didn’t have Iris. If I didn’t have Chaz. We both needed someone. He just turned to a demon.

  “No, daughter. He is not you.”

  My hackles rose at hearing a panther call me daughter. I shivered when I realized that she was right. That could have been me, but I chose something else. Something bigger than myself to focus on.

  “But he is your fight, not ours.”

  An invisible call echoed across the fields, like a silent purr across my skin. The lion and wolf pulled away from their fight and ran toward the tree line, the forest enveloping them quietly.

  My eyes focused on Spencer for one moment and the panther was gone from my side, taking with her the warm scent of wet earth.

  “This is my fight,” I repeated to myself. Even though he wasn’t a threat to my pack on the other side of the Veil, he was still a threat. Jovan, the Biggers, they backed away. They knew that the two of us weren’t right, the boy who eats souls and the panther masquerading as a girl.

  Maybe I belonged in the Neveranth with all the other monsters who had gotten too big for their britches. Mystical realm built to house powerful Wanderers or not, there was only room for one of us on either side of the Veil.

  “What kind of deal did you make?” Spencer’s voice echoed across the grass, carried by the wind. He ran his fingers through his hair and wiped his bloody nose on what was left of his sleeve.

  “No deal. Just the truth.”

  “Biggers eat half-breeds like you.”

  “Not if they don’t know what the other half is.”

  A smile passed over his lips. He’d used that same line against the Biggers just months before.

  “I had no clue how special you were going to be, Violet. You were just supposed to be a midnight snack.”

  “So you really didn’t know about the prophecies or our connection or any of it?”

  Spencer shook his head. “I was just hungry.”

  I stretched my neck, rolled my shoulders, and slipped the knife from my belt. “Guess we’ve both grown up a little since then.”

  “Says the drunk girl in the alley.”

  “Says the reckless playboy.”

  He threw a cloud of power out at me, but I quickly darted around it. I wasn’t stopping this time. Not until the pointy end of this knife was embedded in his chest. But I’d take his abdomen or eye socket as well.

  I ran past him and took a broad swipe with my claws down his injured arm. He wasn’t as fast as me, he was vulnerable to the panther and he hadn’t been tossed around by a Jeet Kune Do sensei for the past eight months. I knew exactly how many hits I could take; he didn’t.

  I circled around his back and stopped. I knew I could beat him on the ground. It was just a matter of getting him on his back.

  He had to spin around to face me again, and when he did, I ran toward him.

  We swapped hits to the face and fists to the torso. I kept at him, hoping that between the power plays he’d been making all night and the sheer violence, he would be worn out. Lord knows I was feeling the strain down my back, in the tension down my legs.

  After one particularly rough exchange, I skidded back, my bare feet ripping up grass as I stopped. I looked down at the simple knife still clutched in my hand, my bloody knuckles, and my ruined blue jeans.

  My gaze darted up to him to find him panting, bleeding, and not looking anything like the boy that ran away through the mirror. He tore off what was left of the white business shirt, exposing the scratches down his chest and his purple shoulder.

  I knew what I needed to do; I could see it in my head. I’d done it a million times in the dojo. I just needed him down. “Just fall down already,” I whispered, thinking that if I used the words and pushed at them with my will, he would just magically fall down.

  He didn’t. There is a downside to fighting something that always lands on its feet.

  With a deep breath, I launched at him again, slicing the knife upward. He leaned back.

  And then he fell.

  I was coming after him so fast that I too tripped over the root arched up out of the ground. The root that neither of us had tripped over so far in the fight.

  I landed on top of him and rolled over his head.

  He was down. And I had about a fourth of a second before he was back up. I stabbed the knife into the ground by his head and jumped on his chest.

  His hand immediately went for my face. I slammed his wrist against the ground and ground my knee into his hip to keep him pinned. I wound my arm through his and got him into the most perfect figure four. I pulled his arm up and his knuckles drug across the ground.

  His back arched and he cried out. With a sharp twist of my torso, I pulled his shoulder out of its socket. The pop echoed through the empty field.

  I released his arm and it fell to the ground limp.

  Something else snapped within him, the civil part, whatever was left of the human part and I was faced with what a demon really looked like. Wild, raw, and with a single-mindedness that was aimed at my throat.

  His blue eyes turned black and his good arm shot out at my throat. I caught it easily but he still managed to flip my entire body over like a full-body arm-wrestling match.

  I wrapped my long legs around his waist and squeezed. Arching my back, I was able to keep his one good arm from strangling me, bracing my shoulders against the ground.

  I let my claws slide out through my hand and brought them down quickly across his face.

  He caught my hand with his and pinned it above my head, grinding my bones into the dirt. His wild eyes focused in on me and his teeth grew sharper. I felt the dark power squirm within him, begging to just take one more soul.

  He wouldn’t get the chance. The sun caught the edge of the silver blade.

  My right arm darted out to where I’d tucked the knife into the ground. I tore it from the earth and rammed the blade into his side, slipping it between his ribs and up to the hilt.

  He screamed out above me and reared up, letting go of my arm. I dropped my legs from around his waist and scurried back.

  Panting, I got to my knees and watched as he tried to grab at the blade, the silver sizzling away at his skin.

  He fell to his back and gasped for breath. Burning began to grow in my own chest as I crawled over to him, the exhaustion of the battle finally settling into my bones as I saw the end.


  I reached out and pulled out the knife. Blood poured out into the grass, staining the ground beneath him. I couldn’t help but think of how Iris talked about giving it back to the earth.

  Spencer gasped for air as he lay back on the ground. The darkness faded from his eyes and his blue came back.

  “We knew there was only one ending to this story,” I said softly.

  His eyes darted toward me.

  “The good guys win.”

  “You’re not the good guy,” he whispered. “Not anymore. Not after this.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m the one who’s still breathing.”

  With one final push of energy, I drove the knife into his chest, through his heart and felt it embed into the ground beneath him. There was a symmetry in it that all endings needed.

  Spencer gasped, blood trickling out of his mouth. His blue eyes landed on me. His hand clasped around mine on the hilt of the blade.

  I took his injured arm and brought our hands to his chest and waited.

  The field was too quiet. His last breaths, too loud.

  “The Haverty line doesn’t end. If that matters to the human part of you left. The empire your father made is still the most powerful in the Wandering world. I intended to make it the strongest. And my pack will continue on with that.”

  There was one more fluttering look in his navy blue eyes before his breathing stopped and his head lolled to one side. I reached over and closed his eyes.

  That’s when our connection snapped. The thick steel line that held us together for eight months, that criss-crossed our energies, our brains, broke. The force of it sent me flying across the field.

  I landed softly on the ground, as if it caught my broken body. It was done.

  My muscles gave up and I just looked up at the clear blue sky. The grass created a pillow under my head. The sun covered me like a warm blanket over my aching body. Sleep came swiftly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  HAY. I SMELLED golden hay. I forced my eyes open and saw dust dancing through golden light as it streamed through the familiar slats in Iris’s barn, as it filtered between the bars of the cage where I’d first shifted, where Chaz had seen my panther and loved me anyway.

  I pushed myself up and looked down at my shirt, my knuckles. No blood, no bruises. Just a white T-shirt smelling slightly of starch, and jeans, unstained by the mud I’d just been dragged through.