Nine Lives of an Urban Panther

by Amanda Arista

  Instinct took hold and I darted out in front of the car. Scooping up the small boy from the asphalt, I leapt onto the hood. The motion sent the two of us sliding, leaving a clean streak across the hot metal. We flew off the other side and tumbled to the ground.

  I hit the pavement hard, almost on all fours. Kneeling, I held the boy tightly, his arms clutched around my neck. His little heart beat wildly, almost as fast as mine. I looked up to follow the driver down the street. It was the same car that had been parked outside my coffee shop. I caught a flick of blonde hair and a flash of white teeth as the driver laughed and sped around the corner out of sight. His parting shot echoed out his open window, “See you later, Leftovers.”

  The little boy began to wriggle in my tight grasp and pushed back to look up at me. I saw his doe-like eyes, his mouth in a small O, and the pulse in his neck. His little face puckered in panic and a small finger worked its way up to poke me in the eye.

  That’s when the world seemed to start up again. The wind swept through the trees carrying the scent of excited children. Doors slammed. People suddenly hovered all around us. “ “Oh my god, Tomas,” a woman cried out and the boy was snatched from my arms.

  I leaned against the car beside me, blinking rapidly to make the sting from his grubby little finger go away.

  As I pushed myself to my feet, I caught my reflection in the side view mirror. Yellow eyes stared back. Crap. Guess if I saw a monster with yellow eyes, I’d poke her in the eye as well.

  “You all right?” The police officer’s musky cologne and the smell of leather from his holster drew my attention as he walked closer. He was a police officer. Just a public servant. Not a threat.

  “Fine.” I bent over, hands on my knees, hiding my face, simply taking in long deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. I’m just a writer. And I’m fine. Just fine. Everything’s friggin’ peachy in Violet-Land.

  My hands were shaking; my knees were weak. I heard the roar of blood in my ears and saw the pulse in my vision. My glance darted to the other side of the street where people had lined up to watch the show. Just people, I told myself. A boy nearly gets run down by a sports car and people are going to gawk. Nothing weird about that.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated, still taking in deep breaths, still processing everything that had flown by. Did the world actual stop moving? Had I actually just run out in front of a car? Who was that guy that called me Leftovers?

  A slight chill ran down my body as the breeze cooled the sweat on my skin. My heartbeat slowed; my pulse less visible. As I turned back at my reflection in the car window, I looked like me again. Just Violet.

  The boy’s mother reached out and touched my forearm with cool fingers. “You saved my little boy’s life.”

  I turned towards her quickly. I had. I had saved a life. Little Violet Jordan was a hero.

  The woman hugged me, smashing the boy between us. It threw me off balance for a moment as her rose perfume assaulted my senses but I patted her back softly. She pulled away and, without meeting my eyes again, headed toward her car. Tomas’s frightful eyes peered over his mother’s shoulder and he stared at me until he was securely fastened into his seat.

  The police officer watched silently as I tried to catch my bearings. I didn’t know where home was. There wasn’t a school anywhere near my house. I thought I’d run west, but with all the turns and shortcuts, I couldn’t be sure any more.

  “I’ve never seen anyone do that,” the officer said with a smile as he scratched behind his ear, lifting up the edge of his hat.

  “Adrenaline, I guess.” I forced a half smile and watched Tomas and his mom drive away.

  “You training for a marathon or something?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I watched you speed around the corner. It was like a woman with a mission.”

  I gulped. “Just running,” I squeaked out.

  He nodded and waved to the gathering crowd to disperse. As the people slowly retreated to their cars or back into the school building, five black dogs remained on the sidewalk, panting, staring at me.

  Frozen, I stared at the motley group of mongrels. My skin crawled and the space between my shoulder blades tightened, the hair prickling down my neck. They’d found me. My vain attempt to blend into a crowd of schoolchildren three feet shorter than me hadn’t worked as well as I thought and now they were waiting with bated breath.

  “Is your ankle alright?”

  “My ankle?” I looked down to see a gash just above my ankle soaking my sock with deep red blood. “Where’s my shoe?”

  The officer pointed to the middle of the street where my size ten rested like a big white speed bump. “You clipped the front; that’s what made you spin.”

  “I spun?”

  He nodded and looked at the dogs, then back at me. “Do you want me to call you an ambulance?”

  I tried to put pressure on my swollen ankle and fire flew up my leg. Not just bleeding, broken. I gulped but tried not to show just how painful it really was. “I’ve survived worse.”

  He pulled out a small memo pad from his breast pocket. I almost expected him to lick the tip of the pencil like in the old detective movies, but he didn’t. “Did you recognize the car?”

  I could only shake my head; my lips clamped shut. I couldn’t positively identify it as the one that had been parked outside the coffee shop where I spent half my waking moments. I mean there were probably thousands of BMW convertibles in Dallas.

  “Would you like to press charges?”

  “Press charges? The guy sped off.”

  With an unsatisfied sigh, he put the pad back in his front pocket. “Well, I’m going to have to fill out a report anyway, but since you’re refusing an ambulance, can I at least give you a ride home?”

  I looked down at the empty street, then at the dogs lined up just waiting for me to be alone again. “That would be great,” I said with a pain-filled smile.

  I’d never been in the back of a police car but I could see the odometer from there. As I gave the officer directions, I watched the numbers tick away. Seven miles. I’d run seven miles, saved a boy’s life, and broken an ankle. That was a bit more than my standard afternoon. I longed for the days when I stayed in my office to write my little stories and only ran after ice cream trucks.

  We stopped outside my townhouse and the officer rushed around the front of his patrol car to let me out. He offered a hand as I gingerly slid across the vinyl seats and stood on one leg. I looked down the quiet residential street. No dogs. No speeding sociopaths.

  “Thank you again.” He closed the door and walked back around to the driver side of the car. “We need more heroes like you.”

  I watched as he drove off. Wincing with every uneven step, the walk to my house felt like another mile in itself. As quickly as I could, I found my key, unlocked my door, hobbled inside, and slammed the door shut.

  Exhausted, I leaned against the door and slid down to the floor. The sock was a lost cause. I’d forgotten my shoe at the scene of the crime. There was so much pain in my leg I didn’t know if I would ever move from this spot.

  Now I had a reason to never leave my house again.

  I hate dogs. I hate lost shoes and I really hate exercise.

  And thanks to what happened two weeks ago, I’d never enjoy another Cosmo again.

  AN EXCERPT FROM CLAWS AND EFFECT

  Chapter One

  I DIDN’T NOTICE the intoxicating aroma of stale creek water until I was finished packing up my laptop and notes. Crap. And I thought today might just be a normal day. Silly Violet.

  I slowly scanned my coffee shop. Nothing new here. Same coffee guy. Same old man who sat in the corner everyday grumbling at the newspaper. Then, a shadow darted across the sun-filled window.

  I put my bag over my shoulder and moved carefully out of the café. The scent was still there, lingering. Watching. Waiting. Double crap.

  With ears peeled and eyes aware of everything around me, I sta
lked around the corner to the small lot where my car was parked. I kept my borders open but not relaxed, aware but not overpowering.

  And that’s when it hit me. A burst of wind lifted me up and threw me against the brick wall of the coffee shop. I cracked my head against the wall, but what was really painful was the crack of my laptop against the brick. I slid down the wall and landed on my feet. The laptop was new. Now, I was pissed.

  A slight, scraggly man walked across the parking lot. He looked greasy and smelled like lightening. Smelled like Sensei. The man’s dark hair hung over his ice blue eyes and his acid-washed jacket needed to go back to the eighties where it came from.

  I just smiled. My Jeet Kune Do sensei, an ancient wind elemental himself, had thrown me against more walls than I could count during our five months of training. And if this guy really was looking for a fight, this was going to be cathartic.

  “Thanks,” I said to him as he approached in long, determined strides for his small figure. I ran my fingers through my hair. “Wind-blown look is all the rage this season.”

  “You shouldn’t be laughing,” the man snarled.

  “Why not?” I was already looking for an escape route. There were three, providing that Little Boy Blew stayed where he was. Thank you, Chaz, for making me a paranoid little panther. While other couples were playing footsie on their dates, Chaz and I were playing Shoots and Ladders, discussing the best places to hide weapons and to get out of a place quickly and undetected.

  The man stopped six feet away. I pushed myself away from the wall. He couldn’t have been any taller than me in his oversized combat boots. Compensate much?

  His hands clenched tightly at his side, just like Sensei’s did. “You’re about to die.”

  “You know,” I said as I pulled off my already pulverized laptop and set it on the ground next to me. “People keep saying that. In fact, you’re the fourth.”

  And he was. Little showdowns like this were becoming a pretty regular thing. They all wanted a piece of Violet to prove something. And they all walked away bleeding. Of course, most of the time I had Chaz or Jessa with me. But solo might be fun. This little guy would be no trouble.

  “And the last.”

  I love men and their bravado.

  As with Sensei, I could sense the attack before it came, a whiff of lightening on the wind. Got to love those panther super senses. The man drew in his energy and punched it at me. His power extended out from his hand and a fist of wind hit the brickwork next to my head. Brick chunks flew off the wall and got caught in my hair. The noise made me jump. So, maybe he might be a little stronger than first assessed.

  Another attack came a second later, and I slid down the wall to avoid the attack, another crushed brick in the wall.

  “Ready for the real show?”

  “Sure,” I nodded.

  Turned out that two wind punches at a time wasn’t as easy to avoid. Dodged one of them but the other caught me in the chest. My shoulder blade ground into the wall, and I smelled blood.

  And then I smelled wet dog again.

  Holding my arm, I watched as a man the size of a linebacker tackled the small elemental to the ground. There wasn’t much of a struggle with such a surprise attack. The smaller man’s head slammed against the pavement and his eyes rolled back in his head. I didn’t miss the irony that the wind probably got knocked out of him. Either way, by the looks of the wound to his forehead that now dripped blood onto the pavement, he wasn’t getting up any time soon.

  I grabbed for my laptop and quickly found my keys in my pocket. The bulky pepper spray Chaz gave me was easy to grab.

  The large man stood up and brushed off his dusty trench coat. He looked down at the elemental and nudged the body with his foot. Seeming satisfied, he turned toward me.

  I’d never forget that smell. It had accosted me too many times and was associated with too many bad memories. But if it weren’t for his smell, I don’t know if I would have even recognized him from any other homeless person on the street. His brown hair hung down around his dark brown eyes now and his cheeks were a bit more sunken in and smudged with dirt.

  “What do you want, Briggs?” I asked. His presence here was more concerning than the fourth assassination attempt moments before. Two months ago, Briggs and his mongrels had my best friend strapped to a chair, ready to cut her into pieces. Now, he stood before me like a sullen child.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly.

  “Then why are you still following me?”

  I couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t guess what he was thinking, but his power was low, nothing aggressive, like a hot coal left alone in a fire pit. My brain was wiped clean of all the images of violence that his other form, a black lab, had caused and was replaced by that of a little lost puppy.

  “Because we need you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not this again.”

  “We need someone to protect us.”

  “No,” I said shaking my head as I walked past him toward my car. “I’ve already got enough on my plate. I’m not taking on a bunch of mutts. You’re grown men.”

  “We don’t know where else to go.”

  “You’re a police officer, Briggs.”

  “Not anymore.”

  I paused in my retreat to my car. There had been repercussions from my showdown against the Haverty Pride two months ago, but up to this point, it had all been aimed at me. An attack from a wind elemental here, a werewolf there. It had never occurred to me just how influential the Havertys could have been or what could befall a rogue member of the Pride after I had rid the Pride of both its head and its heir.

  I turned to face him and crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t want to do this. I really wasn’t just being catty when I said I had a lot on my plate. Work was picking up. I had a movie filming this summer. Chaz was moving in piece by piece. Jessa and I now did patrols around the city to find weak spots in the Veil between worlds. My schedule was packed.

  But it was that damn kicked puppy look that got me. The way he would not match my eyes, the way his shoulders sunk. “Why?”

  I could have sworn I heard a boot steps on the gravel. As Briggs and I looked over to where the elemental had fallen, nothing was left but a scuff in the dirt and a puff of dust.

  I looked back up at the darkly clad man. It worried me how this huge man could look so lost. What worried me even more was that I was the only person he could turn to. A thought gleamed above all the crazy stories that usually ran around up there: I had to help them. The last prophesy of my mother’s. I needed to give them a direction because without one, they would perish.

  “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

  About the Author

  Amanda was born in Illinois, was raised in Corpus Christi and lives in Dallas, but her heart lies in London. Good thing she loves to travel. The summer of second grade, she read every book in the young adult section of the library, so she started making up her own stories and hasn’t stopped. She has a husband who fights crime, one dog who thinks he’s a real boy, and another who might be a fruit bat in disguise. When not writing, Amanda often dreams of co-opening an evil bakery and selling despicable desserts. She spends her weekends writing at coffee shops, practicing for the day that caffeine intake becomes an Olympic sport, and plotting character demises with her fellow writers.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  By Amanda Arista

  Nine Lives of an Urban Panther

  Claws and Effect

  Diaries of an Urban Panther

  Give in to your impulses . . .

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  by Nico Rosso

  Night of fire, night of passion

  U.S. Army Upland Ranger Tom Knox always knew going home wouldn’t be easy. Three years ago, he skipped town, leaving behind the only woman who ever mattered; now that he’s seen the front lines of war, he’s ready to do what he must to win her back.

  Rosa Campos is long past wasting tears on Tom Knox, and now that she’s sheriff of Thornville she has more than enough to do. Especially when a five-story rock-eating mining machine barrels toward the town she’s sworn to protect.

  Tom’s the last person Rosa expects to see riding to her aid on his ether-borne mechanical horse. She may not be ready to forgive, but Rosa can’t deny that having him at her side brings back blissful memories . . . even as it reignites a flame more dangerous than the enemy threatening to destroy them both.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Sierra Madre Mountains, California

  He wore his gun. And hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. The war was behind him. Tom Knox headed west.

  His saddle creaked. The ends of the leather reins slapped lightly against the body of his steed. The wind whistled in his ears. Six hundred feet below him, small hills gathered into a larger mountain range.

  Instead of being filled with screaming ether-charged bullets and explosive cannon shells, the sky here was peaceful. A red-tailed hawk skimmed below him, head twitching from side to side, tracking prey. In the distance, three turkey vultures spun wide circles over a shady hill. Tom was part of the calm. His Sky Charger kept a steady pace, pushed by the high whispering whir of the tetrol-powered fan at the back.