“Yes, that is correct,” Karabi replied.
“Are you also seeking to reinstate your membership?”
“No, I am not.”
Cassandra cocked her head. “You are not a member of this Pride, nor do you intend to become one, yet you come here to ask for our help? You do realize it is not customary for us to provide assistance and support to nonmembers and non-initiates?”
Karabi took a deep breath before answering. “Alex is a Late Bloomer who just became aware of his Cat nature two weeks ago. As the one who triggered his first shift, which led to a Werewolf bite, I felt it my responsibility to bring him to you for assistance. I am not here for my own benefit, but for a fellow Werecat who is in need.”
“He’s not in the Pride, so he is not yet our fellow,” the one named Justin said with a smirk. He looked Alex up and down before addressing him. “Do you intend to become an initiate?”
Alex shifted his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. He glanced quickly at Karabi, then at the faces of everyone in the room before turning back to Justin. “Um, to be honest, the only thing I have on my mind at this moment is getting well.”
“What exactly is wrong with you?”
“Well, I—” He licked his lips and ran a hand through his hair. “I have to fight to keep my tiger at bay, and it’s getting harder every day. I’m extremely horny, all of the time. I’m having a hard time drinking water, yet I’m always thirsty. These past couple of days, I’ve been hungry, but food doesn’t satisfy me. Just this morning, I shifted involuntarily, and almost hunted down a woman jogging near the lakefront.”
Justin scoffed. “What makes you think we can fix all of that?”
“I’m almost certain that the Werewolf bite has had an effect on me.”
“Werewolf bites don’t have an effect on Werecats. What effect are you talking about?”
“This kind,” Alex said, removing his shirt to reveal the psychedelic-colored, blistering wound on his chest.
The council members gasped and began murmuring to each other.
“How can this be?” the red-haired one named Ava cried.
“It appears the rumors about Werewolves going rabid are true,” Marcus, the chocolate one with stark golden eyes and long dreadlocks, said.
“Even a rabid Werewolf should not be able to infect a Werecat!”
“Maybe that is true for a normal Werecat, but what about Late Bloomers? Could they be susceptible in some way to a Werewolf’s bite?”
They all looked at Cassandra, who stood and walked toward Alex to more closely investigate his wound. “It is possible,” she said, “that a Late Bloomer who is freshly triggered has not yet fully developed an immunity to Werewolves. Meaning he could become infected, or possibly even rabid himself.”
This caused more murmurs amongst the council members. Karabi bit her bottom lip with worry and moved to place her hand comfortingly on Alex’s shoulder.
Justin laughed out loud. “Well, folks, this Tom here isn’t fit to join the Pride even if he wanted to. He’s unclean,” he said. Karabi glared at the scruffy-looking dirty-blond man with yellow-green eyes, longing to claw at his face.
Cassandra threw a warning glance at Justin as she went to the table and picked up a black bag. “I’m going to take a blood sample from Alex before making any kind of determination on his qualification to join the Pride,” she said. She went back over to Alex and grabbed his arm. He jerked it away, eyeing her with suspicion.
“Relax, I’m a medical doctor,” Cassandra said, grabbing his arm again. She took a rubber tourniquet from the black bag and tied it above his elbow. Then she pulled out a syringe and inserted it into his vein, filling the Vacutainer.
“Okay,” Cassandra said. “I’ll go run some tests on this. I’ll let you know the results in about an hour. I’m going to go right now so a decision can be made fast.”
As the doctor left the room with the blood sample, Alex leaned into Karabi. “What’s the rush?” he asked her.
Karabi opened her mouth but Justin loudly answered the question instead. “It’s against the rules for non-Pride members or non-initiates to even be present during a retreat,” Justin said. “Every moment you stand in here without being one of those two is a moment longer we are breaking vital Pride rules. At least with you, you’re in limbo until we figure out your health deal. But this Feline here,” he turned to fully face Karabi, “has trouble pledging her loyalty to anyone. We don’t trust Cats with no loyalties.”
“Why would I pledge my loyalty to a group that won’t help their own kind without getting something in return?”
Justin smirked. “Pride members are our own kind, and we do everything in our power to take care of each other. That’s the way we work. But you’re the one who walked in here after a decade of silence and no-shows, asking us to show loyalty to you, just because you have a friend who got chomped on by some dumb dog.”
Karabi rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you what’s dumb—”
“Enough, Finland,” Marcus said. Justin grumbled but instantly went quiet. “If the Werewolves are really going rabid and are attacking and kidnapping Werecats, the last thing we Cats need to be doing right now is making enemies with each other. Fellow Pride-mates or not.”
Karabi’s eyes went wide and she met Alex’s confused orbs as well. “Kidnapping?” they both said.
The raven-haired beauty, Ava, spoke for the first time. “There have been a few reports of missing Queens, suspected to have been taken against their will by Werewolves. More than likely the Rabids.”
“Taken where?” Karabi asked.
“We don’t know, none of them have been found as of yet. We don’t know why either.”
Karabi blinked. “A Werewolf attacked me in an alley in downtown Chicago two weeks ago, and he threw me over his shoulder and attempted to capture me. He looked as if he was in-between forms. He was part man and part wolf at the same time. And he seemed…sexually aroused. Alex was bitten when he jumped in to defend me.”
The council members all looked at each other. “Werewolves do not reproduce sexually, only by infecting normal humans through a bite. An aroused Wolf in mid-shift is—”
“Scary, let me tell you,” Karabi said. The idea of these twisted and horny creatures going around kidnapping female Werecats for who-knows-what was quite disturbing.
Justin crossed his arms. “Looks as if I might have been wrong about McClellan here,” he said and nodded appreciatively. “He got crunched while defending a pussy, fresh out of the Cat gate? This tiger here is a hero. Real potential Pride material.”
A proud smile spread across Alex’s face. “I’m happy to hear you think so,” he said.
Heat enflamed Karabi’s face as she glared in Alex’s direction. Why the hell would he care what Justin or any of them thought? Surely he wasn’t thinking of betraying her and joining them, was he?
Karabi was about to pinch him when the double doors to the room burst open and two young men came pouring in, looking flustered and out of breath.
“Something’s coming! We heard them while out scouting,” one of them said.
“We need to get in position for battle,” said the other. “Now.”
Justin hopped to his feet. “What’s coming?”
“I can smell it,” Alex said, his nose twitching in the air. “Smells…canine. Smells dangerous.”
“You can smell them? From here?” the first bringer of news said, his eyebrows raised high.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “And they’re coming this way. Fast.”
“They?” Karabi asked.
“Werewolves. The rabid ones,” he replied. “And they are ready for a full-on attack.”
Chapter Twelve
Alex lay in waiting, still and quiet. He didn’t even allow a twitch of his thick, long, striped tail. His pulse raced with a lot of adrenaline, a little bit of fear but primarily anticipation of ambushing the enemy. Finally his Cat was going to get what for days it had been yearning for. H
e was finally going to feel like a real tiger. One free to do what tigers do. Not what tigers-who-turned-into-suit-and-tie-wearing-men do.
They didn’t have very long to wait. The Rabid Werewolves were only a quarter of a mile away from the Pride’s location when the Cats on patrol had heard them approaching, so within seconds they were charging on the scene, feet thundering upon the ground in the odd rhythm of creatures that were half man, half beast. Sometimes running upright on two legs, sometimes galloping on all fours.
The wolves moved together, like a united front, and lunged toward Alex’s position. He wasn’t surprised—he recognized the scent of at least two of these beasts. They were part of the same trio that attacked Karabi in the alley that fateful night. This was no accidental stumbling upon the Pride’s gathering—the Three Stooges had gone home and cried to their Alpha mommy and daddy to round up the whole rabid pack for a night of tiger hunting and revenge.
But Alex wasn’t afraid. There was a bit of rabid wolf surging through his blood right at the moment, intermingling with the tiger’s. The two together created an explosive concoction that resulted in one. Pissed. Off. Cat.
The first Wolf that lunged at him was one of the Stooges Alex had fought. One violent slash across its leg sent it falling back, at least for the moment. But was okay, Alex could come back to that one later. “Curly” wasn’t the Stooge he was looking for. When Alex found “Moe”, the one who left his trademark upon Alex’s chest, Moe was already coming at him. Alex jumped back at it and the two clashed in midair. Growling, hissing, jaws snapping, claws digging, paws swiping, teeth piercing. Moe was enraged and fierce but he had the disadvantage of rabidly trying to rip into any part of the tiger’s body he could get at. But Alex was only rabid in body and had all of his normal mental faculties turned on at the moment, and so he was more strategic. It only took one good clamp of the jaw at Moe’s throat to take him down permanently.
Good god, that felt good. Tiger Alex chuffed triumphantly at his kill.
It wasn’t until Moe was dead that Alex took the time to notice what was happening around him. Lions, cougars, cheetahs, tigers, jaguars, lynxes, every kind of big cat one could image was there. Rabid or not, the Wolves didn’t stand a chance, and soon the ones that could move were retreating back into the woods from which they’d come.
When the commotion cleared, the Cats shifted back to naked humans, giving Alex the chance to see what other members of the Pride looked like. The group was as diverse as humans as they were as cats. People of all sizes, races and ages, men and women. Alex was so taken with being surrounded by so many of his kind all at once that it took several minutes before he realized they were all looking at something. There was one corpse in the group. It looked like a human man now but Alex could tell it was Moe. Curly sat next to him, now also human, with a wounded leg, and a long scratch went across half his face.
“Why did you come here?” Pride Council Member Justin was yelling at it.
Curly raised a shaking hand and pointed it at Alex. “That one killed one of us,” he said. He was obviously talking about the third of the trio, whom Alex was now going to name “Larry”. “And now he’s killed Jet too!”
“Likely in self-defense,” one of the Werecats said.
“But we didn’t touch him!”
“You were attacking Karabi,” Alex said, moving to stand next to her. He looked her over to make sure she was okay.
“We weren’t going to injure her,” Curly said.
“Then what were you gonna to do with her?” Justin asked sharply. “What the fuck are you dirty dogs after Queens for?”
“None of your business. It’s not as if you care about us.”
“It is my business if you’re causing trouble with Were kin.”
“We’re no kin to you Cats,” Curly snarled. “Not yet. Which is why we need the Queens.”
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Curly ignored the question. Again he pointed at Alex. “That one was just a kitten when we bit him. It will take some time, but he will become just as much part of us as part of you.”
A part of them? Alex thought. I better not! I can barely handle being Cat. There’s no way I can be a rabid Werewolf too!
“Not if I can help it,” Cassandra said.
“There won’t be any of ‘you’ left for him to be a part of, you keep this shit up,” Justin warned him.
“We’re only trying to save ourselves. We do what we must.”
“Then you must get the fuck out of here, right now,” Justin said. “We’re only letting you go so you can run and warn all of your little rabid puppy pals not to touch another Cat. Male or female. Or we’ll have a Were war on our hands.”
The Werewolf Alex dubbed Larry shifted into a normal-looking Wolf and scampered off, leaving the rest of the group literally scratching their heads and picking up their clothes. A few guys moved in quick to carry off Moe’s body. But just as things looked as though they were about to calm down, a scream came from the foliage nearby.
Alex and a few others ran over to investigate, ready to fight if necessary. Marcus and Justin leapt over the bushes, reached down and grabbed whoever or whatever was there, wriggling and yelling. They lifted the creature from behind the bushes and sat him on the ground where everyone could see him. This was a normal human. He was fully clothed but had an injury on his neck that was red and bleeding profusely. It looked like teeth marks. Ouch, that looks painful, Alex thought. Then his next thought was confusion as to why there was a normal human there in the first place, just as the recognition hit him.
This human was Karabi’s ex-boyfriend, Rao!
* * * * *
“Rao?” Karabi almost couldn’t believe her eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The look on Rao’s face was a crazed one. At first Karabi wasn’t even sure he recognized her. “One of those wolf things fucking bit me!”
“Yes, I see that,” she said. Someone handed her a piece of cloth and she pressed it against Rao’s bite wound. “But that doesn’t answer what you are even doing here in the first place.”
“I was with those guys, looking for you. I had no idea they were freaking monsters too.”
“With them? What do you mean?”
“I contacted them to provide the whereabouts of your tiger-man friend over there,” Rao said. “Then we met outside your apartment. A couple of them followed you here, found out where you went, then called us and let us know. We planned to come and attack at sundown, and they brought me along. But once they all changed into…good god, you saw what they were! I tried to leave but they wouldn’t let me. Said I saw and knew too much to be let go, and so they bit me and carried me with them through the woods. I must have lost consciousness when the fight started, but I woke in pain and—I thought they could help you. It didn’t occur to me that you were a monster too!”
Karabi blinked several times. “Rao—”
“What will happen to me now?” Rao cried. “Will you all eat me? Will I die? I’m losing so much blood!”
Karabi swallowed hard and looked away. So this was all her fault? She couldn’t bear to look Rao in the eyes at that moment, or anyone.
“If you bleed out, you’ll die,” Justin said. “If you live, you’ll become a ‘monster’ too.”
Rao shook his head vigorously, his eyes wide. “No. I don’t want to die or become one of you!”
The guilt made Karabi’s chest hurt. Sure, Rao had brought this upon himself for stalking and following her. But he wouldn’t have done any of that if she hadn’t let him get involved with her in the first place. He’d had no clue about this secret paranormal shit and now he’d been violently dragged into it. Whatever had made her stupid enough to think she could have something serious with a regular human, she really didn’t know. But now poor Rao was suffering for it.
“What do we do with this one?” someone asked.
“Put him out of his misery with a clean shot,” Justin said. “Does anyone ha
ve a gun on them by chance?”
“No, no, no!” Rao wailed.
“Wait, why must he be killed?” Karabi asked. “He hasn’t done anything. He wasn’t even involved in the fight.”
Justin snorted. “Wasn’t involved in the fight? Didn’t you just hear him say he practically brought them to us?”
“Yes, but he didn’t know that we’re—”
“But he does know now, doesn’t he?” Justin said, getting in Karabi’s face. Alex juxtaposed himself between them. And just in time too. Karabi really didn’t like that Justin guy and she was seriously considering punching him in his smug little face.
“Let him go,” Alex said. “If he’s going Wolf, it’s not like he can run to some humans for support. He will need the pack to help him out, right? We can send him with another warning message.”
Justin smacked his lips. “Slow up, McClellan. You’re not even an initiate yet, and you’re trying to tell me what to do? It doesn’t work like that here. Besides, we already sent one messenger, why let two live?”
“Because if we start killing other Weres just because, we’re really asking for more tension between our shifter camps than there already is now,” Nadia said. She helped Rao to his feet and shooed him. Rao immediately took off running in the direction the other wolves went.
“You’re not afraid he’s going to go tell someone we’re here?” Justin said.
“He’s a normal human who’s been bitten—and by a Rabid, at that,” Nadia said. “By the time he makes it out of the woods, he’ll either be a corpse or a Werewolf. Either way, we won’t be staying here long. We’re breaking camp.”
Justin waved it off. “No way. We’re not afraid of a few mangy pups.”
“It’s not about being afraid, Finland,” Marcus said. “We’ve been made. We don’t know if the pack plans on coming back for another round, or if all of the commotion caught some unwanted attention.”
Cat on the Fence Page 12