Skinned

by Blakely Chorpenning

  Looking at each potential king or queen, tears gleamed in the edges of Elder Kit's worn eyes. "Thank you for your gift. For offering yourselves to us. We drink to our mothers, and to you for heralding a new age of power and unity to the serpentes. May the gorgons bless you."

  Everyone drank.

  The tale of Medusa came to mind at the mention of gorgons. It is said that Athena condemned the priestess to become the embodiment of death, never to feel the touch of man again for her sacrilege in the sanctuary. Talk about a cock-blocker. If you ask me, Medusa and her sisters paid an eternal price for the infractions of men. Love is a bitch. I knew that much.

  Dinner came to an abrupt end as the serpentes began quietly leaving. That was our chance to escape the socially awkward event of the century. Loading onto the bus, we took our original seats and headed back to the motel, our minds heavier from the trip, our stomachs lighter. We wanted nothing more than snacks and mindless time in front of the television.

  Petal pressed her palms against the window, pressing her nose to the glass between them. "I saw something!" she raised alarm. "Something moved."

  Sunyet was irritated. "Do not start this again, Petal!"

  "Everything is moving," Borus sighed. "We are going sixty down a dirt road. I'm surprised pieces are not hurtling off the bus."

  "It was something..." Petal whispered, squinting her eyes, searching desperately out the window.

  While everyone dismissed her, I felt a tiny shockwave twist through my core. Better to be safe. Coolly, I leaned close to the back window and cupped my hands around my eyes. After a heavy, silent minute, Gage grew restless and followed suit. He felt it, too.

  The lone shrill down our spines of someone watching us.

  Chapter Seven

  Gage and I saw lights flash in the woods. Once, twice, three times more. A signal.

  "Petal, get away from the window!" I ordered. "Heads down, now."

  Our group of misfit toys was caught in the midst of huddling, faces between their legs, when the bus lurched forward, then sideways.

  Breaking my own rule, I stretched over the seat and wound my fingers around Cody's arm. "When the bus tips, stay close to me. Don't lose sight."

  "When it tips?" He sounded incredulous, like I was willing it to do so.

  Headlights closed in on us, shining into my eyes through the back emergency door.

  "Is Tomas' car still ahead of us?" I held my breath, but somehow I already knew the answer.

  Drey slammed his fist into the side of the wall. "Goddamn it, no!"

  The lights behind us drew closer.

  "Don't slow down!" I yelled at the driver.

  Throwing his body over the wheel, fighting to maintain control, the balding man said, "I should pull over before someone gets hurt."

  Anything able to rattle on the old bus certainly did.

  "Don't you dare stop this bus!" I reaffirmed, "I will reach down your throat and yank your testicles out between your teeth if you stop!"

  "Miss, if I don't stop we might die."

  "Stop and we most certainly will die."

  The driver inhaled a rattled breath, his resolve returning as he straightened his shoulders and gripped the steering wheel with a newfound purpose. I was proud of him for releasing his fear.

  Unfortunately, one final lunge sent the tin coffin careening.

  "Hold on, folks!" the driver warned. "We're leaving blacktop!"

  If you know anything about twelve-ton vehicles, it's that leaving solid traction is never, ever the winning idea.

  Strained voices filled the space. "Oh my God!" someone practically screamed from the middle of the bus.

  I dove over the seat, dragging Cody to the middle of the aisle. My fellow lepe huddled around us, creating a protective shield around the confused cowboy. The only human on board.

  We knew the moment the bus' tires left asphalt. Skidding deep into the soil, mud sputtered across the windows as the entire vehicle came crashing down on its side. It sounded as if a massive dinosaur had awoken from the grave, angry to have slept through such a tasty new world.

  Screams echoed through the space. Glass snapped and shattered. Bodies reeled into one another. And as the rooftop slammed into the tree line, the mass chaos came to rest in darkness.

  There was a collective moment relishing the stillness before we raised our heads.

  "That was one hell of a ride," Cody choked, his body buried beneath the weight of Gage and myself. My arms were still woven tightly around him, our chests smashed together. Cody had seemed rather lanky, at first sight. Though, as I labored to unwind our limbs, there was a definite authority in the way his muscles reacted against mine.

  Drey began moving from person to person. "Are you okay?" he asked a twenty-something red-head who had shifted into her tiger, her stronger form. Vibrating in response, Drey was reassured that she had taken no damage. "Are you injured?" he asked a stalky man in his fifties and a woman no older than thirty-five.

  There were no casualties. No real injuries outside of bruises and nicks. I began making my way to the middle, where Drey and I met.

  "Everyone good on your end?" I asked.

  "Yeah. Yours?"

  "Yeah, thankfully." As if on cue, Drey and I shifted our attention to the empty seat beside us. "That wasn't empty before," I commented.

  There was nothing left of the window except a jagged hole. And blood.

  Drey turned to his people. "Who was sitting here?"

  Someone yelled out, "Petal and the were-hyena, Brantley."

  Sunyet's voice sounded strangled as she yelped, "Petal?"

  I dug my nails into the seat cushion where Petal's frightened face had last been seen, and climbed up to the window, allowing the lingering acrid tang to flood my nostrils. "Snakes," I growled, dropping back to the other side of the bus.

  Drey ordered, "Gable, you're with me. Let's find these motherfuckers."

  "I'm coming, too."

  Gage set his hand on my shoulder. "You won't be safe on your own."

  "I won't be alone."

  "Do you trust them that much?"

  Gage did not have to fill in the blanks. His voice dripped with contempt for the pride in front of us. Of course, he was hesitant to leave my safety up to non-lepe. Hell, I felt the same way a few months ago. But things were changing. We had to change. I wasn't the little cat refusing to grow up any longer.

  Looking into his eyes, I nodded. "I bet my life on them."

  Gage wanted to believe me. He wanted to share in my confidence and newfound conviction that all shifters could do better by one another, but it wasn't that easy. The pride would have to win his trust just as they had mine.

  "I'll come with you."

  "Absolutely not," I decreed. "I need you to stay and protect Cody. If they come back, you are the only one I trust to keep him alive."

  He reluctantly agreed.

  I turned to the rest of the panicked shifters. "Stay together. Stay alert. Get back to the motel and lock your doors."

  Without further hesitation, I leapt upward, through the hole in the window, landing on the upward tipped side of the bus. Drey and Gable followed. Sniffing the air, Gable closed his eyes, permitting his kitty senses to find our trail.

  "This way!" He pointed across the road, in the direction I thought I had seen the signal lights come from.

  "Are you sure?" I asked.

  Drey said, "Gable has an exceptional sense of smell. He's never wrong."

  Gable's bones began to crack. His head bowed back and slick skin gave way to thick, coarse fur. As if his body was expertly turning inside out in an eruption of biofluids and body mass, Gable's lion form soon dominated our view. No wonder lions have a reputation for being kingly. They really are quite impressive up close, had I ever bothered to pay attention.

  I tilted my head, having to look up to make eye contact with the giant cat. "Lead the way."

  Drey and I shifted. It felt spectacular to stretch my tail, anticipating that feeling
of dirt beating beneath my paws. I was ready to hunt, to languish in that moment when flesh gives way between my canines as I tear into something. In this case, someone.

  We leapt from the white capsized bus, our mission crystal clear behind the sheen of our kitty cat eyes. Drey's and Gable's were sun-kissed wheat. Mine were always yellow, even in human form. It was something of a family mystery. Snow leopards traditionally have blue or grey eyes. Only black leopards have yellow eyes.

  The night smelled sharp from the matted pelts of tiny animals scurrying beneath us to the crisp air mixing with the smoke of neighboring chimneys in the valley and, of course, from that metallic tinge of spilled blood tainting the world around it.

  Speeding our pace, we bounded between trees and over fallen limbs. I branched off when I sensed Petal's presence. And that of someone else. I would sneak from the other side, surrounding them with the help of the lions.

  Drey and Gable remained tight, shoulders hulking, standing on their tiptoes. Anything to make themselves appear larger, like that was necessary. They were already sharks in a fucking terrarium.

  As they prowled through the dark underbrush, I found my perch on a high rock, likely buried twice as deep as its twenty-foot face above ground. I focused on the movement below and the heavy breathing of someone well beyond her right to panic.

  Whimpering sounded through the forest. That was our cue. Drey released a guttural roar that seemed endless. It promised a slow death, to bring the nightmares of nightmares to life.

  The lions pounced from their hidden space, coming face to muzzle with a pale serpente no older than my ham sandwich from lunch. The boy was maybe eighteen. His lower body was ten feet of sleek olive snake scales locked around Petal's torso, threatening to... Well, I guess constrict her until nothing was left of her lungs but a deserted hull. His upper torso and head were still human. It was a sight.

  I spit and hissed, letting him know the lions were not the only kitties who wanted to play. I thought he grew even paler at the sight of me lording over him and the sticklike girl, no larger than your average pre-teen.

  It only took a few artful moves before I was on the ground, slinking towards him. While he was threatening to twist Petal's neck or worse, my cat sniffed his fear, tasting it. Yes, he would be a fine kill. Obviously too easy. No fun. But his terror tantalized me like catnip.

  Petal cried out as his grip tightened.

  Gable stepped closer to the pair, growling.

  As we circled the boy, playing with his fear, a foreboding spike of apprehension froze my paws in place. My claws itched to rip at his skin or scales but the human voice in my head was reminding me of the last mess we leapt into without much forethought. The Dissenters. I still wished to know more about the men whose bodies we littered the earth with that fiery night. Had they been spared, even for a few hours, we would have the answers I sorely needed.

  Shifting back into human form, I allowed the chilled night air to crawl up my bare skin as I yelled, "Wait!"

  No one was more surprised than snake boy.

  "If he dies, answers die with him."

  The imposing lions seemed to shift back, thinking.

  I turned to the kid threatening Petal.

  "If you so much as harm her, I promise, answers won't save you." Stalking him, I added, "I would love to slice into your chest, here." I pointed to the soft spot just below his bare ribcage. "I will eat your kidneys and your liver, but first I'll pull your intestines out and roll around on them like a bed of grass under the hot day's sun. And you'll watch."

  "I believe you," the kid whispered, unwinding his petrified body from Petal. After a few seconds of writhing on the ground, he looked one hundred percent human. Nothing as awkward or impressive as his half human, half snake form.

  Petal stormed up to the shaking guy and slapped him across his face. "You are bad!" she said in her worst voice, which was actually no more disturbing than a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. He glanced from her to me, confused. He had been terrified mere seconds before. Now he was probably picturing her wearing a tight librarian's sweater and a cute pair of glasses as he waited on his punishment for not returning his library book on time.

  "Petal," I motioned for her to step back, "Let's not confuse him." Snapping my fingers in his face immediately caught his attention. "I am the punisher, not her. And I never break a promise."

  The color slowly drained from his cheeks. Yes, he would remember me until the day came to walk into that bright light.

  Drey and Gable shifted back. We stood in the middle of the woods, naked, save for Petal, fighting the urge to tear this kid's head from his spine.

  "Why isn't he dead yet?" Gable complained.

  I held my hand out, suggesting that he settle down. "Because I don't care to react out of anger when I need to be calm and focused." Holy shit, had I just quoted Nash? He had been spouting this type of crap for months. I tried not to listen. I did everything but listen.

  Apparently, I listened to the damn walking bag of bones more than I liked to admit.

  Turning to the serpente, I asked, "What is your name?"

  "Fred."

  "What a daunting moniker. You come with us."

  I snatched him by the hair at the base of his neck, walking him in front of us like a man to the plank the entire way back to the motel. Petal walked between the men, only feeling a tad safer. Her fear still perfumed the night.

  Quickly, we returned Petal to the bears and brought Fred to the arachnea in room eleven. He sat trembling in a chair in the middle of the small room.

  "This is your moment," I told him.

  "For what?" His voice quivered.

  I smiled. "To decide if I come back and gut you, or if you tell us everything you know about your friends."

  "How do I know you won't kill me after I tell you?"

  My anger pulsated under the surface. It took all of my strength to keep it in check.

  Winding my fingers around the arms of the chair, I leaned so close it seemed impossible not to touch noses, and warned between gritted teeth, "There is no reason to challenge the honor of my word. I'm not the shifter screwing up right now."

  He nodded, unable to speak.

  "Do you know the location of the were-hyena?"

  The tremble started in his shoulders, settling into a full tick at the base of his neck as he tried to shake his head.

  I exhaled sharply. "Remember, good little boys tell the truth. I pick bad little boys out of my teeth." Straightening my posture, I stared into his scared, beady eyes. "I want answers when I come back."

  Viviane created an excellent -if not completely fucking creepy- web around Fred, which was impossible to escape. None of us asked where the web came from, except for Gage, who was two parts regretful and one part fascinated. Fred was, notably, one hundred percent regretful.

  It did not take us long before we were dressed and ready to search for Brantley, whose smell had become distant, muddled somehow.

  On our way out, we noted the return of Tomas' car and stopped by his room, quickly filling him in.

  "We were just a few miles ahead of the bus," he retraced thoughtfully. "Plenty of time."

  For anything to happen, I finished in my mind.

  "Do you think the were-hyena's still alive?"

  Drey sighed. "The serpente wasn't saying much. I think Fray made him swallow his tongue. We gotta get back out there and see for ourselves, I guess."

  I stepped forward. "If whoever's out there is as inept as the kid wrapped in Viviane's ass web next door, we don't have a problem. But..." That last word hung heavy.

  "If he was the bait to slow you down," Tomas interjected, "we've got one royal problem. And we can't have a problem, if you catch my drift."

  The snakes barely trusted us as it were. What good was a good neighbor group if we failed to keep the neighbors breathing? We would lose every bit of hard-won respect across each shifter and 'were' community. They would topple faster than a politician's moral high groun
d during an election year.

  "We can bring him back." My words were solid. I only wished my optimism matched it.

  The lions and I found ourselves back under the cloak of night, sniffing and listening. This time, our human sides were out to play. The big cats were curled deep inside, resting, until we needed them. Shifting was a major drain on our energy. It would be unwise to shift needlessly, especially when we hadn't properly rested from the last time.

  "Damn, I'm hungry," Drey bellyached.

  Gable nodded, grabbing his stomach. "This is bullshit. We're stuck in a rat motel with nothing but a vending machine. Whose bright fucking idea was this?"

  They turned to me.

  "Don't look at me. I don't plan the field trips."

  Gable began laughing. It was soft at first, growing harder. "You were gonna eat that kid like a Big Mac."

  "If he were here right now," Drey daydreamed, "I would, too."

  "I'd eat his intestines like one long Twizzler." Gable sighed with longing. "What about you?"

  There was no delay as Drey said, "I'd go for his brain. It takes longer to get to, but it's not like he's using it anyway."

  They laughed even harder when my stomach growled slowly.

  "No one said it was easy to have values," I quipped. "Nature's diet."

  Drey was about to return a smartass comment when he stopped, sniffing into the light breeze. The air drew a peculiar expression from his brow. "Something's wrong," he whispered. "Like wrong wrong."

  Gable and I leaned into the wind, closing our eyes. An acrid scent trailed through the night. It was akin to stomach acid and spoiled meat.

  We ran through the forest as fast as our human legs allowed. I was no longer filled with exhilaration for the hunt, only dread. This had turned into a recon mission. No amount of entrails this large could signal a living victim.