Skinned

by Blakely Chorpenning

  Though the nightmare had faded, I couldn't shake the feeling that Jack was still with me. I felt him.

  Everyone was aflutter, bouncing between rooms, searching for the spiders and their fly. They were all too busy to pay attention to little ole me. Slowly backing away from the door, I found Cody. It was fairly easy. His cowboy hat was a beacon.

  "Stay with Gage. I'll be back."

  "Where are you going?"

  Taking off through the parking lot, I whirled to face him, arms out by my sides, and confessed, "I don't know," before turning around and slinking into the woods.

  I opened my senses, relying on the undercurrent of bygone life to lead me where it may. The outlines of day-old opossum tracks gave way to fresh deer scat. Beyond, the musty tuft of mountain lions lingered in the air. Closer, the stench of tiny rotting mice mixed with the decaying leaves shielded the world from their accelerated regression back to the earth. It was the following scent that made me stop dead in my tracks. Pride.

  The smell of Jack's hair on my hands, to be exact.

  "Jack?"

  I was no longer dreaming, but half expected to hear the eerie echo of his gurgling voice.

  "If you're here, I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry every day."

  "Every night," a veiled voice corrected.

  I spun to see who had spoken. No one.

  My words bounced off the trees as I demanded, "Come out!"

  Nothing, though the feeling of Jack's presence intensified.

  I climbed onto an impossibly giant rock formation, searching from my new perch for the culprit, daring him or her to come get me. Only, the forest appeared darker than it had moments earlier. Night had turned thicker than fog. Symbols and lines painted on the stone's face were the last things I saw.

  "She belongs," a raspy whisper declared into my ear.

  Another reared, "She does not belong!"

  Flailing my arms, I felt for a body to snatch up, to punish. The slopes and jagged edges of the rock formation led me to trip a couple of times. With every stumble, I half-expected Jack to catch my balance. It was as if he stood protectively by my side. But I deserved no such protection. How could a boy -a dead boy- want to, let alone actually, protect the one person who had failed him during his greatest time of need?

  I was beginning to rethink this vacation. Especially when a half-human, half-serpente skeleton slithered out of a crack in the stone, chasing me.

  Chapter Nine

  I managed to kick the clattering mystical bones right in the skull. It whirled in place like a macabre merry-go-round, coming to a halt backward. As it turned to me, arms outreached in the opposite direction, that voice whispered again, "She belongs."

  "No!" This voice was directly behind me.

  Turning just in time, I dodged a bony arm hammering down upon me. Falling to the rock, I watched as the two skeletons reproached one another.

  "You are blind, Sister," the angered bones hissed. "She does not belong."

  Turning to stare with empty eye sockets, head tilted in contemplation, she confessed, "It calls to me." Long fangs created a monstrous appearance on the otherwise human skull.

  Their voices floated on the wind, through my mind, even as their skulls and arms wobbled unsteadily. How much power did it take to hold themselves together?

  "It lies." The "s" was drawn out, almost as fear-evoking as the rattle at the end of a snake's tail. Maybe more so because they had no tongues.

  "I have lied to no one!" I leapt to my feet, ready to break bones and bury them a second time if I must.

  "She is a warrior."

  The rattling bones of the smaller form slithered closer. "She is more," she said, inspecting me.

  Gathering the hint that fighting would be unnecessary, I decided to be diplomatic. "I can hear you, you faceless, dead bitches." Well, that's about as diplomatic as I get.

  The larger mass hissed, ready to strike with her tail.

  "No, Stheno!" The skeleton jangled as it rushed between us. "Look, Sister." A bony finger pointed to my face. "Her eyes do not lie."

  Were they talking about my yellow irises?

  Their voices no longer sounded hollow. As I searched the empty, black sockets for signs of life, I could soon hear the undercurrent of a melody as they spoke.

  "It calls to us," the small form said again.

  "What calls to you?" I leaned toward her, earnestly curious. "My leopard?" I asked, searching the darkness for the reward the melody promised.

  The sterner of the two warned, "Euryale, leave it. Some things are not meant to be."

  "It is not a mistake, Sister."

  Their use of "it" was provoking me, whether they realized or not. Were they calling me "it" or something inside me? Something part of me.

  I clapped my hands together hard, startling the skeletons into silence.

  "Who are you?" I demanded.

  "We are gorgon," the smaller sister, Euryale, informed me, skull bobbling unsettled between her shoulder blades.

  "Like Medusa?"

  Stheno hissed her disapproval. "Three of us, yet only her name sits on the tongue of history." The melody in her tone faltered, teetering on the edge of ugliness. "We should kill her." She grabbed a knife from a withered piece of fabric tied where her waist should have been and descended upon me.

  A throaty rumble challenged the gorgons. Jack's lion stepped out from behind me. Where he had come from, I was just as mystified and answerless as they were. He was sturdy on his paws, his golden fur felt bristly against my arm. Marisa had been right. The smell of bygone daisies wafted into my nostrils. The scent of Jack's mane.

  I blinked in confusion. The darkness receded to the edge of the large stones, enabling me to see more clearly. Jack stood by my side, his mane brushing against my right shoulder. I buried my hand in his mane. It felt real. He looked real. But my brain warred with my heart, demanding it not believe this unfathomable sight.

  "Did you bring the darkness?" I asked the skeleton sisters as I released Jack's deep auburn mane.

  I felt the impression of Stheno smile in my mind. "The darkness is yours."

  "It calls to me," Euryale repeated to her sister, childlike wonder in her tone.

  When Euryale reached out for my hand, a growl matriculated from Jack. A warning.

  Stheno stopped her sister. "Do not be fooled. It lies," she warned again.

  "Start answering me clearly or I'll start throwing your bones back to Hell one at a time!"

  A scream of such rage and suffering grew from Stheno's nonexistent diaphragm until is spilled into the night. Startled and losing focus, I tucked my chin to my chest and held my ears, only looking up in time to see Stheno's snake-like tail slam my body into the air.

  I flailed, freefalling from the statuesque rock formation.

  It was best to land on my pads in leopard form rather than on my ass in human form. However, as the moments ticked by, I realized unfortunately that my leopard was unwilling to come out. Something had spooked her. More importantly, something was blocking me from shifting.

  I braced for impact in human form.

  When the moment arrived to slam into the unforgiving earth, I hit something softer...before slamming into the unforgiving earth.

  My legs were splayed as I stared up at the bright, starry sky and sighed with relief, even as my lungs wrestled to fill with air again. The fog of darkness was completely gone, replaced with a natural darkness kissed by moonlight.

  Rolling off of the groaning form at my back, I felt the chill from the ground as I turned, making eye contact with Blaire. Leave it to him to look like a model resting under a beautifully arched oak when he's just been battered into the dirt while I looked like twice chewed shit.

  "What are you doing here?" I spat.

  "Looking for you."

  He tugged my arm up as we stood but I smacked it away.

  "I'm perfectly capable of standing by myself." Honestly, I was rattled by everything, especially Jack, who had felt so ali
ve. My body vibrated with leftover adrenaline as my eyes darted across the terrain, searching for any sign of him.

  "You left the motel grounds. What happened?"

  We brushed leaves and debris from our clothing while my brain quietly tried to make sense of it all, and I gave no fucks to speak about it.

  "Just chasing butterflies."

  "It's nighttime," he pointed out dryly.

  "Just chasing bats."

  Raising his hand, he stopped me from walking past him. "I heard you speaking to someone. I couldn't find you through the darkness, but your voice led me here."

  "Who did you hear?" I wanted to know as much as he did. I needed to know if I was losing my mind or if I really just had a bad date with two gorgons and an underage ghost.

  Straightening his back, he shook his head. "Absolutely no one, other than you." More cautiously than I had seen him act in a long time, Blaire placed his hands on my upper arms and drew me close. I feared he might try to hug me. "Something happened. I'm not doubting you," he said in a low voice. "But now is not the time to lose control of the situation. The snakes are close behind me."

  Was I giving off the vibe of a woman on the edge? It felt more like soaring past the edge only to discover a hidden ledge. I had just experienced a new boundary and was doing my damnedest to process it.

  "Don't worry, it won't get in your way."

  It.

  "Nothing about you is ever in my way. A pain in my ass, maybe."

  I looked up into those Caribbean eyes and saw the man I tried so hard to distance myself from. He was a man of his word, a leopard of stealth and action. I would be ridiculous not to love him with everything that I am, but I would also be a fool to lose myself.

  Sensing my trepidation, Blaire pulled me to his chest, resting his chin on top of my head. Not moving to reciprocate, we stood self-consciously close as I allowed the power of his leopard to quell mine.

  Voices and clatter worked their way through the evening air until we were met with a borage of questions and faces. Blaire released me and we shoved the tender moment away, denying the bond that spoke so fixedly to both of us.

  Darien and Gage looked me over for damage even before they were standing awkwardly close. The pride members hung back, observing. And the snakes were pissed that I had crossed into their sacred grounds. That we were all standing dangerously close to their ancient ones.

  Gage warded them away, standing between them and us. "Back off or we'll sue your crusty asses!"

  "The seal has been broken before the ceremony. She has placed our future kingdom at risk! No one is allowed on sacred grounds without permission!" Venus was one of those people who you wished suffered a loss of words when anger overtook her. Her black hair swished, her olive features overly animated, as she incorporated gestures and glares into her searing words. "If the ceremony fails because this shifter has the brain capacity of fungi, I will personally charge your lepe with tampering and-"

  Blaire cut her off. "There is nothing to insinuate that this area is sacred." His voice grew louder and pointedly more hostile with each statement. "No signs. No special markings. Nothing to protect the space from unwelcomed guests. So if you choose to raise your voice at me, the leader of the Western Lepe, trouble will land on your doorstep much sooner than ours, and I predict you will fair far worse."

  Venus was spooked into silence.

  Foust, whose skin was covered in a maze of light and dark birthmarks calling to the eye, nodded. "She did not mean to offend. We have anticipated the coming event, the change our nest has been relying on, our entire lives. Venus, as well as our fellow serpentes, feel the weight of collapse if the ceremony is a failure."

  "What would make it fail, besides me?" I asked.

  Thinking for a moment, Foust reckoned, "Failure, for a number of reasons, is far more probable than success."

  "This ceremony means everything." More aware of her place in the delicate hierarchy, Venus spoke with a hint of humility. "We fail or we survive. Outsiders being involved will likely harm the nest because you do not know our ways. This is a place where our people commune with our dead. It isn't to be trampled on. If the ancestors become unhappy, they could leave us permanently."

  Feeling like a bucket of chum, I stepped forward, motioning for Gage to move out of the way.

  "I swear, I had no idea that I was on your sacred grounds. I'm sorry."

  Everyone collectively gasped. 'Everyone' mostly being my people, who would have bet on the likelihood of intergalactic space travel long before hearing me apologize for something that wasn't my fault. But these were dark times for the serpentes, and Venus and Foust were right to worry. I respected them for speaking up for their nest.

  And I had just interacted with ancient, dicky gorgons. Would that affect the ceremony? Had I marred the site, somehow?

  "I think she's been poisoned again," Gage announced.

  I shot him a look of death. "Shut your face. Don't ruin my apology."

  Gage turned to Foust and Venus. "Congratulations! I'm still waiting on an apology from Fray flooding my room two years ago."

  "It was a faulty valve," I reminded him.

  "Faulty user," he corrected under his breath.

  Blaire managed to catch our attention. "Everyone back to the motel. It isn't safe out in the open."

  We began filing through the forest. Being one of the last, I walked toward Tomas and his people with the intention of walking past them, but a sudden flare of guilt encased me. Jack had been made real. For a second, anyway. Time had ripped in half and he had stepped through, a living, breathing being. I still recalled the feel of his fur brushing against my bare arm. The feel of the thick tuft of his mane challenging my fingers. The injustice of it smacked me. Tomas deserved to see his son as the proud, formidable lion that he would have been. Somewhere is.

  And I deserved to drown in my guilt.

  As I approached the pride, their nostrils flared. Tomas searched my eyes as Drey and Gable stood at attention by his sides. I could smell his disbelief before he opened his mouth.

  "How?"

  I didn't say anything.

  "How do you smell like my son?"

  I couldn't say anything. I wasn't sure how to answer his question.

  He practically screamed, "How?" This was the most unhinged I had seen Tomas since Jack's funeral when he nearly banished Linay for her hatefulness towards Marisa.

  Without speaking, my gaze settled on the rock formation behind us. I wanted to explain what I had witnessed on the stone. How Jack had shifted, ready to protect me from the ancient force that lived there. How spectacular his lion was.

  Without warning, Tomas pulled me into his arms. He drew me close, leaning his head into the crook of my shoulder, and inhaled. There was nothing sensual about it. He was searching for Jack's scent, and it seemed to be everywhere. When he released me, I held my hand up. The one that had touched Jack's mane.

  Tomas' eyes were rimmed with unshed tears. He pressed my hand between both of his and brought them to his nose. His breath trembled as he squeezed his eyes shut, an expression of pure longing replacing his usual mask of duty and leadership. Jack's lion form was only a dream to Tomas and his pride. They never had the pleasure of witnessing his transformation. It was a great loss to their community to have that moment stolen away by the Dissenters.

  I couldn't help but think that I was just a thief in another form, stealing their great moment away from them yet again.

  When Tomas pulled away, he looked down. An impressive auburn hair from Jack's mane had shifted from my shirt to the front of his, tickling his neck. Gently coiling it up in the palm of his hand, he smiled. "I have never believed in miracles until now." Looking into my eyes, he said, "I will ask one more time. How?"

  Believing we were the only ones left in the tight clearing of blessed land, I said, "There is power here. First, he came to me in a dream. Then," I pointed to the rock formation, "he protected me. I touched his fur." Shaking my head, I whispered, "I'
m still asking myself how."

  The snakes were right, it was a sacred place where the living and the dead communed. Where fates were decided. Where rules of natural order were broken.

  Tomas nodded before he turned and walked away, Drey and Gable remaining close as they made their way back to the motel.

  Taking a deep breath, I moaned, "What the fuck?"

  "I've been wondering the same thing," Cody said, walking out of the shadows. He had been waiting for me, which was reckless as well as clever. The initiates were being picked off one by one. He would do best to stick as closely by my side as possible from this point forward.

  We walked swiftly and quietly back to our motel room. After the pings and swooshes signaled the door was fully locked and triple enforced, I turned to Cody.

  "How much did you hear?"

  "Everything."

  His usual coolness had subsided. There was a serious side to Cody, thankfully. I never trusted happy-go-lucky pricks. They always had something to hide. Possessing a serious demeanor proved that Cody could think under pressure and solve harder problems than 'yes' or 'no' questions.

  "Blaire could only hear me."

  "I hate to talk bad about somebody I barely know, but he must be deaf. I was farther away than him -and human- and I heard them plain as day."

  A shiver ran up my spine at the thought of the gorgons, causing goose bumps to rise on my forearms.

  "What did you see?"

  "Past the black fog?"

  Nodding slowly, I chose my next words carefully. "Did you see anything unusual?"

  "You mean, like, 'giant fucking lions in the South' unusual or 'dead skeletons climbing out of rocks' unusual?"

  I practically jumped out of my skin as I pointed at him accusingly. "You saw them!"

  "It would have been a hard sight to miss. The darkness only kept your friends from seeing."

  The realization that the sacred place of the serpentes contained death magic tugged at my body, making it feel extra heavy. I collapsed in the chair next to Cody's. We sat, eye to eye, elbows on knees, trying to figure out what it all meant.

  "How could it be invisible to every shifter in the area, but a fucking human -no offense- sees right through the smoke and mirrors of immortal gorgons?"