Skinned

by Blakely Chorpenning

  The seriousness of Tomas' expression wouldn't budge. "Thank you," he said.

  "Don't." I raised my hand in the air. "Please."

  His wife wrapped her arms around me. "We must thank you."

  Looking somber, Tomas offered, "Sometimes truth cuts to the bone. When it does, you'll find out what kind of person you are." His wife released me, taking her place beside the only man she cared to call home. A king and queen by their own right. Shaking my hand, Tomas said, "Don't be scared to look a matter straight to the bone."

  I nodded quietly as they got in an old borrowed Ford and followed Drey and Gable out of the parking lot. The Corolla had to be towed home. I waved to the men. Returning the sentiment, they looked relieved to be leaving, to say the least.

  Linay hopped in her fancy little sports car. When I approached the driver's window, she spat, "What are you gonna be an asshole about today?"

  "Tuesday morning, 6:00 a.m., the front gate at Deer Park."

  "What?" She was confused. I would be, too. No smartass remarks. No snide name-calling.

  "It's where the kids and I run."

  I wasn't above inviting her to exercise with us. It's where I was able to open my mind and do my best thinking. Maybe she could use some clarity. It had done wonders for me. However, I was above saying it out loud. If she wanted to play our shifter games, she could show the fuck up like the rest of us. If not, that was on her.

  Linay looked stunned. I walked away, listening to her pull out of the parking lot as a car rolled in.

  "I heard you made quite an impression on the serpente community," my dad said, getting out of the old car. "Sorry I missed it."

  "Where were you?"

  "Oh," he waved his hand in the air, as if he could bat away my question. "I let serpente business stay just that. I live with one. My interest stops there." He hugged me. "It feels like we just said hello. I'm sorry we didn't get to spend time together."

  That's how it always was. My dad would put off spending time with me until the last minute. Was he scared that I might not love him as much if I actually got to know him? The likelier reason was the secrets he kept. I was smart enough, and grown enough, to know they existed. I swore to dig them up, chase them out, or rip them to shreds one day. And that day was coming because I didn't plan on waiting until it was too late.

  "It's okay, Dad."

  When our hug ended, part of me wilted. I would miss him like crazy. Like always.

  He handed me a brown suitcase. "Here are your brother's things."

  "Shit."

  "Hey," he placed his hand on my chin, "Be good to him. It hasn't been easy for him here since the change."

  Seizing the suitcase from his hand, I admitted, "I can't make any promises."

  "Well, do your best. That's at least better than most people's worst. Love you, baby."

  I tried to smile. "Love you, too."

  Packing the suitcase with the rest of them, I didn't wait to hop into the front passenger seat. Lydia slid in behind me with a bag full of snacks.

  "We raided the snack machine. Elder Kit also gave us a few leftovers from the buffet," she admitted, a bit bubbly.

  As I watched Venus and Foust -the only two serpentes not at the celebration- pack up the lucky souls who would never be king, I wondered out loud, "What will happen to them now?"

  Lydia shrugged. "They go home, like us. Cody was the only human. He would have been disposed of, I guess, to guard the therianthrope secret." She took a bite out of a chip. "It's good to be king."

  Joshua sat behind the wheel as Warren and Gage got in. Warren unconsciously lifted his left arm, allowing Lydia to tuck in without a word. Their lovey-dovey actions usually struck a nerve. Today, it brought to mind Cody and made me sad. He was starting a new life. I could wish him luck and joy, but underneath, a layer of jealousy boiled because I had to share him with the serpentes. He had to be king, and I had to go home.

  Andre appeared at the back window, looking morose. They made room for him next to Gage in the very back.

  "This should be a fun trip," Joshua lied.

  I sighed, looking at the rear passengers in the vanity mirror on the sunshade. "Andre, put your seatbelt on."

  "Fuck you!" he said in a sing-song tone.

  The shade snapped closed. Fighting the urge to lunge at him, I turned slowly. Everyone fell silent.

  "Put your seatbelt on before I choke you with it."

  Crossing his arms, he looked dead into my eyes and shook his head.

  "Put it on, now," I demanded through clenched teeth.

  "Dude," Gage warned under his breath, "I should have sat somewhere else."

  I lunged before my brain could comprehend my actions. Lydia and Warren parted. I flew between them, snatching Andre by the collar of his shirt, pulling him over the seatback. He landed in the middle seat with us.

  "Eat shit!" he yelled.

  "You eat shit!" I returned.

  We immediately started grabbing snacks from Lydia's coveted bag, popping open lids and shoving the contents in the other's face. Casserole, salad, turkey slices. You name it, we threw it.

  "Not the Brie," Lydia bemoaned.

  Andre shoved the soft cheese in my face. The smell assaulted my nose before the carefully sliced white squares exploded in my hair.

  When we were out of full containers, I ripped open a bag of chips and started shoving them in Andre's face. Lydia jumped into Warren's lap on the other side of the Pilot. Andre's face was shoved against the windowpane as I forced chips into his mouth.

  "Mmm," he exclaimed, "I love barbeque!" His words were muffled by the food falling out as fast as I could shove it in. "Got any more?"

  "I hope you like sour cream!"

  As I grabbed a second bag, we noticed Darien, Blaire, and our father staring at us from the parking lot. We froze. Everyone else in the vehicle pretended to be busy, avoiding our lepe leader's death stare.

  Calmly, I rolled the window down. Chips fell out of Andre's mouth to the ground.

  In a take-no-prisoners tone, I stated, "We thought we had a snack shortage. Turns out, there's enough for everyone." After a moment of silence, I rolled the window back up.

  I said I was trying to be a better person. Nothing a little exercising and meditating wouldn't fix.

  Letting go of Andre, I took a moment to survey the damage. The entire vehicle and its occupants had been turned into one giant fucking buffet.

  Turning to Lydia, I said, "I'm sorry we murdered your snack bag... I'm sorry for a lot of things."

  She smiled like she couldn't smell the Brie burrowing into everything she was wearing. "You don't have to apologize. We love you."

  "A little less," Gage chimed in.

  Lydia shot him an evil expression. "He's kidding. Mostly kidding."

  Together, we swept the car out and started over. Food still clung to our clothes and parts of the interior, but we left the bulk of it in the parking lot of the Knot's Landing Motel. A keepsake.

  I took my seat in the front, Andre in the back.

  Gage looked at him incredulously. "Put your seatbelt on."

  He did.

  They all did.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three weeks passed as we settled back into daily lepe life...with a few tweaks. The emptiness of Jack's death was replaced by a newfound sense of amity between the shifter communities after word spread of Tomas' family healing by my handiwork. Of course, he never shared how it was possible or that we were standing on ancient gorgon grounds when it happened, only that Jack had used my broken heart as a conduit to deliver a message of love, which laid the groundwork for hope between our groups. The strands of Jack's mane solidified their claim. Undeniable proof.

  And I found proof of my own healing with family.

  Sunday dinners at Mom and Frank's, once again, fed my soul as much as it ever had my stomach. I no longer felt shame or guilt for sharing a table with my loved ones when Jack's parents had locked themselves away, even from each other. They wou
ld never be quite whole, but every tomorrow brought new possibilities, and that was a miracle all of its own for Tomas, who could hear his wife singing any given afternoon.

  Andre fit in better than I had expected. He could be a real asshat. Then again, I've been given the same shining review at times. We had a lot to mend between us. I didn't want to be an idea anymore, I wanted to be a big sister. The same could be said about my relationship with the girls.

  I spent a lot of time talking to them about my experience, again, omitting the existence of my serpente ties. I wasn't exactly denying it, merely delaying the shit storm the revelation might cause if it were to be shared amongst the wrong shifters.

  While Mira and Marisa were spellbound by the tale of Jack's ghost, Ena was a bit more skeptical, never passing up a chance to bring it up. I grew used to her third degree whenever we met for a jog.

  "So he just decided to come to you in serpente territory?" she asked suspiciously.

  "Yes. He came because I felt threatened."

  "By what," Ena scoffed, "naked shifters hallucinating in the woods?"

  "That's ridiculous."

  The others hadn't passed on the chance to gossip about the serpentes and their lackluster ceremony. The oblivion to the gorgons and their archaic magical hold on our realm spurred a ton of scolding stories questioning serpente rationality and sobriety. Some from my own household, except for Darien. He knew that something had changed me during our time in the nest, and not knowing what ate away at him. I was still sidestepping our talk that he had been trying to corner me with every other day. I wasn't ready for that can of worms to explode.

  Not missing the chance to glare at me, Ena's eyebrows raised. "Or did you learn a secret that you're hiding from your own lepe?"

  Glaring back with equal mastery, I said, "Linay will be here tomorrow, so lay off the conspiracy theories for a while."

  Because they were way too accurate.

  "Again?" she griped.

  Mira chimed in, "I like her," just as Marisa mumbled, "She scares me."

  "You'll get used to her. Get in the car." As the girls made their way to my Mustang, I tugged Marisa's arm, holding her back. "Let's talk."

  Once we were alone, I sighed, kicking a rock with my sneaker.

  "I've been waiting for the right time to tell you something, but I don't think a perfect moment exists for this type of thing."

  "You can tell me," she said in her soft yet confident voice.

  "I have a message for you."

  "Like a text message?"

  Shaking my head, I confided, "Like a message from the dead."

  Marisa's body stiffened. "From Jack?"

  Wrapping her thin frame in a powerful hug, I repeated what he had told me.

  "You were the first girl I ever kissed."

  She crushed my ribs, squeezing harder with each fallen tear. We stood by the picnic area of the park for some time while Marisa found some healing of her own. The last time she saw Jack, he was being dragged into a room by monsters. Dragged to his death. To know that he was safe now, somewhere now, thinking about her... That would bring her comfort when the nightmares came.

  My nightmares felt farther away. Ant-sized in comparison to the old giants they used to be. I was sleeping alone these days, to the chagrin of Blaire. He had felt defeated in nest territory, useless as a leader. And here, in his own domain, he had lost his way around me. I wished I could apologize, but the only way out is through the beast of absence. If he could lose me, he could find me again.

  Marisa wiped the last of her tears away. "Thank you," she whispered.

  "Some things can't be taken by violence or greed or control. You gave something to Jack that crossed the boundaries of death. Part of you is with him forever."

  Smiling wistfully, she nodded.

  "I'll meet you in the car after I pack up our food."

  Marisa scuffed the rubber soles of her sneakers against the pebbles all the way to the car as I picked up empty Danish wrappers and packed the breakfast leftovers.

  "Trash duty?" a familiar voice asked from the shadows. "Restitution for your crimes?"

  "I'd ask you to help, but I'm sure you would use some lame excuse like, 'My arms aren't corporeal,' right?"

  Shane's laughter echoed through the chilly early morning air.

  I pointed out, "I expected to see you much sooner, like three weeks ago."

  His humorous tone turned thoughtful. "We discovered something. I needed to be certain before bringing it to you."

  Stuffing the glass containers into the zip-up bag, I charged, "Tell me."

  "There is a spy in your lepe. A spy for the Dissenters."

  "What?" I hurriedly shelved my disbelief, not wanting to draw attention from the girls sitting in the car twenty yards away. They had been through enough. If I could protect them from further pain, I would fight half the world with one arm tied behind my back. "Tell me who. I'll rip his throat out before he can beg me not to," I growled.

  "That might be a bad idea. You don't want to ruin the upholstery in your car."

  The breath left my lungs and my head drowned in static as I turned with inhuman precision toward the Mustang, where Marisa, Ena, and Mira waited patiently for their ride home. One of these young women -one of these girls- had turned on our lepe. On me.

  An overwhelming sense of dread eclipsed the spearhead of my anger because I had worked too hard protecting them to let a wolf sneak into the flock. "Damn."

  "I'm sorry." Shane disappeared, leaving me to this ugly revelation.

  I sat on the bench, discarding my clean-up attempt. When I needed answers the most, the world seemed agonizingly quiet. In one week, I was supposed to visit Cody. Three weeks ago, I said goodbye to Jack. Every day, I wrestled with the memory of Blaire, even while he was a living, breathing thorn in my ass. And now the Dissenters had found a way to snuff out the light in my soul.

  Praying for an answer, I remembered the Tarot card. How could I forget it? I carried it everywhere, like it was an extension of my being, afraid to open it. Pulling it from the lunch sack, I released a long-held breath and unfolded the delicate crease.

  The Devil.

  Glancing at my Mustang before grabbing the bags, Tomas' words sat heavy on my mind. 'Truth cuts to the bone,' he had said. Not if I get there first.

  "The devil better run," I whispered.

  Read an Excerpt from

  A Madison Lark Adventure Three: Kissed

  Chapter One

  My fight had been restored ten-fold once the serpente king was crowned by Medusa's sisters, the gorgons. Once I had said my peace to Jack, the pride boy, who wasn't stuck anywhere resembling limbo or Hell.

  Once I knew there was a traitor among us.

  Kicking Haden Nash with the might of my innermost beast, a smile cracked my vicious facade when he stumbled backward.

  "Not eating your Wheaties?" I purred.

  The vampire was losing our sparring match.

  "Not used to seeing the fire in your eyes, that's all."

  "There's nothing wrong with my eyes," I protested too quickly, jabbing him in the throat.

  I used to be proud of my saffron kitty cat eyes...until I found out they were practically a calling card, screaming to the world that I had gorgon blood. I had recently discovered that I was a descendant of Medusa, the only mortal gorgon. Keeping such a truth hidden from those I respected was like living with a burrowing animal in my gut.

  Nash held his hands up, surrendering. "Relax."

  Stalking him, I chided, "Don't you know it's rude as fuck to tell someone to relax?"

  Nash crouched in anticipation of my next attack, having expertly run countless scenarios in his head from years of experience. He could guess my next three moves before I had time to blink. Which is why my psyche didn't throw a tantrum when he dropped me to the unforgiving tile in one swift blur.

  "My abounding years tell me that you are hiding something."

  I accepted his hand as he extended it to help
me up. Re-grounding myself, I scoffed and rolled my eyes before an awkward pfhif noise escaped my lips.

  He sighed. "A human toddler is more adept at lying. Or, should I say, omitting the truth?"

  "Or the lack of sunlight has shriveled your brain and now you're delusional."

  Pretending to entertain my hypothesis, Nash mused, "A valid concern."

  He was only an inch or so taller, and his dark hair was expertly clipped to the nape, calling to mind a bygone private eye.

  "Does it bother you," I asked hesitantly, "to know that you'll die as something totally different than what you were born as?"

  My candor caught him off guard. I immediately took advantage, kicking him in the ribs before landing a rigid elbow to the jaw. In a hot second, the floor was at his back and I was smiling.

  Raising onto his elbows, Nash pondered my question as if I hadn't just kicked his ass.

  "It would only bother me if I hadn't accepted the duality of my existence. Many supernaturals are, in fact, not born but made. We have the added advantage, as well as the shortcoming, of thinking with two minds and two hearts. You are but one animal when the skin is peeled away and the fur dries. Is it easier? Who's to say?"

  I wanted to tell Nash right then what I knew about the gorgons and my bloodline. It should have been easy to confide in him, but it felt wrong to want to tell him instead of my brother, Darien. Shouldn't I trust family first? Shame sealed my lips.

  "So being more than one thing is an asset?"

  "I...think you're only going to hear what you want to hear." He stood, brushing himself off.

  Ignoring my inner turmoil, I pointed out, "Lucy has no problem living with one foot in each life."

  "Doesn't she?"

  Lucy Wells, the sunniest vampire you ever did meet, was Nash's ex. She was dating a handsome, enigmatic, werewolf. And yet, she accepted an invite every Saturday night to Nash' townhome for a light human dinner, watered-down coffee, and small talk. Something told me she would never accept her vampirism over human pleasantries, or deny her fangs over feelings. There was a balance to her madness. Maybe I just needed to find my balance between leopard and gorgon. It would be helpful if I was going to keep sneaking around with Cody, the newly crowned king of the serpentes.