by Lynn Red
“Yes, yes, yes, my friends,” Lyle was starting to excite himself, and was taking the audience along with him. “We have quite a show for you tonight. This is a bigger group than we’ve had for a long, long time. And when big crowds show up, wild, wonderful, incredible things tend to come. So now, settle in, get a drink, get a snack, and let the show take you away. And now—”
Lex and Cass took a unified deep breath. If she had been looking, she would have seen Lex curl his lip in a smile.
“Cassiopeia, the most beautiful lion tamer in the galaxy, and Lex, a savage beast, wild, fierce and deadly. He’s eight hundred and eight pounds of nothing but muscle, teeth, and rage.”
Cass rolled her eyes, Lex let out a chuffing sound. The two exchanged one more glance. “You ready?” she asked him. He nodded.
That time she noticed. She couldn’t not notice. She asked a question and he nodded. “I must be crazy,” she said. “But I’m almost certain I just talked to a lion.”
Lex nudged her hand, prodded her side.
“Will this woman tame this beast?” Lyle was shouting now, his voice a whirlwind of excitement and power. Whatever she thought about him, if nothing else in the world, he knew how to work a damn crowd. “Or will this be the night that the monster finally sinks in his teeth? Like I said, friends, when crowds are big, wild things happen.”
As the gate flew open, Lex bounded into the ring, throwing his head back and forth, flashing his massive, dagger-like canines in the bright light that filled the ring. He gave a roar so deafening that Cass winced just slightly. She’d never seen him like this. So full of rage… or was it theatricality?
“Oh ho!” Lyle trumpeted over the loudspeaker. “I’ve never seen the lion this worked up! Cass, you better get out here and save these people from this beast!”
Lex stalked up and down, snapping his huge jaws at the audience, who were all in absolutely no danger. But they didn’t know that.
Every time the massive lion snapped or snarled, the audience recoiled, children screamed in a mixture of horror and delight, parents laughed, hugging their babies close and playing along with the fake terror.
Lex turned back to Cass, his eyes blazing. Something was there, something more than normal, something beyond what she was used to seeing. The fire in his eyes burned brighter, the flex to his muscles was tighter, harder than she’d ever seen. It was enough to put just the slightest stir of worry in the pit of Cass’s stomach. Why was he doing this? And had he really nodded to her?
The lion narrowed his flaring eyes and gave another huge, ear-splitting roar. As she took a step out into the spotlight, Cass felt, for the first time in years, a stir of excitement, of anticipation, that she couldn’t explain. Something was going to happen, she felt it in her soul. But what?
“Yah!” she cracked her whip above her head, swinging it in a circle as Lex drew nearer, snarling, and opening those soulful eyes wider. “Hyah!”
She cracked it again, and the lion feigned a wince.
He roared again, she cracked the whip and led him through a series of obstacles, through a flaming hoop and over a cement sphere. He was so intense, his muscles flexing and surging, that he seemed like a different creature altogether.
Lex tilted his head in a way that, if he were a person, would say “are you ready?” or “is it time?” and studied Cass’s face. She furrowed her brow, eyes flicking back and forth as she cracked the whip and Lex hopped onto a ball and balanced.
The crowd cheered, because the crowd always cheers. Lex roared, and they cheered again. He threw his head back and shook his mane and they broke into wild, almost furious cheers.
And then, Lex looked in Lyle’s direction.
This wasn’t part of the show.
Cass looked at him one last time. He tilted his head. “What are you saying?” she whispered. “What are you trying to say?”
As he took a step toward the MC’s booth, it started making sense. “Holy shit,” Cass swore, and clenched the whip in her fist. “What’s the point of living without some adventure, right?”
That time, she saw the smile. Saw the snarl of lips pulling back over teeth. “What are you?” she asked. Lex let out a low, dangerous growl. He snapped the air with his jaws, clapping them together with noise like a bear trap. She whipped the air, and once again the crowd erupted with boiling-over excitement.
And then, the lion feigned a move to the left before bursting out in a run in the opposite direction. As soon as he saw what was happening, Lyle went for the tranquilizer gun he habitually kept in case of something just like this.
“What’n the fuck?” he shouted.
Cass snapped her whip, popping his hand, as the sweating, warty man’s pig eyes fixed on her. “I told you – you wouldn’t get away with this,” she snarled as she yanked his arm forward and smelled his rancid cologne. “I told you.”
Lex waited just long enough for the crowd to part before he leapt the ring and looked back at Cass. She got the sense that was his way of saying “now.”
Without a second thought, she gave another hard yank on the whip, making Lyle screech in pain, and charged after Lex, with the crowd parting around them, confusion and chaos replacing the cheers.
As the two charged into the night, into the hopelessly blank, empty southern Texas desert, the last thing Cass heard from Lyle was desperate howling to the crowd to calm down, that everything was fine, that this was all part of the show.
She laughed, and so did Lex.
“What are you?” she asked, lurching over to brace her hands on her knees and catch her breath. “And what the hell just happened.”
He pulled his lips back over those massive teeth and stared at her for a moment. Then, he grumbled a sound that sounded suspiciously like he said “soon.”
-4-
“Weather the storm. Just… just weather the storm.”
-Cass
Morning broke, and almost immediately, so did a rainstorm that rolled over the desert and cracked the sky with thunder with surprising quickness.
“Good thing we found this place to hide,” she said to Lex, who she was convinced could understand her. And, in her confused terror, Cass had started to believe he was responding to her. “That’s a hell of a storm.”
With a grunt, Lex got to his feet and moved to the opening of the small, copper-colored, rocky outcropping that they’d settled into after a few hours of running. He’d stayed there all night, watching the horizon for any sign of activity. Cass caught a few hours of sleep, and nothing more had happened. No one was chasing them – then again, if Lyle’s plan was to convince everyone it was part of the show, then sending a bunch of pissed off people chasing the performers would make that seem slightly suspect.
She shot him a sidelong glance, and frowned slightly. “Well, here we are, old friend,” Cass said, feeling a little like Yoda as she looked across the desert. In one direction there was something resembling a shanty town of trailers, and then in the other, absolutely nothing. Nothing, not a house, not a car, no road or water, just open desert that stretched so far it became open sky.
“What in the hell do we do? He’s gonna come after us before too long.”
Lex sidled up to her and growled softly, laying his head in her lap. “We stay ahead of them, one step at a time.”
It took about four seconds for Cass to process that the lion just talked to her, at which point she jumped to her feet, eyes bugged out of her skull, and stared at him as he laughed.
“I was going to wait, but… well, now we’re fugitives.”
She just stared at him, pointed for a while, and wondered what in the hot hell was going on. “I’m nuts, right? I’m crazy. I ran into the desert with a lion and now I think he’s talking to me. I’m one hundred percent certifiable. Holy shit I went nuts. Right?” she asked. “I’m nuts, right?”
The talking went silent. The voice was gone, the soulful looks went blank, like Lex was about to reveal something to her, and then got scared off at the last
second. He stood, stared at her face for a moment, and then shook his head. She watched him, he turned and retreated further back into the rocky outcropping where they’d spent the night. He paced back and forth before settling.
“Well sorry,” Cass offered, looking out over the desert and wondering what she’d done to scare him off from whatever kind of revelation he was going to make. “I didn’t mean to upset you. And I certainly didn’t want to scare you or whatever I actually managed to do.”
Lex growled a soft, slightly relaxed, but pleasant sound, and rested his huge head on his paws.
“Look,” Cass said, standing up as a cloud of dust. “The hell is that?”
She pointed at the cloud that stretched up from the desert, up into the sky. “That isn’t what I think, is it?”
She felt the lion under the palm of her hand. He had somehow come right to her side, against her, warm and growling and powerful. Somehow, just his being there made her feel better, made her feel more safe and secure. But there was still the issue of the truck, or the jeep, or whatever it was, making its way across the flat, open desert.
“It is, isn’t it?” her voice was flat, unsurprised, but still terrified. “We gotta run, don’t we?”
At that, Lex finally reacted. With a snarl, he flexed his shoulders, lowered his head. Something about the way he reacted told her that there weren’t going to be any long runs. There wasn’t going to be any hiding.
“What are we going to do?”
She shot a glance back at Lex, who was yawning sleepily, then shook his head and relaxed on his paws. Seeing him completely nonplussed about the jeep or whatever it was zooming around the cracked, rocky ground, Cass trotted over to the lion, and shook him until he opened one of huge eyes, then slowly closed it again.
She blew a puff of air between her lips, flipping a fallen tendril of hair back on top of her head. “Really?” she said, standing up and driving her fists into her hips. “So this is the grand plan, then? You shoot me a couple of sidelong glances, you either talk to me, or I go crazy enough to think a lion is chatting me up, and then you go to sleep? That’s it?”
Cass started pacing. “We’re alone, unarmed, and sitting in the middle of the damn desert. In the only land form anywhere around. Huge rocky thing?” she used a mocking voice. “Yep! That’s where we are, the single place for what seems like a hundred miles that’s safe from rain. And we’re in it, and there’s a damn jeep coming our way and you’re sleeping.”
“I’m tired,” Lex said, simply and flatly. “So I’m sleeping.”
Her eyes shot open and she spun on her heel. “So you are talking?”
“You’re not gonna let me sleep, are you?” The lion’s lips didn’t curl in quite the right way for the words to all come out in perfect English. There was a little twist to some of the words, and a strange lift to his voice, even though it was somewhat gravelly and hard. “I’m tired.”
“Okay,” Cass said, more to herself than to Lex, who had closed his eyes again. “So, good, talking lion. I’m living in a Disney movie, and I’ve got a pissed off carnie chasing me. What could be better? Oh right, the only way this could be better is if I was in the middle of the desert. Oh! Good! Check again!”
She hadn’t gotten this huffed up in a long time. When she finally looked back at Lex, his eyes were closed, but his shoulders were shaking slightly. “And now you’re laughing at me?” Cass felt her cheeks burn. The flush went all the way down the sides of her neck. She’d had plenty of occasions to be angry in the past several years, but she never was. For a second, the thought clicked in her head that the only other time she did get this irritated was with her dad, who she loved dearly, despite his shortcomings.
Loved dearly, she thought, at once chewing on her lip and pinching the bridge of her nose. “In love with a lion?” Cass shook her head. “More like just used to one. Oh my God and here I am talking to the lion again. Maybe Lyle grabbing me will be a good thing. I can flip out and get committed.”
“That isn’t him,” Lex rolled onto his back, stretched, and then hopped to his feet.
Something about him – some kind of scent, or feeling, Cass wasn’t sure enough to say what it was – called to her. She watched the muscles in his shoulders flex and immediately felt comfortable again, just like she had when he protected her for all those years from all those lusty men and angry women.
“Wait, what?” Cass asked. “How do you know?”
Twisting his neck from side to side, Lex snuffled and yawned again. “See how far your eyes let you see? I can see three times further. And your ears? Mine are five times as good.”
Distracted, Cass looked back out at the desert. Sure enough, the jeep spun a doughnut, then another, and a third, before darting off in the opposite direction. “How do you know?” she asked. “I mean, how do you know what it’s like to see as a person? To hear as one?”
She watched the Jeep bounce over a rocky patch of desert and disappear behind a patch of mesquites.
“Because,” Lex said, his voice deeper, rounder, and infinitely less uncomfortable sounding. Before the fact that there was a warm palm radiating heat through her shoulder could register, Cass turned around, promptly let her mouth fall open at the sight of the man from her dreams, from her visions, whatever they were. She looked him up, and down, shamelessly staring at the thing hanging between his legs.
And then, she went white, and fell in a heap onto the floor.
*
“That didn’t take long,” Lex said, smiling gently and sweeping the back of his hand against the side of Cass’s face.
She blinked heavily, and moved her eyes around, taking in the scene. “Shallow cave,” she said, her voice hollow and crackling. “Shallow cave, weird sandstone floor. Yep, not in my trailer, ran away, still safe.”
Lex cleared his throat. She lifted her eyebrow, but didn’t look his direction. Even though her head was resting in his lap, and he was stroking her face with those warm, soft fingertips, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the face.
“This is real, isn’t it?” she asked.
He saw that her eyes moved underneath her closed lids. When she opened them, she’d be staring straight at him. He ran his thumb along her full bottom lip, and trickled a brush down the front of her neck. “I can pretend it isn’t,” he whispered. “If you can’t deal with what I am, what I really am, I’ll get you to safety and you never have to think about me again.”
With her eyes still closed, though they were fluttering as though she was really having to fight herself not to open them, Cass’s lip began to shake. “Why… why would I want that?” she asked. “Tell me this is real. Tell me I’m not going to open my eyes and find out I’m in a hospital bed, or back at home and the whole last chunk of my life was a long, protracted dream-slash-nightmare.”
She laid her hand on top of his for a moment before intertwining her fingers with Lex’s. Somehow, they perfectly fit together, like they were always meant to be. She took a deep breath, held it in for a few moments, and let it out with a long, shuddering exhale. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
“I don’t know how,” Lex said softly. “I don’t have the words, not all of them. I haven’t let myself be like this around another person for… well, since before I was caught.”
Cass sniffed, and nodded lightly. Her hair stuck to the sides of her face – she must’ve been sweating while she was knocked out, which wasn’t all that surprising – and when she squeezed her eyes tight again, a tear rolled down the side of her face. She swallowed hard and parted her lips to speak, but no sound came out of her moving mouth.
The next second, Cass’s nose filled with that familiar scent of man, of sweat dust. In the next breath, Lex’s lips enveloped hers, his tongue sliding along the surface and behind hers, tasting deeply. For a brief, wonderful moment, he pushed his tongue between her teeth, against hers, and then pulled away with a soft suck. As he sat back, Cass’s deep blue eyes opened.
“I’ll take
that as a yes,” she whispered. “You never kissed me like that in my dreams.”
“That’s because you were imagining me,” he said. “Our souls were so close, but so far apart. I dreamed of you, I ached for you, yearned to have you, but… I couldn’t, not then. Not until—”
“Why didn’t you show me… you? I mean, you saw me in all sorts of ways. What was so bad about me knowing what was really under that fur?”
“You’re taking this surprisingly well,” Lex said. “I mean, I am a shape shifting lion, after all. I thought maybe you’d be a little more shocked.”
“I passed out at first,” she said. Her eyes were locked on his, and then studied his face.
She sat up, spun around and in one smooth, fluid motion, straddled Lex’s lap, settling down until his face was only inches away from hers. Between her legs, she felt a stir, and remembered snatches of the dreams, bits and pieces of those fuzzy, warm, long-forgotten memories.
“I guess I was ready for,” she gulped. “Well, I mean, the dreams. If you’d been any different, or if it hadn’t been you, I don’t… ugh, brain getting fuzzy again. Maybe I’m not accepting this as effortlessly as I thought. I better…”
As she lay back, Lex followed her down, looping his muscled arm underneath her head, and gathering up the jacket she’d been wearing as part of her lion taming get-up for cover. Her breathing grew slower, more even, as she relaxed. But then instead of staying closed, she opened one of her eyes, looking up at him.
“Just checking,” she said. “I’m still not entirely convinced I’m awake. Still not totally convinced I’m not—”
When Lex slid his hand down her chest and underneath the waistband of her jeans, Cass finally decided that yeah, she was totally not sleeping.
Every nerve in her body, every pore and follicle, prickled to life. She felt a rush, first of excitement, then fear, then anticipation, and finally relief. “This is right, isn’t it?” she asked with her eyes closed. His finger stroked her the way she’d dreamed of so many times, but it was so much sweeter when Lex’s fingertip bounced over her not-too-recently-trimmed sex, and he sucked a deep breath through his nose.