by Selina Woods
Two lions and two wolves this time. Once the wolves had my scent, there was no place I could hide. Nor could I lead them straight to my hidden lair, even if I could hold them at bay once I got to it. Putting on more speed, I flew down the street, trying to think of a way to get the wolves’ noses off my scent. I heard their shouts as they chased me, but their drugged systems wouldn’t allow them to keep up. They didn’t have to, I reminded myself grimly. The damn wolves would simply follow my scent, run me down to exhaustion.
How to confuse them? I ran down an alley, thinking to lose them by climbing to the rooftops. I passed a dumpster, then instantly skidded to a halt. The damn thing reeked of rotten garbage and the corpse of a dead dog. “Time to get stinky,” I muttered, then leaped inside. Trying to hold my breath against the horrid stench, I rolled in the nasty mixture until my fur and mane were covered in the nasty mix. Hearing them only a block away, the wolves yelling that they still had my scent, I climbed from the dumpster.
A fire escape loomed above me. A good dozen feet above my head, its lower rung offered a tempting escape. Crouching low to the ground, I leaped upward, and seized the iron in my paws. Lions don’t climb straight up very well, so I switched to my human. Hand over hand, I lifted my body until my boots hit the rung, then up I climbed.
Lying on the platform under a window, I lay in the shadows and tried to quell my breathing. The disgusting odor on me nearly made me hurl, but the pack hit the alley and all thoughts of puking left me. Motionless, barely breathing, I watched below as the wolves circled, their noses to the ground, trying to find where I went.
“Where the fuck is he, Dermot?” growled a lion, pacing, restless.
“His trail ends here. Is he hiding in the shit?”
The other lion leaped to the top of the dumpster and dug around in the trash. “Only a dead dog in here,” he snarled, leaping back down. “Where’d he go?”
Both wolves searched, but as the odor of the rotting corpse and the garbage was everywhere, they had no idea where I’d gone. Unless they looked up and saw me, they had no choice but to give up the chase.
The lion leader cuffed one of the wolves, making him yelp in pain. “You’re no fucking good. Let’s go.”
The small pack loped out of the alley, leaving me to breathe in my own stink with relief. I climbed back down the fire escape, then went lion. None of my lairs had showers, and I needed one desperately. No way could I sleep through the day like this. Fortunately, I knew of an old truck stop that had them, a place near the old highway that ran through the city.
Not many folks used the place, and the water wasn’t hot, but I wasn’t about to be picky. Keeping a watch out for my lusty pals, or any of their ilk, I galloped hard to the truck stop. Though long out of business, and often ransacked by anyone passing by, I roamed among the broken shelves until I found a packet of soap bars. In a back office, I lucked upon a ragged blanket and someone’s old peacoat. Stripping out of my clothes, stashing the cash and the jewelry in a coat pocket, I hit the icy water of the showers.
Soaping myself, my skin turning blue with cold, my teeth chattering, I washed the repulsive stench from my skin and hair. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I got out of the shower. While I could freeze to death in the icy cold, I dried myself as best I could with the blanket, then put on the thick coat. Back in my lion form, I started trotting, heading for my closest lair.
The movement kept me from freezing, and once I reached it, I lit a very rare fire with my human hands. Only in extreme conditions did I light one, as the scent of the smoke could be read and followed. Huddling next to it, my blankets around me, I finally warmed up. Munching on my cache of dried meat and some stale bread, I tossed a few more pieces of wood on the fire and lay down.
My instincts told me dawn approached. Exhaustion took hold, and I fell hard to sleep.
When I woke late in the afternoon, the fire had long since burned to blackened wood and ash. Stiff, cold, I sat up and yawned, the blanket sliding off my shoulders, and scratched a persistent itch in my neck with my hind leg. “Now you got no clothes, dumb ass.”
When I shifted forms, all I had to cover myself with was a peacoat. Pondering what to do, I sniffed the air drifting in for any potential danger, wondering if Jae might help me. If she was still at her apartment, that was. Deciding she was my best hope for much-needed attire on short notice, I left my quaint home and emerged under low hanging clouds and the scent of snow on the wind.
Trotting down alleys, avoiding people and cars, I slipped from street to street, pausing now and then to sniff the light breeze. Enforcers shagged the business owners and civilians for the taxes owed to the big guy, but as they were easy to spot, they were easier to avoid. During the cold weather, shifters often moved about in their four-legged forms, thus many wolves, lions, and deer trotted down the sidewalks.
Making sure I wasn’t seen, I entered Jae’s apartment building and loped up the steps. Paws weren’t great for knocking, but I scratched at her door, then stood back so she could view me through the peephole. Hearing her on the far side, I glanced around for any witnesses as I waited for her to identify me.
“Declan?”
“Yeah, I need a little help.”
She unlocked the door and swung it open, permitting me to slip in. “Why aren’t you on two legs?” she inquired, closing and locking it again.
“I, er, got no clothes.”
Jae’s eyes grew wide, and a small giggle popped from her mouth. “What happened?”
“I ran into a pack last night,” I replied, sitting on my haunches. “Wolves had my trail, so I had to roll in something nasty to hide from them.”
Her giggle blossomed into a full-blown gale of laughter. Holding her ribs with her arms, she roared and tears squirted from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Mortified, I grimaced and tried to scowl.
“Look, can you run out and get me some clothes?”
Getting her amusement under control, Jae wiped her face with her hands and sniffed, still grinning. “I suppose I can. What size?”
After I told her, Jae pulled on her coat, then ruffled my mane, still grinning. “Wait here, I guess. There’s some food in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
“I am, thanks.”
She left the apartment, leaving me to shift into my human self, and, wearing just the peacoat, ambled to her refrigerator. With all the cash and the jewelry, I had, I could pay her back. Leaving cash on her table, I hummed to myself as I dined on some leftover spaghetti. “Damn, this girl can cook.”
Even cold, the dish tasted of nirvana. I had few means of cooking for myself, and only occasionally had the cash to eat at a café or diner. Subsisting primarily on whatever I managed to steal, it very seldom was someone’s home-prepared dinner. After eating, I wandered around her apartment, looking at pictures of people I suspected were her murdered family—parents, a sister who looked like Jae, and a small brother.
From what I could tell, she didn’t own many possessions. The pictures, a small jewelry box that held a couple pairs of earrings, her clothes in the closet, some books. Only the bare minimum of furniture occupied the place. Her bed, the kitchen table and chair, and a couch in the sitting room were all worn, scratched, threadbare.
Her key in the lock warned me in time to shift forms, and thus I greeted her on four paws and not two with my lower half bare under the coat. Jae grinned when she saw me and held up a bag for my inspection. “Jeans, shirts, underwear, and a pair of sneakers. I hope they all fit.”
“You’re my hero,” I said gratefully, taking the bag in my teeth.
Padding to the bathroom, I shifted into my human half and quickly dressed. The clothes and shoes fit me well enough, and I emerged to find her holding the bills from the table. Jae nodded her approval upon seeing me dressed, then waved the money.
“What’s this for?”
“You.”
“You saved my life. I’m hardly going to take money from you.”
With a grin, I took
her hand and folded it around the small wad. “You need it. Look, with what we took from Barry, you should have it. You bought me clothes; I ate your food. I should be giving you more.”
Jae shook her head. “You’re making me feel bad.”
Stepping closer to her, I put my hands on her cheeks, and kissed her. “Don’t. I’ll walk you to the bar.”
Her smile lit the room. “Okay. I’ll let you.”
Hand in hand, we strolled openly on the street, keeping a wary eye out for enforcers, especially Jonesy. Cars and trucks passed us without a second look; folks we walked by gave us quick nods of greeting, then hurried on by. Of course, we did spot enforcers busy robbing people of their livelihood to keep Raphael greedy for more.
None accosted us, and we entered the back door of the Tiger’s Paw to find the irritated owner glowering over his broken front door. A big lion shifter with shaggy blond hair and pale, icy blue eyes, he stared at us. “What happened, Jae?” he demanded.
Before she could answer, I stepped toward him. “Barry the Blade kicked it in with the intent to rape her. I killed him with your shotgun.”
Chad put his hands on his hips, his expression softening. “Are you all right, Jae?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Chad, this is Declan. Declan, Chad. I’m sorry, I had to use your truck to get rid of his body.”
He waved his hand. “No worries. I can’t tell anything had happened here, other than the busted door. No one saw you dump it?”
“We don’t think so,” I answered, shooting a glance at Jae.
Chad finally gave me a small grin. “Thanks for looking out for her. Jae’s become part of the family.”
“If you have the tools,” I offered, “I’ll help you fix the door.”
“Naw, I can handle it. You’re welcome to hang out, Declan. Are you two, er, involved?”
Jae chuckled, blushing. “We just met. I hid him from Raphael’s goons, and he saved my life.”
“Ah, young love.” Chad sighed dramatically. With a grin, he vanished into the back as I sat down on the stool I used the previous evening.
“He seems like a good guy,” I said.
Walking behind the bar, Jae nodded. “The best of friends. Helped me after my family died, gave me this job.”
Jae drew me a soda with ice and placed it in front of me. “You don’t pay,” she ordered, her eyes narrowed as I reached into my pocket.
Grinning, I complied. “That’s Chad’s drink you’re giving away.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Chad said, emerging from the back. He opened the front door and started working on the splintered wood and broken lock.
Hunching my shoulders over the bar, I wondered how I might bring up the subject of leaving this town with Chad within hearing range. “We didn’t get a chance to finish talking about maybe escaping this place.”
Jae shot a glance at Chad, who looked up with a slight frown. “You know what’ll happen if we get caught,” she said, her voice low.
“Unless you have a vehicle,” Chad went on, his attention on fixing the door, “you can’t make out on the prairie in winter. Even as lions. You can starve or freeze to death out there.”
“And staying here is just as risky,” I protested. “I have a kill-on-sight order on me.”
“And if Raphael suspects we killed Barry,” Jae continued, her eyes on me, “then we’re all dead.”
“How can we get past the road blockades?” Chad asked, his voice reasonable. “I’m not unwilling to take my family and run, Jae, but I won’t risk it unless we have a foolproof plan.”
“Then we start working on one,” she answered firmly. “There are free cities out there, places not under the rule of gang lords.”
“Yes, there are,” Chad agreed, installing a new lock. “But dying to get to one of them isn’t a good idea.”
As they spoke, I pondered. “If we had a four-wheel drive vehicle,” I said, we might get around the roadblocks.”
“Maybe,” Chad said. “I’ve thought of that before. But even those can get stuck, and if we do, we die.”
“What about during a bad snowstorm?” I asked. “Don’t the enforcers on the roads come in during them? When they do, we can drive out, then find a place to hole up until the storm passes.”
“Son, there’s nothing out there except hundreds of miles of open land with nothing to stop the snow from piling up. That is a death sentence for certain.”
Glum, I drank my soda and watched Jae’s ass as she worked to get the bar ready to open. “That’s why so few people try to escape,” she said over her shoulder. “Going off-road and across country is so dangerous.”
“We lions are at the top of the food chain,” I grumbled. “We should be able to survive out there.”
Chad eyed me sidelong from his lock installation. “When was the last time you hunted an antelope?”
I looked away. “It can’t be that hard,” I muttered.
“Even as humans with guns,” he went on, “hunting isn’t easy. I see your point, though, and maybe in the spring we might try to find a way out.”
As he finished replacing the lock, a few customers trickled in, and I hunched my shoulders, lowering my head in an effort to not be recognized. None of the people were enforcers, and Jae went to work serving them with drink and taking their money. Sipping my soda, I had no doubt I wouldn’t survive until spring.
That notion grew even clearer to me when two big enforcers ambled in through the newly repaired door. Oh, shit. It was too late to hide, and if I tried, the customers might point me out. Sitting still and pretending to be invisible might work, but if they recognized me, I’d be dead before I could even think about escaping.
Chapter Four
This is why I don’t stay indoors. Nowhere to run. The goons didn’t pay me any more attention than they did the other patrons. Instead, they focused on Jae and Chad. Chad, effectively placing himself between them and Jae, nodded to them politely. “I already paid my taxes,” he said, his voice calmer than my stomach, which roiled and churned in dread.
“We know,” said one, and fortunately, they were enforcers I didn’t know, and thus they wouldn’t know me.
“Then have a seat, and we’ll get you whatever you want to drink.”
“We’re looking for someone.”
Here it comes: Jonesy somehow found out about Jae and me, and now will demand my location.
“Who might that be?” Chad inquired, still polite.
“An enforcer named Barry,” replied the foremost.
Chad feigned confusion. “Sorry, I don’t know him. What makes you think he’s here?”
“Obviously he isn’t,” snarled the other. “He told a few friends he was coming here last night.” The shifter’s eyes flicked to Jae. “No one has seen him since.”
“Again, sorry, but he never showed up here.”
I flicked my gaze to Jae’s face. Like Chad, she wore an expression of vague confusion as she washed glasses, as calm and collected as I was when I shot Barry the Blade. The enforcers gazed around, the patrons lowering their eyes just as I did when their heads turned toward me.
“The place is pretty clean,” one muttered. “I don’t think he came here.”
As I kept my eyes on the bar’s mahogany surface, I didn’t know what might have transpired except that at long last, I heard their boots on the floor, and the door open and close. When I glanced up, the pair were gone. Sweat trickled down my ribs and back, but I slowly breathed in and out, not visibly indicating the relief I felt in case one of the customers watched me.
Jae and Chad exchanged a look, then went back to work as though nothing had happened.
As Chad would be driving Jae back to her apartment after closing, I made my farewells and wandered out into the night. The snow I scented earlier in the day had arrived, and I left my footprints in the pristine white along the sidewalk. They made me too easy to track, so I went lion and loped across the street to an abandoned building. Climbing up to the roof
, I jumped from structure to structure, pausing now and then to peer down to the street below.
It appeared even the packs were reluctant to have their paws so easily traced and maybe stayed indoors to rape each other, for I saw nothing. Falling snow tickled my ears and whiskers, landing in my mane. Continuing on, I felt reluctant to head for one of my lairs as my tracks would inform just about anyone where it was. Hungry, I went back to the street level and wandered the alleys in search of a store that wasn’t as closed up as tight as it should be.
Growling voices emerging from a broken window of a grocer’s had me crouching beneath it. Pawprints had flattened the snow all around the alley, scrapes and pieces of broken glass indicated where something had busted in and were even now dining inside. The odors of meat wafted out, making my mouth water.
“Ain’t nobody out there to rob,” said a voice. “Fucking snow screws everything up.”
“Too cold to be out anyway,” chimed another. “It’s warm in here.”
“Don’t get comfortable,” growled the first. “We eat, then we hunt. I need to put my dick in something.”
I cringed, my tail tucked, and crept away from the window. The snow fell harder but wouldn’t cover my tracks completely as I loped away. They might see them and may pursue, or the pack might go the other way and never see them at all. The drugs they took to get high fried their brains and messed up their ability to think straight.
Making my way to the rooftops again, I headed back to the shop where the pack was, needing to know if they were going to follow me or not. If not, then I planned to pick up where they left off and have a late dinner inside the store. Peering down, I watched them leap through the window—two lions and two wolves. Might very well be the pack that chased me last night.
Holding my breath, I watched, fearing the wolves would catch my scent. While I didn’t think the snow would mess with their sense of smell, neither of them put their noses to the ground to sniff. The leader led them at a trot away from me, down the alley to vanish into the swirling snow. Giving them time to put distance between them and me, I waited for thirty minutes. When they didn’t come back, I retraced my steps and went back to the grocery store.