Frayed

by Blakely Chorpenning

  Frayed

  A Madison Lark Adventure 1

  Blakely Chorpenning

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A MADISON LARK ADVENTURE ONE: FRAYED

  Copyright 2011 by Blakely Chorpenning.

  Formatting by Jesse Gordon of A Darned Good Book.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Except for use in review, no part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form—now known or hereafter invented—without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is an original publication of Belle-Merrick Publishing.

  ISBN-10: 0-9847010-1-X

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9847010-1-8

  Dedication

  This book is for my parents. Thank you for never saying no to my imagination, and for supporting everything I've ever wanted to do or be—Especially during those awkward years when I wanted to be a vampire (my entire youth). I will never be so lucky twice, even in a million lifetimes, to have parents like you. I love you Mom and Dad!

  This book is also for Ellys, my "Baby Love." You have taught me the beauty of mortality, and the reason why change is good. And you make me see everything new again. I love you, Noodle!

  A special thanks to:

  My Aunt Lee, who (along with my mom) has read every word from the beginning and listened to every insecurity and crazy plot twist, yet managed to make me feel better about them every time. I love you Aunt Lee!

  My mother-in-law and friend, Brenda, for showing me that family is in the heart, not the blood. I love you Brenda!

  My husband, Sean, for getting on this rollercoaster with me. I love you a little more! (If that’s possible.)

  And last but certainly not least, this book is for everyone who pushes back when life rages.

  Chapter One

  Dome lights toasted the blood streaking from brow to breastbone, turning it to liquid heat on my flesh. The sensation thrilled like the first touch of a lover, and when I realized it wasn’t mine the pleasure spike awoke a fever calling to that part of me that was never human. I wanted to relinquish my human bonds, unleash that feral leopard energy for real, but that was against the rules. This time. Instead, I smiled like the devil and I were sharing a beer in hell and hook-punched Danica, my opponent, in the face. Scarlet splatters filled the air like tiny dancers. I closed my eyes, smiling as the fresh blood caressed my tender eyelids and the hyper sensitive pout of my lips.

  This is my moment, the point in every fight when they see what they did wrong.

  When they see me winning.

  Being a semi-pro mixed martial arts fighter was my world. I especially loved the shifter fights. Underground, of course. To some, it was bloody, simple as that. To me, it was an art form. Truthfully, the decision to fight had been made long before graduating high school ten years ago. My family agreed that it quelled the intense hunting urges of my leopard half and maintained enough excitement to dock my human predisposition for trouble.

  Danica, known in the fighting ring as Savage, had her chestnut hair braided in tight neutral cornrows against her skull. Years ago, I cut mine within three inches of being able to use a receding hairline as an excuse, both for fighting and because it just looked damn hot. Dyeing it blonde turned out to be one of my better ideas, as well.

  Unlike the black spandex covering my thighs and torso, Danica preferred a skimpy gold bikini. It would have been acceptable in a shifter fight. In a human only forum, however, I was left crossing my fingers that it didn’t shift. I definitely embraced my feminine mystique—flaunting it more than my brother thought appropriate, actually—but there was a time and place. It had been hard enough the last few years for female opponents in our region to gain respect as true fighters. Danica was screwing with that. This made me want to kick the shit-eating smile off her face. So I did.

  My lanky five-nine frame tested her fitness like a cat pawing a fat beetle. Aside from rounded hips, we had nothing physically in common. But I spent more time in the gym than at home.

  The blows cost Danica a loose tooth. Well earned, was all I could think. The fight was over soon after, the winning title meaning little since I barely broke a sweat to earn it. If standards continued plummeting, I’d expect to see them given away on windshields next to the pizza coupons.

  In the locker room, Danica and I removed our standard issue fingerless gloves silently. Between Danica’s russet hue and the sanguine sheen adorning my body from the fight, the spots of clean flesh seemed positively lackluster in comparison. When left to my natural charms, my skin is usually as unique as my family tree.

  My paternal grandmother’s family came from Africa many generations ago, some as ebony as it gets. My paternal grandfather was pure Italian with hair that made me wonder as a child what could be darker than the deepest black, which is the origin of my natural hair color. The rest of my family came from everywhere else, some so achromatic bleach gives them a tan. Born from such diversity, my complexion is a faded hazelnut. My mom has always likened it to a beautiful dusk glow, the kind that tricks your eyes, making them restless to focus in light or darkness, unable to settle on either.

  In the middle of this twilight, my mother’s full lips and almond eyes coexist with my grandmother’s prominent nose and shallow bridge. A reminder that the strong women in my family are timeless. The lemon-drop, saffron eyes are all mine, though. I’m the only one in four generations to have marbled kitty-cat eyes in human form.

  Growing sick of the standoff, Danica wiggled her front tooth and practically yelled, "Jesus H. Christ, Fray! This is the second time you’re sending me to the dentist. If the two of you don’t have a thang, I’m gonna be pissed?" Her accent was so southern it made sweet tea taste bland.

  "I wish." I forced a laugh, withdrawing deeper into my locker. "I’ve got two cavities and no insurance." Though home grown, I somehow escaped the thicker regional North Carolina dialect. However, if I venture west of the Mississippi or north of Virginia, I’m told differently.

  Danica leaned against the door frame while I searched for a clean set of clothes. The entire room was barely larger than the smoking cell in an airport and the lighting still managed to suck. Gray everything didn’t inspire much.

  "Seriously, if you got a problem, tell me before I need dentures. There’s definitely more to this," she wiggled the damaged tooth, "than a straightforward fight."

  I stopped digging through the pile and rested my elbows on the edge of the locker, eyes focused on the floor. "It’s not personal, Sav." I always addressed her by her fighting persona unless we were out socially. "I’m just sick of fighting people who don’t enjoy fighting back. You can’t tell me you love it, that you look forward to the next one before you’ve even left the ring from the last one."

  We had fought on and off for the last four years, so I knew Savage wasn’t as bloodthirsty as she once sought to be. Together, we used to give the audience a mind-blowing fight, a pure possession of the soul that left everyone bewitched. It wasn’t there anymore. I wouldn’t hold it against her, though. It would just leave a bad taste in my mouth the next time we sparred.

  "Le’me tell you," she started her tirade by saying. "Not many people love it the way you do, Fray. Truthfully, not many people can." More sympathetically, Danica mused, "I know it means more than Christmas every day to you, but it’s just a job for me. It pays my bills. I get some dates from the press. It’ll be that ‘something’ I b
rag about to my kids one day… When I have kids. And it keeps me in shape."

  "Not like it used to."

  Her body spiraled to accommodate a front to back glance. "Are you implying there’s too much "T" and "A" on this beanpole?" Her smile sprung to life. "Intimidated?"

  I laughed as I glanced at her ass. "Don’t worry, there’s not enough to play bumper cars, yet." I stressed the last. "But there is a little too much if you’re still dreaming of becoming a professional fighter." My comment sobered us back to the moment.

  "That’s the thing. Maybe I don’t want pro anymore. Or any of this. I may look fine, but I’m still thirty-two, Fray. What am I supposed to do when I’m thirty-five? Or forty-five? Not this shit. I wanna do something that really matters. Do you understand that, Fray? If you’re smart, you’ll start making other plans, too."

  Grabbing a wad of clothes blindly, my jaw dropped. "You’re leaving for good, then?" Her head bobbed slowly. Now she was staring at the floor. "When?"

  "No set date. I’ll stick around a little longer, make sure I get a sick farewell. And I guess I’ll be spending more time in the gym. Thanks for the complex."

  I was genuinely stunned. "Wow, I noticed you were getting sloppy, but I didn’t expect this."

  "Keep talking. Maybe it’ll inspire me to stay." I started to tell her I didn’t mean it like that, but she interrupted with a smile. "I know what you meant. We’ll talk about it later. Not right now. I’ve got a date."

  She glided down the row of lockers and disappeared behind the last one. "Just think about what I said." The words echoed off the walls.

  I was left standing in her wake yelling, "They’ll have to kick my ass out! I won’t ever fucking quit!"

  I slammed my locker shut.

  It caught me totally by surprise when a man cleared his throat.

  Chapter Two

  I swiveled on bare heels to find it was no man. It was my brother.

  Darien stood, arms crossed, legs shoulder-width apart. Imposing, considering he was six-five barefoot. Just enough gel tamed his thick hair. It wasn’t a particularly striking or inspirational brown, more the color of mud. His skin was only darker than mine by two or so shades. He looked like our Italian ancestors, but his smile was pure Dad. I hadn’t seen the original in six months because our father belonged to a different lepe.

  Every band of ‘like’ shifters has a label. North Carolina has four lepes, which are exclusively leopard. I’m part of the Western Lepe, living alongside the Ararat River. Since the divorce twenty-two years ago, our mother, Claire, kept the house, remarried, and gave me and Darien a half-sister, Tawny. Our father, Lane, kept his sanity by joining the Northern Lepe five hours away. Over the years, Darien’s made frequent visits, but the politics involved for a traveling single female are harrowing. Typical patriarchal bullshit. So I see our father whenever he’s able to venture my way, which normally means once a year.

  Darien loomed in front of me. He was the most dangerous looking thirty-five-year-old I knew. No one ever suspected he was a mild-mannered accountant with a lot of spare time and a gym membership. To be fair, he spent a lot of that time helping me train.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "We need to talk, Madison."

  Only my family ever calls me Madison. Everyone else—in and out of the ring—usually calls me Fray.

  I prefer Fray.

  "Can it wait ‘til after my shower?"

  "No." He stepped closer and stopped abruptly. "You smell like road kill."

  "I warned you." My laughter escaped before I saw a man step up beside him. "Who’s he?" And more importantly, "Why didn’t I sense him?" Suspicion hijacked the little voice in my head.

  The stranger’s khaki fedora strangely categorized him as a dick. A private eye, that is. Maybe an updated version.

  Darien stepped between us. "Take your shower, then we’ll talk."

  Annoyed, I spat, "Then get the fuck out of the women’s locker room," and carried my stuff wordlessly down the claustrophobic hall to the showers.

  Less than five minutes later, I was out and toweled off. I pulled a thin fuchsia T-shirt over my wet head. It plunged into a V-neck down my back. Inadvertently, I had grabbed the shirt my brother hated the most. It perfectly framed a large portion of the tribal tattoo Darien forbade me to get when I had turned seventeen. Overbearing brother much? The short sleeves also left small rose-tinted tattoos visible on the soft skin of my inner wrists, the product of yet another fight before I turned nineteen.

  Next, I practically leapt into my charcoal stretch denim before slipping on a pair of open-toed sandals. The summer had proven too stagnant for most types of material. Shifters have above average body temperatures, but I also love a good pair of jeans, no matter the season.

  After running my hands through my hair, which left the majority of it spiky, I checked the mirror once, threw my stuff into a large black gypsy purse, and raced out to find my brother.

  He and the stranger were standing in the empty orange hallway leading to the parking lot when I turned the corner and almost mowed them down. The overhead light flickered, and the smell of sweat seemed to waft out of every crevice to hug us like a gross relative nobody wants to touch. Worse, even, than the locker room because the entire building was free of central AC, meaning the main hallway reeked of the audience, too. Somehow, though, through all of the foreign and intimate smells, it all registered as victory.

  Looking from one man to the other, I blurted, "So what the hell?"

  "You’re right," said the stranger, "she is very personable."

  "You couldn’t have worn a different shirt? Or a bra?" Darien’s tone was low, definitely aware of the extra company.

  "What do you want from me?" I stared Darien in the eyes. "Besides underwear."

  He was not in a joking mood. Choosing not to bicker in front of the lean man, he said, "Joshua’s sister and cousin are missing."

  "Rachel and Genevieve?" He nodded. "When?" This was turning into a popular question lately. Counting these two, five of our lepe’s teenagers had gone missing in the last month.

  Ena and her boyfriend, Brian, went missing during a walk in the woods two weeks ago. Unable to find them dead or alive, many of us speculated that they ran off. Ena’s parents didn’t approve of Brian, who was sixteen, two years older than their daughter. Also, he’s been a troublemaker from the time he could walk.

  Admittedly, I had been unable to rest since Marisa never came home from school last Tuesday. She was the younger sister of Tatum, who was in my grade growing up. Tatum and I hung out a few times through friends of friends but hadn’t seen each other in years. She joined her father’s lepe in Kentucky a year after graduation. But her mother and Marisa had attended Mom’s Sunday dinners for years. Marisa has always been a sweet, quiet girl. Her mother already made arrangements with mine to say the coming of age blessing for her fifteenth birthday in two months. A nagging feeling left me wondering if there would still be a party. Marisa was not the type of girl to wander far. Not the type at all.

  And now two more were gone. Something was amiss.

  Darien answered my question. "They haven’t been seen since yesterday afternoon. Joshua spoke with Blaire. They think it’s related to the other disappearances." I could see the strain in his eyes, the toll this crisis was starting to take on him.

  "What does Blaire plan to do about it?"

  Blaire was our lepe leader in training. Actually, since his father, Abram, had a stroke last year, he was acting leader, though the elders pushed him constantly to consult his father for anything more important than eating a deer. That is, before Abram fell into an unexplained coma six months ago. Blaire was growing weary of the little boy treatment, clearly, since he had been making more and more decisions without regard to anyone, least of all his ailing father. Blaire was a grade-A prick, but he also had the makings of a powerful leader if he didn’t let his ego fuck it up.

  "He and the rest of the lepe agree we need to take action."r />
  "Damn right! How?" I managed to sound duly outraged, yet simultaneously dumbfounded.

  "Those of us with special talents or skills are pairing off, each pair being given a list of places to search for clues or the children, themselves. Not much of a list because we don’t have much to go on." He handed me a folded piece of paper that I speed-read before stuffing into my pocket.

  "Not a problem. Savage and the others can cover my fights if I need them to. Where are we looking first?"

  Darien looked uncomfortable. "Not we. You." He pointed to me and then to the dick.

  "What?" I turned to face the man. He was barely taller by two inches. The fedora covered most of his hair, but it was long enough to see the multiple black and brown highlights and lowlights. He wore a simple black knit sweater and dark blue jeans paired with black sneakers.

  Leaning in, I accused, "I can’t smell you."

  He raised an eyebrow. "Most people appreciate that."

  "What are you?"

  I stepped forward, closer.

  Intervening, Darien said, "He is an Alleviator on loan to help us."

  My lip twitched. "You mean vampire."

  Spitting directly on the man would have been less rude than my tone. Giving him a fancy title like ‘Alleviator’ meant nothing. That just told me he stuck his nose in other peoples’ business. How could a vampire make a situation better?

  "He is here to help." Darien paused as his pulse sped up. "And you will not raise issue with it. Is that understood?"

  The vampire was almost casual when he asked, "Do you have a problem with the clinically deceased?"

  "Only if they refuse to lay. The fuck. Down. After last call."

  "What a blossom of truth you are, Miss… What is your name?"

  "Fray."

  "Well, at least your mother had a sense of humor."

  Before I could say something that would completely mortify my mother, even though she was nowhere nearby but would swear on mother’s intuition, Darien said, "Her birth name is Madison Lark."