Feral Nights (15 page)

Carrying a platter of meat, piled high, he approaches the slot in her cage.

Noelle saunters over as if to accept the meal and, as he leans in, lashes out through the bars with extended claws.

Paxton jerks back and flashes his teeth. “Naughty kitty! I’d let you starve, if this gig weren’t so damn profitable.”

Spotting my crutches against the nearby tree, he sets the plate on the three connected bars at the top of one and moves to try to feed her again.

“Grab it!” I yell once the underarm cushion is within her reach. “The crutch!”

“What?” Noelle is already holding the platter of food. “What’re you —?”

With a sneer, Paxton tosses the crutch so it lands on the metal roof of my cage. He doesn’t know why I want it so badly. He’s just getting off on torturing me.

Returning his attention to Noelle, Paxton adds, “Yak ribs fit for a queen.”

She sniffs her food and retreats toward her hammock, and it’s then that I notice her limp. “I’m not interested in your favors,” Noelle says.

She’s not just talking about the menu.

“You sure?” he asks. “Clients keep telling the deific that they want to bag a head with a mane — makes for a nice trophy over the fireplace mantel.”

Noelle tears off a hunk of meat. “What would you know about having a mane?”

Paxton strikes a pose that I’ve seen Yoshi work to great success, but Paxton can’t quite pull it off. “If they can’t locate a male Lion soon, the deific might take a chance on breeding you with another type of Cat.”

Noelle shakes her head. “Remember what happened last time you got too close?”

She’s the one who’d marked Paxton. Is that how she injured her foot?

“You can only hold out so long.” He runs a suggestive hand down his chest. “You and I used to play together just fine, and we kitties have our appetites.”

Ew. Whatever was between Noelle and Paxton, it ended badly.

LUIS AND I SHOWERED
and refilled the canteen at the waterfall. We tied the hog’s front and back hooves, respectively, together with vines, slipped a straight branch beneath them, and are hauling it (Luis in front, me behind him) on our shoulders. It’s not that heavy, but he’s taller than me, and I keep tripping on the undergrowth.

I’ve been able to smell campfire smoke for a while.

“Almost there,” Luis says. “They’re first-rate folks — you’ll see.”

Between birdcalls, I catch snatches of conversation on the wind. At least one of the voices is feminine. Moments later, through the greenery, I make out a few figures — two slender, one burly and bulky. I catch the scent of berry, fish, Wolf, more Bear.

“
Hola,
fellow castaways,” Luis announces. “This is my man Yoshi.”

As we toss the hog into a fire pit, Luis introduces Mei, James, and Brenek. They look wired but healthy, rested and well fed. I haven’t forgotten what Luis told me about the yeti-hosted “big game” hunts, but we’re a Cat, two werewolves, and two werebears. I can hardly think of a more impressive combination of land werepredators. What on earth would be stupid enough to come after us?

“Yoshi Kitahara?” Brenek repeats, extending an enormous hand. He’s about my age, maybe a little younger, with a midwestern accent.

I hesitate before shaking. “Do I know you?”

“I work with your sister,” he says. “Or at least I used to.”

It takes me a minute to process. “You know Ruby? I’ve been looking —”

“Eat first,” Mei insists, glancing at her digital watch. “Talk later. The humidity zaps your strength. Food will help.”

When I open my mouth to protest, Brenek adds, “She’s right. Enjoy. Catch your breath. Then you can join me on first night watch. If you’re not too worn out, that is.”

Ah. He wants to speak with me privately. Fine, I’ve waited this long.

Making small talk, I learn that the werewolves are newlyweds, New Yorkers, and second-semester grad students at UT. She’s in botany. He’s in engineering.

Wolves have a reputation for being book smart and hyper-competent. It can be annoying, but these two seem all right. Paxton captured them biking along the lakefront. They’d been planning to fly out for a five-day, six-night honeymoon in Orlando that evening. They’re still kicking themselves for not taking an earlier plane.

I repeat the version of my story that I told Luis. The conversation oddly reminds of me of Kansas, where the first question old folks often ask is “How’d you get here?”

“Fresh catch of the day,” Mei announces, presenting me with a two-foot-long roasted fish on a large palm leaf. “It’ll take a while to cook the hog.”

Suddenly ravenous, I eat with my fingers, periodically blowing on them to cool them off. The fish tastes like tuna-y heaven. James cracks open a coconut for me, too.

After a few bites, I say, “I appreciate the hot meal, but don’t the campfires give away our location?”

“It won’t matter with the hunters,” Luis explains. “But a plane might spot the smoke, and it keeps the bugs away. There are mosquitoes here the size of ponies.”

I’ve noticed. “What’s with the berry body paint? The holy symbols?” I can’t decipher the Chinese characters on Mei and James, but the newly inked crosses on Brenek’s neck, wrists, and pulse points remind me of Clyde and Aimee’s neck tattoos.

“The hunters are usually proficient in demonic magic,” Luis explains. “These markings may help protect us against certain spells.”

“And some vampires,” Brenek puts in. “It varies from vamp to vamp. But the wards are useless against guns, which can kill you just as dead and from a distance.”

I dip my fingers into the berry mix and paint
COEXIST
in religious symbols down my arms — just in case. I’m not a trained fighter. Ruby is so tenderhearted that she wouldn’t even let me chase squirrels.

Only Luis has survived a previous hunt. That makes him the expert.

“We know what doesn’t work.” He makes himself comfortable by the fire. “Infighting or taking an every-shifter-for-himself attitude. Our best chance of survival is working together.”

Clearly, he’s the alpha. That’s fine. I don’t want the job, and it’s less terrifying knowing that these fellow werepredators have pledged to back me up.

Posturing aside, most Cats aren’t all that independent. I didn’t make it twenty-four hours on my own in Austin before Nora took me in.

“Understood,” I say as Luis and James begin striking rocks together to make hand axes and knives. “You can count on me.”

While we’re still within hearing range of the other shifters, Brenek explains that hunts are traditionally announced by a horn blasting from the lodge side of the island.

“How do we know a warning is standard procedure?” I ask. “Luis has only been in one hunt, right?” I’m doing better, navigating the dense jungle, letting my animal instincts take charge and flow.

“One of the shifters that Luis met, a pygmy wereelephant, had made it through three previous rounds,” Brenek explained. “She told him.”

It goes without saying that she died last time out. “Should we be doing a better job of hiding?” I ask again. “Our campsite isn’t camouflaged, and with the smoke —”

“Wouldn’t matter,” he replies, echoing Luis. “The hunters typically use locator spells or —”

“Then why don’t they just kill us with a snap of their fingers and be done with it?” As soon as the words are out, I’m embarrassed. I expect Brenek to reassure me or yell at me to stop being such a wimp.

“They might,” he says instead, and then he changes the subject to recent college and pro sports, claiming the Chicago Bears football team is actually named after local werebears. It’s entertaining, but total BS — I think.

It gets dark fast, daylight to almost pitch-black in maybe half an hour. Fortunately, Cats see well in low light. I block a palm leaf from smacking my face.

Unable to wait any longer, I finally ask, “Did you work with Ruby at Sanguini’s or the music-promotion company?” Before Brenek can answer, I figure out where I saw him before. “It was you! You were at her place with the priest.”

“Guilty,” he says, climbing the overlook rock. “I might as well admit that I recognized your scent from her apartment.” He glances over his shoulder. “Ruby lied to you. Or at least she didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

Reaching for a handhold, I follow him up. “Meaning?”

“Ruby, that priest — Father Ramos — and I are operatives for an interfaith coalition,” he says. “It’s an international initiative, over five hundred years old.”

“So you . . .” I think it over. “Hand out pamphlets and run soup kitchens?”

His laugh is joyless. “We stake vampires, hack up zombies, and trap renegade hellhounds. You know, if we’re lucky and they don’t kill us first.”

We take a short breather on a ledge. “You’re saying that you and my sister perform exorcisms on vomiting children with rotating heads?” I ask, noticing the tiny lizard who’s hitched a ride up on my shoulder. I decide to leave it there.

Brenek cracks his knuckles. “We leave the heavy lifting to the clergy.” As we resume climbing, he adds, “Ruby was assigned to investigate a series of missing-person cases. The leadership thought Paxton was connected, and they were right. But she kept digging and got caught up in what turned out to be separate vamp activity.”

Werepeople don’t tend to dabble in evil mysticism. But not everyone with a tail is a white hat. “So you moved on to other suspects, like the manager at Sanguini’s.”

We pull ourselves onto the summit. From a distance, a bird calls,
Tchak, tchak, tchak.
Raising the binoculars, I see torches burning outside the lodge.

“There were two sets of scumbags working out of Central Texas — vamps targeting humans, and the yetis’ crew, targeting shifters. Ruby got caught in the cross fire, so to speak. Her last report was dated September twelfth. So far as we know, she’s still alive.”

I can only pray that’s the case. “How’d she hook up with the coalition, anyway?”

“Your grandmother,” Brenek replies. “She’s been an operative for over thirty years.”

“Get out!” I exclaim.

Wow, that explains a lot.

BRENEK AND I
aren’t back at camp five minutes before I try out one of the hammocks, made of interwoven bark and vine, secured between tree trunks. It feels good to finally relax a little. The past couple of days have pushed my endurance to the limit.

I wake around noon on Tuesday, roused by a skittering noise.

A rat scurries past the fire, raising its nose to sniff the smoke before hurrying on. Up in the trees, I spot three black monkeys with white faces sitting in a row on a branch. It’s creepy, like they’re studying me. I hiss. They flinch and start bouncing in place.

Something else catches my eye — a pile of seashells, each filled with multicolored blooms, bright-yellow ones shaped like trumpets and others that I recognize as orchids. Sweet. They’re a gift from James to his bride.

The Wolves don’t complain — none of us do — but I can’t imagine this is how they planned to spend their honeymoon. They’re quiet, and it’s like they have an almost psychic connection. At dinner last night, Mei told me they met between seventh and eighth grade at a science camp and have never even dated anyone else. Luis has made them our official water fetchers, if only to give them some alone time.

Plus the waterfall is kind of romantic. It makes me think of Aimee, and I’m glad she’s safe back in Austin. I wonder what she thinks became of me.

As I close my eyes again, I hear a cracking noise. “Who’s there?”

Where did everyone go? Fishing? Hunting? I don’t expect them to babysit me, but . . . I hear a footstep. A paw step? My new friends would’ve answered my call.

I hear another footfall against the tangled undergrowth and rush forward, leaping over a fallen tree and grabbing a vine to swing Tarzan-style.

The monkeys flee, chirping madly, as I scan the landscape below.

It’s a girl! A wild child, filthy, with her short, dark hair sticking out in all directions. I drop, grabbing her by the arms. She spits and scratches and squirms.

“Stop it!” I yell as she sinks her teeth into my forearm. She’s young, thirteen or fourteen, stocky and athletic, with vicious teeth. I can’t ID her species by scent.