Feral Nights (20 page)

Sandra adds, “You’ll want to change into the overalls hanging in your closet at the lodge and then wait for me at the workshop. Most hunts don’t take all night. When the clients return, it’ll be our job to skin the kills, cure the pelts, and mount the heads for easy transport.” Apparently deciding that no amount of fiddling will make the silk hang just so, she gives up. “In service to the deific, taxidermy is a rewarding, if unsavory, practice. I’ve grown to appreciate it.”

No way am I defiling anyone’s dead body.

“Well, go on,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”

It’s a good question. Taking a breath, I haul off and slug her in the face.

I had
no
idea it hurt so much to punch someone. I’m shaking out my hand as she falls and hits the back of her head. While she’s dazed, I work as fast as I can with bruising fingers and use the canopy drape to secure her to an upright pole.

Paxton has vanished from view, and it turns out that only the closest guard-intern has been eliminated. I’m forced to mosey at an unsuspicious speed past the rest, back toward the lodge.

Fortunately, shifters have excellent hearing. As I pass Clyde and the Lion, I call, “Sit tight. I’ll return for you both as soon as I can.”

“Aimee!” Clyde replies. “Don’t just leave me here.”

I have to. Any second could be Yoshi’s last. “I’ll be back. Trust me.”

What’s more, Clyde can barely walk and he’s practically worthless to the snowmen. If he becomes a problem, the interns will shoot him without a second thought.

Silently praying for Yoshi, I barrel into the empty lodge kitchen, pull out a leftover bowl of yak-potato stew, and pop it into the microwave. It’s thick, hearty.

Hopefully, Frore won’t taste the sedative.

I’m arranging sesame-seed crackers on a plate when Cameron rolls in. “That slutty vampire couple ripped through the housekeeping interns.” He puts his hands on his hips. “The second-floor maid’s entrails are hanging from a curtain rod in the sunroom.”

“All the interns?” I exclaim, wondering if that’s what Sandra had meant when she said she’d take care of “room service” for the clients. “They couldn’t need that much blood in such a short time.” Of course vamps don’t redecorate with human organs because they need sustenance. They must’ve gotten antsy waiting for the hunt to begin.

It’s the sort of thing that happens when you deprive the undead of Internet access.

Cameron taps his foot. “You, me, Sandra, and the drones standing guard are all that’s left, and that, Cinderella, makes you priceless as far as I’m concerned. Someone’s got to sweep the floors, change the linens, and scrub the toilets. Rumor has it that the deific’s bowel movements are epically craptastic, if you get my meaning.”

As the microwave beeps, I grimace at the thought. “Sandra asked me to run some stew to Frore in the security room.”

Cameron takes out the bowl and sets it on the kitchen island. “Weird. She normally does that herself,” he says. “It gives her an opportunity to kiss hairy ass.”

I hope he’s speaking metaphorically. “Oh, um . . . she’s busy —”

“Uh-huh.” Cameron rests his bony elbows on the counter. “Sweetie pie, I’m a demon. I can smell deception a continent away. How ’bout letting old Uncle Cameron in on the fun? Come on, spill it. What’re you up to?”

Busted. He may be attracted to chaos for its own sake, but that’ll only help so much. Evil is selfish. There has to be something in it for him. I risk marching to the silverware drawer for a spoon and slip the sedative out from my bra. Then I artfully position the bowl in the middle of the circle of crackers on the square plate and stir in the sedative. “I’m going to make you a deal.”

Cameron claps his hands. “How intriguing! You do know of course that making deals with a devil, even a minor one like me, is considered the exclusive territory of the criminally stupid, pathetically desperate, and utterly doomed.”

Whatever. Reaching for a tray, I say, “I need a distraction, a big one, and if you can pull that off for me, I’ll help you fulfill your dream of working as a fry cook in hell.”

He tilts his head. “Why should I believe that
you
can do such a thing?”

“Where I come from, we have this little thing called faith.”

“SMOKE.”
In the thin moonlight, Noelle’s hair turns golden. “It smells like burning wood, and a lot of it. We can’t stay here, caged like this.”

She’s right. From what Paxton told Yoshi, Aimee is going to try to lower the high-frequency barrier (Possums have good ears, too). If she succeeds, we may have serious reinforcements in the form of the other shifters. Assuming they’re not all dead. I’m still barely getting around. Noelle’s limping. We could use that kind of muscle.

Thank God Aimee’s okay — she looks okay, anyway, at least from a distance.

I can’t freaking believe she blew me off like that. I know she has someplace to be, but would she have cruised by Yoshi without stopping for a cupcake kiss? I doubt it.

“What are you doing?” Noelle asks. “What happened to your hammock?”

“Fishing,” I reply. People always forget that shifters like Possums have teeth and claws, too. I’ve detached one of the big metal hooks used to hang my hammock, cut loose a long cord, and freed it from the woven swing. From there, I tie the rope to the hook.

As Noelle looks on, I cross to the corner where Travis said my crutch rested on the cage ceiling. I stick my arms out between the bars, wind up the rope, and yank it up and backward. The hook clangs on the top and falls back empty. I try it again, again, another twenty-two times, until Noelle says, “This is all very entertaining, but —”

I shush her. “I’m concentrating.” The last time, the clang of metal on metal sounded a little different than it had all the times before.

Praying for a lucky break, I try once more, adjusting for the angle, and I feel the hook catch. I pull gently, slowly, until the crutch topples off the side and into my hand.

Within seconds, I blast through the bars. Then I half climb, half fall out onto the ground. “Stand clear,” I say, and free Noelle the same way.

She leaps out, landing on her good foot, and scans the cliff. “Where did they go?”

That’s strange. The two guards we can normally see from here are gone.

As I try to make sense of it, my nose itches. Vision blurs. Gut contracts.

The threat of fire, taste of freedom, curves of Noelle’s butt — it’s too much.

I’m losing control, shifting whether I want to or not.

“You okay?” she asks, reaching to steady me. “With your injuries . . .”

It’s like her hand is on fire.

“Don’t touch me,” I grit out. I falter to my knees, whimpering in agony. What will she think of my bald tail? My beady eyes?

“Grow up.” Noelle rips off my shirt. She breaks my jeans zipper, and tugs them off, too, ignoring my candy-cane boxers and the way that they’ve tented from her touch.

During our time in captivity, I’ve fantasized once or five times about her tearing my clothes off, but there’s nothing sexual in this, at least not on her end.

It’s practical. She’s only trying to prevent my changing form from becoming tangled, possibly further injured, in the material.

Wracked with pain, my joints grinding, I wave her off. “The sound barrier should be down soon, if it’s not already. Aimee will be here any minute, looking for us.”

Noelle heard the whispered exchange between Yoshi and Paxton, too.

I point. “Wait for her between those trees. I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Like what?” Noelle takes a few halting steps backward. “Clyde . . .”

“Go,” I say. “G —” It’s the worst, the most excruciating transformation I’ve ever experienced. The damage to my body must be too severe to respond naturally.

My heart thunders. My scalp prickles. My rib cage threatens to bust out of the skin.

As best I can, I take inventory. Whiskers? Check. Claws, yes, but they’re enormous, and where did all this muscle come from?

My head weighs a ton. My legs — long legs? — can barely support me.

What happened to the satisfying, familiar release of my thin, naked tail?

I shut my eyes and risk inhaling, expecting my signature scent, like rotten eggs. This time, I smell blood and mud and water and sex. Or at least what I’ve imagined sex smells like. Noelle’s scent, not mine, except . . .

The pain fades from pounding to throbbing to a faint ache. Then, as if wiped clean by the breeze, it’s gone. I haven’t felt this healthy and whole since before Michigan.

Did I die? Am I a ghost now like Travis?

Is that why the pain has disappeared?

I dare to open one eye, then another, staring at enormous golden-brown paws.

My
enormous golden-brown paws? I curl one, retract and extend the claw.

I force myself up, first anchoring my shaking front legs, then my back.

I can’t get over how I’m not sore anymore. Not at all. Not from the shift or my prior injuries. Changing form so drastically must’ve forced my whole system to reboot. Realign. Heal. Revealing, oh God, a part of me that I never knew existed.

The shock of it mostly retracts my shift, sparing only the body fur and whatever’s left of my human face.

“Clyde?” Noelle covers her mouth. “Clyde!” She claps her hands, marveling at the change. “In human form, you smelled like a Possum.” She begins laughing, a little hysterically. “You’re a Wild Card shifter, part Lion. You’re a Lion like me!”

“I’m more surprised than you are,” I say, for the first time feeling the full weight of my proud and enormous golden mane.

ONCE THE HORN BLARES,
my instincts urge me to flee. But Luis warned us not to expect garden-variety hunters. With the supernatural in play, there’s nowhere on this island where we can’t be found, and we’re too far from any other landmass to swim for it.

Fine. As a Cat from landlocked Kansas, I’m not a fan of large water, anyway.

We have speed, strength, teeth, and claws, but they’ll expect all that. It’s our cunning that makes us unpredictable, a challenge worthy of bragging rights.

In the near darkness, I hear Luis’s rumbling voice from another tree, a lower branch. “Our predecessors defaulted too much to their inner animals. We won’t make that same mistake. But, as we all know, the fight-or-flight instinct is a huge shift trigger. If transforming looks like your best bet — or you can’t stop it — trust in that.”

He adds, “Just remember: the hunters have come for animal-form trophies. If you can avoid changing, they may not even bother firing at you, except in self-defense.”

I hold my ground, or at least the tree trunk, waiting.

With their Wolf ears, I’m sure Mei and James caught all that. But they have taken point outside the ring of traps surrounding our campsite.

Each four-foot-deep pit is camouflaged with greenery and armed with twenty upright, three-foot-tall bamboo stakes, sharpened to vicious points.

“Do you see anything?” Teghan whispers.

“Not yet.” Since her failed attempt to entice me with her middle-school wiles, she’s defaulted to a sort of kid-sister mode. I don’t mind. Someone’s got to look out for her. The Bears are both good-natured guys, but I can see where their girth might intimidate her, and the newlyweds tend to keep to themselves.

“Breathe,” I reply. “Use your ears, your nose.”

“Are you scared?” Teghan adds. “You don’t seem scared.”

I’ve never been more tempted to fully shift. On the upside, Cats have the largest eyes of any carnivorous werepeople on land, and I’ve embraced my inner animal just enough to capitalize on that advantage. “Growing up, my grams used to shoot at me for fun.” That’s an exaggeration, but she is a gun-happy crone. “If bullets start flying, duck.”

Teghan nods like it’s the most original advice she’s ever heard.

We sift through the noises. Mosquitoes. Monkeys. Frogs. Hogs. Rustling leaves. Wind. A bird flying overhead reminds me of Toucan Sam.

Finally, I hear footsteps, bickering, a blade slicing vegetation again and again.

“I don’t see why you needed to act so chummy with them,” a man remarks. “Where’s your spirit of competition?”

“Did it ever occur to you that I need someone new to talk to?” a female voice replies. “We’re always with the same boring people doing the same boring things.”