by Keri Hudson
But there was nothing he could do. Paul knew his fate was to look out for his family and himself, incredible specimens absolutely wasted by fluke and fate.
The first snort took Paul by surprise, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. He turned from his position on the beach to survey the thickly forested area behind him. Another pig snorted, and then another. They were communicating with one another, Paul knew that from personal experience. He didn’t know their language, but he knew the tone. They’d found him alone, the youngest of the Landry clan, and their leader had decided to go in for an opportunistic kill.
Paul threw off the short leather skirt he wore over his privates, knowing it would be torn and destroyed by his shift, and the material was too cumbersome to replace. The hogs stormed out of the forest, five big males with sharp tusks and rude temperaments. They were getting smarter, bolder, but Paul felt certain that this would not be their day.
He shifted quickly, body changing in a terrific and terrible instant—snout sprouting to replace his human face, dropping to all fours as his brown hide sprouted over his muscular body, long fangs pushing out from his gums.
In his lupine form, all of Paul’s senses were heightened. He could smell the hogs’ aggression, and their instant fear of him. But they’d begun their charge and it was too late to override those ancient instincts. So they raced at him with even more gusto, grunting to one another that they knew they were in for the fight of their lives.
Paul swiped at the one who charged nearest, sending it rolling to the side with a pain-filled yelp. Paul couldn’t follow the damage as he turned on the others. One of them was already on his left front leg, digging those terrible teeth into his flesh and bone. Paul opened his mouth wide and clamped down tight on the back of the hog’s neck. It only took one hard press of his jaws to create that reassuring crackle of the hog’s spine, cracking and splintering under Paul’s amazing power. The pig’s mouth released from Paul’s leg, the wounds already beginning to heal, faster than any merely human flesh could.
But another lunged at his shoulder, sharp teeth trying to pierce his thick hide, shaking and grunting and growling into Paul’s ear. Paul reared up, the hog holding on as he lifted the beast up off the ground. A sharp turn of his body threw the hog from him, spinning and flailing as it fell from Paul’s periphery.
Another hog attacked him from behind, but Paul was faster, increasingly furious with their offensive daring. Paul spun and bit down hard, his long jaws clamping down over the pig’s snout. It squealed in pain, body jutting and struggling to escape Paul’s terrible grip. Paul bit down hard, savoring the feeling of the pig’s face tearing, its desperate fear as it tried to pull back. Paul swung to the left, throwing the hog into one of its companions. They both ran back from the beach and into the forest, leaving the battered bodies of three of their fellow hunters, retreating in ignominious defeat.
Paul surveyed the beach, the forest, a hunter’s instincts still at a fever pitch. The ocean splashed behind him, and Paul jumped forward and turned to see the massive orca swimming up onto the beach, white teeth and black, shimmering skin. Paul backed up onto dry land and clapped his jaws, to ward off the terrible apex predator. The beast seemed to know it had missed its chance at him, an opportunistic attack from behind while he’d been distracted by the hogs.
But the big mammal had to turn to ease back into the waves. The non-shifter predators hated all shifters and were pitted by instinct against them as mortal enemies. The orcas were a constant threat, the only beast that no lupine shifter could best.
This time, Paul had been lucky and quick and smart, beating back the hogs and avoiding the killer whale. He could return to his family in his human form, his leather skirt around his waist, wounds already healing.
And he’d be able to bring them dinner.
CHAPTER TWO
The Landry family compound was established around a natural formation of several different caves near the center of the mountain. Paul had never known what forces had opened up the caves, but they provided not only shelter from the often brutal rains and winds, but also a catacomb of passageways through the mountain, some leading all the way to the other side.
Different chambers had been set aside for the family members to allow them a modicum of privacy, and there were communal areas too, larger chambers where the family would gather in the stormy months.
Otherwise, when the weather was as crisp and pleasant as it was then, the springtime of the year in their region of that massive Pacific Ocean, they gathered in the area on one side of the mountain, a naturally flat and barren expanse where the forest seemed unwilling to grow. A big firepit dominated the clearing, with a smoke house not far from it. They’d rolled big stones into place around the firepit for seating, more powerful in their lupine form than any human could be.
Their leather skirts were their only garments in such warm weather, though Paul’s sister, Ruth, wore a matching garment around her bosom at her father’s insistence. He was concerned about their cousin, Matthew, who’d grown up angry and bitter and rebellious. Pretty Ruth had always attracted his idle interest, and as both had gotten older, James had taken a more discerning eye over Matthew’s activities as it regarded his daughter.
They had bigger garments for colder weather, made from the same pigskin leather which was used their more minimal garments, though they were stored in a certain chamber of the catacombs for use later in the year.
The hog meat crackled on the sticks propped above the fire, fat dripping down into the flames, sparking and flicking and filling the clearing with a juicy, meaty smell.
Peter shook his head as he stepped toward Paul. Older and a little bigger, he smiled as if in a good mood. “Nice kill, Paul.” Paul shrugged. “Really, five at once?”
“They’re coordinating, Peter. That’s not good.”
“And the damn orca too. They’re always on the prowl, filthy swimming pit bulls. You gotta be careful out on the beach, my brother.”
“I know how to handle myself, Peter. Have some dinner and tell me I’m wrong.”
Peter shook his head, setting a hand on his kid brother’s shoulder. “Even so, I’ve told you before. We don’t want to run out and find one of those black bastards pulling you into the ocean, right?”
Paul couldn’t help but shake his head, as there was no disagreeing with it. But the fact that his older brother felt he had to remind him of such a thing irked Paul in ways he could not ignore, much as he tried.
Their father, James, approached from the catacombs, passing Ruth as she prepared the salad for dinner. Paul didn’t want to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help but hear their conversation.
Their father asked her, “He’s all right?” She cast him a glance and nodded, then the patriarch approached the firepit where Paul and his brother Peter sat, waiting for the meat to cook. He said to them both, “The pigs are getting smarter, more aggressive.”
“The killer whales too,” Peter said. They shared the same coloring, blue eyes and black hair, though James’ hair was graying, just as striking in his lupine form. Ruth shared their coloring as well, different from Paul’s brown hair and eyes, which they all said had favored his human mother, who had died tragically of a fever on that brutal and merciless island.
“It’s the coming shifter apocalypse,” James said, staring into the fire with an intense expression on his aging face, wrinkles and crags telling the story of his difficult and woebegotten life. “The ursines will make their move. It has always been said to happen, and it surely will. The other alphas know it, they sense it, it’s as plain to them as the routes they follow in the winter or the migrations of the summer. They’re trying to kill as many of us as they can, probably on both sides, to prevent the war breaking out, I’d guess.”
“To kill us all,” Peter said, shaking his head. “War or not, they’ve always feared us, because they know we’re the most powerful creatures on the planet, they know they can never rule as long as we live.” James nodded, taking a
sip from a split coconut as he gazed into the fire as if he were gazing into the future. Peter went on, “Once the war is won, we should kill them all—the orcas, the big sharks, the big cats—”
“Peter,” Paul said, “you don’t mean that. The balance needs those creatures, those and more. It’s not our place to govern every species, that’s not why we’re here.”
James said, “That’s quite right, my sons. We’re not murderous monsters.”
“We’re not anything way out here,” Peter said. “We’ve got no place in the battle to come—”
“Enough,” James barked, quieting his eldest son. “There’s nothing we can do about it, I told you not to dwell.” Peter dipped his head and Paul looked on in respectful silence.
Ruth approached with the hollowed-out and char-hardened coconut shells they used as bowls, each filled with a portion of a tossed salad of grasses and lichen with coconut-milk dressing.
“I think we’re lucky to be alive at all,” Ruth said, “and we should go on being grateful. This whole island could just as easily crumble into the sea, for all we know.”
Peter said, “And nobody would know we were ever here, if we ever lived at all.”
“Nobody needs to know,” James said. “Were we out there, back in the United States or anywhere else, they would never truly know. A lot of us live like this.”
“Because they want to,” Paul couldn’t help but say.
“Because they’re cursed,” Matthew said, approaching from the forest around the clearing. His red hair set him apart from the rest of the family, carrying genes from another shifter who was long dead. “We’re all cursed.”
Ruth was quick to say, “We’re blessed, Matthew,” before handing him a bowlful of salad. “Things are… they’re fine. I mean, we live in relative peace…” But a somber silence followed. Nobody around that firepit truly believed it; it was the tragedy of their line and it seemed that it would hover over them until all had died on that rock, likely of natural causes. But shifters lived long, and with no predators providing any threat while on land, other than a rebellion by the hogs, those lives would be long and sad and lonely and utterly wasted.
CHAPTER THREE
Paul strolled back down the same stretch of beach. He was on his sentry rounds, making sure no passing ships could be spotted, wary of any potential interloper. But there were never any, and once again Paul had time to stroll through his rounds and let his mind wander. He’d long thought of wild things that his spare time allowed him too much time for—what existed beyond the stars; what purpose any of them had on the Earth when things seemed so disjointed and off-kilter; if a family as powerful as Paul’s could be stranded on an island like theirs, what logic or point could there be to the world? Paul thought about his father’s lessons on the god that a lot of the normalos worshipped, which they called simply God. But the details became confusing and contradictory, and Paul felt there had to be a more natural explanation for things.
James had also talked to his family about science, the normalos’ study of the natural world. It had brought them terrific advances and sad backslides, often both at the same time. People had been cured of cancer only to die later, while some died from the cure itself; others who mistreated themselves all their lives never got sick at all. It made little sense, and that was what science was all about as far as Paul could reason. And with no greater power and no real logic to the world, all seemed lost and desolate.
A scrap of paper in the lapping waves captured Paul’s attention, piquing his curiosity. He followed the flow of the current and the curve of the beach to see a cardboard box, soaked with water and bleached of color, brown and mottled and nearly shapeless. Another box was further up the beach, but the next sight made the hair on the back of Paul’s neck stand on end.
He ran up to the woman, laying faceup on the beach, her dress soaked and sullied, green with moss and muck, her blonde hair plastered to the sides of her pretty face. She was lying on the beach, the waves reaching up to threaten to pull her back even after having delivered her.
Paul was quick to lift her up, one arm under her shoulders and the other under her legs, walking her up the beach and away from the terrible orca, always lurking nearby and ready for a quick and deadly assault.
Paul knelt and laid the young woman down on the beach, pressing his ear against her chest. It rose and fell slowly beneath the side of his face, heart barely beating beneath her wet, firm flesh. He looked at her body, her face. She seemed to be his age, perhaps just a bit younger than his twenty-five years.
Paul looked around, the possibilities and ramifications of his discovery instantly ringing through his imagination, instinct telling him what might happen with the arrival of this fascinating and beautiful creature. Her eyes were closed, but he could see that they were big and shapely over her little nose and plump lips. Her shoulders and arms were milky and comely, her breasts firm and her waist very slender, her hips round and her legs long and strong and shaped to a kind of perfection that Paul found hard to place. But he knew.
And he also knew he wouldn’t be the only one.
Paul found himself thrown into instant conflict. He was hopeful and fearful, excited and cautious. The important thing was to get the girl to some secluded place, away from the pigs and the orca and his family, at least until he could come to some clearer understanding of her presence on their island, in his life. One thing he already knew was that none of it would ever be the same again.
Paul picked her up again and carried her into the forest to a place where he’d never come across any of his family. They seemed not to know of it, or if they did, they all had other things to see to and worry about than that small corner of the island, deep in the interior, where a tiny valley sat in the middle of a rocky uprising. There was a small pond fed by the rain and what seemed to be an underground spring, rocks rising up on all sides to protect the palm trees and grasses. But the area was popular with the hogs as a safe watering hole, and Paul knew that when he was there, he had to be on his guard. It was also his favorite place to find solace and consider the mysteries of his life. He’d sat there on numerous days and nights for uncountable hours, wondering why he existed, what was the meaning of his life, what the future would hold for him. His father had explained that the normalos called it existentialism, the philosophy that sought to answer the questions of the meaning of life. Paul found it impossible to resist the pull of those mysteries, but even they could not compare with the questions that magnificent figure inspired in his mind and his heart.
Only one person could answer those questions, and she lay unconscious in front of him, protected and secluded, eyes shut but chest rising and lowering slowly with her breath. She was alive, and she was the most beautiful thing Paul had ever seen—an angel in repose. She seemed delivered to him by the same terrible force which had brought him and his family to that island, perhaps even by the island itself, drawn in for the tyrant mother’s own purposes.
She stirred a bit, a meek little moan leaking up from her lithe, pretty neck. Her head turned, eyes blinking and flinching, coughing and gasping a bit, lucky not to be hurling up two lungfuls of ocean water.
The girl looked around, and it was clear that her conscious thought was slow to return. She struggled with her senses, Paul leaning back so as not to crowd her, knowing that she would need space and calm. His only hope was that she wouldn’t scream.
The girl looked around but her attention was quickly drawn to Paul, almost naked before her. She gasped, eyes wide. But Paul put his own index finger to his lips, glancing around and wordlessly urging her to silence. The girl seemed to know that Paul was no threat, and it was just as clear that the young woman was still searching her memory for what had happened, for what had put her there.
“Hello,” Paul said softly with a smile, a hand up with palm out to calm her before repeating, “hello. I… I’m Paul.”
But she was still confused, it was obvious as her eyes jutted from one rocky outcrop
to the next, from the pond to the bushes and back to Paul. She was panting with her fear, lips quivering as she reasoned things through. She nodded, clearly collecting herself. “I’m Lisa, Lisa van Kamp.”
“Hi, Lisa,” Paul said with deliberate softness and kindness, understanding the girl’s caution and discomfort. “You’re welcome here.”
She looked around while she tried to sit up, Paul happy to lend her an easy hand. Her skin was soft beneath his skin, exotic, her curves shifting as she moved and each inch enticing him in a way that only his instincts understood.
“Where… where am I?”
Paul could only shake his head. “I’m not sure, tell you the truth. You’re… you’re here.”
Lisa looked around with obvious and growing confusion and panic. “But… what happened? What’s going on?”
“Relax, Lisa, you’re safe, you’re fine, nobody’s gonna hurt you here.”
“Hurt me? What?” It was only then that Paul realized he’d said the wrong thing. “What?”
“No, it’s… it’s fine, it’s fine.”
“What… I don’t understand!”
“I found you on the beach, Lisa! There were… packages too. You were in a shipwreck or plane crash.”
The girl stopped and it was clear that she was searching her memory. “I… I was on my yacht… well, my family’s yacht, my father’s yacht, but… the weather got bad, I was in the cabin… something… the boat was hit, I dunno, it… we tipped over, that’s all I remember.”
