Fighting Furry

by Katharine Sadler

  Unfortunately, he was big enough that he was able to pop me up and off him. I rolled under him, the pavement hard on my back, and curled my knees up, ready to kick him. He darted out of range. “Look, lady, I'm just trying to—”

  He was a bit off-kilter, probably from lack of oxygen to his brain, and he stumbled back into range. I arched my back and managed to wrap my legs around his neck. I squeezed hard and something changed. His eyes flashed with a weird sort of light and he growled again, but he sounded like an animal. It startled me so much I loosened my grip.

  “Hey,” someone far off shouted. “What's going on?”

  I tried to get my legs back tight around his neck, but he twisted his head and bit down hard on my calf. I screamed in shock more than pain as his teeth pierced my calf muscle. I'd taken a lot of punches and kicks, but no one had ever bitten me before.

  I released my legs and scrabbled on the concrete away from him. The guy was fucking insane. I tried to stand, to get back into a fighting stance, but my bad knee was locking up on me and my vision…I hadn't taken a blow to my head, but everything was blurry and my body felt heavy, so heavy. Despite that, I forced myself to my feet and spread my legs wide. I raised my fists, ready to fight since I couldn't run.

  “What the hell is happening here?” Another guy had joined the first and was looking from me to my attacker and back again. “Shit, Jeremiah, get a hold of yourself.” He grabbed my attacker by the shoulders and shook him a bit. “Calm the fuck down.”

  “He 'tacked me,” I said, each word heavy and difficult to say. “Bit. Me.”

  “She's a human,” a woman said. What the hell was wrong with these people?

  I took a step back and wobbled. “Bit. Me.” I said again. I just couldn't get over it. Who the hell bites someone like that?

  “You bit her?” A male voice asked. I didn't know which man, because I'd looked down at my leg and it was really bloody. Was it bad for it to be pumping blood like that?

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.” That sounded like my attacker, but I couldn't be sure because my vision had become a small pinprick focused on the red of my blood. I tilted and started to fall.

  Strong arms wrapped around me before I hit the pavement and I struggled against them. Even in my sluggish state, I knew this was very, very bad. “It's okay, sweetheart,” a husky male voice said. “You're okay.”

  His words might have been more settling if my attacker wasn't still chanting “Shit,” in a panicked voice and someone else wasn't asking, “what the hell are we going to do with her?”

  “We'll take her to Axel,” the guy holding me said in a calm voice. “He'll know what to do.”

  I tried to fight him off, to get out of his arms, but I was too weak and I was losing my grip on consciousness. I struggled against it, struggled to get out of the darkness pulling me under. My last thought, as my world went black, was, This is a shitty way to die.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Shit. I know I fucked up, Axel—”

  “Quiet,” a gruff male voice answered. A voice that sent shivers and tingles up and down my whole body. That guy, whoever he was, gave great voice.

  I shifted and reached for the remote to turn off the T.V. I must have left on, and I hit the floor. Hard. Had I fallen asleep on the couch? And why was the floor so cold?

  I groaned and forced my eyes open. I got my good hand under me and pressed up enough to see I was lying on a cement floor. Where the hell was I? I never drank, so I wasn't hungover. Maybe I was sick? Except, I felt amazing. Like I could run a marathon.

  “How are you feeling?” that delicious voice asked.

  I pushed to my feet and spun, spreading my legs and bending my knees to get into a fighting stance. I was surrounded by metal bars and outside them stood a big mountain man with pitch black hair, a trimmed beard, and a body like…Shit, I needed to focus on what was important and ignore the way my libido suddenly wanted to take the lead in this situation. I'd always been attracted to big, gruff, muscular guys, but I'd always known they were bad for me. I'd never date a man who could overpower me.

  “Why am I in a cage?” The cage was in a big room with cinder block walls and cement floors and had iron bars that ran to the ceiling, like a jail cell. On either side of me were cells like the one I was in and there were other cages in the room that looked more like dog kennels. In the cell to my left, my attacker sat on a cot, his shoulders slumped, his expression a scowl, but not a mark on him. I thought I'd at least bruised him a bit.

  “You were fighting, for one,” the mountain man said.

  “He attacked me.” I pointed at my attacker. “He grabbed me from behind. I was defending myself.”

  “I just wanted to talk to you,” my attacker said, his scowl shifting to a pout. “I didn't know you were human.”

  I gestured to my attacker and raised my eyebrows at the mountain man in the universal expression for, 'see, that guy is clearly insane, so why don't you let me out of this cage and we'll all go about our business?'

  “Who are you?” mountain man asked. “And why are you in our town? Why were you out on a full moon night?”

  Oh, for the love of green gummy bears, was everyone in this town crazy? And if they were, was I about to become someone's serial kill? “I'm Julie Jacobs, maybe you've heard of me?”

  Mountain man gave me a blank look, but my attacker leapt to his feet. “No fucking way,” he said. “I thought you looked familiar.” He looked over at mountain man. “Axel, dude, I turned Julie Jacobs. I fucking turned Julie Jacobs.” He pumped his fist in the air and jerked his leg in what appeared to be a pathetic attempt at a roundhouse kick. Axel cleared his throat and glared at my attacker, whose excitement quickly vanished. “Oh, fuck. I am so dead. I am so fucking dead.”

  “Jeremiah,” Axel said. “Sit back down and shut the fuck up. I can't think for all your whining.”

  “But dude, there's no way they're going to let me—”

  Axel growled. “I said I'd take care of it and I'll take fucking care of it. Sit down and shut up.”

  A door at the far end of the room opened and a tall man, possibly the tallest man I'd ever seen, walked over to stand next to Axel. “Morning, boss. Heard you had an interesting night.”

  Axel rolled his eyes. “Zane—”

  But Zane wasn't listening to Axel, because he'd caught sight of me and his eyes had gone wide as saucers. “Dude. Shit.” He took two steps toward my cage, stopped, and almost tripped over his feet, his cheeks going flame red. He looked about my age, but he was acting like a teenager caught with a nudie magazine. It was adorable. “Julie Jacobs. Damn. You are even hotter in person.” Somehow his eyes got even wider and he slammed his lips shut, swallowed hard, tightened his hands into fists, and swallowed again. “What I mean is, you're an amazing athlete. Your technique and, man, your kicks are out of this world.” He crossed his arms over his chest, dropped them to his sides, and crossed them over his chest again. “Sorry about your last fight.” He held up a hand. “Unless that's an offensive thing to say. Shit. I—”

  “It's fine,” I said, even though it wasn't. Part of the reason I was staying at Krista's was so I didn't have to talk about that damn fight ever again.

  “Zane,” Axel said, his voice all growly and deep. “Do you think you could get a hold of yourself? I pulled this woman in for fighting in the street. Jeremiah bit her.”

  Zane frowned and glared at Jeremiah. “You bit Julie Jacobs? What the hell were you thinking?”

  “She punched me,” Jeremiah said, his voice whiny. “And then she kicked me. Then she—”

  “Enough,” Axel roared loud enough to shake the iron bars of my cage. He shifted slightly to focus on Zane. “Since you seem to know so much about our prisoner, maybe you can fill me in.”

  Zane straightened his shoulders and pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket. “It might be easier if I show you, man. You're going to want to see this.”

  He tapped a few buttons on his phone and brought up something, hope
fully not a replay of me getting my ass handed to me in my last fight. He leaned in to Axel and held the phone up to him. “She's a UFC fighter, one of the best. And she was in that movie, you know the one where all the superheroes team up to save the planet from a meteor strike carrying the DNA of killer aliens?”

  “I didn't see that movie,” Axel said, clearly irked.

  Zane looked over at me and winked. “Our alpha is a tiny bit out of touch with the outside—”

  “Zane,” Axel said in a testy voice, still looking at something on Zane's phone. “Who's that?”

  “Her boyfriend. He's the lead singer in that boy band you hate. The one with the—”

  “We broke up.”

  Both men looked over at me, confusion clear on their faces.

  “Isaiah and I broke up after I lost my last fight. He doesn't date losers.”

  “Dick,” Zane sneered.

  “I agree,” I said. “So, now that you two know who I am, think you could let me out of this cage?”

  Before they could answer, the door opened and a woman walked in, dragging a naked man with some sort of feathery, wiry wings on his back. “Hey, boss,” the woman said. “Caught Charles about to leap off the cliff again.”

  Axel scowled and even Zane tensed up. “Put him in a cage, Clarissa,” Axel said.

  Clarissa, who was smaller than me, dragged the pudgy Charles to a cage like he weighed nothing. She opened the door and shoved the man inside. Then, she shut and locked the door with a key she removed from a chain around her neck.

  “It was going to work this time,” Charles said.

  “The only way it was going to work was if you were aiming to be dead,” Zane said. “When are you going to learn, man? Harpies and wolves don't work.”

  “Harpies? Wolves?” I asked. Maybe I hadn't woken up, yet. Maybe I was in the hospital and this was all some weird coma-induced nightmare.

  “Yeah,” Zane said. “Charles thinks he's in love with a harpy, but harpies only mate in the air, so he's been trying to figure out a way to—”

  “Enough,” Axel said. The command in his voice, not to mention the rumble that rolled over me like a warm stone massage, made me look at him. Our eyes met and I felt like I'd been hit with a taser of lust. I licked my lips and his gaze lowered to my mouth and hesitated there, before he cleared his throat and focused on my eyes, his expression stony. “Let's get back to this Julie Jacobs. She was just about—”

  “Oh, my god,” Clarissa said. “Julie Jacobs. I thought you looked familiar.”

  “Stop,” Axel roared. “The next person who speaks is going to be stripped naked, tied to the tree in the center of town, and covered in honey.”

  “Boss, have you been doing your meditation, because you seem—” Zane started.

  Axel glared at him and Zane mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key. Axel pulled at the hem of his shirt, a concert tee for Rob Zombie, like he was straightening a suit jacket. The move had my eyes going to his waist and the not insignificant bulge in his pants before I realized what I was doing and jerked my eyes up to his smirking face. Damn it. “As I was saying, Julie Jacobs was just about to tell me what the hell she's doing in our town.”

  “Krista Merriman is my cousin,” I said, hands on hips, glaring at him, because I had done nothing wrong, and because he was an asshole for being too damn sexy. “I'm staying at her place while she's out of town.”

  “You're related to Krista?” he asked, confusion creasing his brow. “She didn't tell me anyone would be staying at her house.”

  This town was beyond weird. I was going to pack my bags and go back to LA as soon as I got the hell out of this cage. “Call her and ask her if you don't believe me.”

  “And she didn't tell you to stay inside on the night of the full moon?”

  I wanted to crawl into a corner of the cage and curl up in the fetal position until the crazy people had finished with their plan to end me, but I stood my ground. Nothing was gained by hiding. “Look, I understand you're upset that I beat up your friend, but can I talk to someone in charge, like a sheriff or a mayor or, you know, anyone sane?” I snapped my lips shut. Too far. I'd gone too far.

  Axel didn't appear to be offended. “I'm in charge,” he said. “I'm the sheriff, the mayor, and the alpha of this pack.”

  “Pack?”

  “We're werewolves, Julie Jacobs. And now you're one, too.”

  I bit my lip not to laugh in his face. Thanks to genetic mapping services, like Predecessor.com and Whosyourgranddaddy.org, we'd discovered that some people carried wolf and bat, even bird, DNA. The scientists hadn't figured out why, yet, but some of the people with that DNA had gone a little wacko and decided they'd had werewolf or vampire ancestors and that they had werewolf or vampire characteristics. Like, 'hey, I've got bat DNA, must be why I don't tan well,' that sort of thing. I'd never heard of a whole town taking it to this extreme, though. “I'm pretty sure you can't change my DNA with a little bite.”

  Axel rolled his eyes. “Except that we did. We are full-blood werewolves. We change into wolves and howl at the moon and—”

  I doubled over laughing. “Oh, my god,” I said. “You had me going there. You really did.” I stood and scanned the room again. “Where are the cameras? You saw me and you decided to prank me so you could get famous on YouTube. I get it. You're hilarious.” I sobered and glared at Axel. “Now, let me out, or I'm calling my lawyer.”

  “Zane,” Axel said. “Show her.”

  Zane shook his head. “No way, man. I am not getting naked in front of Julie Jacobs during mating season. No fucking—”

  “Do it,” Axel said in this weirdly deep and echoing voice that made me take a step forward, like I wanted to do whatever he asked. So weird.

  Zane pulled his shirt over his head to reveal a long, lean body. He wasn't super muscular, but he was clearly fit and toned. He toed off his shoes and pulled down his pants to reveal…Holy shit, um, wow…I'd never seen a, um, a cucumber quite that big before and it was erect and, um, just wow, pointing at me.

  “My eyes are up here,” Zane said.

  I raised my eyes to his. I couldn't stop my cheeks from warming with a killer blush, but I could keep my expression stern. “Sorry,” I said. “That thing should come with a warning label.”

  Zane smirked.

  Axel growled. “Just shift already.”

  Zane dropped to all fours and a ripple rolled over his whole body. In a matter of seconds, he'd shifted to a wolf, a huge, silver wolf with eyes as dark brown as Zane's. I rubbed my eyes. This was definitely a coma-induced nightmare. I grabbed a chunk of flesh near my wrist and pinched hard. Nope, I felt that.

  Zane shifted back to human and dressed. “We're wolves,” Axel said. “And now you're one, too.”

  I was shaking, my whole body was shaking. “You're saying I'll be able to turn into a wolf like that?”

  Axel nodded. “You should be able to, yes.”

  I could turn into a wolf? I probably should have been freaking out, or asking about the potential problems associated with being a werewolf, but I couldn't get over how fucking cool it would be to turn into one of nature's deadliest predators. “Can I try it, now?”

  Axel glanced at the others, suddenly looking a touch less sure of himself. “You want to do it with all these people in the room?”

  “I've seen Zane's package,” I said. “It seems only fair if he sees mine. But maybe the rest of you could leave?”

  Zane was a good-looking guy, but I wasn't attracted to him, and I was pretty sure I could take him in a fight. I felt comfortable with him in a way I didn't feel comfortable with Axel. Maybe because Zane was leaner, easier to take out if he attacked me. At least in theory. I'd known lean guys who were scrappy as fuck.

  Axel shifted, not meeting my eyes. “The first shift is difficult. You'll need your alpha to help you through it.”

  “My alpha?”

  “Me,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Clarissa, Zane, please wait outside.�
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  “No,” I said. “I want her to stay.”

  “Fine,” Axel said, his voice gruffer. Zane left with no argument. “Charles and Jeremiah turn to face the side wall.”

  The two men faced the wall. I stripped off my clothes as quickly as I could, grateful that Axel kept his eyes on the floor.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Clarissa said. “We'll need to get that cast off you.”

  Shit. I hadn't thought of that. “I don't suppose you have a doctor who could give me a new one?”

  “You won't need it,” Axel said. He was looking at me now, but his eyes were on my face. “Werewolves heal more quickly than humans. Shifting will speed the healing process even more.”

  “Really?” I said. “That's amazing. Do werewolves live longer, too?”

  “All things being equal we should,” Axel said. “But the wolves I've known tend to shorten their lives by doing stupid, idiotic things like trying to fly off a cliff.”

  “It would've worked,” Charles groused.

  Axel ignored him. “Stick your arm through the bars.”

  I stuck my arm through the bars and Axel tore the cast off like it was made of toilet paper. It hurt to lose the support of the cast, but not as bad as I thought it would. “Get on all fours,” Axel said.

  I did as he asked, wondering if I was as crazy as the rest of them. It would be worth it, though. If shifting healed me and I could get back to fighting, it would be worth all the crazy in the world.

  “Shift,” Axel said.

  I was on all fours, naked, my good hand and knees getting colder by the second against the chilly cement floor, goosebumps rising on my body. Axel told me to shift, and I bit my lip not to laugh. This was too ridiculous for words.

  “Shift,” Axel said again, his voice doing that deep, echoing thing that made me want to get closer to him.

  I concentrated on going wolfy, on doing what he asked, but I just didn't know how to do it. What if this was a prank and my naked body would be plastered all over the Internet? Maybe Zane shifting to wolf was a CGI trick. Did that work if you weren't watching it on a screen?