Feral Nights

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  “You’re not able to reach close enough,” Travis says. “With the wind and rain . . . Maybe try again in the morning.”

  Sliding down, I ask, “You okay?”

  Travis says, “I just wish I could do something to help.”

  “Be with Aimee,” I tell him. “Even if she doesn’t know you’re there, I can’t stand the thought of her being all alone in the lodge with those arctic asshats.”

  “Will do,” the Dillo ghost replies, dissipating in the humid air.

  “Who’re you talking to?” Noelle mumbles in a sleepy voice. “God?”

  Travis has disappeared, though he might still be listening.

  “Sorry I woke you,” I tell Noelle. “How do you feel?”

  She yawns, stretches her arms. “Fuzzy.”

  I explain my theory about the food being drugged.

  “That would fit with Paxton’s MO,” she observes, repositioning herself. Now we’re face-to-face, resting on our stomachs. “When I first met him at Basement Blues, he was dealing transformeaze.”

  “The shift-freezing drug,” I say.

  She nods. “There’s an underground circuit of shifter music clubs in big cities and remote honky-tonks across the countryside. I sing in this blues band, Fayard and the French Horns, and we didn’t really take off until we started using. The more animal form we looked, the better the audiences liked us. The money was solid, and the applause felt even better. Before long, the drug seemed necessary, and not just for business purposes.”

  My dad warned me about transformeaze. Except for very young adolescents and hybrids, most werepeople typically have no trouble with control during and throughout a shift. It’s painful but natural, and we’re still ourselves. Animal is the form, not the mind inside it.

  You start toying with that . . . I can’t imagine losing myself, what makes me Clyde, and going all renegade Possum. That’s scary enough. But unleashing an inner Lion could get deadly fast. “Did you have issues with control?”

  “That’s why I stopped. Never try it, Clyde. Transformeaze is distilled from a demonic spell. Under the influence, I did things I’ll always regret.”

  I take that to mean she did someone she’ll always regret. I hate Paxton that much more for taking advantage of her. I search my mind for something that will reassure Noelle that I don’t think less of her for what she’s been through. “You’re so graceful. I can barely get in and out of my hammock without fumbling all over myself.”

  Her lips curl. “I’m so graceful?”

  “What?” I reply, blushing. “You are!” Despite the limp. I can’t remember the last time I came right out and complimented somebody. I haven’t even admitted to my parents that the kits are cute. “What color are your eyes in fully human form?”

  “More brown, but I like them better this way. That’s not the transformeaze. The various species of Cats — Lions included — tend to be better than other shifters at holding on to superficial animal-form features.”

  “It’s worse for you here,” I say. “Nobody wants to mate me to some strange Possum girl.” Not that I’d necessarily mind.

  Noelle props her chin on her fists. “Tell me about Possums.”

  I blink. “I’m not really qualified to speak on behalf of all of Possum kind.”

  That makes her laugh. “Then tell me about you.”

  So I do. We talk for hours. I tell her about Mom and Dad, Cleatus, Clara, Claudette, and Clint, about Waterloo High, working at Sanguini’s, how I got hurt so badly.

  Turns out she’s from Atlanta, her parents work for Coca-Cola, they have a Maine coon named Aesop, and her mother collects porcelain mouse thimbles. Fascinating.

  As the sun comes up, I talk about Aimee. “We’d been hanging out for a while, but after I woke from the coma, she was the person most there for me. She even tracked down VHS copies of Galactica 1980, plus a VCR for us to watch them on, and suffered through the whole set with me, just so I could say that I’d seen it.”

  “Galactica 1980?” Noelle repeats. “Never heard of it.”

  That bothers me more than it should. “I take my geek cred very seriously.”

  I don’t get into Aimee’s relationship with Travis or how he died. I’m more self-conscious about what I say now that I know he might be listening.

  Besides, I don’t want Noelle to think that I’m holding what Ruby did against all of Cat kind . . . because I’m not, at least not anymore.

  Noelle confirms that two of her toes and a bone in her foot were broken when she was captured. “You should’ve seen it, all swollen up, before I could shift it partly out. It looked like a bloody stump. Paxton —”

  “He’s worse than those arctic asshats,” I say. “Because he’s a shifter, it’s —”

  “More personal somehow,” Noelle says along with me. “I like you, Clyde. I really do. If we could ever find our way out of this hellhole —”

  “We will,” I promise, forcing myself up to once again try shaking the crutch from the top of my cage.

  THE TEMPERATURE COOLS Wednesday at sunset, though last night’s rain did nothing to break the humidity. The ground is muddy, messy. Cats are known for our fastidiousness. Keeping watch in a treetop, I’m cleaner and more content up high.

  Helicopters come and go from the island — sometimes to drop off a shifter, sometimes for the day-to-day business of the yetis, and every once in a great while to bring hunters salivating at the chance to kill.

  We’re almost done setting up the Burmese tiger pits. James and Mei are digging the last one now while Brenek and Luis tweak our camouflage efforts.

  I can hear Luis below, humming a blues song.

  Right then Teghan scurries up the trunk, carrying half a coconut in her teeth. She hunches next to me and cradles the nut in her hands. It’s filled with mashed red berries, and in the light of the rising moon, her hands are red, her face and arms decorated with crosses and doves. “Did you paint yourself?” I ask. “You’re not a half-bad artist.”

  Taking our example, she’s trying to protect herself from whatever’s to come.

  “I’m better at pottery,” she replies. Then she hands me the makeshift bowl, stands, turns so that her back is facing me, and says, “Do the backs of my thighs.”

  Excuse me? “Why don’t you ask Mei?” I suggest, moving so I’m no longer at eye level with her barely adolescent hind end. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  Teghan flashes me a grin over her shoulder. “Are you a prude or just shy?”

  It’s the first time I’ve been accused of either. “How old are you, anyway?”

  The Tasmanian weredevil makes a show of rolling her eyes and swings to a limb a few feet away. “Fourteen.” At my arched brow, she amends, “Okay, thirteen.”

  I let that speak for itself, and then she says, “Do you have an age requirement or something, like for a driver’s license?”

  “Or something,” I reply. “Do you make a habit of coming on to older guys?”

  Teghan pulls her knees to her chest. “If this is our last night on earth, I —”

  I can’t help laughing, and at her indignant glare, I hold up my palms in mock surrender. “I’m flattered — really. I bet you’re the hottest girl in seventh grade.”

  “Eighth,” she spits out, tapping her foot against a leafy branch.

  As a peace offering, I return her half coconut of red berry mush. “Fine, eighth. But you’re a little young to worry about dying a virgin.”

  At her stricken expression, I add, “You’re not going to die, Teghan. You can’t let in thoughts like that.” I hold up my arm, showing off the scabbed-over wound where she bit me. “You may be a kid, but you’re not some defenseless little girl, either.”

  CAMERON IS DRESSED in his usual duds, scrubbing pots and pans.

  Tonight’s dinner is for Sandra and the interns only. Earlier, the clients requested room service, and she said she had it handled. So I grab a towel to help the demon dry dishes, dearly wishing I was working with Clyd
e in Sanguini’s kitchen instead.

  I ask, “Where did Boreal and the other snowmen run off to?”

  “Off-island,” Cameron replies. “They sailed one of the yachts around to the other side for the duration of the clients’ stay — except for Frore, who’s still stuck babysitting the dock for mouthing off. The clientele never go there, anyway. They always take a copter in and out.” At my quizzical expression, Cameron adds, “The deific are not about to risk revealing the secret of their existence to the clients. Sandra has ‘flunky’ written all over her, and besides, when marketing to maleficent sorcerers and undead aristocrats, would you rather strut out a devilishly handsome hell-spawn demon or a hirsute, paunchy evolutionary dead end?”

  “Makes sense for Boreal,” I reply. “But if your master is on hiatus, why do you step up at all? Why not hightail it home to hell?”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” Cameron says. “To break the spell Boreal has over me, he has to completely abandon this island — leave with no intention of ever coming back.”

  I twirl a dish towel. “He does have a lot invested here.”

  “Tell me about it.” Cameron shudders. “And please don’t call him my ‘master.’ Some demons get off on submission, but I’m more the chaos type.”

  We’re only minutes away from sunset. It’s time for the processional to the hunt. Finally outside the lodge, I breathe in the tropical air and I take one step after another, waiting for my moment. I’m so nervous, I could throw up.

  In contrast, Cameron is once again resplendent. He’s changed into a majestic, sweeping black cape woven of mist and shadows. His fiery orange robes glide across the grounds as if the mud beneath them were polished marble.

  With a flourish, he leads the clients, who’re in turn trailed by me, through parallel rows of tiki torches that stretch to the edge of the jungle.

  “So tell me,” Mrs. Borgia-Simon gushes. “Are you and Lucifer close?”

  “Like this,” he replies, holding up crossed fingers. “Me and Old Scratch, we go way back. I’m the one who pinned the tail on the serpent at his last birthday party.”

  “I thought Lucifer’s fallen angels outranked the hell spawn,” Elina muses.

  I’m not sure if she’s being insensitive or passive-aggressive.

  I’m not sure I even care. But I can tell by the way he straightens that the remark bothers Cameron.

  The demon circles back to tuck her hand in the nook of his arm before continuing on. “Alas, you don’t know the inner workings of hell, sweet Elina . . . at least not yet. Perhaps tonight a werebeast will get lucky and change all that.” It’s the first acknowledgment that the hunt may be as dangerous to the clients as to their prey.

  Mr. Simon adjusts the strap of his rifle. The missus has a gun, too, and they’re decked out in classic hunter apparel. Clunky brown leather boots, night-vision goggles, various small pouches and long knives and canteens hanging off their matching belts. Topped with pith helmets, they look like theme-park safari guides.

  The vamps, in contrast, appear dolled up for Goth clubbing. Elina and Victor nod to practicality only in their low heels and in covering more of their alabaster skin. For all their powers, the undead can still be cut by thorns, targeted by mosquitoes.

  I’m rooting for the bloodsuckers of the tinier variety.

  Mr. Simon mentions having packed silver ammo.

  Victor looks surprised. “You do know that lead kills them just as dead?”

  Mrs. Borgia-Simon touches up her mauve lipstick. “Even werewolves?”

  Victor explains that werepeople have largely taken charge of the trade in silver weapons as a way for them to identify and track their own enemies. “It fools the amateurs. I’d think graduates of the Scholomance would know better.”

  Interesting. Cameron, who’s gone eerily silent, has shaken their haughtiness to the point that they’re sniping at each other.

  Mr. Simon clarifies: “Carpathian campus,” like that means something. “Are you fellow alumni?”

  Elina says, “No, but I dallied with one some years ago at the gala of the late eternal king. Ravishing man, a necromancer by the name of Byron Yansky. Perhaps you know him?”

  I glance at the interns standing guard on the cliff. They’ve ditched their lime-colored casual uniforms for paramilitary-style ones.

  So far as the clients know, they’re on the lookout for any unwelcome air traffic and poised for combat in the unlikely event of an attack on the lodge grounds by any number of anti-demonic forces. Their presence, like so much of the snowmen’s operation, is mostly for show. But they do know how to fire their weapons.

  As the clients chat, I scan the foliage for a glimpse of Clyde’s cage, finally catching sight of it only a few hundred yards from the starting point of the hunt. I should cringe at seeing him caged like an animal. I should be appalled, except . . .

  “Clyde?” I whisper. How could he have bulked up like that in the few days we’ve been apart?

  He clatters his plate across the bars, trying to get my attention. “Aimee!”

  “My apologies for that unpleasant racket,” I tell the clients.

  Unfazed, they continue gossiping.

  I spare a glance at the striking young woman situated next to my friend. She must be the captive Lion that the snowmen were talking about. She’s bared her saber teeth.

  I don’t take it personally. I am, after all, escorting the enemy.

  Mrs. Borgia-Simon remarks, “This humidity is wretched on my hair.” She eyes Elina’s cascading black locks. “Whoever is your stylist?”

  The conversation has turned, and now they’re practically cooing at each other. I keep moving, trying to act casual. Thank heavens for their self-absorption and ADD.

  “Aimee!” Clyde hollers again. It’s painful, ignoring him. I only hope he doesn’t think I’ve been brainwashed or something.

  “And your nails!” Mrs. Borgia-Simon gushes. “They’re works of art. Losing your humanity certainly does wonders for a girl.”

  Ahead, Sandra (now sporting a tropical orange suit) and Paxton have set up a lime-green silk canopy, draped over a rattan-beamed structure and decorated with bright purple-and-orange flowers at each of the four top corners.

  Upon our arrival, the Cat snaps a few photos — both posed and candid — to commemorate the occasion. Then he excuses himself and marches off, probably eager, as a shifter himself, to stay as low as possible on the clients’ radar.

  Meanwhile, Sandra positions herself to one side, bows, and murmurs greetings to Cameron as if he has some power over her.

  An owl screeches in the distance, and I take note of the intern guarding this area of the grounds from the sheer cliff. Meanwhile, the respective couples separate, each standing to one side.

  From beneath the canopy, Cameron glances at the vampires. “No supernatural powers.” His shifts his gaze to the Simons. “No demonic sorcery.” Clasping his gnarled hands behind his back, the demon adds, “It’s a battle of wits and wills, brawn and agility.”

  Not to mention firearms. Victor is bouncing slightly in anticipation.

  Gesturing to Sandra, Cameron says, “Do fill them in on the logistics.”

  “No need to concern yourself with transporting your kills,” she declares. “Once the hunt is concluded, we’ll send out a retrieval team to fetch them. In the unfortunate event that the hunt proves fatal for one couple or the other, the surviving clients will assume responsibility for both fees in full.”

  I suspect the promotional brochure didn’t get into that last point.

  “We here at Daemon Island put a high priority on our guests’ safety, albeit balanced against”— Cameron pauses for effect —“the alluring dangers that await.”

  Sandra sounds an air horn so loud that it’s painful. “You have until dawn.”

  The undead aristocrats join hands and scamper toward the base of the cliff.

  The human billionaires exchange a peck for good luck. Mrs. Borgia-Simon uses her hanky to wipe the
lipstick off her husband. Then they strike out in the general direction of the ocean.

  The hunt is on.

  CAMERON RETREATS toward the lodge, muttering, “They’re nothing but demonic wannabes, a bunch of pretentious bush-leaguers.” His voice becomes mocking: “‘I once met a necromancer named Byron Yansky. He plays Parcheesi with the dead.’”

  Feeling awkward, I say, “Generous of us to sound the horn. Fair warning.”

  “Not so generous,” Sandra says as the wind picks up. “The clients would be crushed if the hunt were over too quickly. They’re here to get their money’s worth.”

  Somehow I have to ditch Sandra, and fast, without raising her suspicions. I check the cliff, and this time the nearest guard-intern is gone. With Sandra’s back to him, Paxton stands in the guard’s place, waving at me. Our odds just got a little better.

  What was I saying? “Without using their powers or magic —”

  “You’re so naive.” Sandra fiddles with the canopy. “Now that the clients are out of sight, they’ll begin cheating immediately.” She winks at me. “They are evil, after all.” Scanning the skyline above the jungle, she points. “Look there.”

  A tiny black ribbon emerges from a trail of rising smoke and flits into the sky.

  “That’s Elina,” Sandra says. “Even with the cover of treetops, it’ll be easier for her to locate her prey from the air. Her hearing is remarkable, and she can cover more ground more quickly that way. The Simons will accomplish the same goal with a spell.”

  My throat tightens at the thought of the clients targeting Yoshi. My plan assumes that at least some of the jungle shifters will make it this far alive.

  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.”