Lions and Tigers and Boys

by Tawny Stokes

  Marvel lifted his teacup. “Cheers.” And he took a sip.

  Dani looked into her cup, then frowning, she took a sip. She smacked her lips afterward. “I don’t usually like tea, but I like this. Tastes like blueberries.”

  Something didn’t feel right, but before I could react, Marvel snapped his fingers and a black candle appeared in his hand. He blew on the wick, and it flared to life. He waved it in front of Dani’s face.

  I was off the couch. “Don’t!”

  Marvel grabbed my arm. “It has to be done, Cai. She’s a liability.”

  “What’s going on?” I could hear the panic in her voice and see it on her face but because of the beginning effects of the tea, she couldn’t move from her seat.

  I knelt in front of her. “You’ll be okay, Dani, I promise.”

  “If you had just done what I told you, made sure she didn’t succeed, and did it all without getting involved with her, I wouldn’t have to do this. I told you pretty girls were a distraction.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt her,” I said to Marvel, then grabbed Dani’s hand. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m in love with you.”

  She just blinked at me.

  “This is the only way. She can’t be involved. Her memories have to be erased.” He yanked on my arm. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded, and he let me go. I looked at Dani. Her gaze was already vacant; she couldn’t see me. The first sip of tea had done that. Preparing her mind to be wiped. I wanted to turn away but had to bear witness—I owed her that much. I squeezed her hand. It would be the last time I could touch her. After this, she would have no recollection of our feelings for each other. She would remember our date, and that she had maybe liked me, but she would be left with a feeling of distaste for me. Marvel would concoct some story that would play well. Probably that I was an ass on our date and said or did something ungentlemanly, and that would be that.

  “I’m sorry, Dani.” I brought her hand to my mouth and pressed a kiss to the back. “I believe in you. I will always believe in you.”

  I felt Frank’s hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, son, let’s go see how the cats are doing in the first snow.”

  Reluctantly I stood and went with him. I couldn’t bear to watch Marvel rip pieces of Dani out of her. I hated that the next time I saw her, she’d have no memory of our first kiss, of our long talks, of how she felt in my arms. Or of how I felt about her. It was like I was being ripped apart, too.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dani

  Slowly, I peeled open my eyes. Light from Anna’s lamp nearly blinded me, and I shut them again. My head pounded like I was being hit with a ball peen hammer. “Oh God,” I groaned and rolled over onto my back.

  Someone poked me in the cheek. That someone was likely Anna. “You awake?”

  “No. I’m dead.”

  “I’ve been waiting an hour for you to wake up to tell me about your date. It must’ve been good, ’cause I didn’t hear you come in.”

  Frowning, I opened my eyes again to see Anna smiling down at me. “What date?”

  She gawked. “What do you mean, what date? Your date with Cai. You went into town to see a movie.”

  I frowned, thinking. I remembered seeing a movie, some action film I think, and enjoying it. I ate popcorn and licorice. At least I felt like I did. Faces flashed in my mind. Shen from school and his boyfriend Aaron, and another girl whose name escaped me. I remembered meeting them and sitting with them. For some reason, I couldn’t exactly picture Cai there. But he had to have been. I pictured the theater, and sitting in the seat, and putting a hand in a popcorn bag, but when I imagined who was holding the bag, it was a bit blurred. Like I could see an outline of a person, Cai, but one second he was smiling at me, and the next it was transformed into something grotesque and animal-like. It was really weird and unsettling. Made my gut clench.

  “The movie was good.” I pushed myself up to sit but had to hold my head. It hurt something awful. “Do you have any Advil? I’ve got a wicked headache.”

  Anna searched her dresser drawer where she kept the majority of her makeup and toiletries and other girlie items. She poured out a brown pill and gave it to me. “Were you drinking or something?”

  I swallowed the pill, chugging water from the bottle on my nightstand. “I don’t remember. Honestly.”

  “Did he roofie you?” Concerned, she sat on my bed and grabbed my hand. “I will kill him. You can tell me. We’ll go to the dean and get him expelled, or worse, arrested.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t roofied. Cai didn’t do anything to me. We just didn’t have a good time. We didn’t click. He isn’t who I thought he was.” My voice was robotic. It sounded hollow in my head.

  “But why are you having memory issues? That’s not normal.”

  “It’s just this headache. I’m sure once it’s faded, I’ll be clearer. Then we can talk about Cai behind his back and call him names.”

  She smiled and hugged me. “Okay. I’m just so sad it didn’t work out with him. I was sure he was the one.”

  “Anna, I’m sixteen. I don’t think I’m going to meet ‘the one’ in high school.”

  “Maybe not.” She stood, then looked down at me with that motherly concern of hers. “You should stay in bed. You don’t look good. I’ll tell Miss Gisele you’re not well.”

  I tried to sit up. “No, I can’t disappoint her.”

  She pushed me back down. “It’s just yoga and stretch class, Dani. She’ll understand.”

  I didn’t argue with her, just slid back into bed, and pulled the covers up to my ear. “I’ll talks slater…” I knew I was slurring, but it didn’t matter because I fell back asleep instantly.

  And I dreamed.

  Images of a path through the woods flashed in my mind. I was jogging down it, it was cold, and I could see my breath. As I ran I could hear something keeping pace beside me. I turned to look and saw a beautiful, sleek tiger at my side. Its jowls twitched as it made chuffing noises. It sounded joyful, and that made me happy. A warm sensation filled my chest, and I smiled.

  “I’m so happy we’re together, Cai,” I said to the tiger.

  “We’ll always be together,” the tiger said back.

  Then dark clouds filled the sky, like black ominous smoke. I shivered inside my jacket and rubbed my gloved hands against my arms. But it didn’t help. I was still cold. I kept running, but the path seemed to end right at the stream. There wasn’t a bridge anywhere to cross. I swore there had been a bridge there earlier.

  A black fog swirled around the banks of the water. I’d never seen black fog before. It looked thick and hazardous, like a chemical reaction. I reached out to touch it, but thinking it was going to somehow burn my skin, I pulled back. A hand reached out from the darkness and grabbed mine.

  I screamed and struggled, trying to jerk away, but the hand would not relent. From within the fog, a shape materialized. Professor Marvel stepped out, still clutching my hand in his, holding tight, squeezing hard. I winced from the pain of it.

  His eyes glowed, and green fire erupted from the skin of his hands. It spread over me, threatening to lick its way up my arms. And still he held on to me, as if we were fused together.

  “You and Cai will never be together. It will only cause you both pain.”

  The green flames shot up my arms, and within seconds, I was completely engulfed. I heard a voice screaming at me, but it was muffled as if I was encased in an airtight bubble. I turned to see Cai standing next to me, reaching for me, and screaming my name.

  I woke, a whimper stuck in my throat. Sweat slicked my skin and soaked my bed sheets beneath me. Shivers racked my body, and I pulled the covers up to my chin to try and get warm. I looked over at the clock on the wall near Anna’s bed. It was 1:30 p.m., and I had obviously been asleep for several hours. I must’ve been really sick. I couldn’t ever remember having such vivid, strange dreams before.

  Except as I lay there thinking about them, I though
t they had the peculiar residue of memories. As if I had experienced them before. I couldn’t shake off the feeling of being burned alive, but I also couldn’t unsettle the scent of fresh warm candy in my nose. As if I had smelled it many times before. Reminded me of my cat Gypsy back home. And of…Cai?

  But that was silly. Why would Cai smell like warm candy? And why would I remember it so vividly?

  An hour later, I managed to get out of bed and go shower. Back in the room, I started to feel human again. Anna must’ve visited me at lunch because she left a veggie wrap, some fruit, and another Advil on my nightstand. I scarfed all of it down, got dressed in workout clothes, grabbed my gym bag, and headed out to the school to get some training in. I had two hours booked on the low wire to practice my routine.

  A blast of cold air hit me in the face the second I stepped out the door. Inches of snow blanketed the ground. I didn’t remember it snowing last night, but obviously it had. Maybe I had gotten back to the room before it started, although if I concentrated hard, I could picture pretty fat snowflakes falling outside a window of a cottage where I had been warm and safe. It must’ve been a memory from when I was child and we spent winters at our cottage.

  I pulled on the hood of my jacket and walked briskly across the quad to the school. There were several students outside enjoying the first snow. A few boys were engaged in a snowball fight, some girls on the sidelines laughing. I walked past a couple, whose heads were down. As they neared, their heads came up. I nearly slipped in the snow.

  Maggie and Cai walked past me. She looked at me and grinned like a Cheshire cat with a sparrow in its mouth. Cai, on the other hand, wouldn’t look at me. His gaze was on the ground. He seemed sheepish, embarrassed even. For some reason, tears sprang into the corners of my eyes, and I had to run the last of the way before anyone could see them fall.

  Once inside, I wiped at my eyes, angry at myself for crying. It wasn’t like Cai and I had a relationship. Sure, I’d had a crush on him, but we went on one date, and it hadn’t been very good. He’d acted like an ass and did something stupid that pissed me off, exactly what I couldn’t remember but I felt betrayed in some way. It was just odd that I couldn’t quite recall what it was that he had done. All I had was the feeling of distaste and irritation when I thought about him.

  “Dani, I was just going to check on you.” Anna came down the hall and hugged me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. I think I just needed that extra sleep.”

  “Are you ready to practice?”

  “Yup. Let’s do it.”

  When I’d told Anna about having to put a routine together for the audition for the show, she insisted on helping me, and being my spotter. I couldn’t have asked for a better cheerleader to have in my corner.

  Thankfully we had the room to ourselves; I didn’t think I would be able to concentrate on my choreography with a bunch of judgmental gazes. And who knows what would have gotten back to Maggie. She probably would’ve loved to have known what I was going to do so she could sabotage it in some way.

  I did a quick stretch, Anna helping me with my leg extensions by pulling each leg one at a time over my head. Then I got up on the tight wire. It was only a foot off the ground so we didn’t hurt ourselves while we choreographed. I walked across it several times to get my balance, to get a rhythm for it. Then I did a few fast front walkovers, then a few back walkovers until I was standing on the post again considering exactly what I was going to do. It had to be different. It had to be spectacular. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, envisioning my routine.

  Cai’s face materialized in my mind, then it morphed into a tiger. I pictured the animal running beside me, its long, lean form and rippling muscles. The fluid, sinuous way it moved. Full of grace and precision and perfection. And I stepped out onto the wire with that in my mind.

  I strutted, and flipped, and twirled and even did the splits the length of the wire, all with feline grace and surefootedness. I’d never felt so much confidence before on the wire. It was like something else was driving me, holding me still on that rope. When I was done, I did a backflip off the wire and landed perfectly on the ground.

  Anna whooped and cheered and clapped so loudly I was sure someone was going to come running thinking something remarkable had happened. Which it kind of did. She jumped on me, hugging me hard. “Oh my God! That was brilliant. Where the heck did that come from? It was like you’d done that routine a thousand times before.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know. I just saw it in my mind and felt it already in my feet and hands.”

  “Well, girl, I don’t know what or who you were channeling, but do that at the audition and that part is yours, no doubt.”

  I smiled, hoping she was right. As I drank from my water bottle, I thought about the tiger, and the scent of fresh warm candy filled my nose. It was so strange, but it engulfed me with a sense of comfort. So, I wouldn’t question it. It was exactly what I needed right now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cai

  I made my way through the old abandoned building and down the stairs. It was a little more difficult getting out here at night because of the snow. Harder to cover tracks as well. Since it was so unpleasant outside, I didn’t expect anyone to be following me. Maybe if Dani still had her memories of us, she might’ve tried. My heart panged at that thought. I missed her.

  It was hard seeing her now. The first time had been like a knife to the gut. I had seen the tears well in her eyes before she had run off. There were now rumors around the school that I was an ass and had broken her heart. I knew it wasn’t Dani saying this. Most likely it was Anna. I had run into her last week, and she had given me an earful.

  “I don’t know what you did to Dani, but you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  I didn’t have a response. Although I’d wanted to confess everything, I knew I couldn’t. Marvel gave me daily warnings about keeping my mouth shut. It wasn’t easy as I still had to partner with her. He told me the memory wipe would stick as long as I stopped monkeying about with it. But how was that possible when we were hand to hand and face-to-face? It tore me apart every second.

  “She won’t admit it, but you really hurt her.” Then Anna marched away, leaving me feeling like dirt. I had to bite down on my lip to stop from declaring my true feelings for Dani. I couldn’t and keep her safe. I would just have to suck it up and live with what had happened.

  The worst thing about it was I had to do the audition with her, and I had to make sure it didn’t go well.

  Leander, Marvel, and Frank waited for me in the basement. Shen and Gisele weren’t here for this practice run. Both Ozzy and Loki were pacing their cages, likely sensing something monumental was going on.

  Without any preamble, I walked into the cage with Ozzy and slammed the door shut. I was ready for this test run. Frank padlocked it, gave me the thumbs-up, then backed away. Ozzy growled low in his throat. It wasn’t an aggressive thing, more like a sound of apprehension and anxiety, because he didn’t know what was going to happen. Poor boy.

  I took off my clothes and folded them neatly in a pile, putting them in the corner. Being a shape-shifter your whole life, you didn’t have issues with nudity. I couldn’t have cared less who was in the room. I dropped to all fours, my body already sweating, anticipating what it was about to do. What I was going to force it to do. I didn’t have to look over into the other cage to know Leander was preparing himself for the same ritual. We both shape-shifted in the same way.

  I closed my eyes and tried to calm my mind. It was both a physical and mental transformation. The calmer I was, the easier the shift. I focused on each part of my body, starting at my feet, engaging my muscles and bones, all the way down to my molecules to change and morph into something different. But my body wasn’t listening. My thoughts were too conflicted to be relaxed.

  I knew Leander had already completed his shift. I could hear his chuffs as he nuzzled into Loki. Soon, Marvel would be on my ass about it. I to
ok in a deep breath and tried to empty my head of images of Dani. Of the pained look on her face when she knew that she’d been betrayed. Slowly, I deleted them, one by one, just like clearing files on a computer. Until I had nothing in my mind but clarity.

  The process wasn’t excruciating, but it wasn’t pleasant, either. It was as if every nerve in my body was electrified. Constantly pulsating as body mechanics and chemistry completely altered. Muscle spasms started at my toes, rushed up my feet, down my legs and over my torso. I could feel things twist and rearrange themselves. The most difficult and painful part was the transformation of my head and facial features. Growing a muzzle was a complicated thing. And the teeth popping through my gums and elongating—that was agony.

  But then it was done, and I opened my eyes and gave my body a good shake all the way to the very tip of my tail. Ozzy came over and bumped his big head against mine, and chuffed at me a few times. I chuffed back and nuzzled his face. He licked my nose, which always tickled. I glanced over at the neighboring cage and saw Leander in lion form wrestling with Loki on the ground.

  Marvel stepped up to the cages. “Okay, so on that night, you will be moved into the warehouse and utility area of the museum. If anyone asks, we tell them we always have a spare cat performer. Once Bo has disabled the security cameras, you two will shift, pick the locks, take the service elevator to the third level, which should be unlocked by Gisele with the master key Shen pickpockets from the museum director during the show. Together you will pick the case’s dual lock system, bag the slippers, and give them to Gisele, who will run the wire back down to the main level. This will all be done while the show is in progress. The student performers, alum, and audience, will have no idea what is really going on behind the scenes. The illusion I will perform should in fact make you all invisible.”