by C. J. Ayers
As she got closer, Shadow swished his tail so it curled inward, leaving a space for her beside him, as if he was inviting her to come and sit down.
“Okay then, Shadow. I’m going to join you.” She smiled at him, and he shook his body in response. Before sitting down, she placed the meat carefully before him, as a peace offering. He sniffed it, nodded his approval regally, and then ignored it.
“I don’t think you like being in captivity, do you?” she gently scratched him behind the ears, and he began purring in response. “I don’t blame you.” She sighed and closed her eyes, facing the sunshine and feeling the cool breeze as it tickled the stray strands of her hair across her face. “I wish you could tell me where you’ve come from. Everyone wants to know, but me most of all.” She yawned. The heat from the sun was making her feel drowsy, and in her jacket she felt too warm. She removed it, and placed it down behind her, wrapping it up to act as a cushion for her elbows as she leant back further.
“I’m going to miss our chats, Shadow, now you’re out here. You’ll probably be relieved not to hear a crazy lady having a one-way conversation about her failed love life and her too-long abstinence from any kind of male contact.” She looked at him and laughed. His eyes seemed mournful in that moment, as if he truly understood what she was saying. He went to nuzzle her, reaching his head over to her breasts, and giving her a small nudge.
As he did so, she heard a short growl come from the other side of the enclosure. The two females were standing, intently watching the exchange.
Felicia immediately realised her mistake, human or not, she had been spending too long and getting too cosy with their only potential mate. Felicia jumped to her feet and swiftly bent down into a crouching position with her arms stretched outward, to show her deference to the two females.
Shadow leapt in front of her, close to the ground, ready for attack. He roared fiercely back at the females, his hackles rising on his back. His tail swished in agitation. Felicia could feel her heart hammering in her chest - she couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been, how carried away by Shadow that she’d forgotten the dangers of dropping her guard in a wild cat enclosure.
The two females, faced with the primal aggression of the male, backed down with small little yelps. They weren’t happy, but there was nothing they could do, or attempt to do, when the male was so ferociously apposed to their threats.
Grateful and ashamed at her disregard for the rules of her job, Felicia beat a hasty exit, collapsing behind the cage door as she caught her breath. That was too close. She vowed then to never re-enter the sanctuary. She would ask her assistant to attend to the feedings from now on.
Chapter seven
Jackson sat in his office watching the grainy images on the computer screen in front of him. With everything that had happened, he’d forgotten that he’d asked the central security manager to send the tapes over at Caleb’s request.
He’s been through hours of footage with nothing suspicious looking, but as soon as he’d loaded up the parking lot feed, it had become a different story.
The parking security guard, Derek, could be seen letting Sheila in via the back entrance of the building. So far he’d seen her arrive twice, and then the two of them would go into Derek’s office. There wasn’t any footage of what happened once they were inside, but considering the time spent in there, the huge grin on Derek’s face and the touchy-feely behaviour he exhibited toward Shelia when they eventually exited, it was pretty obvious.
Fast forwarding the tapes to the day of the car accident, Jackson saw Derek open up the car hood of the Venom and retrieve a small tool kit from his office. He was under there for a good twenty minuets, continually looking around the empty lot in a shifty manner.
Jackson couldn’t see exactly what went on behind the hood of the car, but it seemed pretty clear that Derek had somehow sabotaged the vehicle, and that the catalyst for his mind-numbingly stupid action was most definitely Shelia.
Jackson couldn’t work how they’d known Caleb would be driving that particular car, it would have been about a one in nine chance. Either they weren’t fussed about the day the accident happened, just that it did. Or, worse, they had someone working with them who was privy to all of Caleb’s personal and business decisions.
“Shit, Jackson, look at this,” the youngest member of the pack came busting into the office, proffering an iPhone at Jackson, “it’s on my Twitter feed.” Jackson glanced down at the screen, and then grabbed the phone to get a closer look. It was an image of a panther with unmistakable majesty and ferocity. He looked at the accompanying text.
“What the hell is Caleb doing in a zoo?” he roared. On seeing that Caleb looked alive and well, relief swiftly replaced his anger, “Follow the link, I want to know what’s going on,” he commanded the young cub.
“It says that they’re unveiling him to the public tomorrow, and that he’s a rescue animal, found on the interstate. He’s been recovering with them since the day he went missing,” the cub scrolled through the text as quickly as he could, not wanting to aggravate Jackson further, “they’re calling him Shadow.”
Jackson swore, loudly. They would need to wait till night-time to break him out, and it would have to be tonight – there was no way he wanted their pack leader being presented to a bunch of gawping tourists. He was also aware how vulnerable Caleb was in a place like that – if Shelia, and whoever else was behind the accident, knew his location then he’d be a caged target.
Jackson reached for his cell. “Hey Jake, is Sheila around?” he kept his voice low in the hope his brother would do the same.
“She’s in the washroom, what’s up?”
“Caleb is in Lincoln Park Zoo.”
“The zoo!” his brother practically yelled down the phone.
“Keep quiet! Jesus, kid. I don’t want Shelia to know. I want you to try and keep her away from all news and technology - just till this evening.”
“What?” Jake sounded panicked, “that’s kind of impossible, bro – remember this is a tech company?”
“I know – I don’t care what you do, get her on a date, wine and dine her, whatever – just keep her interested in something other than what’s happening in the city.” Jackson heard Jake sigh down the phone, and could practically see him scratching his head as he tried to come up with a plan.
“Okay, I’ll think of something,” he promised.
“Thanks. I’m going to get a team together to bust him out tonight. I’ll call you when it’s done.” Jackson hung up and turned back to the younger cub who was waiting for his command.
“Get everyone, and I mean everyone. We meet back here in an hour exactly.”
As soon as she heard Jake hang up the phone, Shelia allowed a small smile to spread across her face as she leant her head against the door of the washroom. This is just way too easy. She smirked at herself in the mirror and arranged her hair. She might as well look good for her faux-date with Jake.
Chapter eight
It hadn’t been a good day. Sleets of rain had chucked down all afternoon, and Felicia had busied herself in the humid office sorting through various pieces of admin in anticipation of tomorrow’s public reveal of Shadow. She was dreading it. It was times like this that she hated working in a zoo. She loved animals, not just cats, but all of them – she loved working with them, discovering the nuances of their behaviour, and had spent years at veterinary school gunning for the very position she currently had, but there were times when the idea of wild animals in captivity utterly depressed her.
She had been thinking this past week that perhaps she should apply for a job in a safari or a conservation area in Africa or India. Perhaps she would sleep better knowing that the animals she helped went on to freedom, to live the lives they were meant to. Never again would she see something as majestic and primal as Shadow caged in a city.
She had broken her own pact today, and found herself wandering around the wild cat sanctuary. Shadow was sitting beneath a make-shift
pavilion at the far end of the enclosure, avoiding the rain. As she approached he had turned toward her abruptly, as if he could sense her coming. She was pleased to find that he was looking healthy and fully recovered, but his mournful look almost undid her. She fought the desperate urge to join him, turning abruptly and walking away.
“Damn it” she muttered under her breath. Arriving at her apartment she realised she’d forgotten her house keys. She rummaged in her purse, holding it up to the entrance light outside her block. Nothing. Felicia realised she’d left them in the office at the zoo; she’d have to drive all the way back and find them. This really wasn’t a good day.
When she arrived back at the zoo it was deserted. Felicia let herself in and made her way to the office, adjacent to the cat enclosure. She walked through the zoo’s main pathway in near darkness, hearing the screeches of nocturnal mammals getting worked up by an unknown presence.
She entered her office and saw the keys resting on top of a bunch of filing. She grabbed them, relieved. Back outside, she locked the office door, and then froze in the middle of the pathway. A few yards away a man stood completely naked, in the middle of the cat enclosure.
Felicia’s first instinct was to duck down below the wall of the walkway and pull her knees in close; she could feel the blood draining from her face in fear, leaving it ghostly pale. Her body began to shake with fright at the discovery of the man, and it took her a second to understand who she should be feeling afraid for – it certainly wasn’t herself. She had been startled, but it wasn’t her life in danger.
She hauled herself to her feet and leant over the railing. The man was still standing at the crest of the hill in the habitat below her. She thought he had turned to face her, though with light of the moon glowing on his bare back, she couldn’t be sure.
“Hey!” she shouted. The figure didn’t move, which was probably a good thing, she thought, any sudden movement was sure to attract the notice of the nocturnal cats. She shuddered, recalling the threatening stances of the two felines. She couldn’t believe they weren’t already prowling around him like he was their next meal.
“Are you drunk? You need to get out of there, now!” Felicia didn’t wait for a response. She picked up the purse she had dropped on the ground next to her, and ran down the walkway to the enclosure’s feeding entrance. Her hand shook with adrenaline as she fished down the front of her blouse for her keycard; she popped a button loose in her haste, but eventually located the card and swiped it clumsily on the access pad. The door slid open and she hurried down the darkened hallway.
She entered one of the sterile equipment rooms toward the end of the hallway block, unlocking and pulling open an enormous cooler. If she was going to enter the enclosure, she was going to enter it armed. Felicia snatched up a bucket and started loading it with slabs of raw meat, shovelling as many steaks in as she could. She grabbed a towel from the back of the door before leaving the room, and then took off back down the hallway at a run. She busted through the last door, and was out in the open.
Chapter nine
The moon hung full and round in the sky overhead; the city felt so far away here, she could almost forget the concrete jungle outside as her senses took in the luminous silver landscape before her. She could see that the man was still standing on the hill, and her fear for his immediate safety was quickly starting to turn into anger and annoyance.
Clearly none of the cats were bothering with him. It was strange for them to be so uncurious toward an alien presence in their enclosure; they had a similar disregard for their handlers, most of the time, she reminded herself. But she didn’t recognise him as one of the feeders, she’d never seen this man before in her life.
She thought, with annoyance, that this idiot was likely some yuppie from an upper-class neighbourhood or one of the near-by universities who had thrown back one too many beverages and was now completing a very ill-considered and dangerous dare for his fellow morons over the wall.
The two female leopards greeted her at the door, their previous animosity forgotten, as Felicia pulled several hunks of meat and began to disperse them onto the ground. The two girls purred and pushed up against her forcefully in a frightening imitation of their more domesticated cousins. Once she had emptied the bucket and assured herself that an adequate distraction was in place, she marched out to the center of the enclosure.
When she reached the top of the hill, she flung the towel with force at the man. The figure caught it easily, and smirked.
“Cover yourself” Felicia hissed, pushing a strand of red hair agitatedly back behind her ear. Her hands were slick and bloody from her handling the meat, but she was too irritated to care. “Letting it all hang out in this part of the zoo is a very bad idea.”
“You’ve got quite the temper, Felicia, I like it.” The man’s voice was as dark and velvet-soft as the night’s sky surrounding them, almost a purr. She froze in stricken silence, before remembering that she still wore her nametag. By the light of the moon it wasn’t such a stretch that he’d been able to read her name.
“The cops are on their way.” She was lying – she hadn’t even thought to call for backup. There couldn’t be a member of the security team very far from where they were, at least. The uniformed men and women were instructed to patrol the predator enclosures at least twice as often as they were their more docile neighbours.
He looked at her, still amused. Then his face softened a little, and he did the most unexpected thing – he took Felicia’s hand, and he kissed it.
Felicia dropped the empty pail, her face burning at the overfamiliarity and strangeness of the gesture, her heart thudding once more in her ears. She was painfully aware that he still hadn’t accepted her offer of the towel; as his warm lips skated across her knuckles, she tried not to notice how unfiltered moonlight highlighted every delicious muscular definition that made up his physique.
Seeing him up close was enough to make her regret coming out into the enclosure alone. The man was easily a head taller than her, with broad shoulders and a tanned, statuesque frame. Definitely from an upper class neighbourhood – who else could afford the time to hone a body like that to complete physical perfection?
He overturned her captured hand with lightening-quick speed, and before Felicia could react she felt a wet, probing warmth flick the crease of her palm. He was licking her hands clean, laving up the juices leftover by the meat. Felicia pulled her hand back, aghast, and trying not to dwell on the strange, primal thrill the action gave her. “You are drunk.”
“No.” The amusement in his eyes was gone. His voice sounded sober and serious. She could almost believe him if everything about their current predicament didn’t point directly to intoxication. “I’m completely healed, as you well know. It’s my first day off the tranquilizers.”
Felicia blinked, uncomprehending, as the man turned his face up to the moon. His hair was dark and matted; it hung down in his eyes, obscuring the veracity of their colour, but for a moment she almost thought she could see them glow. “And now,” he continued, “you can see me as I really am. You need to know what I am, Felicia, you above all else.”
Felicia took a startled step back, her wide eyes flickering between the man before her, and the safety of the exit behind her. The man stood, watching her passively as he waited for her to understand.
Felicia hesitated for a moment, Shadow. She scanned the landscape for his familiar form, but couldn’t see him anywhere. She looked back at the man, his eyes searching hers, as if willing her to understand something. Where was Shadow? Even as she asked the question, her mind screamed that he was standing in front of her – no longer beast, but man.
Felicia began to back slowly down the hill. The man started forward; he took measured, almost stalking paces, and it was the inhuman fluidity in the way he moved that triggered her flight. Felicia ran. She was fast, but not fast enough. Her legs carried her the distance to the door before she felt a pair of hands come down on her and arrest her mid-sprin
t.
The man spun her around and pushed her back against the enclosure wall. Felicia winced, expecting pain to accompany his forcefulness, but it never came. He pinned her solidly, and all she felt was the cool concrete of the wall and the long, invasive heat and muscle of his body as he settled himself against her. His hands gripped her wrists above her head, ensuring she wouldn’t be able to use them to aid her escape.
Despite her fear and trembling body, she met his eyes furiously and defiantly. As she did so, she was left awestruck; on the surface his eyes appeared to shine like silver, but beneath the sheen she could see an evanescent gold of a yellow iris.
She knew those eyes. She hadn’t recognised them in his human face, hadn’t wanted to, but there was now no denying the evidence that was right in front of her.
“How is this even possible?” She faltered, “how, how can you be a man and a…”
“Beast?” He smiled at her again, but this time it was slightly more gentle. “It’s something I was born into; it flows in my blood. There are many others like me. But…” one of his hands reached forward and lightly circled her throat, “we don’t like being held captive.”
“I’m…sorry,” her apology was whispered and uncertain. Her head was still reeling from the possibility - no, the increasing likelihood - that Shadow, who she’d spent weeks spilling her mundane secrets too, stroking, petting and loving, was now pinning her beneath an irrefutably male human body. “I just wanted you to get better…we thought we were helping you.”
“You were…and then you weren’t,” his body pressed perceptively closer, “You drove me crazy Felicia, being that close to you without being able to change. There wasn’t a moment when I didn’t want to take you in my arms, to touch you the way your body begged to be touched. It was sheer agony.”
