by Celia Roman
If she toppled me again, I was good as dead.
No sooner had I fallen into another defensive position than she whirled and charged me. I feinted left and barely missed being sideswiped. She cornered around and come at me, not bothering to slow, and I twisted around. My feet skidded across the ground and I tilted to my right.
Not again.
She was on me quicker’n spit, butting her head into my left thigh. Maybe she meant to help me find my way to the ground, and she did. I tumbled down in a half somersault, arse over elbow, and come to rights in a sloppy crouch with my free hand slapping at her face. My fingers slid into her mouth and grazed her teeth and tongue, and blood welled up amongst the spit smeared across my skin.
I yanked my hand away a second before her jaws snapped shut, clicking her teeth together so loud, it sounded like two boards clapped against each other.
Too close.
I leaned back, shifting my weight onto my butt, and swung the knife in a half-assed stab at her front haunch. The tip grazed the skin, digging through fur into muscle. She screamed and swiped a paw at me. Claws ripped through my hip scraping bone, felt like, and pain blossomed in an agonizing ache along my side.
I screamed right back at her. Son of a bitch, that hurt.
Soon as I thought it, the hurt morphed into a whole lotta pissed off. Like mama, like daughter. I reared back, struggling against gravity and the searing pain in my side, and stabbed the knife hard into Betty’s side, right behind her front haunch. Luck held and the knife slid straight in between two ribs. She staggered to the side away from me, and I followed, too mad to let her go.
Dang it. Looked like the knife hadn’t gone far enough in to do any real damage.
Leaves crunched behind me. I craned my neck around in time to see a huge paw swinging toward me on the end of a painter what sure as tootin’ weren’t my grandma. I fell back, more instinct than plan, and hit the ground hard. Another painter leaped over me right into the one what’d tried to hit me, and before I knowed it, all hell broke loose right there in Fame’s yard as painters turned one against t’other.
Trey leapt for me and grabbed my arm, then hauled me up into a stumbling run. “C’mon, cuz. Let’s get you patched up.”
Outta the corner of my eye, I caught Betty slinking through the fighting groups in a limping gait. I jerked my elbow outta Trey’s hold. Pain shot through me, taking my breath, and I doubled over.
“Betty,” I gasped.
Trey glanced around and swore under his breath. “I’ll go with you.”
I shook my head, suddenly weary to the bone. “It’s gotta be me.”
“I know, honey, but you don’t gotta be alone when you do it.”
Fame jogged up to us right then. “Don’t let her get outta sight, Sunny girl.”
“I won’t.”
I straightened up best I could, sucked in a sharp breath to ease the searing pain, what good it did. Blood oozed outta the wounds and soaked through my clothes, creating a sticky mess against ripped skin. Hang it all. I was gonna have to go shopping again and get me some new jeans.
“Where’s Missy and Gentry?” I asked.
“Safe inside.” Fame wrapped a gentle hand around my upper arm, steadying me. “Let’s finish this once and for all.”
I nodded, too dazed by the fight to question him, and pointed myself in the direction I last seen Betty heading. My grandpa raised a hand at me, and I glanced over. His face was expressionless, more stoic than I ever seen anybody’s. I almost limped over and told him what I was about to do, how I was gonna track his wife down and make sure she never come after me nor mine again, but he waved at me and nodded. And me, I realized right then that he knowed what I was about the same way Fame and Trey had. Same way Libby did, I reckoned.
It was time to clean the evil outta the Panther clan.
I attempted a trembling smile for him, then shored myself up and went after the woman what’d spurned me and mine one time too many.
The night gradually faded to silent black as we trailed Betty into the deep wood. Trey lit the way using the flashlight he retrieved. Fame walked beside me, ever at the ready to catch me if I fell, and I near about did a time or two. Pride straightened my gait, that and a good dose of spitting mad.
I was getting real tired of people spurning me. I really was.
Couldn’t see spit beyond the slow sweep of the flashlight’s beam, but ever once in a while, a leaf rustled or a twig snapped, giving Betty’s location away. She weren’t too far ahead of us, far as I could tell. Coulda rushed her, maybe shoulda. I was content to trail for a while, least ‘til my side got good and numb.
Trey flicked the flashlight, jumping light against a dark stain on the ground between two straggly huckleberry bushes. How he seen it was beyond me, it blended into the fallen leaves so well.
“Blood?” he asked.
I knelt down, one hand held to my side, and swiped a finger through the wet drops splattered thin and narrow. I stuck my finger to my nose and sniffed. A faint metallic smell tickled my nose. “Yup, blood.”
We carried on, three soldiers in a war none of us anticipated fighting.
Well, maybe Fame. He was a thinker, was my uncle, and probably knowed when he took me in what the future held between me and my daddy’s kin, but that was like them questions tucked deep inside me. Best left for another time.
The forest crouched in around us, thickening into a laurel thicket we skirted, though I was nigh on certain Betty’d twisted her way through it. Was what I woulda done, if I coulda shifted into another critter the way she could.
We followed the edge of the thicket while keeping a close ear out for Betty. Only thing I heard was us breathing in the cold and our own footsteps jostling dormant undergrowth. The laurel knotted into a final, tangled copse, then opened into a wildlife food plot the size of my trailer’s yard. It was small and roughly elliptical, and bordered on the other side by the creek Fame took some of his liquor water from.
Claws scratched against rock and water splashed above the creek’s natural gurgle. Fame’s hand tightened around my arm. He tugged gently to my left, and I trailed him, skirting the edge of the clearing with Trey about breathing down my neck, he was so close behind me.
The creek weren’t wide a’tall. Trey ran the flashlight’s beam up and down it, then across to the opposite bank. The leading edge of light caught a glimpse of shiny black fur, and my mad settled into a steady calm.
Time to close in for the kill.
We hopped across the creek one at a time, Fame first, then me and Trey. The pain in my side had subsided to a dull throb and the ragged edges of my clothes rubbed stiff against my wounds. Maybe they wasn’t too deep, them claw marks.
I weren’t foolish enough to set store by such fragile hope, but hope I did.
My feet thudded into crunchy mud, jarring my side. I clamped my jaws together, stifling a whimper, and forced my heavy limbs to move. She was close. I could feel her out there in a low thrum along the nape of my neck, limping slower and slower as blood seeped outta that last knife wound I give her, stealing her strength. Could be, she’d pass out before we found her, but I weren’t counting on it. My grandma’d proved herself strong and wily, from what I heard about her. A piddling stab wound wouldn’t slow her down for long a’tall.
From a distance, something crashed into the forest. My heart fluttered once, then regained its natural rhythm. Sounded like the melee we left at Fame’s had hit the edge of the woods. Either that or somebody’d broke free from the fight and followed after us.
I couldn’t take that chance. Betty alone I could probably take down. Throw another painter or two into the mix, and me, Fame, and Trey might not be enough to do the job, ‘specially against the young and healthy. We had to find Betty before anybody, or anything, reached us and hampered the deed what needed doing.
As if they heard my thoughts, Fame and Trey split off from me and quickened their pace, Fame to the left and Trey to the right. I plowed straight
ahead, one foot in front of t’other, though I could hardly feel ‘em now.
Where’d she run off to anyhow?
Stray shafts of moonlight pierced the thinning trees, illuminating the forest in an eerie glow. Shadow shifted not twenty feet ahead of me, shimmying under an arch created by a poplar growing sideways into a beetle infested hemlock. I picked up my pace, slid over the cockeyed poplar, and landed smack dab on top of my grandma’s heaving form.
She yowled and swiped at me, as much reflex as my own backward scramble. The crown of my noggin popped against the poplar and my vision dimmed as fresh pain swamped me.
The woods awoke with the sound of two large men crashing through it. “Sunny!” Trey yelled, and Fame shushed him in a far quieter voice.
Meanwhile, Betty seemed to’ve remembered her strength. She crouched beside me, near about indistinguishable from the night, her cat eyes glowing in the faint pricks of moonlight splashing onto us in thin slices.
I regripped Daddy’s knife, holding it at the ready. Couldn’t go nowhere without turning my back on her or losing my balance. Against this tree, I’d make my stand, even if my stand was carried out on my hind end with blood spilling outta ever cut it could find. Weren’t the noblest way to go down, but it was all I had to work with right then.
Her eyes was unwavering as her body stiffened for the leap. I braced myself against the poplar and sent an unvoiced prayer flying free. She pushed off against the ground and opened her jaws wide, and weren’t no time to think or plan or do nothing other’n react. Daddy’s knife come up, tip pointed straight at Betty flying toward me in a graceful arc. Her teeth growed bigger and bigger, filling my vision, then her chest hit the knife, pushing it back into my shoulder. I twisted my head outta reach of them sharp, sharp teeth, and she landed on me, cradled against me like she was a babe held safe in my arms.
Blood gushed outta her chest onto my hands and neck. One of her paws scraped down my arm, clawing open four deep runnels. She snapped her jaws against my ear, snapped again and clamped down on the fleshy part of my shoulder.
I screamed bloody murder. Dear Lord, after ever thing she done to me, that shouldn’ta hurt, but pain burst into me anyhow, like it didn’t know I’d had enough for one night.
My knife hand was pinned at an awkward angle between me and Betty. I wrapped my free arm around her neck, dug my fingers into the short fur covering her nape, and yanked, ripping her teeth outta my skin. Fresh blood spurted down my chest, and I knowed, this was it. No more chances. No more playing around. Next time she hit me, I was a goner, if I weren’t already.
I tugged with the hand holding her nape and, at the same time, shoved with the hand holding Daddy’s knife, exerting a steady pressure on both against the rigid set of her body until she flipped over onto her back on the ground beside me. I rolled over on top of her and leaned all my weight into the knife, pushing it deep, deep, deep into her chest whilst she wiggled and squirmed, trying to break free.
Fame and Trey rushed up to us from either side, both breathing hard, and it occurred to me that between Trey yelling and that moment, hardly no time’d passed a’tall.
It’d seemed like a coon’s age in the doing.
Betty’s struggles gradually eased into random twitches, and finally, she went limp beneath me. Her head fell back into the circle created by Trey’s flashlight, and her eyes, them what’d been cat green bare moments before, was the round-eyed brown I used to see in the mirror before Teus changed ‘em to suit his own ends.
Human eyes.
I slid off my grandma’s dead body and landed on my back. Somebody was sobbing, low and quiet. Weren’t ‘til Trey knelt beside me that I realized that somebody was me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A steady beep annoyed me into consciousness. Soon as awareness hit, pain throbbed through me, insistent as a swarm of mosquitoes stinging away my blood.
Death by a thousand bites. What a way to go.
I waited for it to pass, tried to breathe through it, and got a heap of side stitches for my trouble. A large, rough-palmed hand draped over mine, accompanied by a presence only vaguely familiar. I risked lifting one eyelid a slit. I was lying in one bed of a two bed hospital room decorated in upscale motel style. My granddaddy sat beside my bed. His silver hair was wove into two plaits hanging over a blue and green plaid shirt. I was so dadgum thankful he had clothes on, I coulda kissed him.
Resigned to visiting, I opened both eyes and squinted into the room’s low lighting. “You here to kill me, too?”
“Bah,” he scoffed. His hand patted mine once, jarring the IV needle dug into me. “I could’ve done that when you were a kit dawdling on my knee.”
“I ain’t never dawdled on your knee, old man.”
His wide mouth turned down ever so slight. “You don’t remember?”
“Can’t remember what never happened,” I retorted. “Where’s Riley?”
“Libby’s got him, safe and sound.”
Panic reared its ugly head. That old legend about the hunter taking on too much of the painter nature probably held a kernel of truth. Last thing I needed was a boyfriend what could shift into a painter at will.
“He ain’t gonna be no two-natured now, is he?” I asked.
Johnny shook his head. “We were careful. He’s safe enough.”
I relaxed into the pillow. “Yeah, but where is he?”
“Far as I know, he’s at work.”
“At ten o’clock at night?”
“Sunshine, kitten.” He sighed, a heave of air shoved out of his lungs by a huge shrug. “You’ve been asleep for more’n two days now. Doctor kept you under for a day after surgery. You lost so much blood.”
An odd note hung in his gravelly voice, like he was holding something back on me, something terrible I maybe didn’t need to know. I let it pass. Too much’d happened in too short a time. Weren’t no need to add nothing more.
I softened my voice and reformed my first question. “Why’re you here?”
“Why do you ask questions you already know the answers to?” His smile took the sting outta the memory of his wife asking me the very same question. “Doctor says we can only have a few minutes each. I reckon the rest of your family’ll want a piece of you.”
He pushed himself outta his seat, far more spry than a man of his advanced years orta do, and shuffled to the closed door on silent feet. I let him get close to it, then said, “You my family, old man?”
“I always was,” he said without turning.
“Then why’d you let your wife come after me like she done?”
“Betty was…sick. And she was strong.”
“So you couldn’t stop her?”
“Only a few people could. We were waiting for you to grow into your heritage, Sunshine, and she was waiting for you to be vulnerable.”
I mulled that over for a bit and finally settled on the one question I couldn’t quite hold back. “She killed my boy, didn’t she?”
His shoulders went rigid under his shirt. “He was dead before I knew she meant to do it.”
For some reason, I believed him. “Weren’t your fault.”
“Yes, kitten, it was.” He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at me, small and sad and knowing. “I’ll be back to answer the questions burning you up inside, Sunshine. When you’re ready for me, I’ll be there.”
He slid out the door past a petite blonde. Seeing Riley’s mama emptied my mind of all them questions my granddaddy accused me of having, and numbed most of the hurt of knowing I done wrong all them years ago by killing that pooka the way I done. I finally righted it, though, the only way I coulda, but that was a nugget I’d have to dwell on another time.
“Mrs. Treadwell.” I stuffed an elbow under me and tried to push myself up. Agony ricocheted down my side and I flopped back onto the mattress. Weren’t gonna try that again anytime soon, no sirree. I mustered up polite for my visitor instead. “How you doing, ma’am?”
Anne sat down in the metal and leathe
r chair Johnny’d vacated, her posture perfect and straight about like ever other aspect of her. Riley’s mama was a beauty, she was, from the top of her blond bob to the tips of her ballet slipper shoes. She wore an elegant beige shell under a pink jacket over black slacks and settled a matching day clutch in her lap.
“Sunshine, dearest.” She attempted a trembling smile and fingered the antique cameo laced around her pale, delicate throat. “We were all so worried about you.”
“Ain’t no need to worry about me, Mrs. Treadwell,” I said, gentle as I could. “I can take a licking the same as anybody.”
“Oh, but you shouldn’t, honey. You—” She cleared her throat and her smile firmed up real smart like. “Riley wanted to be here when you woke. I shooed him off to work and told him I’d call just as soon as you woke up.”
I had a hard time hiding the grin tugging at my mouth, about the only part of me what didn’t hurt a wink. “You do that, he’s liable to come charging in here like a bull in a red rage.”
Anne laughed then, a tinkling, refined sound what lifted the room’s sterile, antiseptic mood. “He always did try to rescue you, but you. You were always the one to save him.”
“Aw, now.”
She clucked her tongue, silencing me as effectively as a hand clapped over my mouth. “As soon as you’re well, you’re coming to dinner. Riley told me how much you enjoyed the coconut cake I sent you.”
I did my best not to scowl at her, but truth be told, it was hard. That Riley was a scamp and a scalawag all rolled into one for telling his mama we was stepping out together. Weren’t no call to worry her like that, was there, when his daddy hung onto ever scrap of hatred for the Carsons he could muster, ‘specially for me and Fame, seemed like.
My uncle stuck his head in the door and said, “Nurse wants to take her vitals, Anne.”
Speak of the devil and there he was. I opened my mouth on a wry comment and let it die. Anne twisted around in her seat, and whatever passed between her and Fame, it lasted a mite too long for two people what’d bound their lives to others, legal or not. She stood slow and regal, ‘bout like Missy, and Fame eased into the room, them wild blue eyes of his stuck on her.
