Feral Pride

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  Anchor: This just in! The following video was taken with a night-vision camera in Pine Ridge, Texas (population 7,394), located about an hour southeast of Austin.

  That figure contorting on your screen is believed to be an actual werecat, caught in mid-shift at Town Park — a public park located in the shadow of the historic downtown, along the Colorado River. She has been identified as Kayla Morgan, a senior at Pine Ridge High, a National Merit semifinalist, a track and cross-country state champion, and the adopted daughter of Mayor Franklin Morgan.

  The structure in the background is an antique Western-themed carousel, which was the site of the death of PRHS quarterback Benjamin Bloom — from a lightning strike — back in February. We have confirmed that Kayla and Benjamin were dating at the time.

  If you look closely, you can see other, as yet unidentified, individuals in the background. It appears as though at least one of them is a werecat, too. While shifters have been caught on video before, it’s extremely rare and unprecedented in small-town Texas.

  The Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office has just issued a statement saying — quote — “Kayla Morgan and her companions are suspected of no known crimes. Nor are they suspected of having any connection whatsoever to the kidnapping of Texas governor Linnie Lawson.

  Kayla’s species has not been verified.”

  I WON’T BE CAGED. Not again. I tense at the crackle of the police radio. I check the side mirror. Not yet. I rub my eyelids, look again. I’m not the only one who’s freaking out. The stink of shock and fear is weighty. I can hear my girlfriend Aimee’s heart thudding in her chest.

  “None of this makes sense,” Kayla says from the backseat of the squad car. “It’s not illegal to be what we are. Why would federal agents be gunning for us?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” answers Yoshi, who’s beside her.

  They’re both right. It’s not illegal to be what we are. But whenever anything goes wrong, anything bloody and brutal, shape-shifters are presumed guilty. So, what went wrong this time?

  Behind the wheel, Jess says, “Sure, there’s the footage. Werepeople in small-town America, cue the hysteria. But the feds were already after y’all before it went live.”

  Earlier tonight Kayla’s shift to Cat form (and possibly Yoshi’s, too) was caught on video. It was uploaded to the International News Network and beyond. She’s become the latest poster child for shifters as beastly boogeymen. Meanwhile, shoot-first feds descended on Town Park. I’d already swept up Aimee. We’d taken refuge in a heavily wooded area nearby. But Kayla and Yoshi were momentarily arrested. A Coyote named Peter and a wereotter named Evan managed to escape. Darby, a Deer, was knocked unconscious and left behind with Tanya, a Bear. An elder werecat, Lula Stubblefield, ran into the line of fire to distract the armed SOBs. We’ve all been doing a bang-up job of avoiding the topic of her death.

  The Cats had just transformed back to human form when the Federal Humanity Protection Unit (FHPU) started shooting. There was no time for them to waste getting dressed, and we’ve been on the run since. That’s why they’re both buck naked and handcuffed.

  Fortunately, shifters have human allies like Aimee and Kayla’s friend Jess, who came to our rescue in her father’s squad car. Her dad, the local sheriff, helped finagle our escape.

  That was about an hour ago. Now, it’s nearly one in the morning. Traffic on the interstate is light. Aimee flicks a downward glance. “You okay?”

  I whisper, “It’s nothing.” Well, not nothing, but . . . She’s perched on my lap in the bucket seat. It’s not just that I’m a teenage guy. Or just that she’s my girlfriend. I briefly bulked up my muscle mass and fur back in Pine Ridge. A bigger package is part of the deal. That’s not discussed in mixed company. Again, Aimee’s not only female. She’s a Homo sapiens.

  Normally, Yoshi would be listening in and mouthing off about my predicament. But Kayla’s Chihuahua won’t shut up. “Peso can’t help it,” she insists. “Be nice to him. He gets carsick sometimes.”

  “He’s going to ralph all over my lap!” Yoshi exclaims. All Cats are fastidious. Yoshi’s a metrosexual. “That’s it!” he says. “Jess, pull over. Nobody’s chasing us right this second. We’ve got to get these cuffs off. Clyde, you give Kayla your shirt.”

  “We should’ve thought of that,” Aimee mutters, which is her nice way of saying that I should’ve thought of that. Kayla was adopted by the human mayor of Pine Ridge and his missus. She’s less comfortable au naturel than any shifter I’ve met before.

  Yoshi’s after her, which is a relief. For a while, he’d set his sights on Aimee.

  “Next exit,” Jess promises, hitting the wiper fluid. “I’ll find a secluded spot.”

  Aimee begins squirming, which doesn’t help my situation. I ask, “What’re you doing?”

  She checks her pockets. “Looking for the keys to the handcuffs.”

  “You lost the keys?” Kayla exclaims.

  They slipped, unnoticed, through Aimee’s fingers as she positioned herself on my lap. With my werelion-wereopossum reflexes, I snatched them in midair.

  “Check the floorboard,” Jess says to Aimee. “You probably dropped them.”

  Yoshi kicks the back of my seat. “What the hell, Clyde!”

  The Cats’ wrists are restrained behind them. We’ve had a long night. There’s no way Yoshi’s comfortable like that. He might be suffering from a little awkwardness of his own, with no jeans to hide it. But notice how he goes straight for blaming me.

  Because why? Yoshi’s a senior. I’m a sophomore. He’s been all Cat his whole life. After being raised by Possums as a Possum, I’ve only recently discovered my inner Lion.

  Yoshi is Mr. Smooth with the ladies. Me? Not so much. He’s become Aimee’s closest guy friend, like I need that in my life.

  I’m not ashamed to be half wereopossum. It’s the animal form I’ve exclusively identified myself with for most of my life. But Possums aren’t considered the sexiest. Or even sexy-ish.

  I’m a Wild Card, dual species. Based on grocery-store paperbacks, it seems like werecurious human girls fantasize about lean predators like Wolves and Cats. Bears, if they’re into the husky type. Aimee and I clicked back when I thought of myself as strictly weremarsupial. We didn’t go from friends to more until after I learned how to roar.

  Yoshi kicks the back of my seat again. I squeeze the keys in my palm. Aimee rushes to apologize. As Jess accelerates past the next exit, my girlfriend insists she’s at fault.

  I’m pissed enough at Yoshi to let her.

  HOURS BEFORE SUNRISE, fleeing Texas in an ungodly crowded police car, the only thing my friends can talk about is Wonder Woman. “Diana represents one-third of the DCU Trinity, and who’s her archenemy?” Kayla asks. “Cheetah. Not only a werecat, but a spotted werecat.”

  At least she’s speaking up. A spotted werecat herself, Kayla’s a lot quieter when she’s naked. Self-conscious, I guess. Religious. Not me. I’m a dashing, cougar-like Cat myself with jet-black fur in animal form. I love my body.

  “This is significant . . . why?” Jess asks from behind the wheel. Like everybody else up front, she has her clothes on. “Shifters are people. There are terrific people, terrible people. Most fall in between. Why can’t a wereperson be a villain? Because the hero is Wonder Woman?”

  “Wereperson” is a sometimes preferred term for “shifter.” (I don’t mind either one, so long as nobody’s calling me a “freak of nature” or a “monster” . . . or insulting my hair.) We’re in no way supernatural, even if our bodies can perform a few tricks that are beyond our human cousins. We’re no recent mutation either. We trace our evolutionary line back to at least the Ice Age.

  That’s not breaking news. Werecats and, for that matter, werewolves and weredeer and
Raccoons and Vultures (among others) have been common knowledge among Homo sapiens since the mid-1800s. Some humans, like Jess and Aimee, are cool with us, but the rest . . . not so much. The not-so-much crowd, they’re the majority. Or at least they’re louder.

  The great thing about being in a cop car is that other vehicles give us wide berth. I don’t like it, though, Aimee sitting on Clyde’s lap with the seat belt stretched across them. We’re doing seventy-five miles per hour, and I’ve only got one best friend. She’d be safer back here. It’s cramped but she’s tiny, and it’s not like she has to touch my naked bod — not that I’d blame Clyde for objecting. (I am irresistible.) She could sit on the other side of Kayla. That would press the Cat girl tight against me. Nudity before and after shifts isn’t a big deal among werepeople. But this is Kayla. I should be getting more credit for not staring at her rack. Like a ticker-tape parade.

  “Clyde, what did I tell you?” Jess moves to the far right lane to let a camper trailer pass.

  “Don’t touch the center console,” he replies with a sigh. He’s such a baby. He keeps playing with the radio, camera, and light-bar controls. Which, granted, are pretty cool.

  We debated taking back roads (or at least avoiding tolls), but ultimately decided that I-35 North, the fastest route to Oklahoma, was worth the risks. Not for the first time, I strain against the cuffs and feel the metal give a bit. If I had the strength of a werebear, I’d be free by now.

  Kayla and I discussed trying to shift ourselves free, but trapped in this position, my head bent from the low ceiling, our arms restrained behind our backs — no way. That’s not superficial, stage-one stuff — like fur, eyes, claws, teeth. We could throw a joint out of socket or puncture a lung with a rib bone. We’ve got it made over humans when it comes to healing (when our forms shift, we largely reboot ourselves), but bone and organ injuries are tougher to repair than flesh.

  “Werepeople are portrayed as archvillains a lot,” Aimee points out. “Cheetah isn’t supposed to be an Acinonyx jubatus sapiens like Kayla, but I doubt most Wonder Woman fans put much thought into the difference.” Are we still talking about this?

  The squad car has been pro cleaned, but somebody threw up in this backseat within the past couple of weeks. I’m getting a headache, and it’s not helping that Kayla’s Chihuahua won’t shut up. Most small animals panic in the presence of werepredators. It’s novel that, because he’s Kayla’s, Peso is so comfortable around us. Still, we should’ve left him in Pine Ridge. If he scrambles over my junk one more time, I swear . . .

  “Better an archvillain than a sorry-ass villain,” Clyde chimes in, scratching his freshly grown beard. He’s a Wild Card shifter, half Lion, half Possum (he can choose between forms).

  Staying clean-shaven is key to passing as human, at least until we’re out of high school. Passing — hiding in plain sight in human form — is the way most of us survive. Especially urban shifters, but even country boys (like I used to be) do their best to act average. There are species-only communities like Wolf packs, but Cats are too independent for that sort of BS.

  “Besides,” Clyde goes on, “Cheetah started out as a pathetic Homo sapiens woman in a cat suit. It helped enormously to reinvent her like that. Think about it: How could some random society babe with a personality disorder pose a serious challenge to Diana?”

  They do that all the time — or at least Aimee and Clyde do — they talk about superheroes and sci-fi characters like they’re on a first-name basis. For hours . . . this has been going on for hours. I’m finally bored enough to join in. “You’d sign off on a random society dude with a personality disorder challenging her.”

  “Would not!” Clyde exclaims. “I bow to the awesomeness that is the Amazon princess.”

  “What if it was Bruce Wayne?” I counter as a trio of motorcycle riders cruises by. “Society dude. Major issues. If he’s Superman’s fail-safe, shouldn’t he be able to take down Wonder Woman, too?” That shuts him up. I’m not a geek, but I hear them jabber about this stuff all the time. It seemed like the thing to say to score points with the girls.

  Besides, this whole conversation is whistling in the dark — talking about anything except what’s really wrong. We’re retreating to safety. Wolves would stand their ground and fight, but Wolves are idiots. There’s a reason werewolves are the first shifters that humans name among monsters — often in the same breath as Count Dracula and Frankenstein.

  “It makes you think, doesn’t it?” Aimee asks, glancing over at the semi in the next lane.

  She’s still fretting about whether people assume some comic-book feline fatale is a shifter and what that means for the media or society or both. She’s like that. We’ve only known each other for a few months, and she’s already dragged me to three political rallies (textbooks, immigration, gay marriage). I don’t mind. The women are cute, and snacks are plentiful.

  Aimee and I, we’re platonic, but she might’ve been my girl if it weren’t for Clyde.

  Then again, if Aimee and I had gotten together, I wouldn’t be in this what-might-happen place with Kayla. No, that’s crazy — the Aimee part, not the Kayla part. It’s not like I was madly in love with Aimee. I like her — a lot. She can be flaky and exhausting (in a Goth/New Age/hippie way), but she has this incredible faith in the universe. It’s contagious.

  You could say I love her as a friend. I do. I love her as a friend. So what’s my damage? Aimee was the first girl I cared about as more than booty and, of all the other guys in the world, she chose Clyde Gilbert instead of me. Clyde. Gilbert.

  What can I say? This Cat man has his pride.

  “Bruce Wayne isn’t some random society dude with a personality disorder,” Clyde insists. “He’s the ultimate society dude with a personality disorder. There’s a difference.”

  “Tell that to Tony Stark,” I reply, hoping I remember right that he’s Iron Man.

  “You wish you were Tony Stark,” the Wild Card informs me.

  Aimee yawns. We’re coming up on Denton, Texas, en route to Jess’s aunt’s house in Pawhuska, Oklahoma (otherwise known, I’ve been told, as Osage Nation). We left Pine Ridge not long after midnight, and it’s around 4 A.M. now. Werepeople have more endurance than humans. Of course Cats relish naps and I sure could use one, but Aimee and Jess must be exhausted.

  Peso barks, scratching the tops of my thighs — again. It’s all I can do not to hiss him into quivering submission, but Kayla would have a fit.

  In the rearview mirror, I glimpse flashing lights coming up fast from behind.

  “Should I floor it?” Jess asks, and suddenly we’re all wide awake.

  WE’RE FIVE TEENAGERS, two of whom are naked and cuffed, in a borrowed police vehicle with a small, highly vocal, constantly-in-motion dog. Plus, Kayla is hugely recognizable.

  Aimee cranes her neck to look. “I doubt a high-speed chase is the way to go.”

  I have a mental image of helicopters and live TV. “That would be bad.”

  Clyde snorts. “What? You don’t think we’re getting enough media coverage?”

  I ask, “Other suggestions?”

  “We split up,” Kayla begins. “Shifters, jump out. Humans, say we kidnapped you and forced Jess to drive. Play dumb. Claim you don’t know anything, and take Peso home.”

  At least she agrees that we shouldn’t have brought the dog.

  “Bad idea.” Jess turns down the radio. “Sweetie, this is a police car. The back doors don’t open from the inside, and in case you didn’t notice, your windows are barred.”

  Humans tend to underestimate shifter strength. I bet we could kick the doors open, but leverage is an issue. Again, I struggle against the metal binding.

  No use, not that I’m down with leaping onto the highway. The fact that shifters heal fast doesn’t mean a semi couldn’t flatten us for good.

  Clyde pitches in. “If the cop makes us get out of the car, we can take him.”

  “In cuffs?” Kayla asks.

  He flashes me a grin a
nd holds the keys up for us to see.

  Asshole! Leaning toward the open cage window, I snarl, “You said Aimee lost them!”

  Aimee swats the Wild Card. “Not funny. I felt terrible!”

  The cop isn’t messing around. He’s pulled up alongside us. Sensing the heightened tension, Peso starts shaking and drooling. He’d better not throw up.

  “Pull over,” I say. “Clyde, can you knock out that separator thing?”

  “Do not disturb the cage,” Jess orders him. “You’ll hurt yourself and my dad’s car, too.” She hits the turn signal. “Panicking won’t solve anything. We don’t need to give him another reason to be suspicious, and you can bet he’s got a dash cam.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “You speak cop,” I reply. “You take point.”

  Jess pulls over, muttering, “No pressure.”

  Grateful I’m the one behind the driver, I angle myself to conceal Kayla as much as possible. I release my fur over my lower half to mimic a pair of pants. A long shot, but it’s dark. I’ve got more control than most shifters, even most Cats. I hope the cop doesn’t look too closely. He’s getting out on the side of the highway behind us. “Jess, what’re we dealing with?”

  “Trooper,” she replies, glancing at the rearview mirror. “Young guy; his gun’s out.”

  “His gun’s out?” Aimee echoes. “Is that normal? That’s not normal, is it?”

  “Hush,” Jess whispers, lowering her window. “Evenin’, Officer, is there a problem?”

  He’s short, stocky in his crisp tan uniform. It’s not clear if we, as shifters, have any legal rights. He might shoot us all, not realizing until too late that Jess and Aimee are humans.

  I tilt my head, trying to study the cop, not sure what to make of his silence. Then the breeze slips in. I open my mouth to sample it and exhale. “He’s a wereperson.” That doesn’t guarantee he’s on our side, but it improves the odds.

  “A Tasmanian weredevil,” Clyde adds, like species matters at the moment.

  “Damn, damn, damn, damn.” The weredevil spits and kicks at the gravel. “You’re them, aren’t you? The Cats everyone’s talking about.” Glowering, he holsters his gun. “We need to talk. Meet me at the next McDonald’s, and don’t even think about making a run for it.”