Claws and Effect

by Amanda Arista

  “Let me,” he offered. He ran his fingers through my soapy hair. He wiggled and wriggled the soap from my long locks and smoothed it out as best as he could.

  “My turn?” he asked as he reached for his loofah hanging on my organizer.

  “Gladly.”

  I rinsed my face once more in the stream, and we switched sides in the shower, slipping past one another slowly. I watched as he leaned back in the water, watched as it cut streams down his chest, his stomach, and even farther down. It was full-on, unabashed voyeurism.

  I took his bar of soap and gathered up a strong lather on the white mesh. I started at his shoulders, gently guiding the suds over his tanned chest and down his long arms.

  “How was Vegas?”

  “Pretty normal. Just some PR work and a shoot at the Palms. Think it might land me a few more jobs this year.”

  I stopped. “Wait this was an underwear thing? I thought it was a Cause thing. “

  The creased was slightly forming between his brows. But I was pretty sure it was because I had stopped caressing his torso.

  “I do more than just underwear, Violet.”

  “So what was it this time?”

  His jaw clenched.

  I smiled. “It was underwear, wasn’t it?”

  “Swimwear actually.”

  “Teensey-weensies with polka dots?”

  “But it’s not always.”

  “Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  He kissed my forehead and I ran the sponge around his abs. My free hand traced the cut muscles of his upper chest and across the scar on his shoulder. He hadn’t yet told me the story of that one yet.

  I ran the loofah in a low loop under his belly button. His entire body tensed and parts grew even happier to have the attention.

  He stopped my hand from going any lower. “Maybe I should get that part.”

  I swallowed and let him take the ball of suds from me. Still was the part of the deal that I could hardly bare. I reached for the handle to the sliding door. “I think I’m done anyway.”

  He didn’t protest as I slid the door open and stepped out onto the white shag rug. I reached for my plush lavender towel and began to dry off.

  It simply wasn’t fair. We had been looking for answers for two months. Iris was getting tired of us asking. No one could tell us if the panther could be passed on through sex, and there were no human and shifter couples to see how it would work out in the end. For all we knew, there weren’t any bi-species romances at all because it never stayed a bi-species romance, shifting being a magical version of a communicable disease.

  The way he explained it was horribly romantic, which made the situation more unbearable. He wasn’t willing to risk our relationship until I had perfect control of everything, unlike the first and last time we’d been together, when I wasn’t exactly in control of much of anything. He wanted it to be just him and me; not him, me, and the cat.

  Insert ahh moment here.

  I understood. Considering his history, I was willing to wait. Well, I was willing to help him look for answers, but the waiting was getting harder and harder.

  So this was the cost. The power to save the world, but not the ability to get down and dirty with my boyfriend.

  I went into the bedroom and began to dress. I was still a little damp, but I wanted to be out of there by the time he got out. Out of sight out of mind, maybe. If I didn’t see his Michelangelo frame, maybe I wouldn’t miss it.

  Yeah right.

  We had made it work really, really well in the first month. I swear, it was like high school. We’d kiss and make out, and then make out with less clothes on and then take turns with less and less clothes, but a month ago, we hit a wall.

  Where normal people in relationships were finally getting intimate, we were just holding hands because anything more was too painful. Like today. And then we stopped talking about it.

  When I closed my eyes, I could still see him, still feel him, feel what it was like to lie bare skinned next to him. God, what it was like to nibble on his perfectly fleshy earlobe.

  Now I wore long pants and tank tops to bed if he was going to spend the night because it was just too painful for either one of us to get too excited. I don’t know what he was trying to prove today.

  I HAD ALREADY TOSSED his laundry into the washer and fixed him a grilled ham and cheese when he came down the stairs. We were at the point in a relationship that I could wash his clothes, but I couldn’t take them off.

  “You’re the best,” he said as he flopped down at the kitchen table and ripped into grilled cheese.

  “Yeah. I hear that a lot.”

  “So did you meet with those comic guys today?”

  “Oh.” I slid onto the kitchen counter and watched as he avoided what had just happened like the plague. Chaz was good at that. I wondered if it was part of his superhero package: quick healing, überstrength, superspeed, and the ability to leap over problems in our relationship in a single bound.

  “Yeah, and then I got attacked by a wind elemental and saved by Tucker Briggs.”

  He didn’t even flinch now when I said that. Two months ago, he would have been looking me up one side and down the other and asking a million questions. “The police officer?”

  “Apparently ex-police officer? I didn’t get the whole story.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m meeting with them on Thursday if you want to come.”

  Chaz stuffed the grilled cheese in his mouth. “What made you change your mind?”

  Why had I agreed to help them? Oh yeah, Tucker’s mastery of the kicked puppy look. “Outside of the heroics, he can give me information about Haverty that Iris won’t.”

  “But why now? They’ve been following you for two months?”

  I could only shake my head. “I know I’m supposed to help them. I’m supposed to give them their direction and if I can manage to direct them toward the greater good, then kudos to me.”

  Chaz shoved the other half of the grilled cheese sandwich into his mouth and that was the end of that conversation.

  “MISS JORDAN?” A soft voice asked from above me.

  I had been enjoying a new book, curled up in the front of my coffee shop. Nothing, not even an assassination attempt, was going to stop me from having a decent cup of coffee while waiting for my noon appointment. I looked up from my reading and was met with a pair of doey dark green eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Myers,” the young man introduced himself as he sat down timidly on the chair next to me.

  I didn’t sit up from my lounging position, just watched him. He was a tall thing, and lean by the looks of his hands. He had brown hair that drooped down across his forehead. He kept his eyes just off mind as he settled in, his baggy jeans draping around his ankles.

  “What can I do for you, Myers?” I asked, completely intrigued.

  “Yasmina sent me to you.”

  The name sounded familiar. Where had I heard it before? She wasn’t a contact from L.A. No one from the publishing company. She wasn’t a person that Jessa had ever mentioned.

  He could see the confusion on my face.

  “She’s the elected leader of the Cause,” he informed with a faint wrinkle in his brow.

  Oh. Well then, that was interesting. That would make her Chaz’s boss. The head honcho. The one who sent Chaz to me in the first place. She was the one who Saw, capital S, the big picture.

  “Why did she send you?” I asked, sitting up, coming closer to him. The sudden gravity of the conversation needed a little more privacy.

  “I have a problem. I’m hoping you can help me with,” he said softly, his eyes studying me as I slid my shoes back on.

  I knew that look. Slowly, so I wouldn’t completely freak him out, I brushed him, sending my energy around him. The breath of silk and magnolias moved the hair that almost touched his shoulders.

  He sat up startled, but I’d gathered the answers I needed. A big cat, but not just ano
ther big cat. Another panther. It had to be the one I had heard about on the news. The whole town thought a cat had escaped out of the Dallas World Aquarium’s Mayan exhibit. Since I was at Iris’s for the weekend, I was in the clear. For an instant during the news report, I thought it might have been Spencer returning from the Neveranth, but something in my gut told me he was still safely trapped on the other side of the Veil and his father wasn’t coming back from the kind of dead I’d made him.

  “What the hell?” I asked myself.

  “What was that?” he asked, frightened, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his long neck as he gulped nervously.

  I stood. This was suddenly getting too weird for me. I didn’t know what was going on but I didn’t like it. Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.

  “Excuse me for a second,” I said with a forced smile and I grabbed my phone from the table between us and went outside to stand in the sunshine. Suddenly, I needed the heat of the sun against my skin.

  I hit 3 and speed-dialed Chaz.

  “Hey,” he answered. He sounded like he was on the road with his windows down.

  “I’ve got a problem.”

  “What?” he asked, and I could just see the furrow between his brows.

  “The Cause just sent me a case.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Some kid.”

  “Is he . . .” and his voice trailed off.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “He’s a panther.”

  “What!”

  “I know! So much for being one of the few, the proud—”

  “Then you have to help him.”

  “Why?”

  The line went silent for a moment. It was a selfish thing to say, I know. Without the Cause’s help, I would be a meal in the alleyway. But I had never signed on for this. I had enough of drama for nine lifetimes.

  “Because he was probably another snack.”

  I looked back in the window of my coffee shop. I’d been lucky enough to be under surveillance already when I was attacked five months ago. What if Chaz hadn’t been there? What had happened to this kid?

  Still, the Cause must be hitting the bottom of the barrel if they are sending lost souls to me.

  “I guess I’ll go talk to him,” I gave in under the boy’s piteous brown eyes. “Can you call a few white hats to see who put him on the radar?”

  “Will do. ”

  I snapped the phone shut and watched the boy in the coffee shop, sitting there, his hands between his knees, his head still lowered. I couldn’t not help him. It was an annoying character flaw.

  I walked back into the coffee shop and sat gracefully on the couch next to him. Grace and poise were a few of the benefits of my new lifestyle. Knowing when to use them was a benefit of the new me.

  “Okay,” I said and his eyes snapped up. “I’ll see what I can do. I’m not a Prima or a Shala, but I’ll try to help.”

  “There were a lot of new words in that sentence,” he said, his chin still lowered.

  I immediately softened and smiled. I had said almost the same thing when Chaz had explained everything to me.

  “It means it’s going to be fine.”

  Myers looked up at me with moist eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me. If I can make it through, you can too.”

  Chapter Two

  THE NIGHT WAS a strange kind of dark. No moon to light the night; no wind to carry his scent on the hunt. He welcomed the Spring. Prey was growing scarce, and he couldn’t stomach another rabbit. One of many traits from his dear sister.

  Which is why the allure of the rail-thin deer he now stalked already made his mouth water.

  He crouched silently in the growth and let the deer get a drink of water. Let it relax, trust its surroundings. If the fear saturated the meat, it had a sour taste to it. The first surge of fear was what he liked.

  He hid during the day. The bigger ones were out during the day, prowling around taking the better kills, leaving the smaller ones to only hunt at night. But since he’d gained consciousness in the shift, finding food and hiding from the bigger ones was easier.

  Thank my dear sister for that, he thought as he prepared to pounce, his hind claws digging into the soft earth of the riverbed.

  He leaped, blending into the darkness of the sky as he flew toward the deer. His claws ripped down the sides of the deer.

  Fear filled the deer’s moon lit eyes, and it began to run.

  He rode it for a moment until he could reach his jaws into the shoulder muscle. He tore at the soft flesh and relished in the fresh blood draining down his throat.

  The deer’s call echoed through the silent night. As the deer fell, he was thrown down the muddy banks. He recovered quickly and jumped on the deer, keeping it to the ground.

  It frantically kicked and called out for help into the night.

  He smelled the fear at just the right amount running through its veins.

  He shifted. His bare knee pressed down into the wounded shoulder as his hand crept up around the deer’s neck. The long white scar up his thigh glowed against his now tanned skin.

  He grabbed the deer’s head, staring straight into its eyes and snapped the head around, feeling the crack of the vertebrae. He felt the struggle leave as the deer died.

  His heart racing, his breath heavy, he smelled the sweet smell of magnolias floating just above the fresh blood. She was with him, always with him.

  He laughed into the night as drug his prey back to his lair.

  I WOKE UP SWEATY with a slight taste of brimstone in my mouth. It wasn’t the best taste to start the morning off with. And dreams of my worse half were not the REM I needed to be getting. Two months of this was not exactly conducive to any type of actual rest. Iris has said that Spencer and I would always be connected, but there was another man that I wouldn’t mind getting wild with, even if it were only in my dreams.

  I shook my head of the bloody visions and stretched. Sitting up, I had to rearrange my tank top and untwist my legs from my sheets, like I’d been running.

  I reached for the phone. It was already Thursday, and I hadn’t told Jessa about my meeting with the mongrels. And with the new Do ask, Do tell we had to have with each other, I was breaking the rules by not telling her that I was about to have lunch with the men who’d cut her open last December.

  The phone rang just as my hand hovered over it. A fearful chill started in my left hand and traveled up my arm across the shoulders and dissipated in my right hand. Slowly, I picked up the ringing phone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Vi,” Jessa’s voice was way too perky for this early in the morning. I glanced at the clock. It was nine thirty a.m. So it wasn’t her. I was just too exhausted this late in the morning.

  “I needed to talk to you about something.”

  “Me too, but you first.”

  I stood and stretched. “I’m meeting Briggs and his pack at the mall for a little information swap.”

  The line was silent. Our mystical connection might have bound us together like a lock and key for a prison dimension, but it didn’t make us telepathic. And I didn’t need to be psychic to hear the way her heartbeat sped up on the other side of the line when I mentioned them.

  “I need words, Jessa.”

  And then her heartbeat was gone, and I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. With the phone to my ear, I opened my bedroom door to see her bounding up the stairs.

  I dropped the phone and put it back on the cradle. “You know I don’t like you using magic in the house.”

  Her heart-shaped face was pinched and serious. “This is a face to face kind of discussion. Why are you still in your pajamas?”

  “Rough night. Tell me what you’re thinking.” I sat down on the bed and patted the mattress next to me.

  She sat down and her petite hands clenched on her lap. “I thought we had decided to leave them alone.”

  I matched her wide almond eyes. “I was attacked again and Tucker stepped in.”


  A furrow formed on her smooth brow. “We are on first name basis with the mutts?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Briggs has information about the way Haverty ran the Pride. No amount of research is going to give me more insight that firsthand experience.”

  “They are marked with Jovan, Violet. Infected and influenced by a demon. I felt it, which means that you felt it too. You don’t come back from that. You can’t trust them. Haverty wasn’t their only master.”

  I licked my lips. “My Sensei did. He said that Chaz’s dad knew how to break the mark. And that you can come back from it.”

  Jessa’s mouth fell open. “What did Chaz say?”

  I looked down at my lap. “I haven’t really talked to him about it.”

  Jessa was quiet. Though not telepathic, a best friend can still tell when another friend is holding something back. “Care to comment?” I prodded.

  “You and Chaz are weird. More like ships passing in the night than boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  “No, we’re not.” The protest was flat and I knew it. “It’s hard when they’ve got him all over all the time. When they brought him back on the force, they really kicked it into high gear. He went from the reserves to full on Army ranger.”

  “He’s here now, isn’t he?” she seemed to look around the bedroom like he’d be lurking behind the hamper or something.

  “Actually, no. Didn’t spend the night.”

  “Oh.” Jessa’s furrow was bordering on maternal. “Are you okay with that?”

  I just shrugged. “Parts of me think that it was just a Keanu and Sandra kind of romance, when the fur was flying, it was all endorphins and danger and now that its laundry and grilled cheese sandwiches, the spark is gone.”

  Jessa huffed. “You need to stop watching movies and talk to your boyfriend.” She licked her perfectly glossy lips. “And you need to meet with the mutts. See what they know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’d like to get to a point that I don’t need an armed guard to go have dinner. And that’s not going to stop until the attacks stop. And the attacks aren’t going to stop until the pack is stable. And that’s not going to happen until you figure out how to break the mark on everyone in Dallas and take over.”