by Meg Ripley
Evan looked deeply unsettled by his thoughts; he even put his shades back on before he spoke again. “Whoever this is seems to be targeting young lionesses to impregnate them. Some of the girls are four months pregnant. And the ones they’re mutilating are…Charlie, they’re already pregnant.”
“Already pregnant?” Charlie echoed numbly. “They’re…already…?”
Evan nodded. Charlie stared at him, listening to the blood rushing around his ears as he processed what Evan was telling him. Someone was beating and raping lions, and taking their young right from the womb. This was strategic. This was a genocide.
“It isn’t cops,” Charlie whispered. He turned on his heel and stalked away through the parking garage, leaving Evan to trot behind him toward their shuttle.
“I told you it wasn’t cops,” Evan said, annoyed, but Charlie wasn’t listening; he was too busy assembling the growing puzzle in his mind and trying to formulate a plan.
****
Charlie kept whipping his face against the vibrating glass of the shuttle’s window to catch glimpses of the streets and houses zipping by the van, and it was starting to rub the skin of his forehead raw, but he couldn’t help it— the town looked so different. Sierra Leandra was technically in San Diego county, but with its neatly divided sections, it looked more like a mini version of the county itself: wide open spaces for the first ten miles, populated with squat scrubs whose thin soils were graced with sprawling ranch houses and apathetic farm animals who milled border of the town; then came gas stations and main freeway exits; then strip malls started to pop up alongside boxy duplexes and apartment buildings surrounding the three public schools. There were two churches and a community college, a rec center, two malls, then a small business and entertainment district that blended nicely together on Friday evenings. On the other side of the bars and banks were gaudy houses—mini-mansions with huge bay windows and tall cream doors that opened into the sort of meticulously styled and polished rooms that begged to be lounged in by people of the same caliber. Charlie knew the layout of the town like the back of his hand, knew what each building would look like painted blue or yellow or burned down to black ash and rebuilt in brick, but he never thought he’d see it this way.
The streets were completely empty, save for a few lonely adults strolling along the sidewalks or going into shops. Every window he could see was shuttered, and some were even boarded up. The rural part of town was even empty of llamas and geese—when he tried to focus on smelling them with his eyes closed, he couldn’t catch the scent of a single feather or puff of fur. One gas station looked open for business, but the lights were off inside, and the others looked like they had been closed for months. Horror gripped his stomach as they rode through the business section of town and saw that not only were the main malls closed and vacated, half of their structures had been pulled or knocked down. There was such a profound sense of wrongness about everything that even the warm hum of the engine didn’t do much to mask how quiet it was, and he felt bile start to rise in his throat. What is this? What’s happened? It looks like a ghost town.
“Flax,” Evan said suddenly, breaking him out of his trance. Charlie jumped at the sound of his last name and turned toward the other man, who was holding the now half-full water bottle the driver had offered each of them.
“What’s up?” Charlie asked. The next second he noticed that Evan’s posture had changed— it was ever so slightly, and the human driver almost certainly didn’t notice it, but it was there. His spine was more rigid, but his eyes were darting around the vehicle behind the dark lenses of his shades. He lowered his voice when he spoke so that it wouldn’t register to the driver’s ears.
“We’re being followed,” Evan said casually. “Black sedan with no plates. Big Native American guy driving who kinda looks like your wife’s brother, and a squat looking white guy in the passenger seat. I saw one of them pat a weapon on the ceiling roof to secure it. They’re not human.” His words came blunt and fast, and Charlie knew his military training was kicking in.
Charlie flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror of the van, pouring all of his energy into focusing his gaze on the two figures behind them. After a moment, he saw that Evan was right; a brown-skinned man with thick knuckles was piloting the car, and his small blonde friend was trying far too hard to look relaxed in the seat.
“Damn,” Charlie said under his breath. “They’re lions.”
“Thought so,” Evan said, and even though his words were slow and steady, Charlie knew his pulse had just accelerated. The city had somehow been closed down, their people were being terrorized, and now two strange lions were on their tail. After another second, the car dropped back and turned a corner, but both of the lions in the shuttle knew it was out of caution. Charlie had a horrible feeling in his gut about the likelihood of them meeting again. He sat back in his seat, willing the van to materialize at his and Evan’s homes. He could picture Natalie now, and the vision made his heart ache—her mane of soft, dark curls, caramel brown eyes, and the disarming smile he saw most nights in his dreams.
“We’re here,” the driver intoned a few minutes later. Charlie opened his eyes and saw that Evan was already unbuckling his seatbelt and sliding his door open.
Did I doze off? he wondered as he climbed out of the van. He slipped a twenty-dollar bill into the driver’s chubby palm and noted that he was twitchy and covered in sweat despite the air conditioning. He pulled off before Charlie could ask him if anything was alright, and he nearly called for him to come back. If the human could tell something was amiss, maybe he should just grab Natalie and pay him to keep driving until they hit the other side of the country.
Instead, Charlie nodded to Evan at the foot of his own driveway and turned to the Reynolds’ home, finally glancing at the burned-out husk his pride mate and neighbor’s garage had become. “Ariel really didn’t say anything about it?”
Evan shook his head, his dark eyes unreadable behind his lenses. “Not a thing. Mentioned having to move the car. And she never mentioned our niece getting…hurt.” Evan’s clipped tone hid the grief in that single word, and Charlie felt a wrench of pain deep inside his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” he said softy, holding one upturned palm toward his best friend’s jaw. For a moment, he was afraid the lion would turn away from the gesture, but then Evan stepped forward and bumped his cheek against Charlie’s palm, accepting the comfort he sorely needed.
“Thanks,” he said, his voice filled with pain. “I should get inside. I have a feeling I’ll see you soon?”
Charlie nodded, gazing toward the living room window of his house. “Yeah. We’ll all be seeing each other soon, I think. “
Evan flashed him a wide smile before he turned toward his house, and it was vicious, dark, and wrapped in a layer of red-hot shifter energy that Charlie would have flinched away from if he hadn’t been positive it wasn’t for him. A shiver rolled down his spine as he watched Evan’s slim, muscle-heavy form slink toward his front door; his best friend reminded him pretty often that he should be thankful he was one of the good guys.
Charlie’s heart was slamming against his ribcage as he walked swiftly up his driveway, noticing that the curtains had been pulled shut the whole time and hadn’t moved when the shuttle pulled up. The truck wasn’t outside at all, and Charlie worried briefly that Natalie wasn’t home—then the anxiety bled away, and he realized he was feeling relief at the possibility that Nat was already far away from the potentially dangerous storm brewing for them on the horizon. He hesitated as he slipped his key into the door, tension knotting his heavy bicep before turning the handle and pushing the thick oak door inward and stepping inside, closing it almost as quickly as he’d opened it.
“Nat?”
His voice echoed uncomfortably in the house, and the terse syllable hit his ears with the force of a gunshot. Something wasn’t right; as his eyes adjusted to the artificial darkness the blackout curtains provided, he realized that all the furniture
in their wide living room was covered in a thick layer of dust. There were clear footprints crossing the dust on the wood floor, and some of the dirt seemed like it had been pushed around recently, but no weight had been put on the sofa, recliner, or coffee table for weeks. He called her name again and dropped his duffle bag as he crossed through the living room, shouldering through the swinging doors leading into the kitchen so fast he’d already zipped through the dining room by the time they swung closed again. The linoleum near the stove showed signs of foot traffic, and there was still a worn mat near the fridge, but otherwise, everything was bare and untouched. The chairs in the dining room were shoved under the table, and there was nothing in the cupboards. He spoke again, projecting his voice through the house without caring if any of the neighbors heard his panicked screech.
“Natalie!”
A solid thunk sounded below his feet, and Charlie froze, his breath coming hard and fast on the heels of a wave of anxiety. It sounded like someone slamming wood onto the earth beneath the floorboards. How?
“Nat?” He shouted again, feeling confusion start to mingle with the terror in his chest. Then the thunk came again, and this time, he saw a floorboard in the dining room fly a foot into the air near table before crashing back into place.
What the fuck?
Charlie dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled over to the section of floor, pressing his nose to the heavy piece of wood that he could now see was far cleaner than the rest of the space. He could smell chilly, stale air wafting up through the crack, and if he concentrated, he could hear the rattle of what had to be their old air conditioner pumping out a cool breeze. Charlie inhaled, filling his powerful lungs with as many particles as he could drag through his nose— and thought he caught a whiff of sharp, sweet smoke mixed in with the damp earth.
“Natalie,” Charlie murmured, and the board flew up again—but this time, he caught it with both hands and finally saw that it was a trapdoor with hinges buried in the wood. He propped it open and peered down as a dark brown ladder rose a few inches above the five-by-five-foot opening, trying to see down into the room that had to be twenty feet underground. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he finally saw her—bags under her warm brown eyes, lips cracked, arms skinnier than they should have been, but beaming that soul-cracking smile that was all for him. She stepped back as he launched himself down the ladder, swinging the door shut above them and plunging them into darkness as a consequence.
“Sorry!” Charlie yelped, and he felt his hands brush across his wife’s knuckles as she scrambled to turn on a lamp. His heart caught in his throat, and the startled look on Natalie’s face when the lamp flared to life told him he was already tearing up. One of her hands went to her round belly as she stepped forward and extended the other, and Charlie placed his large, callused hand on top of hers as he pressed his jaw against the warmth of her smaller palm. She smiled at him as he turned his face inward to kiss her hand, and it lit up her tired features. Natalie was a foot shorter than Charlie, so she had to crane her neck and stretch to reach his face, but when she kissed him, he felt every shred of anxiety and darkness melt away from his body at once. He slipped both of his hands to her hips as she rubbed the nape of his neck, and a crackle of warm electricity surrounded their bodies as the energy of their beasts mingled together. When he pulled back, her tawny cheeks were flushed pink, and she was breathing hard; he pulled one of her soft brown curls with his fingers as he looked around.
“So,” he said, feigning an air of detachment. “Do you come here often?”
The laughter that poured from Natalie’s lips went a long way to loosen the death grip that fear had around his throat, and he finally got a good look at the room they were standing in. It was much larger than he first realized, with several moth-eaten partitions blocking parts of the room from view. It was eight feet long at least, and about half as wide—most of the front of their house must be above them. Though the floor was purely made of earth, there were wide plastic circles covering much of its surface, and the walls had been lined with a slick, shiny material.
“Steel,” Natalie explained. “We’re soundproof, fireproof and stormproof, and we could seal up that door as soon as we need to, easily, with the material left over.”
“Nat…how did you make this?” Charlie asked, his voice soft with wonder. He kept Natalie’s small hand in his as he walked over to the partitions to see a full-sized mattress and a small, hand-built end table holding an electric lamp and a jar of water. Further beyond, the other partition revealed a cement floor with a drain in its center and a wide shower head jutting from the wall, about six feet above it. A simple knob controlled the water, and a plain porcelain toilet was located uncomfortably close to a jet black sink made from a single chunk of onyx.
“Ariel made that,” Natalie said nervously, answering Charlie’s unspoken question. “And you can probably see the kitchen sink is made of the same material.” She put a hand on her lower back as she gestured to the end of the room, where a small electric stove stood opposite another square-ish black sink, though this one was larger than its partner. Each part of the room had at least one lamp, and there was a set of cabinets at either side. The end with the trap door also had a huge green chest against one wall that he knew normally sat in their garage and held emergency supplies; he walked over to it and lifted the heavy lid, confirming that it was filled with gauze, emergency blankets, medicine, and smaller bundles of first aid materials. Charlie was impressed that Natalie got it down here alone. Then something she’d said earlier stirred in his mind, and he turned to his wife, whose heart-shaped face was pinched with apprehension and a hint of impatience.
“You said Ariel made these sinks?” Charlie asked, and his voice was as dumbfounded as he felt. When did this happen? How could she hide this from me? What the fuck is going on?
Natalie nodded, and her brown eyes were guarded. “For her side, too,” she said slowly, and Charlie could tell she wasn’t happy with his decidedly mixed reaction.
“Her side?” he repeated numbly. “So…Ariel has a secret fallout bunker dug out underneath her house, as well? Just something you lionesses cooked up?” Charlie couldn’t keep the anger and condescension out of his tone, and his wife took note.
Natalie laughed, but it was dry and biting; Charlie hated it, but he hated feeling like a prisoner even more. “I wouldn’t call it that,” she admitted. “But yes, the Reynolds have a safe house as well, and so do the Doyles and the Li family.” Her voice was soft, but her words were steady, and when Charlie looked in her eyes, a cautionary sort of heat was waiting there. “I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t necessary, Charles.”
Charlie straightened his back, unable to stop himself from becoming defensive. “I just wish you would have told me just what the hell was going on when this stuff started being planned, and why such drastic tactics were so necessary, Natalie.” He stepped back from her. “I come home, you look tired and beaten down, my city is deserted and looks like it’s under siege…and you expect me to be okay with all of this?”
“No,” Natalie said, though her voice was nearing a shout. She started to close the space between them, her words urgent and laced with pain. “I expect you to let me explain before you start getting all territorial in the house that we share! Did it ever occur to you, maybe while you looked at those empty streets and all that broken glass, that while you were manning a war over there I was doing the same, right here at home? That our people are under attack, and that I have been trying to stay safe while doing something about it? I’m the Matriarch of this pride, did you expect me to pussyfoot around while you were overseas and just do nothing?” She was right under his nose now, stretching to push her angry gaze against his lowered eyes. “I’m carrying our child; do you think I’m just going to sit here and stay a target?”
Charlie dropped to his knees, the back of his eyes burning with shame. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, digging his knuckles into the plastic mat beneath them. “Forgi
ve me. I didn’t mean to imply any of that. I know you were busy here. I’m just scared, but I shouldn’t put that before the issue. Please, Nat…tell me what’s going on.” He raised his eyes to hers, and was relieved to see that her expression has softened dramatically. She held her hand out to him, and he pressed his cheek into the warmth of her palm, grateful for the comfort her contact always gave him.
“Rise, love,” she said softly. “Now that you’re here, we can’t waste words. It’s time I catch you up.”
****
“One more time,” Charlie said ten minutes later. They were sitting on the soft mattress hand in hand, and Natalie had just given him a condensed rundown for the third time. After being in the marines for so long, Charlie liked having things drilled into his memory like this, and today was no different. He understood now that this was literally life and death for everyone involved.
Natalie, fortunately, was every bit the soldier he was after standing as Matriarch for ten years, since she was eighteen. She nodded patiently at his request, happy to have someone new to share this with after all these months. “After the first rash of attacks, Ariel started doing research. She noticed a pattern, and sent out requests to other prides around the country about a month after they started, once things were clearly getting worse. Most of the prides said the same thing: she was crazy for thinking there was somebody targeting lions that wasn’t already in the news, or at least known to the council. They said it was just a gang. But a handful of prides came forward, and then a few more. All in all, a couple prides in each state reported that their membership had been invaded and systematically culled until almost no one was around to breed. In addition to mutilations, they got rid of the young and tried to leave women pregnant with their own seed. Infants were smothered, toddlers kidnapped, and pregnant women had their pregnancies…forcefully terminated.” Her breath hitched in her throat, and Charlie squeezed her hand encouragingly, sending her a soothing wave of his energy that brought a rush of color to her cheeks. My brave lioness, he thought in wonder.
