He’d obviously, somehow, determined my nature—likely my father’s fault—and had begun his clever schemes to infiltrate his way into my affections using my one true weakness. Once I shifted back to human, I’d have to have a long discussion with my father. Was he unaware mongoose ate black mambas? Did he lack fear because of his gorgon heritage?
I bet it was because he was a gorgon. Obviously, my father cowed other black mambas by parading his pet mongoose around. As I had a severe objection to my prey—a mongoose!—being someone else’s pet, I’d have to take steps to take him from my father and make a proper arrangement with Justin. A mongoose was a good predator.
While I couldn’t retire, I could obtain a partner in crime. Having a partner would help me restore my past, careful practices. It wouldn’t be just me taking a fall. I’d thought about it—I’d even already considered Justin as a potential.
A mongoose lycanthrope with the hybrid form had to be at least as rare as the bacon he made. The problem was, what was I supposed to do with a mongoose? I didn’t want him heeling like some pet, obeying my every word.
I wanted a challenge. I wanted to be the predator as much as he was the predator, equals in our lethality.
My first challenge would be rescuing him from my father’s clutches. My second challenge would be teaching my father he would never, ever make my mongoose heel like some dog. I’d have to spend a great deal of time coming up with a suitable punishment. I’d involve my mother in some fashion, assuming I could get her to stay in the same room with the gorgon for more than five minutes.
I still questioned how I’d been born in the first place. I also didn’t want to think about if I was the result of an interspecies quickie.
The possibility annoyed a few hisses out of me, and I eyed my father’s wrist. One bite probably wouldn’t kill him, would it?
“Don’t even think about it,” my father warned.
I raised my head, opened my mouth, and displayed my fangs in warning.
“Tulip!”
I hissed again, beating his arm with the tip of my tail.
“I left you alone for one week. Then you decided to run away and become the prey of a minotaur. You are in no position to hiss at me, young lady. What were you thinking?”
“With all due respect, sir, it is possible he lured her out here. Why else would she come out here? There’s nothing here.” Justin bounded forward a few strides, stretched out, and shook himself, tufts of yellow fur shedding out of his coat. “I’d consider it fortuitous she had enough control of her faculties to climb a tree and stay there. It’s also fortuitous he was too stupid to climb up after her.”
“Or he had no idea she was there and smelled a female he couldn’t find,” my father grumbled. “To try to touch my daughter. When you get to the car, take her home. See if you can get her to shift back to human. I’ll return to his lair and evaluate the situation.”
“I’ll call the police as well.”
“Yes, do. They’re welcome to what’s left of his body for study.”
“I’m sure the CDC will be pleased to be given a gift of a beheaded minotaur.”
I hissed my approval of Justin’s sarcasm and began the tedious process of untangling my coils, reaching towards the ground. Before I made it far, my father grabbed the back of my head. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Justin rose to his full height, seized the back of my head, and used his other hand to gather my full length. “I’ll save you the walk back to the car. Should she refuse to shift, I’m sure I can stuff her into a bag for transport.”
“Justin,” my father warned while his snakes hissed their displeasure.
With a low, rumbling laugh, the mongoose wrapped me around his arm, kept hold of the back of my neck, and bounded off, his run consisting of long jumps. The way he moved suggested he was accustomed to carrying something in his left hand while in his hybrid form. My first thought was a gun, but I discarded the idea; why would a lycanthrope need—or want—a firearm?
The minotaur could pulverize trees with his head, but lycanthropes with the hybrid form could rip cars apart without putting much effort into it.
I’d have to make sure Justin understood there’d be no destruction of any vehicles I wanted to claim as my own.
Capturing a lycanthrope, obviously, would only be the beginning of my problems. Caring for one and taming him enough he wouldn’t destroy me and everything I wanted to own, would be a challenge. I’d also have a lot of work to do in the untaming department. I’d have to do something about my father to ensure Justin wasn’t controlled.
Under no circumstances could I allow my future partner in crime to heel to anyone, not even me.
Almost every problem in life could be solved with a nap, or so I liked to believe. Justin won a great number of points recognizing when I went from alert to dozing. When he arrived at a dark sedan parked at the edge of the forest, he opened the driver’s door, snatched clothes from the passenger seat, and set me down. Then he started the engine, cranked the heat, and left me alone.
He shifted, revealing a deceptively lean, soft body. I suspected his muscles hid beneath his skin, waiting to be flexed. With no sign of fear, he took hold of me behind the head, transferred me to the passenger seat, and dressed before sliding behind the wheel. “I see no reason to force you to shift,” he announced, reaching over to open the glove box. He retrieved a cell phone, and he dialed a number. “I’ve made it to the car, sir. She’s mostly asleep, so I’m going to let her be. I’ll crank the heat in her room, settle her in, and stand guard in case he’s part of a herd.”
I liked that his tone allowed no argument, and I also liked he hung up before my father could say a word. I didn’t like the idea the mutant minotaur from hell, recently relieved of his head, might not be a solitary entity.
Justin drove, and I rearranged myself on the seat, coiling properly so I could bask in the hot air blowing on me without agitating my collection of bumps, bruises, and probable broken bones.
I couldn’t remember most of the ride, and I stirred when he transformed my bed into an oversized nest, placing me in its heart. True to his word, he cranked the heat high enough I was comfortable; I suspected Justin sweltered, and his solution to the problem was to strip and shift, hopping up on my bed as a mongoose, the kind I didn’t want to battle in the wild.
I watched him, kept my fangs to myself so I wouldn’t provoke him, and waited.
At my lack of aggression, he jumped into my nest with me, rammed his nose under my coils, and shunted me aside.
I uncoiled and moved to reclaim my territory.
With what I interpreted to be a mongoose grin, one that displayed his snake-eating teeth, he swatted my nose with his paw, then he bounced, swaying in place.
I hated mongoose. I hated the smug little bastards. Since biting—and potentially killing—my future partner in crime wouldn’t work, I’d have to come up with some other tactic to browbeat him into submission. I reared up to my full height and hissed at him.
Justin dared to purr at me.
Since killing him wasn’t an option, I’d teach him that there were ways I could use all fourteen feet of my length to put him in a bind. Humiliation wasn’t lethal, and I’d enjoy when my father discovered I’d used my natural weapons in unexpected ways to keep my opponent tied up and unable to bite my head off for annoying him.
I couldn’t help myself. I enjoyed a challenged.
Justin cheated. I had no other explanation for how we’d ended up a tangled mess, rather than me binding him with my coils and remaining in full control of the situation. Sometime during bringing all fourteen feet of my length into play and wrapping around my furry nemesis, I’d become knotted in several places.
I’d done exactly what I’d set out to do, trapping the squirming mongoose. Like me, he avoided using his natural weapons, claws and teeth included, which was likely how we’d become a living pretzel, so twisted we’d need an intervention to escape the situation.
I yawned, wiggled enough I could burrow my nose into his warm fur, and took a nap.
A bark of laughter woke me, and I displayed my fangs for the intruder, lifting my head with a long, low hiss. Not much had changed since I’d decided consciousness wasn’t a requirement; Justin remained tangled in my coils, although he’d squirmed to make himself as comfortable as he could.
My father leaned over my bed, and his serpents canted their heads to the side as though at a loss.
“Please tell me you know how to shift, Tulip.”
I flicked the air with my tongue, and as he had asked a reasonable question in a pleasant tone, I bobbed my head.
“Is there a reason you haven’t shifted?”
I nodded, then I pointed my nose at Justin, who remained asleep despite my father making enough nose to wake the dead.
“I fail to understand how Justin is responsible for your current status as a rather lovely black mamba, if I do say so myself. I should’ve guessed you were your own supplier. Do we need to have a long talk about the appropriate use of your fangs?”
Annoyed over his incorrect belief he could control how I used my fangs, I hissed and burrowed my nose back in Justin’s fur where it belonged.
“And here I thought you’d be more like your mother. She made it halfway across the planet before she realized I wasn’t going to hurt her.” My father gently took hold of the back of my head, peeling me away from Justin, trailing a finger along my back. Making a thoughtful noise, he released me, pinched Justin by the scruff of his neck, and lifted us both up.
When alarmed, mongoose barked, and Justin thrashed before blinking and realizing my father held us hostage. Both of his ears twisted back, and he showed off his snake-eating teeth.
My father rolled his eyes at Justin’s display. “Unless you want to stay tied up with a black mamba rope all day, settle down. And to think my parents want me to have an entire hive of children tormenting me until I die of old age. I have enough trouble with one daughter. To make it worse, unless you get your act together, I’m going to be stuck with both of you. You just had to introduce her to your cooking skills, didn’t you? Taking advantage to my family’s weakness to bacon was low, even for you.”
Justin lifted and turned his head with a satisfied huff.
Grunting his disapproval, my father resumed untangling us, and I found it amusing neither one of us made any efforts to help him. When I was finally freed, I returned to my nest, coiled up, and hissed.
“You need to shift back to human,” my father replied, still holding Justin by the scruff of his neck.
I reared up, opened my mouth, and showed off my fangs.
“Don’t you get mouthy with me, young lady.”
While I counted as young to him, there was nothing ladylike about me, so I darted forward and snapped at his hand. He yelped, jerked back, and dropped my future partner-in-crime. Justin bounced on the bed, rolled, and bounded across the comforter. I flicked my tongue and pursued, slithering along the edge to keep him from escaping.
“Seriously? Play with him later, after you tell me what you think you were doing, Tulip.”
I swiveled my head to hiss at my father, which was when Justin pounced, grabbing hold with his front paws and driving me down to the bedding. I lashed my tail and waited.
Checking his watch, my father sighed, shook his head, and strode to the door. “Fine. I’ll be back in a few hours. Try to be human by the time I return. We’re going to have a very long talk.”
I wondered if all parents believed such threats were effective. My father left, closing the door behind him and leaving me alone with the number one natural predator of black mambas.
As having hands was useful, I slithered off the bed and headed for the bathroom so I could shift in the tub and soak away the aches and pains. It hurt like hell, and through the entire process, I had a curious mongoose voyeur keeping me company.
“You’re a pervert,” I rasped, and as I was too tired to make a fuss over it, I didn’t bother to try to hide the mottling of bruises covering me head to toe. “Lycanthropes suck. You just shift back and forth a few times, and you don’t have to pay the bill for your idiocy. Me? Oh, no. I’m going to be a bloody mess for weeks.”
Shifting had helped, although I wasn’t going to admit it. My tentative exploration of my ribs indicated I’d gone from probable breaks to bone bruises, which were far superior to fractures. It would hurt, but unless I started coughing up blood, I wouldn’t go to the hospital.
Lycanthropes cheated. Justin’s shifted quicker than I did, and he did so with fluid grace, growing and melding with his human form until he knelt beside the tub, his arms draped over the side. “This explains so much,” he murmured, looking me over while I went about filling the tub and adding shampoo to the water so I could have bubbles.
“Being a freak of nature does explain a lot of things,” I conceded.
“I was trying to figure out how a reptile lycanthrope could exist; lycanthropes are exclusively mammals. From our observations, we’d determined you’d inherited cold-blooded traits from both sides of the family, but we were beginning to believe you were a vanilla human.”
Me? Vanilla? I snorted and splashed the water. “The CDC refuses to believe I’m immune to lycanthropy, and since I don’t have another trick I’m willing to prove, I look vanilla. I’m sure they’ll give me an immunity rating one of these days.”
“Or you can register as a shapeshifter.”
“That’d be rather stupid of me.”
“Would that be because you have a tendency to find your way directly into trouble that might require you to use your fangs to eliminate threats?” Justin rested his chin on his forearm, watching me with a smirk. “I’ve been studying you, Tulip.”
The way he purred the word studying made me want to think he had a few ideas for a more thorough examination of my person. “I thought you couldn’t stand the sight of me.”
“As a rather skilled predator, one of my first tricks to lure another predator out is to act like prey. I ran and, because you’re a predator as I suspected, you locked on and hunted for me. Had I known you weren’t cut from your mother’s cloth, I would’ve lured you off somewhere in private and begun my campaign to win you sooner.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why? Because let’s face it, that sounds about as creepy as me wanting you for your bacon.”
“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” he admitted with a shrug. “Part of my job. Your father’s interests are my interests. As his interests involve making certain you, his only living child, remain safe, I’ve been keeping an eye on your activities. You’re a magnet for trouble. Were you aware that you almost fell prey to a sexual predator?”
I cocked a brow, and I considered how I’d discovered Matthew Henders’s body. A hybrid mongoose lycanthrope could’ve easily done the damage with a single claw, and it fell in line with how they liked to kill, going for the throat and killing the snake by the head. “Were you aware my mail was going to explode?”
“No,” he growled. “I’ve learned you have a serious problem with mail bombs.”
I scowled, twitching at the thought Justin might’ve been the one to yank my prey right out from beneath my nose. “You were the one to kill him, weren’t you?”
“I had reason to believe he was your next target.”
With my cheek still twitching, I wiggled my toes in the water. To my dismay, they ached, too. “Yes, that was the entire point.”
He gaped at me. “What?”
Rolling my eyes, I fashioned my hand to resemble a gun and mimed shooting someone. “Let’s say there’s someone I really don’t like, and I have a really good reason to dislike them. Well, I have this bad habit of killing them, especially when they’re someone like Matthew Henders. He was an irredeemable ass of the worst sort. I got onto that mail route specific
ally so he’d notice me.” I heaved a sigh. “There’s just no artistry in a slit throat. Really. Couldn’t you have at least used some finesse? I had everything planned right to the second. Except the mail bomb. That was not a part of my plan.”
“You were planning what? To become his victim?”
I leveled my worst glare at him. “No, you idiot mongoose. I was planning to kill him. Also, he wasn’t a sexual predator. He was a serial killer with rapist tendencies. There’s a difference.”
Justin blinked. “He was a serial killer with rapist tendencies?”
“I do believe I just said that.”
“You knew he was a serial killer with rapist tendencies, and you went near him anyway?”
I flicked bubbles at him. “That is the idea. How else was I going to kill him?”
Slumping over the edge of the bathtub, Justin bowed his head and groaned. “This is even worse than I thought. Next, you’re going to tell me you went after a minotaur on your own on purpose.”
“No. I was actually looking into the disappearances of two lion centaurs in the area, poked my nose where it didn’t belong, and found his lair. I found the centaurs, but they’re dead. At least I don’t have to try to explain away that one. He had a lot of victims. I mercy killed some of them, but one inside might survive if someone gets to them sooner than later. There was a wolf lycanthrope I guided out, but he went loco the instant he got through the maze. That’s actually why I was up the tree; I didn’t want a crazed lycanthrope getting a hold of me.” Lifting my hand, I showed off where I’d punched the cat in the mouth. “Last lycanthrope I tangoed with got punched in the mouth for trying to wreck my future car.”
“We heard. That’s why your father’s back here rather than trying to convince your mother she should come home with him again. It wasn’t going well.”
“Well, yeah. Snakes eat fish. Was he really expecting a different result?”
Justin snorted without lifting his head. “And mongoose eat black mambas, yet here we are. We’re both in the same bathroom. No one’s dead yet.”
Sirens and Scales Page 45
