Badass and the Beast: 10

by Shrum, Kory M.

  “It will be amazing,” Joss said. “Once you learn to let go.”

  “Of what?” Claire asked. “My humanity? The idea of being beautiful?”

  She thought they might laugh at this, but no one did. In fact, as she looked at them through her tears, she saw only sadness in their faces and pity.

  “You have us,” Audrey said.

  “I’m not a lesbian!”

  “Hey!” Joss and Camilla said in unison.

  Toni’s laughter came in a great wave. “Most of us aren’t, honey! This isn’t some kind of lesbian cult. The fact that you think so tells me you haven’t grown enough fur yet.”

  Claire just cried harder and Toni let out a long sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and placed a dark hand on top of Claire’s head. “I keep forgetting how hard it is at first.”

  “Come with us,” Audrey said.

  “Where?” Claire looked up through her wet lashes and sniffed.

  “You need to run,” Audrey said.

  “Yes!” Joss said and the other girls nodded in excitement. “Run with us.”

  “I can’t be running around outside,” Claire said. “People will see me.”

  “Nothing will happen to you,” Audrey said. “Just come with us.”

  Toni looked at the watch on the back of her hand. “We can make it to the cabin in half an hour. It’ll be sunset.”

  “The sky will be gorgeous,” Lex said from her chair.

  “Will you come with us?” Audrey asked softly, taking Claire’s hands in hers.

  Claire tried to be brave, but she was so frightened. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “What you’ve longed for your entire life.”

  They arrived at a house on the edge of a great forest about forty minutes north of Claire’s apartment. The home was a large cabin, elegant but not ostentatious, built to blend with the nature surrounding it rather than stand out. Claire had never heard about it in the years she’d spent as friends to these girls. But it was clear from the moment they arrived, by the way they entered, hung up their light jackets and put away their shoes—they were each intimate with this home. They had favorite seats on the sofa by the cold fireplace. They had favorite cups in the cabinet. They had their own rooms.

  “Claire can sleep in my room,” said Lex. “If she wants.”

  “It was given to me by my mother,” Audrey explained as they settled in. They’d each packed for the night, and Claire, despite her distress, could tell the girls were excited. She couldn’t help but feel a swell of anticipation herself.

  They stood around the living room, speaking, laughing and enjoying the view out of the large windows overlooking the dense trees to the left, a long, welcoming stretch of open land to the right. They watched the sunset through these windows, and the moon rise.

  Once the moon was high and bright overhead, Audrey sat down her glass of red wine. “Ready?”

  The five women followed Audrey out into the night. The moonlight made them glow as they crossed into the wide open space just beyond the house. When they stopped a few feet from where Audrey had stopped, Claire realized she could hear so much out here, far from the city noises. Small animals in underbrush. Bats diving for the insects above their heads. Night birds in the trees.

  The stars were plentiful, thick and wet looking—close enough that she was sure she could reach up and scoop them out of the sky, like a great reflection of an expansive lake suspended overhead. She swayed on her toes as if drunk on the night. She felt so small beneath the infinite expanse above her. Perfectly small.

  Someone giggled.

  They removed their clothes and stood naked in the moonlight. Claire hesitated but followed their lead. The night was warm and soft on her skin and her fur. One by one her muscles relaxed.

  “Mother,” Audrey said. And it was her voice that brought the world back into sharp focus for Claire. “We have found your daughter.”

  Claire was confused by these words. She looked around for another woman, but saw their raised hands, faces skyward as if in victory—it was a prayer.

  “As she runs with us in her true form, may she finally know her own strength, her true beauty, her true preciousness, and power.”

  All the other girls muttered an agreement. Claire didn’t know why but she began to cry, a feeling of sweet beautiful release washing over her.

  Audrey came to stop in front of Claire. She reached her hands under the girl’s hair and made a motion, much like the unfastening of a collar that wasn’t there. Claire knew it was symbolic, as is often true with rituals, but she would have sworn that she felt her neck release, her heart swell with newfound freedom. Her arms and legs light, alive and vibrating with their own power.

  A cry erupted from her throat, a long, throaty wail that she’d been holding inside her whole life—and never knew it.

  Her howl was echoed in five other throats, swelling, billowing up toward the sky like smoke signals. When the last ounce of air left her throat, she hit the dirt on all fours.

  Ten more pairs of paws joined her.

  Audrey was the first to run.

  Audrey with her thick black fur except for a tip of grey on her tail, like a fox. It wasn’t that she was their leader—only that she led the way.

  Toni’s brassy fur followed, Joss and Camilla, each honey-colored, not far behind. Lex, a soft white bounded away from her wheelchair, frolicking in the moonlight, encouraging Claire, as if whispering with her wolf tongue—your legs will hold you. You are more than a body.

  Her own body covered in soft grey fur, shined like silver in the moonlight.

  She took a step and saw her paw move forward, spread wide with her weight against the ground. Again she stepped and again she felt steady, strong.

  Once she started running, she couldn’t stop. Two legs or four, it didn’t matter.

  The world rushed past her as she followed the others into the wilderness, felt the trees embrace them, the soft grass rubbing their bellies and making their journey just a little easier. And the moon—

  How long had she been waiting for Claire to come home, with a face as bright and beautiful as any daughter could hope for?

  Shifting Loyalties

  Monica La Porta

  Legs stretched and her body bent over the metal rim, Laura rummaged inside the trashcan. She was hungry and cold. Both conditions were familiar to her, to the point that she couldn’t remember a moment in her life when she had felt full and warm.

  She reached for a promising white bag that smelled like it had been garbage for less than an hour. Her sensitive nostrils twitched and she salivated as she caught the scent of artichokes and lamb. It paid to go food-scavenging behind the Roman restaurants on this side of Ghetto. She didn’t like to leave the safety of the Promenade and her hideout, but she had gone several days without eating a whole meal, and she was weak. She couldn’t afford to be weak. A weak shifter would not run at full speed when the Controller came to take her.

  A shiver ran down Laura’s back at the memory of her last encounter with the Controller. She had been minding her business, which at the time amounted to looking for scraps of food among the heaps of fresh garbage left over from a recent paranormal party. The underground Promenade—the place she had called home for the last four years—was a favorite hangout for all the things that went bump in the Roman night. Kilometers of tunnels excavated under Rome were used by shifters, immortals, vampires, and the like as their private playground. A whole city under the city had been built at the same level of the catacombs, with which the Promenade and the ancient Roman Suburra shared space.

  Laura usually avoided the Promenade’s main areas where people gathered, but that night she had been forced out of her hole by her never ending hunger. The Controller was strolling by and saw her hunched over a miraculous finding. A whole rack of ribs had been thrown away, practically uneaten. She was too busy gorging herself on juicy meat to hear him coming. He was huge and dwarfed her in a corner. His eyes
changed colors and his gloved hands reached down for her. She had refused to cry or beg. Instead, she looked up, spat in his face, and called him a few names. Then she kicked his shins and scooted backward, into a small hole in the rock wall. Her heart in her throat, she wormed inside the narrow tunnel and exited a few minutes later in the adjacent warlock territory. Magik Nation wasn’t a welcoming place to escape to, so she retraced her steps and carefully found her way back to her sanctuary, where she hid in fear for a few days before venturing out again.

  Finally, unable to stand the pangs in her stomach, Laura had crept out from one of the Promenade’s many exits along the Tiber River. She closed the lapels of her thin coat over her chest, hugged herself, and walked across the whole length of Fabricius Bridge to reach the other side of Lungotevere Boulevard. From there, she walked to the heart of the Ghetto neighborhood where the best restaurants in Rome awaited her. Now, plastic bag in hand, she was glad she had risked the walk. The artichokes and lamb would be worth the escapade into the human world.

  She ripped the bag open, one hand already feeling the lukewarm remains of what must have been an expensive meal, and heard a low growl, followed by whimpering. Her meal clutched to her chest, she turned and saw a black dog scampering her way, dragging his left hind leg. Laura wasn’t an expert in dog breeds, but the furry canine looked like a Newfoundland, and he was on the large side. Voices echoed into the small alley. Humans. If the Controller scared Laura, humans— especially male humans—terrified her.

  When her parents died in a car accident, humans had found her on the scene. No one from the paranormal world, her world, had come forward to claim her, to save her from the foster family who took her in. She was thirteen when she finally escaped the house where she fought every night to be left alone. Only her panther with her extra senses and extra strength had protected her from her foster brother and his friends. Not one of the social workers who came to check on her had believed her. Her foster parents complained she was feral and showed her scratches on their son’s face and arms. The bruises on her arms and legs went unnoticed, covered by the loose clothes she had started to favor once her body had gone through a change she hadn’t been ready for. And she would have never shown them the marks on her chest and groin.

  The dog behind her whined, bringing her back to her present quandary.

  “Good puppy, be quiet, please.” She patted his head and the dog seemed to calm. The moment of peace didn’t last. Running steps and laughter came from around the corner, and she wished it was closer to a full moon so she would be able to call her panther forth. She didn’t care about paranormal laws and having to hide her nature from the mortals. Being a renegade had that advantage. But she didn’t have the full command of her panther yet. At seventeen, she still hadn’t mastered her inner beast. Usually, around puberty, shifter kids had parents giving them the talk when the time came for the first shift. She had to figure out things for herself through trial and error. At least, she had learned how to draw strength from her cat. Out of necessity, that came naturally. Her ex-foster brother could attest to that.

  “Come here, dog.” A man in his twenties appeared at the mouth of the alley.

  A second man, taller, and of the same age as the first ran in. “We haven’t finished playing with you.”

  A third and a fourth soon followed. They appeared inebriated and sounded cruel. The dog whined and shifted behind Laura, exposing her. She muttered a curse under her breath, but tried to keep still.

  “What do we have here?” one of them asked, walking closer to Laura’s corner. “A little girl guarding the dog.”

  “Let me see.”

  “Oh, it’s just a homeless kid.”

  “Even better than that mongrel.”

  “We’re almost done with it anyway.”

  Bodies crammed the alley’s entry and obscured the place.

  “She’s going to be much more fun.”

  One of the men reached for Laura’s arm. She snarled at him, soliciting a shocked reaction at first and laughs soon after.

  “Oh, yes, this is going to be lots and lots of fun.” Another hand shot forward to grab her.

  Laura ducked and lashed out at the man’s limbs. He screamed, then uttered obscenities at her as his friends tried to reach for her. She bared her teeth and kept hitting her assailants with kicks and punches, fending off their attack, but knowing that without fully shifting she couldn’t go on for long. She was too weak to begin with and these four men were in their prime. A hard slap had her reeling backward. Her head slammed against the brick wall and her teeth closed over her tongue. Blood flooded her mouth and she snapped out of the momentary daze. As she propelled herself forward, screaming and kicking, she thought she heard the dog barking. Hits rained all over her, hands grabbing her arms, fingers digging into her cold skin, reaching for her long hair. She doubled her efforts and bit the hands that had gone to her mouth to shut her up.

  The image of her foster brother sneering at her swam before her eyes. She head-butted the man in front of her and at the same time raised her booted foot to his groin. He went down to the cobblestones, howling.

  The dog attacked the man to her left and she turned to the one on her right to scratch at his eyes. Soon, the men joined her in the screaming match. The fourth man proved to be the most resilient or probably the drunkest, and didn’t seem to notice Laura’s attacks one bit. Even when the dog joined her, the man still stood with a maniacal look on his face, his hands shooting toward her chest. Laura was tired, her body feeling the strain of fighting while half-starved. The dog came to her rescue again and again, but the man kicked him viciously and sent him to the far corner.

  The man towered over her. His friends stirred, getting ready for a second round. The dog couldn’t raise his hind leg, blood seeping out from a deep cut on his back. Despite her panther senses helping in the semi-darkness of the alley, Laura struck several times blindly. Her hits connected with flesh and bone, but she was getting weaker, and she hurt herself more than she damaged her attackers. The dog’s warm nose poked at her side and that gave her the strength to keep her arms up.

  The backdoor of one of the restaurants opened, spilling yellow light into the alley. Steam rolled outside from the kitchen and a waiter emerged from it, a pack of cigarettes and lighter in his hands. At the same time, Laura saw her assailant descending upon her to silence her and screamed with all the breath she had left.

  That got the waiter’s attention. “What the f—”

  “Help!” Laura managed to free herself from the tangle of bodies hiding her from view, and with one hand grabbing the dog’s back by his fur, she ran toward the waiter who was walking toward them with his cell phone raised, already talking to the police. Muttering her thanks, she passed her savior and sprinted ahead and out of the alley with the dog firmly in her grasp. She didn’t stop until they were under Fabricious Bridge and out of sight, where she only took a breather, patted the dog, then entered one of the ingresses to Magik Nation. Any other time, she would have avoided warlock territory, but this time, she couldn’t afford to be picky. Knowing the danger she was in just to pass through those tunnels—they never stood still, but moved and morphed—she hurried through them and only slowed when she reached the Promenade.

  “Good boy. Don’t pass out on me. I can’t carry you.” She kept talking to the black dog the whole time, needing to voice her worries. “You’re such a pretty boy.”

  Paranormals strolled by, and she jumped from shadow to shadow, hoping the dog would make it to the next spot. She wouldn’t leave him alone, but she couldn’t afford to be seen. Her clothes would give away she was a renegade, and, as a minor, authorities would swarm down there to apprehend her. She had been in a foster home once already. She didn’t need to repeat the experience just to see if paranormal foster parents would be any better. Only eleven months left before she turned eighteen and she would finally be an adult.

  The dog whined louder and collapsed to the ground. His tail waggin
g nervously, his big chocolate eyes stared up at her.

  “What are we going to do?” She sat by his side, and leaned her head against the rocky wall, flattening herself so that she wasn’t visible from the Styx riverbank trail. She watched as a group of werewolves walked by, two of the boys hand-in-hand, while the others talked about some party they wanted to go to. They looked her age, and they were all beautiful with their perfect haircuts and fashionable outfits. The girls had sparkles in their tresses and giggled at something one of them said. Laura lowered her eyes to the ground, becoming one with the wall behind her, and pressed one hand over her grumbling stomach. Sadness engulfed her and she felt tears threatening to spill forth, but she didn’t let them.

  She waited for the group to pass and disappear behind the next bend in the river trail. “Let’s go home.” Like a shadow, she moved along the wall until she found the passage she had concealed with a piece of broken scaffold from an archeological site uncovered a few years back. The Promenade was disseminated with Roman and Etruscan ruins, and it was one of her pastimes to dig small treasures out of those sites. She had spent several nights with her hands in the dirt, breaking her nails against the rocks, and she had a small collection of bronze figurines and copper coins she kept hidden in a hole under her bed of straw. Her most precious item, a Cybele statuette no bigger than her pinky, she always had on her, close to her heart. One of the few memories she had of her life before the accident was of her mom telling her the story of the goddess who traveled on a chariot carried by lions.

  Although it took a long time for Laura to reach her sanctuary, she drew strength from pressing the small Cybele to her skin. The dog limped heavily alongside but didn’t utter a whine the whole walk. Only when she was finally home, did she relax. “Come here, buddy.” She slumped down on the floor and tapped her side.