Bite: A Shifters of Theria Novel

by Bera, Ilia

  I accept death. Intentional ignorance overrides the burn in my legs. Pain suddenly seems so irrelevant; bowing to it seems almost comical.

  I emerge from the forest before the city of Lemuria in under an hour, much quicker than Mert’s estimate.

  Lemuria is a giant town; shocking to think that humans have no idea it even exists. Standing a mile from the perimeter, I can’t see the town’s end in either direction; it seems to go on and on, indefinitely. The roaring of chainsaws is loud at the forest’s edge. The mile hike between the tree line and the town is a minefield of thick tree stumps. Bears travel back and forth, pulling heavy stacks of timber.

  The timber doesn’t even make it to the town’s towering core of smokestacks. Instead, it’s dropped off at the town’s perimeter where it’s immediately processed, cut, and distributed down the long line of cranes that form the town’s outer-shell. It’s almost like watching a time-lapse video. If you stop, you can watch the town expanding before your eyes.

  When I reach Lemuria, the sun is in the center of the sky. Assuming Porsha keeps her word, and doesn’t check the location of her card until this evening, I have a few hours to carry out my plan before I’m killed.

  Humans and therians aren’t so different, despite what therians seem to think. In my limited experience, I’ve noticed therians think rather poorly about humans. Call me a petty, ignorant human—anatomy aside, we’re no different. Unless you tell a therian you’re human, they’ll have no idea.

  Therians see themselves as a more pure, more civilized race. Lemurians are a particularly proud people. Flags rise up from every second building. The statue of some important Lemurian is displayed prominently on every street corner. Men and women gleam with pride as they pass the statues and flags—and as they pass one another. Lemurians are constantly gleaming with pride. There is no place more perfect than Lemuria, no people better than Lemurians.

  Mel was right—Lemurians are a bunch of stubborn bastards.

  Perhaps Lemurians never look down their alleyways or wander towards their downtown core. If they did, they would see all of the drug dealers and prostitutes. They would see the homeless beggars fighting for scraps of food, and the wealthy businessmen hunched behind dumpsters, smoking crack with their lighters and rusted spoons. Lemuria was a dump, no different from Ilium.

  The perfect place for me to thrive.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  A LATE NIGHT ARRIVAL

  My busy day ends at a busy bar, at the center of the city’s industrial core. Crowds of men cycle through the place, in time with the nearby mill’s steam whistle. It seems like every working man in Lemuria ends his day with a few drinks. An eerie dread rolls over me as I take my seat. This could be the place that I die. I try not to react to every creaking of the bar door’s hinges, and every set of footsteps that passes behind me. Any second, I will feel cold steel press against the back of my head.

  The strange sport playing on the television could be the final sight I ever see: a bunch of people sneaking through a forest with bows. From what I’ve gathered, they’re trying to shoot a bunch of flying turkeys. The roaring of the bar-goers, every time a player shoots a turkey, could be the last sound I ever hear.

  The roaring is audible across the entire town when the game ends, a mixture of angry boos and fanatic cheers. In the street outside the bar, a crowd chants, “Treeskins! Treeskins! Treeskins!” The man sitting next to me slouches down and buries his face in his hands. “Fucking refs!” he mutters to himself, over and over. At one point, I hear him sobbing. I want to tell him to cheer up. If your favourite sports’ team losing is the worst of your problems, you’re doing alright. Maybe he’ll be around when Carmine blows my brains across the bar; maybe then he won’t feel so bad about the loss.

  Following the game, the crowd thins out. Only a few drinkers remain in the bar, some drinking away their post-game sorrows, some drinking to keep their post-game excitement alive.

  The bartender walks up. “Another gingerale?” he asks.

  “Just a water.” I try to force a smile, but seeing as I’m not a Treeskins fan, there’s nothing to force a smile about.

  “Don’t like the bottled water?” he asks, tilting his head at the bottle I ordered when I first sat down, the seal still unbroken.

  “That’s for a f—for someone else,” I say. A shudder runs through my body. Carmine does not deserve to be called a friend. I would sooner die than call him my friend.

  “You meeting someone here?” the bartender asks, pouring me a water.

  I simply nod. It hurts to speak. It hurts to push words past the stagnant lump clogged in my throat.

  “Pretty late to be meeting someone.” He places the water down and begins to load the dishwasher. Believe it or not, I’m not in the mood for a conversation. Unfortunately, the seat directly in front of the bar’s camera is also in front of the dishwasher. Carmine isn’t stupid enough to murder me in front of a camera. His henchmen may be, but Carmine won’t let his henchmen kill me. No way.

  I nod again. The bartender takes the hint and walks away to carry out different clean-up duties.

  The ground gently vibrates. I wouldn’t notice if not for the water in my glass rippling. The vibration grows. Now I can feel it. I can hear it, like a mighty wave crashing far in the distance. It’s a solid noise, unbroken, loudening as it approaches. This is it.

  I take a breath, dig into my pocket, and pull out the lipstick I bought at the Lemuria Drug Mart. It’s dark red, the exact shade I’ve always wanted. It matches the beautiful heels I bought with Porsha’s credit card, shoes I found at the same store where I bought myself a new dress, and a gorgeous perfume. I’m not going to die looking like a hobo.

  The vibration becomes a tremor; even the bartender and the drunks notice it now, looking over their shoulders towards the bar door. Whatever it is, it’s heading for the bar door. I know what it is.

  Footsteps. Like an army, but they aren’t marching or running. They aren’t even walking. It almost sounds more like shuffling—like a dozen men shuffling towards the bar.

  I try to sip my water, but my hands are shaking. I try to inhale, but my lungs are shaking. My whole body shivers involuntarily. This is it, the final moments of my life. I’d thought I would cry when they came, but I’m not crying. I’m scared shitless, but I’m also overwhelmed by a strange satisfaction. They came for me. The gypsies got away, and Pesconi came for me. I don’t have to die with hundreds of innocent lives on my conscious.

  My heart is beating in my head, pounding against my skull, drumming up a deafening ring. I hardly hear the bar door as it’s kicked in, and the flurry of footsteps as men pour into the bar.

  The bartender perks up straight and raises his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot!” he says. I can see them through the warped reflection of the bottles that line the bar shelves—no less than a dozen men in long black coats and black hats, armed with what appear to be crossbows. Crossbows? I suppose they’re silent, discreet. A bullet’s loud, but it’s in and out, and quick. The thought of a bolt driving into my skull is unnerving, though it makes no difference at the end of the day.

  “Where are they?” a man says.

  “Tracker says they’re here. They should be here. Look around.”

  “These aren’t fucking gypsies. These are a bunch of fucking drunks!”

  “Shit.”

  The men scour the bar. I keep my head forward, with help from the rigid muscles in my neck. My gut turns and clenches. I want to throw up on the bar, but I also don’t want to die in a pool of my own vomit. My vision is cloudy. Keep it together, Olivia. Now’s not the time to be some useless zombie.

  “Hey, boss! There’s no gypsies here!” one of the men calls out in the street.

  “Please don’t shoot—” the bartender says again.

  “—Shut up,” says one of the cronies. That same crony now walks towards me. “Turn around and put your hands up, darling. This ain’t some candy gram.”

  My muscles are
slow to thaw. I turn slowly to the scene. The bar’s patrons are stiff, with their hands far above their head, each with a crossbow aimed at their chest. The man with his weapon aimed at me is familiar.

  His eyes widen as he sees my face. I’m familiar to him, too. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Don’t move,” he says, stepping back towards the door. “Boss! Better come in here!”

  The heads of the henchmen and the patrons turn to me, some with long, confused expressions, some with wide-eyed and dazed expressions, others with all-too-familiar sinking, pitiful expressions.

  Carmine enters the bar. Death enters the bar. My legs go weak but I stay upright. He doesn’t even scan the room before his eyes fall on me and his skin turns red. “You,” he says simply, in a low, growling tone.

  “What should we do with her, boss?” asks one of Pesconi’s men.

  Carmine is too busy glaring into my soul to respond. His eyes narrow and his lips press thin.

  “Boss?”

  Unlike his clueless henchmen, Carmine scans the bar for cameras, spotting the one right behind my head. “Everyone get out.” His men are slow to respond, but no one questions the command.

  Carmine scans the faces of the patrons and the bartender. “You too. Get out. Go home. You saw nothing, here.” The place clears out within seconds, save for Carmine, and two armed men who linger by the door.

  “Well? Get up,” Carmine says to me.

  I remain seated. The pain in the center of my chest is crippling. These are the final seconds of my life. Carmine reaches under his coat. I can see his fingers wrap around a handgun, but he doesn’t pull the weapon out. Unlike his men, he’s smarter than that. “Get up.” His low voice rumbles through his clenched teeth.

  “No.” If he wants to kill me, he can kill me on camera.

  He turns to his henchmen. “Get out of here, and close the door.” The men don’t hesitate. I don’t blame them. Carmine turns back to me. He wants me alone, for himself. “Explain to me why you have my wife’s territ card.” He steps towards me.

  I stare into his narrow, brooding eyes. I want to look away so badly; my eyes shake in their sockets. I keep my gaze locked on his. “Because I stole it.” I can’t help but grin. Freddie would be proud.

  “You stole it? That’s funny, because my wife told me a gypsy stole it.” He stops close enough to me that I can smell the lingering scotch on his breath.

  “She’s probably right, seeing as I stole it from a gypsy.” The pressure in my chest is unbearable—what I imagine it feels like to have a heart attack. Maybe I am having a heart attack.

  His face his red as his hand clenches into a tight fist. His muscles tense as he stands in silence, as if he’s fighting the urge to smash my head into the bar. “Where are the gypsies?” he asks slowly.

  I hold my eye-contact, fighting through the strong instinct to cower away. “I could tell you, but I don’t want to.”

  The back of his hand connects with the side of my face, knocking me off my seat, onto the cold, sticky bar floor. It takes a moment for my blurry vision to refocus. The whole side of my face stings, burns like I’d been splashed with boiling water. Stay strong, Olivia. You have him where you want him. Now you just need to stay strong. Carmine glances over at the camera, shrugs his shoulders, and takes a deep breath. “Get up,” he says, recomposed.

  I do.

  “Let’s go,” he says, turning to the door, reaching for my arm.

  I push his hand away. “No. If you’re going to kill me, kill me here.”

  Carmine’s eyes drift to the camera and then back to me. “I’m not going to kill you here.” A clever choice of wording for the camera. He’s smart enough to resist dragging me out by my hair. He regrets the slap. I can tell by his sudden sheepish and hesitant demeanour Still, it’s not good enough—not enough to win any court case. I need to make him angry, I need to irritate him—I need to become Freddie.

  “Oh, right. Better make sure you kill me in front of your wife, right?” I want to cower again, but I hold my stance and I grin. “Speaking of which, you’d better make sure she knows you aren’t messing around behind her back, huh?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” he says, slapping my face again, right on the burn from his last strike.

  I hit the ground hard. Ouch. The slap leaves me dazed, as if my brain is still rattling around my skull like a rogue Ping-Pong ball. Carmine’s eyes dart over to the camera again.

  He doesn’t tell me to get up. Instead, he starts to pace, taking slow, controlled breaths. He grabs the bottle from the counter, cracks the lid, and in a single guzzle, drinks all the water—the whole bottle.

  He also drinks fifteen grams of dissolved ketamine; fifteen times what it took to knock the moustachioed fighter out cold. Now in Carmine’s stomach is enough to kill any man, five times over. Any second, he’ll be on the floor, foaming out of his mouth, eyes, ears, nose…

  Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #316: Always know where to find the local drug dealer. An easy tip in a city like Lemuria, where there’s a drug dealer in every alleyway.

  Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip # 92: always stay relaxed and absorb any and all information. Even when some brawny asshole is yelling in your face, make careful note of everything. What is he saying? What is he wearing? The little things are especially useful—things like, do they have a quick temper? Or, do they snatch any water bottle they see?

  And finally, the newest addition to the Survival Guide…

  Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #498: Every fight is fixed. No exceptions.

  Any second now, the ketamine will kick in. Any second… “Get up,” Carmine says again.

  I don’t—at least, not on my own. He grabs my arm and lifts me to my feet. He’s done putting on a show for the camera. I try to resist, but it’s useless. I’m weightless to him. Once the ketamine starts to kicks in, I’ll be able to break free. Any second now…

  Maybe I bought the slow acting stuff. Maybe the stuff I bought is bogus. No—it can’t be, I have too much riding on this—my whole life is riding on this. Of all days, I did not get ripped off today.

  Carmine kicks the door open.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  DESOLATE STREETS

  The moment the bar doors closes behind us, Carmine throws me into the street. He spares no time, reaching under his coat and revealing a handgun with a long silencer screwed onto its barrel.

  This is it. This is the end. I close my eyes and see Freddie’s face. Will he realize what I did? When Pesconi and his men never shows up at the caravan, and when he finds his wallet in his trailer, next to the sac of territs, will he put it all together? Whether he does or doesn’t, it makes no difference. He’s alive. His family is alive. Maybe I’ve lost my mind, but that’s enough for me.

  Carmine doesn’t shoot. I peel my eyes open and see that he’s distracted, looking around the streets with a crooked grimace. Maybe the ketamine is finally kicking in. Once it kicks in, it won’t be long before he hits the ground. But it’s not the ketamine that’s distracting him.

  It’s the street; it’s dark and silent, save for a gentle whistle of the breeze. None of his men are anywhere in sight. Maybe the cops came, and they ran. It’s as if the cronies were plucked from existence. A black hat floats in a puddle on the street, next to an crossbow, still armed as it lays abandoned. A dozen men, erased from the world.

  A dark blur pounces out from the shadows, tackling Carmine, taking him down to the cold street. A growl echoes down the street as the creature is thrown into the air, fifteen feet down the road. Carmine stands up, though no longer in human form, but in that of a fifteen hundred pound grizzly bear. I wasn’t hallucinating down in his Vianna dungeon. He roars a dense plume of humid breath.

  His front paws shake the earth as he lands, facing his aggressor—a grey timber wolf, a tenth the bear’s size. I scurry off the road, my brain still registering the attack. I need to act quickly… But how?

  Despite its size, the wolf stands confidently in the eyes of its
monster opponent. I only know one therian with that kind of ego, one therian that stupid: Freddie. And I don’t need to think twice about it—I know—in my heart, I know it’s Freddie.

  He circles the bear, crouched low, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. What is he doing here? How did he find me? Wolf-form or not, Freddie doesn’t stand a chance against the beast. He’s going to get himself killed for nothing. So much for me dying with no blood on my hands. Carmine stays in his place, turning to keep his eye on the circling predator. With impossible speed, Freddie lunges, catching his foe off guard. He sinks his teeth into Carmine’s throat and digs the claws of four of his paws into Carmine’s skin.

  I reach for the abandoned crossbow. I have no idea how to shoot the thing, but it can’t be too complicated. Like any gun, it probably has a safety somewhere on it—a little switch that you flick to unlock the trigger. I spin the weapon around.