by Anna Leonard
“Can you stand up?”
“Dunno. Maybe.”
There was a crash behind them, the sound of a door bursting open and a loud, animal scream followed by a shrill challenge that could only have come from Mustang’s throat. Maggie focused briefly, and gasped, shrinking back against the sofa back. Elizabeth turned on her heels, and scrambled back next to her, instinctively. Josh had shifted, his thickly muscled body turned sideways and standing between them and the door, his maned neck arched, head down, his horn held at a steady angle; warning enemies away. There were three monsters in the room with them, crowding the space even more. One was even more catlike than the earlier beast, its body crouched, a long tail flickering behind it, the ears set on a human skull tufted and twitching. The human mouth was filled with sharp teeth, the kind that were meant only for taking down prey, and rending flesh.
The other two monsters were more humanlike, but only by comparison. They hung back by the door, unable to get past the cat-monster, but preventing anyone from making a break. There was the only one exit, and that led back into the lab, where who knew how many other of the monsters waited.
They were trapped.
Ray had moved back behind his desk, and he held a large, odd-shaped gun, the long muzzle pointed down at the ground, but Elizabeth had no doubt that it could and would rise up in an instant. A tranquilizer gun, to control the beasts? If so, the level of drugs in it would likely kill a human easily. Or a Mustang.
Her gun...could she get at it? If she even reached for it, would Ray shoot her? The weight seemed to burn in her pocket, but she dared not move.
“Bad animals,” Maggie said, her voice a whimper. “Bad animals. I can’t control them. I can’t...” Her voice broke, the combination of fear and pain overloading her.
“Maggie, listen to me.” Elizabeth spoke quickly, not taking her eyes off the tableau before them. Any instant, one of them would move, and then all hell would break loose. “I need you to do something and I need you to do it without hesitation. You have to get out of here. You’re small and fast, get past them when the fighting starts, and then run like hell. Don’t stop, don’t come back.”
“But...”
“Maggie, listen to me. Don’t stop. Don’t ask anyone here for help. Get out of town and go straight to the cops. Tell them... Tell them you were abused, you’re afraid of Ray.”
It was true, although not in any way the outside world would understand. Maggie was just a kid; they would protect her, even if they didn’t believe it, and Ray had no legal right to custody. She’d be safe. And maybe, maybe, someone else would listen, would stop Ray, if they failed.
Maggie, bless her, didn’t protest, but slid off the sofa, crouching, looking for her opening.
The cat-creature leaped, and Mustang’s horn lowered, and the room exploded into chaos.
Vaguely, Elizabeth was aware of Maggie scrambling for the door, her injured arm tucked like a broken wing, but she had no time to do more than send her love with the younger girl, because the cat-creature had leaped not at Mustang, but at her. The oversized hands, with their curved claws, were stretched out toward her face, coming down like the Reaper’s scythe, and she felt the whisper of them across her cheek, the salty tang of blood under her nose, before she was falling, and Mustang’s body was over hers, his hooves slamming the cat-monster against the wall. Screams filled the room, echoing off the walls, until her ears rung with the noise and she couldn’t think straight. But when she blinked again, she saw great heavy furred feet coming toward her, and she reacted, lunging from her prone position to grab one of those legs with both hands, her fingers grabbing at the thick hair and yanking with all her strength.
“Gahhh, bitch,” she thought she heard the monster say, as it leaned down to try to dislodge her. Its mouth had trouble forming words, but it clearly understood English, and something inside her died a little. This might have been a friend, once, a teacher, a customer at the bakery....
She forced that thought to die, and sank her teeth into the furred leg.
The creature howled, and swatted at her head, making her ears ring again, but she refused to let go, gagging a little at the taste, like sweaty laundry and salt water, and slightly rancid meat. It staggered, and she released her bite, and then used her upper body to shove at it, where she thought its knees might be. They fell over in a tangle, and Elizabeth felt its hands grabbing at her body—thankfully without claws; this was one of the other creatures, not the cat-thing—trying to crush her bones. She squirmed, trying to eel away, trying to get the gun out of the pocket, but her hands were so numb with fear, she could barely get a grip on it. The blood from her scratches dripped into her eyes, and she blinked, unable to see.
There was a crash somewhere off to her left, and a man’s yell, making her hand jerk, the gun going flying across the floor.
“Damn it!”
She scrambled on the floor, trying to find the gun, anything to use as a weapon. A piece of something—wood, splintered, the leg of a broken chair—met her searching fingers, and she grabbed it. Then she waited, her heart beating too fast for her chest to contain it, her clothing torn, sweat coating her body—that must have made her slippery enough to escape. Still half-blind, her ears still ringing, she waited until her nose told her something was approaching, something rancid, not the clean sweet hay scent of Mustang, and swung her makeshift weapon with all of her strength and desperation.
It connected, hard enough to shed shockwaves back through her arms, rattling her teeth, and the creature went down, dropping to the ground in front of her, putting them at equal height. She couldn’t look at it, couldn’t bear to see its face, to see if its eyes were human, its awareness human. It needed to die, or she would die, and Maggie...
She didn’t have enough strength to pull back and swing again, but, following some instinct, remembering Mustang’s fight with the monsters before, she turned the chair leg around in her hands and drove the splintered end deep into the monster’s flesh.
The flesh resisted, then the makeshift weapon went in with a wet, sucking noise, and she leaned on it as much as she could to force it deeper.
The body struggled, then went limp and collapsed to the floor. Elizabeth wiped the blood and sweat from her eyes even as she was scooting backward toward where she thought the sofa, and some kind of safety, was. Mustang was standing in the middle of what had once been an office, the expensive desk broken in two by the blow of his hooves, the body of the cat-monster trampled against the floor, blood staining the once cream-colored rug and bits...
She looked away, looked up. Mustang’s horn was stained red, long splatters of...something thrown against his coat, his mane tangled and knotted. There was a wild look in his eye as he struck his hoof against the floor, his broad chest heaving and coated with sweat, but still ready for more, if need be. Ray was backed up against the wall, his weapon shattered on the ground, the remaining monster standing between the two of them, looking back and forth as though trying to decide which meal to eat first.
The busted doorway was empty. Elizabeth could only pray that Maggie had gotten away. She tried to stand up, and collapsed. She looked down, and realized, with an odd calm, that there was an open gash on her thigh that she hadn’t even noticed, jagged and bloody and disgusting-looking.
Blood loss. That was why she was dizzy. That and being knocked around the head and thrown to the ground.... If all she had was a concussion, she’d consider herself lucky.
The thought almost made her laugh. If she died, so long as Maggie got away she’d consider herself lucky.
“Josh,” she whispered, and hated herself for distracting his attention. His skin quivered, the way it did when she touched him, but he didn’t take his attention off either enemy.
“Ah. Elizabeth, I had not expected hypocrisy from you, of all people,” Ray said, somehow recovering his smooth bravado,
although he never took his attention off the two creatures in front of him. “You railed against my beasts, and here you had one of your own. And it has two distinct forms—a were-unicorn? How wonderful. I’m sure the autopsy will give me oh, so many ideas for how to perfect the next generation.”
“Over his dead body,” Elizabeth said grimly, even as Mustang, ignoring the last monster, cleared the debris off the desk in one last surge, and drove his horn hard into Ray’s chest.
The remaining animal howled, less angry than triumphant, and lunged for Mustang. Elizabeth would swear, for the rest of her life, that it had thrown itself deliberately onto the backward-kicking leg, taking the brunt of the blow to its thick neck. There was a crack, and it collapsed heavily onto the destroyed desk.
And the room was still.
* * *
“Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God.”
At first, Elizabeth thought the voice was hers. Then she opened her eyes, and realized that it was Maggie. Her long dark hair was pulling out of its braids, giving her sister a crazed bag-lady appearance, her eyes were wide and worried and she kept saying that over and over again. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
“Mags. Baby. Shut up.”
Her sister blinked, and then started to cry. “You’re alive.”
Elizabeth considered that statement cautiously. “Yeah.” She was a little surprised by that, but she was definitely still alive. Then her memory of the events just past flooded her, and she panicked. “Josh? Where’s Josh?”
Maggie’s tears were still flowing, and she made a snuffling noise, trying to keep her nose from running. “He’s over there. I came in and you were both on the ground, and there was so much blood....”
Elizabeth forced her body to move, ignoring the shrieking pain in her head, and the stiffness in the rest of her body. The gash in her thigh was still bleeding and painful, but with Maggie’s help, she moved slowly across the room to where Josh lay crumpled, in human form. She settled beside him, wondering if he had shifted before he passed out, or after.
“He’s breathing,” Maggie said. Elizabeth already knew that, even before she placed her finger at his neck to find a pulse. His chest was barely rising, but she could feel his heart pumping blood as surely as her own. Her body knew that he was alive, but oh, so hurt. Like her, his clothing was torn and bloodied, but his face was unmarked, save for a bruise in the center of his forehead where, in his other self, his horn would be.
“Josh.” She called to him, her heart squeezing in anxiety when he didn’t respond. “Josh!”
His eyes opened, and those dark brown eyes looked straight up and into her own. He smiled, a soft, tender, hey-there smile.
And then his entire body spasmed, his upper body bucking up off the floor, and blood began to run from his mouth and nose.
Maggie screamed, and Elizabeth grabbed at him, holding his shoulders down. What was wrong? Was he injured somewhere they couldn’t see? Was it... Was it the rut he had told her about? Was this the change he had been so afraid of, about to trap him forever in his four-legged form?
The thought made her furious. No. Not now. Not after everything they had been through, after everything he had done for them! She wanted to panic but something whispered to her, giving her something to focus on.
When I’m with you...it’s less painful.
Her presence made things better. Their connection soothed him. Trusting that memory, and her instinct, she leaned down and kissed him, letting the blood leave its salty tang on her tongue, mixing with her own sweat and blood, deepening the kiss until his thrashing slowed, and his breathing returned to a slow, regular rate.
She put everything she had, everything she felt, into that kiss. All her fear, her hope, her passion—her life. Letting him know that, no matter what, he would never be alone, not for as long as both of them lived.
And he had damned well better live.
For a terrible instant, she was afraid that it hadn’t been enough. Then his hand moved, turning palm-up, fingers curling in invitation, and she covered it with her own, twining their fingers together in a promise that she was there, that she would always be there.
“M’Lizabeth.” His voice was slurred, and his eyes remained closed, but the smile curving his lips was steady.
“My hero,” she said, resting her forehead against his shoulder, not able right then to look at him, or to even think about the disaster that surrounded them. He was beat all to hell and back, her leg was a disaster, Maggie had a broken wrist....
And they were the ones who had won. They weren’t dead. They were free.
She could feel Maggie huddled at her side, and knew that they had to get up, leave, before someone came and found them, and asked questions they could not answer. But for now it was enough to hear their heartbeats, and feel life in her veins, and know that it was over.
Chapter 15
As though their roles were reversed, Maggie fussed over Elizabeth’s leg, finding a box of bandages in the shattered remains of Ray’s desk and carefully binding the gash so that the bleeding, at least, would stop.
“You need to get that sewn up.”
“I know.” The thought of moving was almost too much for Elizabeth to bear, but too much time had already passed while Maggie sat by their sides and waited for them to wake up.
The fact that nobody had come down—the fact that nobody seemed to even know this place existed, or that the creatures lived here—suggested that the basement lab was soundproofed, but eventually one of the people who worked at those desks outside would return, or one of the bodyguards would come back, and they were in no shape to fight their way out again...and Elizabeth did not want to have to explain how Ray died. Even if they were believed, without betraying Josh’s nature, they would have to deal with the discovery of the bodies of the monsters, and...no.
Eventually, someone would come down here, and then either cover it all up, or expose Ray’s little Plan of Horrors. Without Ray to spearhead his terrible project, with people released from his cajoling evil, the Community could return to what it had been—a gentle, good place. Elizabeth was glad for that, glad they were able to stop any more damage from being done. But this wasn’t a place for her any longer, not with the memories that would haunt her, haunt them both, the rest of their lives.
She had other concerns.
Elizabeth tested her bandaged leg, and gave Maggie a smile. “Good job, baby. Come on, help me get our guy back on his feet.” The two of them helped Josh sit up. He was alert now, but still in obvious pain. “Time to get moving,” Elizabeth told him. “You need medical attention, I don’t care how fast you heal.” She felt another wave of nausea sweep through her, and blinked. “And so do I, for that matter.” Let Josh be all stoic and studly—she hurt, damn it, and wanted a doctor to make sure nothing was permanent. She saw the gun lying on the floor, and motioned to Maggie to pick it up and give it to her. They left nothing behind that could be traced back to them—or, God forbid, Kit and Lou.
“How are we going to get out?” Maggie asked, as they limped out of the shambles of the office, stepping gingerly over the motionless, furred bodies. “We can’t just walk through the main hall, people will see, and they’ll ask questions, and...”
Maggie was right.
“They had to get the beasts out somehow,” Josh said, his voice still slightly slurred. “Not like me, can’t pass. Have to have a second exit, outside of building, somewhere isolated.”
“Where?” They looked around the main room; it was large, but other than the cell doors, there was no obvious exit. Six of the seven doors were open, the other still closed, its lock-pads green-lit.
“Do you think...there are still monsters in there?” Maggie asked, her voice thin again with worry.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Elizabeth said, but even as she spoke, Josh’s body shi
fted forward, as though he were trying to head that way.
“Not a chance,” she said fiercely, pulling him back. “If there is something in there, what are we going to do? Leave it locked up, let them deal with it!” She should feel guilty, not cleaning up the entire mess, but she didn’t. Not while Maggie and Josh needed her more.
“If there’s an exit, it’s going to be close to the cells,” he said. She took some comfort in the fact that his voice was clearer, his words better defined, and let him move forward again, still keeping a grip on his arm in case he needed help. Although, she admitted to herself, the assistance might be more from him to her...despite the wound being bandaged, her dizziness was getting worse, and she didn’t have accelerated Mustang healing.
They bypassed the locked door, although Josh tried to peer into the window as they went passed, and moved into the nearest open door. The cell was about the size of a normal bedroom, with a wooden bed made up with pillows and a blanket, and an overstuffed—and shredded—chair in one corner. One wall was covered with what looked like a sisal mat, and Elizabeth realized with a shudder that one of the cat-things must have lived here—that was its scratching post. The air in the room smelled both musty and clean the way a hospital would, heavy on antiseptics and body fluids.
“They spent their entire lives in here,” Maggie said, and her voice was sorrowful now. “Poor things. I wish...”
“You didn’t know,” she told her sister. “And even if you had, there was nothing you could do. Not unless you wanted to become part of this damned experiment, too.”
What Ray had said, that Maggie had been part of the experiment, that they all had, stayed with her. Her parents... No, they hadn’t known, hadn’t ever said anything. But her grandfather had known. Would he have protected Maggie? Or would he have...
No. Her grandfather had been a good man. No matter what he had originally intended, he would never have approved of Ray’s plans, would never have allowed this to happen.
It didn’t matter. This place was nothing but bad memories and danger, still. The sooner they were gone from here, the better. For all three of them.
