by Loki Renard
He starts forward, and instinct takes over. I have no control over what I do next. My response to Skoll’s motion is purely autonomic and I cannot be judged or blamed for it. Whether it be slash his jugular, sink my teeth into his flesh… or what I actually do.
Turn tail and run.
9 Missing
Pixie
“Come on, asshole…” I growl the words to myself impatiently. It’s starting to get dark, and Scratch is still not here. I’m going to be in trouble for going missing again. They notice when I miss meals, and now I’ve missed two of them. I’m going to have to answer to Shanti, who does not believe that I’m always getting lost.
She’s probably going to beat me again. I know I’m getting real close to earning another one. But seeing Scratch is worth it, so I am waiting in our secret place, the cave he showed me in the hills. At least, I think it is our secret place. Navigating bushy mountains is confusing, but this is important. I’m pretty sure this is the right cave. I can see the ridge my hands gripped for support when Scratch was last inside me.
I can’t wait for him to get here and put me on my knees. I can’t wait to feel his body against mine, driving all the fears out of my head that I feel all the time when I’m away from him.
But I’ve been here for a couple of hours, and he’s still not here. I’m starting to think that he’s not coming.
I heard some rumors that Shanti had been talking to Scratch. I hope she hasn’t finally scared him off. The girls are saying that she’s been trying to get the city cats to meet. I even heard whispers that Scratch had run away when he saw Skoll, but that can’t be true. Scratch isn’t the running type. He’s the strongest, most badass dude I’ve ever met, and half of what the women say is bullshit.
It is getting really late, but I’ll stay here all night if I have to. I want to see Scratch. I need to see him.
My eyes are closed, and I’m half asleep when I hear footfalls outside. I get up quickly and call out in a hissing, hopeful cry.
“Scratch! Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been…”
A figure looms out of the dark. It is not Scratch. It is Skoll. I’ve not met him before, but I have seen him around the place when he brings his baby in for Shanti to look at. I haven’t met his mate. I don’t want to meet another human and bond over all this bullshit captive girl talk. I want to go home to my real home. Not a thatched round house hovel thing that looks like something out of a renaissance faire.
Skoll is leading two younger hunters whose names I don’t know and don't care about. Probably Shanti’s grandkids. That woman seems to have bred half the village personally. That’s why she acts like she has the right to boss everyone around.
“Where’s Scratch?”
“Go home, girl,” Skoll instructs me. “We are hunting.”
“Hunting who?”
Scratch tried to warn me about this guy. He told me what I’m starting to think might actually have been the truth, and I laughed at him. Now, looking into the blue eyes of this apex predator, I believe him. Skoll is massive, and he has an edge to him, a dangerousness and an intensity. He was a bounty hunter, Scratch told me.
It was all the shit about being stuck inside a cat’s head for three years which made me think he was just making things up to fuck with me, but now I’m not so sure. Everything here is bizarre beyond strange.
“Go home,” Skoll repeats in that same domineering way. He really thinks he has the right to order me around. We just fucking met. He doesn’t know me, but he has the same arrogant I run everything attitude that Shanti has.
“My home is on another planet,” I tell him. “And I’ve been trying to go back for fucking weeks now. Who are you hunting? Is it Scratch?”
“I can smell him here,” one of the younger hunters says. “But his scent is fading. I don’t think he has been here today.”
“Perhaps he’s coming," the other suggests. “We could wait with the human, and catch him when he arrives.”
So they are hunting Scratch. My stomach sinks and my head gets really fucking angry.
“Leave him the fuck alone,” I growl up at the massive muscular grimalkin warrior.
“You don’t know who he really is. Go back to Shanti. She’s looking for you, and she’s not happy. You have your own problems, human.”
“First of all, fuck you, you don’t own me. Second of all, fuck you, I’m not going anywhere. Third of all, fuck you, leave Scratch alone.”
“His name isn’t Scratch. It is Richardkimble. He is a dealer of misery, and you are an impudent human who needs to do as she is told.”
This dude is eight feet of total dominant dickhead. He thinks he has the right to order me about because I’m female and human and only five foot two in heels. Fuck this guy.
“I’m not doing a goddamn thing you or anybody else says. And I’m not going to be bait for you either.”
“Humans,” Skoll sighs under his breath before physically picking me up and throwing me over his shoulder. I scream and I kick and I bite, but all that gets me is a mouthful of back fur.
“ASSHOLE! LET ME FUCKING GO!”
“We are going to have to find someone to whip the sass out of you,” he growls.
“Shanti already tried.”
“I very much doubt she did, or you would be much more careful about what you say and how you say it.”
“SCRATCH!”
“SCRATTCCHHH!”
Scratch
I am several miles away from the village and heading in the city's direction when I hear something on the breeze. Something faint, but full of rage.
My mate is calling for me.
I know I’m not physically hearing her. Even with grimalkin hearing, a human’s cry cannot be heard at the distance I have put between myself and Shanti’s village. But I can hear her. I can feel her tugging at me.
We’ve formed a connection of instinct.
Pixie needs me.
Fuck.
I look toward the horizon, where there are endless places to hide, where the possibility of rebuilding my life remains, hiding from the authorities and getting back to getting rich the same way I did in the first place. Garbage is waiting for me in Scratch City. I know he is. I can start my business again. I can trade with a whole new body, whole new face, all the valor of a supposed soldier. I can get away clean.
But she's calling for me.
Pixie
I am carried kicking and screaming back to Shanti. Back to the golden eyes who looked down at me when this all started, the nightmare from which I cannot wake, the vacation I can never return from.
I’m not the sort to get attached or fall in love. I’ve never had a proper boyfriend. I've never lived with anybody. I've never felt the need to be joined with anybody. But I felt that all with Scratch, even if I wanted to deny it to myself. And they’ve taken it from me. They’ve taken me and they’ve chased him away and now they’re trying to hurt him.
Skoll drops me on the floor of the roundhouse and blocks the exit when I scramble to my feet and try to leave. I am a furious mess, a screaming, raving, kicking, biting whirlwind of anger.
“Let me FUCKING GO!”
“CALM DOWN!” He growls at me, grabbing me by the arms and holding me up off the ground so I can’t move. My feet kick pointlessly in the air as I rage until I have absolutely no energy left. There's only so long you can freak out and scream until your body just gives up.
Skoll lets me go then and I slump to the ground, sobbing miserably. I have never, in my entire life, felt so completely alone.
Shanti kneels beside me, her hand on my shoulder. I shrug her off with a hoarse curse.
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
“Put her to bed, please, Skoll,” she says.
The behemoth picks me back up and carries me to the rear of the house, returning me to the furs upon which I woke, my personal prison which I cannot seem to escape.
Is it true? Has Scratch really left me here? Alone? I can't believe it. There
must be more to it. He promised me he’d get me home.
He promised.
I don’t so much fall asleep as pass out in misery.
10 Emptiness
Pixie
“You are sad now, I know, but this is a good thing.”
Shanti is trying to bullshit me. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, which I now refuse to rise from, telling me everything will be okay. That I’ll forget the only male I ever loved and be just fine. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know me.
“You don’t get it, Shanti. And I can’t explain it to you.”
“I know what it is to have a broken heart, Pixie. I know what it is to love someone and find out that they were not who you thought they were. I know what betrayal is. I also know how to survive that and live a full life, and a happy one.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I don’t want to hear her inspirational story. I don’t want to know what things were like in her day. I don’t want to know what dudes she banged to have all these litters of cubs and to end up matriarch of this whole tribe. Good for her, but it’s not for me. I just want to go home.
I want Scratch.
I push that thought away. It’s pointless wanting him. How could I ever have a relationship with an alien? How can I expect him to behave the way a human would, when he isn’t human? He tried to explain things to me once, and I laughed in his face. I told him he was a liar. I wasn’t there for him and now he’s not there for me.
“This is your fault,” I tell Shanti, seconds after having decided that it is all my fault.
“It is not my fault that Scratch is gone,” she tells me. “He was a criminal. When he saw Skoll, he did what criminals do. He ran.”
The word criminal bothers me. It has no context out here in the wild. It doesn't feel real coming out of her mouth.
“Do you seriously think I give a fuck if he is a criminal? Do you think I followed the law on my planet? You think I never sold drugs?”
“You have essentially done that here, so yes, I am sure you were a rule breaker on your planet. But you are one of us now. You are under my authority, and that of the village warriors. I know you do not accept this, but I will no longer tolerate your rebellions.”
“What does that even mean, you're not going to tolerate my rebellions? Rebellions are what oppressed people do.”
“Running around in the woods trying to mate with criminals is what dead girls do,” she replies dryly. “You are lucky Skoll found you before one of the real predators did.”
“You guys are the real predators.”
“That is true to an extent, but there are other things out in the wilds, even more dangerous than us. Just because you haven’t met them doesn't mean they’re not there. That’s half the reason Skoll followed after Scratch. He didn’t want him getting hurt.”
“He didn’t want him getting hurt before he could hurt him, you mean.”
“You maintain this obsession with us being villains, Pixie. We’ve done nothing but help you. Some might call your attitude ungrateful.”
“I was literally dragged here, Shanti. Would you be grateful if someone dragged you to their home?”
“I would if I were a stray lost in wilds, giving myself to rogues who flee in the night.”
“You made him run away.”
“Did I? I had no idea I was capable of operating the limbs of others. That is a power I should use more.”
Shanti is sassy when she wants to be. I forget that about her because she’s usually imposing her will one way or another.
“Get up," she says. “Get out of bed and stop feeling sorry for yourself because a male has let you down. Men are not for depending on. They are for enjoying occasionally when you are in the mood.”
She’s not a romantic, then. Maybe she was once. Maybe she loved once very deeply, and maybe she was hurt. Just like I am now.
“Up,” she insists. "There is work to be done, and you have done almost none since your arrival.”
I do not want to get up. I do not want to do anything. But I have no choice, because when Shanti wants something to happen, it happens.
I get out of bed and mope toward the roundhouse to begin another long stretch of forced weaving. Shanti pauses at the door.
“I think someone is here to see you,” she says. “You can talk to her before you begin your chores.”
“There’s nobody to see me,” I say, leaving the bedroom to step into the main part of the round house.
“Hi?”
I hear a voice which does not sound like a lion learned to talk. It sounds like me. But it is not me, because I am me. Instead, it is Kitty. The other human. I would say she looks good in her furs and whatnot, but she actually looks very tired and quite pale.
“I’m sorry," she says. “I should have come to see you sooner. I would have, but this had just emerged from me, and it’s really loud.”
She holds the baby like an excuse.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I didn’t come here to make friends. I didn’t come here at all. I was dragged here by some kind of war accident.”
“Nobody comes here on purpose,” Kitty says with more sympathy than I deserve. “I never expected to see another human. Is it weird to say you look strange to me now? I’m used to the whiskers and the fur and the…”
“Tails?”
“The tails,” she agrees with a smile. “Humans are weird looking animals, aren’t we?”
She puts her baby down on the floor. He’s very advanced for what must be an infant who is only a few months old. He immediately starts crawling around and trying to touch things while we both stare at him in that way you do when meeting someone is awkward.
“Your baby looks just like them. He’s got a tail.”
“He does,” she says. “Tvei, get that out of your mouth.”
Tvei grins all fanged and happy, drops the bit of floor he had in his face, and puts a slightly different clod of dirt in his mouth with the impeccable logic babies have. I look sideways at her.
“That chain around your neck…”
“Mhm.”
“Shanti says that means you’re owned.”
“I think of it as a wedding ring,” she says, fingering it lightly. “They think they don’t do weddings or marriage, but they do. Just in a different way. Once they mate with you, they mate for life.”
“Not in my case. My mate doesn’t care what happens to me. He’s gone.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she says with a small smile. “I haven’t met Scratch for what he is now, but Skoll says he was inside my cat for three years. I like to think I know him in some limited, small way. And I do not think he is weak, or the kind to flee from his mate.”
“But you’re wrong. Because he’s gone.”
“Maybe. In my experience, he’s never as far away as people think.”
“You think he’s hiding in a tree now?”
“You never know… Tvei! Stop that! You can’t eat fire. Sorry, I have got to get him home. He gets tired, and then he gets destructive.”
“Sure, no problem,” I say as she snatches her baby up from the hearth and hurries away in a rush of highly distracted motherhood.
“So you met Kitty.”
No sooner do I turn around than Shanti is standing there, looking pleased with herself.
“Oh god, Shanti, do you do anything that’s not some manipulation of someone?”
Shanti laughs. “Usually it’s a little more subtle, and usually the grimalkin do not notice.”
“Sure they don’t. You’re always…”
“What did you think of Kitty and her baby?” She interrupts my nascent tirade with a question.
“What was I supposed to think? That she’s happy, so I will be too?”
“Well…”
“That’s what you want for me, huh? To give birth to something that licks the walls and eats the floors?”
“Tvei is a strong cub. He will be a strong warrior.”
“He’s al
so a strong smell,” I say, as the remnants of his wafting diaper somehow manage to cling to the air around us.
Shanti's not pleased. I can tell she expected me to turn to mush because a human lady waved an infant at me. She really doesn’t know me at all. I don’t care how cute the little stinker was, I don’t belong here.
“Not everybody loves babies, Shanti.”
“What does that mean?”
Oh, I am about to blow her fucking mind.
“It means that can’t happen to me. I have a thing inside me that stops it.”
“Who did that to you? And why?”
It’s hard to explain to a forest lady why someone who likes to take a new drug every week might not want to reproduce. Not without sounding like a fucking monster. Even a lot of people in my own species didn’t particularly understand.
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“You always tell me I won’t get something, and then you fail to explain it.”
“Why do you even care?”
“Why do you find it so hard to believe that someone might want the best for you? Or might care about you?”
“Because they fucking don’t? People want what they want. They take whatever that is, and they get the fuck out. Just like Scratch.”
I’m so upset. I’m abandoned. I’m lost.
And that makes me fucking angry.
“Fuck off,” I swear. “I’m leaving. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what happens to me out there. You made Scratch leave, and now I’m going to leave too. Simple as that.”
“If you try to leave this house, you will be punished, Pixie.” Shanti is calm and stoic in the face of my rage.
“Anybody who tries is going to get fucking hurt,” I growl. “You got away with it once because I was weak, but it will never happen….”
Somehow I’m over her lap. She pulls me over her thighs as if I weigh nothing at all, and I find myself looking down at the dirt and ash floor, cursing up a fucking storm. There are tears forming in my eyes already. Tears of frustration, sadness, fear…
