by Lexy Timms
When did the cat get wiser than him?
Taylor gritted his teeth in frustration. Why did no one else have the level of understanding of their cat that he needed them to have right now? “Is the car on this road?” he asked as calmly as he could, going with the basics and what was important.
Olaf translated, and she shook her head. Olaf listened for a bit and turned to Taylor. “She said it is off the road in the trees. It...” He turned to the woman and asked a question. She nodded. “It rolled. Many times.”
“Can they find it?” He pointed to their guides.
“Yes.” Of this Olaf had no doubt.
“All right, get her in the truck and let her rest. Tell her...tell her I’m grateful for her help.”
Olaf smiled and translated. The look she gave him was even, but not angry. “She says,” Olaf translated as she spoke, “nothing good comes from the outside.”
“I’ll try not to take that personally,” Taylor said, nodding.
Olaf signaled the pair in front and they loped off in search of the car.
It was off the road far enough that they might not have spotted it at all. It had flipped and rolled several times, coming to rest at the bottom of a ravine, suspended by a mass of thick vines.
Taylor looked down at the wreckage. There was no way to get in there. He looked at the people with him; they all had the same thought. Even a tiger couldn’t get down that steep drop to the car that was half- suspended over the river.
I can.
Are you sure?
I can. Trust me.
Taylor took a deep breath and pulled the shirt off. He dropped the pants and shifted as he bent over. There was no pain anymore, no lingering snap of bone, no agonizing transition, just an easy flow into the tiger. Those shifters around him jumped back.
They fear me?
No. They don’t understand the embrace. They still fight inside.
Taylor stretched and reached the edge of the embankment. His razor-sharp claws dug into the loam and the dirt. He turned and allowed himself to slide, reaching a root, digging in, suspended by one claw over the precipice.
He kicked out his rear leg and looked down. There was a large rock jutting out halfway down the ridge. Watching the rock, he let go of the root and slid down the edge of the fall. He dug into the heavy dirt to slow his descent, but he couldn’t stop it. His rear paw hit the rock hard. He balanced on the outcropping and breathed a sigh of relief.
The rock gave way and he slid again. There was nothing else to grab, nothing to stop the fall to the bottom, and there was no instant healing from a fall like this. He spun on his back, flipping over to reach for a low-hanging branch. He caught it in his paw, but only the end, and it broke under his weight and reached up to strike his face, and he had nothing left to grab before he plummeted over the precipice.
He caught the branch in his mouth and bit down hard. The sudden stop jarred his head and nearly tore out his teeth. But he was hanging from the branch by his mouth, which was better than dying. Heart thundering in his chest he flexed his neck, his entire body weight dependent on that thin branch, praying it would hold for just a little longer. He dragged himself up, closer to the tree. He reached out, but it was beyond his reach.
Taylor dug his rear paws into the soft dirt, as deep as he could. He braced his front paws under him. The branch in his mouth began to fray under the assault of his razor-sharp teeth. When his rear legs were in as far as he could take them, he pushed off and let go of the branch. Scrabbling paws threw dirt down the crevasse, and his body began to fall. In desperation, he stretched in a single last-ditch effort and sank his claws into the bole of the tree.
He pulled as hard as he could and grabbed it with the other claw. This tree, at least, held. He pulled himself up and embraced the trunk like a long lost lover and took a moment to breathe.
Told you I could do it.
He turned. The car was even with his gaze. She wasn’t in it.
On the other hand, there were two men trapped in the twisted metal. Both dead. Bodies contorted, a broken branch speared one body, ending his life as effectively as a javelin. They’d died from the wreck then. No claw marks. Nothing to indicate that Angelica was to blame.
Taylor breathed a sigh of relief.
He sat back, lips parted as he lifted his head to test the wind, aware that his perch was precarious as he stopped to think. There was no scent of her on the wind. She’d gotten away. He took a closer look. Her clothing was there, lying on the door. She’d left as a lion. Likely she’d changed while they were driving. Suddenly finding themselves with an angry, fully grown lioness in the back of an old Buick was too much, and they’d lost control. But even under such duress, she hadn’t killed.
But she’d shifted. And the words of the elders came back to him. She might not be able to change back. She might not remember who he was, who she was. Taylor pulled himself up the tree. He sprang from the uppermost branch to the ground, with enough momentum to dig in and claw his way back up to the road. It was a painful ascent, made more difficult by the stress and strain he’d put on muscles he didn’t know he had. He lay in the sun, every inch of his body on fire.
You did well. We need to find her now.
They will help?
I need to tell them what I saw...
Taylor choked and couldn’t breathe. The air burned in his lungs but it wouldn’t come. He couldn’t breathe, he...
With a great ragged gasp, he tore the wind back into his lungs and fell again. He’d changed without realizing he was going to, taken by surprise.
No. Worse. Only part of him had shifted.
Sorry.
He would need to discuss this with the tiger later. He needed them to work as a cohesive whole. The tiger couldn’t just initiate the transformation like that without warning. He shook his head, still a little dizzy from the unexpectedness of coming together in pieces. He cleared his throat, just managing to choke out the words. “She’s not in there.”
Olaf was staring at him in horror. He wasn’t the only one.
“She’s shifted,” he managed to choke out, unsure if he’d been clear or not in his previous words.
“How can you... you’re like the elders...”
“NEVER MIND THAT. We have to find her.”
They backed away from him. Scared? Taylor wasn’t sure what to make of that. Olaf stared out at the precipice. At the dense underbrush and trees that blocked out the sun. “It’s a big jungle, my friend.”
“Yes. But in the whole jungle there is only one African lion. How hard can it be?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Let them follow him or not. He wouldn’t rest until her found her. Taylor rose and ran back down the road. If she wasn’t in there, she was thrown free when the men panicked maybe. She might have left the car before the car left the road, so she should be...
There. Her smell.
FIND THE MATE.
DONE.
Over.
The jungle was vast. There was nothing that could hold against a lioness. Nothing.
Rabbit. Drives to the side, not straight.
No one was looking for her here. No one would kill innocent people to catch her here. Let Griselda come. Let her send a hundred men next time. They would never find her. The jungle was too wild, too vast. She dodged around a grouping of trees, noting them idly as she passed.
Kashmir maple. Strong, resilient. Home to bird nests, strong branches.
It had all been too much. The strain had been taking a toll on her and Taylor since they’d left Africa. It had torn them apart and whenever it looked like they could reconcile... everything had blown up all over again. Now his family had been routed, and she’d told him that it wasn’t his fault because, quite simply, it wasn’t.
It was hers.
If she’d been able to control the change, if those damned exercises had worked, if she’d worked a little harder... but no, they’d been at each other’s throats. What had been beautiful between them had
slowly and inexorably been wrecked. There was no salvation. No going back.
She couldn’t do it anymore. And there was no reason to.
Vixen. Cunning. Hides easily, runs quick, but in short bursts. Likes to run in a circle.
She loved Taylor. Adored him. But he was in danger because of her, too. So far he was another of a mythological group that had a strange power that people envied. But she was the product of a repeatable scientific process. She was the promise that anyone could be a shifter, that anyone’s DNA could be cut and sewn and rearranged until they were all cats or dogs or horses.
This was the only one that worked. All the other attempts failed.
Angelica paused to get her bearings. She heard the cries of the wounded at the encampment. They were still dealing with the aftermath of the battle. She knew men and women had been hurt, maybe even killed. And the elder... oh, God, the elder, assaulted and left to bleed and all because Griselda wanted the secret. The way to be a shifter.
Her fault. More people suffering because of her.
She’d become a doctor to ease suffering. She’d wanted to make things better. Even now she fought the urge to go down, to lend her skills where they might help, might ease things for those people, too. But the very act of returning to the compound would put more people in danger. Again. Because of her. Because she happened to be the missing link.
Incompatible DNA attributes are not the only indicators of a successful splice to the gene. There are other factors which preclude adaptation necessary to achieve symbiosis.
So instead Angelica ran into the jungle, blindly, searching for nothing else but a place to be, away from the stress and bloodshed and insanity that her life had become. The form of the large cat made it easy to travel paths she never could have as a human. Leafy fronds that would have slowed her progress slid over the back as she slipped beneath them. Wide paws gave her purchase, balance where she would have had none. The beauty, the grace of the lion was hers to embrace. Here she was no klutz, tripping over her own feet. Here she moved simply, easily. Not perfectly, no. The lion was meant for a different climate, a different altitude even. But here, she could learn to adapt. Wasn’t that what being a shifter was? An individual who embraced the adaptations necessary to survive?
Eventually she found a raging river that tore through the landscape, slowly destroying everything in its path. She followed the raging waters for a time, but a natural aversion to the fast-flowing water kept her back from its banks. In time she found a place where a rivulet branched off, a small side stream where the rushing waters calmed. Here, where the waters nourished and fed the soil, she lay down and drank.
The smell of rabbit. It was here recently.
Angelica froze. It was the same singsong voice that she’d developed over the years to remember the endless parade of medical knowledge she’d had to memorize. The one she thought she’d lost until today, when it had surfaced again after she’d left the wreck of the car smoldering in the underbrush. But that voice had never said anything that wasn’t a catalog of facts. And what about earlier? The words had made no sense.
‘Compatible DNA attributes?’ What the hell does that even mean?
The physiological aspects of the addition of the RNA strand is not as important as the psychological propensity to have an alternative mental outlet for the change, not only physical.
WAIT. Angelica leapt to her feet in shock, the lioness shaking water droplets from her coat, pacing and frantic on the riverbank. YOU’RE my inner beast?
There is no requirement for a ‘beast’ to be beastly.
She sat down heavily on her haunches, suddenly overwhelmed and completely at a loss. So the others, the ones that Dr. Johns experimented on... they died because...
They did not have the psychological fractions to which the altered state of physical—
They didn’t have an inner beast, Angelica interrupted, finding her own thoughts in the morass of input that was clearly not her own. She lay down, panting a little in the heat of the sun, trying to process this.
They didn’t have an inner beast.
Angelica lay by the stream in wonder. It had been there all along, in plain sight, and it had been there long before her cells were changed. The inner beast was a scientific know-it-all.
Somewhat offensive.
She would have laughed if she could, but she rolled over in the dappled sunlight and stretched her legs to the sky, staring at her wide paws with a wonder, an acceptance she had not previously found. This too was part of her. This was normal. She flexed her claws, seeing them splay before retreating, sheathing again within the pads of her feet. This was where she belonged. Here was safe, and moreover, in staying here everyone else would become safe; safe from the people hunting her. Safe from killing and explosions and running and looking over her shoulder. Safe from...
Taylor.
She sighed and flopped back, letting the ferns that grew along the bank cover her. Safe from Taylor? Taylor was her safe place. He was her anchor, her rock. That thought brought her up short. To hide here was to be gone from him.
No. It’s Taylor.
Angelica lifted her head. A large, muscular tiger with intense eyes stood on a rise above her, looking down. He didn’t move. It might have been him, but in that light...
It is Taylor. Can you not smell him?
Angelica smiled, feeling her own lips curl back in an expression of what she guessed was feline satisfaction. She wondered if she could do as he had done: could she manipulate part of her to change back? Could she find the human again?
In response her legs grew, straightened, her hips reset and reformed, her body reshaped and moved and she looked down and this time she did laugh. A genuine laugh. The transition hadn’t hurt at all.
There is no reason it should. If the shift is an evolutionary construct, then the evolution would favor a process that did not cause pain. It only hurts when the muscles contract and battle the morphosis, if the change is not fought, it’s painless.
Taylor loped down the hillside and changed as he walked toward her. It was like watching a liquid flowing from cat to man, mid-step, smooth, as if it weren’t the most unbalancing thing he could do.
Okay, now that is impressive.
“Just when I think I’ve caught up to you,” she said in shy wonder at the way his muscles gleamed in the sunlight, “you raise the bar.”
He knelt down beside her, indeed fully man. Her pulse leaped as his fingers reached to cup her cheek, her jaw. His voice was tender, his voice rough with emotion. “I was afraid I lost you.” The words were almost a sob. He’d been frantic. For her. It was a heady thought. Something that she’d known he could be capable of, somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, but that she’d forgotten in the last few weeks.
She leaned into the caress. “I had the inner beast all along.” She let her lips whisper across his palm. Soft kisses, tasting the salty sweat on his skin. “I just didn’t know that it wasn’t so beastly.” She finished her own change, one that had halted uncomfortably with more fur than skin, and rose to stand in front of him, with a shy awareness that as much as he was male, she was female. Her breasts jutted toward him, nipples peaked and hard. When he wrapped her in his arms he held onto her for dear life.
Yes, fully male. Fully male and wanting her. She pressed that part of herself to him there, letting him know that she desired more than comfort, but that she desired him. Just him.
His hand cupped her hip, pressing her closer. There was no doubt that he felt the same way.
Breathing ragged, he cleared his throat and spoke. “The entire village is looking for you,” he said into her ear.
She understood and sighed. This wasn’t the time or place for a proper reunion. Here they’d only just found each other and she wanted, as much as he wanted, the union that would consummate this moment. Only, there was a certain responsibility to let them know that she was all right. That they could cease searching.
I’m not going back, thou
gh. I’ll let them know I’m all right, but after that we leave. We can go find somewhere else maybe. Another jungle. Farther from here. Someplace where a person...no, a lion can get lost and never be found.
Besides, it was a task better done now rather than later. Being found like this would be embarrassing to a certain extent. Especially if they carried out what they both instinctively wanted. Needed.
She shifted her hips against his. Letting him know that she wouldn’t forget this moment even if it needed to be interrupted. “I want...” Her words were wistful as she stepped back.
He nodded, his expression holding a certain wonder, a trace of hope. “You’ll be okay?” He reached to tangle his fingers in her hair, to draw her close for a kiss that was an eternity and somehow still not long enough. She responded with all the pent-up passion and want and desire that had been suppressed for far too long.
She drew back, laughing. “I’ve never been more okay in my life,” she replied, and shifted back to the lioness, surprising him. Had he truly not expected it? Had he thought maybe they’d travel back to the compound on foot, human, because in his mind it was still too dangerous for her to change? She would show him then. Maybe she didn’t have Taylor’s smoothness but it didn’t hurt, at least not as much as it had in the past. That, at least, was something to be grateful for. She leaped into the jungle and vanished among the fronds, trusting him to follow.
Behind her she heard Taylor call her name, several times, a hint of panic in his voice. He had been caught unprepared after all. He would learn. Let him see that she could be trusted with this. That she was all right after all.
A moment later she heard his roar. Dominant. Masculine. Right on her tail. Angry. When he caught her, there would be hell to pay.
Let him rage. She needed to be true to herself. Laughing inwardly with joy, having finally come into her own, Angelica raced low to the ground. She had the entire jungle before her. Maybe she didn’t need to leave Taylor behind completely to find the peace she’d craved. Maybe things could work out—for the woman and lion both—after all.
