He opened the door. It was Principal Lightwood. He looked piqued and a little flushed. He wasted no time coming in, more or less barging in, brushing pass Merk with an uncharacteristic non-caring nudge. In the coach’s office, he turned around on his heels and pointed at the door.
“Shut that, please.”
Merk did as he was told. He turned back around to face Mr. Lightwood. In the few seconds he had entered the room, his face had gotten redder, more flushed, his visage and demeanor seemed shaken, disturbed. He stepped forward and Merk could see the man actually shaking. Merk braced himself for what was coming next, almost knowing who and what this was about.
“We just can’t have any problems here, Mr. Castle,” said the bald-headed man, sniveling.
Merk lost respect almost immediately for Principal Lightwood, not that he had had a lot to begin with. All of their interactions before yesterday when he had brought Ratty into Kara’s room had been encased with an energy and air of a man that was more like a mouse. This was then confirmed and exacerbated by his acquiescing to Ratty Fairweather’s wants. And now, he was in his office about to unload some more bullshit concerning how Merk did things solely because he too was a fucking sympathizer, or if not one yet, was just as close to being one.
“We just can’t okay?” he continued.
“What problems are you talkin’ about, sir?” asked Merk, he wanted the principal to be clear and to say it, to have the fucking balls to just say it.
Principal Lightwood paused. Merk saw it working around his head, how to say what he had to say – what he had been told to say – without it sounding as if he had been sent there as a messenger by the Rat-man himself. It was pathetic, but Merk understood. Shifters were supernatural. They were living, breathing, and walking gods on earth. If you really thought about it by comparing them to normal human beings. It was no surprise that a person would become enamored with a being like that, willing and ready to do anything and whatever the shifter asked of them, simply because they were something that you were not; the shifter was more, an extension of a reality that was greater than your own and the shifter was proof that there was indeed more to this world than what the human five senses dictated.
“Merk, please… “Ratty – the Fairweathers, they’ve been around this town a long time, way longer than me…than a lot of people. They’ve seen a lot of people come and go and those people tried to change things and make waves, but they are not the ones that are still here.”
“Make waves?” Merk questioned. “Am I trying to make waves, sir?”
Merk was annoyed with Principal Lightwood. His view and approach towards Ratty and his shifter pack of goons was one of acceptance, they were the status quo. Merk wondered if this was seriously how the entire town felt. Did Ratty and the Fairweathers have complete autonomy in this town? Could they do anything, get away with anything they wanted?
His run in with the wolves was a lot different, he didn’t have the luxury of having them held accountable through legal means, involving police and all because of the shifter nature of things. There just wasn’t a way to govern shifters, to police them, which was also part of the problem because they were all above the law (including him, but he had a code that he tried to live by, he had ethics and some set of standards that mattered to him, a lot of shifters didn’t). Listening to him, Merk decided that this small Floridian town was under the wolf pack’s rule - it had to be.
He hadn’t noticed it before, maybe because he’d been so preoccupied with coaching and getting the football team ready, settling into his new life, and then Kara. But it was clear: this was going to be a problem and he found himself directly in the middle of it.
“Do we have an understanding, Mr. Castle?” Principal Lightwood asked, his voice fumbling, stuttering some.
Merk stared at the thinly framed man standing in front of him, his body languid, his face and eyes a sorrowful and pitied visage. Weakness emitted from him. It disgusted Merk and he didn’t have time for it. And there was no way that he was going to cower to the unspoken rule of Ratty and his wolf pack. Merk had never conformed to anything or anyone in his life and he never would.
“I understand…” Merk started. “But here’s what you have to understand. I don’t give a fuck who Ratty Fairweather is – I really don’t. However, he does need to be concerned with who I am.”
There was finality in Merk’s voice. It was pushed to the surface by his hate of cowardice and the people who purport such attributes in others; Ratty and his crew were bullies and they had been allowed to push people around for far too long. Principal Lightwood was on that list. Coach Winston, his assistant. How many others? he wondered. Only Kara seemed to be willing and strong enough to face off with Ratty. She had done so in her classroom yesterday. That’s whom he needed to talk to if he was going to do something about it – if he was going to put an end to the wolves’ rule.
"No! No! You don’t understand – No! You – You can’t –! Mr. Castle, you have to –”
But Merk was done listening to his wining. He felt the adrenaline rush through him, pushing his feral nature, then the rise of his animal instincts to attack, to fight, and come forward. The principal was afraid of Ratty and the wolves and what they could do, but he needed to be just as afraid of him, maybe more. He needed to show him. Make him see it. To see him. Merk lunged forward with lightning quick speed, every muscle in his body bulging, vibrating on a different level, he grabbed Principal Lightwood by the collar and shoved him against the wall with enough force to cause an indentation in the wall behind him.
“Oh God! Mr. Cassss…” he started, his voice trailing off with gasps for air and coughs in between.
Merk emitted a guttural and primal roar. He continued to hold the principal pinned against the wall. It was in these moments that Merk was the most dangerous. As a Panther Shifter, he had the ability to channel his panther nature in human form, usually this was done through his adrenaline with his emotions as a catalyst. He was the strongest like this, a man with animal energy and strength, but he was also more vulnerable because of the human anatomy. If he was being attacked, his panther form, would be the best form of protection, as it had been when the wolves attacked him. If he had been in human form during that attack, he wouldn’t have survived.
“Mer – Mer – Mr. Castle, pl – please…” Mr. Lightwood strained.
“Merk!” a voice yelled from behind him. “Merk! Stop!”
Merk looked over his shoulder. It was Kara. Merk turned back to face Principal Lightwood. He had the man at least two feet off the floor and there was enough strength behind his pinning of the principal to the wall that the man was struggling to breathe. What was he doing? Merk relaxed his grip on Mr. Lightwood’s collar and let him down. The disheveled and utterly frightened principal hurriedly ran past him, brushing against Kara, and out of the coach’s office.
“What the hell, Merk?!” Kara reprimanded.
She came over to him, but Merk shied away. Everything was wrong, had been that way since yesterday when Ratty walked into his life. Merk flopped down in the chair behind his desk, burying his head in his hands, frustrated, unnerved, the muscles in his arms bulging from how tight his grip had been on the principal. He could have killed him. Easily. For a moment, no matter how brief, he had lost it. That happened sometimes when his anger was unchecked and his emotions ran free. His panther nature was so raw, primal that sometimes it was hard to control rationally and still harness the power of the panther; it just wanted to roam free and complete balance between human and panther form just didn’t exist.
“Merk…” he could hear Kara call for him, he kept his eyes closed tightly and his head buried in his hands.
Suddenly her hands were on his shoulder – HE GRABBED HER WRIST – the inclination to twist and break, the kneejerk response, hit him but her smell (his senses were still heightened from his panther nature), it whiffed by his nose and then played around in his nostrils; Kara’s scent was soothing and it almost immed
iately calmed him.
Merk could feel his mind quieting, his anxiousness dissipating. Her hand was still on his shoulder. He peered up at her. Kara’s face seemed to shine down on him like the sun. Her eyes were like disks of rays of light shining forth, breaking through the darkness inside of him that lay behind his eyes, deep down in the recesses of who and what he truly was. He noticed that Kara hadn’t jumped when he had grabbed her.
“We have to get you out of here…” she said, stooping down to be with him, to be eye-level with him.
She put one hand on his leg and the other on his arm. Her touch did something to him and it wasn’t all in his mind. That’s what he was starting to realize. Like earlier, he could feel something coming off of her, something that was misty and airy, just like before. It was light, damn near invisible, and Merk knew somehow that it had something to do with how he was suddenly beginning to feel: he felt light, like the mist. He felt okay, as if he knew that everything was going to work out. There was a calmness that washed through him, a peacefulness that had fallen on him. And it had everything to do with Kara and her touch. He knew it. Merk lifted his head, peering up at her, curiosity filling him; he needed answers.
“What are you?” he made himself ask.
Kara paused. She looked at him. It was a deep look, arcane. He could see the opaqueness about her; it was unsettling to him, making him want to draw away from her, to free himself of her touch. But he didn’t. Then he wondered if he could even if he wanted to. His animal instincts were still high from his panther nature, and he felt, sensed something supernatural about her. It was soft and barely noticeable. But it was there. He met her eyes, willing himself to pass on whatever it was she was doing to him.
“Merk…”
But he didn’t answer. Something told him not to, that he had to remain focused. He pressed harder, leaning on his resolve, he stared at her until she looked away. Kara stood up. He did the same. She walked away from him, her gait shaky and her body language distraught.
“Kara… What are you? Why –?”
She wheeled around to face him. She stood in a manner that suggested that she was trying to regain some of her composure. Merk’s resolve had done something to her, whatever she was doing to him, wouldn’t stick.
“Kara…”
A flash. A flicker in her eyes. He saw it change. No, it was more like a pass through – it was like something passed through her eyes, it was so faint and if he had blinked that second, he would have missed it. Kara stepped forward, she suddenly seemed so unsure of herself, uncharacteristically so. She started to speak but hesitated, then found her footing again. She cleared her throat. Merk readied himself.
“I’m –”
Coach Winston burst through the door, entering the coach’s office frantically and in a frenzy. His eyes were wild and his skin looked sick, like he had spent the better part of the day in cold sweats and feverous. He was panicked. He passed Kara who was standing near the door to approach Merk.
“You can’t fucking do it! Please tell me you changed your mind – that they changed your mind! They’re crazy –”
Merk was on him, putting him down to the floor, the tackle, a hard spear, exactly how he would want his defensive safeties to hit flankers floating around carelessly and freely down the field. Merk could hear when the wind went out of him, then he landed on top of him.
“Oh my God!” he heard Kara squeak in the background.
But it didn’t matter to Merk. His panther nature was too close to the surface, it was easy for him to be triggered now and his strength and force was so brute in this form and feral. Kara ran over to him. She grabbed him trying to pull him off of his assistant coach, but Merk was too big and too strong.
“Merk, you’re hurting him. Stop!”
He could hear Kara but only behind his own growling mind, an echo of the low gutturals that were stirring inside of him, just like earlier with Principal Lightwood. However this time, Merk wasn’t going to back down. Kara had saved the principal but Coach Winston, his assistant coach would not be so lucky.
“Merk! Please –!” she cried in the background.
Merk cocked his arm back ready to strike down on Coach Winston. With how he felt, he knew that he could probably kill the man, if not the damage would be so severe that he would wish that he was dead rather than the invalid and vegetable state he would be in.
“Please…” started Coach Winston. “Do it.”
Merk gave pause. He hadn’t expected that, not his assistant coach’s approval and desire to match his wanting to end him; a hit that would potentially kill him. Had the man lost it? Lost his mind? But it didn’t stop there. Coach Winston seemed to all of a sudden be invigorated. He pushed and pulled at Merk, trying to get him to hit him. There was desperation on his face and within his grip.
“Do it! Do it, please!” he begged.
Hearing a man beg for pain and punishment and even a possible death, took the desire from you to inflict such pain on them, no matter how deservingly. That was the case for Merk. The man’s voice was hollow and the ache in it pulled at Merk, his nerves, the anger and stirring rage that he wanted to unleash. Merk found himself letting the man go and standing up. Kara was behind him. He could hear her sigh. He smelled fear on her and something else – that scent again. He whipped around to face her, a sliver of anger back, his eyes daggers pointed at her.
“What are you!?” he roared.
Kara staggered backwards – more fear, he could smell it. She cowered, pressing her back against the wall, her eyes bouncing from him to Coach Winston and back again. Merk was done. He was tired of everything. He had come to this town to start over, to be someone else, and to definitely not be a shifter anymore. But he was right back where he had started. Trouble seemed to find him and as much as he wanted to stay clear of it, to walk away from it, there was something inside of him that kept bringing him back there, to that place, petitioning him to do something about the wrong, to fix things, to make everything right. He hated whatever that was that made him think and feel those things. He cursed it.
“You should have done it,” said the quivering voice of Coach Winston behind him. “You should have killed me.”
Merk turned to him. Coach Winston seemed smaller. Or maybe Merk was still just so full of his panther nature that his vertebrae and endoskeleton had enlarged, there was literally a chance that he was indeed towering over the comparatively puny assistant coach.
“Why?” Merk growled.
“Because Ratty has his hands in every single thing in this town and there’s no escaping him, Merk. Either you do what he and his… Family wants or you pay the price,” said Kara, answering for him.
That sounded right. Probable. Except that she was the living and breathing proof that that was not the case.
“You survived,” Merk answered her.
“I did,” she replied back. “But I’m not like everyone else.”
That was the first time she had ever spoken of herself as being more than what was in front of him – a woman and a human being. But she knew she couldn’t go any further with it, not in front of Coach Winston.
“Coach Castle…” Coach Winston spoke from behind him. “Are you… Are you like them?”
***
They sat around Merk’s desk talking. Kara, Coach Winston, and Merk. It was kind of a meeting of the minds, a joining of forces in that there was a lot that each person knew. They all had had run-ins with Ratty and the wolf pack. Specifically for Merk, the Rat-pack (as he began to think of them and call them) and also his past experiences with other shifters, the latter neither one of them had. Merk found out that Coach Winston was indeed a sympathizer, but reluctantly.
His family had come to this town as nothing and with nothing and only began to gain money and any respect or status by basically doing the dirty grunt work for the Fairweathers. Since time immemorial, they had been the most well off, and if not respected then feared, family in the small Florida town. When his father pa
ssed away, all the Fairweathers’ scavenging and dirty work had fallen to Coach Winston. However, he was just one of them. There were plenty more families that had Fairweather sympathizers; their wolf pack was a distinguished group in town, like royalty, the only shifters there, ever, until Merk.
Merk could immediately see why his arrival would be problematic. And then factor in his lead role as coach for the high school football team that was obviously an important staple in the community, him and Ratty were bound to bump heads.
“So, what can you do?” Coach Winston asked, a glint of hope on his face, a speck of relief in his voice. “I mean, are you going to end all of this or – or are you just going to replace them?”
The words really hit Merk hard. He never wanted anyone to think that he could be the kind of man or shifter that used his abilities to make people his slaves, servants at the least.
“No. I’m not here to replace them,” he answered. “And I’m still trying to figure out what it is exactly that I need to end.”
“Them,” Kara gave the answer.
They both turned their attention to her. But Merk saw her eyes shoot him a quick look. She was something too. He knew that for sure now. But she didn’t want him to include her in this meeting. For whatever reason, she was desperate to keep what she was secret. Merk eyes searched her as he tried to see past her to identify what she was.
She sat up some in her seat, then scooted forward.
“Well, you already know my connection to Ratty and –”
“Right, I do…” he slid up to the edge of his seat. “And for the life of me, I don’t know how you got away from them – no one gets away from them. How –? How did you do it?”
But Kara never got to answer that. The door burst open and a group of kids rushed in, their clothes torn, some shredded, their faces bore scratch marks like claws to flesh, everything about them was disheveled and panic was in their eyes.
The Panther's Rival Page 9
