Diaries of an Urban Panther

by Amanda Arista

  Haverty’s eyes burned dark with power—and not just his power. It was the first time that I’d been eye to eye with the power of the Order. It was black and cold and seemed void of any life. Haverty’s energy flared out around him and he tried to smother me in it but I brushed it away like dust.

  “You aren’t worthy of such power,” he hissed through intensified canines.

  “I worked my ass off for such power.”

  Haverty lunged towards me and another shot echoed from the barrel of Chaz’s gun. Haverty staggered back and a large red stain appeared on his shoulder.

  I looked at Chaz whose face was hard and hate-filled. It wasn’t a good look for him.

  “Don’t do this, Chaz. You won’t like yourself in the morning.”

  He made a wide circle around Haverty and stood beside me. “Funny. Feels pretty damn good to me.”

  Haverty fell to his knees. His shoulder bleeding, his hand held tightly to his chest. He looked defeated. But I knew better. He glared up at Chaz. “You’re that Guardian’s brat.”

  “His name was Seth Garrett,” Chaz growled.

  I would have put my hand on his shoulder but my arm hung limply at my side. Good thing I had another. And that one had a knife in it that could quickly kill a Haverty.

  “I took him down like a rag doll, boy, and I’ll do the same to you.”

  Chaz didn’t flinch as he pointed the barrel at Haverty’s torso and fired another round. I let him. This was therapy. But that’s all I allowed.

  “Stop,” I said as I moved into Chaz’s arm.

  “That’s right, rein in your little pet.”

  “Oh, be quiet!” I snapped.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  I walked up to him and looked down at his crumpled figure. He glared up at me, panting like a tired dog on a hot day. Sweat dripped down his face. Bruises formed on his cheek and his ash-flavored power lapped low but sharp around him.

  “I’m going to live a long happy life and kick your ass every chance I get.”

  “You are nothing.” Spittle flew out of his mouth as pain ripped deep wrinkles into his face. “I made you what you are.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for ruining my life.”

  “You are my blood. You are my daughter.”

  “I am nothing like you.” I screamed. Pain filled my head and my eyes went dull for a moment.

  There was a crash behind me and I looked to see Jessa push over the mirror with a small smile.

  Chaz’s eyes didn’t leave Haverty and his gun still remained clenched in his hand. Then, Chaz flinched. And I knew what was happening before it happened. I turned, prepared for Haverty coming at me.

  It was as if the knife jumped into his midsection. Haverty was inches away as the dagger slipped easily between his ribs. I swept his legs and he fell hard. I kept on top of him and drove the knife down so hard into his chest with both hands, the bit embedded in the concrete beneath him.

  Panting, I kept the force down on the blade until I knew that he wasn’t getting up again. The movement ignited all my injuries, those known and unknown. I fell to my rear but didn’t take my hands off the knife.

  Haverty didn’t cry out; he fought against the sizzling in his chest. He clumsily pushed at my hand, my arms, my face. He kicked and flopped like a dying fish. Burning flesh filled my nose.

  “You little bitch,” he spat out blood that landed on my cheek.

  I removed one hand to try to wipe my face only to find that I was covered in blood. Mine. The beast’s. And now his. “You did this to yourself.”

  Haverty slowly stopped fighting. His arms went slack and his eyes went glassy. I could taste his blood in the air around us as it spilt out of the wound on his chest.

  “Take it then. See if you do any better,” the man whispered and the light left him.

  I looked over him and felt nothing. No victory, no satisfaction, no disgust. Just the knowledge that I had done something that needed to be done. And the day was over.

  Slowly, I pried my hands off the silver handle. As I tried to rise, my legs went numb and failed me, sending me sprawling on the cement floor next to him. My skull made a dull thud against the floor and his head turned towards me as the last of his blood trickled out of his lips.

  I panted hard, the pain digging into my shoulder. The room began to spin and I didn’t have the energy to lift my head. My eyelids grew heavy and finally closed, as I focused on just breathing.

  Silver light filled the darkness behind my eye lids. And then I was warm and everything smelled of golden hay and I was in Iris’s barn. Chaz was lying across from me in a wide puddle of moonlight. This was a pain-induced vision, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to hold his hand and sleep because I was so tired.

  Unfortunately, the sleep would have to wait as I was accosted by the sour cigar scent of Haverty. It hovered around me on the soft hay, gathering strength like a summer storm, becoming thick like humidity. The silver light around me became hot, searing. It pressed down on me like an iron as it seeped into my skin, burned my eyes, until every inch of me felt like the burnt end of a cigar.

  I gasped and my eyes flew open. I sucked in deep breaths of the death and dust around me but I was breathing. Knives of pain jabbed upwards and inwards from my torso and then burning white heat flared in my muscles. It burned in my shoulder, in my side, in my head, sent spots into my vision as the power burned through me and then settled.

  Chaz and Jessa hovered: Jessa watching me, Chaz watching Haverty’s cold body beside me.

  I pushed myself up to a sitting position and looked over at the dead beast and then the dead man. The smell overwhelmed me and I grew nauseous. And this was a good day?

  Slowly, testing every muscle, I pushed myself to my feet and swayed a bit. Chaz’s arm saved me from biting the cement. The muscles in my shoulder were mending, weaving themselves back together at a speed I knew was far from human, with energy from a place I wasn’t ready to think about yet.

  “I know you can heal better the other way,” Chaz said softly as he led me to the door. “But you came in a convertible. Don’t think we can explain a panther in the backseat to the cops.”

  With a painful chuckle, I held his hand tightly to my arm. Jessa rushed to my side, offering a hand to hold. And I did, squeezed it so tight I was pretty sure her fingers might fall off. She didn’t flinch or pull away, just squeezed back.

  “Do we need to get you to a hospital?” Jessa asked.

  “Nah. I’ll patch it up when we get home,” I managed, though talking and breathing hurt.

  “Violet,” Chaz started softly.

  “Please don’t start, Chaz. It’s been a rough day.” I said softly.

  “You really are difficult.”

  “Get used to it, Wonder boy.”

  With super speed, Chaz swept me off my feet and held me close to him, my legs dangling over his arm and my head immediately resting on his shoulder.

  “I’m going to stain your jacket.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It was your dad’s jacket,” I whispered as I slid my hand under the lapel.

  “You can help me pick out a new one.”

  I weakly pointed out where the car was parked and he carried me the whole way. Jessa rested her hand on my shoulder as we walked and I felt her cool energy running around us, helping me heal.

  Carefully, he sat me against the edge of the car door and pulled away slowly to make sure that I was steady.

  “I’m thinking we head to Iris’s,” Chaz started. “It’s quiet and safe.”

  “I’m thinking that we head to my place because I have a doorman,” Jessa said, crossing her arms over her chest. Back to good ole Jessa.

  “No,” I said softly. “We are going to my house.”

  They didn’t argue. Jessa offered a hand to help me into her car.

  “Miss Jordan.”

  The cry for help froze the three of us in place. We turned around to see four men walking towards us. Chaz i
mmediately went for his gun.

  My borders were about as intact as my shoulder so I felt them coming. Their energy was low, docile, and as they got close, I could have sworn I recognized one of them. And as they got closer, I knew exactly who I smelled.

  “Officer Briggs?”

  His head ducked down and his energy was anxious. The men in the long black trench coats all hung their heads as they followed behind Briggs. He was a mongrel. The damn cop was one of those damn dogs. How did I miss that?

  My entire body tensed in anger as I thought about the accident and the shoe and the fact that my supposed break-in was not actually a break-in.

  “What do you want?” I managed to spit out as I held my arm close to my chest. The cat danced around my chest, angry still, and by the look in Briggs’s eyes, he knew that.

  “We pledge our allegiance to you, Miss Jordan.”

  “Oh god,” I moaned.

  “You just tried to kill me!” Jessa’s anger flowed out from her as white hot needles, and I felt it in my side, like a foot coming back from being asleep.

  “We were following orders,” he said, his eyes still on the cement.

  I put my hand on Jessa’s arm and calmed her down.

  “Guys, she’s really not in shape for anything right now,” Chaz started. “Give us a few days.”

  “We don’t have a few days,” Briggs growled. “We are traitors to the pack, and without a strong leader, the pack will erupt in chaos and war.”

  “Not my problem,” I muttered.

  “It is, Prima Jordan.”

  Chaz shouted. “She is not your Prima!”

  Briggs hunkered down even further and if his ears could have done back, they would have.

  I took in a long cool breath and licked my lips. “An hour ago, you were trying to rip my best friend to pieces. Why should we trust you?”

  My eyes rose to his and I felt the cat settle, felt power in my own stare as I captured Briggs’s eyes and held his gaze in mine. There was a prickle down my spine and I knew that this was not my stare but that of the Haverty energy now coursing through my body.

  “We betrayed our pack by following Spencer when he was banished. We have nowhere to go.”

  Chaz flinched but I put a hand on his arm and pulled myself to a standing position. The muscles in my shoulders and back stretched and burned but were already healed.

  “Why do you need somewhere to go? Why can’t you just be?”

  “They are marked with Jovan. I can feel it,” Jessa’s teeth ground next to me.

  I took in a deep breath, testing my own body, suddenly feeling stronger than it ever had before. My shoulder was fine, my head was fine.

  “We are pack creatures,” Briggs said slowly. “We need a strong leader. You are strong.”

  I shook my head. “Sure, I can kick some demon ass, but I’m not strong enough to be a leader.”

  “But you . . .”

  My finger flew up to silence him. “You will go. And if the pack retaliates, it will be fitting all the shitty things you did to me.”

  Briggs’s eyes dropped to the ground and his shoulders dropped about seven inches in disappointment. He backed away and, in unison, the pack turned to go.

  It was that damn shoulder drop that got me. Why am I such a sucker for a shoulder drop? “Wait.”

  Everyone within earshot was as surprised as I was at the order. Briggs dared to look up at me. There was a glimmer of something there that I was too exhausted to analyze.

  “There is a woman inside. Cristina. Go see if she is okay.”

  “Yes, Prima.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I snapped. My skin sizzled and I had to take a deep breath to calm down. “And clean up the mess inside. Burn it down if you have to. No one needs to know about tonight.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I grimaced. “I think I like Prima better.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  After peeling off my suit, I went immediately to the shower. It was 6 a.m. and I was taking a shower after killing another human being.

  I didn’t know why it didn’t hit me harder. I just felt empty. Maybe because I wrote about death every day, maybe because my head had strategized whole dark armies moving against one another in the night, taking out whole breeds of night creatures. I had written the monologues of the characters as they had made their first kills and I had been dead right about the guilt that comes afterwards and how eventually it became a part of the character to make her stronger.

  But this had been me. This wasn’t a scripted sci-fi scene. I had killed a person—who was harming others. Did that make it right? Did that make it okay because some Power said Jessa was to be protected at all costs, that a reborn warrior must protect her no matter the loss of lives?

  I leaned against the now-warm tiles and let the water wash away the blood from the wounds. The physical injuries were healed but the rest of me would still need mending. I looked down to see a flawless midsection and a small red line where the stab wound had been. With a burger in the morning for some needed protein, I should be back to perfection in a day.

  After getting out of the shower, I peeked in on Jessa who was already asleep in my bed. It was the most comfortable and the most defendable. And this was my life now.

  I put on a soft nightgown and wrapped up in my purple fuzzy robe. The scent of Chaz still lingered and my body twinged as I thought about him downstairs, pacing madly, making phone calls, double-checking the new sliding glass door.

  As I walked downstairs, I could smell cinnamon coffee. I looked around and he had cleaned again, cleaned up the broken mirror, picked up some coffee mugs I’d left around the place. Who knew that he would be the type to stress-clean? It was almost as attractive a quality as his washboard abs.

  “I smell coffee,” I said from the kitchen doorway, jamming my hands into the robe’s pockets.

  “Thought you might like some after the night we had.”

  “Love some.”

  We sat across from each other at my kitchen table like we had before but, this time, I didn’t have anything witty to say. Just looking at him made my chest ache. He looked exhausted and he was the one who did this on a regular basis. He had all the answers for all the tough questions that I needed to ask. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, I was able to speak.

  “Have you ever killed someone?” I already knew the answer but I needed to hear him say it.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you feel after your first time?”

  He pursed his lips and leaned forward, looking out the kitchen window where it was annoyingly sunny outside. “Empty for a while, I guess,” he said with that warm soft tone he had first used when speaking of my new lifestyle. “Unworthy of having that much power.”

  “And how did you get over it?”

  “My dad explained it to me. It’s part of the deal. To live like we do, with the gifts that we have, it’s all part of the package.”

  “Live hard, die young, type of thing?”

  “No,” he chuckled softly. “Not quite. More like we’ve been given these gifts because we have the strength to do what needs to be done and taking lives to protect others is part of that burden.”

  “But I didn’t ask for it.”

  “Not yours for the asking. Remember you were made this way.”

  Couldn’t really argue with him there.

  “And you were incredible last night. The way you moved. Like . . .”

  “Something out of the movies?” I filled in, taking my last swig of cooled coffee.

  “I was going to say like you finally know who you are.”

  I flinched as the reality behind his words struck me. I stood and moved to the sink, closer to the window as I looked out at my perfect little courtyard in my perfect little neighborhood and sighed.

  I heard Chaz stand and set his coffee mug on the table. His arms slid around me gently and I rested my head back on his shoulder.

  “Anything else you want to talk a
bout?”

  I knew what he wanted to talk about. What happened between us less than thirty-six hours ago. “Not right now.”

  “Then you need to sleep.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got so much crap running around in my head right now. I’m not going to sleep for a week.” I turned around in his arms and looked up at him. “That, and you just gave me a full blend Ethiopian.”

  He smiled and pulled away, taking my hand to pull me into the living room and stopped at the base of the stairs.

  “Go upstairs and go to bed,” he ordered.

  “Go upstairs and take a shower.”

  Chaz pulled me to him and placed his lips on my forehead. I closed my eyes and felt him again, more this time than I ever had before. He’d dropped the cement borders around him and I reveled in his golden light for a moment. And then I pushed him away.

  “Seriously, you smell.”

  Once there was a warrior in a time of peace. He and his group of men wandered the countryside without meaning. They got into trouble, fought for money to eat, and created havoc in their wake because that’s what they did. That’s all they were ever told they could do.

  The band of brothers came into a small village rebuilding from the war that had ravaged the houses and stables. The villagers were wary as they watched the warriors ride in on their war horses.

  “We need room and board and stables for our horses,” the warrior told the innkeeper.

  The innkeeper wrung his hands. His daughter, a strong-willed girl, stepped forward. “Then you’ll have to build it yourself. Your war has destroyed half our village.”

  “I’m a knight, not a carpenter.”

  “Well I’m an innkeeper’s daughter, but that doesn’t prevent me from being the baker as well. If you want to stay here, you’ll have to pick up a hammer.”

  The warrior was aghast at the young girl’s willfulness. But he looked at his tired men and sighed, then looked back at the girl. “What do you need?”

  In the days to follow, the warrior and his brothers helped the town rebuild their stables.

  “See, you can do something other than warmonger,” the innkeeper’s daughter smiled as she delivered their lunches.