Oath Sworn

by Kristen Banet

  There were a few reasons for that. I needed the leg room, for one. Two, a werecat could only safely hunt on his or her territory.

  I had been warned that trying to keep my territory while roaming away from it would bite me in the ass. Like the idea of leaving my bar unattended, it was something I had learned quickly to correct.

  It only took two minutes for me to find myself on my back porch. It took less than that for me to turn back around and run off, wanting to keep stretching my legs.

  It felt so good. I didn’t shift often enough, not nearly often enough. I tried for once a week, and there was really no excuse for me not to, but I was bad like that. I had never been a good werecat; I would never be a good werecat. I could only try, and even that felt too hard most of the time.

  In the attempt to be a good werecat tonight, I sniffed out a whitetail deer nearly ten miles from home and took it down without thinking. Hunting came naturally, as I was ridden by animal instincts I couldn’t control sometimes. It saw prey, and the feline beast I shared my body with wanted that prey. I had to be careful, thanks to that beast. The werewolves didn’t admit it to the humans, but our animals thought they were prey too. It made things dangerous and was why I didn’t worry about being closed on full moons. Everyone was. No one wanted to be out when the monsters were. Joey didn’t know it, but it kept him safe too. I could never risk them visiting while some employee I didn’t want was at the bar. It made them easy prey.

  I don’t know how long I ran, really. I could see the dangerous tinge of dawn just beginning to creep over the horizon when I was back on my front porch and triggered the change back into my human form.

  “Fuck,” I groaned, leaning against my back door. It was always painful, and the faster I could do it every year, the more it felt like it hurt. Maybe the pain was just too concentrated; I had no idea, but it wasn’t pleasant. There was no fairy dust and seamless shifting for the moon cursed, wolf or cat. Our bodies just broke and healed into new bodies. It fucking hurt. Every time, it fucking hurt. For me, it’d been hurting worse, and my shifts had only been getting faster.

  With that on my mind, I knew I needed to make a call. A call I would continue to avoid, because it was the worst call.

  It was a call to family.

  “Tomorrow,” I promised myself half-heartedly.

  2

  Chapter Two

  Waking up to my cellphone blaring like a fucking police alarm wasn’t the way I wanted to start my Friday. I didn’t open my eyes, but I knew there was no way I was getting back to sleep. It didn’t matter what time it was. I knew the ring tone. Even if it wasn't loud and obnoxious, the ring tone meant I was getting the call I had avoided making.

  That was never good. In my world, it was possibly the worst thing that could happen.

  Without opening my eyes, I reached out, groping for the phone. If I didn’t pick up, he would just call again. And again. Then he would text, which was the last chance I would have to talk to him before he just showed up and invaded my territory.

  Luckily, I grabbed my cellphone and yanked it off its charger before it stopped ringing. I was able to hit the bouncing green symbol before it stopped.

  “Hi,” I said blandly, hoping the caller wouldn’t realize I had just woken up.

  “It’s three in the afternoon, Jacqueline. Is there a reason you almost missed my phone call?” His deep voice made my bones vibrate.

  I still didn’t open my eyes, and holding back a yawn took effort. “I don’t open the bar until five, Hasan. There’s no reason for me to be awake before three,” I answered, trying not to grow impatient with him. The call had just started. I would have plenty of chances to lose my patience. The beginning of the conversation was not one of them. “What do you need?”

  “To talk to my daughter more often,” he said casually, but I knew him better than that. There was a tightness to the words that I figured only a few people in the world could notice, and I was one of them. Unfortunately.

  Daughter. I despised the word to the very core of my being, but I wasn’t foolish enough to refute it. I would never call him Father or Dad, but I wasn’t stupid enough to tell him I wasn’t his daughter. In the eyes of the werecats, I was. A werecat who Changed a human was that new werecat’s parent. Mother or father to daughter or son. It didn’t matter if there was any relationship previously. It was just their way. I had spent the first year of my new life as a werecat arguing against it to no avail. It wasn’t even a bad thing. Just a thing I hated, and for very personal reasons, not because the system was flawed.

  So I knew better than to argue.

  “That’s not why you called, though,” I retorted, my patience trying its best to walk away from my brain and leave me agitated. I held it in place, however, and waited for the real reason for my father’s phone call.

  “Jacky…did you hear about what’s going on in the Dallas area?” He seemed cautious now, even worried.

  I resisted a sigh. Of course he would be. While I fought hard against the familial tie his Changing me brought, he treasured it. Of course he would be worried about a little coup or hostile takeover just two hours from me.

  “I saw it on the news. It’s not my business and there’s no reason it should spill over and cause me any trouble,” I said quickly, trying to assuage his fears. If he grew too worried, I knew he would show up, and that did no one any good. We’d be at each other’s throats within hours, and it wouldn’t stop until he felt like I was safe. “I’m just out of their reach. I made sure of it. None of them have holdings within an hour of me.”

  “Yes, I remember,” he said patiently, the tinge of worry gone. An act, certainly. Or maybe the worry was an act. I could never tell with Hasan. He was a strange man, somewhat removed from the world around him. I knew it was because of his age, but I wasn’t stupid enough to say it out loud to him or to anyone else.

  He was over two thousand years old. When werecats got that old, and not many did, they tended to get a bit withdrawn, like any aloof cat could—or at least that’s what I had been told. They didn’t feel the need to interact with the mortal world. They no longer adapted, they just existed.

  “So…” I tried to think of anything to say, knowing the conversation wouldn’t be over until he wanted it to be over. The last time I hung up on him, he’d called back. When I didn’t answer, he showed up. He lived somewhere around New York, but he owned a private plane. He could get to me faster than I could get out of the state I bet.

  “Other than that, I had a feeling you would need to talk to me. You’re approaching the end of your first decade as a werecat. That’s a milestone.”

  “Yeah…” I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to remember what that was supposed to mean. Nothing came to mind, which wasn’t good. I had probably forgotten a lesson, which reminded me of the reason I had wanted to make this very dreaded phone call. “I do have a question for you, actually.”

  “Anything, my dear,” he said quickly. I could feel the anticipation. It was very rare for me to have a question for Hasan. I knew one other werecat that I preferred to call, but some things could only be answered by the one who Changed me.

  “How fast do you Change?” I hoped the question wasn’t insulting. There were some strange rules about werecats he’d once tried to teach me. I had told him to fuck off. One of those things was to never ask how old another werecat was. Not because it was a bad thing, but it was just rude. Like humans. As a human, I had never broached that topic since I had been good at eyeballing someone’s age, but as a werecat, that changed. There was no way to tell someone two thousand years old from twenty-five. It made things sticky and a bit more complicated. Now I just had to hope that asking a shifting question wasn’t rude.

  “Hm. That’s interesting. Why?”

  I took a deep breath, closing my eyes again. I had been really hoping he wouldn’t ask why. “I’ve been getting faster and it’s been getting more painful. I want a baseline to compare to. You’re it, as the werecat tha
t Changed me.”

  “Ah, yes. I Change in less than two minutes. Fast by anyone’s standards. Most werecats take about five minutes. You’ve been getting faster? You were at ten minutes when you left here. Good for a youngling, but not quick.”

  “I did it in your time last night,” I whispered. It was actually a lie. I had done it faster, but he didn’t need to know that. “The pain thing…”

  “Worried you, I’m hearing. Yes. It’s like growing pains. The body isn’t accustomed yet to the speed at which it’s doing it. It’ll take some time to adjust to the new speed. Once you hit a consistent speed at which you Change, you’ll rebuild your tolerance for it.” He sounded like he was beaming with pride. “Two minutes at only a decade old. That’s exceptional, my darling daughter. I hope you know that. It’s unheard-of. If you were at five minutes, I would have been proud, but that’s just…”

  “Okay, it’s good. Thanks. Now, I need to get up and get moving for the day, Hasan, so I’m going to let you go.”

  “Stay away from the dog trouble until their keepers get them well in hand, please.”

  “Will do. Goodbye.” I wanted off the phone call and I wanted off it now. I didn’t like anything that I’d just heard. Not that his praise wasn’t kind or anything, but I hated being different. He made it sound like I was very different. Different didn’t fit with a quiet, ignored life. Different stood out. Different was challenge and change.

  Different was bad and I wanted no part in it.

  “Goodbye, Jacqueline,” he said slowly, obviously annoyed my goodbye wasn’t endearing enough. He knew I wanted off the phone. It was an interesting conundrum. I was the modern one. All of thirty-six years old in human years, including the ten I’d spent as a werecat, and yet I wanted to get off the phone call more than the ancient who didn’t want an email until I forced him to get one.

  I waited for him to hang up, and once he did, I dropped the phone and groaned. “Fuck me.”

  I hated surprise phone calls. I should have known it was coming the night before. Of course he was watching everything that happened within two hundred miles of me. Why hadn’t I realized he was going to call? It was probably because I personally gave no shits about what the werewolves were doing. They were an annoyance and a headache, because I couldn’t wrap my mind around their stupidity, not because they were actually a problem.

  As long as it didn’t spill into my territory, it really wasn’t my problem. I might have my issues with it, but I was a werecat. I respected and followed the bounds of my territory. I made no actions outside of it, ever. I even went a step further. I didn’t even shop in the city. I never left. I ordered everything online or made do with what I had in Jacksonville and the portion of Tyler that was my space.

  I knew the dangers of playing outside my own land. It left me open to roamers, werecats who put no roots down. If they never entered my home, I could ignore them. If they did, I had to force them out, and fast, or they could challenge. If I left my territory and ran into one? It was a fight no matter what.

  Werecats were nothing if not vicious. Territories were safer than roaming, even if they needed some defending. Another werecat would instinctively avoid my home unless they were looking for trouble. It led to fewer fights, or so Hasan told me. If eight fights in six years was less than average, I really didn’t want to know what average was.

  I tried to stop thinking about it as I got out of bed. That was it. A werewolf war nearby would also draw the eye of anyone I might have pissed off. There were a few—which was funny, since I had never done anything to any of them. Well, I had never done much to them.

  “Stop thinking about it, Jacky,” I mumbled to myself, shaking my head. There were things I wish I had never done. Things I wish I could get rid of, wipe clean from my history. This wasn’t one of them, no matter how hard I tried over the last six years. “This better all blow over.”

  I showered and left for Kick Shot before my mind could get too stuck on the current situation. If I kept my head down, no one would remember I was here except Hasan and my only friend in the werecat world, Lani. I walked to Kick Shot today, smart enough to know that shifting in broad daylight was moronic. I normally had a dirt bike I took between, but it was in the shop getting repairs. I knew I would need to replace it soon, but I was attached to it. It was one of the few things I had bought with my own money once I moved here.

  It also helped me escape the midday heat faster. It was ninety-eight and humid. Every supernatural creature had a problem with places this hot. It led to most of our kinds becoming more nocturnal than we already were. Monsters go bump in the night and all that. Humans were the only diurnal intelligent species. Everyone else? Werecats, werewolves, fae, vampires, witches, and who knew what else? We played in the dark. We played out of sight, out of mind, though some species started thinking that wasn’t good enough. Hence, werewolves being on the news and everyone locking their doors around the full moon, no matter how safe their neighborhoods were.

  Unlocking and walking into the bar, I sighed happily, thankful I left the AC on overnight. It didn’t always help, but there was a difference between eighty and ninety-eight. I would take what I could get, really.

  I got to work, trying to drown myself in it. I pulled stock around, opening my books to do inventory before opening the bar. I had several different crates and boxes of booze that I needed to get on the shelves, and what better time than the present?

  I worked quietly and quickly, keeping my inventory in check. It was fifteen ‘til five when I was done, right on time. Turning on the TV in the corner as I went, then the radio, because I knew better than to leave it off, I went to the door, watching the clock. The minutes ticked by slowly and the moment five hit, I unlocked the bolt on my front door. I was back behind my bar by five-o-two, like I was five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday.

  My routine. I lived by it. When control over being what I was frayed and began to threaten to break, I could always rely on my routine. It was one of the most important things I could have, and my touchstone to reality to stop the Last Change.

  There always came a time, werecat or werewolf, where our bodies couldn’t keep the separation any longer and clashed into a war that would never end. It was the source of every horror story version of werewolves in Hollywood, though the humans were ignorant to it.

  The last time a werecat hit the Last Change? My kind still whispered about it in dark corners, their eyes full of fear.

  I tapped the bar, waiting patiently for anyone to show up. Joey and his friends arrived first. Then it became a constant stream of people, a few walking in every thirty or so minutes. I stayed behind my bar, serving out drinks to anyone who wanted one. Being the smart bartender I was, I kept tabs on everyone, my memory too good to fail me as long as I didn’t drink.

  “So, is tonight the night?” Joey asked casually, sitting at the bar in front of me.

  “For what?” Rolling my eyes, I took his empty beer bottle and handed him another Blue Moon.

  “For you to tell us you’re a werewolf. Come on, Jacky. Jacky fuckin’ Leon!” He gave me a desperate look, leaning over so that I couldn’t avoid his face when I looked down to work on something.

  “You know werewolves aren’t the only things that go bump in the night, right?” My patience was wearing thin already. He was a smart human. He knew there was something off about me, but I wasn’t foolish enough to ever tell him what separated us. The world was already dealing with the fact that werewolves were real. They even knew of the fae now, though the fae were still living in human disguises. A few witches were even going public, though it wasn’t going as well for them. Salem wasn’t that long ago.

  “Are you a witch?” He blanched, and I couldn’t stop a laugh. Of course he would pick the one everyone seemed most scared of. I didn’t really understand it, but it was probably because witches were the easiest target. They didn’t have the illusions of fae or the strength of werewolves. They were humans with some magic. They were t
he same, yet different from their own kind.

  Different is bad.

  “No, you fucking idiot. I’m just saying, you always ask werewolf and maybe you can shake it up sometimes. I mean, it doesn’t change the answer!” I was still chuckling as he glowered at me. I pushed his new beer to him slowly. “I just wanted to own a bar, Joey. This happened to be a good place to do it.”

  “Fine.” He swiped his drink off my bar top and walked away.

  I felt stung for a moment until I reminded myself that Joey wasn’t a friend. He was different than my other patrons, more willing to reach out and talk to me, but friend wasn’t it. Really, if I thought he was a friend, I might have brought him into my life, exposed him and given him something better than what he had.

  I also heard his friends, and several other humans in the area, talk about supernaturals. It made my stomach twist into knots. They always wanted to know if I was a werewolf. Why would I ever admit that to men who thought a werewolf skin might look good as a rug? Sure, they were joking. Texas was a hunting state, and I was one of those hunters, but they didn’t make the small connection that a werewolf pelt to a supernatural was the equivalent to having human skin as wallpaper. It was disgusting and distasteful. It was inhumane. There was no way in Hell that I would ever tell them that I was a werecat. I would be a new and shiny thing, a unique pelt to adorn their walls and floor.

  I ignored most of the humans for several hours, working and being pleasant, but not open to small talk. I couldn’t find the mood. The werewolf drama already had me edgy, and from the TV and the news, it didn’t seem like it was going to quiet down any time soon.

  “The Werewolf Council of North America has stated that they are going to send in their own team to help stabilize the precarious situation. After the initial violence, there have been no injuries or fatalities reported, but we still recommend all humans lock their doors after getting home and not stay out past midnight. The deposed Alpha is still currently missing, believed dead. His family, two werewolf sons and a human daughter, are also missing as well.”