Cat on the Fence (12 page)

“This kind,” Alex said, removing his shirt to reveal the
psychedelic-colored, blistering wound on his chest.

The council members gasped and began murmuring to each
other.

“How can this be?” the red-haired one named Ava cried.

“It appears the rumors about Werewolves going rabid are
true,” Marcus, the chocolate one with stark golden eyes and long dreadlocks,
said.

“Even a rabid Werewolf should not be able to infect a
Werecat!”

“Maybe that is true for a normal Werecat, but what about
Late Bloomers? Could they be susceptible in some way to a Werewolf’s bite?”

They all looked at Cassandra, who stood and walked toward
Alex to more closely investigate his wound. “It is possible,” she said, “that a
Late Bloomer who is freshly triggered has not yet fully developed an immunity
to Werewolves. Meaning he could become infected, or possibly even rabid
himself.”

This caused more murmurs amongst the council members. Karabi
bit her bottom lip with worry and moved to place her hand comfortingly on
Alex’s shoulder.

Justin laughed out loud. “Well, folks, this Tom here isn’t
fit to join the Pride even if he wanted to. He’s unclean,” he said. Karabi
glared at the scruffy-looking dirty-blond man with yellow-green eyes, longing
to claw at his face.

Cassandra threw a warning glance at Justin as she went to
the table and picked up a black bag. “I’m going to take a blood sample from
Alex before making any kind of determination on his qualification to join the
Pride,” she said. She went back over to Alex and grabbed his arm. He jerked it
away, eyeing her with suspicion.

“Relax, I’m a medical doctor,” Cassandra said, grabbing his
arm again. She took a rubber tourniquet from the black bag and tied it above
his elbow. Then she pulled out a syringe and inserted it into his vein, filling
the Vacutainer.

“Okay,” Cassandra said. “I’ll go run some tests on this.
I’ll let you know the results in about an hour. I’m going to go right now so a
decision can be made fast.”

As the doctor left the room with the blood sample, Alex
leaned into Karabi. “What’s the rush?” he asked her.

Karabi opened her mouth but Justin loudly answered the
question instead. “It’s against the rules for non-Pride members or non-initiates
to even be present during a retreat,” Justin said. “Every moment you stand in
here without being one of those two is a moment longer we are breaking vital
Pride rules. At least with you, you’re in limbo until we figure out your health
deal. But this Feline here,” he turned to fully face Karabi, “has trouble
pledging her loyalty to anyone. We don’t trust Cats with no loyalties.”

“Why would I pledge my loyalty to a group that won’t help
their own kind without getting something in return?”

Justin smirked. “Pride members
are
our own kind, and
we do everything in our power to take care of each other. That’s the way we
work. But you’re the one who walked in here after a decade of silence and
no-shows, asking
us
to show loyalty to
you
, just because you have
a friend who got chomped on by some dumb dog.”

Karabi rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you what’s dumb—”

“Enough, Finland,” Marcus said. Justin grumbled but
instantly went quiet. “If the Werewolves are really going rabid and are
attacking and kidnapping Werecats, the last thing we Cats need to be doing
right now is making enemies with each other. Fellow Pride-mates or not.”

Karabi’s eyes went wide and she met Alex’s confused orbs as
well. “Kidnapping?” they both said.

The raven-haired beauty, Ava, spoke for the first time.
“There have been a few reports of missing Queens, suspected to have been taken
against their will by Werewolves. More than likely the Rabids.”

“Taken where?” Karabi asked.

“We don’t know, none of them have been found as of yet. We
don’t know why either.”

Karabi blinked. “A Werewolf attacked me in an alley in
downtown Chicago two weeks ago, and he threw me over his shoulder and attempted
to capture me. He looked as if he was in-between forms. He was part man and
part wolf at the same time. And he seemed…sexually aroused. Alex was bitten
when he jumped in to defend me.”

The council members all looked at each other. “Werewolves do
not reproduce sexually, only by infecting normal humans through a bite. An
aroused Wolf in mid-shift is—”

“Scary, let me tell you,” Karabi said. The idea of these
twisted and horny creatures going around kidnapping female Werecats for
who-knows-what was quite disturbing.

Justin crossed his arms. “Looks as if I might have been
wrong about McClellan here,” he said and nodded appreciatively. “He got
crunched while defending a pussy, fresh out of the Cat gate? This tiger here is
a hero. Real potential Pride material.”

A proud smile spread across Alex’s face. “I’m happy to hear
you think so,” he said.

Heat enflamed Karabi’s face as she glared in Alex’s
direction. Why the hell would he care what Justin or any of them thought?
Surely he wasn’t thinking of betraying her and joining them, was he?

Karabi was about to pinch him when the double doors to the
room burst open and two young men came pouring in, looking flustered and out of
breath.

“Something’s coming! We heard them while out scouting,” one
of them said.

“We need to get in position for battle,” said the other.
“Now.”

Justin hopped to his feet. “What’s coming?”

“I can smell it,” Alex said, his nose twitching in the air.
“Smells…canine. Smells dangerous.”

“You can smell them? From here?” the first bringer of news
said, his eyebrows raised high.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “And they’re coming this way. Fast.”

“They?” Karabi asked.

“Werewolves. The rabid ones,” he replied. “And they are
ready for a full-on attack.”

Alex lay in waiting, still and quiet. He didn’t even allow a
twitch of his thick, long, striped tail. His pulse raced with a lot of
adrenaline, a little bit of fear but primarily anticipation of ambushing the
enemy. Finally his Cat was going to get what for days it had been yearning for.
He was finally going to feel like a
real
tiger. One free to do what
tigers do. Not what tigers-who-turned-into-suit-and-tie-wearing-men do.

They didn’t have very long to wait. The Rabid Werewolves
were only a quarter of a mile away from the Pride’s location when the Cats on
patrol had heard them approaching, so within seconds they were charging on the
scene, feet thundering upon the ground in the odd rhythm of creatures that were
half man, half beast. Sometimes running upright on two legs, sometimes
galloping on all fours.

The wolves moved together, like a united front, and lunged
toward Alex’s position. He wasn’t surprised—he recognized the scent of at least
two of these beasts. They were part of the same trio that attacked Karabi in
the alley that fateful night. This was no accidental stumbling upon the Pride’s
gathering—the Three Stooges had gone home and cried to their Alpha mommy and
daddy to round up the whole rabid pack for a night of tiger hunting and
revenge.

But Alex wasn’t afraid. There was a bit of rabid wolf
surging through his blood right at the moment, intermingling with the tiger’s.
The two together created an explosive concoction that resulted in one. Pissed.
Off. Cat.

The first Wolf that lunged at him was one of the Stooges
Alex had fought. One violent slash across its leg sent it falling back, at
least for the moment. But was okay, Alex could come back to that one later.
“Curly” wasn’t the Stooge he was looking for. When Alex found “Moe”, the one
who left his trademark upon Alex’s chest, Moe was already coming at him. Alex
jumped back at it and the two clashed in midair. Growling, hissing, jaws
snapping, claws digging, paws swiping, teeth piercing. Moe was enraged and
fierce but he had the disadvantage of rabidly trying to rip into any part of
the tiger’s body he could get at. But Alex was only rabid in body and had all
of his normal mental faculties turned on at the moment, and so he was more
strategic. It only took one good clamp of the jaw at Moe’s throat to take him
down permanently.

Good god, that felt good. Tiger Alex chuffed triumphantly at
his kill.

It wasn’t until Moe was dead that Alex took the time to
notice what was happening around him. Lions, cougars, cheetahs, tigers,
jaguars, lynxes, every kind of big cat one could image was there. Rabid or not,
the Wolves didn’t stand a chance, and soon the ones that could move were
retreating back into the woods from which they’d come.

When the commotion cleared, the Cats shifted back to naked
humans, giving Alex the chance to see what other members of the Pride looked
like. The group was as diverse as humans as they were as cats. People of all
sizes, races and ages, men and women. Alex was so taken with being surrounded
by so many of his kind all at once that it took several minutes before he
realized they were all looking at something. There was one corpse in the group.
It looked like a human man now but Alex could tell it was Moe. Curly sat next
to him, now also human, with a wounded leg, and a long scratch went across half
his face.

“Why did you come here?” Pride Council Member Justin was
yelling at it.

Curly raised a shaking hand and pointed it at Alex. “That
one killed one of us,” he said. He was obviously talking about the third of the
trio, whom Alex was now going to name “Larry”. “And now he’s killed Jet too!”

“Likely in self-defense,” one of the Werecats said.

“But we didn’t touch him!”

“You were attacking Karabi,” Alex said, moving to stand next
to her. He looked her over to make sure she was okay.

“We weren’t going to injure her,” Curly said.

“Then what were you gonna to do with her?” Justin asked
sharply. “What the fuck are you dirty dogs after Queens for?”

“None of your business. It’s not as if you care about us.”

“It is my business if you’re causing trouble with Were kin.”

“We’re no kin to you
Cats
,” Curly snarled. “Not yet.
Which is why we need the Queens.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Curly ignored the question. Again he pointed at Alex. “That
one was just a kitten when we bit him. It will take some time, but he will
become just as much part of us as part of you.”

A part of them?
Alex thought.
I better not! I can
barely handle being Cat. There’s no way I can be a rabid Werewolf too!

“Not if I can help it,” Cassandra said.

“There won’t be any of ‘you’ left for him to be a part of,
you keep this shit up,” Justin warned him.

“We’re only trying to save ourselves. We do what we must.”

“Then you must get the fuck out of here, right now,” Justin
said. “We’re only letting you go so you can run and warn all of your little
rabid puppy pals not to touch another Cat. Male or female. Or we’ll have a Were
war on our hands.”

The Werewolf Alex dubbed Larry shifted into a normal-looking
Wolf and scampered off, leaving the rest of the group literally scratching
their heads and picking up their clothes. A few guys moved in quick to carry
off Moe’s body. But just as things looked as though they were about to calm
down, a scream came from the foliage nearby.

Alex and a few others ran over to investigate, ready to
fight if necessary. Marcus and Justin leapt over the bushes, reached down and
grabbed whoever or whatever was there, wriggling and yelling. They lifted the
creature from behind the bushes and sat him on the ground where everyone could
see him. This was a normal human. He was fully clothed but had an injury on his
neck that was red and bleeding profusely. It looked like teeth marks.
Ouch,
that looks painful,
Alex thought. Then his next thought was confusion as to
why there was a normal human there in the first place, just as the recognition
hit him.

This human was Karabi’s ex-boyfriend, Rao!

* * * * *

“Rao?” Karabi almost couldn’t believe her eyes. “What the
hell are you doing here?”

The look on Rao’s face was a crazed one. At first Karabi
wasn’t even sure he recognized her. “One of those wolf things fucking bit me!”

“Yes, I see that,” she said. Someone handed her a piece of
cloth and she pressed it against Rao’s bite wound. “But that doesn’t answer what
you are even doing here in the first place.”

“I was with those guys, looking for you. I had no idea they
were freaking monsters too.”

“With them? What do you mean?”

“I contacted them to provide the whereabouts of your tiger-man
friend over there,” Rao said. “Then we met outside your apartment. A couple of
them followed you here, found out where you went, then called us and let us
know. We planned to come and attack at sundown, and they brought me along. But
once they all changed into…good god, you saw what they were! I tried to leave
but they wouldn’t let me. Said I saw and knew too much to be let go, and so
they bit me and carried me with them through the woods. I must have lost
consciousness when the fight started, but I woke in pain and—I thought they
could help you. It didn’t occur to me that you were a monster too!”

Karabi blinked several times. “Rao—”

“What will happen to me now?” Rao cried. “Will you all eat
me? Will I die? I’m losing so much blood!”

Karabi swallowed hard and looked away. So this was all her
fault? She couldn’t bear to look Rao in the eyes at that moment, or anyone.

“If you bleed out, you’ll die,” Justin said. “If you live,
you’ll become a ‘monster’ too.”

Rao shook his head vigorously, his eyes wide. “No. I don’t
want to die
or
become one of you!”

The guilt made Karabi’s chest hurt. Sure, Rao had brought
this upon himself for stalking and following her. But he wouldn’t have done any
of that if she hadn’t let him get involved with her in the first place. He’d
had no clue about this secret paranormal shit and now he’d been violently
dragged into it. Whatever had made her stupid enough to think she could have
something serious with a regular human, she really didn’t know. But now poor
Rao was suffering for it.

“What do we do with this one?” someone asked.

“Put him out of his misery with a clean shot,” Justin said.
“Does anyone have a gun on them by chance?”

“No, no, no!” Rao wailed.

“Wait, why must he be killed?” Karabi asked. “He hasn’t done
anything. He wasn’t even involved in the fight.”

Justin snorted. “Wasn’t involved in the fight? Didn’t you
just hear him say he practically brought them to us?”

“Yes, but he didn’t know that we’re—”

“But he does know now, doesn’t he?” Justin said, getting in
Karabi’s face. Alex juxtaposed himself between them. And just in time too.
Karabi
really
didn’t like that Justin guy and she was seriously
considering punching him in his smug little face.

“Let him go,” Alex said. “If he’s going Wolf, it’s not like
he can run to some humans for support. He will need the pack to help him out,
right? We can send him with another warning message.”

Justin smacked his lips. “Slow up, McClellan. You’re not
even an initiate yet, and you’re trying to tell
me
what to do? It
doesn’t work like that here. Besides, we already sent one messenger, why let
two live?”

“Because if we start killing other Weres just because, we’re
really asking for more tension between our shifter camps than there already is
now,” Nadia said. She helped Rao to his feet and shooed him. Rao immediately
took off running in the direction the other wolves went.

“You’re not afraid he’s going to go tell someone we’re here?”
Justin said.

“He’s a normal human who’s been bitten—and by a Rabid, at
that,” Nadia said. “By the time he makes it out of the woods, he’ll either be a
corpse or a Werewolf. Either way, we won’t be staying here long. We’re breaking
camp.”

Justin waved it off. “No way. We’re not afraid of a few
mangy pups.”

“It’s not about being afraid, Finland,” Marcus said. “We’ve
been made. We don’t know if the pack plans on coming back for another round, or
if all of the commotion caught some unwanted attention.”

“So, party’s over?” someone asked.

“Party’s over,” Justin said, his voice thick with
bitterness. He turned around and spoke loudly so the whole group could hear. “Let’s
clear camp, folks, our week has been cut short. We’re heading home early. For
those of you who have travel arrangements that make you unable to go home for a
couple of days still, go find a hotel outside of Starved Rock. We need to
spread out, scatter, so it’s harder for anyone who may be tracking us to do
that.”

Everyone started to scatter and Karabi panicked. She grabbed
Justin by the arm as he was turning to walk away. “What about Alex?” Karabi
asked. “Are we leaving before you decide whether or not you will help Alex?”

Justin crossed his arms and glared at Karabi. “This was your
and his fight just now with all of those Wolves, right? I think we just gave
you all the help we have right now.”

Karabi sighed heavily. “But we haven’t even received the
results of Alex’s blood test yet. And he still needs—”

“At this point, it doesn’t really matter what his test
results are, does it? The Pride is going home. There won’t be any initiation.
Maybe he can try again next quarter. That is, if he’s still a Werecat then,”
Justin said with a chuckle.

“Dammit, this isn’t about him joining the Pride,” Karabi
exclaimed. “It’s about curing him of whatever the Rabids passed on to him!”

“Listen, Minstry, just cool it. Cassandra isn’t going to let
you guys go without some kind of diagnosis for your tiger friend here,” Justin
said. “The hour’s almost up, I’m sure the lab work’s about done and she’ll be
looking for you any minute. If you’re smart, you’ll just listen to what she has
to say, then immediately get out of here and go about your merry little way. At
the next quarter retreat, plan to be initiates and join the Pride.”

“That’s it?” Karabi barked. “She’s just going to give him a
prescription or something? What about any additional training he may need? Some
guidance?”

“Like was said before. That’s for Pride members only. And
before you even think to open your mouth and argue—” Justin put his hand up to
stop both Karabi and Alex from protesting. “Just remember that you’ve done
plenty
enough for the Pride today. You’ve shown up out of nowhere, demanding help,
without any intention of joining us. One of you may be infected with rabies or
whatever the Rabid Werewolves have, potentially putting us all at risk of
falling prey to Tony the Rabid Tiger here. And then to top it all off, you
bring a whole bunch of uninvited guests who come in and wreck the place.”
Justin shook his head and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “You’re
lucky as hell that we’re even
considering
letting you join in the
future. Now, please don’t cause us any more trouble than you already have.”

Karabi kicked at the ground as Justin walked off. Pretty
soon it was just Karabi and Alex standing there in defeat. Alex grabbed her by
the arms and pulled her into his chest, holding her tight. “It’s all right, I’m
okay for now,” Alex said. “Let’s get ready to go. Maybe we can keep looking for
answers on our own.”

“You didn’t really think I was going to let you leave
without telling my tiger brother
something
, did you?”

They turned around to find Cassandra walking toward them.

“At this point, we didn’t know what to think,” Karabi said.

Cassandra shook her head. “Justin can come off as a hard-ass
but he’s not nearly as bad as he seems,” she said. “He loves the Pride and is
just very protective of it.”