Diaries of an Urban Panther (10 page)

My chin hit my chest. “Maybe.”

Iris smiled and put her hand on my arm. “It’s time.”

I took in a deep breath and slowly moved through the steps. We’d practiced all afternoon. Invoking the shift, rather than having it take me like it had the night before. Freaked me the hell out when I first felt it, what Iris told me was where my panther power slept. I think there may have been some unnecessary jumping and pacing. And a lot of deep breaths so I wouldn’t pass out.

But tonight, I looked into Iris’s eyes and everything told me that I could do this. A truth hummed through me: I was made to do this.

I looked out into the night and took the first of many calming breaths, hoping this wasn’t anything like poking a bear in a zoo.

I closed my eyes. I could smell the night, the wind, the trees, the fields, smell Iris’s rosy perfume. The crickets chirped on the warm October night. Nature was alive and well under the full moon.

I listened to my heart. Full of stories and wonder and still so very fragile.

I listened to my other heart. The one with power. The silent center hummed and throbbed and I could feel the potential waiting to be molded.

I felt the animal in the center. Fur and muscle and speed and veracity.

As I gently pulled at the panther in my center, it pounced, digging its claws into the golden center and tearing through my chest. White hot energy poured over me and I struggled against the inky blackness of its fur.

There was a flash of golden that pushed me into the abyss. As I fell, the panther took control.

Chapter Ten

I
woke up bathed in sunlight and warm. I stretched and rolled my shoulders and wiggled my toes against the flannel sheets of my bed.

Bed? I thought quickly as I sat up. I was in the guest bed. How in the hell had Iris managed that? I grabbed the pink robe now thrown over the rocking chair and headed downstairs where I could make out the distinct smell of bacon.

“Good morning,” Iris greeted as she poured a cup of coffee and handed it to me in the doorway. I was beginning to think that she might like me.

“Was everything okay last night?” I asked as I sat down at the little table.

It was a blurred dream. I was usually so good at remembering my dreams. Turned most of them into movies, actually. But this was different, this was hazy and just out of reach in the back corner of my memory.

“Were there any rabbits involved? I had this thing with rabbits a few weeks ago and it was awful.”

Iris laughed. Iris’s was three hardy laughs and then she hid her giggles underneath, like it was something that surprised her and she reeled back within herself. She shook her head as she cooked the eggs and flipped pancakes. “No. How do you feel?”

I thought for a moment. “Good. Really good.”

Iris turned around with a big smile and a full plate of breakfast food. “Wonderful. Now eat up, we have a full day ahead of us.”

I looked down at the plate and had a sickening thought. I wasn’t hungry.

L
ater that morning, Iris and I were in the front yard and to an onlooker, probably looked like we were having one hell of an argument, standing roughly ten feet apart and both glaring in the morning sun. After loosening up with some brushing, Iris was trying to teach me shielding.
Trying
being the operative term.

“Brush me,” Iris directed.

When I did, I didn’t feel anything. No cashmere, no power, no nothing. Like she was human. Like she really was the innocent old lady she appeared to be.

“That’s a shield. Think of it as a container for your energy. It keeps you in and others out.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Without a shield, another wanderer could read your mind or take your energy or see your future or do a number of things, but shields can also protect other people from you.”

“Like keep me from throwing boys against cars.”

“Something like that. Try it.”

“How?”

“Remember the examples that I gave you; it can be a brick wall, a steel door, a cape, whatever makes you feel safe.”

Safe? Could anything make me feel safe anymore? “My townhouse. I feel safe in my house.”

“Visualize your house around your heart then. Make it safe.”

A house around my heart? My life was quickly going from the Syfy channel to the Lifetime Network.

I closed my eyes and relaxed. It was becoming easier and easier to find the gooey magical center. The warmth beat in time with my heart. I saw the golden ball in the darkness behind my eyelids and slowly visualized walls going up around it. But a birdsong distracted me.

“Concentrate.”

I tried harder. Find the marshmallow center and put a roof on the top. But it wouldn’t stay up.

An hour of this and my brain started to hurt. Iris went to sit on the porch but she made me stay out in the yard. “Keep concentrating,” she would say at regular intervals.

“This isn’t working, Iris.” I was whining. It was true. Maybe my ADD was kicking in but it just wasn’t working.

“Fine,” Iris said as she slapped the arms of the rocking chair on the porch and got up. As she made her way down the steps of her house, I could not have predicted what she would do.

Iris ran at me like a line backer. Stunned, my feet froze on the ground and I stood there like a tree watching this little old lady lean forward and run at me head first.

But a force hit me before she did and it knocked me off my feet like a focused tunnel of wind. I flew backwards, but by the time I hit the ground it was gone. It knocked the wind out of me and I laid there for a moment trying to figure out what just happened.

Iris stood there her hands on her hips, looking innocent as always. “Check you center.”

As I got up and brushed the grass off my jeans, I glared at Iris. “That was mean.”

“Check your center.”

I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. The house was built. My two-story townhouse with the red door and the empty terra cotta pot on the porch. It was my house and the safest place in the world. I felt different too, the sun wasn’t as warm. I couldn’t smell the winds. It was like I was normal again.

“What was that?”

“Like you threw Chaz, powerful shifters can project their animal. Your instincts put up the shield to protect you when your brain was too busy to do so.”

As I relaxed, the house faded away and the sun was warm again, the winds were fragrant and Iris was pissed. I tried to contain my giggles. “Can we do that again?”

“H
ow are you doing?” Iris asked as she joined me on the porch that evening.

I squeezed my shoulder and rolled it to stretch out the muscles. “Still stiff.”

“I really am sorry about that,” Iris said, handing me a cup of hot tea before she sat in her rocker next to me. “I’ve been meaning to ask Chaz to check the floorboards in there.”

I was quickly discovering this was the only thing to do in Waxahachie. Sit and rock, and I didn’t mind it one bit. All the bustling around in Dallas made one’s brain rush around at full speed; out here where the weather was the only concern, my brain had slowed to a nice intelligible pace, had a lot of time to think during the day, just
be
for a change.

I took the steaming liquid. “I should have been a little more careful.”

Once I finally got the gist of shielding, we spent the afternoon working on drawing on my cat skills while in human form. Iris said that in her heyday, she could take down a grown man with one swoop of her paw. So she figured that I could probably jump, because that’s what panthers can do. I wasn’t even going for a real height as I found the cat’s balance within me. Just jumping around, first from step to step, and then from the ground to the top of my car. Then from the first floor in the barn around and on top of things and off of things, like a pinball.

And it was really going well. I was like a gold medal gymnast. Until I landed on an old board that gave way underneath me and I fell from the second floor hay loft to the dirt on the first floor. Didn’t land on my feet exactly, but I didn’t break anything, just busted up my shoulder, which we quickly relocated and now I was fine. Well, maybe wary of going all Tarzan again.

After that little disaster, we just did housework, washed and folded laundry, and did dishes until our fingers got all pruny. And now we were on the porch, drinking chamomile tea as the night settled into its quiet.

“Who took you through this process?” I asked as we both leaned back and rocked.

“My sisters and I were all born to it. We all learned it together,” Iris answered slowly.

I knew that voice though, had heard that tone in my own voice before, back when people cared enough to ask about the girl on her own for all major holidays. “Your sisters are gone then?”

Iris nodded.

“And you don’t have any children?”

Iris shook her head. “I dedicated my life to the Cause, never had the time to find a mate, settle down. It always seemed there was just one more person to help, one more that needed training.”

I didn’t know whether to say I’m sorry or I appreciate your sacrifice. Instead, I just stared down at my tea and confessed.

“I’m all alone too,” I finally said looking up. “Only child. Parents died in a car crash twelve years ago.”

It was the first time I had told anyone here. I didn’t even tell Jessa, but Jessa never asked. Maybe that’s what I liked about her. She didn’t ask many questions, didn’t delve too deeply into the well that was Violet.

“You’re not alone anymore,” Iris said in the crisp darkness. “Now you know about the Cause, there will always be someone there for you. And you’ve got Chaz.”

I had to laugh. “He’ll be glad to be rid of me when I’m all trained up.”

“Then I wonder why he called when you were in the shower this morning to make sure everything went okay last night.”

I perked up a little. “Really?”

“He said that he would try to be back by Thursday.”

“Where is he?”

Iris shook her head. “Didn’t say. He’s not much for details.”

Wasn’t that true. But he called. Which either meant that he didn’t hate me, or he still felt bound to check up on me.

Thursday. I was headed back to Dallas on Friday morning. I kinda hoped we didn’t miss each other.

“You need to be gentle with Chaz,” she said as she rocked, watching the sun go down. “You’re not the only person who’s lost everyone.”

“I’m learning that.” I twisted in my seat to look at her. This was a story I wanted to hear.

“Well, he probably told you he was born to this life,” she said as she rocked more vigorously, as if the story was drawn out that way. And if she was telling his, she wasn’t telling hers. “His father was in the Cause, met his mother that way.”

“He mentioned it.”

Iris looked over at me and I felt the soft breeze of her power past me. She sighed and looked back out at the horizon. “His daddy was taken from him about six years ago. It was an epic battle, rang out through the . . . what do you call it?”

“White hat broadband?” I offered.

“Seth had figured out a way to take Haverty’s power from him to release his hold on the pack here in Dallas.”

“Haverty killed his father?”

My blood froze in my veins. The tea in my hands stopped steaming. I put the mug down before I dropped the stone cold contents on the porch. That’s why he couldn’t say anything the other morning; that’s why he protested so violently when I wanted to leave. He couldn’t risk another crazed panther on the streets.

Iris’s knotted hands gripped her tea mug so hard her knuckles went white. “And Seth almost had him, but that damn son of his mucked everything up. Seth died before Chaz could get to him.”

“Did Chaz try to go after him? After Haverty?”

“Hell, yes. Nearly got himself killed. Did some right stupid stuff before he gave up. I was expecting him to just drop you off and hightail it out of here. You being a Haverty.”

My throat closed up, my mouth went dry, but my eyes began to water. Knowing that I was the one thing Chaz probably hated more than anything else in the world weighed heavy in my chest. “I suppose he’s got his orders,” I mumbled out from under the sumo wrestler on my sternum.

“I think it’s you, Violet Jordan. He could have left but . . .”

I shook my head. “No, Iris. I’m just an assignment.”

“I’ve seen the way you two watch each other.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “You’re dreaming Iris. I threw him into a wall. I’m the progeny of his mortal enemy. No amount of witty banter will ever overcome that.”

Iris simply smiled, took a sip of her tea, and looked out across her backyard. “When you’re older, you’ll be able to see potential in everything.”

F
ive nights and I was falling in love with the bed in the guest room. It was always warm and soft and felt like heaven after days of exhaustive learning and practicing and nights of doing whatever the panther’s little heart desired. It was a routine that I fell into easily but knew would end too soon.

The previous night had been easier to draw the panther out. Less like a stumbling teenager with big feet. It was strong. And I was beginning to think that Iris wasn’t being overprotective when she got onto me about shielding.

But I still didn’t remember anything about the shift as I ran. Iris promised it would come with time. She said that I had to completely assimilate myself with my cat half before I would be able to remember everything. What I could recall was like a dream, a dream where I was the night wind and everything sped past me so fast it was a blur.

I showered and dressed and hopped downstairs to see if I could beat Iris to making breakfast. But I didn’t. She was already beating the eggs as I skipped into the room.

“You’re up early,” she remarked as she handed me a huge stack of bread to toast.

“Must be the country living,” I said back as I put in the first of six pieces of bread. “You feeling the carbs this morning, Iris?”

She just looked up at me with a small smile and went back to her stirring of the eggs.

I wanted to clap. In the past few days I was beginning to decode her devious little looks. That one meant Chaz was going to be here for breakfast. The celebration stopped when I remembered how nasty I had been to him and what I had learned last night about his father.

“God, Iris. What do I say to him?” I said hopping up on the counter to watch her skillfully cook the eggs.