Diaries of an Urban Panther (7 page)

Leaning against the white stone front of the performance hall, I gulped down the cool air and tried to catch up with the thoughts racing around in my head. The copper taste of fear filled my mouth and ran like ice water through my veins. I could have sworn my shoulder began to burn against the cool stone. This was real.

And then I smelled it, smelled him. You don’t forget the smell of a man, at least I don’t. Sometimes a guy will walk past wearing the same cologne as my ex and I’m thrown back to all those unhappy days in LA.

So I knew this smell and looked up and down the darkened streets of downtown Fort Worth to find Chaz. I closed my eyes and took in a calmer breath and knew it was him, it was warm and musky and athletic and very close by.

I reached into my purse and scrolled through my received numbers to find his.

He answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?” I snapped, the panic replaced by paranoia.

I saw the slightest movement out of the corner of my eye. He was a block down, standing just out of the light of a street lamp. He stayed in the shadows but I could see his face from the glow of his cell phone.

“So is this what I’m going to be cursed with, a perverse sense of smell?”

“What?”

“I can smell you.”

“I must be a block away,” he said confused.

“Then maybe you need to take a shower.”

“Are you okay?” But the question didn’t come from the phone. It came from over my shoulder. Devin’s hand slid around my waist, as if protecting me from unseen threat. He looked up and down the street with a viciously raised eye brow.

I watched as Chaz snapped his phone closed and slid back into the shadows down the street.

I turned towards Devin. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of apologizing this evening,” he said looking down at me with concerned brown eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you want me to take you home?”

I shook my head and allowed myself to be guided back into the warm interior of the theatre. Even though the opera was beautiful and might have elicited a tear, I still couldn’t shake the chill up my spine that this was real, and Chaz had followed me across a county to make sure that I was safe.

M
y stalker didn’t call on Sunday, which was understandable. I wouldn’t have called me back. I would have let me rot and gone on to my next holy mission or whatever he was on.

I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop Monday afternoon, reading the latest movie magazine without my glasses in the streaming sun of the front window. My feet were curled up under me as I sipped the cinnamon latté. It had taken me all night and a very hot shower the next morning to get warm again after the chill of last night’s panic attack. But I got up, convinced myself I wasn’t going to die today, a new daily ritual, and forced myself out of the house.

Suddenly, I was overcome with his scent again. I looked around and watched as he sauntered across the café and sat in the seat opposite of me. He was in a long-sleeved green buttoned-down shirt, the black leather jacket nowhere in sight. He looked almost naked without it.

I didn’t exactly know what to say. He sat across the coffee table from me, very relaxed, looking very unsuspicious. Very “nothing to see here people, just a man talking to a girl. Move along.”

“Was that your boyfriend?” he said, looking down at the table between us, strewn with the magazines I’d flipped through that morning.

“I thought you’d been watching me for the past two months.”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen you have dinner with him, go to the opera.”

He looked up at me with wide puppy dog eyes, searching for an answer.

I shook my head. “Devin’s a good friend.”

Something flashed across those warm eyes. “How are you doing?” he asked as if he had to, but didn’t want to.

“Fine,” I knew I’d said it too quickly the moment after it left my mouth.

He looked me over, top to toes, with a hard eye. “Where are your glasses?”

“Seems I don’t need them anymore,” I shrugged casually looking away from him, down at the magazine in my lap.

“Oh really. Any other recent advantages then?”

“Nope.”

“Violet, look at me.”

Like a guilty child, I moved my eyes slowly up to his face, keeping my chin low.

“What else?”

I sighed and shifted in my seat. “I’m not afraid of heights anymore,” I said, thinking it was inconsequential and he couldn’t read anything dark into it.

But he leaned forward with that ever increasing furrow between his brows. His hands clasped out in front of him, he asked, “What else?”

“I ran down the street to catch the ice cream man and didn’t get winded.”

“How far?”

“A hundred yards.”

Chaz grunted and looked away. I didn’t like it when he did that, it made me nervous, made me very aware of the four dark shadows still down my left shoulder.

He looked up from his hands, a determined jut to his soap star jaw. You have to see the Shala. She’s the only one who can help you.”

I just laughed. “Right.”

“She is, Violet. She can guide you through this. We should go tonight; the full moon is less than a week away.”

I stood and he mirrored my new position. “I can’t just leave, Chaz. Some of us have responsibilities to actual people. Have commitments. Did you know that I have to work three jobs in order to pay my mortgage?”

“And keeping you safe isn’t a full time job?” he snapped back. The muscles clenched in his jaw and my skin grew a hotter as my temper flared.

“Made it through the first twenty-seven years just fine.”

Storming off, I threw my magazines back on the rack as I walked for the door. He caught my arm and spun me around harshly so we were practically nose to nose. I was awash in that scent that had haunted my dreams.

“You don’t understand. You are changing, Violet,” he said in a low tone, almost a growl. “And if you don’t get it under control, they will not hesitate to control it.”

I tore my arm away from him and glared furiously until I fully understood what he was saying: If I couldn’t get whatever was inside me, running through my blood, under control, he would shoot me, like he shot that thing in the alley.

I ran; the fight or flight response kicking in like it had never done before. My hand was on the door handle of my Miata when I saw a familiar sports car sitting across the street. The driver wasn’t visible.

Chaz ran into my frozen figure. “What?”

His eyes followed mine to the car without the driver.

“I’ve seen it before. He’s one of yours, right?”

Chaz grunted. “They don’t pay us enough to have BMWs.”

He moved around the front of my car, his eyes never moving from the car across the street. “Go home,” he ordered.

Chaz was gone in the blink of an eye. Nothing figurative about it. Just gone, like The Flash minus the red tights. His scent lingered around me as I got into my car and quickly turned on the ignition. I heard the squealing of tires and the sports car was gone too.

I’d never driven that fast before. After what Chaz said, after seeing that other car following me around, there was no way that I was going home.

My car sort of steered itself to the only safe place that I could think of.

Chapter Six

J
essa opened the door with the phone attached to her ear. “I’ll call you back,” she said slowly as she dropped her cell phone from her cheek and the blood ran out of her face.

“Is it that bad?” I forced a smile.

Jessa stepped aside and I dragged my feet as I entered her perfect apartment.

“What’s going on? You look terrible.”

“Don’t I always?”

Jessa ushered me into her flawless flat. She was the only person I knew who had actually hired a team of decorators to have her apartment match a picture in a magazine. And it did. Something out of the pages of
Single and Fabulous
. I ordered almost everything online from IKEA and Craigslist.

Jessa suggested a steak and cheesecake night. It was a bit of a tradition. Break up with boyfriend: steak and cheesecake. Have another script rejected before it even hit Drew’s desk: steak and cheesecake. Lose your fiancé to another woman: steak and cheesecake.

I ordered a little fillet mignon with a side of potatoes and Jessa ordered the thirty-five-dollar steak she would undoubtedly only eat half of. But that was Jessa.

“So what’s eating you?” she asked as the waiter finally left, after offering Jessa every sort of appetizer and drink and even his phone number.

“Work’s getting crazy and I needed to get out.”

“You don’t look too great, a little peaked.”

Jessa knew the word
peaked
? “I’m fine.”

I mean, doesn’t every girl have a stalker who threatens her life when she refuses to buy into his little delirium? Isn’t that part of the
Single and Fabulous
life style?

I looked down at my little steak and my mouth watered. It had been eight hours since toast. I was starving. I cut into my steak and took a huge bite. I closed my eyes and chewed on the juicy meat. It tasted wonderful, perfect, and as I swallowed, my mind flooded with the sensation of ripping the meat off of the bone.

My eyes snapped open and my pulse raced. What the hell was that? As I looked back down at my plate, all I could see was what my little steak used to be and how much better it would be if it was still connected to bone, still had blood racing through it as I sunk in my huge teeth and ripped the meat off it.

I jumped up out of my chair, much to the surprise of my dinner mate, stumbled away from the gorgeous meal, and ran to the bathroom.

Full visions of running, no, chasing something through the tall grass, filled my head. The wind in my ears, the need to pounce on the small furry creature, to sink large white teeth into the hot meat.

I threw up everything I had eaten that day and probably a few days before. Stale toast with apricot jam was worse the second time around.

Jessa tentatively walked into the bathroom as I was splashing my face with water. I still had the vision of blood just behind my eyelids as I leaned over the white marble sink.

“You okay?” she asked with the concern written over every inch of her face.

“I’ll be fine,” I said through clenched teeth. Having to lie to another person almost made me sick again.

“Was it the steak?”

“Something like that.” I patted my face dry and forced a smile. “I think I’ll stick to the potatoes.”

Jessa walked me out, her arm around my waist, and I was glad to see she had already ordered to-go boxes, and the waitstaff had taken away most of the meat at the table already.

“Is it the flu?”

“Must be something I caught along the way.”

I
’m pretty sure it won’t surprise anyone that I don’t exercise. So you can imagine my anger when the first, and decidedly only, time I decide to take a jog around my neighborhood, I get hunted down by a pack of big burly black dogs who want to play chase.

It had been an odd sensation. In the middle of an outline for a new script, I suddenly wanted to be outside. And more than that, I wanted to run. At first, I thought it was an instinctual retreat from the roadblock I had come across in this project Drew was trying to get off the ground. But it wasn’t. My muscles wanted to move: my legs, not just my fingertips.

Standing outside, I tucked my spare key under a terra cotta pot without a flower and faked my way through the few stretches I remembered from the three scarring years of high school gym class before the school took pity on me and waived that class for an extra journalism course.

It was broad daylight. I was safe. Nothing happens in broad daylight. I started off down the sidewalk at a sedate jog. I figured I’d start out slow, maybe trick myself into actually exercising a block or two. It was nothing fancy, but immediately I felt better. Less restless. Dare we say invigorated? Can’t say it was the weirdest moment in the past two weeks but it was up there in the top four.

Three blocks down, I was definitely running; I could hear the pulsing beat in my heart, a steady thrum, thrum, thrum, in my ears. My muscles stretched and pulled as I turned a corner. With each breath I took, I felt loosened, focused. I could feel oxygen flooding my body, coaxing my muscles to relax and move, encouraging the continuing patter of my feet on pavement.

For a brief moment, everything felt aligned and I felt alive. Maybe commercials constantly toting exercise and endorphin highs weren’t total bunk after all.

And then I got the distinct smell of wet dog. When you hate dogs, you know the smell.

I stopped. Where was the smell coming from? As I glanced over my shoulder, five big black dogs stood on the sidewalk behind me. Crap.

Thanks to my recent encounter with a huge black animal, I froze. I could stay really still and hope a squirrel ran across the road to attract their attention, or I could make a run for it.

I looked down at my tennis shoes. My left one was untied. Great. I was toast all over again.

The leader, or at least the one in the front, barked a bark that shattered the silence of the street around us and started towards me.

My instincts took over. I turned swiftly and ran. All about the flight response.

Stride after stride, I didn’t think. I just ran. Taking in deep breaths and pumping my arms. Even over the blood racing through my ears, I could hear the howling and snarling behind me.

They were keeping pace with me. I couldn’t outrun a pack of dogs. What was I thinking?

I took a hard left down the main street into the neighborhood. There had to be people here somewhere.
God Dammit, Chaz, the one time I need you,
I cursed.

Heavy panting crept behind me and teeth ripped into my jersey pants. My heel caught the beast in jaw and I heard the familiar pop of teeth on teeth and little whimper. Take that, Fido.

The other four didn’t break formation. They took turns snapping at the edge of my shirt, the side of my pants. I swatted them away the best I could.

I had the distinct feeling that they were enjoying this. Their barks were not of terror but of pure enjoyment.

I pushed the thoughts from my head. They were dogs, stupid, flea-ridden mongrels who could probably smell the peanut butter on my hands from my lunch of ants on a log.

Suddenly, a little girl rode into my path on her little pink bike with white streamers. At this speed, I couldn’t stop.

Instinct took hold. I leapt from the sidewalk and flew over the girl, size ten out before me, the other tucked up underneath me like an Olympic hurdler.

I didn’t feel myself hit the pavement. I barely felt the impact of the concrete beneath my feet. I was moving. And it felt good.

The dog’s heavy breathing faded away and all I felt was the wind in my face and smell of the outside air. It called to me. Called me to go faster. Called me to let go and run faster.

The greens of the grass blurred past, the cars on the street were streaks of reds and blues in my visions. I was the wind.

And then I was almost a pancake.

And then I saved a little boy’s life.

And then I was Violet, Action girl, with a broken ankle.