Feral Pride (24 page)

Oh, sweet baby Jesus. It’s Governor “Laughin’ Linnie” Lawson. Her throat and face are a mess of meat. She’s lurching in our direction.

“Zombie?” Clyde reaches into the pocket of his harem pants and hits a key on his phone. “Uh, what do we know about zombies?”

“NO WORRIES,”
Clyde says, pocketing his phone again. “Kieren says zombies just shuffle around and moan. We can forget . . . uh-oh.”

Triangle patterns appear around the governor’s eyes; her ears extend into horns. Her head flattens and widens, causing her tall light-brown wig to topple. Her red suit splits at the seams, and her taupe pumps fall away as she transforms from woman to snake. Another shape-changer, another demon like Seth. They look exactly alike, except her eyes are a milky yellow, not orange. She exclaims, “What have you done to Daddy?”

“Not a zombie,” Clyde concludes.

Yoshi lunges for the sword and dislodges it from Seth’s tail, severing the flaming part from the rest of him. What remains is scorched but no longer on fire.

Yoshi glances at the now-glowing weapon in his hand like he’s not sure he made the right call. Two demons, one holy sword. He swings wide at Lawson’s gyrating torso, mindful of her descending fangs. Meanwhile, Seth gives up pretending to be a weresnake, and before we know it, both demons are two, no, three times their initial size, nearly thirty feet tall. Seth’s headset mic has snapped in half and come tumbling off. He’s still lightning fast, but still down to one fang, one horn. He looks lopsided, and he’s off-balance on his tail stub.

“Why didn’t you help me?” Seth exclaims, dancing to avoid Yoshi’s blade. “I could’ve been destroyed by holy flame!” The demons slither around us. “I’ll be the punch line at every comedy club in Lucifer’s capital city!”

“I was busy.” Lawson captures me in her tail. “I was pretending to be dead!”

I’m lifted off my feet as Seth informs his spawn, “I was screaming ‘holy fire’! You have to learn to pay attention. We don’t excuse ADD in hell!”

I can hear my friends yelling my name, cursing the demons.

“But I was doing such a good job.” Lawson swings her head so we’re nose to nose. Her breath is rank. Her eyes are gleaming. I could reach out and caress her horns. She adds, “I fooled all of them. I could’ve been president of the United States someday!” Then, noticing the crosses tattooed around my neck, she jerks back. Her grip tightens, squeezing air from my lungs.

“A demon world leader?” Seth mocks. “How unoriginal! Have you never heard of Ivan the Terrible, Idi Amin, Andrew Jackson? It’s like your banal circus concept all over again.”

Lawson tries to defend herself. “Boreal liked —”

“Boreal doesn’t matter,” Seth rants on. “The aborted police sweeps, the FHPU, it’s been one mess after another with you.”

Trying to save me, Clyde leaps to rake his claws down Lawson’s scaly belly. “Retract your fur!” I choke out. “Show your crosses! Show —”

Seth pierces Clyde’s shoulder with his poisonous fang.

YOSHI NICKS LAWSON
with the sword. The demon wails. Flames
whoosh
up. “Aimee!”

Yoshi’s knees buckle. He’d been trying to save her. Instead, she’s lost to the blaze.

Clyde’s been impaled, poisoned. The demons give us no chance to grieve. Yoshi struggles to hold them both at bay while covering me. He slices Lawson’s torso, separating Aimee in hopes the flames will dissipate. They do, but too late.

We’ve got to end this now. “Yoshi, give me a boost!”

He holds out his free hand. I step up and, with his added muscle, leap again to an overhead trapeze. Only this time I’m on camera. It’s a showy move.

Tonight we’re heaven’s foot soldiers, battling hell spawn with holy fire. “Hey, Seth!” I shout, swinging back and forth. “Seth, I’ll make you a deal.”

Yoshi pivots with the sword to block Lawson’s fangs, and I drop onto her back, where her head narrows to tail. As she bucks, I sink in my left claws to hang on. “Yoshi, the sword!”

He tosses the weapon, hilt first, to me, and I stretch to make the catch, right-handed.

Yoshi’s defenseless now. I’ve got to make this work.

I rest the edge of the blade against Lawson’s blotchy scales. They smolder. “What are you doing?” she exclaims. “What have you done to my alluring tail?”

Snake demons trade in children? Time to talk to Seth about his. “Seth,” I begin again. “If you never again target, torment, or even annoy shifters,
Homo sapiens
, or . . .” Why not? “Any closely related species, then I won’t behead Lawson.”

“That’s
not
my name,” she pipes up like it’s important at the moment. “Let history show I am Til’tehxya, Intern of Discord. Disguised as Lawson, I have endured nagging media and blah chicken dinners, and no matter what incantation I try, I always get a run in my panty hose.”

“Go ahead,” Seth says. “Behead her.” Beneath my thighs, I feel Til’s scales adjust in response. He adds, “She’s whiny, always making excuses, and I have fifty thousand more spawn roaming Lucifer’s capital, including a favored eighteen who’ve been admitted to university.” He sounds sincerely proud of that, like it’s on the bumper sticker of his hell mobile. “Two Chaos majors, three in Bigotry, one in Culinary Arts, and a dozen in Negative Self-Esteem.”

“Culinary Arts?” Yoshi echoes. He’s kneeling by Clyde, who’s reaching toward the smoky fire that’s consumed Aimee.

“Everybody’s got to eat,” Seth quips. “Counteroffer: Let me go. Call off your second front outside the amphitheater, and I’ll leave
Homo sapiens
,
Homo shifters
, and
Homo deific
to create discord wholly of their own making. You hardly need my help anyway.”

We’ve already lost Aimee and Quincie, too. We have to get Clyde to a healer. My stomach clenches, and the skin breaks again. “It’s a deal,” I announce. “You can go.”

As Seth shoots out of the amphitheater, Til tries once more to buck me off. “We can talk about this,” she pleads. “We can make a deal. Do you have a pet? A kitten or puppy? I’d be happy to talk about —”

Puppy
? The blade bursts into flames as I shove it through her reptilian neck. No way is that satanic freak going anywhere near Peso.

LAWSON’S SEVERED HEAD
smacks the ground, and Kayla leaps, graceful, to my side. She uses the flaming sword to split Lawson’s pale belly from the base to the charred tip of her tail. Then Kayla rushes to what remains of Seth’s flesh around Aimee’s body.

“Aimee,” Clyde gasps. “Get her away from that thing.”

His Lion-form face dissolves to human, his expression contorted in pain. I snatch a scrap of fallen red linen that used to be the governor’s lapel. “All clear,” I say into the mic. “Forget the fleeing monster. We need a healer — now!” We need more than that — an incantation, a full-blown spell.

Whatever works, or we’re going to lose Clyde, too.

Kayla returns the sword to me and uses her bare hands to tear ashy demon meat from Aimee’s face. “It’s not hot. She’s not burned.” The Cat girl sounds mystified. “She’s alive!”

“Tell Aimee . . .” Clyde’s eyelids flutter shut. “Tell her . . .”

His blood has bloomed to cover his heart.

“Tell her
what
?” I ask, grasping his hand. “Come on, man. Stay with me.”

The medical team swarms in, their identities protected by masks, and we’re pushed out of the way. Mrs. Morales mutters, “We’ve got no antivenom for that thing.” She kneels.
“
Clyde!”

“What?” Aimee’s voice sounds soft and small. Kayla helps her to her feet.

Holding each other, we watch and wait, helpless.

“She saved him last time,” Aimee whispers. “Miz Morales brought him out of the coma.” In the months since, Clyde has lived a lifetime. He found passion in Noelle, love in Aimee, and not only the Lion but the man within. On the biggest, best adventures of my life, Clyde was the guy by my side.

Mrs. Morales looks up at us through tears and shakes her head. Aimee collapses against me. I hate that the world’s watching. I call, “Cut the transmission.”

“No,” Kayla says. “Don’t. Clyde died
pretending
to be somebody else, and the demons used it against him. Don’t you see? The problem isn’t who and what we are. It’s the lies, the apologies, the pretenses . . . No matter the consequences, God made us this way. We’re glorious.”

Before I can stop her, the Cat girl steps up to address the cameras. “Hello, world. My name is Kayla Morgan. I’m from Pine Ridge, Texas, and I’m a werecat. An
Acinonyx jubatus sapiens.
You’ve seen me before on TV or on the Internet.

“I’m sure you’re confused, possibly even frightened. That’s because you don’t understand. Listen to me. I’m going to explain what just happened. I’m going to explain the difference between a horror and a hero.”