Feral Pride (8 page)

I’m on the third stair when I hear the knock. Joshua takes his time answering. I’ve reached the master bathroom when the pounding begins.

Running water mostly drowns out Joshua’s enthusiastic greeting as I shimmy out of my clothes and under the spray. I picked Nora’s bathroom on purpose. The chef has a passion for heavily aromatic bath products. Apple-scented shampoo, black orchid body wash. Perfect.

I hurry to lather and rinse. I slip on her heavy robe and tie the terry-cloth belt tight. I have to lift it to keep from tripping as I scamper back downstairs, where — as feared — Joshua is offering an angelic, dimpled smile to two 350-plus-pound men I assume are werebears and an officious-looking twit in an FHPU uniform. Joshua’s managed to hold them at the front step.

“We received a tip that the owner of this home, one Quincie P. Morris, under the legal guardianship of Meara and Dr. Roberto Morales, employs a Clyde Gilbert at her restaurant up the street,” reports a thin male voice. “Do you know him? Has he been here recently?”

Playing dumb, Joshua asks, “What has the boy done wrong?”

No answer. Addressing his burly companions, Agent Masters asks, “What do you smell?”

“Cats, fresh, one’s off somehow . . .” is the answer. “Wolf, and lots of it. But less recent.”

“I’d love to let you inside, Agent Masters,” Joshua says, covering his phone with one hand. “But you can’t be too careful these days. You don’t have a warrant, and I’ve never heard of the Federal Humanity Protection Unit. Funny thing, my state senator’s office hasn’t either.”

Huh?
Go
, Joshua. Come to think of it, we’ve heard no mention of the FHPU in the media. It could be some shadow agency within the government — very Men in Black.

As I come up behind him, Joshua’s tone is upbeat. “I’m trying the
Capital City News
now.”

I ask, “Are these men harassing you?”

Joshua holds up a finger. “Yes,” he says into the phone. “News desk, please.”

“Who’re you?” The fed peers at my fresh-scrubbed face. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Joshua is talking to someone at the newspaper who’s trying to pull up the FHPU on the Web. “That’s right,” he answers. “Private property, and they don’t have a warrant.”

The agent draws his handgun. “End the call.”

Joshua does. He raises his hands, stepping in front of me. Are we the first to doubt this so-called FHPU? No. Back in Pine Ridge, Sheriff Bigheart ran into them, and then he and Jess made sure we escaped. Joshua says, “Now, let’s be reasonable, gentlemen. You don’t —”

The twit fires his weapon, hitting Joshua in the chest. The shot may be quiet — silencer — but my scream sure isn’t. I can’t help it. It’s horrible. It’s blasphemous.

Joshua staggers back from the impact, collapsing into my arms. He’s a tall, muscular guy, and it’s all I can do to break his fall. I glance up, and the gun’s pointed at me.

I brace myself, but Clyde, Kayla, and Yoshi drop in full feline forms from the roof, landing hard on Masters and the Bears. A huge risk in a residential neighborhood in the light of day. Pound for pound, a werecat — even a Lion — is no match for a Bear, but my friends have speed and surprise on their side. In the fray, the door slams shut with everybody inside.

I lunge over Joshua, trying to shield him from further damage.

It ends fast. In seconds Agent Masters is unconscious, and the Bears are in chains kept stored in the attic. Yoshi’s able to quickly retract his hands to snap the locks in place.

When Clyde raises a clawed paw to strike a Bear, I yell, “Don’t! It’s not their fault!” At least it may not be, if their behavior can be explained by neural implants. They look lost, baffled. Like somebody pulled the plug. The FHPU didn’t give them orders for this scenario.

Yoshi chokes out, “Apply pressure!”

Yes. Right. That’s what they do on TV when someone is shot. I press down with my palm, and it’s instantly drenched in blood. Meanwhile, my other friends’ bodies rearrange. Their bones grind, contract, lengthen, and snap. Their flesh twists like Silly Putty and glistens with a slippery liquid unique to
Homo shifters.
The scent is like a mix of mud and trees and sweat.

Yoshi finishes first and with the least obvious pain. He hurries to bring me fresh kitchen towels to use as a compress. Then he gags the Bears with two more.

I slide Joshua’s phone across the floor toward him. “Call Quincie!”

“Quincie?” Yoshi’s naked, gleaming. “Shouldn’t we call 911?”

Am I sure Joshua is an angel? Yes, yes, I am. What’s more, Oliver told us to lose our phones. We’ve got to be more careful. “No,
get
Quincie.” We’re at her house, off Congress and Academy, near the state school for the deaf. Sanguini’s is only a few blocks south of here.

Joshua whispers, “It’ll heal on its own. Take a little time, but . . .” There’s so much blood, it’s hard to tell if the bullet missed his heart.

Yoshi still isn’t convinced, and I don’t blame him. “I’ve got this,” I lie. I honestly don’t know how an angel’s physiology might differ from a human’s, but I’m sure we don’t want modern medicine trying to figure it out.

“If you say so.” The Cat jumps over Joshua, offering an eyeful of his jiggling man parts (I’ll
never
be as casual about nudity as the shifters are).

Clyde sits up, a whole lot of naked himself. “This FHPU jerk reeks of yeti.”

Kayla, panting, confirms, “He’s right.”

“Grab his keys,” I say. The Bears could tell Joshua’s no shifter. They couldn’t know he’s an angel, which means the FHPU is willing to murder anyone, even a human who gets in their way. If not for my friends, I might be dead.

“Yoshi,” I add. “You move Masters’s car . . . out of the driveway. Into the neighborhood, not too close to Sanguini’s. Then fetch Quincie.” I catch myself saying “fetch” to a wereperson and feel lousy about it. A least Yoshi’s not a Wolf.

The Cat doesn’t seem to notice, though, and is dressed and gone by the time naked Clyde and naked Kayla are steady on their feet. Kayla grabs for the Mexican blanket folded across a nearby tufted chair and wraps herself in it. “Your friend needs emergency medical help, Aimee!”

I wish I could explain. “Easy,” I whisper to Joshua, mesmerized by the blood. “You’ll be okay.” Or at least he said so, and I have faith in him. Angels are supposed to be immortal, but if they’re corporeal, they can be hurt. Badly. “You’re going to be okay, aren’t you?”

CLIMBING THE STAIRS,
Aimee scolds, “Don’t drop him!”

“I’m
not
going to drop him.” I’m carrying Joshua. She’s applying pressure to his wound. It would help if hanging baskets didn’t stick out from the walls at weird angles. Or if his legs were shorter.

I’m pissed that Joshua got shot, but he’s an eternal being. Aimee could’ve died. My family — my baby sibs — they got an at-home visit, too. Wereopossums are known to be skittish. But not when cornered or when there are young to protect. Things could’ve gotten ugly fast.

If anything happens to any of them, so help me, I would kill again. There was this human woman, a hunter, on Daemon Island. Rich, like all of them. A sorceress. She shot Yoshi. He walked away with a scratch, but she was shooting to kill. No, worse than that. She was shooting for trophies. Werewolf heads above the mantle. A werebear-skin rug in front of the fireplace. A Tasmanian weredevil stole.

I didn’t mean for it to happen. I started out a broken-down wereopossum. I was caged and useless. The arctic asshats had taken away my crutches. They separated me from all the other captive shifters except Noelle. She was caged alongside me because they planned to breed her.

Noelle’s explosive sex appeal, along with the threat of a quickly spreading fire, triggered my first transformation to Lion form. I hauled ass into the jungle to rescue the hunted. What I didn’t know was that they’d constructed and camouflaged Burmese tiger pits. I pounced to stop the hunter-sorceress from firing again. She fell into one of the traps. I’ll never forget her scream or the way it cut short. She was skewered like a pincushion. One of the sharpened sticks went right through the back of her neck and exited her throat with a chunk of tongue on it.

An accident, sure, but it was still my responsibility. I don’t regret what happened. Not exactly. She was a murderer. I acted to defend the others. But, bottom line, I’ve taken a mortal life. On some cosmic level, I’m in the minus column. The freaking least I can do is not drop a bleeding angel of the Lord God.

“Careful around the corner,” Aimee nags as I turn into Nora’s room. There’s a photo of her son on the dresser. Ferns hang in the windows. Notes from the Sanguini’s cookbook are scattered all over her desk. The Moraleses became Quincie’s guardians last fall after her uncle died. They were willing to let her stay here, so long as Nora moved in to serve as the responsible adult. It’s the only bedroom in the house with an attached bath.

“Should we have moved him?” Aimee asks. “We shouldn’t have moved him.”

It’s too late to worry about that now. Joshua’s out of it, muttering about “brushing the warhorses” and playing Pictionary with someone named Idelle.

“Wait!” Aimee whisks away Nora’s lacy bedspread, embroidered with bluebonnets. The sheets will be trashed by blood regardless. The mattress, too.

As I lay down the angel, Aimee rushes to the adjacent bathroom for fresh towels. Yoshi hasn’t come back yet. Kayla’s getting dressed. I already threw my clothes back on.

“Joshua?” It’s Quincie’s voice, from downstairs. She marches through the door before Aimee or I can reply. Preternaturally fast. Quincie’s eyes are red. Her Wolf’s down, now her angel, too. “I’ll take care of him,” she announces with fangs barred. “I’ll —”

I slap her face. Hard. “Snap out of it!”

Aimee charges out of the bathroom.
“Clyde!”

Quincie lifts me by the forearms. A full mane sprouts from my head. My saber teeth descend. “Mif o’ ’op o’ ebrythin’ else, ooo loose or mole, we are oyally kewed.”

“What was that?” Quincie turns to Aimee with a raised brow.

“He’s trying to say that if on top of everything else, you lose your soul, we are totally screwed,” my girlfriend translates. “Or maybe ‘royally screwed.’ But his throat has shifted too far for him to articulate it.”

Quincie sets me aside — like I’m nothing — and rushes to Joshua. She takes her guardian’s hand. She brushes his dreadlocks out of his eyes. He’s a holy being. A lesser vampire, a soulless one, couldn’t touch his blood-stained skin. Not without being destroyed. Quincie is special.

Whatever. I made my point.

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE KITCHEN,
Clyde and I try to sell Kayla on the idea that Joshua doesn’t need a doctor or, for that matter, the undivided attention of an entire ER. “Joshua is . . . robust,” I say. “It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

“Uh-huh.” It was Kayla who cleaned up the not-insignificant puddle of blood on the hardwood floor. Rinsing the mop, she asks, “How dumb do you two think I —”

“Shh!” Clyde cocks his head. “Someone’s coming. It’s not Yoshi.”

“What now?” the Cat girl whispers.

The sharp knock at the back door is impatient. This time it’s a friend. Meara Morales, Kieren’s mother. Quincie must’ve called her. Miz Morales barely nods at us before jogging upstairs with her worn leather doctor’s bag. Miz Morales isn’t supposed to know what Joshua is either, but at this point, that’s between her, Quincie, and God.

“Everything’s fine now,” I announce to Kayla. “Miz Morales is an amazing healer. She brought Clyde out of a coma last fall.” I don’t mention that the spell she used blew the roof off of her house. Repairs were finished only a few weeks ago.

“You were in a
coma
?” Kayla exclaims. “What happened?”

“It’s been a hell of a year,” he replies.

A few minutes later, Miz Morales returns with her bag. “Joshua’s passed out from the shock, which is a mercy. I created a patch. It’ll hold him until I can figure out something better. For now, I’ve left Quincie in charge.” It’s an alpha female werepredator tone (with the barest trace of her Irish homeland), and none of us question her. I’m sure that “temporary patch” is mystical in nature.

I introduce Miz Morales to Kayla. I don’t have to explain the Cat-Wolf part. Their noses will tell them that. “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” the Cat girl says.