Feral Pride

  Leander glances at his gaudy watch. “It’s even allowed him to infiltrate shape-shifter communities. This isn’t the first time he’s pretended to be a weresnake. He’s indulged his hunger for attention, traveling with shifter-owned sideshows and carnivals.”

  I’m reminded of the “Man-Eating Snake” carnival poster in Granny Z’s cabin. The two snake figures on the Pine Ridge carousel. “Sure, but in battle —”

  “It was Seth . . . or another demon of his ilk . . . who assassinated civil-rights leader Palpate Kith,” the king declares. “Should Seth slay you, masquerading as me, how will I explain myself to other werepeople, to the Pride?”

  “Tell them you came back from the dead,” I reply. “That’ll do wonders for your rep.”

  Leander’s already rocking a major Aslan complex.

  To: Joshua

  From: Michael

  Date: Sunday, April 27

  Please be informed that your Appeal to a Refusal of a Petition for Intervention: Order Arch has been denied.

  The situation you describe does not constitute a Class-A-level emergency, directly involving Lucifer himself and, therefore, meriting the involvement of an archangel.

  With regard to your argument, I am well aware that the archangel Zachary revealed himself to destroy the minor hell-spawn Duane in the underground parking lot of Whole Foods corporate headquarters in February.

  However, Zachary is on personal leave. As such, I am temporarily overseeing matters related to those guardians, like you, who’re assigned to neophyte vampires still in possession of their souls.

  In Zachary’s absence, I deem his action constituted an exercise in managerial discretion rather than a binding procedural precedent and, once again, refuse your request.

  LYING ON THE KING-SIZE BED, staring at the dimly lit ceiling, I’m afraid to sleep and afraid not to. It’s almost daybreak, and the governor is supposed to die during prime time tonight.

  I wonder if Dad will return Junior in time for the show. It’s clear now that he’s known for some time that my friends and I were on Boreal’s hit list. I’m glad that Clyde doesn’t trust my father. I only hope my friends will protect the snowboy and hear him out.

  My in-room landline has been cut off, but otherwise Whispering Pines makes for a plush prison. Snowmen escorted me back to my suite. They stand guard outside the door and beneath my balcony. None of the chipped shifter employees we passed reacted to the sight of them, and all of the MCC executives have vacated the property.

  The knock at the door is a surprise. It’s such a polite gesture, a knock.

  I didn’t undress for bed, and I don’t pretend by throwing on a robe. I check the peephole and open the door to Boreal, cleaning his spectacles.

  “Uh-hem,” he begins. “Crystal requested you.”

  “Her name is Drifa,” Crystal tells me. The snowwoman is breast-feeding in a lounge chair, her furry feet propped up on a lime-green-and-peach striped ottoman.

  The fourteen-and-a-half-pound baby, Drifa, has huge blue eyes and is enormous for a newborn. So is the diaper made from a hotel pillowcase. “She looks like you,” I say.

  I’m leaving Boreal, who already took off, out of it. They’re used to living with human servants. I should know. For a while, I was one of them.

  On the island, Crystal never would’ve bothered having a conversation with me. Here, she offered to split her special-order yak breakfast quesadillas from room service. Maybe she’s lonely for feminine companionship. She (and now Drifa) are the only females of her species I’ve ever seen. The guards and medical team are all men.

  “Yes,” Crystal agrees. “She has a proper coat of fur.” She scowls. “But I don’t.”

  Crystal gestures to a cosmetics case on the dresser. “Bring that over here and open it up.”

  We’re on the top floor of the new lodging building. It features the same kind of colorful blown-glass art and framed sepia photos as the hotel. From what she tells me, the lower levels are more utilitarian, with cheap linens and rooms a fifth the square footage of this one. I pause at the sliding-glass door to the only balcony and its view of the river and wooded grounds. The winding, hilly drive from the highway to the resort took the limo a little over five minutes. The state park is on the other side of the water.

  “You don’t want to do that, pet,” Crystal warns me. “Boreal has werepredators patrolling the forest. The flat-headed werepeccaries are especially vicious, and you are a weak, pink-skinned human, so much ugly skin. It’s better that you concentrate on grooming me instead.”

  What’s a Peccary? Does she mean a werejavelina? And my pink skin is not ugly. It’s just not covered with hair. Furry Crystal, on the other hand, has no use for foundation, eye shadow, lipstick, or blush. Instead, her case is packed with brushes and accessories — sparkly barrettes, rolls of ribbons, fabric and metal and rhinestone headbands, and an array of head wraps.

  I skirt around the chair and set to work on her spiral curls. I hope she doesn’t expect me to brush out the fur all over her body. I have zero desire to tackle butt tangles.

  I imagine the snowpeople living in high-tech underground ice palaces, but I have only the faintest idea of what their society might be like. At the same time, I can see they’re desperate to unravel ours. The suite is littered with news, sports, celebrity, and fashion magazines.

  “Will you leave the resort, now that you’ve had the baby?”

  “We would, if Junior hadn’t run off. A handpicked management team is scheduled to arrive at dawn to program the werebeast workers with a new control word and reopen the resort. We have to vacate by then regardless.” Crystal sighs. “Unfortunately, your great minds are closing in on us Homo deific.” She says “great minds” like the concept is absurd. “However, if Boreal and I return home with Junior, having secured MCC’s financial future, our losses at Daemon Island will be irrelevant. It will be dismissed for what it was, a pet project gone awry.”

  Never mind the millions Daemon Island made or the werepeople who were murdered there. . . . Boil it down and Boreal’s approach here is much the same. Only now he’s doing it on a bigger scale, through a pseudo-legit operation, and expanding his market.

  “Junior referred to you, a human girl, as his friend.” Crystal sounds puzzled by the notion. Does she realize he was raised by a fortune-telling werecat? If so, has she considered what that might mean to him? Granny Z may have left Junior to marry the Old Alligator Man, but she loved the kid. For years she protected him, and now that I think about it, she didn’t leave him alone in the world. She left him with me, Clyde, Yoshi, and Kayla.

  Crystal adds, too casually, “By any chance, do you know where he ran off to?”

  “How do you know the Peccaries didn’t get him?” I sound more nonchalant than I feel. I considered the possibility that Junior might be overwhelmed by his mission, that my friends wouldn’t trust him. It never occurred to me that he might not have made it off the property alive.

  “He is no intruder werebeast,” Crystal replies. “No mere human.” She strokes the fur on her baby’s forehead. “The shifter vermin in the forest have been programmed to do no harm to Homo deific.”

  Which means Junior could leave and return safely, but . . . “What about my dad?”

  She ignores the question. Of course if Dad tries to return but doesn’t make it to the amphitheater, they’ll still have Junior back and me to do with whatever they want. For the foreseeable future, it looks like playing nanny may be my only way to stay alive.

  I trade out the paddle brush for a wide-tooth comb and try again. “Why did Boreal choose Seth to summon in the first place?” I’m not an expert on demons, but there’s clearly a variety of them. “Y’all are pretty committed to a low-profile lifestyle, and if you’ll excuse me for saying so, he’s kind of a show-off.”

  “What an astute question!” she exclaims. “Pet, you are a bright one!”

  I paste a smile on my face and keep brushing.

  “Boreal meant well,”
she explains. “He always does. Every type of hell spawn has its own bailiwick. The ancient stories tell us that Seth’s mission is to sow hostilities between the species of man, which seemed compatible with our various enterprises around the globe.”

  “But Homo deific are a species of man,” I point out.

  “We’re only distantly related to humans.” She laughs out loud. “You are all such children. We recall a time when Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis edged on breeding compatibility. Like horses and donkeys. Our species is further apart from yours than that.”

  Is it? I’m tempted to ask her about the “breeding compatibility” of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo deific, but it’s smarter to keep my mouth shut.

  “Boreal had every intention of riding herd over that vile creature on the assumption that I would agree to surrendering our offspring in trade.” Sobering, Crystal reaches into the case, plucks out an oh-so-darling sparkly green barrette, and snaps it around a lock on top of Drifa’s head. She adds, “Homo sapiens cannot be trusted with primary guardianship of this planet. We have no choice but to manipulate your society’s commercial and political systems to improve your environmental protocols. Once werebeasts become a servant caste, we’ll all be relieved of fairly compensating them. Those profits will buy the influence we need.”

  Slave caste is more like it. She may have a point about the environment. I could see where global warming would panic snowpeople. But the ends don’t excuse the means.

  Her matted fur is sticky. Ew, is this pink stuff bubble gum?

  “We’re not inhumane,” Crystal concludes. “We’ll provide food, shelter, do selective breeding. They’ll be given no reason to rebel like on Daemon Island.”

  No free will to rebel either, what with the brain chips. Was this how I sounded to Clyde? I shouldn’t antagonize her. I can’t help myself. “Would you want to be selectively bred?”

  “I was,” she replies, steepling her thick fingers. “My mother chose Boreal for me because of his ambition, imagination, and work ethic.” The baby starts fussing. “She believed his interest in demonology would prove useful. She agreed with him that deepening the divisions between your people and the werebeasts would prove profitable. I would have selected someone with better eyesight and more pronounced genitals.”

  Gah. I have no idea what to say to that, but she’s still talking. “The only reason I’ve come along on these past two endeavors is that he cannot be trusted to act unsupervised. Once Boreal has made amends to the Assembly of Matrons, I will personally tutor Junior to be presented to highborn peerage females. He lacks sophistication, even by what I understand to be human standards.”

  Assembly of Matrons? As in ladies? Female Homo deific are the dominant gender?

  “Poor Frore,” I reply, remembering that he was her brother and Boreal’s cousin (small gene pool). The funeral pyre must still be fresh on her mind. On the island, Crystal took up for Frore when the males clashed. “He certainly paid for Boreal’s ambition.”

  “Yes.” She gently bounces Drifa to soothe her. “Such a loss.”

  I reach for a round brush. “After he agreed to be implanted with a brain chip, too.”

  Suddenly, I have Crystal’s undivided attention. “What are you talking about?”

  I take my time, smoothing curls at the base of her thick neck. “It was in the news,” I explain. “When his body was found on that life raft and brought to scientists. They discovered the chip when they examined his remains.”

  Crystal stands without warning and plops the baby against my chest. “Take Drifa to the bathroom. She needs to be changed. Be certain to wash all of the excrement from her privates.”

  I’m going to count that as a win anyway.

  To: Michael

  From: Zachary

  Date: Monday, April 28

  Thanks for babysitting my guardians while I’m on leave during my honeymoon.

  My assistants Vesper and Nigel have sent word that, despite our understanding, you blew off forwarding me any nonroutine formal requests from the angel Joshua.

  I know my personal appearance in the Whole Foods parking lot was in violation of The Archangels’ Code of Conduct, and I’ve apologized to the Big Boss for that.

  But guess what? Under those same guidelines, I can still do whatever I want when it comes to my own weapon. So I’ve lent my holy sword to my former assignment, the vampire Quincie P. Morris. She has previously wielded it successfully and can be counted on to be discreet.

  Besides, there’s nothing you can do to stop me because you’re not my supervisor anymore.

  P.S. On behalf of my bride, ascended soul Miranda Shen McAlister, the monogrammed towel set is “lovely and most appreciated.”

  AT THE HIDEOUT HOUSE, we use Joshua’s odor-free soap and shampoo. We brush our teeth with baking soda. It’s nothing we haven’t been doing every day, a couple of times a day, since returning to Austin. Except this time, Kayla and I pull on charcoal-lined black T-shirts and tear-away warm-up pants, washed in hunter’s detergent. We tug on running boots.

  We’re soldiers now.

  It’s a hair past sundown at Pine Ridge R&R, a bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of Kayla’s hometown. A half-dozen log cabins are appointed with copper birdbaths and river-rock stepping-stones. Paper lanterns hang from branches. “This was my mother’s big listing,” Kayla says, undoing her seat belt. “It’s been on the market at 1.2 million since last fall.”

  “I bet the interfaith coalition bought it,” Clyde muses aloud in the backseat.

  Next to a converted barn with a screened-in porch, five SUVs are parked side by side. They’re big; they’re expensive. They can each comfortably transport several werebears. Next to Quincie’s yellow convertible, another long, low vehicle is covered by an army-green tarp.

  I say what we’re all thinking. “Aimee should’ve checked in by now.”

  “Aimee never should’ve left with her asshat father in the first place,” Clyde grumbles.

  I glare at him in the rearview mirror. “If you hadn’t —”

  “It’s none of your damn —”

  “Enough!” Kayla scolds. “You can argue about it after we’re all dead.”

  I park my car alongside Quincie’s, graze Kayla’s wrist with my fingertips, and get out.

  Grams bursts from the porch at the same time. She’s leading three dozen men and women, most of them shifters, dressed like us and carrying gas masks. Five — make that six — are buck naked and empty-handed. They look alike — protruding noses, weak chins, and bony shoulders.

  Werebirds. Before our eyes, feathers sprout from their skin, their arms contort, their legs retract, and beaks erupt from their faces. Their scent becomes fishier, brine and yeast. It’ll take a few moments for their feathers to dry.

  As Clyde climbs out of the backseat, my nose takes inventory of my allies . . . slightly more men than women (two who’re menstruating, nobody who’s pregnant), a handful of old folks. Most of those suited up are werebears, including Zaleski, plus Wertheimer, a weretiger couple, three pygmy wereelephants, a couple of Buffalo I recognize from a bar fight (no hard feelings), Leander’s Liger, the Armadillo king Karl Richards, along with four of his personal Dillo guards, and a werebeaver, which doesn’t sound intimidating until you imagine the world’s largest rodent gunning for your ass.

  Then there are the humans — Freddy, Roberto Morales, and others I don’t recognize. A skinny guy in a turban is bent over a leather-bound book, whispering to a woman wearing a Waterloo High T-shirt. I make out the words foretold and sacrifice.

  Because I’ve only seen him on television, it takes me a moment to place the man in the rumpled suit, carrying a briefcase. That’s Aimee’s dad, Graham Barnard.

  Clyde recognizes him right away. “Where is she?”

  Barnard holds the case over his chest like a shield. “I had to leave her. Seth and Boreal would’ve killed us both if I hadn’t —”

  Clyde’s in mid-spring, his clawed hands extendin
g toward Barnard’s throat, when Grams’s boot meets his gut. The Wild Card goes down hard, skidding on the gravel drive.

  She snarls, “If that’s the best you’ve got, boy, it’s a good thing you’re the one riding in fancy.” Before I can say anything, she gets in my face. “Be grateful I don’t kick you for taking my truck without permission.”

  Freddy offers Clyde a hand up. “Noelle, would you come with us, too?” He leads them toward the building, calling, “Mr. Barnard? This way, please.”

  “About Aimee,” I begin. “What —?”

  “So far as we know,” Freddy says, “she’s alive and will remain so until she can be rescued from the discord demon and the Homo deific.”

  Quincie — ungodly sexy (and Joan of Arc) in a hooded chain-mail jacket over her black clothes — holds the door for them as she exits the porch.

  Blocking my way, Grams points at Kayla. “It’s past time you high-tailed it home, young lady. I promised your parents we’d have you back by now.”

  “What?” Kayla exclaims, reaching for my hand. “No, I’m going with Yoshi.”

  Grams will hear none of it. “You’re not ready for this, little girl. Take a look around. These people are professional law enforcement, trained private security, and seasoned interfaith coalition operatives, many of them former military.”

  “What about Yoshi?” Kayla counters.

  Grams looks me up and down. “Yoshi survived the jungle hunt on Daemon Island, and nobody cares much whether he lives or dies except his big sister, but she’s biased.”

  “I care,” Kayla protests, and I stroke the back of her hand with my thumb.

  “Well, then.” Grams gets in her face. “You want to get Yoshi killed, protecting you? Because, believe me, he’s stupid enough to do that.”

  I am. I really am. I’m also distracted by the Birds. How does the old saying go? If it walks like a wereduck and talks like a wereduck . . . Not that there’s such a thing as a wereduck anyway. They’ve shifted enough that I can make out their species — six turkey werevultures and ten wereteratorns. The Vultures are local. Their heads are red, and their dark wings appear tipped in white. Teratorns are originally out of Argentina, distantly related to an ancestor of the condor that died out in the late Miocene. Their human-form noses are ginormous, and their bird-form wings span up to thirty feet.