"So, are we cool?"
"Yeah. Totally cool, but I thought-"
"Coffee?" a wavering voice called out.
I looked around and remembered the little old lady. I"d have to ask Danni what she was talking about later.
"Coffee"s coming right up." I walked to the kitchen for the coffeepot and a mug. When I pushed through the swinging door, I paused.
The kitchen was packed. Jose, his three part-time cooks, t.i.to the dishwasher, Penney, Yana, and Walt from Ultimate were all standing in a huddle, like a group of football players discussing their next move in the middle of the big game. When they noticed me, they all shut up.
"What now?" I asked, my body sagging as if I"d been deflated. Jose and Naalyehe looked at each other, an unspoken agreement pa.s.sing between them.
"How is your arm?" Naalyehe asked, coming over to examine where the coyote"s teeth had grazed it. When I"d come into work that morning, he had seen the scratch and put chewed-up tobacco on it.
As he picked up my hand and made a show of examining my arm, everyone left the kitchen. Even the cooks.
"Don"t draw it out, Naalyehe. Just tell me. Is that poacher guy out of jail, or what?"
"The coyote is the trickster."
I looked at him, trying to figure out what this had to do with anything.
"It is not a good omen," he continued. "It means your life is going to change in unexpected ways."
"And this has to do with ..."
He cleared his throat. "Bridger is back. Jorge, one of the part-time cooks, saw him at the seafood restaurant two days ago and Walt saw him at the health food store today."
"Oh my gosh! Really?" Helium seemed to expand my deflated body. I started fussing with my hair, trying to tuck the stray wisps back into the ponytail. "He might come in tonight to see me ... I mean for dinner.... What is it, Naalyehe?"
Naalyehe was looking down at his scuffed black shoes. A frown creased his mouth. "He was not alone."
I swallowed hard. "What? Who was he with? Alex? Or Kat?"
"Walt has never seen her before. Neither has Jorge."
Her?
"You and Bridger, you were just friends, right?" Naalyehe said, studying my face.
Were just friends? He said it as if Bridger"s and my past was just that: past. "We are friends."
"Good. Because Walt said he and this woman, they acted ... they were kissing in the health food store." Naalyehe scratched his head. "And she had her arms wrapped around his waist and was ... nuzzling ... Bridger"s neck while he examined the organic produce. Magdalena?"
I was gasping for air.
"Maggie Mae?" Naalyehe said, using my real name for the first time since he had employed me. "You said you and Bridger are just friends!"
I nodded and forced my mouth to curve up. "We were. Friends. I"m glad. To know, though. About Bridger. And ... her. Thanks. For telling me," I blurted between gasps.
I turned my back to Naalyehe and took two deep, calming breaths, then tossed the grocery bag with the new jacket to the side of the kitchen. I grabbed the coffeepot and walked out into the packed dining room like a robot. That"s how I was the rest of the night-doing my job, but going through the movements mechanically, as if my conscious mind had shut off and I was on autopilot. Otherwise, I might have broken down in the packed dining room and turned into a puddle of tears.
And if the tourists were still staring at me, I was oblivious.
When Jose called me aside to send me home, I didn"t glance at my watch, so I had no idea what time it was when I walked out of the restaurant carrying my new jacket in its plastic bag. All I knew was my heart felt dead and the moon was pulling at me. Of the two, the broken heart was stronger.
That is when the tears finally started.
I wandered a full mile sobbing, completely oblivious to my surroundings, before I realized that I had missed my turn. I sank to the sidewalk and cradled my head in my hands.
"What is the matter with you, Maggie Mae Mortensen?" I scolded loudly, not caring if anyone was around to hear. With the hem of my shirt, I wiped the tears from my cheeks. "You have been through so much worse than this c.r.a.p! So he has a girlfriend! So what? Pick up your feet and stop moping."
I stood and started backtracking. After fifteen minutes of wandering I realized I was way lost. The urge to sit down on the sidewalk again and just stop existing made it nearly impossible to think. I wanted to die.
The will to survive is one of the strongest instincts a person has. Stronger, I found out, than the desire to die of a broken heart. At that moment, I thought death would have been an easy alternative to what I was suffering. I decided to shift before the moon forced the change out of me. That"s what ended up testing my will.
I stepped into the nearest front yard. The flowers were fragrant and the bushes were thick. I stripped behind those bushes. After putting my clothes into the plastic bag with my new jacket, I stood for a long minute, just feeling the cool, dry, dusty breeze on my naked skin. Then I shifted into the one animal that could make me forget about a broken heart, because when I ran, my aching heart became an afterthought, overpowered by the feel of the world rushing by.
I became a tall, sleek, spotted cheetah, my long tail whipping slowly back and forth, and the world became clear. Instantly I knew how to get home. In fact, I could sense directions, north, east, south, and west. If I wanted to, I could run in a perfectly straight line to anywhere-the North Pole, Bridger"s house, even the mine. I just knew where everything was.
With the grocery bag in my mouth, I dug my hind claws into the gra.s.s and ran.
For a brief second I thought I was the luckiest girl alive.
29.
Night thrived at the mine. Moonlight reflected from the small, abandoned cement buildings on the mountainside. An owl hooted and an intermittent breeze whistled through juniper boughs.
I set my bag of clothes beneath a tree and, on padded paws, slunk between the cement buildings. What I smelled there excited my animal side and chilled my human mind. Traces of blood spattered the ground. I glided from building to building looking for the animal it belonged to, but found nothing.
Hugging the shadows, I loped to the dirt road, sniffed, and found my own scent-human, weak, and almost forgotten. Then I found Bridger"s scent, new and strong, along with another. It was female, masked by perfume, hair spray, and lotion. A low growl rumbled deep in my throat. I ran from that scent.
The night slipped by as I wandered the eerie terrain, discovering the giant holes where the mine had caved in, swallowing the earth"s crust. The holes were dark and silent, yet icy wind poured out of them as if the earth were a living, breathing thing, its breath crying out from haunted depths.
When the moon had moved halfway across the sky, I climbed to the mountaintop that overshadowed the mine and sat with my tail wrapped around my paws, looking down at the small, sparkling city far below. People were the cause of those lights-normal, mundane, happy people who slept, ate, played, worked, and never turned into something as impossible as a cheetah. They got married and started families, went to school, played with friends, had aunts and uncles and grandparents who came over on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
My tail whipped about restlessly. I was so different. Why was I an animal? Had my parents shifted? Did something happen to them because of it? Did other people shift, but were too scared to tell?
For hours I sat on top of that mountain, savoring the feel of the night wind in my fur and staring down at a world that looked so simple from up high. Finally, when I"d had enough solitude, I leaped from the mountaintop and began a downward sprint, ready to go home.
At the mountain"s base, I turned instinctively in the direction of my bag of clothes and started to lope toward it. Tree branches rustled in a breeze that blew from the north. The wind shifted and the world seemed to crumble beneath my paws. I crouched low to the ground and growled an ear-splintering roar that shuddered off the side of the mountain and echoed back.
Something was tainting the air, an odor that turned me into a quivering ma.s.s of fear. I had smelled that horrible stench before, the night I"d been attacked by the pack of wild dogs.
In that moment, I should have run. Instead I cowered. And the mine came alive with crawling movement. Dark, slinking shadows materialized from under trees, behind rocks, out of thickets-stalking me on all sides.
Beneath the glow of the full moon, they appeared to be animals. But I knew better. They moved too stiffly, as if stumbling around on legs without joints. Where their eyes should have been were black, opaque shadows that absorbed the moon"s light instead of reflecting it. Unlike their eyes, their sharp teeth caught the light.
There were groups of wild boars, coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, dogs ... When I saw the wolves walking on their hind legs like men, my blood seemed to thicken and freeze beneath my skin. Werewolves were not the fictional creatures I had always imagined them to be!
As the circle of beasts tightened around me, they began to pant and whine and smack their chops. It was like reliving the day Danni got half the school to turn against me, times one hundred. And this time I wasn"t going to cower.
One animal, a boar with swordlike tusks reflecting moonlight, slipped from the circle and darted toward me. My muscles tensed, ready for a fight, but one of the werewolves pounced on it, picking it up in its front paws and tearing at the boar"s throat with its teeth. The night came alive with the cries of a hundred frenzied animals. As quickly as the noise started, it deadened into silence. The wolf held the boar out and dropped it. Its dead body smacked wetly to the ground, and the scent of fresh blood wafted on the air.
A memory flashed into my head, something so terrible that it had been buried in my brain for thirteen years. My aunt, Effie Reynolds, and her daughter, Lucy, were attacked by a pack of Russian boar when I was five years old. The only reason they hadn"t attacked me, too, is because Aunt Effie pushed me up into the boughs of a st.u.r.dy pine. When she tried to push Lucy up, Aunt Effie was gored in the back. I still remember thinking that the tusk that went completely through her was more like a sword than something jutting out of a giant pig"s face.
Lucy fell to the ground when her mom was gored. The boar killed her instantly. I started screaming and was found within minutes, but it was not soon enough for Aunt Effie to pull through. She hung on to life and died three days later in the hospital. That was the worst day of my life. And the day I met Mr. Petersen.
The memory flashed through my brain in less than a second. I knew these animals. They were the same type of creatures that had killed my family, and now they had found me. Fighting was out of the question. I needed to get away or be slaughtered.
I dug my back paws into the ground, crouched low, and prepared to leap. The deep, gravelly growl of a big cat vibrated in the air and my muscles went slack with fear.
Three huge striped tigers joined the circle of animals, two behind me and one in front. They stood amidst the smaller animals and devoured me with their eyes. The other animals, natural prey of these ma.s.sive cats, showed no fear. They seemed to be bowing. Even the wolves no longer stood on their hind legs, but hunched low to the ground, groveling. My stomach clenched.
The odds of me surviving till sunrise were growing smaller by the second. I could outrun one tiger-at least I hoped I could. But three? And what happened if one got in front of me while the other two were on my flanks? I was a cheetah, made for speed, lean and long. Compared to the bulky, muscular tigers, I was scrawny as a chicken.
The three tigers, as if of one mind, started slowly, silently, to close in on me. Their eyes did not gleam in the moonlight like their glossy coats, but I knew they were staring at me. The weight of that stare was suffocating. With every predatory step they took, my time was running out. Looking at the tigers, I could imagine being scratched to shreds, gnawed to pieces. I was about to die.
And, broken heart or not, I was not ready.
Once again, my hind legs dug into the earth, my claws cutting the ground for purchase. Muscles bunched and strained, and with every ounce of strength I possessed, I leaped, gliding in a giant, soaring arc past the perimeter of the animals. One tiger had antic.i.p.ated my reaction, moving at the exact same instant I had. My body came down on top of it. It felt like landing on stone. Maybe it expected me to fight, because when I pushed off its back to leap again and ran into the trees, it didn"t follow.
Faster than I"d ever run before, I sprinted down the clearest path, a forgotten, wind-rutted dirt road. I heard no pursuit from behind but didn"t dare turn to check-my instincts warned against it. I had to run or die. The road curved to the right, and I followed, though my legs were begging for a rest and fire filled my lungs with every inhale.
In the shapeless shadow of an ancient pine, I paused and scanned my surroundings, desperate for a way to stay alive to see the sunrise. Above a giant hill of dirt, a red flag flapped feebly. I was in the wide juniper valley that stretched below Evening Hill-the place Bridger and I had had a picnic. A burst of hope gave me the courage to go on.
I ran toward that hill, for I had a plan.
At the top, the scent of Bridger became so strong and fresh, I actually feared for his life. I would fight the tigers to keep him safe. But he wasn"t there.
I stood atop Evening Hill and awaited my three hunters, luring them toward me. Like noiseless shadows they appeared at the foot of the hill, their dark eyes unnatural voids on their moonlit faces. I tensed to run, but instead of coming up after me like I"d hoped, the tigers split up, flanking me on three sides. That"s when I realized tigers were not chasing me-I mean, they were, but they had human minds.
Just.
Like.
Me.
Shock overwhelmed my fear. I was not the only human being who could turn into an animal at will. But that meant the boars that killed Aunt Effie and Lucy were not animals. They were beings that possessed a conscience and the ability to know right from wrong. Humans had murdered Aunt Effie and Lucy.
I was about to be murdered by humans.
As one, all three tigers lunged. I was their target. The chase was on.
My hind legs bunched and pushed, and I leaped through the air. A pair of gleaming, outstretched claws thrust upward and raked harmlessly through my fur, mere millimeters from flesh, but then I was free, bolting across the dirt road toward a gaping black rent in the earth.
I gauged the distance across the ma.s.sive fissure, slowed my pace, and when the tigers were practically on top of me, leaped, gliding through a wall of icy air that hovered above that yawning hole. I did not leap straight across the long, skinny mine shaft, but at an angle, hoping the tigers would do the same. They were heavier. If I was right, they couldn"t leap as far.
I misjudged the distance and came down too soon. As my hind half entered the mine shaft, my front legs flew outward, claws extended and searching for purchase in the rocky ground. My body slammed to a painful stop, so hard that my claws almost lost their tentative hold in stone. Yet they held. A swoosh of air ruffled my fur as a tiger missed the edge of the mine shaft and plummeted to its death far, far below.
I managed to heave my aching body up a few inches and sink my claws into the thick, tough bark of a gnarled tree root when fire exploded in my back. A pair of claws was entrenched in my flesh. They clung there, supporting the ma.s.sive weight of a tiger.
I screamed. The sound echoed to the depths of the shaft and back. The tiger clung desperately to my skin, just as my claws clung to the tree root. Inch by inch, those claws ripped downward through my flesh as gravity dragged down the tiger"s body. I screamed again, almost willing to give up my hold on the tree root and plummet into the shaft below if it meant the end of pain. But then the claws slipped from my skin. Frigid air blew against my fur as the tiger plunged into the hole. The third and final tiger, though, did not stir the air around me.
A shadow, almost impossible to see even beneath the full moon, silently crept around the edge of the sunken mine shaft. Fear gave me the energy I needed to scramble up out of the shaft, though my back burned in agony every time I moved so much as a claw.
The moment I stood on solid ground, the last tiger jumped. My ribs strained and cracked as the monstrous beast landed atop my slight body, its momentum rolling me onto my back. Before its whole weight settled, its teeth sank into my shoulder. I screamed and clamped my mouth down onto the tiger"s neck, biting as hard as I could.
My teeth sank into fur and met flesh, but the tiger shook me off as if I were a cub. It studied me with midnight eyes, showing me its fearsome teeth, giving me a glimpse of its power.
A noise shattered the night-gunfire. The tiger, about to take my life with its jaws, jerked up and looked in the direction of the echoing shot. And I, with the last bit of strength I possessed, lifted my front leg, thrust out my glorious claws, and swung up and into the tiger"s throat.
Like a hangnail snagging on silk, the tiger"s skin caught under my claws. It wasn"t until hot blood poured over me that I realized I had actually done any damage. And then, as lifeless as a sack of feed, the tiger collapsed on me. A spasm tore through its body as it struggled to breathe.
I clawed my way out from under the beast. Every bit of me hurt, except the tip of my tail. My ribs were broken, my shoulder was bleeding, and the skin on my back was sliced to shreds and streaming blood-I could smell my own blood mingling with the stench of other human blood. I began licking the disgusting foreign blood off my golden fur. I didn"t know what else to do, I was in such a state of raw animal instinct. Just sat there and licked and licked and licked.
I probably would have sat there till the sun came up if I hadn"t been snapped back to reality. Gunshots, three in a row and getting closer, reminded me of my humanity.
I turned to take one last look at the tiger, but it was gone. What I saw shattered my already broken heart.
Lying naked atop the giant striped skin of a tiger was a muscular middle-aged man with thinning brown hair. I had seen him once before, in the mug shot the police had given Naalyehe of the man who"d been loitering in front of his store and searching for me-Rolf Heinrich. Blue tinted his dead lips and the moon reflected brightly against his glazed, frozen eyes. Blood coated his neck and half his torso, blood from three jagged wounds slashed in his neck by a pair of razor-sharp claws. Mine. And barely visible in all the blood was a turquoise choker digging into his flesh.
Panic overwhelmed my better senses. I clamped down on the ankle of the naked corpse, felt my teeth slide into the cool skin, and pulled. It didn"t take much to drag the body to the mine shaft and nudge it over the edge. The empty tiger pelt followed. And then, as easy as sprinting the fifty-yard dash, all evidence of murder was gone.
30.
I don"t know how I made it home, but somehow, with the sun just above the horizon, I found myself wandering aimlessly around Mrs. Carpenter"s property, searching for an animal to eat. Shash was barking inside the barn. I was still a cheetah and my wounds were about to drive the lingering bit of sanity I possessed right out of reach. I yearned to be me again.
I almost couldn"t change back. It took a lot of energy, I guess, and mine was almost gone-had bled out of my body through the gashes on my back. Had I not been so scared of staying a cheetah forever, I never would have been able to use that last, tiny bit of adrenaline surging through my blood to make the change possible-even so, it just barely made the difference.
Naked, blood covered, and shivering, I skulked into the barn, to the joy of Shash, and stumbled toward the stairs. And then I realized ... I had left my clothes and my key near the mine. Big lazy tears began making their sleepy way down my cheeks. Then I remembered: I"d replaced the spare key under the bottom step.