Skinned Page 11

  I called to Jack in my mind, from the dark recesses I had closed off long ago.

  Please show yourself, Jack. They need you.

  Call it a resurrection, a resuscitation, or a miracle. Whatever it was, it was beginning to happen. Heat grew in the center of my chest as I forced that serpente seed to blossom into a beacon.

  One last time.

  My eyes squinted shut so tightly a low pain grew in my head, but I didn't stop.

  Let them see you. Say goodbye. Be free of our pain, Jack.

  Tomas' wife let out a gasp, forcing my eyes open.

  Jack stood in solid form by my side. His mother, wracked with sobs, wasted no time closing the distance. She grabbed Jack to her, hugging him tighter than death as she rubbed the back of his head, feeling his hair in her hands to make sure this moment was real. He was taller than her by an inch. It didn't stop her from trying to hug every bit of him to her like she had done countless times when he was a tiny child.

  Tomas made no move to join them, though he inhaled his son's scent in the air, fighting back tears of thanks. He had prayed for a miracle. It didn't take a mind reader to know how much his family needed a healing force.

  It shocked all of us when the soft, medium pitch of Jack's voice touched our ears.

  "I'm okay." He looked into his mother's eyes. "I am."

  "Where have you been?" she quizzed, her own voice rough and edgy from lack of use.

  "With you, Mom."

  She squeezed him to her again, tears streaming freely down her face as she sobbed unencumbered. Agony and joy spilled from her unencumbered wails.

  Tearing my eyes off of them to glance at Cody, I saw the awe in his expression. I was curious if he would maintain this level of wonder as his new life progressed with the serpentes, or if it would evaporate. I wanted to believe that his human heart would always find this life enchanting, if only to keep it from driving him mad.

  Tomas stared at his son, whom he hadn't set eyes upon in months. The last time he had, Jack had been layered in dirt and blood, limp, splayed across his mother's lap for the entirety of the pride to witness.

  "Dad."

  Here, in this place of dreams and nightmares, he was speaking with a voice dug from the grave. He was seeing with the perception only the dead possess. And he was...happy.

  Something the rest of us hadn't been since Jack's last night.

  Tomas approached Jack. Before us, the air sparked alive with supernatural barbs as they shifted into massive lions. Jack was almost as tall as his father. They would have made a lovely and lethal pair.

  A humming noise reverberated from Jack as they rubbed their heads together, expressing happiness. It had been thought this moment died with Jack. Being able to stand side by side with his son was a lost dream until now. Jack pawed his father playfully and Tomas was soaking it in, fully aware that it would be the first and last of such moments. Bittersweet, though the sweet would far overpower the bitter, surely.

  Jack's mother ran her hand over his mane adoringly. Before retracting her touch, she used a sharp fingernail to cut some of his coarse hair and held it tight in her palm. And as the timeless bubble burst, the contented lions reverted to their human forms. Just like that, it was time to say goodbye.

  For the last time.

  Jack turned to me. "Thank you."

  "I didn't do anything worth thanking."

  "You could have left me there." The glowing undertone of his angelic skin was captivating, even while his eyes were pained. "You chose to carry me with you."

  I shook my head. "That's nothing."

  "It was everything," he conceded. "Everything. Don't take that from me."

  I nodded, embarrassed by the levels of my own self-doubt.

  "Give Marisa a message for me?"

  "Of course."

  He leaned close, whispering his message. I swore to give it to her. With that, he said, "Thank you for watching over me."

  "Thanks for watching over me."

  "You had a lot of growing up to do." He smiled a goofy, sideways grin. It must have looked spectacular when he was alive.

  Silently, he approached his parents and laid a palm on each of their shoulders. A dull light radiated outward until it shined so fierce, I feared it might incinerate us all. The early morning turned upside down, as if we were standing on the sun itself.

  Tomas and his wife inhaled sharply, struggling with the unassailable power of the light. When Jack let go, they visibly sagged and stared into their son's eyes, mystified. The light vanished.

  An innate sense of wellbeing engulfed us.

  "I'm not alone," Jack reassured them. "Neither are you." Before they could grab him back, Jack returned to wherever I had manifested him from. I felt the release of him in my chest, and not just from the serpente part within. I felt my guilt and resentment and failure rise from where they had settled in my bones. For the first time in months, that godforsaken pain that never let up, that hounded every side of my soul, had lost traction. The toll it demanded had been greater than I realized.

  Tomas kissed the tears on his wife's cheek as she stared at the strands of mane poking out from her grip. In my heart, I thanked Jack one last time.

  We left the rock formations with less baggage than we'd arrived with. It felt like a new start. Though optimism took hold for the first time in forever, it was short lived.

  Heading back to the motel, Cody commented, "Why wouldn't I want to be a part of something like this every day?"

  As he jogged ahead, I mumbled to myself, "Talk to me after you've felt the wrath of your own beast."

  Chapter Fourteen

  The following day -the day of the ceremony- was utterly quiet. No one ventured too far from his or her given motel room. And those of us who had stepped out in the wee hours felt no inclination to mention it to the others, much less talk about it amongst ourselves.

  Gage and Arrie hung out in our room. The nymph's presence was nature's tranquilizer, and I was taking full advantage. She drank green tea and watched Jeopardy with Gage and Cody while I "meditated" with a stiff Tom Collins. Don't ask where it came from. I didn't when Gage set it in my hand. I vowed not to ask where the second one came from, either, if one were to show up.

  A knock at the door startled us from our best motel lives.

  I peeked around the curtain. Darien was waiting patiently outside.

  "We didn't order room service!" I yelled.

  "Let me in."

  "Who is it?"

  My brother looked at me through the slip in the curtain. "Dad's here. We need to talk."

  Just like that, my pristine mood was dead.

  Gage grumbled, "I wish he'd been room service."

  I smirked. "If wishes were kisses..."

  "We'd all be whores," Gage finished.

  "Who broke you?" I asked, grabbing my knit sweater off the back of the chair before heading over to Darien's room.

  Cody hopped off the bed, grabbing his hat. "Should I join you?"

  "No, stay here."

  Gage leapt onto the bed, screaming at a contestant on the show. Arrie's tea splashed across the comforter. She didn't seem to mind.

  "Gage will protect you if there's trouble." Glancing at Gage one more time, I rectified, "Unless it happens during the Daily Double."

  Locking the door behind me, I joined my brother and Blaire in the other room. With my father and little brother. Damn, that sounded bizarre, even thinking it in my head.

  "Hi, Dad." I hugged him, though it was a guarded action. Not at all like the one I'd given him two days prior.

  "I'm glad you're here, baby."

  I glanced over the brother I had worked so hard to erase, though I had never actually laid eyes on him. He was of average height for a teenager. A spitting image, downsized version of my father. The scowl on his face, however, must have been his mother's because my father had never looked at anyone so disrespectfully.

  "We have something to tell you," Dad said, pressing his knuckles into his
palm.

  Eyes on the kid, I guessed, "You and your wife are having a replacement baby?"

  "Fuck you!" the boy shouted.

  "Andre!"

  Blaire acknowledged, "He has your vocabulary. What a great addition he'll make."

  "Addition?" I practically ate my words as I struggled to ask, "What are you talking about?"

  Dad took a long breath before saying, "Andre needs to learn what it means to be lepe."

  "But he's serpente," I returned sharply.

  Andre was just as surprised as I was. "I'm not going anywhere!" he yelled in Dad's face.

  "He's not serpente like his mother," Dad struggled to say. "Andre turned. He's a leopard."

  Stunned into silence, I stood motionless, assessing the half pint hairball. I had successfully avoided this very moment for months, and now it had come home to roost threefold. What were we supposed to do with a serpente kid who didn't want to be part of our lepe? Who didn't know shit about a lepe, to begin with?

  "What about Mom?" I asked. "This isn't fair to her."

  My dad was almost apologetic when he shared, "It was your mom's idea. Baby, it's been discussed round and round." He turned to Andre. "It's happening. It's for the best."

  A fire mightier than the devil's own hand tore through Andre's temper. "Then you can ride straight to hell with your ex-wife and every shifter in this room!" He stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

  The room was quiet.

  Eventually, my dad apologized to Blaire.

  "He's scared. It's my fault," he blabbered. "I would have raised him differently had I known he'd take after me. But Andre can't stay ignorant to lepe ways. Not if he has a chance of being accepted into the community."

  Blaire nodded. I recognized his formal stature and stiff handshake as the front he often used to portray a confident leader. Something learned from his father.

  "We will teach him what every young leopard should know," Blaire assured my father.

  "I don't doubt that one bit," he said before disappearing out the door to locate his runaway son.

  Darien waited for him to leave before asking, "Are you okay with this?"

  "The part about my asshole of a half-brother coming to live with us, or the fact that all of this was planned behind my back?"

  Without waiting for a reply, I stormed out. I was livid, and I had a right to be. This was another spotless example of Darien and Blaire not trusting me. For not seeing me as more than an agitator or a fuck up. It was as if, in their minds, I wasn't allowed to evolve into a dynamic member of our lepe. I was forever shelved with the misfits.

  Forever wishful they could look past the surface and see me.

  Luckily, it was time to head to Elder Kit's for the crowning ceremony. I wouldn't be trapped seething in the motel room for the remainder of the evening.

  The ride was quick, though my mind was anywhere else. It was a task to focus on the serpentes when I was so overcome by the changes about to take place once we returned home. And that was shitty. My head needed to be on the job. I needed to be present for Cody.

  It didn't take long to be reminded why.

  As we arrived, filing off the bus, an explosion rocked the twilight. It vibrated violently underfoot.

  "What the hell was that?" Gage grabbed Arrie instinctively, shielding her between him and the side of the white activity bus.

  Tugging Cody behind me, I surveyed our surroundings. Nothing was out of sorts. Picnic tables were lined up in the yard from the previous day. Lanterns burned in preparation for nightfall. The light fragrance of citronella mingled with lamp oil. The day was coming to a drowsy close.

  Every shifter sniffed the air, searching for an adversary.

  Elder Kit stormed from her home, deeming, "The sacred earth must not be spoiled!"

  The hair on my arms prickled with the dew of magic as mutinous serpentes appeared from nearby hiding spots, ready to attack.

  Shifters began yelling and scrambling for cover. Well removed from the chaos encircling us, Cody and I set our sights on the hallowed grounds of the gorgons.

  "Fray!" Blaire barked.

  In the heat of furious bodies scattering left and right, I halted, eyes transfixed on my once lover. The dying light flirted with the rich hue of his skin. Alert, he stood on the brink of bedlam, a golden god, summoning me to fight by his side.

  "I need you here!" he ordered.

  The warmth of Cody's skin as his hand slid around mine abruptly severed the power Blaire's words held over my heart.

  "The gorgons need us!" I answered. Leaving with Cody, I didn't risk glancing back. The betrayed look on Blaire's face would have been a killing blow.

  All hell broke loose. Screams of surprise turned to war cries at our backs, but we refused to stop. It was the sight of the explosion that had our attention.

  When we busted through the dense brush and briars, bloodied by hundreds of scratches, the staggering spectacle in front of us was enough to steal our breath.

  "The blast broke the sacred stones in half..." My voice trailed to nothing.

  The mammoth stone formation had been blown completely down the middle. One large piece slumped backward in a repulsive slant. The smooth indentation where I had stood only hours before was gone. The disfigurement changed the weight of the air, stifling the magical pull that had thrived for centuries in this place of secrets.

  What now? The rogue serpentes had won, managing to mutilate the most coveted of their ancestral places, and in less than an hour before the ceremony. Would it rob the gorgons of their power? Cody of his future?

  He looked as wounded as I felt. "What should we do?" he asked.

  "Fight!" My scream turned to a low rumble, a warning that I was coming for them. Flesh receded, readying to release my leopard half. Fur roiled over my body as my torso elongated and the joints of my arms and legs reworked their projected direction. My need for blood far outweighed my leopard's repulsion of the ancient remains.

  Wasting no more time than necessary, I charged the nearest serpente. I wanted to be the last thing he ever saw, to rip him into thick, squishy strips, but it wasn't my place. He would answer to the serpentes.

  To the king.

  I vaguely heard Cody grunt. Not risking an attack by losing focus as the snake worked his best angles to strike my sweet spots, the neck and belly, I charged ahead, flipping him through the air with the twist of my powerful muzzle. This enabled me to glance in Cody's direction. The last thing I expected to see was the man I had come to know in the last few days riding a serpente like a cowboy taming a wild stallion.

  It was disturbing.

  Assessing my options to help Cody or lay the serpente's humiliation to rest, I reacted to the budding smell of snakeskin to my left. With deadly precision, my paw lashed out, catching the slithering torso with my claws. The serpente's insides slid out with a squish and a flop. He dropped to the ground, writhing. The serpente clutched his belly in an attempt to stop the grotesque waterfall of life force being spent over the ground.

  Voices enclosed the melee until our shifters lunged into the open space under the first touch of moonlight, fighting every serpente who gave them opposition. The coats of leopards, lions, and bears looked pale amongst the gleaming keratin scales of the serpente shifters, enemy and ally alike.

  The only division amongst the therianthropes this night was between the rebels and the rest of us. We moved as if we were at home in our given groups. Drey and Gable covered my ass as effectively as Gage or Darien, matching every strike and bite against our enemy with equal efficiency. Elder Kit stood ground beside Tomas and his wife, warding off the trespassers with a threatening hiss and growl respectively. I protected Sunyet's pelt from raging fangs without a second thought to my own safety, just as I would for any of my fellow lepe. Venus and Foust flanked Lydia and Warren's great cats, shielding their blind spots as they bullied forward, tearing into near-feral snakes. The rest of the nest glided through our woven stances, on the offensive and defensive
wherever demanded.

  Overcome by the adrenaline of the fight, I almost forgot about very human Cody. He must be terrified by the sea of unbound, rampaging animals tossing one another around like chew toys. I scanned, expecting to find him, at best, hiding along the tree line with Arrie and Petal or, worst case scenario, reduced to a pile of meat.

  Rather than save his ass, I returned to my human form and found myself gawking as he stood motionless on the tallest point of the last standing stone.

  Blaire snuck up beside me, also human. Unimpressed by the object of my attention, he rather rudely suggested, "If I had been serpente, you'd be dead right now."

  Unable to peel my eyes off of Cody, I merely shook my head. "Nothing about you is serpente."

  "Disappointed?"

  There was definitely a jealous bite in his tone.

  Slowly, the fighting was subsiding around us as Cody demanded the attention of the shifters, their animals reverting to humans, one by one. Shrieks and hissing and roars died away, bathing us in an unnatural silence.

  Gage crept up on my other side. "What's happening?"

  He whispers louder than an average person bellows. No conversation is ever private when it involves Gage.

  As I tried to answer him, I realized I'd been holding my breath. Blaire noticed. He was the only being in attendance staring at me rather than the human. I wanted to tell him to kiss my ass, but I was drawn to the sight of Cody as he fell to his knees, head tilted upward. I wanted to remind Blaire that we were finished. Long gone were the late night arguments and the lonely stretches of uncertainty. We were both free now to grow in different directions. I wanted to express the totality of the turmoil that accompanied our connection, but I was struck mute.

  Under the forgiving rays of the moon, the gorgons traversed the newly crumbling wall of stone, crawling up from the heart of the explosion like cockroaches. Skeletal hands arched into view, undertaking the chore of hoisting up the rest of their clattering bones.

  The gorgon sisters had arrived for all to witness... Well, not exactly.