Skinned Read online

  "Who the hell are you?" I quizzed, wrapping my legs around her waist as I struggled to pin her neck in the bend of my elbow.

  She spun relentlessly until it became impossible to hold onto her muscular frame. Whipping out of my grip, the dark-haired woman with eyes of hellfire tossed me into the air, kicking me with all of her might, like a circus ball. A tree broke my fall before the ground had a chance to.

  "Get up!" she bellowed.

  Quickly checking for injuries, I sprung to my feet and cracked my neck with anticipation. This wasn't going to end well...for her.

  I wiped the blood from my nose with the back of my hand. Tasting it between my teeth, I could only imagine what it looked like framed in a smile.

  "Give up already," I said. "Only one of us wins, and I've already taken my bet."

  The wicked sight of her screeching as she charged me, muscles rippling under her flesh, drew a laugh. By the end of this, the forest would be covered in her blood. Payback for her crimes.

  I began running at her, the speed of my legs matching my temper. Our bodies slammed together in an awestruck moment. I didn't know that 'seeing stars' was actually possible until our skulls met in the vicious collision. The noise was sickening. Had either of us been human, important things would have been annihilated. We would have been twisted together, as inseparable as Siamese twins.

  "Damn, you're hard-headed," I ventured, trying to shake off the concussion.

  The wild figure lunged for my neck, gripping it between her unusually strong fingers that seemed to slither along my skin. In fact, her fingers elongated to perfectly sized snakes, constricting around my neck inch by inch, until I was fighting for breath.

  "No!" I wheezed, thrashing my body. Calling to my inner leopard for help, I allowed that tingling sensation of supernatural charm to reach inside, tickling her ears, whispering of a fight she couldn't resist. Instead, it came as a shock when she didn't budge. This was the second time that I was in need and was unable to shift.

  Digging my fingernails into the woman's flesh did little to sway her grip. The little voice in my head was beginning to panic. A fuzziness had nested in the outer rim of my vision, eating away until it sluggishly crept to the center, extinguishing the contorted face right in front of my eyes.

  "You won't win." My words were barely audible, maybe even laughable, but I believed in them.

  I felt her lean closely as she whispered into my ear, "You're already dead."

  That part of me that had always been my security, my ace in the deck, was gone. There was no turning to kitty cat form and tearing her apart. My claws were clipped. It felt farther away than my own heartbeat when it usually feels burrowed into every particle of my being.

  Something was very wrong.

  Lying on the ground, slipping away quietly, as I had vowed never to do, something new breathed into my being. A power that had flirted with me on the rocks with the gorgons. An ancient undertone of resentment and death that clicked just right into a need I hadn't realized existed.

  "You're not welcome here," the woman said with venomous intent. "And neither is Elder's king. If they all must die to destroy the one, so be it."

  A flare of heat sparked inside my chest, causing it to rise and give way to new breath. A healing breath. Even as the woman's snaking fingers wound around my neck ever tighter, I felt more balanced and alive.

  Staring into her reptilianesque pupils, I took possession of her faculties. Thinking merely of the tiny beasts slithering in on themselves caused her fingers to glide and slip into a tangled mess before they retracted back into human fingers, twisting and breaking.

  "How are you doing this?" she bellowed, wracked with pain. Clutching her maimed fingers to her chest, she slid away, hunkering on the ground. "Your eyes..."

  I sat up, reveling in the feel of magic coursing through my body. The pounding in my head subsided. Nothing ached.

  "You messed with the wrong shifter," I warned.

  "Please, I didn't know."

  "Where are the others?"

  Hesitantly, the woman, no older than forty, began to weep. "The house by the crooked tree." Trying to shield her fear, she pleaded, "Don't kill them. They only want our nest to thrive."

  I stood on solid feet and marched towards her with a particular intention. Flailing my hand in the air called the magic to my fingertips. The allure was damning.

  "I can help you talk to them," she offered.

  Tapping into the magic swirling through my being, I crouched in front of the serpente. "It's too late for you." I felt a heat rise up, lapping behind my pupils, as she stared helplessly into my eyes. "Nothing hurts in the Timeless Place," I whispered, not understanding my own words.

  She only blinked twice before her eyes focused, wide and frightened, locking into that new thing that felt at home inside my chest. Her last breath hissed between her teeth as she relaxed, inviting death.

  My eyelids blinked rapidly. They felt heavy with grit, dryer than I could ever remember them being. As my vision cleared, I was able to see the serpente again. No magic was left to paint a false canvas of truths.

  The woman was frozen in front of me, a statue of stone, her expression disturbingly peaceful.

  "What have I done?" I thought my voice would be a scream, but it came out hoarse.

  Instantly, I abandoned the figure that more resembled a tombstone than a once living creature. Running naked through the woods, I allowed my newfound sense to direct my heading. I knew it would lead me to the gorgons. That prospect scared the shit out of me, but not as much as the brutal magic I had just wielded against a fellow shifter. Sure, she was trying to kill me at the time. But what I had done to her... That was of another realm. It wasn't leopard, so how could it have felt so right?

  My skin buzzed with the invisible nuances of magic as I grew closer to the ceremonial grounds of the serpentes. It was as if a million tiny voices had turned to gnats swaddling my body, suffocating and sinister.

  Stepping barefoot on leftover cones from the sweet birches did nothing for my mood, though I was suddenly struck with an unusual foreboding as I rounded a cluster of hickories and oaks to stand at the base of the gorgon rock formation.

  Even as I climbed the rocks, I lambasted myself for being such an idiot. The serpentes warned me not to come back. So here I was making another mistake my brother and Blaire would likely be made to clean up. I really was no different from Linay. Maybe that's why I had hated her so much. Looking into a mirror often hurts the ego when you've been used to painting your own portrait.

  I stood at the top of the giant slab, waiting for something mystical to happen. After a number of minutes passed, I felt the rage build inside.

  "Really? Can't be bothered?"

  "I could stand to listen," a warm voice spoke from the trees.

  Clearing the brush, Cody walked to the edge of the rocks. His arms were wrapped around a bundle of material.

  Not bothering to hide my shock and agitation, I practically yelled, "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Linay mentioned you shifted and might need some clothes." Holding the bundle at arm's length, he cleared his throat. "I mean, you are naked as the day you were born." When I didn't move to accept his offering, he chided, "You know what they say about gift horses."

  Cody climbed up the side of the stone before I could stop him. Snagging the clothes out of his hands, I seethed as I whipped the wine-colored shirt on in one motion. Next, I slid my jeans on, shaking my head in disgust as I buttoned the last button.

  "Do you have a death wish?" I asked bluntly. "Because I don't see anyone else skipping through these woods like Little Red Riding Hood at the nth hour of, oh, I don't know, the most important ceremony to take place in the last thousand years of serpente history."

  Cocking a slight grin, Cody replied, "I wouldn't necessarily call it a skip. More of a swagger."

  Stalking him until we were face to face, I searched his eyes for even a shred of awareness. "This isn't funny. People a
re dying for you."

  "Me? Any one of us could be the next king."

  "No," I scoffed. "Not one of those motherfuckers is half the king that you already aspire to be." Raising my arms in a grand gesture, I looked around us. "Can't you feel it? Here, of all places. Don't you feel the magic beneath our feet, beating up through our soles, fluttering through our bowels, threatening to spill out of every pour?"

  Wracked with a sudden seriousness, Cody removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow where his hair had clung to his forehead. I noted the indentation around his hairline from the constant wear of the leather monstrosity before he sat it back in place.

  With a quick nod, he said, "I won't deny it."

  "You heard the gorgons. You saw them when no one else could."

  "You could," he noted.

  "But I'm not their king, you are."

  "Look," Cody soothed, "I'm just trying to do my part here and help out."

  "Do your part after you're crowned. I'll let you tie my shoelaces and cut my apples, but not before the ceremony. You need to remain safe." Gawking at the open sky and menacing forest, the heartbeat of any nightmare in waiting, I reaffirmed, "This is the opposite of safe."

  "Why do you care so much?" His words were confrontational, but his tone was passive. It wasn't Cody's style to be rude when someone was trying to help. That much I gathered.

  "It's my job."

  He laughed. "I don't buy that for a minute. There are lots of better jobs out there. Why did fate bring you here to save me?"

  A streak of honesty rushed the words out of my mouth before I could help myself. "Because I couldn't save Jack. I thought I had at least saved the other kids, but some days I feel like they're sinking faster than I am. Did I really save them, or prolong the inevitable?"

  "Damn."

  "You did ask," I tried to joke, though emotions sparking happiness and relevance had been fairly nonexistent since the ordeal with the Dissenters. Even during the car ride with my roommates, I had joked and laughed, experiencing moments of candor, but they always settled into that vat of quicksand in my heart, forgotten. Erased.

  But here...

  "Don't you feel something stirring here?" I asked Cody. "Don't you feel whole?"

  "In a way. I've had this sense of longing, like a lump of peanut butter stuck in my throat, ever since I can remember. It's what's kept me hopping from place to place. I only made myself stop because I figured if I can't have 'normal', I could have the illusion."

  "And now?"

  Taking a deep breath, Cody confessed, "This is shit and gone from normal, but it damn well feels more right than anything I've ever known." He stepped closer. When I didn't step back, he attentively rested his hand on the back of my neck and drew me to his lips. A spark of magic bounced between us. The electricity pulsed from my lips to my stomach to lower regions. When he let go, the urge to grab him back surprised me. "Why do you feel right?" he whispered.

  It was my turn to confess. "I shouldn't."

  He placed his hand over my heart, feeling the beats quicken. "There's something in there like me."

  I was horrified by his revelation. There was something serpente intertwined in the making of my very being. The gorgons awakened it. Called it out of hiding.

  Backing away from him, I shook my head, clearing it of the mystical hold my body wanted to so readily accept. "I can't."

  The stone vibrated underfoot.

  "I don't think it's something you can choose," Cody cautioned.

  "It sure the hell is. I can choose to push it away."

  He stepped closer, though slowly, trying not to spook me.

  "You don't understand. I did something bad." My throat felt restricted, making my voice sound raspy. I had not forgotten the woman of stone I abandoned in the woods.

  The ground rattled with greater resolve.

  Cody reached his hand to me. "Stop moving. Something's happening."

  "No," I said tight-jawed. "I reject them. I reject their power."

  A disturbing series of pops sounded through the forest. They couldn't have been louder if I had been standing next to a lit stick of dynamite.

  The rock formation snapped in two with the force of the earth cracking open. Cody leapt with no regard for his own safety, ready to stop me from falling through the unnatural crevice.

  He missed.

  The last thing I heard was Cody screaming my name as something slithered around my ankle and tugged with great force, yanking me from this world.

  And then darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  The rocks closed in and I was left alone in a dark, unearthly tomb. When nothing showed signs of life or danger, I decided to feel my way around. I couldn't actually be in a different realm or parallel universe, right? That was for witches or people on acid.

  I stood on sore legs, hunched over, and ran my hands along the smooth recesses of stone. The dampness fed the cold sensation wicking the heat from my fingers and toes.

  As I persisted onward, a dim light began to shine. It expanded, its illumination gaining in strength, as I inched closer. When I literally found myself at a crossroad of sorts, the arm of the tight cave multiplied to five, reminding me of a disproportionate, dangly hand. The light, however, only shines from one point, down the left tunnel.

  I was in no hurry to see what was at the end of the tunnel, honestly. With the way my luck was running, it would be a man-eating squirrel or a vampire with rabies rather than a way to the surface.

  The space was shorter than I presumed. In a matter of minutes, I found myself peeking around a corner, assaulted by bright lights.

  "I told you, Sister," a sweet voice cooed.

  Shit.

  Before I could move to show myself, Stheno turned, directly making eye contact. "I don't like her," she huffed, staring at me with disgust.

  "Fuck you, too!" I returned. "Where am I?"

  Once my eyes focused in the light, I was able to assess the gorgons, who were no longer piles of clattering bones. They were...kind of beautiful. Their unnaturally thick hair was pulled back, exposing human faces framed with the occasional iridescent snake scale. Euryale had eyes the size of plums juxtaposed by a slim dot of a mouth, creating an ethereal air. Stheno's features, by contrast, were overly pronounced and sharp. Her nose was beakish while the swells of her top lip were pointed. Woven grasses and leaves acted as tops to cover their torsos, though the hems fell unevenly. And their bottom halves were large snake bodies covered in countless scales. Watching them speak as they moved generated the illusion that they were gliding just over the surface.

  "You have been welcomed," Euryale sing-sang.

  "I don't recall accepting an invite to this party."

  Stheno loomed near. "Use our powers, accept the sacrifices."

  "No, no, no," I corrected, "I didn't ask to use your powers. I'm not even sure how I was able to."

  Looking reproachful, Stheno muttered, "You are of her children."

  "Whose?"

  "The one no one forgets, yet everyone is scared to speak of," Euryale chimed in.

  "Medusa," Stheno said with a sour expression.

  "That's not possible. I'm ailuran, not serpente."

  Ailurans are feline therianthropes. Though other shifters are therianthropes, they may be of different species, such as lycanthropes, which are wolves, or the serpentes, who are snakes.

  Slithering around my body in a circle, Stheno was so close I felt as though she were inspecting every angle of my soul. Both of the gorgons swayed incessantly. The constant movement could have induced motion sickness in the most seasoned of sailors.

  "Your eyes do not lie."

  No one in my family had saffron eyes in human form. I was the first in four generations on my mother's side.

  "These are ailurian eyes," I protested.

  "Are they?"

  Stheno held up a bowed piece of metal. She and Euryale flanked me, forcing all of us to stare at our warped reflection. I wanted to protest further, b
ut our eyes were shockingly similar. While the pattern in our irises could have been a carbon copy, my pupils maintained the rounded diamond shape of a cat's. Theirs were slim and vertical, so often found in those of venomous snakes. The only difference in color was in the slightest of russet and gold undertones.

  "She belongs," Euryale celebrated.

  I swallowed audibly. "What makes me more special than any other serpente?"

  Stheno pointed to a bust of Medusa. Not the ugly hag I had grown accustomed to seeing on Mythology websites, but a woman with proportionately attractive features and dainty snakes for hair braided expertly into a bun.

  The irritable gorgon said, "You are of her children." Motioning to the world above, she said, "They are of ours."

  "And the snake king?"

  She sneered, "Some answers are not for you, Medusa's mixed breed ailurian."

  Ignoring Stheno's barb, I couldn't help but ask, "So Cody is the rightful king?"

  "He is the prophecy," Euryale said with a modest smile.

  "Sister!"

  "She belongs," Euryale countered her sister's harsh tone.

  "Sister is right," I told Euryale, before crossing my arms. "Send me back."

  "There is no return," Stheno replied.

  Euryale tugged at Stheno's elbow. "But-"

  "There is no return," Stheno unpleasantly repeated.

  I was not about to get stuck in the bowels of gorgon hell for eternity. I already had a long road of self-reflection after this huge ass discovery.

  "Look, every second I'm down here is a chance for those backward serpentes to murder your would-be king. Do you want your prophecy king or do you want to be stuck with my winning personality, because I can really get this fucking party started if you're bored?"

  Her lip curled in revulsion at the thought.

  "Kindred feelings, Sister," I mocked.

  Stheno and Euryale slithered to where a tapestry hung on the wall. It wasn't a typical representation of its historical time period, which looked to be around the sixteen hundreds. This particular textile depicted a lyrical place with dancing unicorns and jolly suitors showing off for giggling horned ladies by playing croquet with porcupines rather than wooden balls.