Stray

“Yes, she is.” Marc lunged to block Jace’s dart to the right.

“But if she wins—”

“I’m more worried about her losing.”

I cringed, but kept going. I should have realized the eavesdropper was Marc. Anyone else would have shown himself. Cats have amazing ears, and we were lucky my parents hadn’t heard us. How was I sure they hadn’t? Because my father would have already locked me in the basement and ground the key into steel powder.

Spinning in midstep, I shoved the back door open and raced for the trees, letting the screen slam shut behind me. I ran at top speed, glorying in the taste of freedom, temporary as it was. Grass tickled my bare feet, and the sultry night air caressed my skin. If I hadn’t been racing, I would have stopped to look at the moon. It was full, which wasn’t necessary for Shifting, but made for a very scenic run.

Standing at the tree line, I could still hear Jace and Marc arguing in the house behind me, but more interesting was what I heard in the woods.

Our ranch and its adjoining twenty acres of woodland backed up to the north side of the Davy Crockett National Forest, with nothing more than an imaginary boundary separating the two. What that meant for me was a freedom unlike anything I could ever gain in civilized society. It was the freedom of grass, and trees, and fallen leaves, and pinecones, and most important, the freedom of speed. With speed and our natural stealth came the power of life and death. It was an intoxication alcohol could never match. And it was my birthright.

Obviously, prudence demanded the use of caution during the tourist season, which included all three summer months, as well as most of the fall. But we could hear and smell humans long before we saw them, and we could see them before they saw us, so it really wasn’t difficult to avoid contact. In fact, it was kind of fun, like a one-sided game of sight-tag.

Deep in the forest, I heard the guys weaving among the trees, occasionally pouncing on one another, or on a rodent or small rabbit. Behind me, at the front of the house, Michael’s car growled to life, followed by the crunch of gravel beneath his tires and the biting odor of exhaust. He was going home.

I spared a moment for disappointment that my homecoming hadn’t meant more to my oldest brother, but only a moment. I sympathized with his obligations and respected them. Michael had a wife. He was the only tomcat I knew who’d married a human woman, and even though Holly was a model—an honest-to-goodness runway model who spent most of her time in New York, L.A., or Paris—maintaining his marriage when she was home required a delicate balance of secrecy and creative planning. Even better than most, I understood. Though I’ll admit to being curious about how he interacted with her normal, human family.

Jace burst through the back door with Marc on his heels while I was still unzipping my pants. I let them fall to the ground as I pulled my shirt over my head, then dropped my underwear on the small heap of clothing on the grass.

Both men ran toward me, pulling their shirts off as they came. I paused for a moment to enjoy the view as generous moonlight highlighted every hard plane on their chests and cast shadows beneath each ripple of their abs. Very nice. Almost worth being dragged home for.

The guys never bothered with neat piles. They left their clothing scattered all over the yard, draped across bushes and sometimes hanging from tree branches. It would have been quite a sight for the unaccustomed eye. Fortunately, we had no close neighbors and never had human visitors, other than Michael’s wife, who visited rarely enough that it was easy for us to keep our inner cats on their leashes. So there was seldom anyone around to be scandalized by our behavior.

Naked, I ducked beneath the branches of the nearest tree and into the forest, twigs and thorns scraping my bare skin. Relief rushed through me to ease tension I hadn’t even realized I’d felt. My impulse to rush was gone now; in crossing the tree line, I’d won the race. Jace’s car was mine, if and when I had the nerve to take it. I’d have to remember to thank Marc. Yeah, right.

My means of escape secured, I was ready to relax and stretch my legs in the forest, a luxury I’d sorely missed at school.

As soon as the guys were out of sight, I dropped to all fours and closed my eyes in concentration. Shifting always begins for me with a moment of quiet relaxation or meditation. It sounds like a page from Zen for Dummies, but it really helps and only takes a couple of minutes. It’s just a moment for my mind to acknowledge and submit to what my body wants.

Shifting is possible during moments of extreme stress, but I wouldn’t recommend it. If your brain hasn’t had a chance to adjust to what’s coming, it responds by sending your body more pain signals than necessary. No one wants to experience avoidable pain. Okay, maybe masochists do, but I harbor no fondness for pain. No fondness for experiencing it, anyway.

Dimly, I heard leaves rustle as Marc and Jace entered the woods, but I made no effort to acknowledge them. I didn’t need to. They dropped to the ground, one on either side of me, and began their own Shifts.

On my knees, with my nose less than two feet from the ground, I breathed in the fragrances of the forest, letting the pine-scented air trigger my Shift. Just as certain notes played on the piano can bring to mind an entire melody, so the smell of last year’s pine needles and leaf mold called forth the cat from inside me. An undulating wave of pain and change, the Shift rolled through me, tensing and relaxing my muscles with no pattern I could discern.

As a teenager, I’d struggled to try to prepare myself for each phase as it came, determined to master the art of Shifting. It didn’t work. In the end, Shifting mastered me. When I gave up trying and relaxed, I realized that while I couldn’t control my discomfort, I could anticipate it, from the first sharp stab of pain to the last nagging bone-ache. With anticipation came acceptance, and that turned out to be enough.

My spine arched and joints popped. I ground my teeth together as my fingernails hardened and grew into claws, remembering to unclench my jaw before the first ripple of pain lapped at my face, announcing the arrival of the tidal wave just behind it. Mouth open, I stretched my chin as far forward as I could, gasping as my jaw buckled and bulged with the ingress of new teeth, pointed, slightly curved, and very sharp. My tongue itched briefly but unbearably, as hundreds of tiny, backward-pointing barbs budded from it in a prickling surge from the base to the rounded tip.

And finally, just as I was starting to catch my breath, my skin began to tingle as fur sprouted across my back, flowing to cover my limbs and stomach, before moving on to my face.

The only good thing about the pain was its brevity, and the worst by far was its intensity. It was like being ripped open and rearranged, without so much as a capsule of Tylenol. Immediately following a Shift, I felt like all my bones had been broken and allowed to heal wrong, like I didn’t quite fit into my new body. Fortunately, it only took one good stretch to improve the fit. I extended my front paws, claws piercing ground cover to grip the fragrant earth while I presented my rump to the sky, my tail waving slowly in the air.

There was a time when Shifting on a regular basis was a normal part of my life, just something else I did, like I slept, showered, and ate. Along with other, normal physical changes, my initial Shift was brought on by puberty. But unlike other biological processes, it could be repressed or initiated, though I’d pay a severe physical penalty for doing too much of either.

Away at school, I Shifted when I had to, or when an irresistible opportunity presented itself, like my yearly camping trip with Sammi’s family. While slinking undetected through a forest swarming with humans is exciting in a forbidden kind of way, it can’t compare to the sense of belonging I felt each time I hunted with the members of my Pride.

And it’s been so long, I thought, watching Marc and Jace writhe, each in the grip of his own Shift. Far too long.

Six

By the time Marc and Jace stood, their Shifts complete, I was ready to greet them on four legs. I weighed a healthy one-hundred-and-thirty-five pounds, which is slim, with ample allowance for curves on a woman my height. As a human, that’s not very impressive. But a one-hundred-and-thirty-five pound cat always gets a second glance—and usually a panicked scream.

But if I was impressive as a cat, Marc was downright scary. Including his tail, he was just over six and a half feet of sleek black fur, sharp claws and jaws powerful enough to split the back of a deer’s skull with a single bite. He was a two-hundred-and-forty-pound mass of graceful, rippling muscles, just waiting to pounce. And few things pounced on by Marc ever got back up.

My father theorized that in cat form we have occasionally been mistaken for so-called “black panthers,” a term used to refer to melanistic jaguars or leopards. In short, black panthers don’t exist, but we do. All of us, regardless of our coloring as humans, have, as cats, the same short, solid black, glossy fur, completely devoid of stripes or rosettes. Length and weight vary with each individual, of course, but in general we are somewhere between the size of a jaguar and that of a small-to-medium lion.

Finished with his own Shift, Marc circled me slowly, stopping several times to sniff my fur in specific places, and once to give my nose a quick lick. Finally satisfied that all was well with me, he rubbed his cheek against mine and nipped tenderly at my neck. I let him. Social guidelines were different in cat form, when it no longer mattered who’d left whom, and why. As cats, we were part of a whole, like littermates.

Jace stood back, letting Marc have his way, because just as some rules changed, others stayed the same. Marc walked the length of my body, letting his tail drag across my back. Then he sat on the ground in front of me and roared.

My heart leapt to hear it. I hadn’t heard a roar other than my own in years. Ours is not the distinctive roar of a lion, though it’s nearly as deep and clearly feline. It sounds like a series of low-pitched bleats, rising and falling in volume, each blending into the next.

Deeper in the woods, the playful romping stopped as the others froze in place to listen. Marc had called, and he was their leader in my father’s absence. As the last of Marc’s roar faded from my ears, it was replaced with the sounds signaling their approach: snapping twigs, crunching leaves and deep breathing. Cats could be absolutely silent when they chose, but rarely bothered when there was no need. The guys weren’t stalking; they were responding to a summons.

In moments, Parker burst through the brush, followed by Owen and Ethan, three dark blurs soaring through the air in front of me to land with delicate, easy grace. Except for one. Ethan landed not on the ground, but on Jace, who rolled over onto his back at the last second. He caught Ethan’s throat between enlarged canines and the vulnerable flesh of his attacker’s stomach with exposed rear claws. They were only playing, so Jace neither bit nor slashed, but had it been for real, it would have been bloody. And it would have been over in a heartbeat. But then, if it had been for real, Jace would never have heard him coming.

Jace tossed Ethan to the ground, where he landed on his feet, hissing with his fur standing on end. They both joined the others in greeting me. In cat form, even more than as humans, our greetings were very physical. I found myself at the center of a writhing, purring mass of black fur and whiskers, tails curling over, under, and around me. The mingling of personal scents was both comforting and invigorating, as were the memories tumbling over one another in a bid for my attention.

When my patience dwindled, I nipped at whatever came near my mouth. I got a whiff of hay and dry soil as I bit down gently on Owen’s tail. Jace’s ear came with the faint scent of the Granny Smith he’d finished for Ethan. But no one paid any attention to my warnings until I growled, and even then they were slow learners. Marc came to my rescue, which I thought was the least he could do, since it was his fault they’d converged on me in the first place. And since even the smallest of them—Ethan—outweighed me by forty pounds.

Marc hissed, and I turned to look at him across someone’s back. He stood several feet away with his neck straining forward and his jaw open to expose a mouthful of sharp teeth, ears flat against the top of his skull. He wasn’t really mad; he was just posturing to get their attention. It worked.

All eyes were on Marc, and since I was never one to pass up an opportunity, I launched myself over Parker and through a thin clump of brush. The chase was on.

I heard them behind me, pursuing me for the thrill of speed, and not because they had any hope of catching me. Surely they knew they had no chance. Maybe in a car on a long stretch of highway, but not in the woods where I’d grown up. And never on four paws.

My pulse racing, I darted between trees and vaulted off fallen limbs, sending small creatures fleeing ahead of me. Everywhere were the sights and sounds of the woods. The undergrowth grew thick and green, and pine trees soared to over one hundred feet high, with the red birches not far behind. My ears were on alert, catching and instantly cataloging the various nocturnal forest creatures as I passed them. Mice squeaked, owls hooted, and possums waddled off in search of safety. I ignored them all.

For fun, as my heart beat a syncopated rhythm against my rib cage, I climbed a broad oak tree, gripping the trunk with my claws over and over again, leg muscles tensing and relaxing as they propelled me upward until I gained a low, thick branch. With a glance at the ground below, I leapt onto a limb extending from a neighboring trunk. From there, I worked my way along, leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree, until I finally thumped to the ground, already running.

My eyes were perfectly suited to roaming the forest at night. They made good use of generous pools of moonlight pouring through gaps in the canopy of leaves and heavily laden pine branches above. Light reflected from the eyes of potential prey, and I could easily distinguish the dark coats of nocturnal animals from the shadows nestled in every niche and crevice, and hiding beneath curtains of fern and blankets of poison ivy. Dry leaves crackled beneath my paws and thorns tugged at my fur as I sprinted, my lungs relishing the luxury of such fresh, fragrant air.

Our forest was home to any number of woodland creatures, the largest of which were deer. But we were the biggest predators around for miles. Dogs—and especially cats—knew to avoid our territory thanks to Marc’s obsessively organized system of scent marking. We had the run of the forest, and we liked it that way.

On my right, something slithered beneath a pile of leaves, but I didn’t pause to identify it as I ran. The only things I chased that night were my personal demons. Or rather, they were chasing me. For the first time in years, I felt the hot breath of my past on the back of my neck. It was the carnivorous spirit of everything tradition demanded I become, and the only way to escape was to run, to beat the ground with my paws, in a furious race for the right to control my life. And I would not lose. Not again.

Finally, when my lungs burned, my legs ached, and every muscle in my body insisted that I must stop or collapse, I had to admit that at least for now, the demons were only in my head. My pursuers were my fellow Pride members, and they only chased because I ran. It was a cat’s instinct to try to catch anything that moved, like a kitten pouncing on a piece of string trailed across the floor. And I’d trailed my string all over the forest, practically daring them to come get me.

I slowed to a stop, listening between ragged pants as I calmed my racing heart. The guys had fallen far behind, and the evidence of their pursuit faded into the symphony of shuffles, rustles, cracks, hoots and squeaks that defined the forest at night. Satisfied that I’d proven my point, that I could outrun them all, I sank to the ground to rest at the base of a pine tree. I glanced around, taking in even the most minute shift of leaves in the warm night breeze. The night was mine for as long as I wanted it, and I finally had the privacy I’d sought for so long at school. It irked me that I’d found what I wanted in my own backyard, when I’d searched for it fruitlessly for years, hundreds of miles from home.

Content, I licked the dirt from my paws, giving my ears a good swipe while I was at it. Grooming was always relaxing. It gave me a chance to think, which I could never do without something to occupy my hands. Or paws, as the case may be. As I set to work on my whiskers, a gurgling sound caught my attention, and my ears perked up—literally. I’d paid little attention to direction as I ran, more intent on escaping the tomcats and my personal demons, which became harder to tell apart with each passing moment. But the sound of running water was unmistakable. I was near the stream.

Unlike house cats, we swim very well and love to fish. And unless something had changed in the last two years, the stream was full of fish practically tripping over one another for the honor of filling my stomach. I stood and listened carefully, my ears rotating in unison as I searched for the direction of the sound.

There. Southeast, and not very far away. I could already smell the mineral-rich water.