Diaries of an Urban Panther (9 page)

I pulled my hand away from his and put it back around the hot coffee in my hand, fighting off a clammy chill. It was the tone more than anything that scared me. Like a doctor telling you about terminal cancer. Like your aunt sitting you down to tell you that your parents wouldn’t be coming home. Ever.

I looked down at the caramel-colored liquid, and then back up at Chaz. The heat had traveled up my arms and into my cheeks. “So you’re telling me I die or I go evil? That wasn’t the gallant effort I was expecting from a white hat.”

I stood up and strode out of the kitchen, fighting tears. I wasn’t a tearful person; ask Jessa, who still couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t bawling at the end of
Steel Magnolias
. Maybe I was evil.

I stormed up the stairs and went to my room. I began dressing and ran a brush through my hair, having to intermittently wipe moisture from my cheeks. I had gotten one shoe on before Chaz burst into my room.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going home.”

“No.”

“Are you going to kidnap me again?”

Chaz widened his stance to more fully block my door and crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t leave.”

“Why not? Apparently I’m going to go evil anyway, so why don’t we make this an epic showdown on the streets of downtown Dallas? Something to brag about to your white hat frat brothers? Or would you rather just take me out back and pull an
Old Yeller
?”

“Violet,” he protested.

“Chaz,” I mocked as I reached for my other shoe and started for the door.

He grabbed for my arm and I pushed him with all my might. Which was, unfortunately, more than I remembered having yesterday. Chaz went flying across the room, cracking the dry wall before he sunk to the baseboard.

I didn’t care. I wasn’t into this predestined shit and if I had gotten myself into this, I could get myself out. And if I couldn’t get out, I could out run it. There was still one more coast I hadn’t lived on yet and I’m sure Jessa would want to go home.

Iris was in the doorway as I scurried down the stairs. I stared her down and she moved out of the way pretty fast for an old girl.

I got to the car and was reaching for the door when Chaz caught my arm again, his fingers wrapped tightly around my forearm. He spun me around and slammed me against my car.

“Let me go,” I demanded.

“I can’t.”

“Instructions from your mystical guru to chain the cat?”

Chaz jerked back a little like I had snapped at him
.
“You’re mean when you’re mad.”

“Apparently I have a built-in dark side.”

Chaz clenched his jaw and grabbed both of my arms, hard. And as much as I struggled, I couldn’t break free. Kinda made me wonder if he hadn’t tapped into another part of his supernatural something or other. He pressed me to the car with his hips and held me tight.

“We can’t risk you turning against us. You don’t understand the power, Violet. It’s dark and . . .” His words trailed off.

I looked at him confused, angry; the heat in my face so blindingly hot it evaporated the tears from my cheeks.

“Have I ever done anything by the book, Chaz?” I said, fighting my quivering chin.

“No,” he admitted, the furrow in his brow lessening.

“Then why are you so sure I’ll do this by the book? Why are you so ready to give up on me?”

“I’m not,” he sighed. “I’m cautious. There’s just me and Iris left. We can’t afford another attack.”

“And I look the attacking type?”

“Threw me around a little.”

I sighed. Crap. One day with a little power and I was already a bully. I dropped my shoulders in defeat. “I’m not weak, Chaz.”

“I know. No one has taken to this like you.”

He stepped back, releasing me from my car. Slowly, he released his grip on my arms. I looked down to see handprints on my skin. By the throbbing, bruises would form soon but be gone sooner.

“But you have to stay. You have to be able to control it before the Powers will leave you alone and hide yourself so he can’t find you.”

I clenched my jaw. “I’m already pretty tired of these Powers.”

He cracked a small smile. “Wait until you work for them.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No, sir. I already have a few jobs, providing that I don’t keeping vanishing on them.”

“Say you’ll stay?”

I looked out at the fields around us. Looked like a pretty safe place, and they hadn’t sacrificed me to a moon god yet. The soft rolling hills of the farm were peaceful and I hadn’t taken a vacation in a long time. I could probably write a few articles while I was here and email them to the office, providing there was wifi in the boonies.

“Say you’ll stay?” he repeated.

I just sighed and leaned against the car. Chaz took my chin and lifted my eyes to meet his.

“Going to bring me Starbucks every morning?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

He dropped his hand to rest on his waist. “If that will keep you here.”

As I looked out at the uncultured land, I felt it. Felt something with my chest, felt something I couldn’t explain away stirring there. And it was more than just the memory of the long line of his body pressed against mine. The panther was fierce and fiery and it burned as I looked at the wide open space.

I sighed. “Let me make a couple of phone calls and I should be able to get a solid week off.”

Chaz just nodded. “And I’ll be here the whole time, if that’s what you want.”

I nodded. “So one week?”

“One week.”

I pushed up off the car and stepped around him. “Better get back inside. I still have half a cup of coffee left and I think I need to apologize to Iris.”

“Why?” he asked as he followed me back towards the house.

“I think I growled at her.”

Chaz’s laughter echoed across the fields as we went back into the farmhouse.

Chapter Nine

T
hat evening, Iris and I were sitting on her back porch, sipping sweet tea, when Chaz came in from his grocery trip. Iris had not so subtly asked him to get out so us girls could have the afternoon to ourselves. He offered to pick up groceries and a few other things from the store.

“Wasn’t sure if you wanted me to put them away,” speaking to Iris, his hands jammed in his pockets.

“Nah, I’ll get ’em, hon. You two, sit. Relax before tonight.”

“What’s happening tonight?” he asked, as the woman slowly pushed herself out of her chair and hobbled back towards the house.

“We’re hunting tonight,” I filled in with mock excitement, and then took a long sip of ice tea.

Chaz’s gaze bounced from the old woman to me and then back to her. He didn’t believe me.

“Have some tea before you hurt yourself,” Iris said as she entered the house.

Chaz, still confused, sat in the vacated chair and poured himself a glass.

“Hunting?” he finally asked after he drank half the glass in one gulp.

“Working on the three primal urges,” I said still uncomfortable with the idea as I stared at the drink in my lap. Something about intentionally provoking a metaphysical panther just didn’t seem like a good idea, like poking a bear in a zoo wasn’t a good idea.

His brow furrowed as he watched me. It was a look that I was getting used to.

“And hunting is one of them?”

“Yep.”

“Gonna tell me what the others are?”

“Nope.”

He sighed and leaned back in the chair as we both stared off at the broad landscape.

“What else did you do today?”

“Worked on brushing.”

“Right,” he nodded. “What’s brushing?”

I looked up at him fighting a small smile. “You, the great hunter of paranormal and you don’t know what brushing is?”

“I know a little about a lot of things. Just not that.”

I put my drink down on the table and began my explanation, to the best of my abilities. “Brushing is something shapeshifters do to determine dominance. Since we can’t tell how big or powerful the other person is in human form, the animal can all be picked up by other shapeshifters when you brush them.”

“And can normal people feel it?”

“Humans can’t, but we can.” God, I really was buying into all this, wasn’t I?

“So I could feel if you brushed me?”

“Yes,” I nodded, feeling slightly ridiculous saying the words out loud. The entire day had been like that: finding out terms for things that I had written about in scripts. I’d learned that werewolves are just one breed of shapeshifter, heirloom silver is the only way to quickly kill a shapeshifter, and I was now part of a lineage of beings that predated humans.

“So do it,” he said sitting up and putting his tea down as well.

“What?”

“Brush me.”

“Why?”

He was silent for a moment, like he didn’t have an answer, but I could see the second something clever come into his head. There was a little twinkle in his golden green eyes.

“Brush me, so if I ever meet another shapeshifter like you, I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”

I could only laugh. “I don’t think you’ll ever meet anyone else like me.”

“Probably not,” he said leaning back in his chair with a half smile.

I sighed. It was a simple enough request actually and I did need the practice. But part of me wanted him to still see me as a girl, as a nice nerdy girl. Then again, he had already seen me furry and he was still driving into town to get me Starbucks, so what was one more little display of abnormal?

Taking in a deep breath, I found my furry center. It was already easier to feel her in there after the lessons that day, to feel the other me curled up like a Siamese in the sun just under my breastbone. I surrounded myself with the thought of her, the energy prickling down my skin and making the hair on my arms rise. Then, I pushed it gently outwards with an exhaled breath.

Iris said since I was new to this whole thing, my effect would be minimal but when I opened my eyes, Chaz was sitting up straight and wide eyed, like I had physically hit him. His knuckles were white on the arms on the chair and his mouth was slightly open before he snapped it shut.

“Was that it?” he inquired.

I nodded.

He had the most peculiar look on his face as he looked out at the field.

“What is it?” I asked, slightly unnerved by his reaction.

“It felt,” and his eyes dropped to the wooden slats of the porch between us to find the words. “It felt smooth, like silk, and smelled like flowers.”

I nodded. That’s what Iris had said it was like: magnolias. Irony abounds in all things. She had smelled of dusty books and cashmere and had nearly knocked me out of my chair, she was so powerful. She felt ancient, or what I thought what ancient would feel like, and her power hung around in the air long after she had brushed me. Me, I was still a gentle breeze that faded quickly.

“That was incredible,” he breathed.

“Incredible? Really?” I asked as I scrunched my nose.

Chaz nodded and sat back in his chair and drank down the rest of his tea.

I sat there mildly pleased with myself as the two of us quietly watched the sun go down.

I
ris came out and told us that dinner was ready. The two of us went inside like two little children, washed our hands, and helped her set the table.

It was a quiet dinner to say the least. I was nervous about tonight. I just had this horrible thought of waking up naked in the park like in the movies. Running naked through the town square of Waxahachie was not the way I wanted to spend my Monday morning.

I was so lost in thought that when Chaz’s cell phone went off, I jumped, almost knocking my tea down. But I caught it just in time. Got to love those new cat-like reflexes.

“Calm down there,” Iris scolded. “Nothing to be nervous about.”

“I’m not nervous,” I snapped as I watched him check his phone and frown deeply before he got up.

“Excuse me,” Chaz said quickly exiting the room.

“You are as jumpy as a long tailed cat,” Iris said, trying not to crack a smile.

“Ha. Seems fitting,” I said back as I took a bite of the stew she had been preparing intermittently all day. It was cooking like I hadn’t had in a long while—from scratch. It was the kind of thing you would make for a family after a long day apart—something to share with loved ones.

I stared down at the bowl sadly and sighed. I had the urge to call Jessa but I knew she probably had a date tonight and was in the midst of her date routine. I checked my watch. She was probably somewhere between putting her hair in rollers and putting on her makeup.

Chaz’s entrance into the room brought me out of my melancholia for a moment. “I’ve got to go.”

Iris just nodded solemnly.

“What?” I snapped.

He just grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and walked out.

Startled, I looked up at Iris with questions.

She just shook her head, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking, and gestured that I should ask him about the thoughts that were flying through my head.

I caught him as he opened his car door.

“Where are you going?” I demanded, sounding angrier than I thought I was.

“They need me somewhere else,” was all he responded as he tossed his jacket in the passenger seat.

“But what about me?” I asked, stifling the urge to stomp my foot. “You said you’d stay.”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Violet,” he shouted back, quite unexpectedly to both of us.

It was like he had smacked me, a cold hard smack that chilled me down to my toes before my face turned to fire. I wasn’t sure I deserved that. I turned quickly and started back to the house.

“Violet,” he called out after me.

The tears burned in my eyes but I refused to let them fall. I turned back around to face him in the moonlight that flooded the front of the house.

I didn’t have anything to say to him. So I just balled up everything in my chest right now and I threw it at him, the fear and the nervousness and this sudden betrayal that had worked its way in there as well and I flung it at him so hard that he stumbled back against his car.

Feeling less angry but not better, I went into the house and sat on the steps up on the second floor.

It was a few minutes before I heard his car start up and saw the headlights illuminate the living room as he drove off down the dirt road.

Iris shuffled into the foyer and looked down at me.

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” I grumbled with a sniff.

Iris threw her hands up, complete with a white flag napkin from the dinner table. “You need to finish your dinner,” she finally said.

I sighed and pushed myself up off the stairs.

“I’ll give you one thing,” Iris said as we sat back down at the table and I looked across at Chaz’s empty spot with a clenched jaw.

“What?” I asked trying to be civil. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I don’t ever want to be on the receiving end of your fury. Ever.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not usually like this. I’m usually the calm collected one, but lately . . .” I just shook my head and picked up my spoon.

“I know,” Iris said softly. “Just eat your dinner and you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

W
e stood outside in the front yard bathed in the moon from high above. The chirp of the crickets and the soft swoosh of the wind through the tall grasses in the surrounding fields calmed me but the stirring in my chest was not abated.

“You just need to run, get it out of your system so when you’re in the city, you won’t have the urge.”

“So are we actually going to be hunting?” I asked as my hands twisted at my waist, playing with the belt on the pink fuzzy robe she had loaned me to save my clothes from being shredded again.

“No, your cat just needs a safe place to stretch its legs, your legs.”

I nodded. We had gone through the pronoun game this afternoon. It was not my cat, it was me. My other legs needed to be stretched out, needed to be set free to run and streak through the night air.

“But if you do grab a little snack, please don’t leave it on my doormat,” Iris joked.

And I laughed. It was what I needed right now to calm the jitters in my chest.

“And tomorrow we’ll work on shielding.”

“Going a little medieval tomorrow, are we?”

Iris pursed her lips. “Shielding is the opposite of brushing. It’s putting up borders to protect yourself”

“Why?”

“People are going to begin to notice you walking into a room. And not the kind of noticing you want. Imagine if I just walked around like that, power out all willy-nilly, knocking people out of chairs all the time. So we’ll work on it tomorrow, on how to put up borders to keep yourself hidden. Should protect you until we know what’s happening and keep Haverty from finding you.”

“Wait,” I asked. “What about Chaz? Does he have borders up?”

Iris flashed quick smile. “Honey, that boy was born with his borders cemented in place. Never seen such impenetrable stuff. Known him for over ten years and I couldn’t tell you what his insides are like.”

She turned back to the fields, closing her eyes for a moment, the wind softly swishing the white wisps around her face. I was still looking at her when she opened her eyes.

“I’ll work with you tomorrow,” she repeated. “Otherwise, I have a feeling you could get yourself into trouble.”

“Me? Trouble?”

Iris just raised an eyebrow.

“I might be able to stay out of trouble if I understood how it works,” I said. The feline stretched in my chest, rolled around. The high moon called to her and she wanted to be free. “Still dealing with the whole magic is real thing.”

Iris turned her golden eyes to me. She’d told me that she rarely shifted anymore, that the change was too hard on her old body, but she could still feel the pull of the moon. Tonight, you could see the pull of the moon in her eyes. “You a religious girl?”

“Used to be.”

Iris looked long out across her land. “Well, I’m not an expert at the metaphysical stuff. I’m better at showing you how it works than telling you why is works. Our people sprung forth from the Earth and when they did, they kept the magic of their creation with them, practiced it and worshiped it. You’ll feel it when you’re older, how much potential everything has. The difference between us and regular folks is that we can tap into that potential and use it.”

“This is going to sound contrite, but what else is out there?”

“Didn’t Chaz give you the book?”

“Werewolves and demons and vampires, oh my.”

“If you can think it, it was real at some point.” Iris slowly looked over at me and raised her silver eyebrow above her sharp blue eyes. “You’re stalling, aren’t you?”