Arcadia Burns

THE PACK


SOON SHE WAS STUMBLING down a slope, at the bottom of which was a narrow path. Ahead of her in the darkness rose a mighty arch made of rough-hewn stone blocks. She knew this part of the park; she had been here before, years ago.

It was the Ramble, an artificially laid-out wilderness with dense woodland, winding paths, and steep rock formations. Streams and pools of water looked idyllic in daylight, but on a winter night the open, unprotected, icy surfaces became insurmountable barriers.

Somewhere in all these thickets there was a man-made grotto that had been closed to visitors for years, as well as countless other nooks and crannies that might provide a hiding place. Michele certainly assumed that his prey would look for cover somewhere, hoping that the Panthera wouldn’t find them. But Rosa knew what a keen sense of smell the big cats had and didn’t make the mistake of underestimating it. She had seen Alessandro and other Carnevares in their animal form, and it was obvious that there was nowhere to hide from them. Sooner or later they would track down anyone who crept into one of those places for shelter.

Run straight ahead, she had told the others. But you couldn’t do that in the Ramble. The network of paths wound this way and that, there was no way to see straight in front of you, and steep slopes and precipices rose on either side. Michele had chosen the best imaginable playground, for the same reasons that Cesare had once chosen the Gibellina monument. There was no escape from the narrow aisles between the rocks and the rampant undergrowth.

Rosa ran through the crusted snow and tried to control her racing breath. The soles of her heavy shoes kept her from slipping, but she was still too slow. She wanted to go west, to the edge of the park, but whenever she caught a glimpse through the trees, she saw only darkness, no skyline. Maybe she was running the wrong way, farther and farther into the park. She didn’t dare turn around. The Panthera had to be on her trail already.

She heard the first scream when she was ducking low as she crossed a small bridge. One of the boys, probably, but it was hard to tell for certain—the voice was shrill and high, a shriek of mortal terror.

Rosa ran on. No time for pity, not now. She felt sick. She just made it to the handrail of the bridge and threw up on the frozen surface of the water.

When she looked up, she saw movement in the bushes, the outline of something gliding along the bank in the darkness. She flung herself around and ran on. She would have liked to listen to the sounds made by her pursuer, but could only hear the crunch of her own footsteps in the snow and her own breathing, both of them too loud.

The second scream came from one of the girls, and was from a different direction. So the four of them had separated after all. Not that it had done them any good. The Panthera had taken their second victim. Rosa wondered if they killed their prey at once or just injured it, let it get away, gave it a head start, and then followed the scent of hot blood.

Once again something moved among the trees, beside her now. Keeping low and close to the ground, as if the black silhouettes of the trunks were forming growths that moved from tree to tree and merged. Whatever it was scurried through the brushwood parallel to the path. But she immediately lost sight of it again when, after a few steps, the next high slope cut off her view.

How long had she been running now? Less than five minutes. It was going to seem forever before the effect of the serum wore off and she, too, had a chance to change shape. Would Michele wait that long before attacking? Did he want a fight with an opponent who could defend herself? Rosa remembered the duel between Zoe and Tano that she had seen in the woods on the Alcantara property, snake and tiger locked in combat. She doubted whether she could fight back as well as her sister.

Another scream, and this time it seemed endless. The snarling of the big cats echoed through the night. Several Panthera scuffling with one another for possession of the prey. Then came the mighty roar of a lion, and after that, silence. The argument had been settled.

She reached a crossroads in the path and turned right. Another bridge under branches hanging low. Ahead of her yawned the mouth of a pedestrian underpass. She could see the other end of it, not thirty feet away, a vague gray patch in the black of the darkness.

She stopped, listened, heard her heartbeat thudding. Alessandro’s face appeared before her mind’s eye, but that was the last thing she needed right now. She was waiting for the snake, for the ice-cold reptile in her. She didn’t want to think of Alessandro at this moment. But the more she fought against it, the more her feelings rose to the surface. She couldn’t let them distract her from what lay ahead.

From the black mouth of the tunnel.

From the muzzle of the black panther suddenly barring her way.

They stared at each other, and for a crazy moment she felt sure that the panther was Alessandro.

She hadn’t yet seen many Panthera after their transformation into big cats, but she knew that their human features could still be recognized in animal form. Only in small details. There was a certain sparkle in Alessandro’s eyes. Not in this panther’s.

She took a step backward.

Behind her, the snarling of the pack could be heard again, and then branches breaking and snapping. They were coming through the frozen winter woodland of the Ramble now, ignoring the paths, racing through the undergrowth.

The panther in front of her didn’t move, just imperceptibly raised his nose and waited. Then she realized that he was picking up the scent of the others as they charged this way through the night. Presumably working out how much time he still had to claim her just for himself.

Quickly, Rosa began climbing the steep slope to the left of the path. The panther wasn’t twelve feet away, with the tunnel opening directly behind him. Somehow or other she had to get to the top, crossing the frozen snowdrifts caught in the tangled tendrils and roots. Broad tree trunks rose above the slope. Something was moving behind them.

The panther let out a snarl, but she didn’t turn around.

Then the sounds coming from his muzzle changed.

“Not that way.”

She looked down on the path. A naked man was crouching in front of the tunnel, at first glance not much older than Rosa herself. As she stared at him, he stood up, swaying, dazed by the speed of his shift back to human form. Strands of panther fur scurried over his muscular body, branched out, and disappeared. But his eyes were still glowing; his hair was still raven black.

“I’ll help you,” he managed to say hoarsely, as his interior organs went on changing and his vocal cords became human again. He looked pale and defenseless in front of the deep, black mouth of the tunnel.

“Come with me.” He stretched out a shaking hand.

She went on climbing. Up to the trees. To the figures moving among them.

Swaying, she straightened up, and now she could see just over the top of the slope.

Two lions were prowling through the undergrowth. Then she saw the girl. Jessie was cowering behind a tree over to the right, trembling with the freezing cold as she hid from the beasts. When Rosa looked left again, there were more Panthera there. A leopard. Two tigers. A graceful lioness with huge eyes, her beautiful feline face seeming almost innocent.

The beasts were approaching Jessie’s hiding place. The girl couldn’t see them, but she probably smelled them, heard the crunch of frozen foliage and twigs under their paws. But Jessie stood there, frozen to the spot, behind the trunk of the oak tree, not daring to move.

Only her eyes were turned toward Rosa, over a distance of some twenty-five feet, pale pearls shining in the darkness. A pleading, terrified glance.

A hand was placed over Rosa’s mouth from behind and forced her down, into the shelter of the edge of the slope. A whisper in her ear, almost inaudible: “There’s nothing you can do for her.”

As if she had no will of her own left, she let him lead her down the hill. She knew he was right. But she had just turned her back on a stranger who, in those few seconds, had begged Rosa for her life.

Down at the foot of the slope she tore herself away from the man, ready to scale it again and intervene after all, shout at the Panthera that she was the only one they really wanted, the Lamia they hated so much.

Except that that wouldn’t change anything.

Up in the darkness, Jessie began to scream.

The man leaped after Rosa and hauled her down again. “If you don’t come with me, you’ll die,” he hissed at her, still with that dangerous feline growl in his voice. She thought it attractive in Alessandro, merely menacing in this man.

She wanted to resist, contradict him, run to help the girl.

But she did none of those things. She just stared at him, feeling something die inside her, maybe her pity, maybe only her brief moment of desperate courage, and then she nodded.

“This way,” he whispered, and ran into the tunnel ahead of her. “Come on.”

She followed him, hoping that Jessie’s screeching and howling would lessen down there, but instead it was amplified. Many growls and much feline mewling mingled with it as the Panthera quarreled over their prey again, and then, as before, an animal roar silenced them. It did not sound as fierce and barbaric; more domineering. A short command in the language of the Panthera, and immediately there was quiet apart from Jessie’s weeping and pleading.

The sounds that finally silenced the girl almost brought Rosa to her knees. The noise of snapping and tearing echoed through the tunnel, as if the Panthera were feasting down here in the shadows, right beside Rosa.

The man seized her again and pulled her along. “They’ll kill us both if they catch up with us.”

“You’re one of them.”

He didn’t deny it.

“Why are you helping me?”

She might have expected anything, or nothing. An ally of Alessandro, one of his informers in the New York branch of his clan. Or one of the Panthera wanting her all to himself.

But not this.

“Because of Valerie,” he said quietly.

She asked no more questions, but only ran faster now, away from the sound of the angry jaws snapping behind her.

They reached the other end of the tunnel, turned down a path branching off, and ran along the bank of a small lake. Then the man pulled her after him, by the arm, into the undergrowth. It didn’t grow so luxuriantly here. They were near the edge of the Ramble, approaching the well-tended, neat, and tidy part of the park.

In the cover of a line of trees, the outskirts of a little wood, he stopped and looked out at the open terrain beyond. He was still naked, and by the light of a nearby lantern she saw that he was trembling. Now that he had no panther coat to protect him, he was freezing like any ordinary human being. Neither of them would last much longer.

“Is that East Drive?” she whispered. Ahead of them, beyond a narrow snowfield, lay a paved road, entirely empty.

He nodded. His lips were blue.

“But you’re heading for somewhere, right?” she asked doubtfully.

“Not far now.” He looked right and left, then back over his shoulder. “Run!”

They left the protection of the shadows under the trees. Rosa’s steel-toed boots left deep prints in the frozen snow, while he ran across it barefoot as if part of him were still a cat.

“Are they following us?” she asked.

“They won’t stop to eat their fill until they have you all. Then they take all the prey to a place where they divvy it up.”

They crossed the street, and Rosa thought of following it south. He saw the way she was looking, and shook his head. “There’s a barrier where this road meets Terrace Drive. You wouldn’t get far. Not in human form.”

“What’s your name?” she asked, as they reached the trees on the other side of the road. The trunks were much farther apart here, and there were few bushes.

“Mattia.”

“Carnevare?”

He nodded again. “You’re Rosa.”

She was going to ask how he knew, but he got in first. “Valerie,” he said. “She sometimes talked about you.”

Behind them she heard a triumphant roar as the pack streamed out onto the snowy field.