Raphael’s eyes glowed with ruby fire. His face, a meld of human and hyena, didn’t mirror emotions well but his eyes stared at me with a chilling determination.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m taking you home.”
My mind chewed on his words, trying to break them into chunks. Take me home? Take me home…Home. With him.
My fatigue evaporated in an instant. “No.”
“Yes. You’re coming home with me. We’ll take a bath and eat and make love, and everything will be fine.”
I got my ass off the floor. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m done doing things your way. Your way means we don’t talk for months. You’re coming home with me.”
“You hurt me, on purpose, but everything is cool now, because you didn’t sleep with Rebecca and we can go home.”
“Yes!”
“It doesn’t work this way. I’m not going home with you. You and I are done.”
“You’re mine,” he snarled.
What the hell. Maybe the fight had knocked some screw loose in his brain.
“You’ll always be mine.” He stepped on the carcass and started toward me. I looked into his eyes and saw bouda insanity glaring back. The fighting had tipped the balance between rational thought and crazy passion. Raphael’s emergency brake was malfunctioning and he and I were on a collision course. “You know it and I know it. We love each other.”
“We’re bad for each other.”
“You’re not leaving me again!” he growled.
The adrenaline still coursing through me surged up. He was challenging me! I marched toward him, put my muzzle as close to his as I could, and said slowly, clearly pronouncing every word, “I am leaving you. You don’t get to play with me. I’m not your pet and you don’t get to hurt me because you think I should be punished.”
Baiting him was stupid. I knew that, but I couldn’t help myself. The crazy cocktail of biochemicals and magic that got me through this fight drove me on. I knew I should stop, but it was as if there were two of me—the rational Andrea and the emotion-crazy beastkin—and right now the rational Andrea was being dragged off by a raging river of hormones, while the beastkin Andrea waved good-bye from a cliff nearby.
I bit off words. “You broke my heart and now I’m walking away from you. Watch me.”
He’d hurt me. He would pay.
“This is me walking away.” I turned and took a couple of steps. “Are you watching?”
He lunged at me, and we went down, rolling in the dirt, arm over leg. My back hit the floor and Raphael pinned me in a classic schoolyard bully mount, sitting on my stomach. One of the worst positions you can be trapped in. Great.
“Not walking away now,” he said.
I bent my knees, planted my heels in the ground, and bridged under him. He pitched forward, his right hand coming down on the ground. Got you. I dropped my hips, caught his right arm, pulling it snug against my chest, stepped my right foot over his, capturing him, and bridged sharply to the right. Raphael pitched over and I rolled up on top of him. He clamped my shoulders with his hands.
“I’m getting up and walking out of here. You’ll have to fight me to stop me. Your call.”
Raphael opened his arms. He was letting me go. I had known he would.
I jumped to my feet and walked away. A part of me was screaming, What are you doing, stupid? Run back. I kept walking, holding on to the memory of Raphael telling me, “I know exactly how much it hurt.” This thing between us was too complicated and it hurt too fucking much. I had nothing left in me now and I couldn’t deal with it.
Behind me Raphael roared, shaking the ruin. I kept walking. The sound of his frustration chased me until I finally broke into a run. My body hurt. Fever heated my face from the inside—the Lyc-V was trying to mend my battered body. If only mending other things were that easy.
I ran faster, scurried up the wall, through the opening, and out into the moonlit night. I leaped onto the nearest roof and ran and ran, the air burning in my lungs, droplets of the beast’s blood falling off my body, leaving a grisly trail.
I kept going until the fatigue built into an ache in my limbs. I was on a roof…somewhere. The buildings around me no longer looked familiar. I slowed, then stopped. Behind me the city stretched, steeping in magic. In front, a river flowed, like a silvery serpent glinting in the moonlight. Tall trees stood guard on the distant bank. Tiny points of light, green and turquoise, drifted gently between their branches. I had run all the way across the city to Sibley Forest, one of the new post-Shift woods, supercharged by magic and filled with hungry things that viewed humans as tasty, fun-to-catch snacks.
The trees beckoned me. They looked so peaceful and even though I knew they weren’t, I couldn’t resist.
I dived off the building into the river. Cool water foamed around me with a million bubbles. I surfaced and swam, gliding through the cool depths as if I were flying. The river ended too soon, and I emerged onto the opposite bank, dripping wet but no longer bloody. I climbed up and made my way through the underbrush. The forest sang to me in a dozen different voices and teased me with a myriad of smells. I inhaled the spicy scent of forest herbs, the musk of a raccoon, and the slightly bitter scent of opossum. My ears twitched, catching the sounds of mice scurrying in the underbrush, the distant hooting of an owl, and the chirping of cicadas, fiddling away in the soothing darkness.
As I walked, the grasses rubbed against my legs, tickling my fur. Above me a dense vine covered with tiny white flowers shivered in the night breeze. The tiny flowers detached, glowing with pale green, and floated past me, like fairy lights. Fascinated, I crouched in the grass and watched one of the glowing blossoms settle on a leaf. So pretty.
I walked the woods, thinking of nothing at all. If I could’ve shifted into a hyena, I would’ve. I just wanted to cool down, smell things, watch animals move about, and pretend that I was part of this world, rather than the place across the river. My choices were simpler here. Lay in the grass or on a fallen log. Watch the mice or try to catch one. Listen to the owl hooting or listen to the frogs singing. Simple and easy.
Finally I climbed a large tree, curled up in its branches, and fell asleep.