“I do.” I nudged him under the table with my toe. “How did you discover this venue?”
“I told some friends that I needed somewhere to take my lady where they wouldn’t look at us funny for eating everything in sight. This place,” he gestured to the restaurant around us, “does all-you-can-eat Sunday once a month, at which point it winds up packed with college kids, competitive eaters, and lots of other folks who are more interested in eating than they are in judging.”
“Excellent.” I scanned the room, taking note of the wide variety of people who had crammed themselves into the narrow space. I was most definitely the best dressed of the lot, or at least the only one who had bothered to coordinate my earrings with my vertically striped stockings.
Most waheela do not care for crowds. I do not care for crowds. But I am very fond of watching fashion trends, and this has required me to learn to be still even when surrounded. It was not an easy lesson.
One of the waitresses wove through the crowd with an easy grace that I admired, putting a small dessert pizza down between us. It was grated chocolate and sliced strawberries on cinnamon bread, and I appreciated the artistry of it, even as I felt no desire to continue eating.
“We didn’t order this,” said Ryan, sounding puzzled.
“Compliments of the chef,” said the waitress. “You’re tonight’s big eaters!” Her announcement drew a round of applause from the tables around us.
“Oh. Well, thanks.” Ryan looked back to me and shrugged. “I guess we should try it. To be polite.”
“Your weakness for chocolate will be your undoing one day,” I said, and sighed, and reached for the pizza. If there is one thing I have learned since leaving the cave of my fathers, it is how to be polite.
There was a bitter taste lurking beneath the sweetness of the treat, like bones sleeping under snow. I paused in the act of chewing my first mouthful, trying to figure out why I knew that flavor—and more, what it was doing in my food.
Then Ryan’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell, face-first, into his plate. I threw my slice of pizza aside, reaching for him. Someone in the crowd protested. I swallowed my half-chewed mouthful in order to snarl at her. The protests stopped.
My hand never reached my boyfriend’s shoulder. Cold swept over me like the cruel north wind, and I barely felt my own head hit the table.
Isnapped awake. The pizza parlor was gone, replaced by a dark, cold room and a metal chair beneath me. Something held me in place. I tensed, testing my bonds. Metal chains, with a smell I did not recognize. No common alloy, then. They were wrapped around my body half a dozen times, holding me down, torso, arms, and legs. If I changed forms, and the chains did not snap …
I have seen stronger than I killed by their own foolish bravado, believing they could transform their way out of any trap or trouble. I calmed my breathing and was still.
The scent of Ryan hung in the room, but I did not know whether it meant my boyfriend was present or whether I was simply smelling my own clothing until he groaned off to my left, and said, “I don’t think that pizza was a good idea.”
“Shh,” I cautioned, despite my relief. “We are unlikely to be alone here.”
“I know, but they wouldn’t have put us together if they didn’t want us talking. Can you change?”
“The chains are too tight. I fear I would break myself. Can you?”
“No. Same.” Ryan sighed. “They’re too tight for me to get bigger, and too complicated for me to get smaller. Even if I shrank, I’d be all tangled up.”
“Ah.” Waheela have two shapes that we choose to wear: the one I was chained in, and my great-form, which was ten feet tall and difficult to buy shoes for. Tanuki have three common shapes—man, beast-man, and beast. It was a pity that none of them were currently available to us. “Is there a length of chain between your legs?”
“Yeah, and it’s, um, a little closer to the boys than I really appreciate.”
“Is there direct constriction of your testicles?”
I could virtually hear Ryan’s wince. “No, but it’s close.”
“Hmm.” I looked around the darkened room again. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, allowing me to pick out some small details, such as the location of the nearest walls. I considered rocking back and forth until I fell over, but dismissed the idea as impractical. I would injure myself well before I did anything to damage either the chains or the chair, and I would probably rip my stockings in the process. That was unacceptable.
“So honey? Do you smell anything that might tell us where we are?”
“I smell you. I smell metal. I smell cold. We are near something refrig erated. I do not smell anything that would indicate why we are here, or how we have been brought here.” As I said the last words, I froze. There was one thing that would explain how we had been brought here without our captors leaving any scent hanging in the air to warn me of their natures.
Ryan realized it, too. The silence stretched between us for what felt like an age before he said, “Waheela smell like cold.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “We do.”
It is hard to be a predator in any world, but harder still in a world where all is ice and snow and cold, forever. The waheela grew large, to fight off all who would challenge us, and then, when that was not enough, we grew difficult to track, to confound those who we would hunt. The scent of a waheela in human form is indistinguishable from fresh-fallen snow. Even in our great hunting forms, we leave behind meaningful scent trails only when we are wounded. We had been taken; we were in a room where the only abiding smell was the smell of the cold. It was thus clear that we had been taken by waheela.
“Ryan?” My voice was suddenly brittle in the cold, dark air, like ice that was on the verge of breaking.
“Yeah, Istas?”
“I have been very fond of you, and am glad to have entered into a casual mating relationship, despite the differences in our species and cultural backgrounds. I hope that you have not regretted your time with me.”
“What? Of course not. Istas—” Confusion and burgeoning panic sharpened his voice to a killing edge.
In some stories of the waheela, we can grab the wind itself to use as a weapon, when the need is upon us. If only all stories were true. I sat up taller in my chair, as tall as the chains allowed, and wished that I had my parasol. I have always felt braver when properly accessorized.
“We are ready for you,” I said. “You have toyed with your prey suffi-ciently, don’t you think?”