Darkest Fear (27 page)

“I'm really sorry,” Alex repeated.

“Hello? Naked guy? Still threatening,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on the wall.

“Oh.” Alex got a pillow from my bed and held it over his crucial parts. “I think my clothes are in the hall.” He turned and hustled out, but of course we got a great view of his bare butt.

Aly shook her head and sighed. “He's older than me by a whole year, but that hasn't sunk in yet. Now, what happened to you? Coco told me she saw you come upstairs, not looking great.”

“I drank too much,” I admitted. “Got sick as a dog.”

“Oh, no!” Aly laughed ruefully. “Yeah, that mulled wine can knock you on your ass. How are you feeling now?”

“I was doing better till I came out and found a strange jaguar in my room,” I said.

“Really, so sorry,” said Alex, coming back into my room and tossing the pillow back onto my bed. His jeans were zipped but not
snapped, and his shirt was unbuttoned and hung open, exposing his great chest. He looked like the cover of a steamy romance novel. “I really thought you'd laugh, maybe throw something at me, maybe change yourself. I didn't realize you weren't feeling well.”

“I didn't recognize you,” I said, suddenly remembering that I was sitting here in nothing but my underwear and a big T-shirt. I crossed my arms over my chest.

Alex looked surprised.

“Let's go downstairs and leave Vivi alone,” Aly said firmly, standing up. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?” She rubbed my shoulder and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

I shook my head. “I think I'll just try to go to sleep. But thank you again for everything you did to get me ready. I felt like Cinderella. Till I barfed.”

Aly smiled. “I was glad to do it—it was fun to show you how beautiful you are. I know you'll feel a lot better in the morning. Now, come on,” she said, taking Alex's arm. As I saw them standing next to each other, I realized why Alex had seemed familiar: There was definitely a family resemblance. In a way, Alex was more handsome than Aly was beautiful—I mean, Aly was really pretty, but he was gorgeous. As beautiful in his own way as Rafael was in his way.

Once they closed my bedroom door, I went over quietly and locked it. I was not up for any more surprise visitors tonight.

• • •

After the party I was even more determined to learn how to change. If I'd been able to change, I would have felt safer when Alex had
come in. Also I had, for once in my life, felt like one of the crowd. All of them, everyone at that party, knew how to change, how to express both sides of themselves. I was the only one there who didn't. I didn't want to be that person. I didn't want to stand out among my own kind.

It was hard to find time to practice together—apparently September was an especially busy time for luthiers. “It's all the kids, going back to school,” Matéo had explained. “All their violins suddenly need repair or adjusting or even just tuning. This town is full of school bands and orchestras, and it's crazy until mid-October.”

Usually I worked five out of seven days at Ro's, but my schedule was flexible—sometimes I had Sunday and Monday nights off, sometimes a Tuesday and a Friday, or whatever. I didn't have kids or a school schedule to work around, so it was easier for me to change at the last minute. Privately, I allowed myself to pine for Rafael. I found myself thinking that it would have been so awesome if he had come to the Fécinte party, because then I would know for sure that he was haguari and he wouldn't seem off-limits. Then I remembered that I didn't want to date any haguaro at all. But it was all blending and fading, my objections to my species, my outraged rejection of everything I was.

Slowly, little by little, I was seeing examples of how to be haguari, how to live a normalish life, how to have fun. It wasn't that Matéo and Aly and our friends did anything different than my parents had. I think it was just knowing about all the others like us in New Orleans, knowing how many there were of us. I was starting
to think that my parents either hadn't known how many haguari there were all over the world, or that they had chosen to live separate from them on purpose. Surely they had to have known. Why wouldn't they have wanted to be part of a bigger community? Why wouldn't they have wanted me to know other kids like me, besides my own cousins who were still too young to change?

One afternoon at the beginning of October, Matéo and I were practicing in my room. I could now meditate quickly and easily, and could isolate each of my muscles and my senses. I'd learned a lot since I'd been practicing with him, but still, for whatever reason, had never once managed to turn into a jaguar. We'd tried using cuvaje rojo and cuva rojo a couple times to jump-start the physical sensations, and they always worked. But on my own I simply could. Not. Change.

I was fed up and discouraged. After weeks of work, I was no closer to being able to control changing than I was before. Suzanne had wondered out loud if it was like a foreign language, easier to learn when you're younger. I'd wanted to smack her.

“Do you still, still maybe . . . not like being a haguara?” Matéo asked. “Could that be why you can't get there? 'Cause something in you just doesn't want to accept this?”

Near tears, I sat on the floor in my room. I was wearing a tank top and yoga pants, my hair hanging hot and heavy down my back. “I don't know. I mean, I want to learn how to do this. I know I need to—just to feel safer. I'm doing this by choice.”

“No, I mean, if you could choose to not be a haguara, would you?”

I opened my mouth to say, “Of course,” but then thought it through. Thought about the amazing people I'd met, how easily people around me embraced their natures, how many people I'd met who were like me. My attitude had definitely changed. Definitely. So would I still choose to not be this? Would I still choose to have this cut out of me, the way I'd wanted when I was younger?

“I don't know,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“Even apart from the change,” Matéo said. “Even without the change. As people we're strong, fast, have lightning reflexes. We make beautiful dancers, incredible athletes, and exceptional soldiers. Our immune systems are amazingly strong. Isn't all that really cool?”

I hunched my shoulders. “Yeah, of course.” My folks had tried to tell me all this. Naturally, I had blocked it out.

“Don't you feel beautiful? Don't you like being strong?”

“Yes.” Another shrug.

Matéo ran his hand through his dark red hair. “Vivi . . . you should have learned how to do this by now, frankly.”

“I've been trying!”

“It's not working. We know you can change, because you have. But it's like you have some internal block against it. If you were thirteen, I could teach you how to change in like three, four days.”

That stung. My mouth opened, and feelings I didn't know I still had came pouring out. “Of course I have an internal block against it! I hate everything about it! I always have! Just because you and your friends like to prance around all jungly doesn't mean that I do!”

Matéo's eyebrows rose, and then his eyes narrowed. With no
warning he scooped me up into his arms and carried me out of my room to the hallway. I was only two inches shorter than him but hoped I weighed at least forty pounds less. All the same, he carried me without effort.

“Okay, put me down,” I began—

—and then he dumped me over the second-floor railing.

My gurgled scream was cut short, but the next split second seemed to take minutes. It registered that I was falling from a tall height, and that I would soon crunch down hard onto the wooden floor fourteen feet below. Oddly, my brain had time to process all this, to see the chandelier as I fell past it, to gauge how quickly the floor was zooming up to meet me. Without thinking I twisted in the air, and then facedown I landed on my hands and feet, limbs spread to absorb the shock. I didn't go splat, didn't hit my face—my hands and feet spread solidly on the floor and I stuck my landing. Apart from a slight stinging sensation on my palms, I wasn't hurt at all.

I looked up in amazement to see Matéo grinning at me over the banister.

“You lunatic!” I yelled, scrambling to stand up. “You could have killed me!”

“No,” he said. “I couldn't. That's the point.”

I stood there, breathing hard, clenching my fists. He had shown me my innate nature, the nature that took over when my rational self blanked out.

Then I became aware of it . . . a tingling, almost a clenching at the base of my neck, as if a thick muscle were quivering with
electricity. My attention focused on it, I paid attention to it, and then I just . . . grabbed it. I felt that sensation and gripped it, holding it tightly, and wasn't really surprised when my vision changed, I dropped to all fours, and my ears picked up the drip coming from the kitchen sink forty feet away. I didn't let go, didn't back away. For the first time in my life I recognized the jaguar part of me and followed where it led.

It didn't hurt, but it felt weird as hell. It wasn't scary, but it was shocking. Within a minute I was my jaguar self.

Fur scent my scent my black fur

I'm strong fast like an arrow like a cold river that crashes onto sharp knifelike rocks

I am night-colored night-scented with blotches of shadows on my shoulders my head my flanks

The floor smells dry under me I leave my scent with my paw pads

I hear a bird outside I could catch the bird could swallow it

Sound above and ear twitch see heat smell heat

He's there watching me from up high

I put my head back pull in air push out sound feel it rumble out roll through the air like waves

They hit the wall they go up he hears them his eyes go wide

He is my prey

Behind me door flies open hits wall she comes out her blue eyes her dark hair

I tell her stay back he is mine my prey I show her my teeth my strong jaws I tell her stay back she comes no closer

His voice floats down “Beautiful” It sounds odd not like bird not animal but human

He thinks I am beautiful I am

He did this he threw me down I see his teeth he is laughing

I am not laughing we do not laugh I will show him

Stairs one big jump and one big jump and land on high floor claws gouge the wood

Around this turn claws gripping wood fast fast he is smiling

He sees my face sees how fast I come at him his smile disappears

I hit him like a boulder in his chest hit him like a wave knock him down

He falls heavy slamming into the ground the rug there the dust goes up into my nose

His scent is different he is changing

I am standing on his chest his chest is roiling under me like the swell of a wave

He smells male he smells like family like strong jaguar I know him

Pull in air dust woolly rug scent pull in air it coils inside and curls like a fist

It rolls out into his face he is growing strong he is writhing and changing

Now he is golden he is jaguar

My roar shifts his fur sparks light in his eyes the spark is lit in mine

He is bigger and heavier than me the fight is on

He is family I am so mad I am strong I smack him hard

My bones shake my muscles ripple

He snarls he shows his teeth I show mine I bite his shoulder the skin breaks

It splits under my fangs separating like cloth his blood is warm and salty and sweet

He knocks me off and slams my head shaking me loose

My mouth drips blood he roars at me

I am not afraid

We hold on we roll we hit a big thing it scrapes the floor

We hit a little thing it tips something cold and heavy falls on my back and breaks

There is dirt everywhere there is plant in my mouth there is plant in my ear there is dirt in my eyes but I don't let go

We roll and I kick his belly hard and he bites me but not too hard but he knocks me over

He stands on me I kick his belly with my hind claws

My back legs so strong so heavy with muscle he roars at me I snarl and kick again

He hits my head and roars I kick again his fur comes off in my claws

I feel his skin feel the peel of fur and skin in my claws

He drops his head he takes my neck in his teeth he closes his teeth he shakes me hard

Shakes my eyes closed his fangs puncture my skin I feel it my blood is tart and sweet-smelling he is crushing me

I let go I go limp I let go my muscles soften and smooth out

He shakes me pulls my shoulders off the ground the woolly rug stained with blood

He thrashes my head back and forth my teeth click together

I smell my blood I am limp I let go I said I let go I am a puppet

My blood is hot and wet and I am sticky

“What the hell are you doing?” A person yells that is Tink Tink is here the jaguar grunts Tink kicks him hard in the flank

My cousin drops me I lie limp on the rug

Matéo snarls at Tink he paces around me because he won

He shows Tink his fangs red with my blood I have red fangs too

“I will kick your ass,”  Tink says. “Move back!”

My cousin does not want to he won his tail lashes back and forth

He paces he watches as Tink moves close to me

Tink kneels by my head I smell cloth I smell lotion I smell shampoo I smell him he is a person he is not my family

I growl at him the sound leaking out of my throat

“Stop it.” He is in charge and I lie still

“Vivi, you need to change back so I can see your neck.”

She is here with blue eyes and scent of lemons

“Matéo! Come on! Help here!”

I smell Matéo the jaguar then I smell person skin and blood and person hair

My cousin sits on the rug I pant and try not to swallow dirt

My head hurts my neck hurts my bones hurt my muscles hurt