Leopard Moon (13 page)
"And if I say nothing?"
"Then I will do it myself," Sek snarled.
"You forget your place."
"I don't think so." He made a decision then, one he’d been toying with for weeks. His father could not be allowed to continue this way. There was only one door left open to him. "You've forgotten what it is to lead. Without me, this clan would be dead or dispossessed already." His father looked sad, but said nothing. Sek continued, determined to force his father's hand. "I invoke rite of challenge."
Something like disappointment flashed across his father's face, but Sek didn't care. His father was old, bound by outdated thinking. The clan would be better off with him at the head. His father could always acquiesce and declare Sek his heir and leave the clan to him. Live out his days in peace. That would be the smart thing to do. Sek was young, in his prime, and he'd been leading this clan in all but name anyway. He had the clan's best interests in mind. He was the future.
Darius' next words surprised him. "As the challenged party, I decide the time and place. Midnight tomorrow. We'll do it in the Everglades."
Sek swallowed. He hadn't expected his father to fight him, not really. He thought that if pushed, the old man would back down. It had always been accepted that Sek would assume leadership of the clan when Darius no longer wanted it or died. But if his father was determined to consign their clan to oblivion, Sek had to step up and take his rightful place. And if he had to go through his father to get it, so be it.
"Bomani will be my witness. I trust you will have one of your own." The sadness in his father's voice threatened to make Sek ashamed, but he pushed those feelings aside. He was right to challenge his father, but it didn't mean he had to be happy about it.
Sek nodded and turned to leave. He paused at the threshold as his father spoke again. "Kess warned me to watch out for you. I had thought she meant to protect you. I see now that I was mistaken."
Kess knew in her bones that tonight she needed to change. She hadn’t been in her leopard form for the weeks she’d been here and it was costing her dearly. It grew harder and harder to control that part of herself and she realized that tonight she needed to let it free. The moon had waned and no longer hung like a scythe blade in the sky. It would begin to wax again in another night or two. She almost felt like her skin rippled with the need to morph, to run, to hunt.
Work had been especially hard that day and she was glad she hadn’t picked up a double shift, even though it was a Friday night and she could always use the money. She wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on taking people’s orders or able to handle the large trays of plates without dropping them. Better to get it over with and done and get back to real life. The longer she kept it in, the harder that side of her was to control.
She stopped by her boarding house to change into her rattiest jeans and an old sweater. The sun had already set and she knew Anita would be busy making dinner, so she stuck her head in the kitchen doorway to ask her a question on the way out. "Hey Anita," she began, startling the older woman who was elbow deep in flour, "is there an overlook or someplace like that nearby? I wanted to take in some of the nighttime scenery."
Anita looked at her oddly. "You aren’t going in the woods, are you? It’s easy to get lost out there, especially in the dark."
"Wasn’t planning on it," Kess lied easily, not worried at all about losing her way in the dark. "Just want to get out a little, stretch my legs, see the stars." She’d been scoping out the area surrounding the town for a place suitable for a good run. She’d been disappointed. The college was large with a lot of ground, including a number of off-campus natural observation areas but the risk of running into a student out there was too great. The resort was off-limits up at the top of the mountain. That left the Parkway, but she’d not gotten a chance to really get out there and scope it out. Now she couldn’t wait and would just have to rely on instinct, and hope for a quick and successful hunt.
"Head out of town going north and get on the Parkway. You should run across an overlook after a couple of miles. Just make sure you have plenty of gas—there are no stations once you hit the parkway." Anita looked at her closely. "Be careful, okay? It’s not a good idea to go walking out there alone."
Kess grinned, not worried in the slightest. "I’ll be fine. I’m not planning on going too far and I’m certainly not going to run around out there like this." It wasn’t technically a lie.
"I’ll leave a plate in the fridge for you." Anita’s eyes bored into her, as if accounting for every pound that had dropped from Kess’ frame. "You’ve lost some weight. You need to take better care of yourself."
Kess shrugged, her default answer for anything she didn’t want to talk about. She knew she’d lost weight recently; it was one of the costs of not changing when she should. As the moon disappeared, her body required more and more food to power the change that was to come and Kess didn’t have that kind of cash. She always got a free meal for each shift that she worked, and she tried to order the biggest piece of meat on the menu at any given time, but that, combined with gorging on sausages at breakfast, still wasn’t nearly enough. She planned to bag a deer tonight if she could scent one and that would go a long way to setting things to rights. Raw meat always did.
"Thanks, Anita. See you in the morning." Anita waved a floured hand and Kess headed out.
She followed Anita’s directions, making sure she was at least at half a tank, before turning right onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. There weren’t lights out here, so she flipped on her high beams, fairly certain that there wouldn’t be a lot of cars out here now that night had fallen. It was hard to appreciate the beautiful mountain vista in the dark. She skimmed past the first overlook she came too, choosing to continue on in the hopes of finding an area that wasn’t quite as open.
She drove for a couple of miles before pulling over to the left onto a graveled half circle off of the parkway. Kess sat for a minute, gathering her thoughts. The view would have been breathtaking in daylight, the open space between mountains and trees and limitless sable sky yawning like a great mouth in the darkness, broken only by the faint light of the few stars that had begun to appear. Kess resolved to come back when she had a day off and enjoy everything the view had to offer during sunlit hours.
Kess locked the car up, then ran across the road and into the woods on the other side. She walked along a well trod path for a few minutes before leaving it to push deeper into the woods. She made her way along what she thought was a small game trail, trying to put as much distance between herself and the road until she felt far enough in that it was safe. She could hear the faint gurgle of a stream flowing over stone farther ahead and to the right. Kess stopped and began to strip down next to a large outcropping of boulders that marked the border of the stream. She placed her clothes behind the rock on the stream side, walked forward several feet and crouched, allowing the change to take her.
It was painful and pleasurable all at once. As her body morphed and shifted, sparks seemed to snap all along her muscles, the pain intense but bearable and over quickly, followed by a feeling of heat that slid across her bones as they melded and lengthened. There was a tightening in her skin, like a maddening itch spreading across it. The process took several minutes—it would have taken less time if she’d been properly fed and been in better practice—and when it was over, she looked out at the suddenly clear forest through the eyes of a black leopard.
It was good to be in this shape again. She didn't have the same concerns as human Kess. She could put aside thoughts about Cormac and longing and running and just be something else for a little while. Instead of trying to plan for every eventuality, of having to agonize over every decision, she could just give herself over to instincts. She was grounded in the physical and it was a relief.
Kess padded over to a tree and stretched upwards, dragging her claws down the rough bark, the wood peeling down in curlicues. She rubbed up against the tree, its roughness digging into her soft, short fur. Her senses were amped to the extreme in leopard form and her instincts were unbound—she always marveled that she never lost the thinking part of herself when she was in animal form; it just took a backseat. Scent and hearing ruled. She could reason, but it was the animal hungers that drove her. Now, the hunt called her and from the myriad scents of the forest and earth, she picked out the one she wanted to track: deer.
She moved through the forest quietly, pausing to catch the scent again and determine where the wind was coming from. The darkness was no hindrance to her--her whiskers and eyebrows were long and incredibly sensitive, serving to guide her as much as her eyes. Her paws moved silently over the ground, the large pads enveloped in thick fur that allowed her to move soundlessly through the woods. She moved forward slowly as the scent of the deer grew stronger, taking care so she didn’t miss out on her meal. She was fast, but she wasn't built for a long chase. She slunk closer. When the deer was in sight, she crouched, creeping in as close as she dared. It was a young male, if the size was any indication.
Kess saw the buck’s head come up and she leapt at it, hitting it with her claws across the rump. Her weight threw it sideways but she buried her claws in its shoulder, clamping onto its throat with her powerful jaws to strangle it. She held on as it fell, digging in with both sets of claws as it struggled, until it finally stilled. She didn’t release her jaws from its throat until she was sure it was dead, even though she’d stopped hearing a heartbeat a few moments before. It only took a few minutes to open up the young buck and hollow him out with her teeth.
She dragged it to the base of a large tree. Using the muscles in her shoulders and front legs, she pulled herself and the deer up the tree. She paused to get a better grip with her back legs then lunged upwards again, then again and again. She walked out on a horizontal limb, carrying the carcass in her mouth. There she deposited the deer, letting it flop onto a web of pine branches. Then she settled down so she could eat her kill in peace.
Cormac was on his way back from the latest build site. Fridays were supposed to be his study day, but his father had needed an extra hand in order to stay on schedule. He’d wanted to finish the roof before a round of rain and snow came in. This was the last house they’d be building this year; it was too dangerous and costly to build the huge log cabins in January and February. Of course, it didn’t mean they were idle. They would still clear land slated for development and mill the timber from it, in preparation for the spring building season.
He was heading home in his Jeep, tired from a long day of stabilizing heavy roof timbers and general carting and toting building supplies around the site. He didn’t mind the work, but it seemed like his father was trying more and more to pull him into the business side of things, which while fine, wasn’t what he necessarily envisioned himself doing. He wanted to build things, yes, but bigger things than custom log homes--mountain mansions really--for those special few who could afford it. He loved bridges and large open spaces, cleanly designed. He hoped to incorporate his buildings with nature, much like Frank Lloyd Wright did with his Falling Water house--one of Cormac’s favorite architectural accomplishments.
His classes were done, and exams would be starting next week. He knew he’d done well this semester, as he always did, and he’d gotten registered for all of his spring classes. His older brother and his family were coming up in a few weeks to join them for Christmas and he planned to talk to him about the best way to handle their father’s ongoing lectures--the ones Cormac liked to refer to as the How You Should Live Your Life series. He was happy his dad didn’t know about his girl troubles; he could only imagine the talks those would generate.
He'd been staying away from the Barn lately. Burke and Finn hadn't said anything about it, but he knew they noticed. He was trying to give Kess the space she needed to figure things out for herself. He didn't want to push her into anything. He thought they had the potential for something pretty great, but she didn't seem to want to admit it. He would still swing by every once in a while, but it had been easier to avoid the place with the flurry of studying for finals.
The coffee date with Kess had been a lot of fun and he knew that she had felt the same. He couldn't understand why she kept backing away from him. She'd open herself up a little, put herself out there, and then shut him down completely. He wondered if it was a previous bad relationship that made her so gun-shy. It would certainly explain the fear and mistrust.
If he was truthful about it, it was as much for himself as for her that he stayed away from the Barn. It was kind of hard to see her and not want to sit down and talk to her. He wasn't worried about Kess not being a were--Burke's girlfriend Lindsay wasn't and she was accepted into the family, so he knew it wouldn't be an issue on his side. It wasn't ideal, but it wasn't a deal-breaker either. Unfortunately, it looked like he'd never get the opportunity to find out if it could work out since she seemed so determined to strangle whatever it was between them before it could really get started.
Cormac was passing one of the many overlooks that liberally spotted the mountainside when his headlights illuminated a familiar blue compact car sitting there. He made a U-turn to check and he was almost positive it was Kess' car. She'd traded in the California plates for local ones since the last time he’d walked her out to the Barn’s parking lot at the end of her shift, but everything else was the same. He parked his Jeep next to her car and got out.