~~~
Alexander stomped along the path, not caring where he was going, ignoring the rain that had started while he’d been walking. What did his dad expect? That he could pull magic out of his butt on a whim? He couldn’t. He’d tried. Not the butt part. He more than tried. Mostly on his own where he didn’t have to watch the disappointment seep into the tightness of his father’s jaw.
He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t magical. He was the only person in his entire family who didn’t have magic. If the tales his parents told him about his mysterious aunts and uncles were even true. It’s not like he’d ever met them. Oh yeah, because they all time traveled through a swirling hole in the fabric of time to the future for a reason his parents couldn’t tell him about yet.
Right.
That didn’t sound like a boatload of crap.
They all had magic, could do these amazing far-fetched things, and he couldn’t.
He was a freak, okay? A freak among freaks.
His parents would just have to learn to get over their disappointment.
He kicked a stone over the edge of the cliff. The North Sea below was pulsing and angry today, heaving up to slap into the cliff face.
His angry pace had carried him to the sinkholes, an area of the cliffs he wasn’t supposed to go near, yet had often snuck off to anyway with the Garrity twins to throw stones at the crumbling sandy soil to watch the soil drain into small craters their rocks made. The twins claimed that if they hit the right spots hard enough, they might make a hole that drained all the way through and out the cliff wall below, spewing earth into the ocean below.
The rock face was pockmarked with caves and holes, though these past months he’d been sneaking off here with the boys, none of them had produced any such hole.
Alexander frowned, eyeing the indents they’d made in the ground which were filling with rain water.
Pushing his dripping bangs off his forehead, he exhaled and turned to leave. As rebellious as he felt at being here, it wasn’t very safe, especially near the cliff edge in winter where storms blew in fast. Judging by the dark clouds and flashes of lightning over the sea, this one was going to be epic.
He pulled his wet jacket tighter, wishing he had grabbed his rain slicker before stalking off, but he’d been so frustrated and having to march past his mom’s sympathetic gaze to retrieve it was worse than the cold.
Stupid though because now he was freezing. The frigid air whipped across the back of his shoulders, pushing his hair forward against his cheeks, but he was too cold and wet to smooth it out of his face, preferring to keep his hands in his pockets.
He picked his way carefully along the slick path. His sneakers squished with each step, filling with icy mud. The wind shrieked. Lightning flickered, followed closely by groaning thunder.
Close.
He’d better hurry. His mom would be pacing the length of the kitchen, mixing up nasty tasting herbs to warm him up and ward off pneumonia, which she was certain he would catch just from being out in the rain. Mom was a worrier.
A growl whipped across the charged atmosphere, the aftermath of the thunder. The hairs on Alexander’s arms raised in goose bumps.
He lifted his face, peering through his rain-flattened hair into the dark storm, squinting against the pelting rain.
His heart banged rapidly, twisting on itself. He stopped.
Something was out there in the gloom, watching him. He could feel it.
“Who’s there?” he asked just as a jolt of lightning revealed his answer.
It was a mere flash, but it was enough to freeze all the blood in his veins. It was a nightmare figure, disproportionate shoulders and arms hunched over thick muscular legs. Rain sluiced over bloated, sagging skin, the face of a hairless ape, bloated, dead and drowned and soggy like it had somehow crawled out of the sea.
He couldn’t have seen it. It couldn’t be real. Even so, Alexander felt himself edge backwards, his feet working where his shocked brain wasn’t.
Another lightning strike showed the beast had come closer, was impossibly real, and grinning at him with tiger teeth.
Every muscle in Alexander’s body locked up hard.
The monster purred. The hum of it rattled low in its throat as it edged forward, its weight pushing into the bony knuckles sinking in the mud. Gray translucent lips peeled back even farther. This close, he could see it had no eyes, or if it did, they were buried beneath layers of rotting skin.
Wide nostrils were flaring with chuffs of air as the beast was scenting the stormy atmosphere.
The blind face turned toward him, a tremor rolled through Alexander, hard enough to break the stiffness of his spine.
“Run.” The resonant voice broke past the raging storm, past the roaring of the blood in his head, and past the fear holding him immobile.
His head jerked toward the sea. He felt the beast jerk also.
A man stood at the cliff’s edge without a stitch of clothing against the freezing rain. He looked like his dad, only he wasn’t. The guy was younger, more slender.
The guy lowered slowly into a crouch, eyes never leaving the terrible beast only yards away from either of them. Between them.
“Alexander, run. Run now.”
This time his mind and body cooperated. Spinning on mud-coated heels, he ran back up the way he’d come and promptly slipped on the rainy soil to his knees, skinning the heels of his palms.
The beast flew onto him. He was flipped over, claws digging into his arms. He kicked out, jarring his knee into a blubbery stomach. The stink of wet animal and mold washed over him.
Alexander dug the back of his head into the seeping ground, angling his face away from the leathery mouth. Cold slime-coated teeth grazed along his jaw, fleetingly as the naked man slammed into them, rolling with the beast across the ground.
Alexander flipped to his stomach and pushed to his hands and knees to run.
The man and monster were locked together in a terrible struggle, shrieking and yelling.
No way could a man take on a creature like that bare-handed. His arms and legs were clamped tight around the beast’s torso, muscles strained with effort, hanging on—no, holding it back.
The monster’s attention was solely locked—Alexander’s throat tightened—the beast was trying to get at him.
“Run!” The guy snarled.
Alexander lunged up, intending to obey, got a few steps downslope—but, that man was history the second the creature stopped lunging after him and got a good swipe in at the guy.
Alexander started scooping up rocks. They were thin, sharp-edged, almost knife-like. He ran back, getting close, close enough that he had to jump back out of reach of a swishing claw, then moved in again close enough to shear a rock down on the bulbous head.
The rock cut into the spongy folds of skin with a slurp then hit bone, jarring Alexander’s arm.
The monster howled, turning and twisting its torso to escape the man’s hold. Sharp-toed feet dug into the soil, flinging mud and rain.
The man growled. “Alexander, get out of here.”
Alexander ignored him and hit the monster’s head again. And again.
Its skull had to be made of cement!
“Watch out!” he yelled and swung his arm like a baseball bat.
Eyes going wide, the guy ducked his head against the back of the beast’s shoulder right as Alexander hit the rock against the monster’s temple.
He felt that one all the way to his shoulder. The impact carried the monster to the ground, where it slurped out of the stranger’s grasp, the rock halfway embedded in its gooey skin, possibly into the bone. Who knew? It hung there for a second then thumped upon the ground where dazedly, the monster shook its head. And twisted toward Alexander.
Before he knew what was happening, the monster was up—tough sucker—and catapulted into the air and was on him. Just that quick.
Alexander’s back hit the mud, pummeling the breath from his lungs.
The mon
ster shrieked above him, but the guy came at them again, behind the monster, arms clamped around its arms, keeping those fileting claws from gutting him alive.
Lightning struck them, poured through their bodies in an electrical jolt. Except it wasn’t lightning. Couldn’t be. The guy…the guy glowed.
And changed. His entire body looked like a million pixelated squares of light. How could that hold the monster off him?
Alexander tried to breathe, make his lungs work…
The man disappeared.
He was completely gone. The light winked out.
Unobstructed, the beast fell onto Alexander.
Alexander squeezed his eyes closed, tensing for the claws or teeth to pierce him.
Long hands sank into his hair, holding his head steady. Claws scraped along his scalp and the hideous sagging face lowered into the hollow of his neck. In a voice like sandpaper rubbing wood, it whispered. “We live.”
He didn’t know what shocked him more. That the beast could talk or that he was about to die. Or the pain that exploded in his chest as his lungs decided to take that precise moment to work again and pull in a stabbing breath.
As it turned out, none of those were as shocking as the white tiger that materialized behind the monster and stabbed gleaming eye-teeth into the creature’s fleshy shoulder and started shaking.
Groping backwards, Alexander scrabbled out from beneath the two beasts trampling the wet soil.
Straining, half on his side, he heaved in painful pulls of air, not knowing what to do.
He wanted his dad.
He wanted to run home.
But that guy—shapeshifter. Crap, they were really real—that guy was trying to save him.
Except he was a tiger now. A huge one. And what if in tiger form he didn’t retain the brain cells to remember that he was trying to help him? The tiger could turn on him for all he knew.
The battle a few yards away was fierce and angry. Both beasts getting in licks. Blood slicked the tiger’s side, red streaks washing traces down the white muddy pelt.
He had to get help.
Struggling up, Alexander ran, slapping a hand to his arm where his wrist pad should be to call for help, but he’d taken it off and left it by the forge.
A feline shriek yanked his attention back and he caught sight of the tiger flying in the air, hitting the ground, then sliding toward the edge of the cliff where it tottered, then toppled over.
Shit! Alexander scrambled back, not sure what he could do. The tiger screamed, claws gouging the edge. He hadn’t fallen over all the way and as Alexander ran, it leapt back over the edge, landing on solid ground as the spot he was on washed away in a rainfall of mud.
But he didn’t stop there, muscles bunching, the cat sprang into Alexander, catching him against its furry stomach while Alexander’s back hit the other monster’s stomach.
It must have been right on top of him and he didn’t see it.
They hit the ground, bounced, hit again, but kept going as the soil gave way, crumbling beneath them. Dirt, rain and mud swallowed them whole.
~~~