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He blinked slowly, and his eyes changed, growing slightly wider and golden to match his scales, split in two by the dark line of his pupil. He held the package in one hand, the other hand waving above it, and then cricked his neck like all those fighters do when they’re about to start some big bout.
Oh, gods, he’s transforming. In my head, I pictured the eight-foot-tall great naga from the vision. Did they all get that big when they changed? Dire wolf or no, I didn’t know if I could take him on my own. I stole another step back during his grandstanding, but he caught me.
“Not-so-little wolf, you’ll miss the whole show.” His long, forked tongue slipped through his lips. He shrugged the cloak off, and the movement caused a ripple across his skin, like a million scales were racing down his body to beat the cloth to the ground. What a beautiful sight to see, the curves of muscle, and scales that seemed to breathe with him. The visions did the nagas no justice. Had I not been a tad more interested in the odorous package in his hand (and perhaps not in wolf form), the sheer magnitude of his change might have startled me.
Score a point for me.
The naga had grown taller in the process, but now he stood a mere six feet tall, which wasn’t as intimidating as his boss, though the slight cobra-esque hood that had formed on the sides of his neck was interesting.
Enough of this shit. I dared another step forward and growled again. Playtime was over.
His hands had grown minor talons.
Minor only because my own claws were bigger. Supernatural creature vanity? Nah, more like a weapons check.
With one talon, he flicked a corner of the fabric, and the tiniest fist dangled from the package.
I growled.
He grinned. “Catch!” He tossed the bundle into the air and took off running.
Well shit. I sprang forward and gingerly caught it in my mouth, laid it against the tree, and nudged the cloth from the face. I had to know. Please don’t be Esther. Oh, thank the gods. The face was younger than my niece, and Chinese. Now where is that son of a bitch?
He was waiting for me on the edge of a glen, legs now smoothed out into a thick network of muscles that formed a scaled tail. The bastard actually winked.
I pushed off the ground with my powerful back legs and launched my furry mass at him. Not sure what I was expecting, but the impact felt like I’d run into one of those wooden electrical poles. A little give, but mostly... well, not.
Like a pole struck by a wayward vehicle, the naga fell to the ground, but not without grabbing two great clawfuls of my fur and taking me with him into the glen. We rolled several times, more forward momentum than intentional movement, and we both leveraged our brief turns on top. He clawed me across the muzzle, and I scraped the length of his tail with the long reach of my hind legs.
When we stopped rolling, I slammed his shoulders down with my two front paws, and leaned forward to growl just an inch away from his face.
The motherfucker laughed.
He struggled, trying to get up, but I shoved him back down.
“Oh, you are fast and strong. My king will be pleased to know he’s facing such a worthy adversary.”
Sonofabitch. I snapped at his face, just nipping his nose. Brute strength was great, but what I would give for words right now.
“No one’s going to save you,” he whispered.
Wait, I was on top. I was in control. So why was he talking like he’d already won this bout? What did he know that I didn’t?
“No one knows we’re out here,” he continued. “That little pet you found? The electric scarab? It masks you from being traced by any spells. I could kill you right now, and your body would be a rotted mess before anyone found you.” He dragged one talon up my front leg. “Lucky for you my king wishes you alive. Doesn’t mean I can’t leave you with a memento.”
In one swift move, he disengaged my front left leg from his shoulder and bit down. Hard.
I yelped and leaped backward.
The naga wiggled upright, saluted, and headed toward the tree line.
I started after him, but one step on the leg he’d bitten and I was down in the grass. Trying to run on three legs was hard enough, but my coordination was off too—something more was going on. My prey was gone, dammit so I might as well take a look at his gracious reminder, as if I’d forget him anytime soon.
The bite was deep, his fangs bypassing fur, through skin. No broken bones, but the holes burned hot against my nose, and an acrid stench emanated from the wound. I blinked and immediately vomited. It was no better an experience as a wolf.
The tree line swayed, and the sky followed. I backed up and lay in the grass. Ground was better. Sturdy. Didn’t move. Ground was good. I closed my eyes, and another flood of nausea washed over me.
Were nagas poisonous? He’d said he couldn’t kill me, so this must be temporary. Or he thought I would be able to get help in time. Did they have anti-venom for nagas? Of course not. That was stupid.
I shook my head, trying to lift some of the encroaching fog. I needed to work it out of my system, but I also needed to get back to the house.
Three legs in my four-legged form was out of the question, but a hurt arm in human form—I could work with that. Granted, that meant I had to force the change, but....
I pushed through another wave of ick and concentrated on my magick. Stand down, wolf. I’ve got things to do!
She bristled against my request, but when another bout of nausea hit us she whined in pain and backed away.
I howled as the change began, the sound morphing to a high-pitched human scream. Every hair retreated, like a million hot, fiery needles that tore at my skin at an excruciatingly slow pace. As the fur pulled back, the bite on my arm looked worse—bright red holes oozing puss.
Muscle and bone rearranged themselves in jagged bouts of movement, as if someone were unzipping my wolf form and got stuck on skin. Some transitions were smooth. Some left me screaming face-down in the dirt.
Human again, I threw up into the grass, bits catching in my long, dark hair. With shaky hands, I did a half-assed braid to toss over my shoulder. I got to my feet, standing there for a minute while the world orientated around me, and took a few steps forward.
Less nausea for the win. Now if I could just get my arm to stop feeling like it weighed a million pounds and was on fire.
Get home first, Zoë. Easier said than done. I leaned against the first tree at the edge of the glen in an attempt to avoid revisiting my stomach contents, and to figure out where the heck I was.
One of the biggest issues with being a dire wolf was the significant difference in stride. I was only five-three with a smallish walking step. My wolf, on the other hand, was above my waist at her shoulder and a good six feet long, nose to tip of tail. That’s quite a longer stride, which occasionally left me in unknown places without the resources to scent my way back. Like now.
“Okay, Zoë, you’ve got this. Dying isn’t an option.” Gotta love a good self-pep talk.
I closed my eyes, sighed, opened them and— Wait, what was that? I ambled toward a small shiny thing on the forest floor, bent down, and picked up a scale from the dirt. Ahead of that lay another scale.
I smiled. “Motherfucker left me bread crumbs.”
Whether he had done it on purpose or not, as I made my way through the trees, I was grateful to keep finding scales—sometimes one, sometimes more. I collected them in the hand of my bitten arm as I went. No pockets on my birthday suit. The further I walked, the more things began to look familiar.
Someone in the distance was calling my name and whistling for me. Guess there was no “Zoë changed back into a human” memo.
I followed the scales until they stopped at the edge of a copse, but the voice kept calling, so I headed towards it until I tumbled out into my backyard where my best friend, my ex-boyfriend, and a red-faced stranger in a police uniform stood.
What, you’ve never seen a naked shapeshifter before?
“Zoë!” Lucy ran toward me, stopped, and turned around. “Give me your shirt, Daniel.” He said something I couldn’t hear, but Luce was having none of it. “Now is not the time for modesty or pride. Give me your damn shirt or there will be two topless women in the middle of Goddess’ green earth!”
“Ma’am.” The stranger unbuttoned his shirt and handed it to her.
“Thank you! At least someone has some common sense.” She kissed him on the cheek, which only turned him a deeper shade of red. “Zoë!”
I’d managed a few more steps forward, so her journey to me was a short one.
“Oh, gods, Zoë, what happened to you? How’d you change back? Are you okay?”
I think she said something else, but my ears stopped working for some reason. I extended my hand to her. “I have scales.”
Her eyes got big. “What in hell happened to your arm?”
I took another step forward, hand outstretched, and repeated, “I have scales.”
The nausea came back in a spectacular flood, and the world spun and swallowed me whole as my best friend screamed my name.
