Destined Fur More

Everybody Grab Your Cliche

I awoke with a jolt, then realized how painful waking up with a jolt after fighting a mammoth-sized moose was and gently lowered myself back down. I was still a leopard, so apparently animals can wake with jolts, too. I tried to glower at that, but found glowering too, is difficult after fighting with a moose. My left eye felt bloated, with the skin stretched tight and every hair follicle I had—which was a lot, by the way—ached.

My right eye, though, capture perfectly the look of annoyance on Erika’s face as she kneeled next to Teague—also still a large cat, dabbing his elongated face. Her eyes were so narrow I wondered if she could even tell I was awake or not, but after a long minute, she looked back down to stab at Teague’s unconscious face with the cloth. Some part of me was incredibly relieved I didn’t have to talk to her; I knew I’d get an earful. But the other part was disappointed; I wanted to know how she found us, or why she thought cleaning our faces off would help us at all.

But that, of course, would have to wait. I was sprawled out along the same ground we’d fought the moose on; I doubted Erika was able or willing to carry two, fully grown cats that probably weighed twice what she did through the miles I’d walked, which might also jostle and further injure us. Unless she had telekinesis and was waiting for the perfect moment to tell us, which I knew was far too lucky to happen to me.

So, I waited.

Every time I breathed in, a sharp, knife-like pain stabbed in my chest, causing me to take in smaller gulps of air. God, why hadn’t I healed yet? Wasn’t that one of the perks of this job? Super-fast healing? And yet, whenever I moved my head, every nerve in a ten-inch radius of it fired off and caused me to exclaim with a sound resembling wild dolphins during heat. With each of these uncharacteristic sounds, Erika shot me a “this is what happens when you wander off on your own in the wee hours of the fucking morning to be a Goddamned philosopher, you shape-shifting bitch” look—one I would have to practice later and use against her in the future, it was so effective. This happened about seven times before she finally threw Teague’s feline arm to the ground and waddled on her knees over to me, whom she started poking painfully in the ribs. I bared my teeth at her to tell her to fuck off, which she seemed to understand completely, and almost even more completely ignore.

“You know,” Erika finally said, after running her hands up and down my tender ribs, her voice that sort of scary-calm people have when they’re about to go postal. “If you would stop squirming around like a fucking worm on a hook, I could have this self-inflicted, idiotic break fixed in about two seconds and you could shift back into a human and get your mother-fucking clothes on before Teague wakes up.”

Making the best annoyed face I could, which involved a lot of whisker twitching, I held still. Erika straightened her back up, though the bitter expression remained. Her fingers probed my pained ribs again, and I couldn’t help the random leg-kicking I had when she touched a particularly painful spot. After a few minutes, Erika finally sighed and said, “Done.”

I made a weird face at her. The pain in my ribs was still there, and she’d done nothing other than poke them, much to my annoyance. Just to make sure, I took a deep breath and—fucking—it still hurt. I opened my mouth, in hopes I could somehow convey to Erika that she hadn’t done shit, when I noticed her hands tightly clamped together, held high in the air. Ignoring that, I went on to say, “Rlssp—“ when her hands came careening down onto my ribs, and it transformed into a “RLSPPAH!” of shocked pain.

I felt the two most pained ribs crack again, and tried thrashing out of the psychotic bitch’s evil hands, but she wouldn’t have it. Erika jabbed at a few specific spots on my neck, and dazing me, and making me immobile as she played puddy with my bones, moving and shoving them. My mind reeled with pain, but Erika seemed not to care. Her eyebrows were knit in deep concentration.