Chapter One
The rain was pouring down on the pavement outside. The city streets were cold and there was a smell in the air that reminded her of piss. She never liked to go walking out this late at night. Work had held her later than usual. If she spent the money she had earned on a cab, she would not be able to afford rent.
“That’s how it is in this place,” Coral muttered while stepping through puddles.
She pulled a coat around her shoulders to ward off the wind.
You don’t get a chance to take care of yourself because someone else has already got plans for your cash, she thought.
A puddle covered a pothole in front of her path. She did not notice the depth of the hole as she trudged forward through the storm. Stepping forward into the puddle, she twisted her ankle and sank into the hole. With a bit of effort, she caught herself once more. Her balance was usually decent. Coral was an erotic dancer. Her creole body type was a bit larger than the rest of the girls, but when she was on stage, she could really strut her stuff.
She knew that in order to get what she needed on the stage, she had to be confident. Living in the slums had bred that confidence inside of her. In order to one-up the competition with the other women at the club, she had been practicing her technique as a dancer for the last couple of years. Strength was vital in her approach toward dancing and her style was more aggressive and volatile than the others. In order to temper her power on stage, she had to maintain a certain degree of finesse. Balance was important and she silently reproached herself for letting her balance slip — even for a moment.
I'm glad I didn't wear my heels.
Even her shit-kicking boots had only warded off a serious injury. The ankle would still hurt the next morning. She was lucky. Even though this was the first day of her weekend a blow to the ankle could mean she would be out of work for a week or more, and there were bills to pay. She had seen it happen to other dancers before. She knelt down for a minute to rub the sting out. The pain was still there, but it would be gone by the time she had to perform again.
“Fuckin’ place,” Coral muttered to herself.
She would often swear when situations seemed dismal.
It wasn’t that the place was without value. Coral lived in a slum, cloistered on the outer edge of major metropolitan Baltimore. The only critical factors in her life were making rent each month and staving off depression. Her only personal goal was to create some kind of meaning in her life.
Coral was an existentialist, in the strictest sense. But she was also a romantic. She believed that her life was her own to make of it as she saw fit. There was some aspect of her which always hoped to discover something greater. She looked for some purpose or path to take which would finally show that she understood life.
Of course she thought about killing herself sometimes — who doesn’t?
On nights like this, all she cared about was getting home and curling up next to the space heater. The wind blew on her calves and whipped her dark hair around her face in short, temperamental bursts. The dull ache in her ankle was irritating, but not problematic. She knew the neighborhood well enough to know the shortest route home. In a neighborhood like this, there was no value in taking the scenic route.
Coral approached the corner of one of her favorite alleys. She liked this alley because she enjoyed climbing up a terrace at the end of the block. The shortcut allowed her to skip through an entire neighborhood. All she would have to do was climb a sequence of linked rooftops and she would be home. When she turned the corner she gasped. A man stood in front of her, grinning up at her.
“Looking great, doll,” he said. “Why don’t you let me see what’s going on under that cute skirt of yours?”
She sniffed at him and walked around his position, her hand trailing down to her side. A history in the area had given her the experience necessary to navigate this situation with care. When you’re accosted on the street, there’s no need for you to interact with the person. Coral knew that even acknowledging a rude stranger was an invitation to trouble.
He walked with her for a couple of paces and called out her name.
“Coral,” he said, “You know, your brother was a friend of mine.”
“How do you know my name?” Coral asked, turning toward him and glaring.
When a man dropped a crude sexual remark, it was easy to blow him off and keep on walking. When he knew who you were… things got ugly fast. Coral’s heart quickened and she closed her stance like her father had taught her so many years ago. She prepared for an attack.
“Hold on sweetheart, hold on,” the man soothed, though Coral was not buying the ruse.
“Your brother was in a bit of trouble not too long ago and came to some friends of mine for a loan,” the man explained. “I guess he got a little too hooked on some pills and had some trouble making good on his commitments.”
“I haven’t spoken to my brother in a couple of years,” she replied. “If he has some problems with your friends, as far as I’m concerned that is between you and him.”
“The problem is, we haven’t seen him around much either,” the man replied.
He edged his way closer to her position in the alleyway.
“Believe me," he continued, "if I knew where he was, we’d be talking to him right now instead of you.”
He reached out a hand to grab her shoulder, which was his second major mistake.
Without pausing, she pulled his hand in toward her body, with one arm and whipped out a can of mace with the other. She got him in the eye. When he screamed and pulled his hands up to his face, she clipped him between the legs with her knee. As he fell, she got him once more on the nose.
“Get the fuck out of our neighborhood,” she spat.
After considering kicking him while he was down, she decided to leave quickly, instead. Coral ran toward the terrace at the end of the alley.
From behind her, she saw headlights flare up on a car she had passed on her right. The car’s bright lights flashed, glaring in her dark eyes. They signaled to another vehicle parked on the opposite side of the alley. Coral hadn't noticed either car.
“Oh shit…” she cursed.
She knew she was in trouble and began to consider how she would get out of the situation. The terrace was too far away, but she thought she might be able to make it if she sprinted. Running as fast as she could, which was actually pretty quick, she made her way to the terrace. Her eyes were set toward her goal. So focused was she on her salvation, that she didn't see a figure step out from beside her in the alleyway.
A foot snagged hers in mid stride. It was a cheap trip move, which caused her to plunge forward onto her hands. In a painful descent, Coral fell onto the wet, uneven asphalt of the alleyway. She had no more words for cursing and terror took her mind. Figures gathered around her, sneering and making jokes to one another.
“Look what we have here,” one of them said.
“A feisty one no doubt,” said another. “Did you see how she handled Charles?”
“Watch this one,” still another said, “I bet she’s a biter.”
“I think the boss will like this one,” said the man who had been instrumental in her fall.
“We should break her in before we drop her off,” said the second, with an excited tone in his voice. “She looks like she’s a foxy one, too.”
“You know the rules,” the third replied, a warning tone in his voice, “Don’t touch the merchandise, only collect it.”
She struggled to get to her feet. The second and third man who arrived on the scene argued with one another over whether there were reasonable exceptions to the boss’s rules.
“It’s been too long since I’ve had a piece of the action,” the second man said. “I’m going for it — you boys can watch if you like, see how a man handles these sort of situations.”
The man who tripped her flashed a knife, which she caught out of the corner of her eye. Realizing that if she struggled now, it might end poorly for her, Coral remained still. She didn’t dare rise up from her position on the asphalt.
“We deliver her to the boss, as agreed,” the man said firmly. “There are other girls to pick up tonight and if you want to get your rocks off, you can do that on your own time.”
Down the alley, toward the intersection where she had met the man named Charles, there was a cry, followed by a dull thumping noise.
“What the hell?” the third man said, turning around to catch the commotion. “Charles, what the fuck are you crying about? It couldn’t have been that bad, she’s just a…”
He had trouble finishing his sentence, because he was cut off by a guttural roar, echoing down the alleyway.
There were two men who had gotten out of the first car between the start of the alley and Coral. Three more surrounded Coral — two from the second car and the one with the knife who had been cloaked in the alleyway. The three men who surrounded Coral watched as a monstrous beast tore through the first two men. Their courage faltered and the three who surrounded Coral felt dread sink in their bodies.
The monster rose up on its hind legs and bore down on one of the fallen men. He mauled him with his teeth and knocked his body to the ground with two incredible claws. Without pause, the monster turned around once to slash a massive paw across the second man’s chest. Within moments, the man was bleeding on the ground, lost in a daze.
“What the hell?” One of the other men cried, pulling a pistol out from his pocket with a shaking hand.
He fired off two shots, causing the third man who was positioned between the man with the pistol and the monster, to dive to the side. The man with the knife was the only one who had managed to keep his head during the entire exchange. He evaluated the situation, shoved the knife into its sheath and ran down the alleyway. His new goal was the same terrace that Coral had been sprinting toward before he had brought her to the ground.
The shots were wild and unfocused. Out of fear, the man with the gun loosed an entire clip. He prayed that a bullet would connect and the thing which now ran toward him on all fours would slow in its approach. Whether any of the bullets hit was no longer a point of concern for the thug. The distance between them was closed in no time at all. A single hit from the monster’s paw knocked the man halfway across the alleyway. His body collided with the parked car from which he had exited. The man’s head struck the side of the vehicle, breaking one of the windows and knocking him out cold.
The final remaining thug was on his backside. He scrambled backward like a frightened crab into the darkness, hiding from the monster before him.
“Look… You can let me go, right?” he begged. “We didn’t mean any harm, we were just playing with the girl… I mean, do you know her? Cause if you don’t know her, we could cut you in. An ass like that and she’s probably worth…”
Coral stared in horror as the beast pounced forward onto the man who was cowering in fear in the side of the alleyway. He had been bargaining with his assailant, in an attempt to save his life. He had been about to share the street price for a 28-year-old woman, in good physical health, who was about to be introduced to the sex trade. He had been about to do a lot of things, but with the beast glaring over his body, all he could do was piss his pants.
“Please, let me live. I’ll make good, I promise,” the man whimpered.
The beast glanced upward, catching the sight of the man with the knife, standing on top of the roof, witnessing the carnage on the street below. The animal’s golden eyes narrowed and focused in on the man for long enough to make a profile shot in his mind for later use.
Turning to the man on the ground, the beast got in his face and let out a deep growl. The man shuddered and held his tongue. Snorting at the man, the monster narrowed its eyes and bared its teeth once more. The gesture was one of mercy, though it was a fearsome way of expressing beneficence.
Coral was crying and crawling away on all fours. She was frightened and had never seen so much blood before in her entire life. Twelve years in the slums and she had not seen nearly the amount of violence that this creature had caused in the last two minutes. Coral felt like she had gotten out of the frying pan, only to fall into the fryer.
The thugs that remained sprinted away from the scene. The bodies of the thugs were haggard and bleeding, but they were alive. Wasting no further effort on either the Shifter or the girl, they fled into the darkness.
“Oh god…oh god… oh god…” she cried, the words running together in a breathless mantra.
The creature kneeled before her and then let out a roar which shook her entire body. She stared into the moonlight and saw the form of a bear. Transfixed with her attention, she watched as the bear shifted into the shape of a man. His muscles contorted and his eyes glowed with intensity. His teeth grit in his mouth and she watched as his hair shed from his body.
She felt sick watching the transformation process. His body looked like something which belonged in a film about demonic possession. She had never expected to see something like this a few miles away from her home. She had heard that men like this lived in the area, but until this moment, she imagined it had only been a rumor.
When the man had finished his transformation, he fell onto the floor. Blood pooled out from the side of his body and he lay naked on the wet asphalt, bleeding into a nearby puddle. Seeing that the nightmare was over, she gathered her senses and approached him. Carefully, she turned him on his side to inspect the bleeding. He was still breathing, but his eyes were closed. His teeth were fixed in a grimace of pain. Not only was he wounded from the bullets, but the actual process of shifting had done some damage to his body as well.
“Look,” she said, her voice shaking. “Whatever you are, thanks… but I don’t know how to help you.”
“Dress…” he murmured through grit teeth.
“What?” she said, not understanding.
“Rip off… Fuck… Just give me your dress — a shirt… something…” he gasped. “Pressure.”
“Oh God,” she realized. “Right. You’re bleeding. ”
She took off her jacket and lifted a shirt from off of her body. She wore a black lace bra below her shirt and compared to the man’s nakedness, she was practically still clothed. The jacket had been set down on the street and she wrapped the shirt quickly around the man’s shoulder, attempting to tie it in a knot.
He pushed her hand away with his free hand. He appeared to be coming back into consciousness quickly for a man who had just been wounded. Using his teeth and his spare hand, he fashioned a tight bandage around his shoulder. Only after, did he look up at her and glare.
“Put on your jacket,” he said, struggling to get up. “You’ll catch a cold.”
The man did not acknowledge Coral any further. He walked over to the man who was lying comatose next to the car. He removed the man's jacket and placed it on his own body.
“You know, you didn’t have to help,” she said, feeling uncomfortable.
“Do you enjoy getting abducted?” he asked, not wanting to put up with any of her bullshit.
“Thanks…” she replied. “I thought I could handle it, but…”
“You did what you could,” he replied. “I was passing by on my way to a meeting with some friends of mine and I noticed you were in a bit of a bind. You handled the first guy alright, though.”
“A meeting?” she asked, incredulously. “It’s got to be like three in the morning — what kind of meeting happens at three in the morning?”
“None of your business,” the man replied. “Look, I’ve got to go, try to get home safe.”
He turned to go, leaving her to fend for herself once more, but she chased after him.
“You’re just going to leave me here?” she said, somewhat irritated. “Those guys are still out there, they could be waiting on the next street over or at my front door. They know my family so they probably know where I live.”
“Well, you can’t come and I have to go. I’m running late,” he said, turning toward her once more.
“Look, if you leave me here, you’re no worse than they are,” she said.
Coral knew that her statement was false, but stuck to it anyways. He paused for a moment and then made his decision.
“Follow me,” he said and continued to walk away.
Coral felt scared. But the prospect of leaving this man was more frightening than remaining at his side.
“So what’s your name?” she inquired.
“Kalin,” he said, once she had caught up with him.
She nodded and continued to walk with him.
“Are you going to pick up a pair of pants?” she asked.
“Details,” he replied. “Don’t worry. It’s not too far from here.”