The Unusual Suspects

I meant to write something new this week but time got away from me, so here's a continuation of last week's story. We'll see how I do next week, after I mow the lawn.
# # #
Before the man could leap or Shane could shoot, a thick cord of rough-skinned muscle wrapped around Shane’s waist and lifted him clear off the ground. With a sudden flip of the cord he found himself upside down and being shaken like a can of soda. He got off two wild shots before the gun flew from his hand.

The cord slid loose and dumped him on ground that lurched like the deck of a ship. He flailed for the knife in his boot, his backup weapon, but couldn’t even find his own body, let alone the hilt. His head spun like a dervish, and his gut seemed determined to climb up his throat and join it.

Somewhere an animal roared anxiously. Shane thought it might be the tiger.

Gradually the world, his brain and his stomach all settled back into their usual places. Shane groped across the dirt for his gun. A pair of muscular brown legs stepped into his ground-level sightline. A hand appeared and disappeared, taking his gun with it. Another set of legs joined the brown ones. These were gray, wrinkled at the knees, and thick around as fire hydrants. There were four of them.

“Thanks, Mindy,” the man said from somewhere above Shane’s head. “Better get inside before one of those asshole do-gooders sees you and tries to liberate you.”

The owner of the wrinkly legs let out a sound somewhere between a wheeze and a car horn. A trunk swept across Shane’s field of vision and slapped the lion-man on the ass. He raised his head enough to watch all of “Mindy” amble into the tent, and realized he’d just found one of the missing elephants. Not exactly Jumbo-sized, more on par with a Clydesdale. A youngster? Considering an adult could have crushed him, Shane figured it was better not to argue.

He elbowed most of his torso off the ground. The roars still shook the tent walls. They did indeed originate from the tiger. The lioness treated Shane to a filthy look that said, You got me up for this?

“Dammit.” The lion-man passed Shane’s gun to the midget elephant and hurried over to the tiger’s cage. “Now look what you’ve done,” he fired at Shane. “If he shits himself, you’re cleaning it up.”

Shane sat up gingerly. Now that he was all the way upright and his head had stopped spinning, he had a better view of the elephant, which had his gun snugly secured in its trunk. He couldn’t take on even that small of a pachyderm with only a knife, or anything less than an assault rifle, so the gun was likely to stay in its possession. The elephant also blocked the tent’s only exit. It fanned its ears at him and made what sounded to Shane like a questioning noise.

“Because he’s a hunter, that’s why.” The lion-shifter eased his arm into the tiger’s cage and scratched the agitated cat behind the ears. “Take it easy, Ramar,” he crooned to the tiger. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. The nasty human’s not going to hurt you. Before we can do anything to him, we have to tell Magritte,” he finished the elephant end of the conversation.

“You’re going to lose that arm,” Shane said.

The lion-man growled, in a deeper rumble than the tiger’s. “He wouldn’t dare. I outrank him and he knows it. There we go, that’s a good boy. See? I’m right here. Mindy’s right here. Everything’s okay.”

The tiger settled somewhat, although its tail continued to twitch and it continued to glare at Shane through the bars. The lioness huffed and lay back down.

“Now.” The lion-shifter pulled his miraculously intact and unmauled arm from the cage and turned to Shane. “Who are you after? Anyone in particular, or just any shifter you find?”

“Depends,” Shane said. “How many shifters do you have here?”

The man shut his jaw with a snap. Aha. So there was a family here. All lions? A killer pride? That would be new.

Beyond the tent, in the outside world, he caught another trumpeting call, unmistakably elephant. The smaller beast tossed the gun back to the shifter so she could respond. He caught the gun and pointed it inexpertly at Shane.

Shane weighed his chances. He’d yet to meet a shifter proficient in any kind of weapons beyond those provided by nature. Their instinct was to shift. He’d have to drop the gun for that, and Shane would have a chance. Not much of one with the elephant there, but more than if the rest of the pride showed up.

Suppose fortune favored him, and he got his gun back. What then? Shoot the young man in the head? Kill every lion he found here and hope he got the right one? It shouldn’t matter. They were shifters, and one was a murderer. But it did matter. For some reason it mattered a lot.

While he warred with a moral dilemma he’d never once considered before, the rest of the troupe arrived. The four roustabouts barreled into the tent, followed by an Indian couple, a twentyish kid in baggy pants, and another kid almost seven feet tall, at least two-thirds of it leg. They all made way for the final arrival, Magritte del Rio herself. She spotted Shane and stopped dead with an ominous hiss.

At the same time the small elephant suddenly shimmered and morphed into a plump, black and naked teenage girl. She darted behind the largest and beefiest of the roustabouts. From this safe haven she proceeded to make a series of faces at Shane.

“You said you’d got all of them,” Magritte said to the roustabouts. Her unblinking glare remained fixed to Shane.

“He’s not a protestor,” the lion-man said. He handed Shane’s gun to Magritte. “He’s a hunter.”

The close air inside the tent got closer, squeezed by sudden tension. The circus folk moved into a circle around him. By the looks on all their faces, he figured they didn’t plan on letting him out again.

Shane kept very still, not just out of caution. If he’d tried to stand with all the psychic zings shooting at him, he probably would have fallen over anyway. He didn’t even need the warnings from his gift. The young man and girl changing shape right in front of him were giveaways enough. Then there was the similarity of features between the girl and the man she hid behind, both in their faces and their wrinkled knees. One for the books, indeed.

“Let me make an educated guess,” he said. “You’re all shifters. Every one of you. Aren’t you?”

Break Week - Scene from Horsepower

The serial story hit a speed bump, so here’s something from my WIP. Roy and Dale—yeah, I went there—are about to have a night of drunken revelry when Dale puts the kibosh on things by turning into a horse. It’s now the morning after …

# # #

Sounds. Snores. Traffic. Morning. Roy’s head moved steadily up and down on the mattress, or whatever the warm, hairy thing was he was pillowed on. His top half was nice and toasty. The chill started at his thighs and spread downward from there.

He pried his eyelids open and owlishly blinked his surroundings into focus. The world began at a grease stain on the floor and gradually widened into the garage bay. The chill came from the concrete his legs were sprawled on. His moving mattress turned out to be Dale, also lying on the floor, still dead to the world and still a horse. He smelled like Budweiser. A snort-snore wheezed through his nostrils at irregular intervals.

Then the hangover hit, a throb in his head like a Harley’s engine, followed by a churning gut. When his attempt to stand dumped him back on the concrete, Roy crawled over to one of the benches and levered himself up from there. He squinted against the harsh sunlight streaming into the showroom. One ray glinted off a Honda’s fender and stabbed him in the eyes. Roy swore. Dale slept on.

He rubbed his forehead. Coffee. Coffee would solve everything.

Forewarned by the glare in the showroom, Roy shut his eyes and averted his face before he yanked up the bay door. Sunlight hit his skin, and an unexpected, unfamiliar voice pounded his ears. “Morning, son. Don’t you look like shit on a stick.”

Roy cracked an eye open. His gaze hit the other man’s grin first, then dropped to the badge pinned to his shirt.

Fuck. Now the goddamned cops show up.

“Looks like you had yourself a helluva night last night.” The cop roamed his own gaze over the front of the building. “Maybe you thought it’d be a laugh to call in a nuisance report? Waste our time?"

“It’s not a nuisance call. I got vandalized. We scrubbed off the dirty words so we wouldn’t offend the ladies. But I got pictures.” Roy dug for his phone. God-damn, that sun was bright. He squinted longingly at the diner across the street, and its promise of strong, hot coffee. "Dammit. I think I left my phone in the office.”

“I think you’re just trying to make trouble,” the cop said. “You think playing the ex-Army card lets you get away with shit? Not in this town.” Homo hung unspoken in the air.

“Look, let me go in and get my—”

From within the shadowy depths of the garage bay came a snort, a staccato series of belches, and the scrape of hooves trying to find purchase on concrete. The cop stared over Roy’s shoulder. His eyes got huge. “Holy shit! Is that a horse?”

Goddammit, Roy thought. Of course he’d wake up now. None of this was doing his headache a lick of good. He longed for Tylenol and coffee. “Never mind him. I’m going in to get my phone.” And to get out of the sun, which wasn’t helping either.

“Why’s there a horse in your garage?”

“He’s not mine. I’m just watching him for a friend. Do you want to take my statement or not?”

Meanwhile Dale had finally managed to find all four of his feet. He tottered past Roy and the cop on legs as shaky as a newborn foal’s and lurched to a stop on the sidewalk. The noise he made at the sun wasn’t human or horsey, but it sure as hell sounded disgusted.

“You can’t keep a horse in the city,” the cop said.

“I’m not keeping him anywhere. He goes wherever he wants. Now, about the vandalism. The place was fine when I left around 12:30, but when I got back around four—”

Suddenly Dale urped. He sprang toward a trash barrel, just in time to ralph up a bellyful of Bud. Both he and Roy wrinkled their respective snouts against the stink. Already the few people on the street had stopped to stare.

“That’s it.” The cop pulled out his ticket book. “I’m writing you up.”

“For what? Reporting legitimate vandalism?”

“Falsely reporting,” the cop corrected. “Also public drunkenness, harboring livestock within town limits, causing a disturbance—”

At the word “livestock” Dale’s head swung around. He bore down on the cop with flattened ears, bared teeth and horrendous breath. His threat was marred by another belch. He swung back to the trash barrel and yarked up another spurt.

The cop’s hand flashed to his sidearm. “Control your animal or I’ll have to shoot him.”

“He’s not a—”

“For goodness’ sake.” Suellen appeared on the run. She skidded to a halt between Roy and the cop. “What’s going on here, officer?”

“Not your business, ma’am. Please—” He got a better look at her features. His own went white, and his hand left his gun in a hurry. “Dr. Evanista.”

“Officer …” She peered at his nameplate. “Simmons. Are you in the habit of drawing on people who call to report a crime?”

“Man’s keeping a horse in his garage here. The animal got unruly.”

“Nonsense. He’s perfectly harmless.” Suellen went to Dale and caught him by the forelock. Her eyes narrowed and her nose wrinkled as the smell hit her. Dale muttered a drunken apology.

“He’s feeling better,” Roy said quickly. “I kept him warm and in the dark, just like you asked me to.”

She never batted an eye, God bless her. “I appreciate your help. There just wasn’t room at the hospital. Now.” She turned on the cop with flashing eyes. “What’s going on?”

The cop swallowed. “We got a report—”

“Last night. You got a report last night. I know. I was here when this young man called it in. And you’re only responding now? Had a lot of crime last night, did you? Drug busts and armed standoffs, I suppose?”

The cop reddened. “Vandalism’s not exactly a priority, ma’am. Especially for—” He bit off the end of his sentence.

Suellen’s voice went Antarctic. “For what, Officer Simmons?”

“For false reports,” he recovered. “There’s no sign of vandalism here.”

“There most certainly was, Officer Simmons. I was here. I saw it.” She shook her head. “I dread telling George about this. Standards have certainly fallen since my brother retired. Were you working when George Evanista was Chief?”

The cop had gone a sickly shade of yellow. Roy hadn’t known a man’s face could change color so often in such short order.

Suellen turned to Roy with a maternal smile. “I’m going to give my statement. Why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee? You look like you could do with one.”

“Thanks.” He shot a glance at Dale. “You want coffee?”

Dale bobbed his head, but quickly stopped. He swayed on his feet and moaned.

Roy headed across the street for the diner. Behind him he heard Suellen’s clear, powerful voice ripping Officer Simmons a new one. Dale’s hooves clopped heavily on the sidewalk.

He had his hand on the diner door when the cop cried out, “Jesus Christ! My car!”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Suellen said. “Certainly not as awful as spray paint. A trip through the car wash should rinse that right off.”

It's Filler Time

I decided the wrap-up to Moon-Moon’s adventure would play better on Christmas Eve, so you’ll get that next week. Which left me short a post for this week. Fortunately, J. J. Collins has a rough draft WIP, and it’s got shifters in it. We join Roy Tennyson on his Harley, headed home from work, and his daily match race with—well, we’ll see.

# # #

He mounted up and rode out of town, careful to keep to the speed limit. Once he hit the town line he opened up, and made it to the crossroads in record time.

Sure enough, the horse was waiting.

Roy grinned and gunned his engine. The horse pawed the ground. Roy swung onto the road, and they were off.

The horse kept pace all the way up the road to the narrow gravel drive that led to Roy’s place. Roy slowed, both for the turn and to wait for the pickup coming from the other direction. As Roy’s speed diminished the horse pulled ahead. It even found wind for a whinny.

All at once the truck swung toward him, right over the center line. Roy, with his eyes on the horse, almost didn’t see it. He frantically swerved to the berm. The truck sideswiped him, close enough its side brushed the denim on his leg. The driver’s face snarled at him, a twisted blur. One of O’Casey’s buddies. “Watch where you’re driving, you goddamn faggot!”

The Harley skidded, bucked and slid. Roy’s brain did the same. He heard loud noises but couldn’t attach them to anything. Except for one shrill scream he was pretty sure wasn’t him. It must have been the horse. Awareness left him on his own for a while

 Next thing he knew, something warm and stubbly was nudging at his face. He opened his eyes to four long legs and scuffed black hooves. He licked his lips and tasted dirt. The horse nosed his face again and murmured its concern.

His first coherent thought was, Where’s my bike?

Carefully, Roy elbowed himself up. His heart crashed against his ribs, nearly through his jacket. That proved he was still alive. He could still feel his legs, and they moved when he thought at them. Another good sign. He reached up and found blood in his hair, but no bumps. His helmet lay a few feet away. That, his gloves and jacket, and the fact he must have rolled when he landed had probably saved him from serious injury.

Had he lost consciousness? He was pretty sure he hadn’t, but couldn’t be certain. The truck and its murderous driver, of course, were long gone.

Then he spotted the Harley, lying on its side on the grassy edge of the berm. Even at a distance he saw the kink in the handlebar, the tailpipe hanging loose. There was probably more, maybe worse, waiting for a hands-on search.

 A groan ripped out of him. He tried to scramble upright. Sharp jabs of pain in his left ankle and knee put a stop to that. “Son of a bitch,” he cursed the truck.

He made a second attempt. This time the horse helped out. When his left leg crumpled under him the horse caught his jacket sleeve in its teeth and kept him semi-standing. Roy grabbed at its mane and dragged himself onto his still-functioning right leg. He hooked an arm across the horse’s neck and leaned hard on the solid support of its shoulder. The horse did not move or complain. It whickered at him, perhaps in sympathy.

 Roy patted its neck. “Good Noche. Good boy. Good—” He stopped, both words and patting.

The horse had blue eyes.

Now that was flat-out weird. Back in Oklahoma he’d seen blue-eyed horses, even one with one blue eye and the other regular brown. But those had all been pintos. He’d been told that was normal for them. Any horse that wasn’t a pinto tended to have brown eyes. Except for his racing buddy here.

And damned if those eyes, even the way the horse cocked its head, didn’t look familiar.

Then he put too much weight on his left foot and the pain shot up his leg again. Roy cried out. Now he was getting alarms from his lower chest and his elbow. He had to get off the road, get home, maybe call somebody.

He and the horse must have been on the same page, because Noche folded his forelegs and got down on his knees and presented his back to Roy. Somebody’s pet for sure, and excellently trained. He hauled himself onto the horse’s back and gripped its mane as hard as his aching hands would let him. One hard fall was bad enough. He didn’t need another.

The horse set off at a slow, careful walk, toward the road and the gravel drive. Roy didn’t even have to steer him. It was like he knew right where to go.

He couldn’t resist a squint at his bike as they shuffled past it. That looked like a dent in the fuel tank. Was the engine okay? Roy groaned with a pain divorced from his physical injuries. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered again.

Even with the horse’s easy pace, Roy still jounced enough to spark snaps of pain in various parts of his body. Motorcycles he could straddle. Men too, in the right circumstances. Horses, not so much. He gritted his teeth and hung on while Noche made his tedious, torturous way up the drive to Roy’s cozy rancher. The barn, where the Harley should be sitting safe and secure and undamaged right now, seemed to mock him with its placidity.

The horse knelt again, positioned so Roy could slide off onto the porch and not have to climb the front steps. He tried to land to protect his ankle and barked his knee on the porch rail instead. Tears started to his eyes. I won’t faint, he told himself. It’s just a twisted ankle. An Army vet doesn’t faint over a twisted ankle.

Noche nuzzled his hair. Roy patted his nose. “Not that I’m ungrateful,” he said, “but as an ambulance, you’re not the smoothest.”

The horse backed a step. His body blurred. Thinking his eyes had got knocked askew too, Roy blinked hard. It wasn’t his eyes after all. It was the horse. The horse had somehow reshaped itself into a human being.

“That makes us even,” Dale Evanista said. “’Cause you can’t ride for shit.”

Roy fainted.

Monday Filler

The flash scene well dried up in the wake of my self-published release of The Mountain Lion King last week (shameless plug), so here's the beginning of an M/M I'm fooling around with for an anthology featuring alphas behaving badly. In this case, there are two of them. Since they're both shapeshifters and this is a shapeshifter blog, I figured what the heck.

# # #

The smell of hot fresh blood got Declan up and moving again. He took a step and bit his lip against a whine of pain. He needed meat. Given his injuries, there was no guarantee when he'd be able to make a kill on his own. Right now even the chance of regaining human form was iffy.

Following the enticing lure of blood, the battered wolf staggered to the edge of the forest. Something must have made a kill in that field out there. Declan swept his fuzzy glare across the open meadow but couldn't see a goddamn thing.

Then a small head dominated by huge bright eyes and a hooked yellow beak popped up above the tips of the tall grass for a quick look-see. Declan froze. His muscles screamed at him and his demands they not shiver. Oh fuck, now that bite on his haunch was starting to bleed again.

After what seemed like centuries to Declan's aching muscles, the hawk dipped its head back below the grass. The shudders of the stalks hinted at violence within, a sharp beak and razor talons ripping something apart.

Saliva frothed with blood dripped from Declan's jaws. He needed that kill badly, far more than any stupid bird. He burst from the forest and charged toward where he'd seen the hawk's head appear.

Halfway there the bird itself suddenly erupted from the grass with a gutted rabbit in its claws. The rabbit's weight battled the hawk's efforts to bear it aloft. Declan zeroed in on the bloody prize and leaped. At the last second the hawk abandoned its catch and zoomed with empty claws into the air and safety.

Declan caught the rabbit in his jaws before it hit the ground. He gulped down still-warm flesh and felt renewed energy surge through his throbbing body. When only shreds were left on the bones, he took the chance and willed himself to shift.

His ripped and bitten flesh resisted his demand it rearrange. Declan gnashed his jaws against the agonizing protest put up by his abused skin and tissues. In the end his howl burst free, but it finished as a human scream. He fell to his knees and elbows and panted hard into the dirt.

Well, this was some improvement, at least. His limbs still shot blistering pain up and down his nerves when he moved, but the shift had sealed the worst of his wounds. Most of the bleeding had slowed to an annoying seep. Declan shoved himself upright and succeeded in gaining his feet on his second attempt. So far, so good.

Next up: find a place to hide. Get a good night's sleep. Find water, find more food. Meat would be best, berries and roots if he had to. Then march back onto clan territory and kill that bastard Seth. With his bare hands if necessary, though fangs would be so much more satisfying.

He turned toward the woods, straight into a fist that smashed into his chin. His battered body hit the ground with a jarring thud. The world, so briefly back in focus, started spinning again.

"Excuse me," a sharp voice said from above him, "but that was my dinner."

Guest Author ~ Sapphire Phelan

Shapeshifter lovers, welcome our guest author, Sapphire Phelan on this Full Moon in Taurus Sunday. Sapphire wrote the short story, HIS GIRL, in the Just Another ParaNormal Halloween anthology, which also features my short story, THE TIGER'S MASQUERADE. Sapphire is an amazing woman, who not only pens the paranormal, but also investigates and writes non-fiction books on a range of paranormal topics.

Writing from the Gay Male’s Perspective of a Paranormal Romance

I’ve written from mostly a woman’s POV and even a man’s in a Male/Female romance, but when I did an erotic Male/Male paranormal for the first time, it was a whole different ball of wax for me. That one was “The Dark Man,” included in the anthology, Forbidden Love: Sacred Bands, published by Under the Moon. I had started writing it out as male/female until Under the Moon sent out they were doing a male/male anthology and wanted submissions. I had two stories in their first two, so I found this story I started on and decided to use it.

That was easy. I just switched the female for a male. Okay, it wasn’t. I had to actually read sex scenes in male/male fiction to understand the differences in mechanics of sex between two men. So very out of the box for this heterosexual author. I had gay friends, but I couldn’t ask them how it all went, could I? LOL

But when I did the novella, Beast Magic, a world where shifters of all kinds lived among us. They had the Dreaming in order to find their destined mates. Like my werelion, Ramses, found his mate in a human woman named Shana Tory. Most found them this way, others did not. And sometimes the Dreaming brought up a mate one did not expect. Such as in Dark Leopard Magic, the second novella set in the Beast Magic world. This time I also changed it from third person to first person, with both guys telling from their povs in their own chapters.

Dev Tollen starts out the novella. He is half Indian (from India) and Caucasian—he is also half shifter and half human. His father was a Caucasian human from the United States, but was not Dev’s wereleopard mother’s destined mate sent by the Dreaming. Because of this and that she kills his father, Dev begins a dark past. Even more so, he finds he has a darker soul.

Dev can’t seem to make love with human females. But when a man (clown with a circus) takes him one night, Dev discovers he enjoys a man’s touch. So not only is he a wereleopard, but now gay. He has a double whammy in ‘coming out of the closet’ here. He’s never had the Dreaming either, and resigned to thinking he never would, that maybe being gay was the cause. Until one day it comes upon him and he sees Montsho, a black African wereleopard. Montsho first appeared as a secondary character in Beast Magic. So now I add interracial to the equation too.

With these two males, I got deep into their psyche. One does not deny his gay self, while the other never even dreamed that a male would be his destined mate. Montsho fights this attraction, as he is confused and upset that the Dreaming put this on him. But we all know how the romance will go—one can not deny their own true love, no matter the color, race, or even sexual preference.

I am proud of this novella. I become fond of the two guys and happy there is a HEA for them. Most of all, I am glad for the experience of writing from a different viewpoint and really getting to know and most of all understand what Dev and Montsho tick. Even though they’re characters from my mind, I can say that they’re become a lot more and are alive to me. Finally Dev gets to come out of the closet: not as a gay man, but as something even more meaningful to him: a wereleopard. But most of all, to have someone to love and who will love him, no matter his dark and troubled past.
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DARK LEOPARD MAGIC

Blurb:

Dev Tollen is a man with a dark past and an even darker soul. More than that, he's a gay wereleopard. He has never had the Dreaming and never met his true mate. But one night the Dreaming does come and reveals his lover, an African man named Montsho, also an alpha black wereleopard. Montsho will fight their love and their destiny. Dev will do all he can to win his beloved's heart and keep him by his side always.

Then the ghost of a human begs Dev to solve his wereleopard lover's murder. Both men will find that their new-found love tested and their lives in danger. Their idyllic time in paradise is about to be torn asunder when they discover who the murderer is.
~~~

***CONTEST ALERT *** Sapphire will be giving away a download of the novella. So leave a COMMENT, with name and email, so she can check all the blogs on 29th and draw a winner for the eBook.
~~~~~~

Sapphire Phelan

Website: SapphirePhelan.com
Blog: sapphirePhelansPassionCorner.blogspot.com
Newsletter: groups.yahoo.com/group/SapphirePhelansParanormalNewsletter
Twitter: twitter.com/SapphirePhelan
Facebook: facebook.com/pages/Sapphire-Phelan/324399690647

Go beyond the usual, instead take the unusual that stretches the boundaries and find romance with Sapphire Phelan's aliens, werewolves, vampires, fairies, and other supernatural/otherworldly heroes and heroines.

Bio:
Sapphire Phelan is an author of erotic and sweet paranormal, fantasy, and science fiction romance, along with a couple of erotic horror stories. She also writes as Pamela K. Kinney, for horror, fantasy, science fiction, and nonfiction ghost books.
She lives in Virginia with her husband and two cats, Ripley and Bast.
She admits she can always be found at her desk and on her computer, writing. And yes, the house and husband sometimes suffers for it!

For more information, check out her website: SapphirePhelan.com

BUY LINK:
http://www.king-cart.com/Phaze/product=Dark+Leopard+Magic/exact_match=exact