Chương 25: Mountin Lion

Scara lies in her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. A knock at the door brings her mother, Mrs Hall, who peeks inside.

"Sweetheart, there's a Churro here to see you."

"What the hell's a Churro?" Scara's mother turns to Churro with a sheepish grin.

"She's had a little something to calm her nerves. Go right in." Churro slips into the room, making his way to Scara's bedside.

"Why are you here?"

"Just checking on you. Because I was a bit concerned. Are you feeling okay? You're hurt after the attack from the other day, are you?"

"I feel ffffffantastic." Churro looks at the prescription bottle on the nightstand.

"I bet you can't say, I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop, five times fast."

"I saw Shusie... I shaw... I saw..." Scara's eyes wander off. Churro sits on the bed beside her, taking note of her distant look and changed mood.

"What? What did you see?"

"I saw something.... I saw A giant mountain lion. I swear I did. It was so massive, it was very hard to not see when it came crashing out of the window."

"You really saw a mountain lion? Or did the cops tell you it was one?" Churro piled another question on top of the first.

"A mountain lion." She answered. Churro picks up a teddy bear from her daybed and raises it.

"What's this? Can you tell me what this thing is?"

"A mountain lion." Defeated, Churro puts the teddy bear back down.

Willow trails Crimson as they venture further into the forest, ascending ever more challenging slopes. When they cross another rocky ledge, she finds the climb difficult. His gaze turns to her, filled with worry. Yet she speeds up, determined to stay alongside him. They sneak around a jagged bend, and as Crimson reaches upward to scale the ridge, Willow's feet slip from beneath her. He seizes her with one hand while claws extend from the other, digging into a tree's bark.

He gently pulls her upward, drawing her close.

"You okay?"

"I think you just reclaimed your manhood." Once she stands on solid ground, Crimson examines his hand. The claws have retracted. A fleeting instant of command. When he glances back, Willow is holding her phone, tapping away at a message. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"What are you doing? Mine's powered down. Yours should be too."

"So we're fully cutting ourselves off from the world? I was just sending Scara a quick thanks for the birthday gifts."

"You can manage without it for a single day, right?"

"Just this one message, and then I'm entirely yours."

Once more in Scara's room, Churro gazes at her, whose eyelids have softly shut.

"I suppose I ought to head out and let you get back to the whole post-traumatic stress routine." He begins to rise, but then her fingers wrap around his.

"Stay."

"You actually want me to stick around? Me?" Scara responds with a nod.

"Yes. Please, don't go. Please, Larch." Churro's joy collapses into gloom in an instant.

"And that's that." Scara's phone chirps with an incoming text.

"You want that?" Scara gives another nod. He grabs the phone, thumbs tapping away.

"Uh, how do you make it..." But he halts, lifting the phone to his face. On the screen, a shadowy figure crashes through the storefront glass. Churro hits stop. With a held breath, he enlarges a flawless snapshot of a terror. There, upright on two legs, a grim and ominous shape with burning crimson eyes... The Alpha.

The Tale house. Hushed. Tranquil. Scorched to ash. Lily strides forward, flanked by two hunters. The first is striking, a seasoned hunter whose unsettling calm marks him. Leveque is his name. The other, Ulrich, is a compact, wiry man in his twenties, seemingly itching to take a life, any life.

"He wants us to wait." Leveque inquires, growing impatient.

"So I've been told. Endlessly. But that doesn't stop us from a quick greeting." Inside, a bare, heavily muscled torso moves rhythmically up and down. It's Autzee, doing chin-ups from an exposed ceiling beam. He drops, then launches into push-ups, abruptly halting. Suspended mid-push-up, muscles taut, he slowly lifts his downcast head to peer around. The door crashes open. Lily saunters in calmly, with Leveque and Ulrich trailing. The spot where Autzee was training is now vacant.

"Nobody home?"

"He's here. Just not in a welcoming mood." Lily told the group with honesty and sarcasm"Maybe he's outside burying a bone in the yard." As Ulrich chuckles at his own quip, Lily shoots him a disdainful glare.

"Seriously? A dog joke? That's the best you can come up with?" His smile fades.

"Want to provoke him? Try something like... Too bad your sister died before having her first pups. The others nod, approving her direction.

"Too bad she howled like a bitch..." She turns to the house itself.

"When we sliced her in two." Autzee bursts from the shadows with a furious growl. Ulrich draws a gun, but in an instant, it's snatched from his hand and he's crashing to the ground. Lily watches with a faint smile, savoring the scene. Autzee looks up, fangs fully bared, and lunges at Leveque. A heartbeat later, Leveque's unconscious form thuds to the floor, rolling to Lily's feet. Now he targets her. She stands motionless, as if inviting the blow.

Then, with a flick of her wrist, a telescoping stun baton crackles to life in her hand. She twirls it and presses it to Autzee's skin as he charges. He collapses, muscles spasming uncontrollably. Lily approaches slowly.

"Wow. This one grew up right." She circles him, admiring the physique.

"I'm torn between killing it. Or licking it." As she waves the baton before his eyes, Autzee glares at her with pure loathing. Fuming at her playful smirk.

At his place, Churro walks back and forth in his bedroom, his cell phone held tight against his ear.

"It's me. Once more. I've stumbled onto something and I've got no clue what to do, and if you don't switch your phone back on, I swear I'll end you. I'm way too furious to craft a clever line about the exact way I'll end you. I'll simply end you." He ends the call. A knock makes him flinch. The door swings open, revealing his dad.

"Please tell me I'll hear something good at tonight's parent-teacher meeting, and by good, I mean straight A's and zero behaviour problems."

"Our ideas of good clearly don't match."

"Don't say another word.

"Dad..." His father lingers in the doorway.

"Did you all figure out what attacked Scara and Larch last night at the DVD Store? Everyone's guessing mountain lion. Is that what you figured it out to be also, right?"

"That's our best theory for now. We're putting out traps and talking to Animal Control about the situation. You've got nothing to worry about." The boy nods. As his father pulls the door shut, Churro reaches inside his jacket and pulls out Scara's phone. He pulls up the video. His eyes fix on the Alpha's image on the display.

"Come on, Crimson. Where the hell are you at a time like this?"