Markings (20 page)

“Welcome home, Aaron.” The lion had a deep, husky voice. His eyes honed in on me. He scanned me twice, head to toe. I leaned against Aaron, nervous. It was as if Raja was memorizing my hair color down to the length of each of my fingernails. He had the kind of eyes that seemed to peer through your soul.

“What?” Even Aaron seemed to be discomforted by Raja’s cat-scan. His hand crept around my waist, index finger slipping through a belt loop in my jeans.

Raja’s gaze flickered away. “No need to act so protective, Aaron,” he said lightly. “Though I must say, it is nice to see. I am proud to see you looking after her so diligently.”

Aaron opened his mouth then shut it. He stared at the floor.

“My dear Celina.” The feline’s mouth tilted up on the sides. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to meet you. Welcome to Home Base. I am Raja,” he bowed his head, like I was royalty “though I suspect you already know this. Come. We have much to speak of, and little time.” He slipped off into another tunnel, taking some stairs deeper into the ground.

The lower underground tunnels, lit by torches, had a wet, rocky smell. I assumed the deeper into the ground you got, the less developed the area. It was cold down here, too, only more proof of my theory. A flash went off ahead of us, and I looked up to see the lion replaced by a lanky, older man. He wore silver pants that shimmered in the torchlight, as did his braid of silver hair. He didn’t look back at us, and no one spoke as we walked, our footsteps echoing off the walls.

At the tunnel’s end, a steel door awaited us. Chains had been wrapped through the handles, held together by a numbered lock.

“Aaron,” Raja said as he passed the torch to him. Walking up to the lock, the old man spun the wheel back and forth. I thought of my locker at school and how it was a daily war to get the thing open. The lock clicked. After pulling it off the chains, Raja motioned us forward.

The door hid a circular room. “Wow,” I said, walking to the center. The ceiling shot high above my head, painted with stars and clouds that silhouetted a wildcat. Golden plates shined on the walls, each carrying a symbol or drawing. They looked to be hieroglyph imitations.

“The Wall of History,” Raja introduced, coming up behind me.

“The lowest room in the entire house.” Aaron stood off to the side, watching water stream down one side of the wall and pass through a series of rocks. The water poured off a broken stone, rippling a small pool.

I admired the twisting, black sconces mounted around the room. My mother would’ve loved them, along with the painted vases decorating the table on my left. Getting a closer look, I saw the largest vase had an intricate design of women around a fire. They danced along the desert sand, white castles glimmering behind them. Many of the shapes used to create the palaces and the evening sky were cats. Cats and symbols put together like puzzle pieces, strands of gold wrapped in here and there for contrast. While beautiful and unique and probably extremely old, it was the vase behind this one that held my attention.

A woman lounged on a silver throne. A white skirt flowed from her waist past her feet, painted out in all directions. Black hair waved around her shoulders, hiding her breasts and curling around her jeweled staff. Two ears poked out of her tiara. She had the face of a cat.

“Bastet,” Raja said, seeing me stare. “The Goddess of Felines. She is the one who gave us our gifts.”

“How?” I challenged, knowing I wasn’t going to say,
I don’t believe that
. Anything seemed to be possible these days, and as Aaron came up and took my hand, it was only more of a reminder.

Raja said, “It is written by the human hand that Bastet, daughter of Ra, represented the sun. Unless you read the work of the Greeks, in which case she was sometimes seen as goddess of the moon. She was a fierce protector of Egyptian lands, but a nurturing mother to her cats. Her children roamed the streets of Egypt, cleansing the cities of mice. They were hunters like her, and the humans loved and worshipped them for keeping their food supplies safe from vermin, and destroying venomous snakes, such as cobras.

“But what the humans did not know was how deep Bastet’s fascination was with the people. There is a reason Bastet is seen today as a symbol of fertility and motherhood. Her kits pleased her, but they grew quickly and became independent. They did not need a mother for very long.

“She wanted a child—a real child. One that was everything she was and more, something human and animal and goddess all wrapped up into one. But to bear this kind of child, she would need a man, and this required her to become mortal.

“She drew in a servant of the pharaoh, a young man known as Chenzira. It was said that she charmed him out of the castle during dark of the moon, led him deep into the desert to her hidden palace in the sandy hills.

“Her child was born nine months later, a son called Femi, a name which means
love
. Human he looked, but his arms and legs were covered in patterns of spots and stripes . . . He was the first Shifter to walk the earth.”

Chapter 22: Cursed

I
was still blinking at the vase as Raja finished. “That’s
it
?” I cried in disbelief. “What about the Iew Keftey? What about all the thousands of Shifters in the world? If she only had one child then we’re like, what? All inbred?”

Raja gave a hearty laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Oh, no. Bastet had many more men, and many children. You see, Chenzira feared Femi. He feared a child that was not all human. He threatened to dispose of him, said that his ability to shift forms was the sign of a demon. So to protect her son, Bastet killed her first husband.

“The following year, she returned to the city. This time, however, she not only brought home a new husband: she took humans on the brink of adulthood and made them into servants. Her palace was no longer lonely. She was a queen, ruling both her humans and her children, the Shifters. As her children grew, many took servants’ offspring as wives and husbands within the palace. The gene of the Miew Demos is dominant, so even with one parent being human the child will still be Miew.”

Raja paused. His smile fell as he reached out, ran a hand over Bastet’s face. “But every queen has her enemies,” he continued.
“Chenzira had five brothers. On the night Chenzira followed Bastet out of the kingdom, his brother, Chigaru, witnessed their departure. He and his brothers waited months in hopes that he would return. Finally, Chigaru and the brothers went to investigate.

“It took them four days to find the palace, where they discovered their brother’s death at the hand of Bastet. In the palace, Chigaru learned why she killed him, that he believed his son to be a demon. Infuriated, Chigaru lashed out at the queen, unconvinced this mortal woman was the great Bastet. After telling his brothers what he’d learned, he took his dagger and plunged it into the heart of Femi, the first son. The brothers followed suit, killing Bastet’s first daughter, Amunet, then her second son, Hasani.

“Bastet had never felt such sorrow, such pain of loss. Lost in her rage, the walls of her kingdom crumbled. Her Shifters and humans fled into the desert. Before returning to her immortal form, she placed a curse on Chigaru and his brothers. ‘To you and your children’s children. Forever shall you remember my agony.’ Then back to the high heavens she went, in search of her lost sons and daughter.”

The room fell silent. Visions of white palaces and rolling sand hills filled my mind. The longer I stared at Bastet, the more I could imagine what her reign must’ve been like—a monarchy based on freedom, yet isolation, since her home was in the middle of the desert. Laws governed by love, but enforced with hatred should someone cross her path. I could see the debate over whether she was a moon goddess or a goddess of the sun; she was both light and dark.

She was the ultimate Alpha.

“So the Iew Keftey exist because of her curse?” I clarified.

“Correct.” Raja nodded. “After the destruction of Bastet’s kingdom, Chigaru and his brothers staggered back to the Pharaoh’s lands, but soon discovered they couldn’t stay there. They grew bad tempers and every angry outburst lead to their transformation, which led to more deaths.”

“Why wolves?” I asked. “Why not something less powerful, like, I don’t know, flies? That’d be a much worse curse in my opinion.”

Aaron chuckled somewhere behind me.

Raja smiled then shrugged. “Flies die quickly and they are fairly emotionless. I don’t think she wanted the brothers dead; she wanted them to
feel
. Feel pain, feel sorrow, and most of all feel isolated. Like she did as a human who’d lost children. Plus, an angry monster in town meant angry townspeople. To this day the Iew Demos are rarely seen amongst humans out of fear that they won’t be able to control themselves should a situation arise. They are the reason stories of werewolves exist. More than once the brothers had to escape a town because one of them attacked a human.”

I noticed a particularly dark hieroglyph on the wall, one that looked like a dog eating a human woman. I suppressed a shudder. “How did their gene line survive? I mean, if there were only five brothers and they don’t like humans, how are there so many of them today?”

“Brothels. Speakeasies. Clubs.” Raja caught me looking at the wall. “Most don’t choose a life devoted to a single love, or love in general. Thanks to the curse, I sometimes wonder if they even
can
love. Nonetheless, men are men. The brothers had many, many bastards by the time each of their deaths came about. The Iew gene is dominant, too. By the time their children came of age, it ensued.”

“That’s . . . horrible.” I had a hard time picking a word for it. Even horrible didn’t seem to cut it. I suddenly felt bad for those children. They would’ve had no idea what was coming as a teenager. They must’ve been so scared.

A sad pucker formed between Raja’s brows. “Agreed.”

I hesitated for a moment, soaking this all in. The Iew Keftey depressed me and I really didn’t want to talk about them anymore, but I had one more question that really needed answering. “Why are they set on hunting us all?”

Raja took a breath, hesitating. “There is a rumor that upon the ruins of Bastet’s palace the Iew Demos curse and cure is written. It is said that when the brothers died, the great guardian of the dead, Anubis, was infuriated. Their wild souls wreaked havoc on the gates of the afterlife, so the great Anubis traveled to the High Heavens in search of Bastet. When he found her and found that many more creations like Chigaru existed, he threatened her and her Shifters. She spilled to him the makings of her curse, told him that the High Heavens laid out rules for her putting creations on their Earth. The rules were simple: her creations either existed as a whole, or they died out all in one. The Miews and Iews are tied together. Anubis relayed this information to the Iew Demos, telling them if they destroyed each and every Miew their curse would end.”

I made a face. “That sounds, uh, weird.” I wanted to say
unrealistic
or
crazy
, but didn’t want to offend Raja. I didn’t really get it. Still, one race trying to eliminate another, especially when we were strewn across continents and our genes had been altered by human blood throughout the years, sounded impossible. There were thousands of us now! I thought sickly of Hitler, of the Holocaust. Would we end up like the Jews, threatened and afraid of the Germans?

Aaron came up behind me. “I know it sounds stupid. It’s a task close to impossible,” he said. “They can’t destroy all of us. We’re everywhere. Plus, even if they could, it’s dangerous to mess with the balance of nature. Extremely dangerous. It would be like trying to take away all light and leave only the dark. It doesn’t work that way.”

“It makes me sick,” I said. “That these mutts think wiping us out is the answer. Did they forget the part where they were cursed because Chigaru and his brothers killed the first Miew Demos?”

“At this point, I don’t think breaking the curse is what matters. At least, not to Senneth.” Aaron growled after saying the Pack leader’s name. “For him, I think it’s about control. About not having to share land with a rival shifting group, about having all our land and not having us put them in their place should they become reckless. The Keftey mind is a volatile place. Like Bastet said, ‘forever shall you remember my agony’. It is a punishment; Bastet didn’t design their transformations to go easy on them.”

“A
very
volatile place.” Raja frowned. “In fact, I’m wondering if we shouldn’t send bodyguards to accompany you home. We’ve had many sightings of the beasts lately. And I want our Alpha safe. All it took was me turning my head away from Jinalo, and it wasn’t even the Keftey that took his life.”

Aaron glared at the mentioning of the previous Alpha. Now that I was among the clan, I had a moment of wondering if I’d ever measure up, be as good as Jinalo must’ve been. I found myself thinking,
you poor suckers
,
getting a girl who can barely lead herself to lead all of you
. What had Bastet been thinking?

Aaron pulled his cell phone out, looked at the screen then flipped it shut again. “Raja, I need to get her back soon. Her mother will be waiting for her.”

“That’s true,” I said, picturing Mom in the living room. She’d probably looked out the window a dozen times by now, waiting for the Cougar to pull in. It had been very hard to keep her from going, too, and she didn’t seem happy about Aaron being the one to take me.

“Your mother is not the Miew, is she?” Raja asked.

“No,” I sighed. “My dad.”
My irritating, lying dad
.

“Ah. What is his name?”

“Alex Bayberry.”

“Hmm. Never heard of him.” Raja sounded concerned about that.

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to talk about him. My parents are divorced, and my current relationship with him is . . . rocky.” I would’ve said
over
but I didn’t want Raja thinking the new Alpha came from a messed-up family.

“I understand. In that case, let us change the subject.” Raja glanced at Aaron for a second. “With the Keftey moving and the sightings increasing, I think the sooner you meet the clan the better.”

My stomach did a flip. “Oh. How soon?”

Raja laughed. “The court is planning your homecoming party as we speak.”

“Oh.” I felt nauseous. “
That
soon, huh?”

“Lina, you have nothing to fear. The news of your discovery has sparked great hope and everyone is eager to meet you.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “They do know what I am, right? I mean, if they’re expecting Conan the Big Barbarian Man Tiger or something they might not be so eager anymore.”

Aaron said, “Nope. They don’t.”

Raja narrowed his eyes at him. “It is true that we’ve had few female Alphas, but neither your age nor your looks or gender will matter once they get to know you.”

I let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah. Okay.” Honestly, I begged to differ, but felt I couldn’t say so. I’d be meeting everyone whether I liked it or not, and most likely in my human form.

•   •   •

“I can’t believe I’m meeting the clan tomorrow,” I mused on the drive home from Home Base. “Do they really have to throw me the big ‘welcome home’ shebang now?”

“Come on, Lina, it’ll be fun. The clan hasn’t had an actual party in years.” Aaron flicked off the high beams on the Cougar as we pulled into my driveway. While cutting the engine, he continued, “Besides, there are already rumors about you circulating. People like Joey and Tom don’t exactly keep their traps shut. Raja’s right: your Shifters are getting antsy.”

I groaned, rolling my head towards the sky.
My Shifters.
“I’m not ready for this. Once I do this, they’ll know my face, my smell, everything. I’ll be one of them. There won’t be . . .”

“Won’t be what?” Aaron asked.

I sighed, whipping my seatbelt off. “There won’t be any going back.

This time, I would officially be the Alpha.

He chuckled, unbuckling his own seatbelt. “Aw, Lina. I hate to say it, but there was no going back to begin with.” He leaned over, pulling me in until his cheek touched my hair.

For a second my mind blanked, and I wrapped my arms around his chest. He folded his around my shoulders, giving me a squeeze. The stress seemed to dissipate the longer he held me. I decided to put all shifting matters aside and enjoy the last few minutes I had left with him.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I whispered.

“I know.” He kissed my forehead then quickly looked at the windows. It was a miracle that Mom hadn’t popped up in any of them yet. “I’m not really leaving though. I’ll still be here.”

“Yeah, but you won’t physically be
with
me.”

He hummed. “Leave your bedroom window open tonight. I’ll see if I can change that.”

My heart pounded excitedly. “Are you sure? Aaron, you look tired. You should probably go home and get some sleep.”

“I’ll get some sleep, but I won’t go home to get it.” He pecked my lips. “You’d better hurry in before your mom comes running out here with that chainsaw you mentioned.”

“She’s just having momma bear syndrome.” I sighed. “I’ll probably be caged for the next week.”

“I doubt that.” Aaron smirked, brushing some hair behind my ears. He held a strand in his hand for a minute. “You’re Shifter. We’re designed to be free. Your instincts will always find you a way to be so.”

“Hmm.” Actually, I believed him on that. “I suppose you’re right.” I slid a hand under his chin, pulling him back to my lips.

He gave me a real kiss. One led to another, slow at first, then more heated. His hands came up into my hair. I slinked both of mine around his neck. Dropping my hair he grabbed me by the belt loops of my jeans, tugging me part way across the glove box. I was about to wrap my arms around his chest.

Suddenly he jerked away. I slipped off the glove box, falling back into my seat. “Ouch! Hey, what the heck,” I snapped.

Blood rushed into his cheeks. He focused on the porch, and without saying anything, he pointed.

I flinched.

Mom stood on the veranda, trying to act like she was admiring the rosebushes that lined the flowerbed. By the size of her eyes, however, I could tell that wasn’t really the case.

“I’d better go,” Aaron mumbled. His hand lingered near the ignition, prepared to start up and rip out of here the second I stepped outside.

“Um, yeah. Okay.” I opened the car door, feeling my body heat up.
She’s going to kill me.
Turning my back so Mom couldn’t see, I grabbed my bag and smiled at him one last time. “See you later?”

He nodded. “I’ll try.”

Shutting the door, I rearranged my expression. Acting calm and collected, I turned and started for the porch. Aaron pulled out of the driveway slowly—to my amazement—then drove off down the road.

Mom met my eyes as I reached the door, which she now blocked. I straightened up, fingers clamped around my purse straps. She narrowed an eye. “Did you really go to a clan meeting? Or is there something else you want to tell me?”

“No, Mom, I was at the meeting.” How dare she accuse me of lying?