Secrets of the Jaguar (Crimson Romance) (2 page)

One night he was playing at a local spot when he noticed a woman watching him intently. She was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She slinked across the dimly lit room to sit nearer to his spot at the piano, and she sipped intently on a glass of red wine. Her lips were crimson and he struggled not to fumble at the piano under the seductive gaze she pinned on him. He had never felt so vulnerable, or so excited.

The next thing he knew, she was behind him, leaning down to whisper into Duncan’s ear a request: Nocturne No. 1 in E minor, a masterpiece of Chopin.

He should have known by her request that all was perhaps not right with this siren who requested such a serious and eerily rolling song. The beautiful piano classical was the last he would play before he died.

After his set, he trailed behind her into the brick-lined alley. He was tall, six-feet four, but the woman in her heels was just as tall and seemed even taller as she descended upon him like a sexual hunter. The seductress spoke not at all as she leaned into his hard length of body to attack his neck, kissing with more teeth than tongue, her mouth sucking feverishly.

Duncan became entranced, his eyes rolling back into his head, only taking in a blur of brick before stars of black and gray covered his vision. Nocturne No. 1 in E minor played though his mind with its dark, violent piano pounding in his ears while blood seeped from his neck from their romantic and frightening rendezvous behind the bar. Life was draining from his body and he realized he had gotten his wish. He would not be in the shipping industry, he would not be a musician, he would not be anything. Darkness covered his vision completely as the evil escaped, his blood smeared across her lips. She faded into the night along with his consciousness. When Duncan awoke, his life would begin anew.

The eternal life of a vampire.

That night, Michelle lay awake in bed, her eyes focused on the ceiling. Her gaze trickled over the intricate Victorian-era lighting fixture and she wondered why her stomach hadn’t stopped twirling. Never had a man caught her attention so. She pondered how old he was. His voice made him seem older, like he knew many things she didn’t. Yet the youthful, cocky gaze from under his hood made him seem more playful than wise.

The last thing I need to be thinking about is men.

She pulled her comforter over her head and heaved a sigh and then, curiously, she realized she was smiling. He had snuck up on her tonight;
maybe it’s time for me to do a little sneaking myself.

Michelle threw the covers off and jumped out of bed. After hurrying across her small studio apartment, she opened the window, using all her weight to push it up. The studio was full of character. Sure, the sink only worked sometimes, her bathroom door refused to close, and all of her windows had been painted shut, but that didn’t stop her from taking a butter knife to the frames to get the fresh air she craved, like now.

With the window to her second floor studio now ajar, she began her transformation. Midnight wind swirled into the room and she inhaled deeply. The scent of the jasmine vines that grew alongside the house intoxicated her senses as she began to change. The tingling sensation of fur piercing through her flesh moved over her body. Within seconds, the molecules in her body made the smooth, magical transition into a lithe black jaguar.

Despite what her parents believed, Michelle had never felt evil after a transformation. Instead, being a jaguar brought her closer to the earth and she felt unique.

Sometimes she did wonder about her birth parents. Were they like her, able to shift into a big, black cat at will? Would they be able to explain to her where the ability came from?

Sure, curiosity had led her to Google “shape shifting” on many occasions, but it seemed as if all she found was a bunch of jokes. One time she even found a video of George W. Bush trying to prove in slow motion that the ex-president was really a reptilian shape shifter. So she had given up a long time ago on trying to figure out how she gained the ability. She simply did it.

And tonight, she shifted into the jaguar so that she could sniff out her handsome stranger and do a little spying.

I’m gonna get to know him a little better.
She fought the urge to let out a playful roar and instead crept through her window and slinked her way down the tree branches.

Prowling the street in the shadows, she was wary of being seen but trusted in the jaguar’s innate predator abilities to keep her concealed as she made her way down the avenue toward the beach.

• • •

With the rain pitter-pattering on the wind-curled waters of the estuary, Michelle kept her body low against the damp ground. From underneath one of the small, square wooden piers, her night vision a la jaguar scanned the expanse before her. Disappointingly, her feline sense of smell hadn’t been able to detect the man earlier, probably because she’d been in human form.

The handsome devil had gotten the drop on her. But tonight, she was determined to find him.

The logical place to start was here by the Alameda beach where they met. Sure it was late, but something about him told Michelle that he was a night creature.

Finally, she was confronted with what she’d been hoping to find. But she was shocked. The curious stranger was swimming, just hanging out in the midnight tide.

His body swayed upright as the waves hit his shoulders, spraying his face. Despite the distance, she spied a smile on his face. She shuddered in her kitty form, imagining how cold the water would be. It would be chilling, and yet he seemed to be joyous.

The mystery man turned in the water, and she could’ve sworn he was staring right at her. There was no way he could see her. In addition to the darkness between them, lay the distance of a football field. Yet another chill went through her, and it was not in contemplation of the water temperature but because she could feel his electrifying gaze on her. Then he began swimming toward her. He walked through the shallow water. Soon he was only fifty yards away.

As she crouched, invisible to anybody who walked by, she watched him stalk toward the pier. He looked strong; the clothes clinging to every hard muscle in his body was evidence of that. Ironically enough, she swore he looked like a big cat himself. She wished he was, because as soon as he made it to the pier, she would pounce on him. She visualized wrestling with him, latching onto him with her fangs and — suddenly, Michelle realized he’d disappeared on the horizon, probably dunking beneath the water.

How could that happen? Damn it, Michelle, you and your fantasizing — now look what you’ve done.

The sound of wood splintering rang in her ears and air collapsed from her lungs as strong hands grabbed the scruff of her neck. Shards of dock flew from where he had crashed through the thin wooden bars beneath the pier.

There he was. The handsome stranger knelt before her, staring into her eyes. A firm grasp held her in place. She noted the immense amount of strength he’d need to hold down a full-sized jaguar.

For the second time, she got a look at her captor’s face. He was pale.
Had swimming in the cold of the night left him with hypothermia?
She took in his whole face, from his pale pink lips to his eyes. Perhaps it was the night, or the dark wet hair that clung to his face framing eyes as black as onyx. Then he smiled.

At first, she wanted to melt at the sweetness in his expression that contradicted his stone-like face. Then, she was horrified.
Were those fangs?

Michelle looked closer and realized he did have pointy canines. They were whiter, smaller, and sharper than her own.
Surely they are not real, perhaps he got them from Hot Topic or a Halloween store or something. Lots of people are into that stuff.

But still. There she was, held firmly in place by his grip, when nobody should have been able to detect her in the first place.

“I thought I saw a big black cat.” His grin didn’t cease and he used his free hand to reach out and scratch her behind the ear. “Usually jaguars have spots, but yours are as dark as midnight. Pretty rare.”

Regaining her sense of self-respect, she hissed and lurched toward her captor with a powerful bite. He was quick though and her vicious chomp found only air. The guy laughed calmly, as if he hadn’t almost lost a finger.

“So did the devil send you to spy on me?” The stranger manhandled his way to her ear and gave a scratch.

Hurt simmered from his comment about the devil.
Just because I’m the only jaguar prowling the Bay Area doesn’t mean I’m a hell spawn. Maybe I escaped from the Oakland Zoo …
Then something shocking happened.

She realized she was drooling.

The stranger’s grip on the scruff of her neck had loosened, but she hadn’t even noticed because now her head lolled in the palm of his hand as he scratched behind her ear.
How mortifying! I came to spy on him and within ten minutes he has me purring? Are you kidding me?

She lashed out with her paw and sliced him across the shoulder, shredding slits into his damp shirt. Blood oozed from the wound.

“Ah, geez, I get it, you can’t be tamed.” He put his hands up in a display of submission, but he didn’t seem too hurt.

She wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She lurched by him from under the pier. Running between tall anise and other beachside growth, she made her way toward home. When she turned onto San Jose Avenue, she looked in every direction to ensure nobody was near. Satisfied, she hurried across the street and crawled up the gigantic magnolia tree to where her window was ajar.

Once inside, Michelle panted, whether from exhaustion or excitement she didn’t know. The furry black coat on her belly elongated and hallowed with every breath as she began to calm herself, imagining the form of her human body. The familiar sensation of a chilly draft hit her skin and she knew the transformation had been made. In the window she saw her naked reflection. Luckily nobody could see her, thanks to the dense magnolia tree that kept the inside of her apartment hidden.

As she walked toward her tiny closet full of jeans and t-shirts, she pondered the unexpected turns of her night. So many questions. The last thing she expected to find the mystery man doing in the midnight hours was swimming in the cold Alameda estuary. Strange. And stranger still was his reaction to her presence. He seemed to have seen her from so far away and then, to make matters even more unbelievable, he got the drop on her.
Just embarrassing. So much for my predator instincts.

And what was up with his fangs? It was unlikely from his well-groomed appearance that he would be into that kind of thing, and even if he was, why would he wear his fangs while swimming? The whole thing just didn’t add up.
And who pets a wild jaguar? I mean come on, jaguars aren’t even supposed to be in this region. Why didn’t he seem more surprised?

Her stomach did a flip flop as she remembered his firm grip and the even softer touch that he used to scratch behind her ear. She wished that she had been human, enjoying his caresses as a woman. Perhaps another night of spying would be in order. But for now, it was time to sleep, with a long day of school tomorrow and job hunting to boot. The funds she had saved up from working in Modesto were almost depleted and rent would be due soon.

That night when sleep claimed Michelle, her dreams were of darkness, accompanied only by the face and the eyes that had born so deeply into her own earlier. The eyes that looked at her as if she were a beautiful, exotic creature. For once, Michelle smiled as she drifted into her dreams.

After the strange black jaguar leapt out of view, Duncan went back to his home on the beach, just feet from his encounter with the wild cat on the estuary. Normally he wouldn’t allow anything to get that close to him — he wasn’t in the mood to be clawed — but somehow he felt he had offended the creature.

What was this exotic jaguar doing in this area? He didn’t imagine it had escaped from the Oakland Zoo. Instead, he figured it must be something more mystical, perhaps a spy for Satan or some other evil being. He found it easy to imagine warlocks with trained jaguars and perhaps flying monkeys like in the
Wizard of Oz
as well.

He walked through the door of his two-story home on the estuary. The inside was dark with tones of black, gray, and merlot. It probably looked like a typical vampire palette, but he couldn’t help but fancy the romantic hues. The deep crimson drapes that hung heavy against his charcoal walls reminded him not of blood, but of roses, life rather than death. Not that the roses he planted ever lasted very long. Must be bad vampire karma.

A piano rather than a TV awaited his company in the corner of his living room. His favorite time to play was in the morning as the sun rose. When he moved in, he had large French doors installed so he would always feel that he was outdoors, or easily could be. While seated at the piano, he could enjoy the sight of the water. He loved it most when it was being tossed back and forth by the wind. In the early Alameda hours, the water was often a deep teal, as if to match the low overcast that hid the California sun until noontime. With the doors open, the scents of black licorice and sea foam wafted into his home, enticing his fingers to sweep over the keys, telling tales with musical composition.

Although he’d traveled much of the world in his years, Alameda was still his home. True, this house was not the one he had grown up in. This very spot would have been underwater in his original life, back when the town was a beach paradise.

The boardwalk had been a grand carnival of fun for all ages, especially lovers who could indulge themselves by riding the gigantic wooden rollercoaster and clutch onto each other tightly as the coaster swept them up and down along the beach. He had wished he had someone to cling to, but that person only would have felt a cold, pulse-less embrace.

Not one grain of sand could be seen on Neptune Beach, for on a decent day all the folks would gather in their finest Victorian styles to picnic. Huge umbrellas striped in red and yellow dotted the landscape and for a moment, he could almost see his mom smiling from under a wide-brimmed beach hat, her dainty feet struggling to navigate the sand in her pointy-toed boots.