Her Lion Guard Page 5

  After several unsuccessful starts, Jonas was finally able to guide Mary-Lou to a seat on a plush couch. Jonathon observed the younger shifter from his place next to his wife; his eyes narrowed at the muscular arm circling his daughter’s waist, a growl building in his throat. Irma placed a calming hand against his shoulder and shook her head. It was not their place. Not yet.

  “Mary,” Jonathon focused on Mary-Lou instead, voice a bit breathless. Winded. His daughter – his daughter! He bit back a pained whimper – she raised her head, meeting his gaze for the very first time.

  Mary-Lou gasped. The pain in her chest – the worry, the fear, the blood-tinged anger – had not receded, was not forgotten. Yet, with her birth parents standing but steps away, Mary-Lou found the strength to overcome it – to set it aside in favor of studying faces both familiar and strange.

  Irma was a tall, slender woman. Her skin was darker than Mary-Lou’s, physique more defined and effortlessly powerful. Her face, however – Irma’s full lips, straight nose, the hair falling in heavy curls about her shoulders – those were all Mary-Lou’s. Mary-Lou blinked back tears and shifted her eyes back to her father, to the startlingly familiar green eyes that had desperately sought hers.

  Jonathon Smith was not a tall man. His body was compact, sturdy and muscular, his face quietly handsome. There was a dimple in his chin, two more framing a mouth that smiled often. His hair was pepper-gray and straight, his skin pale, and his eyes –

  Mary-Lou felt her heart clench. She had her father’s eyes.

  Mary-Lou was struck by how young they both were, how strong and unmarred by time they seemed in comparison with Emma and Ronald’s frail bodies. It was unfair, somehow – cruel, even, that they had entrusted such a burden on the shoulders of inherently weaker beings.

  “Tell me,” Mary-Lou swallowed against the dryness of her mouth, the bitterness of her thoughts, “Tell me what you need to, and then let me go.”

  Irma shook her head, expression tight and impassive. At her side, Jonathon’s face crumpled.

  “It is not that simple,” Irma told her. “It will not end that easily.”

  “What?” Mary-Lou demanded, would have stood up in indignation if Jonas’ arm had not been a dead weight behind her back, supporting her.

  “Enough!” A sudden chill permeated the air, called into being by Irma’s anger. The older woman narrowed her dark eyes, straightening to her full height as she took command of the room.

  “Will you continue acting like a child?” she growled as she stalked forward, “Or will you learn and take your rightful place among us?”

  “You presume that I want to be among you,” Mary-Lou bared her teeth in an instinctual reaction she could not quite explain, not even to herself. Irma snarled back, eyes blazing a dull auburn.

  Jonathon hurriedly stepped forward then, grasped his wife’s arms and guided her to a nearby couch. At the same time, Jonas pulled Mary-Lou closer to his side, wary blue eyes on Irma’s stormy expression.

  They sat facing each other, and for a long moment no one spoke. When the silence broke, it was to Jonathon’s raspy chuckle.

  “This is who you get your temper from, in case you wondered.” He smiled at Mary-Lou, and Mary-Lou felt her anger disappear.

  “I wondered a lot of things over the years,” Mary-Lou sighed. Jonathon’s face fell; she felt a spike of guilt and hurried to continue, “Tell me, then. Tell me, so I do not have to wonder any longer.”

  “The story is long and strange,” Irma warned. Her voice was soft and melodious in the absence of anger, strangely compelling, “You may find it difficult to understand, but you must try.”

  “This is why we are here,” Jonas murmured beside her. Mary-Lou turned to look at him, finding peace in the calm of his eyes. “We will stay as long as you need, as long as it takes for you to come to terms with what you have to do.”

  Mary-Lou felt her head throb, a strange combination of confusion and apprehension weighting her chest. “Let’s not waste any more time, then,” she said.

  Jonathon smiled. Irma nodded in approval.

  “Our kind is cursed,” Irma took a moment to compose her thoughts before continuing, voice and expression tight, “By foolishness. We are not human, and we are not beasts; some of us, however, have chosen to become monsters.”

  “Like Wiley?” Mary-Lou blurted out, the image of the man’s bloody teeth still painfully vivid in her mind. Irma leveled her with a shrewd gaze, putting together the entire story without needing a single word.

  “No,” she answered, “Wiley Turbo is not quite a monster. He is, however, a brute in need of a hard beating.” Irma growled, angry at the thought the man’s violent hands on her daughter. She shook her head, “He is a subject for another day.

  Those I speak of are dark, twisted beings – creatures that lack a soul, a single reasonable thought in their tainted bodies. They have committed crimes most of us cannot bear to name,” Irma shuddered, hand tightening in Jonathon’s grasp, “Worse, they seek to normalize their behavior, to institutionalize their vile beliefs and terrorize all who oppose them.”

  “You chanced upon a group of them,” Jonas told Mary-Lou, “The night we met. You heard them sing, you saw them dance and shift, did you not?” Mary-Lou nodded.

  Jonas hesitated, then added, “You saw the fire?”

  Mary-Lou nodded again. “What was in the fire?” she asked, heart beating a painful rhythm in her chest.

  “Who,” Jonathon whispered, hand trembling as he carded it through his hair, “The question is, who was in the fire.”

  “They burned a person?” Mary-Lou gasped, horror momentarily painting her vision black.

  “They kill strangers,” Irma continued, voice tight, “Humans of all ages, anyone unlucky enough to stumble upon them alone and unaware. They murder their own children,” she spat out, fangs and claws lengthening as anger briefly overcame her iron-clad control, “if they happen to be born human.”

  “Why,” was all Mary-Lou could say, mind unwilling to comprehend the horror of what she was hearing.

  Irma laughed mirthlessly. “Because they are terrified fools, because they think that the problem lies outside of their rotten, evil selves.” Irma shook her head, “They do not see that they are the cause of that which they seek to eliminate.”

  “They believe we are cursed,” Jonathon spoke up.

  “Over the last four decades, the Shifter population in North America has been falling. Fewer and fewer children are carried to term, and of those who are born, many are deformed or die not long after taking their first breath.” Jonathon’s lips thinned in grief, eyebrows lowered over troubled green eyes. “They think the human blood within us has weakened our species and caused it to wither, when it is just the opposite. Whatever the initial cause for the rise of infant mortality was forty years ago, the lack of genetic diversity they are imposing is only making matters worse.”

  “Is there no one to explain that to them?” Mary-Lou demanded.

  “Many have tried,” Irma growled in response, “But there is no reasoning with idiocy. It is so much simpler to find a scapegoat than face the real issue, after all.”

  “You speak as if you know what the problem is.” Irma and Jonathon shared a look. “You do, don’t you?” Mary-Lou exclaimed. “Why have you not done anything about it, then?”

  “We did!” Irma rolled her eyes, “We had you, didn’t we?”

  “What?” Mary-Lou blinked in confusion. Jonas chuckled softly beside her.

  “This is your story,” Irma told her. “Listen.

  Twenty-six years ago, the last of the Old Ones – the Shifters who lived as long as gods, who told stories of ancient times and led us on the right path to a bright future – died. She was three hundred and four years old, so small and frail at the end that I could lift her in my arms,” Irma smiled, affection briefly softening her eyes. “Her name was Daphne, and she was a seer.

  She told me of your coming long before I met your father, but it
was not until the day she died that she shared her prophecy in its entirety.” Irma closed her eyes.

  “You are to bear a strong daughter,” Daphne promised, “A willful, beautiful little girl.” She coughed, the sound like dry branches snapping in a winter storm.

  “I know, Ma,” Irma smiled through tears, hands gentle around the frail, wrinkled hand she cradled. “You’ve told me so, many times.”

  “No,” Daphne shook her head, the motion sending strands of silver hair dancing atop a baby-blue pillow, “No, my dear, I have not – not everything. But I did not know, could not see it until now – you must forgive me.”

  “Why?” Fear seized Irma’s heart; fear for the child she did not yet know but already loved more than her own life, “Will something happen to her? Is she fated to something dreadful?”

  “Quite the opposite.” Another bout of vicious coughing shook through the older woman’s prone form. Irma gentled her through it, helped her sip at a cup of honeyed water. “The Fates have granted her tremendous power, and her coming is an occasion of joy. But not all will see it so,” Daphne’s voice lowered, the only indication of her anger, “She will suffer much before all is over. But don’t you worry, dear,” the old woman grinned, a bit of her mischievous nature shining through even at death’s door, “Everyone gets what they deserve in the end.”

  “Daphne always did hate fools,” Irma recalled fondly. “She spent the last moments she had left on earth telling me what I had to do to keep you safe –” she paused, eyes catching Mary-Lou’s surprised gaze “– and what you would have to do, to save us all.”

  “Me?” Mary-Lou gasped. She motioned downward, to her bruised and tired and very much human body, “This is what is going to save everyone? Jonas just fought a guy who survived being thrown through a wall; what exactly can I do against that?”

  “Maybe if you let me finish,” Irma groused, “You would find out.” Mary-Lou fell silent, but the doubt in her eyes remained.

  “Strength will not be the decisive factor in the events to come.” Irma ignored Mary-Lou’s sullen, Thank God, and continued, “This is a battle of belief. You are to be a symbol for goodness: A human-born Shifter, a capable leader – the mother of a man and a woman destined to bring our species out of hiding and into human society, without strife or war. Of course,” Irma added, “for any of that to happen, you had to survive first.”

  “So you hid me,” Mary-Lou offered.

  “So we did,” Irma confirmed, “We entrusted you to the care of our closest human friends, knowing that you would come to us once it was time.” Irma smiled, a rare, small thing. “As it came to pass.”

  “Well, that’s just dandy,” Mary-Lou snapped. “Leave your daughter to be chased around a forest, bashed around a bit by a testosterone-driven stranger. What, was that supposed to build my character?”

  “We could not interfere,” Irma sighed, not rising to the bait of Mary-Lou’s sharp words. “Daphne was very clear on that. The smallest of disturbances could have been fatal.”

  “And now?” Mary-Lou demanded, “I have found you. I have come to you as promised,” She leaned further into Jonas, unconsciously seeking his warmth, “What did Daphne say will happen next?”

  Irma remained silent.

  “There was nothing more,” Jonathon offered in her stead. His smile was sheepish, not quite covering the anxious fear in his eyes. “From here on, we are on our own.”

  Mary-Lou fell silent. She drew into herself and by extension, Jonas, attempting to make sense of all she had heard. It was not an easy thing. Even with Jonas beside her, with Irma and Jonathon – with her parents sitting not a foot away, she could not quite believe it was all true. Prophecies? Shape-shifters? Mary-Lou kept waiting for a guy with a camera to jump out and yell, “Smile, you are on Candid Camera!” Would she wake up tomorrow, she wondered, to realize it had all been a chocolate-induced dream?

  “Shift.”

  Irma and Jonathon glanced at each other, at Mary-Lou’s huddled form, unsure they had heard correctly. “Did you say something, Mary?” Jonathon asked, and Mary-Lou lifted her head.

  “Yes. Shift – transform,” Mary-Lou repeated. “Please. I—I need to see—”

  “Alright,” Irma soothed, Jonathon nodding in agreement. “That is alright. We can. We will, if that is what you need to see.” She glanced at Jonas, “You can stay, if you wish.”

  “Thank you,” Jonas bowed his head. A Shift was a private thing, and he would not have dared to presume – but neither could he leave Mary-Lou to witness it alone.

  Irma and Jonathon rose from their seats, fluid and graceful. “This will be a bit uncomfortable,” Irma muttered, “We are usually naked for this part.” She laughed at the twin horrified expressions Mary-Lou and Jonas sent her way, tension leeching from her shoulders.

  “Don’t be scared,” Jonathon warned, eyes kind and concerned as they sought Mary-Lou’s. “It will still be us.”

  “Just furrier,” Irma added, mouth quirking in one last smile before her expression smoothed.

  Mary-Lou watched as her parents closed their eyes, watched them even their breathing and loosen their bodies with gentle twists of their limbs. She expected them to explode into motion, into uncontrollable twitching as the Shifters of that night had – trembled at the thought of watching them lose their minds to animalistic bloodlust.

  It did not happen.

  There were no theatrics in Irma and Jonathon’s Shift. No dance, no song – no fire rising from the confines of human bones. Fine shivers roughened their skin, trembles shook their powerful bodies for all of a moment before a wave seemed to pass over them: Bones shifted beneath thick skin, spines curved and lowered and clothes tore; features sharpened beneath spurts of soft, thick fur.

  It was all over within minutes.

  Mary-Lou stared at the huge, black-striped tiger that stretched before her, at the pepper-red coyote gleefully nuzzling in the great cat’s side. The tiger snorted, snapping her great jaws in mock-anger at her playful companion. The coyote danced just out of reach, letting out a strange he-he-heee sound as it ducked the swipe of a powerful paw.

  They were playing, Mary-Lou realized and stumbled forward, almost falling off the couch in her haste to get closer.

  “Careful!” Jonas bid her. He helped her stand, remained a warm shadow at her back as Mary-Lou made her cautious way toward her parents.

  The tiger and coyote stood still as she approached, eyes calm and intelligent. They lowered their heads when Mary-Lou stretched a curious hand, an obvious invitation to touch. Mary-Lou hesitated nonetheless, wondering if petting a Shifter – petting one’s shifted parents – was considered rude in Shifter society. She glanced at Jonas, meaning to seek advice, then promptly yelped when she felt a furry head butt against her hand.

  Jonathon barked in his coyote form, tongue lolling out of his grinning mouth. He hopped up and butted Mary-Lou’s hand again, fur velvet-soft against her skin.

  Mary-Lou laughed, kneeled to gently pet the coyote’s flank and back. The tiger – Irma, she reminded herself – bumped into her side, placing her large head on Mary-Lou’s shoulder.

  “Do you believe them now?” Jonas asked. He was grinning, fingers twitching with the need to grab for his mobile and snap a picture. As he watched Mary-Lou nod and laugh, joy shining in bright-green eyes, another need grew in his chest: The desire to Shift, to join Mary-Lou and her family, to be her family—

  Jonas’ eyes widened. He stumbled backwards and collapsed into the couch, mind whirling with this new and not entirely welcomed revelation.

  It could not be. He was too young, too unstable still. He could not have found his mate.

  As he watched Mary-Lou nuzzle into her mother’s neck, unafraid and happy and beautiful, Jonas realized it was much too late for doubt. It was done.

  The question was, would Mary-Lou feel the same?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mary-Lou stretched on her bed, tired and sore and strangely, unbearably happy.


  It had been all of seven days; for all that had happened, all that she learned, it could have well been seven months.

  Mary-Lou was terrified that first night, and it had shown. She lashed out at her parents, at Jonas – acted like a child and threw tantrums, ignoring the utter pointlessness of her actions.

  Mary-Lou had always dismissed self-pitying words and actions as meaningless, always chosen to meet her problems head-on.

  Of course, her problems had never previously included shape-shifting bigots. First time for everything, she guessed.

  “Mary-Lou?” a female voice drifted into the room, the wooden door doing nothing to conceal its cheery notes.

  “Yes?” Mary-Lou called back, even as she rose from her sprawl and made her way toward the closed door. “What’s up, Cara?” she asked the younger girl once the door parted open, smiling at the enthusiastic glint in baby-blue eyes.