Dhalia had been born a sociopath.  She knew this.  Benji had become a psychopath as a result of early and frequent childhood traumas.  She knew this also.  Sasha had been born like her, though her lioness didn’t seem to fall in with cold calculations and strictly impersonal decision-making.  Levi was a narcissist.  Zinnie and Rocket were hedonists.  Chamomile suffered from severe post-traumatic-stress-disorder.  Andes was a recovering addict.  Kitten was like Benji but less severe, having learned to express emotions as a way of distancing herself from others.  Rosetta was fairly normal and balanced.  

Babier scared her.  He was like Sasha, only reversed.  His lion didn’t care in the least for anyone or anything.  He’d been the second in command until the day he’d been pushed too far and had ripped the throat and heart from the male who’d formerly ruled.  There had been no emotion, no call for it beyond a calculation that enough had been done and it was time to ascend.  His human side came out from time to time, though it was used as a roadmap for how to best manipulate his underlings and attain their loyalty and gratitude.

She slept with him often enough to curry his favor.  He stimulated her nerve endings and pretended to be gentle.  She was not fooled.  Always, he kept her positioned such that he could more readily kill her than she could kill him.  They’d never spoken of it.  They didn’t need to.

He coordinated the warming and tending of Rocket masterfully.  Zinnie groomed the dying man’s mane, soothing him and keeping his bestial half in the forefront and pushing to heal itself.  Sasha was handling the sewing.  Kitten kept a steady supply of bandages and fresh threaded needles handy while the new girl hefted a saline drip.  Everyone else was rubbing against Rocket, encouraging him to get better.

Dhalia looked up, wanting to stop with this pointless charade, and caught the threat in Babier’s eye.  The male moved his hand subtly in the old gesture used by the former king.  If she left her position, he would kill her.  He would likely do it away from the pride and likely coat himself in the blood of a half-dozen enemies.  No one would suspect a thing.  No one would believe her if she said a word.  Bending, she returned to the task of rubbing the top of Rocket’s forehead.  It was growing warmer so perhaps there yet remained some merit to what otherwise appeared to be a fruitless exercise.

...

Andes beat the eggs rapidly while Benji chopped the ham.  It had been a trying morning, full of touch and go moments, but Rocket was finally stable.  Babier had ordered Benji to go and make breakfast and Andes had followed, knowing full well that, with tensions such as they were, to stay was to invite a similar state upon himself.

Setting the bowl aside, he picked up a brick of sharp cheddar and began grating this.  Benji was the real master in the kitchen.  Andes smiled, glad it was just prep-work that was expected of him.  He’d asked Benji where he’d gotten his training.  The grey-haired man had shrugged and given an imprecise answer about having lived another life in another place before coming here.  That was his standard answer to nearly everything.  

There was a soft knock on the roof and Rosetta’s voice in their ears.  “We’ve got a solo intruder, southwest perimeter, fifty yards and closing at a slow clop.”

Five miles per hour, or thereabouts.  Andes pressed his ring-finger to the connecter point and informed Rosetta that he’d investigate, leaving the half-brick of cheese for Benji to deal with.  One to one, and he knew he was a prime combatant.  With Rosetta up top and the entire pride ready to bloody their teeth, he was not the least worried.

As he slid from the RV, he slipped a .45 into his waistline, wishing he’d time enough to don his holster.  The way the metal bit into his back was unpleasant, the cold iron making his skin tingle.  Strapped to the outside of his loose-laced boots were a pair of silver-leaf titanium blades.  He cautiously wove around the trees until he was no more than twelve feet downwind of the wolf.

That was something his human mind had insisted on.  The lion in him didn’t overmuch care which direction the wind happened to be blowing.  The human in him reasoned that, if he could smell them when he was downwind, they could smell him when he was downwind.  It was now very much a part of both of their stalking routines.

He pounced, though he was careful not to actually touch the woman just yet.  Instead, he let himself shift into his preferred form, a tail, claws and ears marking him as difinitively not-human while the bone-spurs and near-doubling in size were not achieved.  It cost him nothing to enter the form of his auspice and he sharled from inches behind her back.

The woman yelped and turned, stepping back and shifting to full wolf reflexively and with the ease that revealed the form to be that of her natural auspice.  It took no more than eight seconds and exhibited remarkable control as her bones contorted and muscles ripped in ways that made her descent to four paws almost seamless.  Andes stayed calm, ready to chase her off the rest of the way if she bolted but just as happy to let her catch her bearings and offer some form of tribute or such.  That was also a human tradition that had been widely adopted.

Instead, she backed away a fair bit and put her nose to the ground as though she were grazing and blinked her eyes twice as she rolled them and licked her lips.  Her tail was severely tucked under and she seemed utterly terrified.

Andes squatted and put out a hand, much as he would have before the change when introducing himself to a new dog.  The wolf slunk over, staying low and taking a route that kept the cover of a tree close to her side, before licking his fingertips a few times and making small noises.  She rolled over and showed her belly for a brief moment, started to roll back to her feet and rolled over again, pawing at the ground to get a little bit closer.

“Good good, so now we’ve made friends.  You mind taking human form again so we can chat?”

The wolf looked like she was genuinely trying to do the whole subservience thing.  It wasn’t a lion’s way but he’d had a German Shepherd mutt as a kid and knew dogs pretty well.  Coming home to Hercules, his one-time loyal companion, growling after he got the self-test results… that had been a bad day.  The next few months hadn’t been much better, though he liked where he was now.  

With a tilt of her head, the wolf back-pedaled and scratched the word cant into the foliage.  It was another display of control, in that her human mind was still fully intact within the foreign body.  He shrugged and touched his wrist with a thumb, speaking softly and in the same tone he’d used with Hercules on the fourth of July.  “I’m gonna need a collar.  She’s cooperating but form-fixed.  Size fourteen.”  He then sat all the way down and shifted fully to human.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.  Your scent isn’t in the injuries but we need to know what happened.”  Looking at her, he realized that about half of her ribs were showing and her hips were somewhat visible under her thick gray and white coat.  “We’ll even give you some breakfast.  Benji’s making breakfast burritos.  Would you like that?”

The licked lips, this time, meant something other than subservience.  She approached again and Andes gently scratched her cheek, smiling as she kept moving and rolled her shoulder into his lap.  In his ear, he heard that Levi was coming and Dhalia had them fully covered, presumably from atop the RV.  The woman rolled on her belly and whined again a little before Levi slipped into view and Andes sighed, wishing his ears had been so sensitvie.

“Okay, darling, now I’m going to have to put a little collar and leash on you.  It’s just to keep things civil while you wait for your refracking period.  We’ll get things all straightened out then, okay?”  He reached back without looking and the collar fell into his hand.  The silver lining the inside grazed his palm and he knew his face revealed the minor pain, especially as the wolf under his fingertips began shaking.  “Don’t worry too much about it.  We’ll get you back to camp, get a proper watch on you, and take it off.  In the meantime, this is just a safety measure.  Easy, girl, easy.”

Reaching to unlatch the collar, he carefully brought it around her neck slowly before jerking it close and latching it securely.  Just to be sure, he tested the width and found three fingers could squeeze under it.  The woman would be unable to think or shift effectively with the equipment on and already was yelping in a sustained, piteous cry.  He ruffled the fur by her cheek and let her caterwaul for a few minutes before slowly standing and showing that he held the end of the leash.

Levi had backed off a fair bit and seemed rather nervous.  The guy was nervous around Thiriothropes who were not also members of the den.  It was almost a defining feature to the guy, poor soul.  Andes couldn’t imagine a childhood without a dog or two underfoot and unconditionally happy to see him when he got home.  Of course, his life had been charmed by comparison to that of the twins.  He also couldn’t imagine having a custody battle be resolved with ain injection of the Ailouroeidísthropy virus.

“Is he visious?”

“No.  She’s very friendly.  Would you be a dear and let your brother know that we’re going to need breakfast made for one more?”

...

Penny felt at war with herself as the beast demanded to be let out.  It wanted to meet the rest of the pride.  It was angry at having been cooped up like this.  It smelled the enemy and it smelled the blood of one of its pride.  In short, it was ready to come out, regardless of what she desired.

Putting a hand to her abdomen, she stared at the small amount of blood and felt the torn skin under it.  This was not something from the manual.  For the millionth time, she wondered if she’d done something wrong, if the virus had mutated or something.  It was said to be fairly stable, though she’d heard tales of things going horribly awry.  Some of the early treatments had involved injections of multiple strains of Thiriothropy into a subject.  Alternately, samples had been irradiated in the hopes of fashioning a vaccine.  The results were said to have been horrific.

Quietly, she pushed thest thoughts aside and moved to sit beside Rocket again.  He looked so harmless now, so weak and in need of love and support.  She adjusted the blanket again, hoping this helped, and startled as he caught her hand.

Turning his head as though with great effort, he offered her a small smile.  “Hey.  Could you close the blinds?”  His voice was soft enough to reflect his injury and her heart broke for him.  The man had a rounder face and softer features with eyes that radiated kindness even through the pain.

Penny nodded and carefully rose, returning in a moment as the light ceased to be so bright and placing a towel over a small desk-lamp, further increasing the sense of intimacy.

“I thought y’all could shrug off wounds like this.”

“Yeah.  Give me a few weeks.  And maybe some coffee.”

“Sasha said you shouldn’t have anything to eat or drink for a few days, that you had to rely on the saline and your reserves.”

“Yeah, she’s probably right.  Bitch.”  The chuckle that followed this seemed to generate a fair bit of pain.  Penny bit her lower lip and touched his hand, trying to offer comfort without touching the mess of his torso.

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“Yeah.”  His smile, feeble though it was, grew a touch skeevy.  “You can pretend I’m a barren field in the early spring.”

“What?”

“You can plow me.”  He waggled an eyebrow and Penny thought for a moment before blushing.

“You jerk.”

He laughed.  This caused his body to convulse and he rode out a small seizure-like spell, finally growing too still.  Feeling alarmed, Penny put her fingers to his neck and tested for a pulse.  He opened his eyes and smiled with them, a bit of blood on his lips.  “At least it was funny.”

Distressed and not the least sure what to do for the man, Penny grabbed an individually wrapped pad of sterile gauze and, opening it, used the cotton to clean his mouth.  Rocket relaxed under her touch and she watched him draw another few breaths as he fell asleep again.  Not sure what else to do, she lay down beside him and put an arm over his upper chest, relieved to feel his heart pulse valiantly under her arm.   

Rosetta’s voice matched with her touch brought Penny back to wakefulness.  “Hey, sweetie?  You slept through breakfast.  Come on, I’ll take a shift.”  

“Oh, oh that’s okay.  I’m not feeling very hungry.”

“It’s probably stress.  Benji set up a reservation at the local gun range.  He’s going to show you how to pull a trigger.  Don’t worry, I saved a few leftovers.  They’re in a tupperware just outside.”

“Rocket says he’s hungry.”

“Yes, but Rocket’s stomach was ripped out last night and we don’t want to put any extra strain on him just yet.”

“Oh.  So he really can’t have anything to eat or drink?”

“We’ll give him a sip of water tonight and see how it goes.  A lot of this depends on him, though.  He’ll be okay but these early hours determine whether the recovery period lasts a few weeks or a few months.”

“So he’ll really be alright?  There was just so much blood--”

Rosetta drew her up and made a cutting motion with her hand across her neck.  “Yes, we’ve all healed from much worse.  One or two weeks and he’ll be right as rain.”  She then pulled Penny outside and closed the door, moving a good thirty feet off before she resumed.  “Don’t talk about how he might not make it.  The last thing he needs is a reason to panic.”

“Oh, okay.”  Penny felt as though she’d been slapped and squared her shoulders.  “I’ve just never seen anything like that.  Y’all can really survive that much trauma?”

“Our bodies acclimate to the lives we force them to live.  You would die.  Levi would shrug it off after a week.  Chamomile might not even notice she’d been wounded, especially if she fell asleep and let her body do its thing.”  Rosetta smiled and placed a hand on Penny’s shoulder.  “Kelly, look, you’ve obviously never been part of a pride.  Every group has its own dynamic and its own strengths and weaknesses.  We’re good at physical feats like healing and growing claws.  In a few months, after you’ve run with us for awhile, you’ll catch on.  In the meantime, it’s best if you try to relax and enjoy the ride.  We’re here for you when you need us but you need to be here for yourself, too.”  Rosetta slapped Penny’s shoulder firmly and flashed teath that seemed a bit too big for her mouth.  “Enough lecture.  You go and shoot some stuff, y’hear?”

As if on cue, Levi stepped forward.  He barely moved, even shaming the wind into silence.  With a start, Penny realized she’d mistaken the one for the other.  Again.  Benji smiled at her slowly as her now-obvious understanding dawned.

“The engine’s warm.  You know how to ride?”

“What, like a motorcycle?”

The silence answered the question for her and she shook her head.  It had been too long since she’d ridden anything on two wheels and she didn’t trust her body not to spas out as it had been lately.  Her lower arm moved protectively over the ripped skin from where she’d fought the monster to a standstill as she realized more was desired of her.  “I know how but I’d rather practice a bit, first.  They say you never forget…”

“Understood.  Would you sit behind me?”

“Okay.”

A single nod and he turned and began walking off.  She watched him go for about ten feet before he turned back and frowned at her.  “Coming?”

Trotting to catch up, she hid her pain masterfully.

...

Benji knew he was being shunted away from the den.  The girl clinging to his abdomen didn’t need to know how to shoot at precisely this moment and it would have been just as beneficial for hre and, say, Kitten, to get lost in the art of cleaning or dishes or whatever.  Or making bullets; the younger lionesses were phenomenal at that.

The trick was, he didn’t like torture or captivity.  A good clean kill or a prolonged fight with a skilled opponent, even slitting throats on kids and sleeping folks, that was alright.  He could look at corpses and feel nothing.  Heck, he’d made more than one fine meal in the lairs of the enemy and not been the least put off.

A cage, though, that went against everything he stood for.  Cutting on a soul with the intent to let them go… unless it was a team-member who needed the extra motivation to fall into line, it cut him twice as deep.  

The grip around his waist tightened as he headed into the edge of the city.  He’d checked the map and knew Nice Shot was around here somewhere.  It was supposed to be a bit pricy but fielded a fair selection and the staff was supposed to be knowledgeable.  Some bloke named Andrew appeared to be getting all the good reviews, which made Benji feel vaguely hopeful that the man would be present.

Easing around the bend, he spotted the side of the building, pulled into a parking lot, and carefully let eased down.  This bike, a Yamaha Star Cruiser with a black casing, had been making a bit of a strange clicking noise.  Andes and Dhalia were good with the bikes, so he wasn’t too worried, but he took care to ease off the engine gently and set it securely on its kickstand as the new lioness climbed off.  He opened the compartment under the back of the seat and stowed her helmet, holding his under an arm as he stretched a little.  “You wanna catch a bite to eat?”

“What?  Oh, no.  I thought you were going to take me to a field and have me shoot bottles or something.”

Benji shrugged one shoulder and sniffed.  “Nah, I’m not into that whole Western scene.  You and one of our snipers can take the sports-bikes out and do that sometime, if y’like.”

“They won’t mind?”

“Hell if I know.”

This new woman was annoying.  She smelled conflicted, of blood and exposed muscle tissue mixed with resolve and a deep seated calm, but she reeked of frightened -- and therefore violent -- lioness.  The two parts to her mind were not getting on well, which was probably why she’d needed to get gone from the base and not just somewhere away from whatever kinds of questioning involved silver-lined collars, submissive actions, and Dhalia standing by.

“Keep up, Kel.”  He tried the truncation out.  She didn’t respond to it, which likely meant that she’d not been raised near folk who used nicknames or, and this seemed more probable, Kelly was not her actual name.  He considered taking her out somewhere and choking her gently, so that there would not be a whole lot of bruising, then leaving her body where wild animals were likely to get at it.  It would take awhile, maybe two of three hours before her moon-touched body gave up the ghost, but it would be quiet and fairly difficult to trace.  Scratching the back of his neck, he reasoned that it was probably Babier’s call to make.  Even liabilites had their uses.

“Do we have an appointment or something?”

“I called ahead.  The range shouldn’t be too busy.”

“Oh.”

Oh.  He hated that response; it reminded him of his mother.  A weak-willed woman if ever there had been one.  Spineless.  After his uncle had done with her, it had been near enough to the truth. She’d called the man pathetic.  He’d paralyzed her from the waist down.  Benji closed his eyes briefly as he walked.  It was unfair to associate her wih his past.  It was okay to dislike her on general principle.  He and Rosetta had talked about this.  He didn’t have to justify his preferences, he just had to be honest about them.

Reaching the door first, he held it open and returned her smile with what was probably a brooding glare.  She was his responsibility while they were away and, as she was not yet a part of this team in a true and proper sense, he would need to make sure she didn’t get any alone-time with any means of communcation.  Phone calls and such would have to be strictly monitored for awhile, just as when he and Levi had been let out of that room.  It had taken a year and a half for him and he’d not hidden anything in the least.

Judging.  He touched his elbow against the grip of his sidearm and forced himself to relax.  Walking to the counter, he saw a woman with Julie written on her nametag.  He mumbled out the words she needed to hear and produced his concealed carry permit with his Oregonian Driver’s License, signed in, paid the fee to rent a pair of matching .22 pistols and buy a few dozen targets, bought a pair of ear-mufflers, and led Kelly to the range.  She smiled up at him as though this was flirtatious or something.  He ignored her and carefully went over the age-old exercise of listing all the parts and jotting off some numbers about force and velocity.

Honestly, he didn’t mind that he was the go-to for teaching folks how to shoot.  It was practical in that he didn’t want a teammate to shoot him and soothing in that he genuinely did know quite a bit about firearms.  Usually, the team bought inexpensive, generic ammunition and used false papers to purchase firearms at fairly reputable shows.  Sometimes, they made their own bullets.  Sometimes, a gun would be modified or upgraded in some respect.  This new girl was squaring her feet and bracing her wrists, staring down at the target in a very textbook shooting stance.

“Okay, Honey, you’re looking like a cop.”  A sharp intake of breath, a faint shift in position, a slight lowering of arms and her heart jumped up a few paces.  Great, so now there was that to point out.  He’d have to be careful not to sound like he was offering any services when he made his report tonight.  Being presumptuous was not appreciated.  Instead, he came up behind her and lightly kicked her feet into a looser, more mobile position.  “There we go.  This is just a tool.  We use it for taking out varmints and little toy action figures when we go through fast food joints that offer children’s meals.”  He reached up alongside her arm and flicked the safety off.  “Just treat this like a curling iron or a hammer.  Not the same movements and a little louder, but still just a tool.”  He moved his arm back up to her earmuffs and pushed these securely into place.  

“Like this?”  That shy feminine smile, like she wanted him to like her.  Manipulative but not detached.  He stifled his disgust and nodded, keeping his lips tightly pressed to hide whatever expression might otherwise have crept into place.

“Yeah.  You ever shoot one of these before?”

“My dad used to take me.  Back before I… before I pulled my clothes off professionally.”

“So you mean you did it for free?”

“What?:”

“Nevermind.  There’s going to be a little kick and your lioness is going to startle.  She’s going to want to grip down as hard as she can.  It’s why you’ve only just got the bullet in the chamber.  No one else is here, so talk to her.  She won’t understand the words but she’ll hear the tone.  You keep your head, she’ll keep hers.”

 “Oh.”  She squared her shoulders just as she’d probably been trained at the academy.  Likely, she thought she was acting brave.  Actions spoke louder, however, and she’d clearly let herself be either bullied or threatened since the change.  “Okay.  Here goes.”

Benji stared down at the zombie-shaped paper target.  The hole was dead center and just a little above its eyes.  She was gripping the gun hard but not too hard.  And she was silent.  A few seconds and only one deep, shuddering breath later, she was holstering the weapon and standing much straighter.  Her lioness smelled less angry and less afraid, now.  So it was a warrior.  Near beast but not fully that direction.  It wanted goals.  It wanted to survive.  It wanted to fight.

“Good.”  He knew his voice sounded empty and cold and wished it didn’t.  He’d been genuinely impressed and the careful act that he, Dhalia, Kitten and Sasha worked on -- the one that was expressive and outgoing -- had slipped.  “Here’s another bullet.  Put it through his left eye.  At fifteen yards.”

Pressing the button to move the target back, he studied the woman anew.  Sometime in the last one to two months, she’d been infected.  If it had been an STI, it might have taken them a few weeks to find out and take her off the force.  Then again, she might have been military with a similar story.  There was, however, always the chance that she’d done something heroic at some point.  The negative press of releasing a decorated officer over a medical issue might have led her ranking officers to take her out of the field.

Another bang and this time she lowered the gun smoothly and without clenching.  He handed her another bullet, feeling dispassionately interested in her background.  Spooking her with questions would only serve to piss off Babier and make Dhalia’s job harder, if it came to that.  “Good.  Blind him.”

The shot was precise and, this time, she had her left hand under her right elbow, open and waiting for another round.  He gave her four.  She loaded them.  “Make a compass of his heart.”

She did.

Next Chapter: Heart, Head, and Lead