“Let me get a good look at you, prey. And don’t scream or you’re dead meat. Catch my drift?”
Lexi nodded, eyes watering. What else could she do?
The clawed hand covering her face was removed, but it moved to grab her throat instead and turned her around.
The woman who had snatched Lexi off the street was tall and slender—maybe only a half foot shorter than Syd—yet bulky and muscular, like a basketball or volleyball player, with semi-curvy hips and thighs. Half of her head was shaved with an exposed metal plate covered in magitech runes, which matched the series of magitech plate implants running down the back of her neck and presumably her spine as well. The other half of her head sported a shock of medium-length ghostly white hair. On the shaved side of her head, one of her light brown eyes had a vertical scar over it, running from her eyebrow to her upper cheekbone.
Lexi’s suspicions were confirmed when she saw the rest of the spotted fur running up her sinewy arms, and the semi-feline features on her half-shifted face as she leaned in closer—this woman was another beastess.
A cheetah.
“Mmm … you’re a cute one,” the predator cat said, tracing Lexi’s jawline with her claws delicately.
“What do you want from me, asshole?” Lexi said. She regretted it immediately.
“Can it, pipsqueak,” she hissed back. “It’s my job to keep an eye on my kind.”
Lexi obeyed. Why the fuck did she even say that? Now is not the time for mouthing off, renewed confidence be damned.
“Hmm … you don’t look like a beastess to me.” The woman sniffed loudly as she tilted Lexi’s head to one side. “You certainly smell like one though. Must be rubbing off from those other mongrels you’re hanging with. Oh wait, I’ve got it.” The cheetah woman whispered in Lexi’s ear. “Maybe you just like being a chew toy for big were-beast dykes.”
Lexi shivered. Point taken.
“So tell me—why are you hanging around with Syd’s pack?”
“W-wait!” Lexi held up her hands in protest. “You know Syd?”
“I’m a beastess, hun. Of course I know who Sydney fucking Beaumont is. The question is, how do you know her?”
“I’m, uh … I’m n-newly turned,” Lexi stammered. “A pup. Syd turned me.”
The other woman scoffed.
“You? A pup? Don’t make me laugh. No way some half-pint twerp like you is a beastess. Hell, you look more like a guy to me.” The clawed hand around her throat tightened. “I don’t fucking believe you. So you’re going to tell me the truth, the real truth, in the next ten seconds, morsel—or else.”
The Lexi of yesterday—Alex—would have insisted to this woman that they were telling the truth. Would have completely forgotten all of their paladin combat training in the moment. Would have begged for their life. Would have been absolutely scared out of their mind.
Instead, in the face of the misgendering and intimidation from this woman who had taken her, something else surfaced. Some thing else. From deep, deep down within Lexi’s subconscious. An angry, territorial instinct, a voice without words, but perfectly understandable in an instant.
That instinct urged Lexi to FIGHT.
Her brown eyes shimmered and shifted their hue to a golden color. From down in her belly and the back of her throat, a low guttural growl erupted out of Lexi as her lips curled into a sneer.
There was no conscious thought in her brain. She almost completely forgot how much bigger and stronger her adversary was than her. None of that mattered. Her mind focused solely on confronting the enemy, watching them, figuring out a plan of attack, anything she could do to stand up to this cheetah beastess and take her down.
The other woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at first, but then she chuckled dryly.
“Well done. I guess that’s one way to prove you’re not lying. However, you’re still a novice. So weak and small. Nothing but a runt.” She brandished her claws and prepared to swipe them down at Lexi, who was still furiously growling. “I think it’s about time you learned to respect your superiors, little pup. I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t—”
Both Lexi and the other beastess were knocked to the ground at once. Her instinct to fight completely vanished in her confusion. By the time Lexi could get her bearings, her back was pressed up against the other woman’s torso, pinned to her with one furry arm, and she realized they were further back in the alleyway.
Getting up off of the ground from where she had charged at them, half-shifted and hackles raised, was Syd, flanked on either side by Roxy and Sabrina.
“Hey, Syd …” her kidnapper said as she caught her breath, “... Long time, no see.”
“Ripley,” Syd spat out carefully, each word tinged with fire. “Give. Her. Back.”
“Oh, is this your runt? My apologies.”
With a roar, Syd lunged forward to grab for Lexi, but Ripley nimbly dodged backwards.
“Ah, ah, ah! I won’t let you catch me by surprise again. You should never try to be quicker than a cheetah.”
“Fuck you, Rip.”
“Aw, that’s no way to talk to your fellow beta.”
“Shadow Town is neutral territory,” Roxy barked. “Let her go, Ripley.”
Lexi looked behind her up at Ripley, whose calculating gaze moved from Syd, to Roxy, to Sabrina, and back again to Syd. The cheetah woman shrugged, then shoved Lexi forward into Syd’s embrace.
“You okay?” Syd whispered to Lexi.
“Y-yeah,” she replied. “Just a little rattled.” Syd hugged her a little tighter in response. “Is she from a different pack?”
“Yeah. The eastern one.”
“Hey runt,” Ripley called out, “you should ask Syd how she got those scars on her face.” She threw back her head and laughed as she clicked her claws together. “You’re lucky she got to you in time, before I could give you a matching set.”
Lexi could feel Syd flinch, ever so slightly, at that comment.
Syd gently pushed Lexi behind her as she stood to her full towering height. Slowly she sauntered up to Ripley before stopping in front of her, each step deliberate, shaking the ground and sending mild shockwaves through Lexi’s feet. The wolf woman was a walking earthquake, a dormant volcano doing her best to control her fury.
Ripley jingled Syd’s crescent moon dog tag with the tips of her claws.
“I dig the new collar, Syd,” she said. “’Alpha’s Guard Dog’, eh? It suits you, big girl.” The wolf woman swiped Ripley’s hand away.
Syd said quietly, “Snake was killed. Last night. In his home. Throat ripped out.”
“... Shit.” Ripley muttered.
“You seem worried. You have anything to do with that?”
“The fuck you asking me for?” Ripley asked, taken aback.
“You were the last one to talk with him, Rip.”
“Good point. No, I didn’t kill him. Why would I do something that stupid?”
“I dunno. You were stupid enough to kidnap one of my pack-mates just now.”
“Uh, yeah, about that.” Ripley looked around Syd’s hulking form to squint at Lexi. “How the fuck is she a beastess? She barely looks like a girl!”
“None of your business. She’s one of us.”
Ripley carefully studied Syd’s face, then Lexi’s, then Syd’s.
Then it clicked. She grinned at Syd like a maniac.
“Ooooh, I get it now. She’s just like you!”
In an instant, Ripley was gone. She was standing there, and then she wasn’t.
Her voice, however, called from one side, “Now I really regret not giving you both matching marks.” When Lexi turned, Ripley was clinging to the nearest fire escape ladder with one leg and one arm. “Tell me, runt, how much did it hurt when you got bit and they injected you with all of that wild magic? I’ve been a beastess from birth, so I’m curious, is all.”
Syd closed the gap almost, but not quite, as quickly as Ripley had moved.
“Enough, Ripley,” Syd growled. Ripley jumped down from the fire escape into a perfect crouch, then stood up, her tall stature unfolding like a butterfly knife. She shifted back into her full human form and dusted her pants off.
“My apologies for scaring you, little one. Just a little friendly hazing among beastesses, that’s all that was.”
Lexi rolled her eyes. She had experienced enough hazing at the academy to know it was never friendly.
“Allow me to introduce myself more properly—Ripley Belladonna, Beta of the Pack of Abraxas East. What’s your name?” She extended one hand forward, grinning a little too wide.
Lexi looked up at Syd, who nodded, shifting back to her human form while still giving a sideways death glare at the cheetah woman. She hesitantly shook Ripley’s hand.
“Lexi. Lexi Carpenter. Uh … from the Pack of Abraxas West.”
“Lexi, huh? Beautiful name.”
“Are we done here?” Sabrina piped up, hands on her hips. “Or are you going to continue being a conniving jackass all night?”
Ripley released Lexi’s hand and smiled at Sabrina.
“My fellow feline, I couldn’t stop being a conniving jackass if I tried.” Ripley knocked on the metal plate in her head with a metallic clang. “It’s just how I’m wired, sweetie.”
“Sabrina asked you another question,” Syd said to Ripley.
“Well my answer is no, we’re not done here. I asked a question too, you know. To Lexi.” Ripley pointed at her. “And I deserve an answer. Now, for the millionth fucking time: why are you hanging around with these beastesses?”
Steeling herself with clenched fists, Lexi answered, “They recruited me. They need help finding their missing beta.”
“Oh yeah? And how are you supposed to help them?”
“That’s between me and my pack-mates.” Even if Ripley was a beastess too, there was no way Lexi was going to tell her about their plan. The cheetah’s whole vibe screamed ‘untrustworthy’. She definitely wasn’t going to tell her that she’s a cadet paladin. Ex-cadet? An informant, in any case.
“That’s dodging the question, runt.”
“You wanna quit calling her that?” Syd snapped.
“Not until she proves herself as a beastess.” Ripley casually looked at her nails, flicking away imaginary crumbs of dirt. Flashing her fangs and gazing at Lexi hungrily, she smirked and said, “Maybe I’ll stop if she can beat me in the tournament. She’s trans like you, but I wanna see if she can get as big and sexy as you, too.”
Lexi gulped.
Tournament? What tournament?
“If you must know,” Syd said, ignoring the cheetah woman’s comments, “We’ve got a lead that Mac’s being held at Abraxas Paladin Academy. Lexi here is gonna be our mole.”
“Wait, what? She’s a fucking paladin?!” Ripley recoiled in horror. She glared at Lexi with absolute burning malice.
Fuck. So much for staying undercover. Lexi wondered where Syd was going with this.
“Ex-paladin,” Syd corrected. “And that’s all the info you’re getting.”
Still glaring at Lexi with suspicion, Ripley said, “And you’re absolutely sure she’s the only beastess in the paladins right now?”
Lexi narrowed her eyes back at Ripley.
“The Church would never let a beastess join,” Lexi said.
“Correct!” Ripley put one finger in the air. “The Church would never let a beastess join—knowingly.”
Before Lexi could speak up again, Syd placed a hand on her chest. Wait, the wolf said with a glance.
“What the hell are you getting at, Rip?” Syd said.
“I saw one. A templar.”
Lexi’s heart skipped a beat.
There were lots of women in the templars—Sophie had introduced her to some of them at the academy’s end-of-semester parties. Lexi mentally kicked herself for being too shy at the time to properly memorize any of their names.
If what Ripley said was true … Sophie was in danger.
“Bullshit,” Roxy said. “There’s no way they could hide right under the Church’s nose. Their background checks are too extensive.”
“Medically speaking,” Sabrina chimed in, “it would take an enormous amount of effort to just … never shift. Their instincts would have overwhelmed them within a few lunar cycles. It’s, like, straight-up impossible for a beastess if they don’t have a way to let it out, and she would have been caught by now if she did.”
“Show us some proof, Rip,” Syd demanded.
The cheetah beastess smirked and rummaged in her pockets before pulling out a wallet—cheetah-print, of course. She flicked through the contents for a moment before finding what she was looking for. She handed Syd a blurry photograph, while Lexi, Roxy, and Sabrina crowded around Syd to look at it.
The photo was from a rooftop looking down—clearly some alley in Abraxas, but there were no visible landmarks or street signs to tell exactly where. In the center of the image were two figures. One had her back to the camera, and was wearing the telltale catsuit armor of a templar paladin. Her hood was pulled over her head, but a long orange-and-black striped tail extended out from the templar’s lower back, having ripped right out of the uniform (or pulled through a hole that was made ahead of time, Lexi thought). The tigress templar had her clawed furry hands around the throat of a second unconscious woman.
A square-jawed, muscular butch woman with short brown hair in a faux-hawk.
A woman who Lexi had seen exactly once before.
“T-that’s …” Syd whispered.
“Mac. Yeah. Lucky I had my camera on me at the time, or—”
Even a quick cheetah like Ripley couldn’t have anticipated what happened next.
Syd grabbed Ripley by the collar of her shirt with one hand and yanked her forward. To her credit, Ripley stood her ground as her heels slid forward. Almost like she was goading Syd, like she let herself be grabbed.
“You BITCH!” the gigantic wolf woman roared, already rapidly shifting and growing, her muzzle curled into a foaming snarl. Lexi could feel the heat radiating off Syd, like the fuse had been lit on a huge stick of dynamite.
“Calm down, Syd,” Roxy said, putting a hand on Syd that was slapped away immediately. “I’m pissed too, but we really don’t want to draw attention to ourselves in this district.”
Syd’s voice dropped to a low growl as she said, “You were there when it happened? You saw someone kidnapping my beta—your fellow beta—and you did nothing to stop her?!”
“Hey, hey, hey! Listen, Syd—and listen to me real fuckin’ carefully—that templar was no ordinary beastess. Sabrina,” she said, nodding to the lynx woman, “you said that a beastess needs an outlet to shift or else they’ll do it involuntarily? Well, there’s your fucking outlet. She just unleashes it on solo jobs. She’s got the training of a templar and enough repression of her instincts to put a fuckin’ presbyter to shame. And she’s fuckin’ strong. Goddess above, she took down Mac, Syd! If I had interfered, I’m absolutely certain that tigress would have killed both of us on the spot.”
“Did you get a good look at her?” Lexi said to Ripley.
Syd shot Lexi a warning look, but Lexi shot one right back at her, unfazed by the wolf’s rage that once made her quiver in her boots. Frankly, she was getting a little pissed at Syd for not letting her speak up.
To her surprise, Ripley took her question seriously.
“Not from my vantage point. All I could see was that she was a tiger and a templar. Syd, you said that ol’ Snake Mandrake got killed by a beastess?”
Syd said nothing. Just staring daggers into Ripley, her lips curled and fangs bared, panting with quick breaths.
“Well,” Ripley continued, “you know as well as I do that no beastess in the city would be stupid enough to kill that bastard. The alliance between the Four Packs of Abraxas and the Mandrake family was a necessary evil for our survival, and now we're gonna have to scramble for alternatives.”
“And if any of us killed him, the Church wouldn't be so quick to prevent anyone from investigating his death …” Roxy mused. “If anything, they would encourage a beastess witch hunt.”
“If you’re wondering who killed Snake,” Ripley said as she tapped the templar figure in the photo, “there's your prime suspect.”
“So you’ve just had this photo in your wallet?” Syd slowly and carefully enunciated, quivering with rage. “For a year? Why didn’t you ever tell us this?”
“You never asked!”
“Well I’m asking now, you little shit.” Syd menacingly raised the cheetah beastess right up close to her face. “Why were you there, Rip? What the fuck were you doing there when Mac was kidnapped?”
Ripley cackled.
“That’s all the info you’re getting, sweetheart.”
Syd searched Ripley’s eyes for a moment. Then, with a snarl of disgust, she pushed Ripley away.
“I’m keeping this,” Syd said, waving the photo before stuffing it into her pocket. “And if you touch Lexi again without her consent, I will skin your fucking hide and turn you into a cheetah-print rug.”
“Missed you too, big girl,” Ripley said, blowing a kiss at Syd. She winked at Lexi and said, “She likes to play rough, but I’m sure you already knew that. If you’re really not a paladin anymore—and not a guy anymore either—then I’ll be looking at your ‘development’ with …” She leered at Lexi, biting her lip ever so slightly and tracing her eyes up and down her body. “… much interest. Catch ya later, pup.”
Turning around on one foot, the cheetah beastess flexed her back muscles, and the magitech implants running down her spine started to hum and glow green.
Then, in a split-second yellow-spotted blur of motion leading up one wall of the alleyway, she was gone.
All that was left was a sudden gust of wind that kicked up litter from the ground and floating green sparks of magic, followed by a crack of a beastess-sized sonic boom.