WERECAT: THE GLARING Andrew J. Peters Free from Benoit, the man who made him a shifter, twenty-two-year old Jacks tries to get his life in order while crashing with Farzan, the only person who knows about his werecat nature. Then, one day, in the middle of his a grueling schedule of off-thebooks jobs, a raid on a bodega pushes Jacks to transform to fend off a group of gun-wielding gangbangers. Jacks scrambles to disguise the truth, but the incident leaves a thundering wake of questions. The police want to know what really happened to a freaked-out young thug in custody. Farzan, who has been crushing hard on Jacks since they met, begins to doubt that it’s safe to have Jacks living with him. Jacks wants to know where he belongs: with the man who took him in when no one else would or among his own kind. As he searches for answers, Jacks is confronted by a secret shifter society The Glaring. They have come to avenge the death of Jacks’ maker and to claim a powerful item that Benoit left behind. Also by Andrew J. Peters
Werecat: The Rearing
From Vagabondage Romance
CHAPTER 1 No one had come into the bodega for a full hour. It was 4:20 in the morning, too early for the sanitation workers to come in for their coffees and newspapers, too late for the people getting off from night jobs to stop by for beer and cigarettes. Jacks had the traffic patterns down pat after two weeks of working at the store. He had inherited the overnight shift from his roommate Farzan. Farzan called the hour from 3:30 to 4:30 the “Dead Zone.” Sitting behind the cash register, Jacks’ body sank beneath a lead somniferous weight. He had worked from seven in the morning at a grocery store where he got paid under the table stocking shelves. Then, he had headed over to a marketing research center to pick up the five to nine shift. They paid cash to annoy random people with telephone surveys on a temp basis. When that job finished, there had been an hour to wash up, eat dinner, and sit down for a few minutes before Jacks had to take a bus and two subway trains to make it to the bodega by eleven. The routine would start again after Farzan’s father took over the store at six. Jacks had never worked so hard in his twenty-two-year-old life, but he couldn’t complain. He needed the money. Farzan had been letting him crash at his place for a month now, and he had done too much to help Jacks out since Jacks’ life had been torn apart in flames by Benoit. When Farzan had started his overnight rotation at the emergency room for medical school, Jacks had insisted he would cover the bodega for him, and do it for free. It compensated a little for not paying rent while sharing Farzan’s basement apartment in his father’s house, not to mention the fact that Benoit, Jacks’ boyfriend, had tried to kill Farzan. How does a person make up for something like that? Jacks didn’t know. Farzan had told him many times that it wasn’t his fault; Jacks was just as much a victim as he was. Jacks understood in a rational way,
though he still sometimes felt like a scumbag for having brought Benoit into Farzan’s life. The situation wasn’t a case of a battering ex-boyfriend gone mental as Farzan liked to make it out. Benoit had been a hybrid creature—half-human, half-animal—and he had turned Jacks into one as well. It was a part of Jacks’ life he was keeping under wraps until he could get on his own two feet and try to sort things out. One thing he knew for sure: As soon as he had saved up enough money, he would put down a security deposit for his own place and take Farzan out to a nice dinner and a live rock club he had mentioned he wanted to check out. If he could keep up his insane work schedule. There were all kinds of dubious caffeine supplements and herbal boosters on display around the counter, but Jacks had never liked taking drugs. What if his body had a bad reaction and his heart went haywire? Or what if it had the opposite effect, like when kids with attention deficit disorder took stimulants to calm down? That would look real good— passed out at the register when Farzan’s father walked into the store. The store swum fuzzily in his vision as he glanced around the place, trying to take account of things. The aisles had been swept and mopped. The refrigerator cases had been Windexed, and the shelves had all been wiped down. The store had never looked so good since he had started working there. Farzan’s father, Mr. Mohammed, had said it himself. Jacks had to keep in motion to stay alert, and the rigorous routine gave his mind some focus so it wouldn’t wander off to other things. The urge to transform, to roam free, to find higher ground—it flickered inside him at a low burn. The stacks of morning newspapers looked like they could use some straightening up, but Jacks couldn’t will himself to travel around the counter and fix them. His shoulders had melted into a slump. He stared, unfocused, at the coffee machines, wondering if he could take just five or ten minutes to rest before brewing fresh pots for the early morning customers. His eyelids drooped, and his vision diffused. He thought of Bella. There was a scene in his head, and Jacks couldn’t tell if it was a dream washing back into his consciousness every now and then or some illusion of his waking mind. He had looked for Bella all over Farzan’s
neighborhood since she had disappeared from the apartment. He had checked out the abandoned furniture factory where she used to live with him and Benoit. Then this weird vision had kept playing over in his head: It was nighttime, and he was walking along an open boulevard with a long median of parked cars. His senses were sharp and wary. He could feel the cold pavement against the rough pads of his feet, and his body was lithe, trotting on all fours, so light he was practically gliding. It occurred to Jacks that he had transformed into a cat, but there was something different going on than when he called up his mountain lion self. A line of hedges in concrete planters towered above him. His movement was strange: a sidling motion rather than the skulk or gallop he was used to. He was a cat, but he was a small cat. There were black and gray tiger-striped markings on his forelegs. Jacks had somehow zoned into Bella’s head, or at least he was experiencing a fantasy of that, showing him what had happened to her. Bella moved along at her will, only allowing Jacks to see things she was seeing: the open sidewalk ahead, a glance to the side when a car door slammed shut in the distance. She stopped short of a lighted space. It was the entrance to the lobby of a condominium building. Bella waited, listening for sounds of passersby, and then she fast-tracked by the lobby with a quick look through the glass doors. There was a sign imprinted on the carpet of the lobby: The Montana, or The Minnesota, or The Missouri? Jacks remembered the thick, Art Deco-style lettering, but the image passed by too fast to be sure of the name. At the end of the building, Bella turned down a short street with another median filled with parked cars. A breeze rushed against him, and Jacks heard the faint roar of the ocean. Bella was determined to get somewhere, padding quickly along the sidewalk. A shadowy expanse at the end of the street stood out ahead. There was a raised platform—a boardwalk—and two ramps leading up to it. In between the ramps, there was a chain-link fence closing off the space, and a locked gate beneath the boardwalk providing access to the beach during the day. Bella slinked between the gate posts and entered a darkened, sandy tunnel below the boardwalk. She turned to one side.
Yellow-green eyes lit up like sparks from the depths of shadows. The silhouette of a man emerged. He was tall and broad-shouldered with powerful arms. The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled over his head. The stranger stooped to a crouch and reached out his hand for Bella. She trotted toward him. The man’s iridescent eyes flared, and Jacks caught two peculiar details. The guy had a blond tuft of beard on his chin and a fiery orange-red tattoo that looked like a gothic letter G on the back of his hand. Then everything washed away. Jacks didn’t like that man. He didn’t like the thought of Bella being taken in by some stranger. If the vision was real—some kind of feline telepathy Benoit had never told him about—he wondered why Bella had traveled so far. Farzan had told him there were beaches in Brooklyn and Queens, but they were miles away from their basement apartment in Richmond Hills. The door to the bodega swung open, and a swaggering commotion burst into the place. Jacks jolted, sat up and turned to the front of the store. There was a crew of Spanish guys in their teens and early twenties. They had gold bandanas on their heads, and they wore black jackets over long, untucked, gold T-shirts. The guy leading the group had a cleft lip, and his face was almost completely covered in tattoos. Four black teardrops below one of his eyes stood out amidst a menacing design of tribal signs and lettering. Jacks had noticed gangbangers in the bodega before, and they had never made any trouble. But there were seven or eight of them, and they looked keyed up. Some of the guys started grabbing things from the snack racks in the center of the store, stuffing them in their jackets and their baggy jeans pockets. Three others headed for the refrigerator cases and clanged out twelve-packs of beer. Jacks stood up from his seat. He needed to keep track of the activity. His temperature spiked. Were the guys really raiding the store? He didn’t want to believe it. One guy batted his hand down a paper goods shelf, sending bags of paper towels cascading down to the floor. There was laughter, and then the whole group joined in: swatting cans from shelves, kicking over display cases, breaking jars in the middle of the aisles.
Jacks shouted at them: “What do you think you’re doing?” One of the guys started hurling two-liter sodas through the store. More groceries got wrenched from shelves, and the plastic bottles burst like bombs against the walls. The whole place was getting trashed. Jacks’ thoughts whirled. There was a panic button for calling the cops and video cameras for security. How long before the police would respond? There was also Farzan’s dad’s handgun beneath the counter. It was the gun Jacks had used to kill Benoit, a memory that still stabbed at him with shame and dread. What if the thugs had guns? The ringleader with the tattooed face swaggered up in front of Jacks, and the guys eased off from their demolition. “Where’s the jihad motherfucker I seen here before?” His bloodshot eyes bored into Jacks. The guy was high on something, shifting in his place, sweat glazing his shaved head. Jacks didn’t know if he was referring to Farzan or Mr. Mohammed. He answered him the only way he could. “I’m working here tonight.” “Guess it’s that faggot’s lucky night.” Snickers and guffaws broke out from his pals. They shuffled over to their ringleader, a pack of young delinquents wincing and scowling at Jacks. Their ringleader gripped the counter and leaned into Jacks. The spit from his shout showered Jacks’ face. “You tell that Arab piece of shit we don’t want his filthy store in our turf.” Jacks’ insides shattered. But an accumulation of things—the ethnic and homophobic slurs, the destruction of the store he was entrusted to protect, the injustice of a near twenty-four hour workday coming to this—pulled him together and then beyond himself. His eyes flared. “Get the fuck out of here.” The ringleader cocked his head. “What did you say?” Jacks repeated, in an otherworldly voice—cold, unflinching, almost a growl. “I said get the fuck out of the store before I rip out your goddamn throats.” The guy backed away from the counter, momentarily thrown off balance. His pals glanced from him to Jacks, looking for some direction.
The guy reached to his waist and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol from beneath his T-shirt. In a blink, it was pointed at Jacks’ chest. “I wasn’t gonna pop you, but you piss me off.” He held the gun solidly with a finger wrapped around the trigger. The other guys goaded him on in Spanish. “Hágalo!” “Mate el maricon.” “Muere, puta.” Jacks ducked beneath the counter. There was a blast and a violent thud from a bullet puncturing the drywall behind him. Unleashed from an angry, wound-up place in his gut, a transformation sped through Jacks—spine elongating into a feline curve, limbs drawing into his body, musculature entwining taut, and fur bursting from his skin. Jacks had learned how to do it slowly or how to explode into his cat self when necessary. It was like a thermonuclear reaction with every cell of his body blasting white hot, and then his flesh and bones snapped into shape with an audible, excruciating pop, and a flinty scent filled up his nose. He sprang over the counter a snarling, mountain lion. His forepaws connected with the ringleader’s shoulders, and the momentum sent the guy toppling backward into a display case and trapped beneath Jacks’ 250-pound feline body. The gun fell out of the guy’s hand. His friends jumped out of the way, swearing in Spanish. Before any of them got any wise ideas, Jacks batted the gun with his big forepaw so that it slid down the floor and out of reach. The guys closest to the door bolted out to the street. But there were three others who had lurched to the other side of the store, and Jacks was blocking their way out. Their faces were contorted with bewilderment and panic. Jacks bared his teeth and growled. He didn’t want to hurt them, but he needed to chase them out of the store. One of the guys fumbled for a gun that was wedged in his jeans. That second threat of violence set off a deeper instinct inside Jacks. Blind with rage, Jacks sprang at the gun-slinger with his claws outstretched, tackling him and gouging one side of the guy’s face with his powerful mitt. The guy fell backward into a metal shelf and went down in a
delirious tumble. His two buddies made a break for the door. The ringleader slid by the seat of his pants toward the door, muttering some sort of protective Spanish incantation. Jacks glared at him as he made his way out of the bodega. That left the dude he had taken down by the shelf. His gun had fallen out of his hands, and he lay on the floor in a contorted position. He wasn’t moving. He must have hit his head against the shelf. Jacks nudged his muzzle against the gangbanger’s chest. The faint reverberations of a heartbeat tickled his whiskers. Jacks could smell life stirring inside him. He had to get the guy medical attention. But betrayed by a swarming, feral thrill, his mouth watered for the taste of blood. A vision of clamping down on the young man’s exposed jugular vein— claiming the kill—hung delectably before Jacks’ mind’s eye. Jacks pushed it away and skulked back to the counter. He leapt into the cashier compartment, compacted into his human body and pushed the button for the police. A rueful ache worked through his body. There would be a hell of a lot to explain. He could tell the cops the store had been raided, but the gangbangers weren’t likely to keep their mouths shut about what they had seen. Not to mention that one of them was splayed out on the floor with score lines across his face.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit: Larry Black
Andrew J. Peters is the author of the e-novelette series Werecat, which chronicles the adventures of feline shapeshifter Jacks Dowd. His first novel The Seventh Pleiade is the story of a young gay prince who becomes a hero during the last days of Atlantis. The book was published in November 2013. While writing, Andrew is an administrator at Adelphi University’s School of Social Work. He lives in New York City with his husband Genaro and their cat ChloÍ. Visit him at http://andrewjpeterswrites.com.