Shapeshifter Ch. 04

I started to feel relief flooding my system when someone suddenly stepped out of the shade right next to me and shoved me hard against the crumbling wall.

"Well, well, well. What have we got here?" I heard someone sneer through the thick fog of pain radiating from my dislocated shoulder. "You taken the wrong turn, or the right one?"

I knew that voice. It was one of the thugs who had come looking for me. My heart tried to crawl through my throat as I gasped for air and tried to sidestep him, but the man didn't let go of me. For my struggling I got slammed against the wall again, and this time I saw white spots dance through the darkness before my eyes.

"Are you deaf? I asked what you're doing here!" the thug hissed, and prepared to slam me against the wall a third time.

I squealed, I admit it. "I need to go to the factory!" I hastily blubbered, and it worked. Instead of trying to smash the wall in with my body he just grabbed my collar and pulled me up until I had to balance on the tip of my very naked toes.

"And why would a street urchin' like you want to go there, huh?" Oh goody, he didn't recognize my face from anywhere. This was salvagable, at least I hoped so.

"I need to pay some debts, they told me to come, they told me the way, I swear!" My voice still shook, but the lie came out smoothly and convincingly.

The man, towering over me at least a half foot in added height, sniffed. I couldn't see his face in the darkness, but my oversensitive ears picked up the little huffs of air, the steady, calm pulse on his neck, and the soft rustling of cloth as he felt around the back of his belt.

When I heard the metal click of the gun he pulled it was almost too late. "Consider your debts paid," he said, and brought the gun upward, aiming for my head.

I don't know what would have happened if he had stood farther away from me. Maybe he would have actually managed to shoot me, but I was lucky. He was standing so close he couldn't aim straight ahead. He had to bend his arm and bring the gun to my temple, and that was just enough time for me to rip his throat out with one hand.

I didn't even do it consciously, it just happened.

I only realized what I had just done when a spray of sticky hot blood hit my face, and my feet found back to solid ground. The big guy stumbled, tried to hold on to me, and finally fell to the floor in an unceremonious heap. Without thinking I threw the piece of flesh I had ripped out of him to the floor and gasped.

The stench of death and meat suddenly filled my lungs to the brim.

The scent actually made me hungry, but the sheer violence and the shock following it made my stomach churn angrily and finally made me throw up.

When I was finished I stumbled back, grazing along the wall behind me and sliding to the floor a few feet away from the dead man, eyes still fixed on his unmoving body. It had all been over so quick, I just couldn't believe it yet. I still waited for him to jump up and finish me off, but there was no heart beat, no breathing, and no movement whatsoever. I also waited for his colleagues to come looking for him, even though I knew nobody had been alarmed yet.

For a few seconds there was dead silence, and the only thing proving that I was still there was my own heartbeat.

My stomach churned again. It made me jump up and leap over the dead guy. I had to get distance between me and that horrible, sweet smell, and my brain hadn't forgotten where I had headed initially. When I finally got my senses back I stood at the foot of an eight feet high brick wall. I had reached my destination, and there had only been one fatality. Yay me.

~*~

From what I could see the candy factory was quite big. I was standing at the foot of its back wall, for which I was quite grateful. 'Weasel' hadn't sent me to the front door but to the mostly unguarded back, and I sent a quiet prayer of thanks to him for it.

It did put me in a bad spot though, because I was too hurt to climb up and get in, and the wall didn't have any doors. The presence of the dead guy in this back street gave me reason to hope nonetheless. He wouldn't have guarded this place if there wasn't some kind of way into the building.

I inspected the buildings to my left and right next, walking back the way I had come as I looked for doors or passages. I did find a wooden door a few feet up the street, but it had a shiny new padlock on it and looked quite sturdy.

Biting my lower lip I gazed back to the dead body. If this was the right door that guy had to have a key to that padlock, but the thought of touching his dead but still warm body gave me the creeps.

I grabbed the padlock with my good arm and gave it a hearty yank, but besides the rattling of the door and a metallic groan it didn't budge. I was quite strong for a person of my stature, but not this strong. Obviously there was no way around going through the stiff's pockets.

Swallowing bile I slowly tiptoed over, eying the body nervously.

There were many reasons why I didn't want to touch him, and only one of them was my squeamishness. I had seen too many horror movies and too few dead persons to feel secure around a real corpse, and yes, I did expect him to jump up and grab me just as I leaned over his still form.

That damned smell was back as I crouched down to check his pockets, and the still high body temperature made me shiver with nerves and fear. He felt like a living thing, and I found it hard to think of him as an 'it' yet.

I tried to touch his clothes as little as possible as I felt around. His jacket smelled of cloves and tobacco, his pants of weed and urine. For a moment I hoped he hadn't peed on the weed because I could really use it, then I felt bad because I didn't feel bad enough about having killed someone.

I found a small packet of weed in his pants pocket, took his still loaded gun from his hand, and I felt a smallish bump in his shirt's front pocket when I resorted to patting him down. His chest was blood soaked though, and my hand got wet and sticky as I fumbled the small key out of its hiding place.

I was planning to bring as much distance between me and the corpse as soon as I had what I'd wanted, but as I lifted the key to my face the sweet, metallic smell of blood overwhelmed me. My hand was coated in it, and even as it dried it still allured my senses and made my tormented stomach grumble with hunger.

This had to be the worst moment in history to get the munchies.

I couldn't even think about eating... him. Wouldn't. But somehow my bloody hand found its way to my mouth, and my tongue snaked out between my lips to have a lick. The taste of blood exploded in my mouth like fireworks, and I heard myself humming with delight.

Then I realized what I'd just done, and this time I really stumbled back, got up, and jogged for the padlocked door, retching. Luckily there was nothing in my stomach to heave up anymore.

The lock proved to be quite a challenge to my one good hand. I had to wedge it between my hip and the door at just the right angle to get the bloody key in, which took a few tries. When I finally managed to open the padlock and with it the sturdy door I was drenched in sweat and my shoulder was throbbing fiercely again. I carefully pried it open, ready to fumble the gun out of my sweatshirt pocket if anyone tried to jump me, but the room behind the door was dusty, empty and dark. It looked like the entry to a larger clean-room-like storage space, but the door between the small chamber in front of me and the larger unit behind it had been claimed by time long ago.

There were foot prints on the dusty floor, some made by rats and some made by shoes and boots. The scent of cloves and tobacco hung in the air like a forgotten memory, assuring me that I was following the right route. It would have been nice being just as certain where that route was leading me to, but even plain old dumb luck had its limits.

There seemed to be windows somewhere in the bigger room, it would have been pitch black otherwise. My eyes were good enough in near-darkness, but I tried to keep low to the ground as I crept through the crumbling doorway and into the wide, forlorn space.

Following the foot prints and the diffusing scent trail of the man I had killed I made a bee-line through the vast room and reached another door, this time made of rusty iron.

It wasn't locked, but made a low, groaning sound as I moved it, and I froze instantly to listen for an alarm. I also remembered how these people had booby-trapped Noom's house. What if there were bombs around here? What if I stepped into one? I felt another panic attack bubbling up, but this time I stomped it down resolutely. They wouldn't be stupid enough to trap doors and rooms they used regularly, and as long as I followed the dead man's tracks I was on the safe side.

I waited for about a minute but nobody reacted to the sound of the door. The next time I moved it I was very careful to do it as slow as possible. It still groaned a bit, but this time the sound was muted and inconspicuous.

Glimpsing out into the open space in between the old factory buildings I scanned the surroundings for any sign of movement, and ducked when I saw someone walking on the other side. There was light in the first story window right across the cobbled yard, and the figure stepped into the door beneath it. I got a short peek on a set of old wooden stairs, then the door fell closed again.

To my left there was more cobbled yard, then a big doorway, and in the buildings left and right to it more lights and distant voices. Obviously I had miscalculated the mass of people I'd be up against, but that didn't mean I would have to fight my way through every person in the factory. Being sneaky was my second nature after all.

Someone moved up there, making the light flicker when a body blocked it from reaching the window. I ducked again and listened hard, but failed to hear anything but the distant rumble of too many drunk and coked up people.

I had to get closer, and time was running out.

I couldn't wait any longer. The whole situation was fucked up anyway, and I probably would have to wait forever if I wanted to be safe. There was no safe, not this time.

I grabbed the gun inside my sweatshirt and started running across the yard and to the door on the other side. With only one hand I was definitely fucked if anyone saw me, because I didn't have a definitive idea how to use a gun, and as long as I held on to the gun I couldn't do anything else either.

Only when I reached the door I took my hand off the gun and opened it. It gave easily and silent on its well oiled hinges, closing as promptly as I had opened it and with no one the wiser about my presence.

As soon as I entered the small ground level room I could hear voices I recognized from upstairs. Girl-thug and the guy from the speaker phone were up there, talking quite harshly to each other, but that didn't mean I was at the right place. I had no lust for revenge whatsoever, I just wanted Noom.

His scent finally hit me when I started climbing the stairs as silently as possible.

His personal note was a mixture of cigarettes, gun oil, patchouly and something more male and musky, and I would have recognized it amidst a million people. Noom was here, just a few feet away!

Unfortunately my own euphoria made me run up the stairs— and right into the muzzle of a hand gun.

The last thing I saw was Nooms bloody face across the room, then three loud bangs shattered the silence and ripped my belly apart.

~*~

I didn't scream when I was shot, I was just too surprised. The pain was short and dull, then there was only a throbbing, the feel of wetness gushing down my legs and the innate knowledge that something was terribly wrong.

A shiver crept over my back and into my lungs, accompanied by a rush of adrenaline that made my heart leap with panic. I grabbed for the guy with the gun, tried to hold on to something— anything—, but my vision blurred and I missed. The thought of dying manifested itself as a giant boulder crushing my chest, and I couldn't even cry for help. Nobody here would have helped me anyway.

I only understood the feeling of weight on my body and the rush when I fell down on my knees. I suddenly knew what to do, finally caught on to an instinct that I'd had all this years but never had any reason to listen to. Now I had that reason, and the fear of death made it easy for me to give in to that strange, new knowledge and just do as it told me: change.

For the first time in my life the change of my body was fluent and graceful, and not even the blood, the clothes, or my dislocated shoulder could stop me. Fur broke through my skin like a shiny black wave, spreading from my spine to every extremity. There were no breaking bones, no disgusting sounds, no panting, everything in my body, every tiny molecule jumped to the chance to just follow the flow and do what I had always been supposed to do at will. The whole thing didn't take more than three seconds, and only the hissing of fur rubbing against fur and the ripping of cloth mixed with the cacophony of chaos in the room.

The screams of panic, shock and fear from the humans didn't bother cat-me as I ripped the last shreds of clothing from my body and jumped the man who had shot me.

I had never ever done anything but walk around or try eating stuff in my cat form, but that didn't matter now. I still had the instinct to kill, and it told me where to grab the guy's neck, how to bite and how to twist and tug to kill him. Humans were so fragile when it came to their neck; even small deer had more strength there than them.

Only when another shot hit my shoulder I remembered the other two people in the room, and let the dead man's neck go. The woman was nowhere to be seen, but the guy from the phone had a small silver hand gun pointed at me. His hand was shaking so bad, the next shot missed me by two feet, but I didn't want to risk a third shot.

I jumped him too, but missed his throat.

He smashed the butt of the gun into my face, blinding one of my eyes with the force of the impact, but my claws ripped his stomach open and brought him down. I got his throat just a second later, and even though he hit my head two more times, he stood no chance at all.

There was a wet, popping sound when I broke his neck, but even when I felt his pulse cease I didn't let go of him right away. My heart was racing, pushing globs of dark blood out of the fresh shoulder wound, and my long, black tail twitched furiously as I crouched on the dead body, holding his throat between my jaws.

It took Noom about one minute to muster the nerve to make a sound, and it didn't make me react right away. Only when I heard the downstairs door thump against the wall and a crash right next to me did I let go of the dead man and turned to the sound. The first sound had obviously been made by lady-thug, who had seen her chance to finally escape the fury of a nearly grown great cat. The second sound had been that of Noom's chair falling and the arm rest cracking, and thusly setting him free.

Noom was standing near the stairs, white as a sheet, leaning against the wall, dripping blood from numerous cuts, and... once again pointing a gun at my head.

I froze, panting through half open jaws, eying him with my alien silver eyes. They were the only thing that resembled my boy-me, and the only thing separating my cat-me from the real animal. I had survived the several shots, because although painful they hadn't been aimed at vital regions, strictly speaking. But if Noom shot me in the head or broke my neck, even I would stay dead. And that would be a very poor outcome for my rescue mission.

"Don't move."

Noom's voice sounded like gravel in a tin pipe, but that only made him more convincing, so I slowly sat down. Maybe it would have been cleverer to just morph back to my human body, but I honestly had no idea if I could pull off that trick without another dose of heroin. Before it had been instinct, but now it was gone, and I was quite possibly trapped in 'furball mode' for quite some time.

There were 10 seconds of silence in the room, but I could hear foot steps running across the gravel grounds outside. Lady-thug was on her way to get reinforcements, and we didn't have time for waiting games.

I couldn't talk, so I pointedly turned my head and perked up my ears, as if everything outside the ratty building was more important than the gun aimed at my head. But Noom was hurt, and it made him slow.

"I said fuckin' don't you move, you bastard!" he snarled, and I didn't have to turn to understand the sounds his feet were making. He had pushed himself away from the wall to make his point, ignoring his own blood loss and wounds.

I kept staring at the window nonetheless. My concern was much more important than Noom's freak-out over my hellish metamorphosis.

Only when the voices on the other side of the court grew louder did he finally understand what I was trying to tell him.

"Shit, that bitch got away!" he hissed, and stopped pointing the gun at me. I turned my head back to him, relieved that he finally had caught on, and there was a brief moment of confused eye contact. Noom paused, opened his mouth— and closed it again, hobbling down the stairs instead.

I knew he had wanted to talk to me, tell me something, but just as my dad had found it hard to talk to a cat, Noom was having difficulties processing it too. I got up and followed him, limping on three paws.

In my cat form pain registered differently, so I didn't feel like crying or fainting, but the shot to the shoulder was still more than painful, and it made walking down the stairs pretty harrowing.

There was also a faint pain in my other shoulder and in my stomach, but wounds I had gotten as a human had healed more than half the way when I had changed forms. Another neat trick I hadn't known I could do.

When Noom realized I was following him there was another short moment of confusion where he pointed the gun first at me, than at the door, than again at me, and finally decided it was best to get me in front of him.

"Move," he said, waving the muzzle at me, so I moved.

Luckily the door wasn't closed, so I was able to peel it open without having to awkwardly paw at the door knob. Hobbling outside I scented the air, turned my head to the giant door on the other side of the court, and finally looked to Noom, who was crab-walking out of the door, pointing the gun at the far side of the buildings. Just when he got close to me the door there burst open, and five people with machine guns stumbled into the darkness.

It was time to run, fast.

I grabbed Noom's ripped shirt with my teeth and pulled, trying to tug him into the direction of the inconspicuous door I had come from, but it just got me another hit to the head with the butt of the gun. I finally resorted to just let him stand there and started limping for the exit. If he wanted to die, so be it, but I definitely wasn't ready as long as there was a way out.

I had gotten about seven feet when I heard a soft "god damn it!" and footsteps catching up to me. He kept behind me, but when we reached the metal door he finally got my plan and this time opened it for me.

A short volley of bullets rained down onto the yard behind us, but it just made us limp faster.

We actually made it out into the night.

~*~

Have you ever tried hiding a 180 lb Panther in any metropolis? It's a complete impossibility. Adding to it was the fact that Noom looked like a dead man walking and was still bleeding when we took a turn into a moldy, wet inner courtyard of one of the big residential buildings.

Noom was still clutching the gun, but he hid it behind his crossed arms.

His eyes never left me, not even for one second. I saw murder in his face every time I dared look at him. That, and a flicker of madness I learned to dread.