Unchained

Elijah wanted to go back to work but Cole refused so they spent the day out walking in the fresh air. They walked for hours, sometimes quietly, sometimes holding hands but always close. Cole spent a lot of the time smelling for the tigress. He would never forget her. It would be Sunday the next day and he would spend the whole day looking for her now that Elijah was better.

He would never stop.

CHAPTER 13

Victoria approached the van apprehensively. She could taste Rob's scent in the air but it was mixed with too many smells and her hearing, while better than before, wasn't good enough to make out any sounds he might be making. Her snakes were sluggish and non-responsive still. When she stopped paying attention, the small motes of light faded away.

Sunlight warmed her naked flesh. Her stomach wound was better and the muscles had already stopped throbbing. She looked back to the creature but now he just looked like a strangely shaped rock. No doubt years from now people will pass by and think they see the shape of a face or arm in the large rock by the road.

When she turned the corner in front of the van she saw Rob. He was hanging sideways in his seat, his hands hanging down towards the passenger seat. The airbag had deployed but somehow he had a gash on his forehead. There was also a line of blood on the right side of his face. She stopped to stare, holding the corner of the bumper. There. His chest was raising and falling. She breathed out and was annoyed when her tongue flicked out several times. When she took her hand from the bumper, a chunk came with her. She hadn't realized she'd been gripping so hard. Her talons made neat little holes in the useless plastic.

The door handle came off in her hands when she tried to open his door. She tsked at herself and reached in to unlock and open the door. When it wouldn't stay open she ripped it off the hinges and tossed it aside. Rob stirred fitfully. She reached her thick right arm around his waist and easily held him in place while unbuckling him with her left hand

Bonus points for being a freak, she thought.

She pulled Rob out of the van carefully and laid him in the shade. Her white snake was on the bottom of the van, still curled up. There were two large gashes on her but she came readily when called. Victoria laid her out next to Rob and then lowered herself down to lie with him. She pulled him close to her large, heavy breasts.

"Stupid, Rob. I told you to go. The one time you don't listen to me..." He stirred again and she placed her hand on his chest. She closed her eyes briefly and opened them again to watch the multicolored lights dance in the air. "I don't know which one of you can do it but please, heal this man if you can."

Pink, blue and clear lights swirled in the air. Slowly, they settled on Rob's chest and face as if caressing him. Some of them latched onto her hand and she swore she could feel them pulling on her. "Please." She said again.

One by one they sunk into Rob. He gave a little twitch each time. And, each time, she felt a little more tired. Until, with the last one, she fell asleep.

She woke to the sound of Rob's voice. "No, I already called the state troopers. They said it would take a while to get someone out here. So now I'm just calling to tell you about the accident. Yes, sir. Like I told them, there was a man in the road with his car. As I was slowing down, a pickup coming the other way swerved into to and I swerved to get out of the way. The wheels buckled and the van slid. I hit the other truck on the side and that flipped me. I don't remember anything after that. Yes, I need a replacement. No. Yes. Of course not. Yes. South bound just outside of Yreka. Thank you. Yes, you too."

Rob pocketed his phone and turned to Victoria. "Mis... Victoria. Thank god. I was so worried about you! I already called the police and the van rental company but I'll need to hide you too until it's clear."

Victoria sat up slowly. She still felt worn out but nothing hurt - she was just tired. "Thanks, Rob. I was wondering how we'd get out of this one. And... thank you for not listening to me back there. It saved me."

Rob blushed and looked down. "No, I should've listened to you. I just... I would die if something happened to you." When he looked back up there were tears in his eyes. Victoria wished they were real tears - real tears for worrying about her own safety and not because of what the snakes did to him. Her heart hurt at the thought.

She patted Rob on the shoulder and brought her forehead against his. He sighed happily but when he tried to kiss her, she pulled back. "No, Rob. Not... No. Not until you're back to normal." She didn't add that when he was, he would find her disgusting. She pointed away from the road. "I'll be a ways that way, probably behind a rock or something. If you can, sweep up our trail so the cops don't wonder more than they have to, okay?"

Victoria found a large rock a good distance away from the wreckage. She took the trident and her white snake with her. She watched the police come out a fire truck, two ambulances and two tow trucks. A crew of people measured skid patterns and checked the bumper of the van as well as the car near the dead man. A representative from the rental company came out to talk to Rob and the police. Eventually, they loaded the dead man into an ambulance and took him away. The man's car went next and eventually Rob's van was towed as well.

The rental representative gave Rob a ride. Victoria's stomach tightened to watch him go but she had to trust him to take care of things. The sun set before she spotted another van coming back. She came to meet him half-way after he parked and they slowly made her way to the van. He'd found the time to buy two king sized mattress and fit it in the back of the van with creative cutting and rearranging. And a ton of pillows. He also somehow mounted a heater to the ceiling of the van.

Rob watched her anxiously from the side. "It's a memory foam mattress!"

She swallowed her sigh. "Th... thank you, Rob. That's just what I needed. This will really make the trip great. I... I really appreciate it." She lowered herself to hug him. He was positively beaming when she broke the embrace. Victoria cringed before pulling herself into the back. The van creaked noisily under her weight.

Two or three more days, she told herself.

CHAPTER 14

It was easy to lose time on the streets, she found. Nearly a month had gone by since the night at the hotel. Nearly a month of living in filth. She changed her clothes when she could find new ones and learned which places had the best left-over food. It helped when she thought of the food as leftovers rather than trash - she could pretend she was just eating her own leftovers and not someone else's food.

Nothing tasted right. She'd hoped it was temporary but every single time she ate something, she wanted to gag. Everything smelled rotten - from the food she was eating to people passing by. She liked to think she smelled the people dying. Sometimes she would sit in her pile of clothes and watch people all day, inventing ways they would die. Small children would drown in a pool. Little babies would die from being shaken hard by their hateful parents. Adults... there were so many ways for them to die and she imagined them all. Plane wrecks, car wrecks, electrocution from downed wires, falling off of high buildings because of broken railings, breaking their necks falling down stairs... But her favorite was thinking of them mauled and eaten.

Sometimes she thought she imagined the night at Susan's house. Perhaps she was sick and the whole thing was a strange nightmare or something similar and she had just had a mental breakdown. However, the police were looking for her. She caught the news from radios and televisions when she could get close enough. Her friend had died horribly and police had no idea what happened. They knew there had been a terrible struggle based on the state of the house and reports from neighbors but all they found was part of Susan's body and Elizabeth's purse. Usually at that point they would bring up hotel security footage showing Elizabeth running from the hotel.

She was the "Person of Interest" in the case and Susan's husband was offering a $50,000 reward if someone brought her in. She always smiled when she heard that. Nobody would know her now. Even though she'd been thin before, she had lost so much weight. One of her teeth had fallen out two days ago, rotten and black. It barely even hurt. Her previously thick, lustrous black hair was dull and straw-like. She looked like a completely different person. Harmless. People pitied her when they bothered to look at her. Those people... she imagined pulling off their legs with her strong, muscular arms and eating the bloody, soft pink flesh raw.

At night she hid herself under bridges or anything else that could cover her. She didn't look at the sky anymore; the moon was there. She frowned for a moment. That cold bitch, she thought. It did this to me. It made me like this.

As always her mind turned to the man she was supposed to meet. When she closed her eyes she could see his business card clearly. She repeated his name and address like a litany. Robert Poole 2330 Paradise Lane Altadena, California. Robert. Poole. 2330 Paradise Lane. Altadena. California. Robertpooletwothreethreeohparadiselanealtadenacalifornia. Over and over while rocking back and forth. She was close. Tomorrow she'd be there. Tomorrow or the next day. She had to talk to him about investments for her company. They would be so pleased.

She hacked and spit. Her lungs hurt and two more of her teeth felt loose. Her tongue liked to rub them back and forth. Back and forth. Wobble, wobble. Back and forth. Wobble, wobble. She laughed quietly to herself.

The other one. She remembered him. Oh yes, she did. The huge orange and black blur that hurt her that night. She would find him, too. Talk to him. Oh yes, she'd talk to him. Her hand rubbed her stomach when she remembered. She'd talk to him real good.

Sometimes she thought someone was following her but she had to be mistaken. Nobody knew her. Yet... yet, she thought she saw the same face here and there throughout the day. She would see the face and then it would slip away from her. An hour or two later, it would happen again. She moved to a different street when she saw that face. She didn't want to see it.

She found an empty overpass to sleep in when the sun was fat and red on the horizon. She preferred to be alone. Sometimes she watched other homeless people around a fire and envied them but she wasn't like them. She wasn't trash like them. She was a huntress. She killed. She ate. She didn't need them. Didn't need them. Not at all.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would find the man. Tomorrow. She huddled under her rags and wondered if she would sleep that night. It was becoming harder and harder to sleep. The moon was watching her. Waiting for a sign of weakness. How could she sleep? Tears streamed down her face. How could she sleep?

She was daydreaming when she felt it. Her breath caught. She dared not hope in case she was disappointed. No, there it was again. Her hand. Her left hand hurt. It was shaking. On fire. Slowly, she unfolded herself and pulled her sleeve back. The veins of her left hand stood out, black in the deep red shades of twilight.

Her smile was wide and with too many teeth for her mouth.

CHAPTER 15

She had to admit it was worth the wait. Rob's sprawling ranch was nearly 6000 square feet for the house alone, all on a single level. The house was on an acre of land, set back against the foot of the mountains. Rob gave her the grand tour, telling her it'd been in their family for three generations. He still owned some of the orange groves that first paid for the land. He told her he could quit his work and live very well off of his own savings and inheritance for the rest of his life.

He talked about expanding the house for her and adding whatever she wanted but she had nothing to add. There were four huge bedrooms, three massive bathrooms, a living room, a den, a family room, a library and a large sun room. The floors were smooth, cool tile and hardwood. The ceilings were nearly twenty feet up and skylights dotted the house. She recognized the style of the house as Spanish Colonial from her real estate work. It was quite beautiful.

Rob closed the curtains as he walked through the house, telling her he was worried about her safety even though they were on a private road. Sunlight still filtered in but made her shape vague enough to pass for human.

When Rob tried to insist she take the master bedroom, she refused and picked the guest room. Rob had a delivery company at the house within hours to deliver eight king sized mattresses - memory foam again. Victoria had to admit she'd come to love the stupid things. They layered four on top of each other in the corner of the bedroom so she could spread herself out. She let her tail settle and just laid her upper body down to sink into the mattress. Pure heaven.

Rob gave her his credit card information and told her to order whatever she wanted for the room. He practically begged her to make the room hers. Although he had an office with a large, multiple monitor computer setup, it was for his work and she refused to use it. Instead, he built her a nearly identical setup in the library. He was more than happy to show her how to use everything. She wasn't a complete ludite but most of her computer ability ran to Microsoft Office.

She balked at the websites he showed her for ordering things - a dresser for over $1000 was crazy in her book. It took some questioning before he showed her the Craigslist website for their area. She was amazed at the prices. Some people were even giving away beautiful antique furniture for free. Rob went out several times over the next few days to pick up things for her - a dresser, standing mirror, some simple paintings and plants to liven up the room. He was disappointed she didn't buy brand new expensive furniture but he didn't say no.

She even bought a few shirts and bras online. It took some guesswork to find sizes that fit her large but eventually she had a closet full of comfortable clothing. She felt nervous wearing clothes again but when Rob told her she looked beautiful in a dark green silk shirt, she blushed. It felt good. Almost normal. She even bought a funny t-shirt to wear. It had the severed bloody head of medusa wearing sunglasses and the caption read, "Rock On!" She giggled when she saw it. The bras were more difficult. According to most companies, she was an E cup now. Finding good, comfortable bras in that size wasn't easy.

She was talking to her snakes again. They were impressed by what she'd done on the road. It was the first time they could remember their host learning magic of any kind without their guidance and their only criticism was that she gave too much away in the bargain. Her memories were theirs as well so they could see what she'd done. Apparently, the little creatures were just as eager to do their jobs as she was for them to do it. But if not watched, they were slow and greedy.

"So then, how does it work?" She asked one night. She was dreaming again - sitting by the fire with the strange woman.

"These creatures exist, everywhere, always. We give them a piece of our self for their work."

"Can I shoot fireballs? Or fly? Please tell me I can fly with them."

The woman shook her head. "No. There are different kinds of magic but we are elemental. Transformative. Earth is our base. Minerals. We heal because man is from the earth. We turn things to stone for the same reason. We can also move the earth to a small degree. You don't even have to speak the words. Imagine the result and it will happen. In time you will learn minimum the creatures require."

"And the hypnotism? Reading the future?"

"Gifts unique to us. We've always had them. We live here. If this realm is the subconsciousness of man then perhaps we alter it in some way. We've never considered it deeply. It's always been."

Victoria tilted her head. "Perhaps we should take time to figure it out. What else are you missing because you didn't wonder about what you could do?"

The woman shrugged.

The days passed. Victoria practiced using her new body. From simple movements to moving sections of her tail by themselves. By the fourth day, with a small bit of concentration she could make her tail move in a small wave from the tip to below her hip. She only destroyed one wall during the whole process. When she was just learning to coil her tail, she misinterpreted a movement and her tail whipped out with a loud crack, breaking through the wall. Rob cheerfully told her he was thinking of moving the wall back a little anyway.

Nearly two weeks later she was settling into a routine and thinking of hobbies. She'd never tried anything in school - preferring to focus on basic studies and spending time with friends and family. Rob brought several different things for her to try - paints and canvas, modeling clay and even wood blocks and carving knives.

Painting was fun but holding the brush in her hands was awkward and she didn't have the eye for that kind of work anyway. The clay proved much easier to work with. Here she could use her claws for fine detail work and her strong hands seemed tireless in shaping and reshaping. She spent most of the day with the clay. Rob would stop by every so often to watch while he worked around the house.

She loved the way her muscles worked as she took a lump of the clay to work with. She rolled, kneaded and squashed the clay as she shaped it. Large muscles in her shoulders and back tensed and relaxed over and over as she lost herself in what she was doing. Occasionally, she would feel one of her snakes peek around to look before settling back into place. She came to enjoy their presence in a small way. They weren't so bad when they weren't bothering her.

Eventually, a tree took shape in her clay. She sat back, her fingers covered in dark gray with bits of clay stuck to her nose. Her tongue flicked out, as if to watch. She leaned in carefully to scratch a knothole near the bottom of the tree. Looking at it again, a thought struck her. She listened to the quiet house and heard Rob typing at his keyboards in the other room. She grinned and leaned in again to scratch "V & R" next to the knothole.

She was washing her hands carefuly with a rag when he snakes stirred. "Ssssssss... watching... ussssssss... waiting... sssssssssomeone... watching... hurt... angry... watching..."

She paused. "Here? At the house? Where? Who's watching us?"

Rather than answer, the snakes turned to the window. She followed and pulled back an edge of the curtains. Her cat eyes narrowed, searching the landscape. Nothing. Her tongue stuck out and tasted the air, over and over. Still nothing. Wait, there. Something moved. Victoria stopped and watched, barely breathing. Near a bush was a flat, black shape. Her tongue flicked again and the faint smell of blood was in the air. The shape moved and was suddenly gone.

Victoria watched a moment longer and then turned to find Rob.

CHAPTER 16

Elizabeth studied the house closely. The sage brush next to her swayed in the wind, scratching at her cheap clothes. She barely felt the mid-day sun. She rarely felt anything other than coldness these days. One of the curtains twitched aside, nearly startling her. An outline of a face appeared. She saw slit eyes and a forked tongue but she didn't trust her eyes very much lately. Everything was twisted.

There was a pain at the back of her throat that she couldn't stop from turning into a hacking cough. Her mouth filled with thick, congealed blood. She held the wad in her mouth rather than spit it out. Finally, she couldn't hold it in anymore. She was starting to gag on the taste of rancid blood and meat. She slowly backed away and rolled down the small hill. At the bottom, she spit the thing out of her mouth. It was pure black. She shuddered. One little white thing was moving in the blackness of the lump. She told herself it couldn't be a maggot, that it was probably from the ground and not her.