Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Watching Bale lose his shit on Harlow had me seeing a shade of red more vivid than the brickwork of the underground tunnels in Falston.
I needed to fly away before I did something stupid like peck his eyeballs out. Launching into the air from my perch on the cross frame, I did a loop around the corn field. Each beat of my wings in the air was fueled by an overwhelming need to protect what was mine.
The last I saw before forcing myself to cool off, Bale seemed to be pulling himself together. He may not have been emotionally tender, but he had ceased yelling at her as if it were her fault for existing.
About the third circle was when I realized things had taken a wrong turn in the clearing below. Bale’s towering form had an all too familiar cloak of straw and death wrapped around it.
I immediately changed my trajectory to dive down towards him and Harlow. As Bale released her throat, I didn’t need to hear what he told her. The predatory aura was thick in the air.
Not even two steps into her escape, I saw her figure crumple into a pile of velvet and claws. The shift occurred right before my eyes, and I momentarily forgot how to fly. My flight awkwardly stuttered in the aviary equivalent of tripping over nothing.
She could shift forms? Into a black cat, no less. Fuck. Me. Things suddenly clicked, made sense. If I hadn’t been infatuated before? I sure as hell was now.
Snapping out of my head at the last second, I banked hard, swooping around the edge of the clearing before wildly fluttering around Bale’s scarecrow form.
I cawed loudly; the shrieking noise split the air. Doing so several more times around Bale’s head, I hoped he went half deaf with the sound of my crow-equivalent of telling him to piss off.
Lowly growling, Bale swatted at me like he would to a nuisance housefly. With grace and agility, I dodged and ducked all while keeping an eye on the lithe feline running into the expanse of corn stalks.
Flying under one of Bale’s arms, I angled upward, intentionally knocking his stupid newsboy-style cap from his head.
“Fuck off, Corb!” he snarled before bending over and retrieving his favorite accessory.
I pecked hard at his neck, but it left him unfazed and undeterred as he secured his cap on his head.
He left me no choice. Summoning my inner woodpecker, I dive bombed his crotch. With tiny clawed feet latching onto the fabric, my beak pecked furiously at the front of his pants until he doubled over, cursing at me.
“Ass! Fuck!” His hands shoved me off forcefully.
I tumbled to the ground, hopping on my feet while ruffling my feathers.
Perhaps that would be the wake-up call to start thinking with his brain instead of his cock made of straw and roots.
Despite it having been an effective maneuver, I still had half a mind to go in for round two.
Except next time, I’d aim to tear through the fabric and pull pieces of his supernatural dick out to build Harlow and me a fucking nest.
When I flew up to act on the temptation, his hands aggressively shooed me away. My wings flapped tirelessly to keep distracting him from his pursuit of Harlow.
Thankfully, for now, she was far from sight. Yet, I knew it wouldn’t take long for Bale to find her. He always found them.
After one swat that connected with my side, I barrel-rolled through the air almost two times before my wings caught enough air to keep me suspended.
That was all he needed to refocus on his original target: Harlow. With sheer determination and a hunter’s instinct, Bale stormed past me. He cut through the stalks, which all but cowered in his presence.
I took flight above him, trying to spot Harlow’s dark fur through the densely planted crops.
The irony of the striking opposites of our alternate identities was not lost on me. Her, the predator, and me, the prey. My dick may as well already be pussy whipped—no pun intended.
Then there was Bale, whose shifted form was designed to chase trespassers from these fields. He was the apex predator to our shifted forms, but hell if I was going to let him conquer Harlow’s feline or human spirit.
Searching from above, it was nearly impossible to tell where she had run off to. Whatever primitive instincts were driving Bale, he seemed to hear the whispers of her through the corn.
Maybe it was fur brushing against corn leaves or the pads of her paws pressing into the soil. Whatever it was he was picking up on, he was homing in on it with deadly accuracy.
“Here, kitty-kitty,” he darkly taunted with an eerie voice that carried on the wind. “Don’t you want to see how well those claws cut through my straw?”
He enjoyed this fucking game too fucking much. I couldn’t be sure whether it was because of who he was chasing or why he was chasing her.
Noting his jagged patterns through the rows of corn, if he was truly locked on her trail, she was being a smart girl. It seemed she could be using her size to cut through the towering stalks, staying out of the moonlight to blend in with the earth and shadows.
Just when I thought that perhaps she had managed to escape the field altogether, I saw the slightest glint of green eyes. Her pointed ears flattened against her head, and her whiskers twitched before she was back into the darkness again.
She was heading back towards the festival, but Bale was covering more ground in twice the time. His speed was unnatural for his size, especially against a significantly smaller being.
Going back towards the festival wouldn’t be ideal for either of them.
There could be potential witnesses if they strayed from the courtyard’s celebrations.
The only hope I could hold onto was that it was late enough in the evening and that most of Falston’s residents would either be drunk or leaving to go home.
However, just the thought of any unwanted exposure forced me to flap my wings with all the strength I could summon. I kept glancing down, watching them both get closer to the field’s edge.
I needed to be on the other side of that wall of corn stalks when Harlow emerged. Fuck Bale, he could deal with the problems he made for himself by shifting into his scarecrow shape. She came first.
Claws before straw, my friend.
Pushing at my bodily limits, I dropped my altitude dangerously close to the ground. It was going to be a close call, but the nearer to the ground behind the empty corn pit attraction, I was already shifting back to my human form before my feet even hit the ground.
Stumbling, my body burned from the lack of finesse of the rushed shifting, but I didn’t give a damn. My boots were back on my feet, clothes on my body, and I pounded the earth running. Probably the only fucking blessing this curse granted me was no awkward moments of nudity.
I sprinted to where I expected Harlow to exit the field. My body was drawn to her, already positioning myself as her sleek feline form jumped over a fallen ear of corn.
My hands scooped her up around her middle, pulling her directly against my chest. Both of us on edge, my chest heaved with gasping breaths, and her little heart pulsed rapidly inside her chest cavity. Somehow, each beat was synced between us.
Harlow, however, did not take kindly to being snatched up. The hellish growls and hisses coming out of her as she thrashed against me may have been endearing in any other situation.
Fumbling with her squirming, I sucked in a sharp and pained inhale as her claws mauled my hands before her tiny but sharp fangs sank into the flesh of my hand between my thumb and forefinger.
“Shit!” I hissed.
The puncturing bite loosened my hold enough for her to drop from my grasp.
She landed on her feet, as cats always did. But as I leaned over to draw her into my arms, it was then that Bale stumbled out of the field.
He at least had the sense to transform back into his human form, giving me a small sense of relief.
During that brief distraction, suddenly Harlow’s very human head nearly smacked my chin as she shot up onto her feet. It had me staggering back several steps to avoid the collision.
Breathlessly, Bale smiled at her as his hands rested on his hips.
“Predictable,” he said smugly. The word hung between them like an insult.
Harlow’s hands straightened out the wrinkles in her dress with aggression in each sweep of the fabric. Her emerald hues glowed with enough intensity that I was certain they could power an entire city.
She jabbed a finger in Bale’s direction, several feet of space between them. Her cheeks flushed either with exertion or fury, probably both.
“You want to talk about being predictable? Let’s start with your inflated ego as a cover for your self-sabotaging behavior!”
Keeping my hands up in a gesture of no harm, I stepped forward. “Let’s take a deep breath—”
That’s when she spun and pointed a finger at me accusingly, stopping my attempt to mediate.
“And you!” she began before she shifted on her feet, her nostrils flaring with every labored breath from the pursuit. “You— Well, you—”
“I…?” I asked softly, leaning forward slightly to show I was listening to whatever words she wanted to hit me with.
She paused, visibly grinding her teeth in frustration. “Do you even know what he can do?”
I nodded, confirming I knew of Bale’s secret without divulging my own.
Then, teasingly, I held up my injured hand and wiggled the fingers with a smirk. “You’re not so helpless yourself.” The fresh blood was still mapping small rivulets on both sides of my hand.
It seemed that her anger faltered momentarily as she struggled to find whatever words she had intended to say.
After a huff, she handed out her verdict, but it came out with less conviction than her verbal assault on Bale. “You enable him!”
Bale gave a mock wounded expression as he placed a hand to his chest. “It’s true, Corb. You spoil me. Always leading the girls to my field. I’m just a victim of poor circumstances.” He added a pout for extra theatrical flavor.
My eyes narrowed dangerously, unamused by his words, sarcastic or not.
“Give it a break, Bale,” I said through my teeth in warning. Then, I looked at Harlow and shook my head. “He’s being a bastard. Let me walk you home? We can talk if you want, or not. Your choice.”
She straightened up, squaring her shoulders. “I can find my own way. Besides, it seems like the two of you have some shit to work out amongst yourselves.”
Rolling my shoulders, it was a pathetic attempt to hide the way they had slumped in disappointment.
When no argument came from either of us, she curtly nodded and walked off toward the courtyard of festivities. I didn’t take my eyes off her.
Bale propped his elbow on my shoulder as he also took in the sight of her walking off.
“She loves us,” he stated confidently.
I made a sound that was half between a chuckle and a scoff. “Is that what you think? If so, you haven’t gotten any better at reading women in the last century.”
Purposely, I sidestepped so his elbow dropped from my shoulder. My hands patted my pockets, searching for my pack of cigarettes. Each pocket checked turned up empty.
“Oh, come on. Fucking curse magic can ensure my socks end up on the right feet, but can’t keep track of a pack of—”
A low, two-note whistle came from Bale to hook my attention. When I looked up, he held the pack between his two fingers.
Grunting, I plucked the cardboard box from him, and he didn’t dare stop me. Didn’t bother preventing my blood from staining the paper of the cigarette I pulled out.
“Bad habit. It has a nasty reputation for starting fires it shouldn’t,” he remarked in clear disapproval.
“Yeah? Maybe this year the closing bonfire will actually burn instead of sitting pretty,” I mumbled around my cigarette as my lighter flared at the tip of it.
He chuckled. “When monkeys fly.”