

# About Werecat: The Rearing

For Jacks Dowd, a college senior who feels ungrounded from his family and life in general, an alcohol and sex-infused weekend in Montréal sounds like a pretty good escape. His Spring Break binge takes a detour when he meets Benoit, an admiring drifter with startling green eyes. A hook-up turns into a day, two days, and then a full week in Benoit's hostel, making love and scarfing down take-out food. But at the end of the week, Benoit demands that Jacks make an impossible choice: stay with him forever, or go back to college and never see him again.

There's something dangerous about Benoit, but Jacks has fallen for him brutally. The night before Jacks is supposed to return to college, he finds Benoit in Mont Royal Park, where they first met, to try to work things out. Benoit springs on Jacks an unfathomable secret: he's a mythical creature, half man and half jungle panther. He traps Jacks in an abandoned cabin and performs an occult rite so they will be mated forever.

# Licensing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. This book, and parts thereof, may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission. For information, e-mail info@vagabondagepress.com.

### Werecat: The Rearing

© 2013 by Andrew J. Peters

### Vagabondage Press LLC

PO Box 3563

Apollo Beach, Florida 33572

http://www.vagabondagepress.com

First digital edition

Front cover art Andres Rodriguez & Freder

# Werecat:

**The Rearing**

## Andrew J. Peters

#### Vagabondage Press LLC

# Acknowledgements

In August of 2011, I had the honor of participating in Lambda Literary Foundation's Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. At the time, the thought of writing a feline shapeshifter story wasn't even the proverbial "twinkle in my eye." But being immersed in such a vibrant, talented, and mutually-encouraging community gave me the confidence to keep pushing my projects forward. It bolstered my belief that queer stories, in their infinite varieties, are the beautiful, subversive stuff that dreams are made of. I must acknowledge especially author Allison Moon, whose lesbian werewolf novel provoked my curiosity in the shapeshifter genre. That curiosity grew into a bit of an obsession. If the literary world can have lesbian werewolves, why not gay werecats?

My thanks to Fawn Neun and N. Apythia Morges for helping to bring this story to life. I want to thank my writing partner C.A. Clemmings who considered, critiqued and cheer-led my early drafts. To my friends and my family, I thank you for believing in me. To my tiger-striped tabby Chloë, my werecat muse, I thank you for putting up with my following you around as a self-fashioned feline behaviorist. Most of all, this story would not have been possible without the love and the support of my partner Genaro, who endured, and continues to endure, many nights of my literary moodiness and reclusiveness. I love you.

# Table of Contents

About Werecat: The Rearing

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

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# New York City—Present Day

Coming in from the darkened street, Jacks was assaulted by the all-night bodega's fluorescent lights. Ground-in dirt scored the dull tile floor. Boxed dry goods, probably stocked in another decade, lined grimy, metal shelves. The water-stained drop ceiling encroached in on him from the corners of his vision.

As he approached one of the glass refrigerator cabinets, his reflection glared back. Jacks had told himself he was working a grunge look, but he was crossing into vagrant territory. Thick, unwashed hair framed his scruffily bearded face. His black wool cap didn't make him look hip and counterculture. It made him look destitute and dangerous. He wondered if he traveled in a cloud of body odor, like some comic strip character.

Jacks grabbed some things from the refrigerated section, headed to the canned food aisle and dropped an armful of groceries on the check-out counter.

Farzan, the cashier, smiled at him. He was a handsome Persian guy, probably around Jacks' age. They had made small talk before. Farzan worked the overnight shift while he was going to medical school. His dad owned the shop. He had struck up conversation about American politics and American rock bands, and it turned out they liked a lot of the same music. The guy was cool, but Jacks just wanted to get in and out. He looked like a mess. Besides, he had to be getting back to Benoit.

Farzan's dark, almond eyes narrowed at the sight of Jacks' purchases: five packages of hot dogs, two cartons of milk, a graying plastic envelope of assorted cold cuts, and a half dozen cans of Vienna sausages. His tan face flouted a woeful grimace.

"Stocking up on proteins again?"

"Yeah," Jacks mumbled. He flashed a shy grin and dug into his jeans' pocket for cash. Farzan took his time scanning the items at his old, computerized register. He was probably bored and starved for company. The crooked Bud Light clock on the wall behind the register showed three-fifteen in the morning.

"This is no good," Farzan said. "You need a complex diet or you will develop a vitamin deficiency. Did you know that overconsumption of animal products has been linked to cancer?"

"You sound like a doctor already."

"It is also a myth that a diet rich in meat will lead to muscle development."

"I buy other stuff at the market down the street." Jacks' eyebrow twitched, and his gaze skimmed his feet.

"I can't sell you this." Farzan waved the cold cuts at Jacks. "It's past its expiration date." The package flew into the garbage can behind the counter with a thud.

"I'll get another one." Jacks headed over to the refrigerated shelves.

"Don't bother. They're all the same. We only restock on Tuesdays."

Jacks stopped in his tracks and walked back to the register. He realized he had left a crumpled wad of bills and all his loose change on the counter. Luckily, the place was as dead as a morgue. Not many people were out at delis at three in the morning this far uptown.

Farzan was looking around for something behind the counter. When he turned back to Jacks, he had a plastic tub of rice in his hand.

"This is Adas Polo. Basmati rice with lentils and raisins. Very healthy."

Jacks nodded, though he had no idea why Farzan was showing him the stuff.

"I will give you some." Farzan brought out a large size Styrofoam coffee cup and shoveled the rice into it with a plastic spoon.

"No, you don't have to do that."

Farzan didn't seem to hear him. He closed up the cup with a white lid and handed it to Jacks.

"Thanks," Jacks said. He gathered up his money. "What do I owe you?"

"For the Adas Polo, no charge. For the rest, thirty-four dollars and eighty-nine cents."

Jacks fished out a twenty and two tens from the bundle in his hand.

"When are you going to give me the download of the Death Cab for Cutie album?"

Jacks' insides sank. He had been meaning to bring Farzan his memory stick of music downloads. "Sorry, I keep forgetting."

"That's OK. I know you will be back."

He took Jacks' money and gave him his change and his bagged groceries.

On the street, Jacks' vision sharpened like a photographic lens. He scanned the row of curtain-walled storefronts ahead of him, and peered into the darkened recessed spots along the street. Everything was closed. Farzan's neon-signed bodega was an oasis amid a desolate world of concrete and aluminum.

That counted as both a good and a bad thing. People got mugged in the area, and the police only seemed to pay attention after someone got beat up or stabbed. Jacks had been living in the neighborhood for only a couple of months, and he had heard melees on the street more nights than not. The violent squabbles pulled at him, hearing someone was getting hurt

and knowing he could do something to stop it. He never got involved. Watching the cops show up and treat everyone on the street like a criminal ate at Jacks. People had a right to be out at night. It wasn't their fault they lived in a shitty neighborhood.

Jacks turned off the main strip onto a side street.

Up ahead, cloaked in darkness, there was a conversation going on. It was one, maybe two blocks down the street: a group of kids, talking in Spanish. Jacks didn't speak the language, but the intonation was aggressive and drunk. They would probably heckle him or try something worse. Not that Jacks couldn't handle himself. Benoit had taught him that. But he didn't want any trouble that would draw attention. He fast-tracked down an alley between a pair of slummy apartment buildings.

He watched the shadowy borders—rows of garbage cans, an abandoned car picked over to its frame and axles, and one of the resident homeless sloughed against one building by the laundry room vents. Rats rooted around the garbage cans. They were the only life stirring in the alley.

His path ended at a fence, topped with barbed wire, enclosing an old loft building that was once a furniture factory. Jacks took a survey of the shadowy space behind him, and then he secured his grocery bag around one shoulder. His hands and legs worked deftly to climb the chain-link fence, making barely any noise. At the top, he angled and stretched his body around the sharp coils of barbed wire as easily as a cinematic jewel thief. His feet hit the ground on the other side, sure and steady. The back door to the factory was straight ahead.

The bolt to the door was broken, and he slipped inside with an eye out for onlookers.

A vast space, pitch black, opened up in front of him. The sour smell of sawdust and unfinished wood still lingered, though the furniture and most of the machinery had been cleared out years ago. Jacks' gaze pierced the darkness. Besides the high-lofted bed where he and Benoit slept, the factory had been gutted. He unhitched the grocery bag from his shoulder.

A phantom force tackled him from the side.

The bag flew out of from Jacks' hand, and he landed on the concrete floor, stunned breathless by the smacking pain in his back. His invisible attacker pinned him by the shoulders with an insuperable weight. He heard a feline growl, and the meaty breath of it fanned his face. Black as the shuttered factory, an enormous panther lorded over him. The pupils of its green, iridescent eyes were enlivened by the capture of prey.

Benoit.

Jacks cocked his head. The groceries were strewn across the floor, and the milk cartons had burst into a puddle.

"How're we supposed to eat when you do stuff like this?"

The black cat gazed at him intently. A man's voice, Québécois by accent, telepathed into Jacks' head: "I'm in the mood for something else for dinner."

His claws ripped open Jacks' jacket and shirt, and a rough tongue lapped his bare chest. Jacks reeled from the warm, grating sensation against his skin. His nostrils filled with Benoit's wild and musky scent. A familiar beckoning pulled at every cell of Jacks' body. His mind closed up in a blur of heat, and he felt himself rearing.

His breastbone buckled, and his chest expanded in a feline curve. Hot bursts of pressure raced down his back as his spine extenuated and arched, sprouting an appendage from his tailbone. His shoulder blades flexed backward impossibly while his hips realigned, and the muscles of his shortened limbs broadened and knit together, taut. His nails grew and thickened while his fingers and toes retracted, and the balls of his hands and feet bulged into fist-sized roughened pads. All parts of his skin drew up tight around his muscles, and thick fur burst through his body. He could feel the complex transformation of his head—skull elongating, jaws receding, mouth and nose molding together into a muzzle. Fine shoots of whiskers prickled out of him. Though his feline senses worked in his human form, they were now multiplied times ten. His surroundings came into newfound focus, the unveiling of a hidden world.

A lazy breeze drafted from a shattered pane in one of the factory's high, whitewashed windows. He could hear and feel a subway car approaching distantly downtown. Benoit's feral arousal bathed him in a fog of exhilaration. Then he noticed the rich scent of rice and lentils in the air.

Jacks turned reflexively to the groceries. Benoit's gaze followed his, landing on the spilled Styrofoam cup. His tail swung back and forth.

"Flirting with the kid from the bodega again?"

The accusation poked at feelings Jacks had been guarding. He liked Farzan, not so much because the guy was cute, but because they had, pretty instantly, seen something in each other familiar and interesting, maybe even beyond music and politics. They were from totally different worlds, yet it felt like they could be good friends.

Benoit's jealousy was always a short fuse in search of a spark. Jacks wondered even if Benoit might have followed him to the store to watch his interaction with Farzan, from some stealthy place. His possessiveness confused Jacks. It was sometimes terrifying, but he had never felt so important to anyone.

Contrarily, Benoit didn't provide explanations when he went out on his own at night.

Jacks thrust his hind paws into Benoit's side, twisting him onto his back. He pounced on Benoit's chest. Benoit's legs found an advantage, and they tumbled over one another, fighting to clamp down for a pin. Jacks could keep up their wrestling play for a while, but Benoit was bigger and stronger. Jacks' feline form was a mountain lion. Benoit's was a jungle panther.

Benoit bit down on Jacks' neck and grappled him onto his belly. He clambered on top of Jacks' back, his full weight pressing down, an unbreakable hold. Jacks snarled to get free, but as Benoit's purr rumbled through Jacks, his body transformed with a new enticement. His neck curled into Benoit's bite from the sensuous ache of it. Blood coursed through his body in hungry anticipation. He and Benoit had made love before in human form, but sex never felt as exquisitely desperate and dangerous as when they did it as cats.

Benoit held the scruff of Jacks' neck roughly in his muzzle and crouched behind him. His slickened sex stabbed inside Jacks all at once. Jacks writhed to bite him, and he vocalized a bestial complaint. His claws spread against the floor. He throbbed white hot from Benoit's rhythmic rapid fire. Benoit's haunches convulsed against him. There was a final jolt of pain as Benoit's barbed prick pulled out.

Jacks crawled forward on his belly. When the world stopped swimming, he turned to Benoit, and his paw launched out, swatting his lover across his muzzle. Benoit drew back, eyes bulging, like a cub reproached by its mother. It was the only time Jacks felt he had the upper hand with Benoit: when Benoit had gotten what he wanted.

Jacks scampered up to the loft bed. He settled in a pile of shredded newspapers and clothes and licked his paws. His feelings were hard to place. He felt hollow and small from Benoit's forceful and fleeting affection, but he couldn't deny that he wanted more.

Benoit climbed up to the perch and circled around Jacks in a dance of reconciliation. A willful gaze. Tentative nudges of his head that Jacks rebuffed with growls. Eventually, Benoit lay down with his heft leaning into Jacks' side. Benoit's heartbeat thrummed against him. He turned to lick Jacks' face, and Jacks shook fussily away. Benoit's paw curled around Jacks' head to pull him close, and he groomed him. They lay curled together looking out to the empty factory.

A runty, tiger-striped stray had found the groceries and was lapping up the milk from the floor. She was just a cat, not a shape-shifter, and they had taken her in from the streets as their own. Jacks had named her Bella.

"At least someone is getting some supper," Jacks spoke in his telepathic human voice.

Benoit glared at Bella in regal fashion. Her ears perked up, and she scurried up the scaffolding to the loft and nestled between the two big cats.

This was Jacks' new family, as strange as he knew it was. He liked looking out for Bella, and the bond between the three of them was proud and fierce. But his sentimentality got swallowed up by the frightening thought of Benoit's nature and what he, himself, had become. It wasn't a childhood story of Bella and her two daddies. He and Benoit were werecats: unfathomable, freakish things.

Benoit groomed Bella with wide laps of his scratchy tongue. Being a werecat didn't bother him. He spent less and less time in his human form, while Jacks could only sustain the change for a couple of hours. Benoit said it would get easier with time. But what would that mean—living as a cat? Jacks had thought that love had pulled him and Benoit together, but their feline bond was something different. Benoit flaunted his dominance, and it felt like both he and Bella were just members of his pride.

Jacks broke from his thoughts as he realized Benoit's eyes were fastened to him, willful and dominant. Benoit raised himself, arched his back and started toward the edge of the loft.

"Let's go hunting," he told Jacks.

Benoit had never taken Jacks hunting before, which figured as enough of a reason to do it, though Jacks was pretty frightened by what it might entail. He followed Benoit up through the factory's heating shaft to the roof, and they traveled from one building rooftop to the next, heading west.

At night, the city provided a lot of cover, something Jacks never would have considered a few months ago. They could skulk on top of apartment buildings, and when the gap between them was too far to bridge, they could wait out passersby on the street from the lookout of fire escapes. It was a kind of freedom he had never imagined when he was a college student upstate at Calverton University.

Everything in his life had changed in one miraculous and terrible night.

# Montréal—Three Months Earlier

It was Spring Break, Jacks' last semester, his senior year. All of his classmates whose parents had money had taken off to places like Mexico and Florida's Gulf Coast. Jacks could have gone home for the week on a Greyhound bus to the paper mill town in Pennsylvania where he grew up. But ever since Jacks told his parents he was gay, his father pretended Jacks didn't exist, and his mother followed him around with the full force of maternal martyrdom, begging him to come with her to church or at least sit down with her to read The Bible.

Friday afternoon, while the campus emptied out, Jacks' housemates Jonathan and Gabe decided to ditch their plans to go home, and they instead booked bus tickets to Montréal. They found a motel room they could share for eighty dollars a night. They wouldn't be returning to school with tans after a weekend in Montréal in late March, but the drinking age there was eighteen, and Gabe hadn't turned twenty-one yet. Plus, Jonathan said they had clubs where the go-go boys stripped down all the way and danced on the bar. Jacks jumped at an invitation to go along. It sounded a whole lot better than being stuck by himself in the ghost town of his childhood. They made it to the campus bookstore just before closing to sell back their textbooks, and they scrounged up a few hundred dollars for the weekend.

For the bus ride, Jonathan mixed up a ridiculous concoction of orange soda and vodka, and they shared swigs from a metal thermos. Their motel room was predictably a dump, and Jonathan and Gabe threw down their backpacks on one of the two twin beds, signaling to Jacks they'd be hooking up if nothing better turned up that night.

The memories got murkier from the point when they made it to the city's Village, the gay neighborhood, hopping from club to club, and downing shots between drafts of Canadian beer. Jacks wandered off on his own. Probably he had a petty fight with his friends. It made no sense, but Jacks felt lonelier when he was out drinking with people. His solitude bit at him, and he got mean and did self-destructive things.

He remembered walking the streets, the world careening, blurred faces speeding by him. The main part of the city was built on a slope, and he had been determined to keep heading steeply uphill like a labor of a mythological god. Then he was in some kind of park, Mount Royal, he would later piece together. He must have been drawn there by the thought of climbing the mountain, maybe as a drunken lark to show the world that he could do it, or maybe it was a wild idea to jump off from the top. Jagged emotions came back to him—laughing, screeching, and then heaving with tears. If a cop had caught him, he could bet he would've tried to fight him. Jacks was glad no one saw him that way.

There were unrailed concrete stairways for the climb, in serious need of repair, and at some point, he must have lost his balance and tumbled into a forested ditch. That was when things got so dizzy that he threw up and passed out in the leaves and dirt. He recalled, vaguely, the sensation of being dragged along the forest floor and having no will to stop it.

Jacks woke up shivering beneath cheap blankets. Sunlight, filtered through unwashed windows, showed his surroundings to be some park building, hollowed out, strewn with leaves, long ago abandoned.

A stranger handed him a paper cup of steaming coffee, light and sweet.

Jacks shrunk up against a wall and looked the man over. He had long black hair and a stubbly growth of beard. He wore a beat up wool trench coat, and at first Jacks figured he must be some crazy homeless man. But the man's eyes were a stunningly bright shade of green, like some print model Adonis. Jacks took the cup and sipped the sweet coffee. It was delicious and warming.

The strangeness of the situation throttled him. What was he doing holed up with some guy who could be a lunatic?

Jacks put the cup down and stood up from the blankets, grateful that his clothes were intact. He smelled like dirt and the seat of his jeans was black with it.

"I've got to get going," he said.

The man seemed oddly casual about everything. He cocked his head. "Where will you go?"

"I've got friends. They'll be worried about me."

A merry look passed over the man's rugged face. Jacks didn't know what to make of it. Did he think he was lying?

"You probably saved my life or something," Jacks said. "I was pretty far gone last night." He rooted in his pocket. All he had was a pair of five dollar bills, but he offered them to the guy. "Here. Thanks."

The man glanced at the cash. "I don't want your money."

What do you want? Jacks wondered, spooked.

"Stay with me for awhile. It's early morning. There's plenty of time to catch up with your friends later."

Jacks' insides wound up tight. "Nah, I've gotta go." He replaced the bills in his pocket and stepped around the man. Their shoulders brushed together, and a warm sensation spread like tentacles through Jacks' body. The man's hand caught Jacks' arm gently.

Jacks pulled away, telling him, forcibly, "Don't touch me."

The man grinned. "If I was going to hurt you, I would have done it while you were passed out in the ditch."

"We don't know each other. Nothing personal, but I don't make it a habit of meeting people this way."

"You came into my territory, drunk and helpless. And now you want to run off like it was all some big mistake. Do you think you're better than me?"

Jacks' brain pinched up. He didn't mean to offend the guy. The word "territory" lingered in his head. As far as he could figure, they had both been trespassing in the park, and squatted in some long-forgotten cabin. His gaze passed over the man again. Was he dangerously psychotic? The guy seemed too calm for that. They stood an arm's length from each other, and despite his hangover, Jacks felt the stirrings of attraction.

"Sorry. I'm not trying to be rude."

"Maybe we can start again." The man reached out his hand. "Benoit."

His hand fit over Jacks' like a warm, luxurious glove.

"Jackson. Well, everybody calls me Jacks."

Benoit's green eyes flared. Jacks grinned shyly. They had been together ever since that morning.

# New York City—Present Day

Jacks drew up beside Benoit as he looked out from the roof of a Fifth Avenue apartment building. Central Park was a dark lake embanked by the high rises of 110th Street and distant Central Park West. Just below their perch, Jacks could make out the elongated silhouette of the Harlem Meer, where they had paddleboats and old retired men fished during the day. A trickle of taxi cabs glided around the park's borders.

Benoit made a stealthy climb down the fire escape facing the Avenue, and Jacks followed, light-footed. If they were spotted, making a getaway wasn't much of a worry, unless the terrified on-looker was a thug with a gun. But they didn't need a swat team scouring the neighborhood from the report of two big cats loose in the city. Benoit was expert at staying camouflaged. Jacks was getting better at it.

On the street, they slinked behind a parked car and scanned up and down the Avenue. A livery cab swooshed by, leaving a trail of high-pitched Indian pop music. In its wake, everything was still. Benoit looked to Jacks, and then he sprung across the street in the span of heartbeats. Jacks galloped after him, and they jumped a wall and landed under the cover of trees.

Inside the park, Jacks felt even more like a cat. Damp earth and maples, sweet with budding leaves, filled his nostrils. Nocturnal chatter tantalized his ears. There were a million living things to find there, some as tiny as crickets, others more curious, nesting in the trees or scrounging about the brush. Benoit scowled at a flutter of birds overhead. As sly as they were, some creatures had noticed their entrance to the park. Jacks wondered what Benoit was hunting—–a rabbit or a raccoon? Feral instincts swarmed inside him. He wanted to stalk prey, not because he was hungry, but because he could do it.

Benoit led a path along the marshy bank of Harlem Meer. There was a swagger to his stride, and he stopped at a tree here and there to sniff the bark of a trunk and rub his neck against it. At the Meer's southeastern end, they neared the Conservatory Gardens, a circular expanse of walkways and shallow hedges, and they gave the open area a wide berth. They clipped through a little clearing, and Jacks raced after Benoit as he bounded up the rocky escarpment of a forested hill overlooking the opposite side of the Meer.

Benoit skulked through the trees, steady and deliberate, his jaw hanging to vent in the night air. He had picked up the scent of something. Jacks tried to pinpoint it, but he was still getting used to focusing his feline senses. The thick stench of a skunk and other raunchy odors overwhelmed him.

As they wandered further around the hill, a swampy breeze pushed the foul smells away. Jacks honed in on something familiar. Water fowl. They were nested below, on the margins of the Meer. His tail swung in anticipation. Jacks had never killed an animal. The thought had been abhorrent to him as a human. But he was different now. Hunting with Benoit was a new thrill to be discovered, and another fiber strengthening their bond.

While his feline body coursed with primal urges, he fought inside himself. How far would he follow Benoit on this journey? Would he recognize the point where there was no turning back?

# Montréal—Three Months Earlier

The first day with Benoit, back in Montréal, was a series of events which, taken singly, would have each been outrageous and ill-advised, but they sped one to the next like a romance on steroids. They drank the coffee Benoit had bought, beneath blankets in the abandoned cabin, and Jacks told him everything that had led to his reckless flight the night before. He talked about the sense of alienation that was always haunting him, and the frightening emptiness of his parents' home. Jacks had never shared such things with his housemates, but somehow it was easy talking to Benoit. He never showed the faintest distraction. Though Benoit didn't share much of his own story—vague fragments of growing up in Québec City, taking some time to travel the country since his father's death—Jacks felt he understood.

Benoit suggested they take a walk around the park, and he toured Jacks through many amazing things. They saw the granite disks of La Montagne des Jours. Benoit translated the etched words that encircled them. They were strange little odes by past visitors to the park, which made Jacks think about the memories that stuck in one's head, and the one's that didn't, depending where you were and who you were with.

You're going to write me often? Sometimes I close my eyes, and I guess I'm there. You smile. You should have brought me here before. The wind in the trees. Light tasks.

When they came to a toboggan run, Benoit found a broken plastic sled. Though they were too big for it, and the slope was bare and muddy, he coaxed Jacks to climb in with him, and they slid a few yards and got stuck in the grass. Benoit pulled Jacks out, and they went bounding, tumbling, and colliding into one another down the hill. They landed in a muddy jumble, sore, but laughing.

The park filled up with people on their exercise routines—joggers, retired couples on walks, young men on racing bikes. Still, there were many secluded places along the way such that Jacks felt like he was on a private tour with Benoit. They weaved through monolithic Inuit sculptures—primitive, hulking icons of polar bears and statues of creatures that were half man and half bird. When they stopped at the Belvedere to look out on the panorama of Beaver Lake, Benoit's description of what it looked like in winter evoked vivid images: the throngs of ice skaters, horse-led sleighs on snowy trails along the shore, the lakeside meadow filled with people sculpting blocks of ice.

Jacks knew he should be getting back to Jonathan and Gabe. His cell phone groaned with missed calls and text messages. While Benoit stopped in a public bathroom, Jacks wrote back to his friends: "Met someone. Tell you all about it later."

At the Kondiaronk Lookout, where they could see downtown Montréal in the hazy morning and the St. Lawrence River in the distance, Benoit stood close behind Jacks and crossed his arms over Jacks' stomach. It felt good, but Jacks was suddenly aware of his dirty clothes and his unwashed body. He worried that Benoit might try to kiss him. He had thrown up last night, and the taste of it, mixed with coffee, was putrid. But Benoit just nuzzled against his neck, and nibbled on Jacks' ear, which tickled and made him laugh.

Benoit spoke quietly, "Will you be mine, Jackson?" His arms surrounded Jacks' chest tightly. Jacks shut his eyes and sank into the warmth of the embrace.

"I have a room in town," Benoit said. "You can get cleaned up. A change of clothes. Some breakfast?" His mouth wolfed playfully on Jacks' neck.

Jacks took Benoit's hand, and they headed down the slope into town. He thought it was strange that Benoit had slept in the park when he had a place to stay, but did it really matter? He had met someone who really liked him, and he really liked Benoit too.

Benoit's room was at a hostel near the park. They had strict rules against guests bringing in guests, but Benoit improvised a plan. He kept the front door clerk distracted with an obscure sightseeing question so Jacks could slip past the entry lounge with Benoit's key and hold open the locked door to the dormitories.

Inside, Benoit gave him a towel and showed him to the men's bathroom. The dingy, tan, tiled place was empty. Jacks peeled off his clothes and stepped into a curtained shower stall, rich with mildew. Still, the hot water washing away the grime from his body felt luxurious. He closed his eyes while the shower dowsed his head.

A presence filled up the space behind him. Jacks turned and jolted, and his hand jumped to cover his mouth. Benoit had slipped into the stall noiselessly. Jack's pinched-up feelings of caution, and surprise fell away as he took in Benoit's nakedness. His body was rangy and efficient. He had high broad shoulders, scruffy black hair on his lean stomach, and a trunk between his legs that showed his desire in captivating proportions. The green of his irises sparkled, somehow more brilliant in the darkened stall, and for a moment, his pupils looked elliptic. Then Benoit kissed Jacks forcefully, backing him up against the shower wall.

Jacks' vision closed up as Benoit's mouth devoured all parts of his body. He felt weightless, beyond himself, as though by the effects of a drug. His hand raked Benoit's hair as he stooped to Jacks' waist. Jacks teetered with exquisite tension, inhaled by Benoit, their bodies joined, the world stripped away. He raked Benoit's hair more roughly. A strange vision filled his head: hands morphing into claws and reaching out to gouge the wall. Benoit clasped the midsection of Jacks' back and scored lines down his skin. Jacks shuddered with a desperate groan. Breathing heavy, he squinted down at Benoit. His emerald eyes flared, still hungry.

For days, they had holed up in Benoit's room, making love, scarfing down take-out food, and staying up late watching Canadian programs on a tiny television set. Looking back, Jacks could call it a kind of forced captivity. Benoit's sex drive wore Jacks' body down so he was too weak and sore to work up the motivation to leave their bed and try to pick up where his life had left off. Though Jacks wasn't an unwilling participant. Complicated emotions came up when he thought about that span of time, but he didn't feel anger or blame toward Benoit.

More so, he wondered if there had been some way to modulate their relationship so they could have turned out as boyfriends instead of, well, whatever they had become. That first day, he could have given Benoit his phone number, made plans for a date and gone back to his motel. They could have kept the relationship going when Jacks returned to campus, visiting each other on weekends, waiting out the few months he had left to graduate, then they could make plans to live in the same city.

But patience and self-control weren't in Benoit's nature. It had to be all or nothing. Maybe Jacks had known that deep down, and that's why he stayed, never calling his friends, and never telling his parents where he had gone. He had been through hook-ups before, a few weeks of a "relationship" before, but never the experience of being with a man through days and nights with the sole preoccupation of pleasuring each other. Even in their quieter moments, they were constantly in contact, back to chest, holding one another, legs intertwined. Jacks had fallen for Benoit brutally and helplessly, and he was afraid of losing him. What motives possessed Benoit were harder to figure out.

There had been signs of what Benoit was, though they stood out more with the benefit of reflection. He never ate anything but meat and milk, pushing aside the vegetables in his Chinese take-out dinners with his chopsticks, and pulling apart his fast food cheeseburger to discard the bun. At the time, Jacks thought it was quirky and funny, and it was a minor discontent in their otherwise stellar sex life that Benoit's spunk tasted funky and sour because of his diet.

He had noticed also that Benoit was especially energetic, even restless, at nighttime. Jacks chalked it up to their homebody lifestyle, or maybe a delayed sleep pattern, which he had learned about in a bio-psychology class. Jacks would fall asleep in front of the TV around three or four in the morning and stir awake a few hours later to find Benoit opening the door with coffees and chocolate croissant from an early morning bakery. Benoit said he liked to go there when the pastries were fresh. Benoit also only drank the coffee, which was nearly white with cream.

The most suspicious things about Benoit had also been the easiest to overlook. He didn't have a job but always had money. So much the better for them to share their days and nights. He never spoke about family or friends and didn't even own a cell phone. Jacks wasn't interested in talking to his friends or his parents either, at least for now. Everything Benoit owned fit into a hiker's backpack. He had told Jacks his family was poor, and Jacks wasn't about to make him feel bad about it by asking questions. Besides, he had come into Benoit's life with nothing but the muddy clothes on his back. Sorting out what to do with their lives after Spring Break felt like it could wait a couple of days. Jacks' weekend in Montréal had stretched into the most amazing week of his life.

A couple of times on the evening news, Jacks caught a few seconds of a story about a late night jogger in Mount Royal Park being gored in the city by some mysterious attacker or a wild animal like a wolf. Benoit would always take the TV remote and switch to another channel.

On the Saturday before Jacks was to go back to Calverton, he was hit bodily with depression. He could tell Benoit felt it as well. Benoit was more drawn into himself than usual, and whenever their eyes crossed in his little room, he looked away, holding something in. They sat apart for several hours: Jacks on the bed, Benoit on the room's only chair, with the TV on and neither one watching it. Jacks broke the silence.

"You could come with me back to school."

Benoit's voice was cold and angry. "What do you think your housemates would say?"

"They wouldn't say anything. They've both had boyfriends stay over before."

"Boyfriends?" Benoit sneered.

"Yeah, boyfriends. And other people. Jonathan's little brother crashed with us for a week during the Pre-Freshman Summer Program."

"What am I supposed to do while you're going to class and hanging out with your friends?"

Benoit's words scalded Jacks. All Jacks was suggesting was Benoit come down to visit. Of course he would make time for him. But he had suddenly gone back in time to a being a scolded child who had no idea why he was being scolded.

"Why are you making this so difficult? We both want to be together, don't we?"

"You belong here." Benoit stood and paced around the bed.

"I would stay if it was possible. There's seven weeks left in the semester. I can come up weekends—"

"If you leave, you will never come back."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Try finding me again. You won't like what you see. Besides: I'll sense you from a mile away."

Questions crowded Jacks' head. Was Benoit a fugitive, running away from something, unable to cross the border? He didn't know how to ask these things without sounding like he thought Benoit was a dirt bag. Besides he knew what he felt in his heart.

"I don't care who you are, or what you've been through, or what you're going through. I want to be with you, Ben. I'm just saying I can't stay here, like this. It's not a permanent vacation."

"You want to be with me. I can see that. I give you a roof over your head. You eat my food all week. You lie around in my bed."

Jacks' voice pitched high and angry. "You asked me here. Didn't you?"

Benoit crossed the room and sat back down in his chair. He draped one leg over the other, and his dangling foot swayed back and forth.

"Come back tonight to where we met. After the park closes. With only what you wore the night I found you. Do it, if you want to be with me."

He stood, grabbed his jacket and strode out of the room.

That night, Jacks called Jonathan. He told him he met a guy named Benoit in Montréal and gave him the name of the hostel where they were staying.

Jonathan sounded worried. He wanted Benoit's full name and followed up with a string of questions about the guy. Jacks told him what he knew, which wasn't much, even though he and Benoit had basically been living together for a week. Jonathan's judgment hung in the silence on the other end of the line. He thought Jacks was crazy, disappearing for a week to shack up with a stranger. Jacks assured Jonathan he was safe, and that he'd be coming back to town soon.

As the hours ticked toward midnight, Jacks hedged on what to do. On his cell phone browser, he found a bus at five-thirty in the morning that would take him back to Calverton. He could head down to the station and wait for it. Pretend that Spring Break had been a dream. He would re-emerge to the real world, forgetting everything. He cried thinking about it, and he ached for Benoit. Maybe he should have asked more questions about the guy he was sleeping with, but Benoit was obviously in some kind of trouble. How could he walk out on him?

Near midnight, he left the hostel and started walking to Mount Royal Park.

It was just across the street—a boundless, darkened slope of land. A cold wave of fear hit Jacks. He crossed the park-side street, Avenue des Pins, talking to himself.

"What're you doing, Jacks? Meeting some guy you know practically nothing about, in a park, in a foreign country, in the middle of the night? Was the sex that good?"

"Yeah, it was," he answered, with a grin.

He took the path he and Benoit had come down that first day. There were signs posted about the park closing at dusk, but the place was much too big to keep people out of in any practical way. Soon into his trek, Jacks' heart was in his throat, and he was disoriented. Nothing looked familiar as he climbed up stairwells and followed meandering lanes. He took guesses at turns and pushed along briskly, with his shoulders tight and his eyes and ears attuned to his surroundings. The news stories of late night attacks lingered in his head.

Miraculously, he found a sign for Montagne des Jours, where Benoit had read him French poetry from engraved stone disks. It pointed up a paved road that disappeared under the darkness of trees. The abandoned cabin had to be in that direction. He sped up to a jog, keeping to the middle of the pavement.

Headlights glared on a bend of the road ahead of him. Jacks ducked onto the tree-lined shoulder. He watched a police car roll down the road toward him. There were searchlights pointing out the window to uncover the forested brush. Jacks flattened himself on the dirt, praying he wouldn't get caught.

The police car passed. Jacks stood and dusted himself off. It occurred to him that this was fucking insanity. When he found Benoit, Benoit was going to provide answers, no half responses or dramatic diversions. Jacks jogged back onto the road.

The road inclined, and as Jacks looked to one side, something struck him as familiar. There was a drop off, and a broad, forested expanse below. He wasn't one-hundred percent sure of it, but it looked like the vicinity of the remote cabin. He carefully descended a steep escarpment of leaves and mud.

At the bottom, there were no trails, and he was pretty much walking blind. But an instinct pulled at him. He wandered a little, stumbled down a little slope, and his sneakers scuffed an asphalt path. It had to lead to something. He took a moment to call up some inkling and decided to take the path heading to his left.

Rounding an incline, he saw light in the forest. He sprinted toward it. The cabin was at the end of the path, and it looked like it was burning from the inside out.

Frightening thoughts rushed through Jacks' head—an accident, or a suicide, arranged in spite—but nearing the cabin, things came into focus. It wasn't a raging fire. The windows of the cabin were aglow with some form of illumination, burning but contained.

Jacks swung open the door. The cabin's gutted interior had been decked out with hundreds upon hundreds of candles. There were blankets mounted in one corner, approximating a bed. The spicy scents of sandalwood and patchouli hung in the air. Jacks' gaze searched the space. Where was Benoit?

Warm, humid breath grazed Jacks' ear. "You came."

Benoit had somehow snuck up on him. His mouth sealed over Jacks', and his arms surrounded him. Jacks nudged Benoit's head away—a moment of refusal—but his body caved to the proximity to his lover, the arousal of surprise. His worries, his questions, his exasperation diffused.

They pulled each other's clothes off. Skin found skin. Sexes throbbed against bare stomachs and thighs. Benoit grasped Jacks' hard-on, as though claiming what was his. His chest bullied Jacks on his heels, through the room, until the blankets bunched up at Jacks' feet, and he toppled backward, braced by Benoit's arms, the nest of blankets beneath him.

Benoit shucked the sneakers and socks from Jacks' feet, and he took off his boots. Jacks gazed at the lusty nakedness of his lover's body and his yearning green eyes. Then Benoit was upon him, and Jacks ceded sight to sensation. His legs lifted and arced around Benoit's midsection. Benoit lapped and bit at his nipples, a seduction of pleasure and pain that plied Jacks to bend back from his knees, baring his bottom, wanting Benoit's touch, his mouth, his penetration. Benoit rubbed his stubbly beard against Jacks' chest, burning him like a brush fire, sending Jacks' head swooning. Benoit leaned back, astride Jacks' hips, and Jacks looked down at his chest. It was scored pink and dotted with tiny domes of blood.

A wave of panic hit Jacks, but before he could process what was going on, Benoit clasped Jacks' open palm against his heart. Benoit's eyes smoldered.

"Will you be mine, Jackson?"

Shocked and disoriented, Jacks joggled his head. Of course, he had come because he loved Benoit. But his heart pounded rapidly in fear of what sort of bond Benoit was implying.

Benoit molded Jacks' fingers like a claw and raked his hand down his chest. Jacks felt his nails scraping into Benoit's flesh—he hadn't cut them in over a week—and he tugged his hand away. Benoit caught him with both of his hands, and his thighs clamped around Jacks' sides.

"It's the only way we can be together."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You said you wanted to be with me."

Jacks wrestled to free his hand and twisted his body to get out from under Benoit. Benoit held him tight. There was a spark in his eyes that made Jacks think he was turned on by the struggle. The dark room, dappled in candlelight, suddenly felt like a scene from a satanic ritual rather than a romantic retreat.

"Stop. You're freaking me out."

"It's the only way: blood to blood. We'll be mated, forever."

"I don't know what you're talking about. You're scaring me."

"You know, Jackson."

Benoit hovered over Jacks, and in a blink, Jacks saw a black panther head glaring down at him. In another blink, the feline phantom was gone. Jacks struggled to get away. He freed his hand and tried to push up from the floor. Benoit slashed Jacks' exposed chest with his nails, gouging a bloody tear. On reflex, Jacks shoved Benoit from the shoulders, and in the ensuing grapple, his loose hand swiped wildly and a fingernail caught flesh below Benoit's collarbone.

Benoit pinned Jacks' hands above his head. Blood seeped from his wound. The room seemed to be spinning, and Jacks' terror had him paralyzed. Benoit sealed himself on top of Jacks, chest to chest, with his feet hooking Jacks' ankles.

Jacks fought and cried out, but Benoit held him solidly like an iron apron. He imagined their blood commingling and understood it was some sort of occultist rite. The meaning was too abstruse, the possibilities too farfetched to grasp. Two heartbeats drummed in his ears—a syncopated rhythm—his quickening, Benoit's calm and steady. Gradually, the rapid contractions of Jacks' heart slowed down as Benoit's pulsing chest lulled him into a steady meter. He felt lightheaded and weak. A feline purr reverberated through his body, and then he blacked out.

# New York City—Present Day

Jacks and Benoit skulked through the wooded hill. They were coming up to the drop-off above Harlem Meer. Jacks could feel the breeze travelling from the open space and smell the gamey scent of the ducks below, their quarry. A primal thrill rose up from his core. He envisioned his jaws clamping down on prey, its fruitless struggle to escape, its fluttering life snuffed out. Jacks wondered if Benoit would lead him on a stealthy descent to the banks of the Meer or if they would charge down on the birds all at once. Then Benoit stopped short of the escarpment and retook a different approach through the woods.

Jacks was confused. He followed a few paces behind.

They came up to a dusky clearing, and Benoit crouched in the brush of the periphery, still as a statue. On a quick scan, Jacks couldn't make out anything in the open space, but a waft of unwashed clothes and body odor traveled to his olfactory senses. He peered deeper into the gap in the woods, and at the opposite end, he spotted the source: two men, their faces blackened with grime, camped out with a ramshackle assortment of shopping bags. They were taking slugs from a whiskey bottle.

Jacks' chest tightened. He watched, dumbstruck, as Benoit crept forward, low to the ground, toward the homeless men.

He telepathed, urgently. "No."

Benoit glanced back with a forbidding scowl. One of the men stood and walked a few swaying steps into the woods. Jacks' heard a fly unzip. The black panther's gaze was trained on the man. He sprung toward him.

Jacks leapt after Benoit and caught him with his two paws by the back. They tumbled together, snarling. The man who was relieving himself swung around to the sight. He screamed and ran into the woods. His companion slid back on the ground. He was too shocked or too drunk to get up on his feet.

Benoit shook away from Jacks. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not hunting people."

Benoit's paw clobbered Jacks' muzzle. Jacks backed away, stinging.

"You need to learn."

Benoit turned his attention to the man on the ground, who was watching their interaction, paralyzed.

"You're a big kitty, aren't you?"

A low growl, shuddering with violence, answered back.

The man rooted through a plastic bag. He stammered: "You want something to eat? I've got beef jerky here."

Like a menacing shadow, Benoit buried the man beneath his weight, and the homeless man was gone except for his excruciating shrieks from the attack. Jacks lunged to intervene, but it was too late. Benoit grappled his victim belly-down, and his bone-crushing jaws clamped on the man's neck and shook him.

Blood spouted, a raw, grisly scent. Carnal urges sliced through Jacks, pulling him to join in the kill. A cold wave of shame and fear stopped him. How could he be a bystander to such an atrocious act, and even think about participating in it? Jacks gripped Benoit's body with his mouth and claws to drag him off the man. Benoit released the man's limp body and fought Jacks off in a spinning wrangle. Jacks rolled out of their tangle and righted himself.

Benoit went back to his prey, pawing the man's body over a few times to make sure he was dead. He looked back at Jacks. His muzzle was wet with blood, and his eyes glinted with pride.

Jacks felt himself shrinking as though the world was pressing in on him from every direction. He should have acted sooner and done something to stop Benoit. Now a man was dead, and what could he do? Go to the police?

Benoit stared at him as though to break Jacks' will. Jacks searched Benoit's eyes. There was no remorse, no hesitation over what he had done. It was a murder simply for sport, and like the lifting of a glamour, he saw Benoit anew—a monster capable of a million hideous deeds. Jacks sprung off into the woods.

# Montréal—Three Months Earlier

When Jacks had stirred awake in the cabin at Mount Royal Park, he had wondered for a moment if everything had been a dream. The violent struggle with Benoit echoed faintly in his mind. But there was no pain in his body to verify that the fight had happened. Could he have freaked out and imagined things? He hoped so, considering the alternative.

Candles glowed around the room. Everything looked peaceful. Maybe an hour had passed since he had lain down to sleep. It could have been only minutes.

In a shadowy corner on the opposite side of the cabin, Jacks glimpsed a terrifying silhouette. There was an enormous black cat with fearsome, iridescent green eyes. It was half a man's height at its shoulders and easily six feet long.

Activated by their mutual discovery, the cat swayed toward him. Jacks' lungs shrunk up, and he held himself completely still. His mind raced. Should he make a break for it or play dead on the hope that it would lose interest and go away? He watched the dangerous beast, trying to judge its intention. Its eyes were fastened on him though he couldn't say if it took him for a mild curiosity or dinner. He heard a voice.

"It's me, Jackson."

Jacks swung around, searching for Benoit. He sounded so near.

"It's me," Benoit's voice repeated.

The cat came up an arm's length from Jacks and sat on its haunches with its big fore legs pitted in front of him. Instinctively, Jacks felt it. Benoit was in there.

He gazed into the cat's big eyes, which were glassy at their proximity. A reflection terrified him: a feline head with pointed ears. Jacks looked down at his hands and saw bushy paws. A scream rose up from his chest, and a bestial howl came out. He stood and turned around himself in a panic. He had a tail. He could see his balls, but his penis had receded beneath the fur and skin between his hind legs. He was a golden mountain lion.

Benoit gazed at him steadily. "You're beautiful."

The ritual flooded back to Jacks: the slashing of skin, Benoit's weight pressing down on him, the mixture of their blood. He thought the words and heard his own disbelieving voice.

"What did you do to me?"

"I made you better. So we will be the same. You won't believe what you can do."

"I want to go back to what I was. Change me back. I didn't want this."

"You'll be able to change in time. You'll be able to go back and forth. It's a gift, Jackson. There are very few of us."

It didn't feel like a gift to Jacks. It was an illusion, or a nightmare, or worst of all, he had completely lost his mind. He couldn't get enough air into his chest. He was panting with a big tongue lolling out of his mouth. Everything about his new self was horrifying and foreign.

Benoit nudged his muzzle against Jacks' furry chin. A scratchy tongue lapped beneath his ears. Jacks shirked away.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," Benoit said. "We are nature at its finest. A superior state of being."

Jacks glared at him coldly. "You should have told me what you were."

Benoit's eyes flared and narrowed. "What would you have done?"

There was an answer in Jacks' head, but he was ashamed of it. "You should have given me a choice."

"I gave you a choice. You didn't have to come to meet me tonight."

Jacks' thoughts spun and tangled. He hadn't known what meeting Benoit meant. Or had he been fooling himself? There had been signs and suspicions, but he hadn't thought much about them because he wanted so badly for things to work out with Benoit. He wanted to believe Benoit really thought he was important and special. Maybe, crazy as it sounded, this was Benoit's way of showing him exactly that.

Another painful realization hit him. How was he going to live as a person trapped in a cat's body? Benoit was the only person who understood how this new existence worked. He was the only person who could help him.

Jacks sloughed onto his side, staring away unfocused, feeling clobbered. Benoit clawed up a spot in the blankets next to him and lay down, leaning his back into Jacks' underbelly.

"The world is ours, Jackson. You don't need your old life anymore. Stay with me, and I will always protect you."

Jacks closed his eyes. He couldn't think anymore, and his body just wanted to go to sleep. He prayed that what Benoit said was true.

#

The next day had rushed by. Waking in the morning, back to his human self, Jacks had been seized by a scary reckoning. He couldn't return to school, and there had been that phone call to Jonathan. A missing persons report and international police cooperation would lead to a search for him and Benoit in Montréal. People, both his friends and strangers, would discover what they were, and what would happen then? An inferno of media sensationalism and horror? They needed to travel somewhere far and somewhere they could blend in anonymously. Jacks suggested New York City. Benoit agreed. He said he knew his way around New York and how they could keep a low profile.

They packed up Benoit's things and left the hostel by noon, and they were on a train across the border before dinner time.

As they neared the stop for Calverton, Jacks told Benoit they were getting off. Before he left his old life behind him, he wanted a few of his belongings: his iPod, his laptop, a big, grey wool sweater he always wore when he wanted to feel comfortable, and a pair of designer jeans that had chalked up a hefty credit card bill.

Benoit looked at Jacks like he was insane. "That's not a good idea."

"I don't care. You got what you wanted. Now it's my turn."

He surprised himself by how forceful it came out. Benoit was pissed, but he followed Jacks off the train.

Jacks knew they had to avoid sightings or awkward conversations with his housemates. They needed to get into his room, get out, and go on their way. He led Benoit off the country highway to Calverton and through the fields of farmland and wooded stretches that surrounded the college town.

It was a long trek under darkening skies, but the new attunement of Jacks' senses laid bare what had once been obscure and bewildering. His eyes could penetrate the night. The familiar smells and sounds of campus pointed him in the right direction—the furnace-heated dormitories, the frat houses redolent with beer, a faint teenaged commotion here and there, the scent of people.

They skulked through the backyards of the houses on his block and drew up by some bushes behind his home.

There was light in the first floor bay window of the fire-trap old Colonial, and pop music and a television blared from inside. A Sunday night. The guys were home, probably with some friends over.

Benoit looked at Jacks impatiently. Jacks studied the house. He had never considered it before, but there was a clear climb from the back porch railing to the porch roof and around the corner of the house to his second floor bedroom window. His slumlord had never installed a storm panel or fixed the double-hung window guard.

"Just stay here," he told Benoit.

Jacks approached the house, weaving through the shadowy parts of the yard, on some sort of auto-pilot mode. His body knew to distribute its weight so his steps were soundless, to halt and wait out sounds of movement from the kitchen adjoining the porch, to scamper quickly behind the railing. His arms and legs were supercharged with catlike agility. He scaled the porch and kept a light step on its creaky roof. He reached for the window ledge to his bedroom, raised his upper body to its height, and found a bracing position for his feet with the toes of his sneakers lodged at an angle on the house's wood siding. The height of his perch—twelve feet or more—barely registered as a danger.

He peered through the window into the darkened room. A familiar scene spread out in front of him: his cluttered computer desk where he had left his laptop charging, his overflowing laundry bag, his faded, wood-paneled chest of drawers, and—as luck would have it—the back pack he had taken on the trip to Montréal, where he had left his iPod. His housemates must have brought it back and put it in his room.

He glanced at his bed and jolted, narrowly recovering his footing. There was shadowy, muted movement going on, and as he zoned in, he saw two figures shuddering together, joined from buttocks to hips. Jacks recognized the long neck and shaggy head of Gabe in the driver's position. Gabe was fucking some guy in his bed?

Anger tore at Jacks. He wanted to pound his fists against the glass. His better sense arrested him. How was he going to get his stuff while this was going on?

A reckless plan occurred to him. He wasn't going to let some rude housemate drama ruin his plans—Gabe seizing the opportunity to bag some dude in a place where Jonathan wouldn't catch him, or whatever. Jacks didn't understand their on again/off again relationship, and now he was even more annoyed that its vagaries had invaded his space. His hands felt along the bottom edge of the window, and carefully, patiently, he slid up the lower panel until the top of it caught on the warped window frame. There was an opening of two feet or so for him to duck inside. He pulled half of his body through the window.

Raunchy odors and stale marijuana smoke assailed his nose. The guys were caught up with what they were doing and unaware of the open window.

He wriggled the rest of his body over the window ledge and landed in a contorted position on the floor, overestimating just how stealthy he could be. Gabe turned to the window, and his body froze. His anonymous trick glanced over too. Jacks had felt a tickle of pressure deep inside his gut ever since he had transformed into a mountain lion back in Montréal. Concentrating on that achy spot, Jacks bore down on his diaphragm to summon his cat self. In the span of heartbeats, his skull and skeleton lengthened, bent and curved. His musculature broadened, and he was crouched on four paws with fur rustling through his back threateningly. He fixed in on the two young men and raised his voice into a snarl.

They scrambled to the far side of the bed, muttered disbelieving swear words, and bolted out the nearby door. Now, Jacks had to gather what he had come for. He grabbed the strap of his backpack with his mouth and looked at his laptop. There was no way to pack it quickly with his mouth and short forelimbs. Nor was he able to sort through his dresser for the clothes he wanted. There wasn't time to transform back to his human self. He needed to make a quick getaway without being recognized. The backpack had some going-out clothes, a few changes of underwear and his toiletries. It would have to do.

Beyond the bedroom, the music cut off. Jacks heard a frenzied conversation coming from the first floor.

"A goddamn mountain lion came through the window."

"Whoa—you're freakin' out."

"We both saw it. In Jacks' room. We've gotta call the cops, or animal control or something."

"Why are you guys naked?"

Jacks didn't stay to hear the rest. He secured the pack in his jaws, climbed out the window, and jumped down to the ground. He galloped back to Benoit's hiding spot.

Benoit grinned, betraying a hint of pride.

"Let's go," Jacks telepathed.

Benoit reared into a panther, and they stampeded through the backwoods toward the train station.

# New York City—Present Day

Jacks stood in the recess of an apartment building entrance, staring at the neon bodega sign across the street. Bella squirmed in his arms. She wasn't happy about being wrenched away from her bed at the factory, but he couldn't leave her there.

Since running away from Benoit in the park, the question of what to do had been thundering in Jacks' brain. He hadn't come up with any ideas for the long term, though he had felt with certainty, he had to leave Benoit. He couldn't live with a murderer. He couldn't risk the possibility that Benoit would convince him to stay. Deep down, Jacks didn't trust himself. He had felt the urge to kill, and Benoit, both his lover and his mentor, wanted to take that instinct further, turning him into a horrible creature. Maybe it was cowardly, but running away, at least to have some time to clear his head, seemed like the only answer.

Then came the decision to take Bella with him. In part, it was selfish. He needed to bring someone familiar along with him as his ventured out to the strange and scary city. But more than that, Jacks was the one who had fed her and treated her with affection, while Benoit merely lorded over her. In the whole world, Jacks and Bella only had each other. Jacks had shifted back to his human form, grabbed his backpack of clothes, and carried the cat away.

They had ended up at the only place he could think of going. Jacks knew nobody in New York City. He had no money, and how was he supposed to keep track of Bella living on the street? Jacks grooved soft lines down Bella's back to calm her. He inhaled and exhaled a long breath. Then he crossed the street and entered the bodega.

A hail of bullets, sirens, and screeching cars travelled from the cashier counter. Farzan must have been watching some action flick on his portable movie player. Jacks walked up to the counter, trying to look casual.

Farzan's eyes were heavy with fatigue. It was five-thirty in the morning, the tail end of his overnight shift. He glanced at Jacks, and his face lit up with surprise and a big smile.

"Twice in one night. What did I do to deserve such luck?" he said. He gestured to the movie player. "You like Al Pacino? This is a classic. Serpico."

As Farzan took account of Jacks, he drew back, and his face twisted up. There was a swollen scratch below his eye from his tussle with Benoit. There was an over-packed knapsack weighing down his shoulder. Then, of course, there was the tiger-striped cat he was holding. Jacks looked down at his feet.

"What happened?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't have any place to go."

Jacks could feel Farzan's heavy gaze on him. His eyes burned. When he spoke, it came out stunted.

"There was a fight. With my boyfriend."

Farzan walked around the counter, locked the door and flipped over the "Closed" sign.

Jacks let Bella jump down to the floor so she could roam free. She scurried down a grocery aisle, stopping to take notice of her surroundings along the way.

Farzan stood in front of Jacks, trying to meet his downturned gaze.

"He hurt you?"

Jacks didn't know how to answer.

"If he's abusing you, you should report it. We'll call the police. There's a domestic violence unit."

"It's not like that," Jacks said. How could he explain? "I started the fight. And the problem is we were living together."

Farzan frowned. "I'm not sure I believe you."

"Then don't believe me. I'll get out of your way." Jacks wandered down the aisle to retrieve Bella. She had taken off to some hiding place. He felt lousy about pulling her from one place to the next, but what could he do?

"Where will you go?" Farzan called after him.

"I don't know. Do they allow cats at homeless shelters?"

"No. But they take them at the A.S.P.C.A."

Bella was crouched down low behind a row of cereal boxes. Jacks approached her cautiously and scooped her up in his arms.

"This one's not going to any jail for cats." He started back to the front of the bodega where Farzan stood solidly in front of the door.

"Why did you come here if you don't want help?"

"I thought maybe I could hang out here a little while. Just until morning. When I can call some people."

"Who are you going to call?"

"I've got some friends upstate. But I don't want to wake them up in the middle of the night with my stupid drama."

"If they're your friends, they shouldn't care."

"It's been awhile since they heard from me."

"Anyway, it's not going to work."

Jacks looked up at Farzan, startled.

"My father takes over the shop at six. He's not anywhere near as charitable as me."

Jacks thought about all night diners. But he couldn't bring Bella there, and he had no money. The train station was a long walk downtown. He was tired. Then again, there wasn't anything better to do.

Farzan sighed. "I will probably regret this for the rest of my life," he said. "I've got the basement of my parents' house. You can get cleaned up and call your friends in the morning. Just keep your cat out of my comic books."

Jacks looked at him with a lopsided grin. Farzan shrugged, earnestly indignant. "I've got a collection of over one thousand titles. Some of them are worth big money."

Showered, with a bath towel wrapped around his waist, Jacks sat on Farzan's faded microfiber sofa, staring at the cordless phone in his hand. A rusty squeak and then a fizz traveled from the adjoining bathroom where Farzan was washing up. Morning light from the basement windows cast the cluttered apartment in swaths of gold. Bella had gone off exploring the landscape of second-hand furniture, bookshelves, and polyester carpeting.

Jacks couldn't decide whether or not to call Jonathan. He felt in his heart that Jonathan would do what he could to help him, wiring him some money so he could get on his feet. But there would be so many questions Jacks wasn't prepared to answer, and it wasn't fair to Jonathan to lie to him, or to ask him to keep their conversation secret.

Time seemed to stand still while he wrestled with these things, and he was startled when the bathroom door creaked open. A haze of men's grooming products spread into the living space, and Farzan came out of the bathroom. Jacks quickly set the phone on the coffee table in front of him as though he had just finished a call.

There was an awkward moment. They were alone, each with only a towel covering himself up. Farzan's cheeks flushed, and he crossed his arms in front of his bare, skinny torso.

"Did you call your friends?"

"Yeah," Jacks said. "No answer."

"They will have this phone number now. That's good. They will call you back." He travelled to the bedroom and out of sight.

Jacks ached. How could he lie to Farzan again and again? He was sick of all of his lying and avoidance, and angry at himself for his whole fucked-up situation. He had a backpack full of clothes, but they were all unwashed. Changing into another damp, grimy outfit would be disgusting.

Farzan came back into the room wearing an untucked button-down shirt and a pair of jeans. He had some sort of first aid kit in his hands, and he sat down next to Jacks and zeroed in on the scratch across his face.

"This looks more like the work of your cat than your boyfriend."

Jacks' breath squelched. Farzan continued looking him over. There was a brown, puffy spot on one side of Jacks' ribcage.

"You have a mild contusion," Farzan said. His hands lifted from his lap, and he looked to Jacks for his consent. Jacks leaned back into the couch to let him better examine the wound. Farzan's fingers pressed lightly around it. Jacks grimaced.

"It hurts?"

"Yes."

"I don't think anything is broken. You would be in a lot more pain." Farzan opened up his kit, snapped on latex gloves and retrieved an alcohol swab for the scratch. "This is to clean out the scratch, to prevent infection," he said. "There is more bacteria and fungus under most fingernails than on a toilet seat."

He started working on Jacks' face. The alcohol stung like acid, but Jacks gritted through it. He wanted to be a good patient for Farzan.

"Can I ask you a question?" Jacks said.

"I've got three years to go with my degree, but I'm fully insured for malpractice through the University."

"No, not that. I wanted to know, why are you being so nice to me?"

"Overcompensation."

Jacks' face scrunched up.

"It's the exertion of effort to compensate for a perceived physical or psychological defect. In my case, the perceived defect is being gay in a Persian family. I'm the only one of three brothers who completed college. One of them is a drug addict. The other is unemployed and has three kids by three different women. But somehow I'm the family disgrace."

"That's ridiculous. They should be proud of you."

"Maybe they will be some day. In the meantime, I'm building up my hasanat by performing good deeds. It's like karma for Muslims."

Jacks stirred with mixed feelings. He was grateful for Farzan's kindness, but he didn't like being thought of as a charity case.

Farzan touched some antibiotic cream onto the scratch. He set down his supplies, looked over his work favorably, and pulled off his gloves.

"That doesn't really answer your question, though."

Jacks glanced at him.

"When you came into my father's shop, you treated me like a human being. Not some terrorist or crooked Arab trying to cheat you out of money. Anyway, I had a good feeling about you since the day we met. If you weren't already taken, I would have full-on seduced you with my Middle Eastern charms." He stood and started toward the bedroom to return the kit. He stopped short. "Don't worry. I can control my impulses. I had plenty of practice with that going to an all-boys Muslim school."

Jacks grinned, and Farzan went into his room. When he re-emerged, he had a jacket and a messenger bag for his laptop and books.

"I get back from classes around six. There's food in the fridge and tuna in the cupboard for your cat. Answer the door at your own risk. If my mother finds you, she'll likely have you moving furniture around the house and running errands for her."

Jacks reached for his backpack and rooted through it. He brought out his iPod and handed it to Farzan.

"The Death Cab for Cutie track," he explained.

Farzan looked at the device for a moment, puzzled, and then he pocketed it. "Thanks."

When Farzan left, Jacks picked up the phone again. He called 311 and got transferred to an anonymous tips hotline at the police department.

The woman on the other end of the line took down his report about witnessing a homeless man being attacked by a panther in Central Park last night. Crazy as he knew it sounded, she handled it matter-of-fact, whether she was used to outlandish reports or desensitized to her job. She told Jacks the police would check out the site, so he figured at least they would find the man's body. Then, maybe, they would put more officers in the park, which would deter Benoit from hunting, and maybe even scare him away completely.

But what if the police caught Benoit? He might get hurt or locked up in prison for the rest of his life. Jacks had placed in danger the only person who truly knew him. How was he going to make it on his own as a freak of nature, a fugitive from everyone, and everything familiar?

He rounded up Bella from a sunbathing spot beneath a window and lay on the couch with the cat on his chest. He rubbed her back the way she liked it. Still, Bella's green eyes glared at him in annoyance.

"I know," he said. "But what else was I supposed to do?"

# Calverton, New York—Three Months Earlier

After his stunt getting his backpack from his house, Jacks had been bursting with questions about being a werecat. Overnight, on the Calverton train station platform, while they waited for the next departure to New York City, Benoit filled in some blanks.

"Our ancestry goes back to the ancient world, when cults in Africa, Asia and Central America worshipped the great cat. Werejagaurs trace our origins to an Olmec King from the Yucatan who performed ritual sacrifices of young warriors, trying to merge their life-force with martyred felines.

"His necromancy didn't work, but he was so determined to emulate the jaguar god, he killed his favorite beast, laid it at the god's altar and plunged a dagger into his own heart so he would die beside it. He was said to have been reborn with the shape-shifting magic. Little was recorded about and what happened to him, but some centuries later, in the same region, the Aztecs had an unstoppable army of jaguar-warriors."

"How did you become a werejaguar?" Jacks said.

"It was a long time ago, when I was sixteen. My father was French, but we travelled the Americas during my childhood. He had a hand in a little of everything, running goods from Guyana through the Caribbean Islands and all the way up the Atlantic to Québec. We were staying on a sugar plantation near Cayenne when the Portuguese and British landed to take the city. We ran off into the countryside to escape the bloodshed. It was nighttime. It was chaos. They were burning everything in town. I got separated from my father, and I wandered deep into the rainforest looking for him."

Jacks hadn't been the best student in history class, but he knew a conflict between the France, Portugal and Great Britain placed Benoit's story something like two hundred years ago.

"You're talking about colonial times."

Benoit nodded. The space inside Jacks' head expanded. How could Benoit have lived so long? There were some fine wrinkles in the corner of his eyes, but if they indicated something like a lifeline, he had one groove for every fifty years. He looked like he was in his late twenties, or early thirties at the most. Could it be another miracle of the werecat transformation? Jacks' breath halted, waiting to hear the details of Benoit's story.

"While I was wandering that night, there was a she-jaguar stalking me, though I didn't know it at the time. She must have been very old, from the glory days of the Aztecs. The Europeans had conquered the native people with their gunpowder and their missionaries. There were very few of her kind left.

"Near daybreak, she showed herself to me when I was cornered on the bank of a river. Her spotted muzzle was big enough to wrap around my head, and she was so near she could close the space between us in seconds. I couldn't move, even if there had been time or a place for me to go. I had never seen such a powerful animal.

"She must have known enough to sort me out from the foreign men who would kill her for her pelt. Maybe she needed to pass along the gift to somebody before she died or maybe she felt something more for me. I'll never know. After she attacked me and slashed her chest, my father and a group of men gained up on us, following my screams. They shot her, and then stood around in disbelief as her feline body transformed into a young Aztec woman. They buried her by the river. We never spoke about what we saw again."

"How did you survive all this time?"

"My father managed to work out some business dealings with the Portuguese, and we migrated back to Québec. After what happened to me, he vowed to never return to South America. He settled into the fur trade, which was very profitable. We had a house and a shop on Rue du Petit Champlain, among the wealthiest residents of Québec City. Over the years, I came to know my feline nature, but my father turned a blind eye to the changes I was undergoing. He blamed himself for losing track of me in the rainforest, and I don't think he could bear to face what had happened to me."

"What about your mother?"

"I never knew her. My father said she died in childbirth, some native girl from Guyana. He said I should always say she was French to avoid people's prejudices. I was his only son. He wanted to make certain there would be no issue about his holdings passing to me. The inheritance came sooner than either of us had imagined. Our fourth winter in Québec, he died of pneumonia."

Benoit's face was hard. Jacks let a moment pass in silence. But he couldn't keep the questions inside him contained for long. "What happened to the business?"

"I kept my father's trade going for awhile, but while my friends and clients grew older, I wasn't changing through the years. I had to disappear from people who knew me. I sold off everything and placed funds in foreign bank accounts. I traveled around the world, never staying in one place for more than ten years at a time. I became bored with it after awhile, which is why I returned to Québec. It was the closest thing to home for me."

Jacks' hand interlaced with Benoit's as he thought about his remarkable past, and the profound accident of the two of them meeting in Mount Royal Park.

"How did you figure it out—what it meant to be a werecat, and all this history?"

"The information is out there if you weed through all the nonsense about witches and demonic possession. I had decades to study it. I visited Aztec ruins in Mexico and spoke with Zapotec mystics. I lived with the Ashanti People who worship the leopard in West Africa. In Masharata, India, there are villagers who have knowledge of the magic through the cult of Waghia, the Lord of Tigers. I realized what that she-jaguar did to me wasn't a curse. It was the greatest gift anyone could give me."

"Why did you choose to give it to with me?"

Benoit's hand tensed and gradually relaxed. "I sensed in you someone who could be my mate."

Jacks' words tripped over themselves. "What...how?"

"Panthers are solitary, but even we need companionship. Especially when we grow older, and we see that a life without connection is empty. I wasn't looking for a mate, but I found you in the park that night, and I felt your link to the past, a miracle really. There are very few who are suited for the transformation."

Jacks glossed over his last words, unsure of what he was saying. Instead he asked: "Were there others—" He fumbled for the phrasing. "You converted?"

There was a glimmer in Benoit's eyes. "There was another many years ago." His voice trailed off. Jacks gazed at him expectantly.

"I had a lover in Vietnam."

Jacks squeezed Benoit's ribs, teasing out more information.

Benoit glared at him in reproach. "You're already showing your feline jealousy."

Jacks laughed. "I want to know about your Vietnamese lover."

"He was handsome, and graceful, and when he reared he became the most magnificent orange and black striped tiger."

Jacks drew into himself. How did he measure up to a tiger? Benoit nuzzled against his neck.

"But he wasn't loyal to me."

"Why are you a panther and I'm a mountain lion?"

Benoit shrugged. "The traces of the old spiritual traditions open up our potential. My maternal ancestors had their roots in the Amazon people. Yours must descend from North America. The Ho-Chunk and Cheyenne tribes hold the cougar with great esteem."

Jacks thought on it. He had always been told he was a mutt of German and English heritage, but he had seen in his mother's box of old photographs an old-fashioned portrait of his great-grandmother. She had long, straight hair, high cheekbones and a darker complexion, like a Native American. It had always been a curiosity, though his mother had said nothing about the photo and buried it beneath the others in her scrapbook box. Now, that discovery rang through Jacks with much more meaning. It was possible he carried Native blood from a branch of his family tree.

The idea grew inside him. His cougar nature might be part of his ancestry, a tradition of cat mysticism, passed down through an immutable bond. He had never felt like he was part of any religion, or any group for that matter. In fact, something inside him had always resisted the idea of being part of a community, and he wondered at that moment if it could be some lost spirit within him, refusing convention, wanting something more that would root him in the world. His mind roamed broader, considering the concept of a collective soul, and thrumming vagaries, the inheritance of ancestral wounds, and drawing strength from one's forefathers.

In a moment, he was rearing. His feline eyes stared up at the star-speckled sky, and he could trace the lines of many constellations. They gradually came into focus as an expansive plane of images he had never seen before in the stars. A soaring falcon, a rattlesnake, the round head of a bear. There among them was a proud cougar, standing on its hind legs, looking down on him.

The springtime night was fresh and crisp. Jacks leapt down to the train tracks. His muscular limbs propelled him forward at an unbreakable pace. He slackened his jaw, the air filling up his lungs, feeling free.

# New York City—Present Day

When Jacks woke up, his head hummed happily with a sleepy residue of possibility. He took account of his surroundings with some dissonance, and gradually a pinch of panic. Farzan's basement apartment was cloaked in darkness. The casement windows were pitch black. A single patina of light traveled from the adjoining kitchen. He had fallen asleep on the couch and slept away the entire day. How did that happen? He had meant to make some calls, figure out some things, namely what he was going to do with his life.

Farzan must have covered him with a hand-knit woolen quilt. Jacks drew the covering over his bare shoulders and went to explore the kitchen.

There was a Tupperware bowl on a Formica table. Beneath the bowl was a handwritten note on college stationery. Jacks slid out the note to read it.

Didn't want to wake you. This is chicken kabobs and rice. I know you prefer hot dogs, but I only restock them on Tuesdays. (Ha, ha). You can heat up your dinner in the microwave: one minute and thirty seconds, stir, then one more minute. There's juice and milk in the fridge. Your scratch should be patted clean with alcohol, and re-apply the antibiotic cream one more time. (Supplies are laid out in the bathroom).

I'm at the store overnight. See you in the morning.

Farzan

P.S. I hope you heard from your friends.

Jacks noticed in the corner of the kitchen there was a litter pan and plastic kitty bowls with food and water for Bella. Farzan was heaven-sent. Jacks swore to himself he would repay him somehow.

His gaze wandered to the kitchen window. Over countertops and cabinets, Bella had found a perch up there on the narrow, basement sill. Her tail swung, and she mewed against the glass. She was focused intently on something outside.

As Jacks remembered, the window faced the backyard. They had come in that way in the morning. There was a stairwell to the apartment door, and it opened into the kitchen.

The door rattled. Jacks jolted and froze. Someone was jerking the locked door knob and pushing against the frame. The curtain panels over the window pane quivered in distress. Jacks stepped lightly to the door at an angle, trying to perceive the visitor in the sliver gap between the curtains.

"Jacks, I know you're in there."

An icicle shot down Jacks' spine. It was Benoit's voice. He could wake up the entire house. Farzan's parents could call the cops. Jacks sensed danger in a confrontation, but his greater worry was bringing the tornado of his life into Farzan's home. He had to calm Benoit down. There was a button lock on the door knob. He released it and opened the door.

Benoit's face was downcast and grim, and his shoulders were hunched, like a bull ready to horn its way in.

"You're coming home," he said.

Jacks stood aside. Benoit paced the kitchen aggressively. Bella jumped down from the window to greet him, and Jacks watched the exchange, on edge, worried about Benoit's temperament. Benoit broke his stride, and the cat rubbed the sides of her muzzle against his black combat boots. Mercifully, she appeared to have a mollifying effect on him.

"You shouldn't have left."

"What choice did I have?"

Benoit looked at the litter pan and the bowls on the floor. His face wrenched painfully. "This is how you want Bella to live?"

"How did you find me?"

Benoit blustered out a snort. "I thought you would go upstate, or to your parents. But your scent lingered in the city. I took subway trains and buses and went on foot to track you here."

"Why, Benoit?"

"You belong with me."

A familiar pull reached into Jacks. Benoit's words, his simple certainty, could swallow him up, and make him believe that their love and their attraction to each other was all that mattered. Jacks grasped for the painful memory of Benoit's panther mouth covered in blood.

"We're not the same. You showed me that last night. I won't kill people for sport."

"You're young. You'll learn. You think you're still one of them." Benoit swaggered over, raked his fingers through Jacks' thick hair, and grabbed a tuft by the nape of Jack's neck in his fist. A shy sensuality worked through Jacks, though he tried to resist it. Benoit's stubbly chin nuzzled against his cheeks, and his teeth closed over his ear. Jacks broke away from him.

"I am one of them."

"You can blend in. But our spirits are wild, Jacks. You'll understand that with time and experience."

"I don't understand why you have to hunt people."

"I think you do."

His green eyes stabbed into Jacks, reaching a place Jacks had buried after that night at the Harlem Meer. Jacks had felt that instinct to kill just because he could, a clawing urge to root out weaker creatures and destroy them, a thrill that lifted him beyond himself, exalting in his power to snuff out life. But couldn't that be controlled, or redirected to other prey? Benoit's energy was looser now. Jacks ventured to say something bold.

"Something died in me last night when I saw you kill that man. It's over, Ben. I can't be with you."

Benoit backed off, as though stricken. The sight of it tore at Jacks. He had never seen Benoit so unmasked, so vulnerable. He had never hurt someone so deeply before.

"I made you," Benoit said.

"You don't own me."

"I gave you everything."

"That's not true. I'm still me, Ben. And I don't want to live like this. I can't hide in abandoned buildings. I can't hurt innocent people. If that's what it means to be with you, I can't do it."

Benoit staggered to the kitchen table, took account of Farzan's written note, and swatted the Tupperware bowl with such force that it rebounded from the counter and flew clear across to the other side of the kitchen floor.

"This is why. He turned you against me."

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Did you go crying to him after our fight? Did he say you'd be better off with him? Of course, he told you what you wanted to hear. He wants you for himself."

"You're talking crazy. I needed a place to stay. He doesn't know anything about us."

"Where is he?" Benoit swerved through the apartment. He found the bedroom door and threw it open.

"He's not here," Jacks called after him.

Benoit tramped back to the kitchen. "He thinks he can get between us. He sees your will is weak. He's a distraction. He needs to be gotten rid of."

Jacks stood firmly by the door. "No."

Benoit shoved past him. In a blink, he reared into black, muscled hide and sprung away into the night.

#

Jacks started dialing 911 then threw down the phone. He knew Benoit could cover ground quickly. What if the cops didn't respond in time? What if they couldn't subdue Benoit and shot him?

Jacks realized he had set in motion an unfathomable disaster. Benoit would gore and rip apart Farzan, who had taken Jacks in, asking for nothing in return, purely motivated by goodwill and trust. In his blind, jealous rage, Benoit would be equally in danger if Farzan had time to hit a panic button in the store, or if there were onlookers to call the authorities. Benoit would be gunned down either during or after the attack. Jacks had never wanted Benoit to be killed. How would he live with himself, being responsible for the destruction of either life?

Jacks spotted, hanging on a nail by the door, a key ring from a Pontiac dealership. Farzan had taken his own car to work, but maybe the key was for another one, belonging to his father? It was overstepping boundaries by a long shot to take it, but how else could Jacks make it to the bodega before Benoit?

He threw on some clothes, grabbed the key and went outside to find the car.

A black sedan was parked in the driveway, and the headlights flashed and the doors clicked open when Jacks pressed the unlock button on the key ring. He climbed inside and started the engine.

There was a GPS monitor on the dashboard. Jacks punched in the address for the bodega on the touch screen. A light came on from a second floor window in the house, and someone threw open the curtains to look down. Jacks backed out of the driveway and gunned it down the street with the tires squealing.

Amped up with adrenalin, Jacks peeled through outer borough streets and bolted onto a parkway. He had to get to Farzan before Benoit did. No highway patrolmen or toddling construction vehicles were going to slow him down. The GPS directed him across a bridge and then onto a cross-street through city blocks that started to look familiar. There was no way Benoit could beat him on foot, was there? Jacks sailed through traffic lights at deserted intersections. Some guys at a corner shouted obscenities at him, but otherwise the streets were pretty clear.

The neon bodega sign stood out ahead of him. He cruised toward it and screeched into a parking spot on the corner by a fire hydrant.

Jacks barreled out of the car but stopped short of the store. Sounds filled his ears—the distant, whirring parkway, drunken banter from shadowy places, a bus grinding and shrieking on the main avenue some blocks away. The store was quiet in front of him. He drew air through his nostrils. There was the sour smell of garbage cans, subway exhaust rising up from the sidewalk gratings, and a trail of greasy food from a Chinese restaurant vent some blocks away. But no Benoit. The moment of delay gave Jacks' heart a chance to ease down from his throat. He wiped his sweat-slick brow on his sleeve and walked into the bodega.

Synth-punk music permeated the store from laptop speakers. The place looked empty. Jacks drew up in front of Farzan at the counter. Farzan looked happily bewildered, and his anatomy textbook slipped out of his hands.

"What are you doing here?"

"There's no time to explain. You've got to close the store."

Farzan smiled absurdly. Jacks gripped the counter. "I'm totally serious. Your life's in danger. Get your stuff and lock the place up so we can get out of here."

Farzan glanced down the aisle. Jacks followed his gaze. They were not alone. Some Spanish dude with squinty eyes was stumbling toward the counter with a big bottle of malted liquor swinging in his hand. He foisted his purchase up to the register. The bottle wobbled on the counter and came to a stop.

Farzan rang up the guy while anxiety expanded inside Jacks like compressed heat. How was he going to convince Farzan to leave the store? He scanned around. The store's three aisles were deserted. At the end of the wall of refrigerators, there was a door that probably led to a back stockroom and then, maybe, out to the street.

His eyes honed in on a light displacement coming from the roof. He caught a trail of Benoit's musky scent. Benoit was up there.

Jacks hurried around the counter and through the swinging gate to Farzan. "He's here. We've got to go."

"Jacks, you're not allowed back here. Take it easy. I've got customers."

Jacks stared at Farzan pleadingly.

There was a loud thump on the drop ceiling, like the weight of a sandbag. They both looked up to it. Dust flurried down on the store from the rectangular tiles. The fluorescent light panels flickered and sparked, and then the store was engulfed in darkness.

Ceiling tiles broke apart and crumbled to the floor. Like a monster conjured from another dimension, Benoit—300 pounds of wild panther—plunged down from the ceiling into the store's center aisle.

With sudden sobriety, the Spanish guy grabbed his malt liquor and ran out of the bodega. It was too dark for anyone except Jacks to make out the intruder, but Benoit's presence seemed to spread across the store like a terrifying chill. Farzan backed up behind the counter. That left him trapped. There was only one way out, through the gate, in the opposite direction, and Benoit closed in on that exit at a fang-bearing, growling skulk.

Jacks grabbed Farzan from both sides and guided him toward the gate. There wasn't time to make it around the counter and out of the store, but there was a straight run down the refrigerator aisle to the back room.

He told Farzan quietly and steadily: "Fast as you can. To the back of the store."

Benoit crept toward them with his jaw slack and the fur on his back puffed out. Farzan's body shook in Jacks' hands.

"No. I won't make it."

He searched over his shoulder. Jacks followed his gaze and spotted a handgun on the shelf below the cash register. It was too much of a gamble. He didn't trust Farzan to fire a warning shot, and he didn't trust Benoit to be deterred.

Jacks nudged Farzan forward. "There's no time for that. Run for that door and don't look back. Lock the door behind you. Get to your car and drive."

Farzan's frightened eyes searched Jacks' face. "What about you?"

"I'll be fine."

From three yards away, Benoit's green-eyed glare locked in on Farzan, quivering in murderous anticipation.

"Go," Jacks shouted.

Farzan raced for the back room. Benoit sprang after him, cornering the aisle with a skin-curling scrape of his claws on the linoleum floor. Jacks took a running leap, bore down on the magical spot in his diaphragm, and burst into fur and pouncing limbs in midair. He caught Benoit by his hind legs, and they went tumbling down the aisle together in a massive wipeout that sent cans of coffee and soda bottles flying from shelves.

Jacks heard a door open and slam shut.

When they came to a stop, Benoit pulled himself free and batted Jacks hard across the head.

"You can't protect him. He's mine."

Jacks lunged for Benoit's neck, caught a fold of his black hide in his mouth, and worked him onto his back.

"You think killing him is going to get me back? It's over, Ben. Face it."

Benoit's hind legs launched out, catapulting Jacks into a metal shelf of paper goods that toppled over into the next aisle. Jacks rolled over himself to get back to the fight. He needed to delay Benoit as long as he could so Farzan had a chance to get to his car.

Benoit hunched and snarled. "I can destroy you as easily as I can destroy that boy."

Jacks pounced on his head and buried him with his paws. His jaws gripped Benoit's back. Benoit writhed, and they spun over each other and slammed into the back door of the bodega. Benoit swung for Jacks' eye. Jacks ducked and swung back, clawing Benoit's ear. He sprung away before Benoit could reply. The maneuver worked. Benoit bounded after him, away from the back end of the store.

He hadn't figured on Benoit's strength and speed. Some yards short of the front door, a claw mauled his shoulder, and Benoit was upon him, gnashing Jacks' hide and gouging the sides of his legs with his hind claws. Jacks fought and twisted his body to get free. Benoit clamped down on his neck and wouldn't let him go. Jacks' lungs burned, trying to suck in air, and there were so many sore spots on his body he felt ripped apart. The store was blurry, overlapping fragments, and fading. Then Benoit released him.

Jacks crawled out from under Benoit's body. He wondered if a finishing attack was coming next. One of his hind legs collapsed under him as he tried to stand on it. There was no way he could fight Benoit off.

Through steadying breaths, he took account of things. Benoit had turned his attention to the back of the store. Farzan stood beneath a neon exit sign with a baseball bat raised over his shoulder. Benoit's tail swung back and forth, gauging timing and approach.

Farzan's voice stuttered into the darkness: "Jacks?"

Benoit stalked toward Farzan, slouched to the ground, readying his muscular torso to make a surprise, springing attack. Farzan's bat wouldn't do him any good. He would never have a chance to use it. Benoit would clamp down on his neck in seconds.

Jacks summoned a burst of strength to kick off from his good leg and leap onto the counter. He jumped down to the cashier side and—pushing out from his diaphragm—his fur retracted, his bones and his muscles realigned, and he was back to his human self. He grabbed the handgun from the shelf, released the trigger guard, and pointed the gun with both of his hands.

Benoit galloped toward Farzan, accelerating, charging to make an ambush. With preternatural precision, Jacks zeroed in on a target and squeezed the trigger of his gun. Benoit bowed and his legs gave out beneath him, still sliding forward from his massive momentum. His lumbering body came to rest at Farzan's feet.

Jacks dropped the gun. He pushed through the counter's swinging gate, and limped to Benoit. He had saved Farzan's life, but his stomach plummeted, seeing the black panther dead. A whimper rose up from his throat.

Farzan's chest heaved rapidly with shallow breaths. "How did you think you could fight it by yourself?"

"Benoit?" Jacks telepathed.

There was no answer.

Jacks fell down to his knees beside the lifeless panther. Blood pooled beneath Benoit's head. Jacks covered his face in his hands. "I didn't mean to. What else could I do?"

"Are you crazy? That thing was going to kill you." Farzan's voice lowered in careful deliberation. "Jacks, you're really injured. That leg looks bad. You're probably in shock."

Burning tears filled Jacks' throat. He knew in his head there was no other way things could have ended, but the violence splayed out in front of him was shameful and chilling. He shut his eyes to it, momentarily wishing everything away. Could he twist and shrink his memories to make himself believe it never happened? He thought about running off, disappearing forever.

He heard Farzan stepping around Benoit's body, and then there was a jump, a shudder against a wall, and a terrified shriek.

Jacks looked up. Benoit had transformed to his human self. He lay at rest, like a naked corpse on the battlefield. Strangely, the sight drew up a sense of comfort. Benoit had returned to his original nature. The madness that had gripped him had run its course. Just like the she-jaguar who had converted him.

Sirens approached the store. Farzan must have called the police. There would be officers flooding into the place, ambulance workers and a crowd of bystanders on the street. Benoit would be taken away in a covered gurney to a morgue, undocumented, no one to claim his body or to hold a funeral. Jacks brushed his cheek against Benoit's shoulder and kissed him.

"I'm sorry, Ben."

Two days later, Jacks was moved from the critical care unit to a regular bed in the hospital. He had lacerations to his head, body and legs, but the hospital staff was encouraged by how quickly his wounds were healing.

Two police detectives came to visit him.

The cops and the EMTs had asked questions back at the bodega. It had been easy to deflect them, given Jacks' physical condition. On his admittance to the hospital, he had insisted he had no relatives to notify, and had been living on his own. He gave the abandoned furniture factory as his address. There was nothing to prove him wrong. He had left his driver's license and his college ID back at Farzan's apartment.

One of the cops, Detective Robbins, was a pretty, thirty-something, Black woman, who was friendlier than her partner. Detective Faraday was a balding, White guy built like an overgrown bulldog. He had a grim, suspicious face. They both stood at the foot of Jacks' hospital bed with their notepads out like some kind of deflector guns hemming him in. Robbins did most of the questioning.

"The officers on the scene said you were in bad shape. How are you feeling?"

Jacks scooted upright at the head of his bed. "I'm getting better."

"They haven't found the animal that attacked you. What do you remember from that night?"

"Not much," Jacks said. "I was visiting my friend. It's really something I'm trying not to think about."

Robbins looked down at her notepad. "The cashier, Farzan Mohammed, says you saved his life. According to his statement, there was a black panther that got into the store from the roof. After you scared it away, a man entered the scene and tried to attack Mohammed. You got a gun behind the cash register. Did you know the man you shot?"

Jacks shook his head.

"He hasn't been identified, and the strangest thing is, no one in the vicinity of the store seems to have noticed a naked man walking the streets that night. Do you have any idea of how he got there?"

"No."

"Maybe he took off his clothes while he was in the store." Robbins let the sentence hang, almost like a question. Jacks blinked.

"The officers at the scene found you kneeling over his body."

"I never shot anyone before. I was pretty freaked out."

Robbins smiled like she understood how he felt. Though her uniform and tight ponytail hidden behind her head tried to make her look like one of the guys, she had a warm, motherly face. Then Jacks noticed Detective Faraday's gaze locked in on him. He shifted in his bed.

"I'm really sorry. I wish I could be more help."

"You got one of the bad guys. You should be proud of that," Robbins said. "Maybe in a couple of days, things will come back to you clearer."

She smiled at him again. Jacks returned a nervous grin. He didn't want to open his mouth, afraid of what would come out, even the most incidental reply, which could lead to who knew what kind of questions.

"There's one other thing. We went by the place of residence you gave to the hospital. It's an abandoned building. Can you tell us about that?"

A blush spread across Jacks' face. "It's just a place I've been staying. Until I get a job."

"Mr. Mohammed tells us he's offered to take you in while you get back on your feet."

Jacks was aware of this. Farzan, his father, his mother, and one of his brothers had been by to visit him in the hospital. It was the first time Jacks had met a Persian family. He had expected them to be angry about him stealing their car. But Mr. and Mrs. Mohammed had been somber and grateful, bringing him fruit, flowers and shiny, jellied candies. Farzan must have told them something ennobling about his homeless situation. Jacks hadn't asked Farzan about it. The few times he had come by to visit on his own, they had both stuck to talking about easy topics, like Jacks' recovery.

"The hospital has you down as twenty-two years old," Robbins said.

"That's right."

Robbins closed her notepad and crossed her arms over her chest. "Where did you grow up, Jackson?"

"Upstate."

The detective's brown eyes pulled for more. Jacks improvised a bit.

"I was living in a group home. I came down to New York a couple of months ago."

"What about your parents?"

"I don't have any. My mom and dad died. Before I can remember."

Detective Faraday broke in. "You're telling us you got no family? No brothers, sisters, aunts or uncles? No one who's gonna be worried about you?"

"Nope."

Jacks steeled himself. He had decided he was never returning to his parents. They were already disappointed in him enough without having to travel to New York City to collect their wild, gay son who had dropped out of college in his last semester to live on the streets with his boyfriend. A boyfriend Jacks ended up shooting when he attacked a store cashier. Jacks could hear his father: "How could you be so irresponsible? Do you know how much we sacrificed so you could go to college? Is this how you expect to make something of your life?"

That's what he would think, but his father didn't know him. Neither did Detective Faraday, who was looking Jacks over smugly. Faraday probably thought he was some rebellious kid, run off from his family because he couldn't handle being a responsible adult.

"Jackson Cherokee," Faraday read off his pad. "That's an unusual name. You Native?"

"Part." It was the fake last name Jacks had given the hospital, a quickly hatched lie he figured would keep people off the trail of tracing him to Pennsylvania or Calverton. Hearing the name said by someone else made him feel good inside. He was starting a new life, with new possibilities.

"I don't want this whole thing blown up in the newspapers. It's kind of embarrassing."

Faraday grinned for a half second. "Believe me, neither do we. You been contacted by reporters?"

"No."

"Neither has Mr. Mohammed, and he's not keen on bad publicity for his business. So don't give a statement if a reporter asks you. Would've happened already if they were interested. Sad to say, but stuff like this happens uptown, and it's not exactly headline news."

Faraday scratched his ear, and his face brightened, suddenly convivial. "Probably our John Doe raised the panther as a cub in his apartment. He couldn't handle it when the thing grew up bigger than him. Those animals belong in the wild, or at least a zoo. Damn shame when one of them has to get put down because of some guy's stupidity." He turned to his partner. "You've seen that show on cable? About the whack jobs who think they can get away with keeping a hyena in their apartment? Animal Obsessions, or something like that?"

Robbins grinned and shook her head. Faraday looked to Jacks, and Jacks shook his head as well.

"You got lucky, Jackson," Faraday said. "Getting attacked by a panther and living to tell about it? Believe me, you got lucky."

The two detectives left their business cards on the bedside table. Jacks' dinner tray was sitting there. The Salisbury steak was gone, but the mashed potatoes and peas were untouched. Faraday's glance delayed on the tray. Jacks tightened up. It couldn't mean anything to the detective, could it?

"We'll check back on you in a few days," Robbins said. "If you remember anything more, give us a call."

"Sometimes it takes a little while for things to come back to you after suffering a trauma," Faraday elaborated. "Hey—how'd you learn to fire off a pistol like that? They got shooting ranges at orphanages?"

Robbins passed her partner a scolding glance. Faraday shrugged her off. Jacks didn't answer. They did have shooting ranges in Pennsylvania, but he had never been good with guns. It had been his feline sight and balance that had enabled him to make his mark cleanly at the base of Benoit's skull.

"No family," Faraday repeated. "That's a damn shame. You figure you're gonna be staying put in New York for awhile?"

"I've got some things to figure out, but yeah. I like it here."

"Always something to do in the big city, isn't there? Well, you take care, Jackson. Get yourself back on your feet."

Jacks didn't feel encouraged. It sounded like what Faraday really meant was: we'll be watching you.

Farzan's family brought Jacks back to their house a day later. Getting out of the car, Jacks favored his left leg due to the gash in the right one. It had been his worst wound and was still sore at the stitches, while his other lacerations had sealed up without a trace. A minor medical miracle, his doctor had said. Though the hospital hadn't made much of it. Jacks was uninsured so he figured they were happy to discharge him early. He had only stayed at the hospital for two and a half days.

Inside Farzan's apartment, the first thing Jacks did was look around for Bella. He made a full sweep of the space, calling out her name, and then he noticed Farzan watching him, looking stricken.

"She was gone the morning I left you at the hospital. We put flyers around the neighborhood, and I've been leaving food for her outside at night. I'm sorry Jacks. I didn't want to tell you while you were recovering."

Jacks staggered past him, out the door and into the backyard. He scanned the shrub-lined fence, the maple trees, and the space around two sides of the garage. The late afternoon sky was heavy and gray, and everything was cast in washed out light, bleak as could be. Jacks called up his feline senses. Through outdoor barbecues, flowering trees, and car exhaust, he couldn't get a read on Bella's scent.

He walked back into the apartment.

"I saw her while you were sleeping that night," Farzan said. "She came into the kitchen and had some food. That was maybe ten o'clock. Could she have gotten out while you were leaving the apartment?"

Jacks ached. He didn't want to believe he had been so careless, not noticing Bella scampering out the door with him. But that time span was a blur. It was possible. How else would she have gotten out of the apartment?

He glanced around and sat down on a wooden chair at the kitchen table. Plopping down on the couch felt too imposing, even though Farzan and his entire family had said he was welcome to stay until he sorted things out—a job, a place of his own. Farzan went to the refrigerator and brought out a pitcher of water.

"Want some?"

"No thanks." Jacks slumped in his seat while Farzan poured himself a glass and took a place across from Jacks at the kitchen table.

The worries over Bella fell away as Jacks realized, starkly, the confidentiality of the moment. He had talked to Farzan at the hospital, but there had always been nurses, patients, or some member of Farzan's family close by. Jacks could gather that Farzan had kept some things he had seen at the bodega from his parents, and certainly from the police. It occurred to him, there were also surveillance cameras in the store, which no one had mentioned. Had Farzan tampered with them? In any case, Jacks wasn't ready to talk about any of it.

"Nice weather we're having, isn't it?" Farzan said.

Jacks glanced at him. Farzan stared back with a lopsided smile.

"That man was your boyfriend."

Jacks nodded slowly.

"He was also the cat."

Jacks looked down at his hands in his lap. How could he explain things? He barely understood anything himself.

Farzan stood and walked into the living space. His steps returned and something slid across the table. Jacks' wallet. Opened up. His driver's license, credit card, and Calverton ID showed in the card slots.

"Jackson Dowd," Farzan said. "I figured there was a reason you didn't give your real name to the hospital or the police. So I went along with it." He retook his seat with his hands folded on the table. "You risked your life saving mine. I decided I owed you something, keeping your business to yourself, I guess. But if you're going to be staying here, I think I have a right to know what's going on."

Sweat beaded Jacks' forehead. He shifted in his seat. His hands gripped the table, and he looked up at Farzan.

"This is going to sound insane." Jacks drew up a deep breath through his nose. "Benoit, my boyfriend, was a werecat." He looked away and didn't wait for a response. "I know it's totally unbelievable, but you saw it yourself."

"There's a Persian superstition that the cat is a jinn, a kind of demon that can change shapes. I always thought that was a stupid phobia passed down by old women. Now I don't know what to believe."

"It's not like that. He wasn't a demon. It's a kind of merging of species that goes back thousands of years."

"Why was he after me?"

"He thought there was something going on between us. He thought getting rid of you would bring us back together. I tried talking to him earlier that night, but I couldn't reason with him." Jacks scuffed his sneakers on the floor. "I think, at some point, you can lose the part of you that's human."

They stared away from each other for a while. All things considered, it was going as well as Jacks could have expected. Farzan wasn't freaking out, or acting like he was crazy. Jacks needed someone to understand and not judge him.

Farzan asked him, flatly: "Are you one too?"

Jacks met his gaze. "Yeah."

Farzan stood up. He stepped around the kitchen, going nowhere in particular. His hand brushed again and again through his thick black hair.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Jacks said. "After all you've done for me, you think I could consider for a second doing anything bad to you? That's why I had to stop Benoit from killing you."

"What if you lose control? What if something inside you takes over and you end up hurting someone? I've got my parents and my brothers living upstairs."

Jacks got up from his seat. "It won't happen. I promise you. I'm the same person I was before you knew about this."

Farzan looked him over. He was wary and torn. Shame gutted Jacks hollow, and his eyes burned. His voice came out fragile. "I don't have any place to go. Things were bad with my parents to start, and there's no way they can handle this. I'll go to a shelter if that's what you want. But you've got to believe me, Farzan. I wouldn't hurt you, or anyone else."

The world pulsed in and out of Jacks' vision. What was he going to do? He was homeless, with a couple of dollars in his pocket, unable to provide any kind of ID to start rebuilding his life. There was no one in the world to turn to for help. His family and Jonathan and Gabe probably thought that he was dead, and it was better that way. No one would ever understand what he had become. They would be disgusted and embarrassed to be around him.

Warm arms surrounded Jacks. He tried to huff back his tears, but the sadness was too much. He buried his face in Farzan's shoulder, and it poured out of him in choking sobs.

Farzan's hug steadied him, and the grief subsided, like a slowly receding tide. Jacks remembered something his grandmother had said, many years ago, after his grandfather had died. Everyone in his family had been worried about how she was adjusting after losing her husband of fifty years, although she appeared more active than ever before, volunteering at her church, and traveling to places she had never been with her friends. Sitting with Jacks and his mother after dinner one night, she had told them: "The world goes on without us. We're born alone. We die alone. The rest is ours to fill the gap."

It was something to believe in, and having shed the layers of hurt and fear with his tears, Jacks realized he had no choice but to keep on going. He was a werecat and so what? He had survived coming out as gay in a backwards, paper-mill town. He had pushed himself through school and college with no one to tell him what to do or to give him a pat on the back.

This new life of his could be figured out. He would job hunt first thing tomorrow. He'd take anything—washing dishes or working at some fast food place—and he'd work two or three jobs so he could give Farzan some money for rent while saving up for a deposit on an apartment. He would look for Bella so she wouldn't be alone. And just as Benoit had, he would learn as much as he could about being a werecat.

There had to be others like him. He would find them so he could understand what it meant to live as both man and cat. Maybe there was enough of him that was still human so he could control his feral nature, keeping it at bay, so he could stay below the radar and live a normal life. Maybe those other werecats could teach him how to blend into the human world, without hurting anyone. Maybe there was even a place where he could live among his own kind. Benoit had said that becoming a werecat was the greatest gift he had ever been given. For Jacks, it had been the greatest disaster. But he was still alive. He had a life ahead of him. He would make it his own, as a werecat, not following Benoit's example exactly, but learning from his experience.

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# About the Author

Andrew J. Peters is an author of fantasy, contemporary and young adult fiction. He is currently an administrator at Adelphi University's School of Social Work. Prior to that, he spent eighteen years as a social worker and an advocate for LGBT youth. His work has appeared in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Wilde Oats, La Bloga, and Ganymede. His novel, The Seventh Pleiade will be released by Bold Strokes Books in November 2013.

Author photo credit: Larry Black
