Furious Flames (Elemental Book 3) (17 page)

Luana lowered her coffee. “We tried to let you stay.
The family kept pushing you away since the first day. They called the cops, the
schools, everything to get you into foster care. Fortunately, you were a good
boy; you didn’t give them your last name. We were able to intercept their calls
and appointments so you could stay with them.”

Henry studied the blood all over his hands. Tears
streamed down his cheeks even as he denied the possibilities. The more his mind
cleared, the more memories of blood filled it. “What happened?”

“Your jaguar got mad when he heard them fighting,”
Matheus said, unconcerned. “We tried to tell you that you were dangerous, but
you never listened. You shifted and killed them.”

When Henry started crying hard, Luana stood and
patted his head gently. “You’re okay. Did you learn your lesson? We’re the only
ones who want you and leaving us will just get other people killed. Do you
understand that now?”

Henry nodded.

*          *          *

Henry didn’t confront them on the thievery. He did
what he had to do to survive. When he was fifteen, his parents robbed a small,
broken family. It was a woman who had come into some money after her husband
died while fighting in the army. His parents’ plan to sneak in was foiled and
they attacked. Matheus demanded that Henry deal with the woman’s two daughters.

Henry said he wasn’t going to help them anymore and
distracted his parents long enough for the family to escape. Matheus beat Henry
until the jaguar in him couldn’t take any more. He shifted into a beast much
more massive than any natural jaguar with saber fangs that looked like they
belonged on a creature from Hell. He struck like lightning; strike, retreat,
strike, retreat, all before Matheus knew he was in trouble. Henry was far too
fast for Matheus to fight back.

However, Henry relented before he could kill his
father. He didn’t want to be a killer. This gave him the chance he needed to
change the dynamics between them. His parents said they would turn him in for
all the crimes he did and blame their own on him. This alone didn’t scare him,
but they told him the authorities would put him in an orphanage because he was
underage. In fear for the safety of everyone he encountered and covered in his father’s
blood, he made a deal.

For some reason, despite having the horrendous
examples that his parents were, he had a sense of morality. He laid boundaries
about the thefts he would do and what crossed the line, including defenseless
women and children. It was a tentative agreement, of course. Over the next
three years, his parents pushed his boundaries and he had to get more and more
violent with them.

Everything changed when he was eighteen. His parents
wanted him to steal from a corporation that was making progress in cancer
research and he finally decided that he was more of a threat with his parents
than without them.
I just have to make sure I never get upset for any reason
whatsoever.

Matheus and Luana knew Henry pretty well,
unfortunately, so the young shifter decided to do something so out of character
that he was sure they would never find him again; he drained one of their
offshore accounts, got a fake I.D., and ran away to Jamaica.

He never really did well in school anyway. He was
intelligent enough, but his parents told him being successful at something
brought attention to himself and so they encouraged frequent skipping and
sneered at him if he did well on an assignment. Of course, neither Luana nor
Matheus went to school, and it was only because he was an American citizen and
it was required by law to have some form of education that he was allowed to
attend at all. His parents weren’t going to risk exposure for something so
minor. Besides, it got him out of their hair for a few hours.

This was Henry’s chance to start over. Without using
his normal contacts, settling in was a little more complicated than he had
expected, but the excess money made it possible. His parents had told him many
times that all they wanted was the life of luxury they were owed, yet here he
was living that life while his parents planned their next hit. He could live
comfortably on what amounted to pocket change to his parents.

He got a beautiful apartment with a balcony that
overlooked the beach and a bed way too big for him. Sometimes, when he saw it,
he would imagine having someone to share it with, which was something that was
never an option before. Then he would remember blood all over his hands and he
would walk away.

For a year, Henry looked twice at every movement,
knew the escape routes of every building, stayed away from cameras, and never
gave anyone even his first name unless it was an absolute necessity. He went by
Henry Hyatt, as he figured getting his first name wrong was a slipup he
couldn’t afford to make. Hyatt was the name of the one of the passengers on the
flight.

Then a woman moved into the apartment across the
hallway from his. She had long, straight, almost gold hair with red highlights
and huge, light green eyes. He saw her only in passing for the first month. She
once tried to introduce herself at the mailboxes, but Henry choked up and
walked away without a word. His throat hadn’t closed up since he was eight, so
he was far too embarrassed to try talking to her after that.

Fate had other plans. Henry was walking up the stairs
when he heard the commotion. Right outside his apartment, a man shoved the
woman against her door, screaming at her. Henry reacted instinctively. Although
the jaguar inside Henry wasn’t concerned with a woman being abused, he was
concerned with a dominant male near his territory. Henry shifted and roared.
Before he could even attack, the stranger ran.

The woman saw him shift; she was a threat. Oddly, his
jaguar seemed to have no interest in killing her. Since the jaguar didn’t get
to fight off his aggression, it was more difficult for him to shift back, so he
stayed in his beast form. He glared after the man in the hallway, not quite
willing to chase after him, when the woman dropped to her knees.

Henry was a normal-sized jaguar this time and his
fangs were only slightly longer than a regular jaguar’s, but the woman should
have been screaming and trying to get away. Instead, she was quiet, seemingly
in awe. “You…” she started breathlessly. “You’re the guy from…” she pointed
weakly to my door. “You’re a cat!”

Henry shifted back to his person form, grabbed his
shopping bags, and unlocked his door. “You’re dreaming,” he said before
shutting the door behind him.

“Wait!” she yelled.

He ignored her, dropped the bags, and leaned against
the door. He noticed an odd sound, as if the woman was trying his knob, but the
door didn’t open and Henry waited until he heard her door close before he
checked. Nothing was unusual, so he closed it and went back inside. He put his
groceries away and only once that was done did he realize he left his key in
the doorknob. The woman had taken it.

The next morning, Henry knocked on her door, waited
until she opened it, and politely asked for the key back. That way, if she
refused, he wouldn’t feel bad about taking it by force. Before she could say
anything, he noticed the bruises all over her face. “Did he come back?”

“No, I just haven’t put my makeup on yet.”

Seeing something suspicious on the floor behind her,
Henry pushed the door open. The woman’s apartment was trashed.

She blushed. “I wasn’t going to steal anything. I
just wanted a place to hide if he came back and I know you go out for dinner
every night. Carl comes by about that time.” She handed him back his key ring
reluctantly. “It was impulsive and stupid, I know. Don’t be mad.”

Henry made a sound that was almost a laugh. “You
think I would call the police or something? That would go over smooth.”

“Yeah, about that… I won’t tell anyone. Will you come
in for coffee? Or milk… I think I have a bowl left.”

Henry growled low, but not threatening, in response
to her teasing. Somehow knowing the difference between a warning growl and the
sound Henry made, she laughed and stepped back so he could enter. He did,
breathing deeply to get a good scent. The man from the previous night had been
there many times, as were others. Henry detected four distinct scents aside
from the woman’s. “Who was that man?”

The woman leaned against the door and Henry noticed
she was only wearing a t-shirt without shorts or shoes. “My ex-boyfriend.”

“Does he know he’s an ex?”

“When he landed me in the hospital and I got a
restraining order on him? Yeah. But he doesn’t take no for an answer. He
wouldn’t leave me alone, so I called the cops. His dad is a cop, and he showed
up threatening that if I ever bothered his son again, I would go to jail. I
moved here to get away from them, but Carl and his friends found me.”

“You had no family to turn to?”

“I couldn’t. Life was great growing up and I have
fantastic parents, but I couldn’t get them involved in this.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen. So… you’re a werecat? If you bite me,
would I turn into a cat on the full moon?”

Henry laughed outright. “It is not contagious; my
curse is genetic. I am a jaguar shifter and I can shift at will any time of the
month.”

“I’m Zoe. Pure human.”

“I’m Henry.”

*          *          *

Zoe hid out in Henry’s apartment when Carl came by,
but after a week, one of Carl’s friends broke in during the day. Zoe decided to
move away, but Henry had another idea. He converted his art studio back into a
bedroom and told her to live with him. It took some convincing, but Zoe
eventually gave in and they moved what little wasn’t destroyed into the spare
room. Henry didn’t like trying to sleep with the smell of paints, so he used
the living room as his studio. He was shy about his art at first, but Zoe
insisted on watching him work and he learned to enjoy her presence. In fact, it
quickly got to the point where her daily routines inspired him.

After a month, Carl knocked on Henry’s door and
demanded to know where his “bitch” was. Henry broke the man’s nose and then
slammed the door in his face. When Carl then tried to break in, he lost a fair
bit of flesh to an angry jaguar. Carl wasn’t about to call the cops, and after
three more miserable attempts, gave up and moved on.

A year later, Henry and Zoe got married.

*          *          *

Henry had never been happier. He sat on the chair by
the window, using the early morning light to draw his wife of ten months. Her
long hair shielded her face, as it always did when he wanted to use more than
his memory to sketch her. She said she had a big nose and didn’t want it shown.
Henry told her she was so beautiful that it hurt not to draw her.

After half an hour of begging, she finally turned her
head so he could see her face as well as the small bundle in her arms. The
newborn baby thrashed a little as Zoe’s hair was no longer blocking the sun
from his eyes. Henry couldn’t help but to smirk. His son didn’t like sunlight.

The shifter barely managed to finish his drawing
before he joined Zoe and Scott on the bed. After Henry finally told Zoe his
entire story, they had decided to name their baby after the man who helped
Henry when everyone else just saw him as a puppy.

Zoe kissed him, but pulled away before he was satisfied.
“You’re daydreaming a lot today,” she commented.

He shrugged. “It’s stuffy in here. Let’s go to the
beach.” She laughed. “What?”

She kissed him again. “We could. Or we could get a
babysitter.”

“Huh?”

“You’re always more intimate on the days before,
during, and after the full moon.”

“Am I? I thought you were just hotter on the full
moon.”

She shoved him playfully and he reached his arm
around her in a cat-like motion, then bit down lightly on her shoulder. She
laughed and tried to shrug her way out of his grip. “This is what I mean.
You’re playful, goofy, and you make ridiculous innuendos. You act your age. I
hate to waste that walking in the sand, trying to talk you into the water.”

“I don’t like the salt on my skin.” He released Zoe
and fluffed the peach-fuzz on his baby’s head. “He has your hair.”

“He has no hair.”

Henry studied Zoe’s hair dramatically, rubbed his
chin, and studied his baby in the same fashion. “What’s your point?”

She punched him in the arm and got up. “I’m going to
take a shower and then we’ll go to lunch.”

They did exactly that, and they had a great day.
After lunch, they walked for a few hours, just enjoying the afternoon and each
other’s company. Zoe could make every day feel like the best in his life.
Arguments between them were few and far between. Scott was only a couple of
weeks old, but he was the perfect child so far. He was in great health, not
fussy, and could sleep through the night. Henry assumed this was thanks to the
baby’s jaguar genetics.

It was the night before the full moon and Zoe was
right; Henry was a lot more intimate during that time of the month. With their
son asleep, they spent hours enjoying alone time with each other before they
finally went to sleep.

Henry didn’t remember much after that. He was awoken
by the sound of wood snapping and remembered getting out of bed to check on
Scott. He remembered the baby’s peacefully sleeping face right before he felt a
sudden pressure in his abdomen. Everything was blurry after that. He saw
flashes of blood splattering and flesh tearing. He remembered Zoe screaming,
Scott wailing, and the vicious snarling of a jaguar.

What he didn’t see was his father stabbing him from
behind with a sedative. He didn’t remember shifting into his jaguar forms and
trying to kill Matheus and Luana to protect his wife and child. The drugs in
his system were too quick and too strong.