Page 30 of A Malicious Menagerie (Fangs & Fables #1)
“Oh,” I say, feeling oddly put out. Because of all the words anyone would ever use to describe me, the very last one would be fierce . “So definitely a she-wolf, then.”
He shoots me an inscrutable look. “Werewolves don’t corner the market on ferocity, you know.”
“They just get a head start,” I reason. “With the fangs and claws and all.”
“Certainly doesn’t hurt,” he concedes with another dimple-popping smile.
Suddenly, my watch starts its incessant, tinny beeping, letting me know I should be done with the woods and moving on to the mountain section by now. “Shit, I have to go.”
When I jump up, he follows, straightening to his towering height that makes me feel pocket-sized by comparison. I reach out for his now-empty takeout container, and he hands it to me with another grateful ‘thank you.’
“Will you come back before you leave?” he asks as I move toward the door of the enclosure. I glance back at him, wondering if he’s as desperate to see me as I am to see him.
But his expression is impassive, and I can’t tell if he particularly cares either way. “Of course.”
Now, he does give me a faint smile, just the slightest movement of his beard giving him away. “Then I’ll see you later.”
* * *
While I finish up in the woods and head to the mountain to chase a pig into the wendigo enclosure, my thoughts are stuck on Chase.
Of course they are. It’s not like I’ve been able to think of much else since I first learned that he was a werewolf.
When I’m not thinking about how unnaturally attractive he is, with his perfectly sculpted muscles, roguish grin, and gilded eyes, I’m reliving our conversations in fine detail.
Picking apart his every word like a high schooler with her bestie, trying to figure out if her crush likes her back.
But beyond those thoughts that make me feel fizzy and bright like a glass of expensive champagne, there’s the darker side of things, too. Because he’s a prisoner here in this glorified zoo, and regardless of how repulsive I find the whole situation, I am, for all intents and purposes, his jailer.
Those thoughts deflate me as I finish up my chores in the mountain section. I trudge back to the breakroom with my shoulders curved inward and my chest feeling like it’s caving in.
So lost in my misery, it takes me far too long after I walk into the breakroom to realize that I’m not alone. I lift my head, intending to exchange my usual curt greeting with whatever security guard is on break, but my words die on my tongue when my gaze meets flashing scarlet eyes.
Having barely been able to make out the Mothman’s silhouette the first and only time I laid eyes on him, it’s a shock to the system to see him fully illuminated by the wavering fluorescent lights.
His shape is as I remember it, waspish with powerfully built shoulders but an almost gaunt waist. Fine steel-gray velvet covers most of his skin, highlighting the dips between his ropy abdominals and sinewy biceps, though he has a ruff of fur around his neck as well as over his hips and continuing down his thighs that’s a blend of white, gray, and mahogany.
His hair is similarly colored, with streaks ranging in color from milk to silver, graphite, cinnamon, and sable.
The messy locks are long enough to brush his shoulders and hang haphazardly into his reflective red gaze and over a surprisingly human face.
His eyes are a bit too large, his cheekbones too sharp, his ears too pointed, his skin—bare over his face and neck—too pallid to pass as belonging to a human, but all the requisite parts are there.
Those antennae, though… those would never pass as human.
White, heavily fringed, and about a foot long each, they rise from his crown from between strands of untidy calico hair and dip slightly at the ends as if burdened by their own weight.
And that’s to say nothing of his wings, which are folded neatly behind him but still visible at his sides and between his muscular calves like a striped cape.
But honestly, I don’t know what’s stranger—his general appearance, or the fact that he’s casually leaning back against the aged linoleum counter of our small kitchenette while spooning yogurt into his mouth.
Yogurt…
“Is that John’s yogurt?” I blurt out, and in terms of first things to say to a cryptid harbinger of doom, it’s not bad.
“Not anymore,” he replies serenely. His voice is low and smooth with an almost buzzing undercurrent. Even with the width of the room between us, I can almost feel his words as readily as I hear them.
“He’s been blaming me for that, you know,” I pout, and really, this conversation has bypassed surreal into the realm of ridiculous.
“Apologies, Anna,” he says with a formal dip of his head. “I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. But there’s only so long one can subsist on aphids and rotten fruit.”
I sigh. “Let me guess: John lied to me when he said you prefer your fruit rotten.”
“No, I do,” he says, popping another spoonful of yogurt between full lips. “It satisfies the moth part of me, but the human part, not so much.”
“Human part?” I ask curiously. “Are you… human?”
“Partly,” he answers, waving his spoon in a vague gesture. “My people are descended from humans and banshees.”
“Banshees,” I repeat flatly. “Like, screaming-into-the-night, doom-and-gloom banshees?”
He snorts in a charmingly human-like way. “Like fae-spirits-from-Ireland banshees.”
“Ahh,” is all I can think to reply. Then, something else occurs to me. “Is that why I felt so terrible the first time I saw you?”
His lips droop, and he looks apologetic. “Unavoidable first impression, I’m afraid.”
“But I don’t feel anything now.”
Now, his lips twitch in a quick smile. “That’s good. I can only foretell unfortunate events. If you don’t feel any foreboding, it’s because nothing bad is due to you.”
“For how long?” I ask, brightening at his words. But then he shrugs, and I’m a little less excited. “How did you get in here, anyway?” Which probably should have been my first question, but oh well.
“Through the door,” he replies, and I’d think he was being sarcastic if not for the innocent way he blinks his piebald eyelashes.
“I’ll rephrase: how did you get out of your enclosure and past the cameras?”
At this, he only smirks, and really, did I think he was going to tell me? “ Don’t worry, I’ll take myself back,” he says as he moves to the trash can to throw out the now-empty yogurt container.
“Why don’t you run?” I ask, curious. “If you’re able to get out of your cage whenever you want.”
“Run where?” he asks mildly, now walking to the sink and turning on the tap to wash his borrowed spoon.
His movements are lithe and graceful, almost as if he’s dancing.
“To the guards, to the outside world I know nothing about and have no map of, or to West Virginia, where I was captured and humans would continue to hunt me like Frankenstein’s monster? ”
Well, when he puts it like that… Saddened, I ask, “Don’t you want to be free?”
He freezes with his winged back to me, his tall, lean frame still bent over the sink. “More than anything,” he murmurs, his voice so quiet that I have to lean in to hear him over the gentle burble of the sink.
Then, suddenly, the moment passes, and he’s in full motion again.
His deft fingers rinse the spoon and tuck it aside in the drying rack beside the sink.
“But where would I go?” he continues conversationally.
“No, it’s better that I’m here for now. Because of my reputation and my powers, I’m mostly left alone, which is better than I can say for the poor vampire. ”
As he turns and moves toward the door, I step aside to let him pass but pause when something occurs to me. “You know my name,” I point out. “How, I don’t know, but you do. I’d like to know yours.”
He grins, revealing very human-looking teeth. “Rory.”
“Rory?” I repeat, wrinkling my nose. Of all the names I could possibly imagine that the Mothman might have, ‘Rory’ would be close to the bottom of the list.
He shrugs. “It’s what she named me.”
Assuming he must mean his mother, I return his smile. “Rory, then. It’s nice to meet you officially.”
“And you, Anna.” And with a wave of a long-fingered hand, he slips back out the door, leaving the breakroom a far duller place in his absence.