The Shapeshifter's Bride

It was the hardest phone call Daisy had ever had to make. With her stomach churning in dread, she told the operator she would like to make a collect call and gave her the number. The pig assigned to watch her folded his arms tightly across his beefy chest and tapped his foot impatiently on the tiled floor. Daisy rolled her eyes and turned away from him. The fluorescent lights above her head fizzed and flickered. The phone on the other line began to ring. She held her breath as the operator asked the other party if it would like to accept a collect call from Daisy Sawyer, and slowly exhaled when the man said yes. “Hello,” said a familiar gruff voice on the other end. The buzz she had incurred from twelve shots of tequila and a line of coke at a party hours ago had dissipated, and she was stone-cold sober. She ran her hand down the metal phone cord, resisting the urge to wrap it around her finger. “Brother.” “Daisy,” said Alec. “This is a pleasant surprise.” His voice implied everything but. Even six hundred miles away, she could hear the deep-seated anger blanketed in the cool calmness of his voice. His power radiated even through the phone line, and the beast inside Daisy’s body stretched awake in response. Daisy shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “How are you, Alec?” “I am well, and so is the family,” he replied. “What’s this about, Daisy?” The family… the people she’d been trying to avoid for the past five years. She had spent thousands of dollars to put distance between them and herself, and yet here she is, at their mercy. She would have laughed at the irony of it if she weren’t close to crying. “I’m in jail, Alec.”  “What did you do?” The question was asked baldly, yet with deceptive casualness. Alec was merely asking about the weather. “I was joy-riding with some of my girlfriends…” She touched her forehead to the cold metal of the telephone frame. Her throat felt like sandpaper, and her skin, she knew, would be hot to the touch. “And um… we got pulled over. My friend, the driver… um… she was drunk.” And high… “If you weren’t the one driving, why were you arrested as well?” her brother asked softly. “Did you do something illegal?” Daisy shut her eyes as shame washed over her body. “Alec… the car was stolen… and I had… um… a gram of coke on me.” “You’re using again?” “It was a party, Alec, and―” She heard herself sounding defensive and stopped. Accountability. It was one of the steps she never could remember. “Anyway, I need you to come and get me, Alec. I’m at the LA County lock-up.” There was nothing but dead silence on the other line for a moment, but Daisy knew he had not hung up. Alec’s fury was a live thing. Even now, she could feel it raising the little hairs on the back of her neck and along her arms.  “I’m tempted to let you rot where you stand.” Anger shoved panic out of the way, and Daisy felt her hand curling into a fist. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered. The hallway went pitch-black for a moment before the lights came back on again. The pig’s boot-tapping against the cold tile became thunderously loud, and Daisy could smell the stink of his nervousness emanating from him. There was a snicking sound that should have been a whisper in the cavernous hallway, but Daisy heard it just fine. The pig had pulled out his nightstick. Daisy squeezed the handset in her hand until the hard plastic began to give. “Alec, in three days―” Her voice came out as an unnaturally deep growl, and panic returned in a hurry. Already she could feel the leopard clawing at her insides, desperate to get out. She had to calm down. She took a deep breath and eased her death grip on the phone. “I know, Daisy. I’ll be in touch.” There was a click and then the cold, humming drone of a dial tone. Daisy dumbly stared at the phone for a moment before slamming it into the cradle.  With a sigh, she shoved her hand into her long black hair and bit her lip as she wondered what she was supposed to do next. Alec would send one of his minions to collect her, she knew that much, but there was no telling when that would be. The very thought of spending any time at all in a tiny cell while waiting for Alec twisted her gut into knots and turned her bowels into ice water. She pressed the butt of her palm against the bridge of her nose and willed the nausea back down. No, she was not going to throw up. The heavy footfalls of the deputy approaching her had Daisy straightening up and lifting her head. She turned around slowly to face him, but he slammed her against the wall and shoved her face against the cold tiles with his elbow while he forced her arms behind her back and slapped handcuffs on her wrists.  The copper taste of blood flooded Daisy’s mouth, and a growl vibrated from deep within her chest. If she could look at her eyes in the mirror, she knew they would be the yellow gold of a leopard instead of their usual green. That meant she could summon the Change. If she wanted, she could break the cuffs now and shred the deputy into ribbons with the talons descending from the tips of her fingers. He might be twice as big as she was, but she was stronger and had no compunction whatsoever about hurting anyone who got in her way. Years of living in LA on her own had taught her that. The deputy shoved her harder against the wall. “I know who you are. You’re one of them socialite bitches who think they’re above the law because of who their daddy is.” He dug his elbow between her shoulder blades and leaned close so that his mouth touched the shell of her ear. “You’re Alec Sawyer’s sister. One call and your criminal brother will send one of his Jew lawyers to bust you out, right? Probation and community service for grand theft auto and possession. You people disgust me.” Daisy could smell his disdain and desire for her warring inside his bulky body. She knew his kind—a power-tripper. Hell, he probably got bullied in high school, so he vowed revenge. Nevertheless, he was also a man, and she could feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against her lower back. Ironically, it was the revulsion for him that caused the leopard to retreat. Disgust was an all too human emotion, and the leopard was only interested in hurting and maiming. “Johnson, what the hell are you doing?” Daisy exhaled as the deputy’s weight was lifted from her and carefully eased her face off the wall. She could feel the hot, throbbing bruise that had formed on her cheek and could not turn around just yet. In a few seconds, the bruise would fade away entirely, and she really didn’t want any witnesses when it happened. “She made a threatening move toward me,” said the cop called Johnson. “I had to disable her.” Daisy bristled but didn’t say a word. The deputy was an abusive d**k, but he wasn’t an i***t. Subconsciously, he must have sensed the emergence of the beast, and his primal instincts took over. The leopard aroused either a flight or fight response in its prey. Most of the time, it was flight. Flailing, screaming into the night flight. “This poor girl who’s a buck-oh-five at most threatened you, Johnson? What are you―deuce, deuce and a half?” said the new arrival with a snort. “Don’t you have some paperwork to process? Get the hell out of here.”  “Thanks,” Daisy murmured as her savior unlocked her cuffs. Once she was sure the bruise on her face was gone, she turned around to face him. Her savior was an affable-looking, middle-aged white man in a deputy’s khaki uniform with a name tag that read Davis. He had a thick body, though he wasn’t fat, and stood about five-ten in his shiny black shoes. His neatly-cut brown curls were thinning on top and graying, and he had a well-groomed mustache under his broad nose. He looked like somebody’s “cool” dad. Daisy liked him immediately. “You all right, Ms. Sawyer?” he asked. “I’m Assistant Sheriff Roger Davis. We received a call from the law offices of Hopkins and Stein. They wanted to let us know they will be representing you in this matter and sending someone to meet with you as soon as possible. Your arraignment is tomorrow morning at seven, and your bail will be set then.” He gave her a regretful look. “Unfortunately, that means you will have to spend the night here tonight. Do you need to go to the infirmary?” Daisy was tempted to say yes just so she could put off being locked up in a cell, but she was, as usual, disgustingly healthy. She wondered if she could say the same for her girlfriends. Kimberly Gardener was the daughter of a well-known defense attorney and lived a scandal-filled, paparazzi-stalked life in Malibu. Jenny Hayasu was a law student at UCLA and the daughter of a man who owns a successful chain of sushi restaurants worldwide. Jenny was Daisy’s friend, but Kimmy had been Jenny’s college roommate and often dragged them to the best clubs in LA. Kimmy had been the driver, and the car she supposedly stole was her ex-boyfriend Jay’s Lambo. The two of them had a very public fight, and they all drove off with Jay’s car.  “Kimberly and Jenny―the women I was arrested with, are they okay?”  “Both Ms. Hayasu and Ms. Gardner have been processed and assigned to a cell. They will both be arraigned tomorrow morning.” Daisy gritted her teeth. Jenny was a good girl if it weren’t for her shitty taste in friends. Kimmy was tolerable, but only because the girl could party and knew just about everyone in Hollywood. The leopard was more fond of Kimmy than Daisy actually was.  “Are you ready to go into your cell now?” Daisy felt the blood leave her head in a rush and, for a moment, feared she was going to pass out. The leopard clawed at her insides and roared inside her skull. She almost gave in to the impulse to shove the friendly assistant sheriff aside and make a run for it but stopped herself in time. She wiped her clammy palms on the delicate material of hot pink Prada micro-skirt and smiled weakly. The assistant sheriff smiled back in an attempt to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Ms. Sawyer, you won’t be placed in the drunk tank. The sheriff believes it would be in your best interest that you have a private cell. You will be isolated from the general population.”  Thanks to Alec, no doubt. She thought of her cold, forbidding older brother and the smile she slapped on her face wobbled at the corners before disappearing entirely. She would have to see him again sooner or later and had a sickening suspicion it would be the former. She took a deep, steadying breath and placed a cold hand on the assistant sheriff’s arm. “Let’s go.” She allowed him to lead her down a long, narrow hallway, dreading each step as though a hole would open up unexpectedly in front of her and swallow her whole. Her four-inch platform shoes, hot pink and neon green atrocities that looked cute about three hours ago seemed to weigh fifteen pounds each as she dragged them along the dinghy tiled floor. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as though the hallway were getting longer and narrower with each step she took. She wrapped her arms around herself as her teeth began to chatter. Her tiny black bandeau top and micro-skirt, which hung several inches above her knees, were definitely not enough protection from the cold. Christ, she still couldn’t believe she was going to be locked up in a cage three days before a full moon. It wasn’t the first time she was going to spend the night in jail―she had now gotten to the point where she could finally laugh about the week she was stuck in Mexico behind bars―but she had never gotten busted so close to the full moon. It was something she had been cautious about.  With a deep breath, she killed the urge to knock down the assistant sheriff, take off her stupid shoes, and make a mad dash for the exit. The police would probably shoot her, but she was confident she could make it to the door with only a few bullet wounds. She was fast. And it wasn’t like she’d never had to dig out bullets from her flesh before.