Panther's Luck

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Romeo Gallo looked into his mother’s tear-filled eyes. “I have to go, Mamma. They’ll kill me if I stay here.”

He only had himself to blame. So f*****g stupid. It wasn’t as bad this time as it had been before, only a scraped knee, a split lip, and bruises in more places than he wanted to think of. It was nothing more than a warning. If they caught him again, it would be worse.

“They will kill you if you go there.”

He smiled, only to wince when his lip protested, and dabbed a tissue against it when fresh blood welled up. The shifters and vampires most likely would kill him, but if he stayed, he was certain his fellow humans would. There was no way out.

His mamma watched him, fear and desperation radiating from her. “I need you here.”

A lie. It would be easier for her too if he disappeared. “You have Teresa. You’ll have more room if I go.” He gestured around the tiny kitchen. “Fewer mouths to feed.”

“Two women living alone.”

Romeo didn’t give in to the wince. “Lorenzo is across the street.” And it was a narrow street. They could wave to each other through their kitchen windows. He loved Lorenzo’s wife, Alice. She was smart and kind, and had he been straight, he’d most likely have fallen in love, but he always had the feeling she was dreaming of more. They all were, but Romeo had learned early on there were no miracles, and if you were born in the gutters, you would die in the gutters. They had a roof over their heads and food on the table several days of the week.

Alice had a faraway look in her eyes, though, and he often caught her staring out the window as if she was waiting for someone to come rescue her. He hoped no one would. He didn’t doubt for a second she loved his brother with all her heart, but this world could break anyone.

“It’s not the same.” She looked away.

“Mamma.” He sighed. “I can’t get a job anymore. Every time I show myself, there is trouble. I can live with the slurs—” She winced, and he believed she got her fair share of slurs too for having birthed a queer son. He didn’t know if being different ever had been accepted, but it most certainly wasn’t now. “—but we can’t afford for me to need medical care every time they beat me up.” He hadn’t this time, but he had before, and it was only a matter of time before he would need it again.

He’d tried to learn self-defense, and if there only was one attacker, he could usually get away, but they often moved in packs.

New tears rose in her eyes, and he sighed. “Mamma.” He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s an opportunity.”

He could lie too. It was a death sentence, and they both knew it.

She straightened and wiped her cheeks. “If you can get there without getting eaten, how will you live? What will you do to get money? You have to eat…until you’re eaten.”

He chuckled. “You don’t happen to be hungry by any chance?”

She slapped his arm. “I’m serious. It’s right in the middle of wild country. There is no town nearby, no human settlement.”

Romeo grimaced. “There have to be other areas in wild country under human jurisdiction.”

She stared at him with an impassive face. “Point them out on a map.”

Maps were useless. They hadn’t been updated in decades. The supernatural breeds had grown tired of humans long before he was born. They’d wiped out entire cities and forced humans to take a step back. But since then, deals had been struck. Romeo didn’t know much about the supernaturals, but some were more sophisticated than others, and vampires needed humans. There were horror stories of blood slaves and human beings kept as cattle, and he was sure it was true in some places, but he’d seen vampires live among humans. They were capable of civilized conversation and following the laws. They got up and went to work in the morning, like everyone else. The only difference was that they were super strong, could move super-fast, and ate people.

Those who turned into animals or were caught in between—not all supes could pass as human—weren’t as…sophisticated. If this was true or if it was because humans had forbidden them access to human cultural artefacts, he didn’t know.

The ruling class had forbidden humans contact with cultural artefacts too. Books weren’t only banned for shifters; they were banned for everyone. Humans were allowed money, which supes weren’t, but as far as Romeo could tell, that was the only difference. A poor attempt to gain power over the stronger species, or he assumed it was what it was about.

He also had a feeling the supes played along with the humans’ rules about papers and money and how they couldn’t do cross-species transactions. Had they wanted to take control, they would have, but by allowing humans to dictate the laws in the settlements, they gave them a sense of power. An illusion, but most people refused to realize it.

All human children went to school for six years, long enough to learn how to read and write and get a grip on arithmetic, but then they were supposed to work. The government needed the taxes, the families needed more food.

All books and magazines were to be handed in—heaven forbid someone read and learned something. An educated population was harder to manipulate.

Romeo had a vague memory from when he was maybe six or seven. His father had been drunk, a rare thing since no one could afford liquor, and was raving about how humans only had themselves to blame for how the world had turned out. First, they’d been too greedy to allow the supes any room. When they’d grown tired of human stupidity, supes put their foot down. They could have wiped them all out, but they hadn’t. They’d kept small communities, giving humans a chance to do better when they built up society again. But had they? No. The politicians decided how people should live, and what was allowed and what wasn’t. Books had been banned, being different had been banned, and having opinions had been banned. Back then, Romeo hadn’t understood what his dad was angry about. This was the only reality he’d ever known. But a couple of weeks later, his father was found beaten to death by the river, and Romeo inherited the anger.

Now he could either walk the same path his father had and end up beaten to death by the river—he didn’t think he had many days left if he stayed here. Or he could go to The Moonlight Ranch, which was an insane name, and become vampire or shapeshifter food.

Having a choice was great. He sighed.

Uncle Leo had always been a weird man. Romeo had only met him a couple of times, but he’d made an impression. He’d been almost identical to Romeo’s dad, and while he hadn’t known Leo well enough to be able to tell what kind of person he’d been, his memories painted him as a loud, vibrant man who spoke without hesitation and filled a room with his presence.

He’d died shortly after his father had. They didn’t know the circumstances behind his demise—eaten by vampires his mother often said, but Romeo wasn’t sure. He believed there would’ve been police coming to talk to them if it had been the case. They loved it when they could point at someone in the supernatural community and say they were guilty. Nothing ever came of it. They couldn’t arrest a vampire. Some people took the law into their own hands and sought revenge. It would often end bloody, with more blood being spilled on the human side than the supernatural, but there would be losses all around.

After Leo’s death, they’d inherited the back-country resort or wilderness resort or whatever he’d called it. They’d never gone there. Mamma had refused, but she’d refused to sell it too. Romeo didn’t know in what shape it’d been while Leo had been alive, but by now it had been empty for thirty years, so he wasn’t sure it was inhabitable. He had to get out while he still could, though, and the summer nights were warm, so if he’d have to sleep in his car while he repaired one of the cabins, he’d do it.

“I don’t have a choice, Mamma.”

She shook her head. “Marry a nice girl, move into the house next to Lorenzo’s, get a job. Don’t shatter the family, Romeo.” The last sentence she spoke in a whisper.

“I can’t marry a girl. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us, and it’s too late. Everyone already knows, I’m…” His voice got stuck in his throat. “Isn’t it better I leave while I still can instead of shattering the family by dying?”

She shook her head.

“Maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe there are humans nearby, maybe I can get a job there where no one knows who I am.”

“You’ll be driving through lawless country.”

He nodded. It was a risk, but according to the agreement, the supernaturals would allow humans to pass between settlements as long as they stuck to the paved roads, so he hoped the roads were paved all the way to the resort. His stomach clenched in fear, but he had to do something.

“If you’re not killed on the way, you’ll starve to death when there. There are no markets in the wild country, no butcher shops.”

He hid a wince. He’d never learned how to hunt, and while they had a couple of garden beds, he didn’t know a lot about gardening. July was late in the season. “Can I have some seeds?”

Seeds were expensive, but she collected them and traded them with the other women on the street. If they had a lot of something, they planted extra and sometimes getting a few more potatoes than planned made a great difference.

She nodded. “Can you slaughter a chicken? A rabbit?”

Romeo stared at her. No. He’d never slaughtered anything. Fish. He and Lorenzo had gone poaching as teens. He didn’t dare to now. Too many kept an eye on him, waiting for him to put a toe out of line, but back then they’d eaten freshly-caught fish regularly.

“Don’t leave until I’ve been to the market. I’ll buy eggs, they’re good protein and don’t spoil right away. I’ll see what they have. Maybe you can take seeds from some of the vegetables.”

“How do you mean?”

She sighed. “How do you plan to live? There is no one to trade seeds with, you’ll have to collect them yourself.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“You’ll starve to death.”

“Maybe.” But he wanted to live.

* * * *

Romeo squinted against the low-hanging sun shining in through the windshield. He hoped he was on the right road because it was getting darker quickly, and the paved road had changed to gravel about a mile ago, which meant he was prey at the moment. Humans were always prey, but the supes usually respected the paved-road rule.

He held onto the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip, and his heart had moved from its protected spot within his ribcage into his throat.

It had taken longer to drive than he’d anticipated. He’d left New Town and his old life behind after breakfast, and now it was after nine in the evening. He checked the map for the hundredth time in the last fifteen minutes.

He should be there already.

He looked up again and something moved between the trees. A yelp escaped him. f**k. He would die here. Looking into the woods, he tried to locate a squirrel or maybe a bird, but there was nothing. He didn’t believe for a second there was nothing. Every hair on his body stood on end, and the feeling of being watched grew stronger.

He didn’t mean to put more pressure on the gas pedal, but he did. This was a stupid idea. He didn’t think he had enough gas to get back home again, and he hadn’t seen any human towns along the way. No sign of life at all until now. He was sure there was someone or something out there. Something was watching him.

His mother had been right. He’d be eaten by vampires. He should write her a goodbye note before it was too late. If he was eaten by vampires, there was a chance of his possessions finding their way back to her. Or not. Had he been killed on a paved road, his belongings would most likely be returned, but would any humans find him out here? And if he was eaten by shifters instead of vampires, there wouldn’t be anything left to find, would there?

He should stick a letter into the basket with the eggs, bread, and seeds she’d packed for him just in case.

He didn’t doubt she’d spent every extra penny she had to get him the food she’d insisted he’d take. It was food she needed. She’d torn out the title page of her favorite book—her only book. It was a trashy romance book he and Lorenzo had found when they’d broken into an abandoned house. They hadn’t been more than maybe ten and twelve, but Romeo knew the moment he’d seen the worn paperback hidden under the mattress in one of the bedrooms that he’d found a treasure.

She had been so angry with them. The telling-off had known no bounds, but she’d kept the book. He was sure she’d read it a hundred times, and she hid it under a loose floorboard in her bedroom when she wasn’t reading it. Under the floorboard was the envelope with the papers for The Moonlight Ranch, too.

On the title page of the book she’d written instructions for how to plant the seeds, what he could plant and expect to get a harvest this year, and there were some seeds he was to plant in the spring. It gave him hope that she’d planned for spring, even if she didn’t think he’d live for long.

He’d never met his grandparents, they’d died before he was born, but where they had lived, it was now wild country. He suspected his mother had a lot more knowledge about living outside a town than he did, despite having chosen to live in the worn-down area he’d grown up in instead of risking setting foot on lawless land.

Maybe there was room for him to scrawl a message on the page in hopes of it getting back to her.

He hadn’t more than finished the thought before the forest opened up before him, and he stared at six small log cabins, three on each side of the overgrown gravel road, and where the road ended, there was a house, or maybe it was a cabin too. It was built in the same style as the cabins, but a little bigger. The main building of the resort.

Romeo stopped the car and stared. He didn’t think the cabins were livable. The roof had fallen in on one of them, and most windows he could see were shattered, but the main house looked fine. It was in too good shape to have been abandoned for thirty years.

It had to be the wrong place.

He looked around and there was a sign: You’ve reached The Moonlight Ranch. For several long seconds, he sat in his car. Flowers were blooming in front of the house, though some of them were closing in the waning light. The reminder of the approaching darkness got him moving.

Pushing the car door open, he grabbed the basket with the eggs and seeds. In it, he had the envelope with the key and a paper stating he, Lorenzo, and Teresa had inherited the resort. His mother had been the one who’d made all decisions about The Moonlight Ranch, but in reality, she had no say. Leo had no spouse and no children of his own, so as his niece and nephews, they were the next of kin.

It was silent when Romeo stepped out of the car. Not a single bird twittered, not a single cricket chirped. The prickling sensation of being watched was there, and Romeo forced himself to breathe. He reached into the back seat to grab the bag with his clothes and toiletries; he didn’t know if there was running water, and he hadn’t considered electricity, but he didn’t want to have to come back out here again once he’d closed the door behind himself.

He shut the car doors but didn’t lock them in case he needed to make a dash for it, and more or less ran up the old, overgrown flagstone walkway to the house. His heart was thundering in his ears as he fumbled to get the key out of the envelope and into the lock.

Thirty years. He was so f*****g naive to think he could walk up here and put a key into a lock and have it open. It had most likely rusted beyond function.

With clawing desperation, he turned the key, almost expecting it to break, but the deadbolt slid back with a click, and he pressed down the door handle.