Feral Claws (The Midnight Panther Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Feral Claws

  The Midnight Panther Chronicles Book One

  Brooke Saylor

  Copyright © 2019 Brooke Saylor

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people either living or dead, or events is purely coincidentally. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, now known or hereinafter invented, without written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  Stay Connected

  Review This Book

  Release Schedule

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my best friend and partner, for without him none of this would be possible. I would also like to thank my beautiful daughter, just for being my light in this dark world. A special thanks to the cover designer, Laura Prevost, for her exceptional skills and suggestions.

  Thank you to my wattpad subscribers, and a special thank you to Sohlll, and AA Pifer for the title suggestions! Sometimes a little creative nudge is needed, and you both were that nudge for me!

  I wouldn’t be able to leave this page without thanking my wonderful Mother and Grandmother “Nana” for supporting me in everything that I do. I don’t know where I would be without you.

  Thank you to all the readers out there! If you’ve opened this page, you are what fuel my love for writing!

  Last but not least, I want to thank myself. No, not because I think I am the best at what I do. Writing is tough, especially when you put yourself out there to be read and critiqued by the masses. It’s important for everyone to acknowledge and appreciate themselves, even when the world tells you differently.

  My parents never told me what would happen when I became a woman. My mother cried the first time I got my period, and I didn’t know why. They both fought for days afterwards, and I let the silent tears wet my face when they weren’t in the room. I felt ashamed, as if it was my fault. My mother’s green eyes would fill with tears every time she glanced at me, and my father avoided me at all costs. I thought I had done something wrong, but I never found out why they had acted the way they did.

  My parents were murdered two weeks later.

  Four weeks after that, my first shift started.

  After my parent’s death, I was sent to a foster home. My foster mother was a sweet woman with fluffy red hair and hazel eyes. She had three other kids under her roof, all under five. I was already sixteen, and grateful she had taken me in. The woman treated me with as much kindness as all the other children.

  One day, I got sick. My foster mother, Caroline, had quarantined me away from the other children. She sent them into the playroom while she tended to me. There were no other adults in the home, since Caroline was a widow, so the other children had to entertain each other at times.

  I was sweating, vomiting, and in so much pain that my body felt like it was on fire. The decline in my health had happened so quickly that Caroline was in a near panic. She had wanted to take me to the hospital, but she never got the chance.

  I didn’t know what was happening; I begged her to save me, but she couldn’t. No one could have saved me from the beast within. It tore me open from the inside and reformed my bones into something primal. I became the monster that my parents had always feared.

  That night was my first hunt, and my first kill. I tore the flesh from my foster mother and ate out her insides. I couldn’t control myself. I was a human child one minute and then a giant predator the next. I panicked, and my instincts took over. The other children’s screams radiated from the other room in the back of the house, but they didn’t see me turn. They only heard the crunching of bones and the feral screech as my teeth seeped into the flesh of an innocent woman, pooling blood on the plush carpet.

  That was the first thing I noticed when I shifted back into my human form. I didn’t register the blood smeared all over my naked flesh or the taste of metal in my mouth. I saw the soft pink carpeting and all the tiny fibers that frayed at the edges.

  When I heard screams coming from the other room again, I manage to pull my gaze from the floor to my hands, then to my chest. The sticky blood coated every bit of my skin, and a glance into the mirror showed the blood caked into my hair and scalp.

  I didn’t even recognize the person in the reflection. My pupils were fully dilated, and not a hint of their normal emerald color showed. My face was blank. My subconscious mind must have recognized the state of shock I was in, but it was like I was frozen in time.

  When I finally began hearing the sirens down the street and yells from the neighbor's next door, my fight-or-flight instinct took hold. I didn’t stop to grab any of my belongings. All of my clothes had been torn to shreds, and the only thing that had withstood my change was my mother's golden locket that I wore around my neck. The cold wind barely registered on my naked body as I opened the window and jumped down.

  I ran as fast as my feet would take me through the woods behind the old farmhouse. The leaves were beginning to change and the crispness of the air took my breath away. I ran until my sides hurt, but never slowed down. Just when I was about to give up and fall into a heap of nothingness on the forest floor, I started to hear the bubbling of the creek.

  My legs ached as I ran the remainder of the way to the running water, and when I finally arrived, I wasted no time jumping in. I remember how cold the water felt on my skin, and how at that moment the reality sunk in. The pain tore through my chest until the numbness crept in. I refused to accept the truth and denied the knowledge that I had killed someone who had only tried to help me.

  I pulled myself back up from the roots sticking out of the dirt, and when I made it onto the mushy moss I hurled out all the sickness. The change that had occurred within me was over, but there would never be any going back. When I opened my eyes, blood and bits of hair covered the damp earth. The sight made me vomit again, but this time I averted my gaze.

  I wandered away from the stream, not sure where I would go next. When I finally made it to the other side of the treeline, I was freezing and wet on the verge of hypothermia. My toes and fingers were stiff and blue, and my brown hair was damp and stringy.

  A part in the trees revealed a trailer park. The light had just begun to creep into the sky, and fog wafted up from the ground, providing shelter from the eyes of any unwanted peepers. I shuffled over to a line hung with clothes and grabbed a few loose garments, too rushed to really look at what I was grabbing. I dashed back into the woods and sifted through my new wardrobe.

  I had managed to snag a gray thermal, a large white t-shirt, and a child’s skirt that was too tight for my newly formed curves. I made it work. Glad to finally have something to shield me from the cold, I began to walk again. I walked for two days straight, only stopping once to scavenge food from a dumpster. I wasn’t sure where I was going, I just knew I had to get as far away from the home as I could. When I was too tired to walk, or even think anymore, I pulled myself up
into a tree at the edge of the forest, near a heavy interstate.

  I had made my way into Nashville, only thirty short miles from where I had started. I knew I couldn’t risk stopping to rest, but I didn’t have an ounce of fight left in my body. I let sleep take me and drifted into a nightmare.

  Blackness swirled into images of red blood pooling on the carpet, and razor-sharp claws connected to gray paws swatting against soft flesh. This time I remember looking through the tall mirror on the cream-colored walls. A massive panther stood in front of me. My eyes glowed green, and my coat was gray with black tiger stripes zig-zagging down my back.

  I didn’t look like anything you would see in a zoo or feline manual; I was something new. My mass was larger than any other cat I had ever seen, even on TV. When I opened my mouth, large incisors shone back at me. I was truly a monster.

  I sobbed myself awake, nearly falling from the branch I had perched myself on. The sound of the busy interstate violated my newly sensitive ears, and the smell of pollution nearly made me gag. It suddenly reminded me of how my mother had always complained about such things. She hated the city, and we always lived as far deep into the farmlands as we could. Now I knew why.

  New grief shook my body, but I forced myself to slide down from the tree and begin walking again. I had no other option than to travel deeper into the city. I knew how I must look to the people speeding down the road in their vehicles, but I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t feel anything except pain and fear. Pain of what I had one, and fear of what I might do again.

  I was briskly walking through an empty street when a stranger's voice interrupted my pitiful thoughts.

  “Hey, baby! What are you doin’ out here all alone?”

  A scruffy man with dirty blonde hair and oil smeared on his forehead stepped out from behind his car. The car hood was up, and the oil stains on his shirt told me he was a mechanic. He was a foot taller than me and looked to be in his late thirties.

  A girl in my state of mind didn’t know the appropriate way to react. Either that, or I was trying to punish myself.

  “I’m walking,” I replied.

  “Walkin’ out here all by yourself?” He asked again. His gaze raked over my body, but I didn’t look away.

  “Ya know, there are some bad people out in these parts.” He smiled. His teeth were crooked and yellowing, with black decay dotting the edges.

  “I know.” I said.

  I was bad people, but he didn’t know that.

  He must have taken my plain tone as an invitation. I didn’t back away when he took a step forward, I didn’t knock his hand aside when he placed it on my shoulder, and I didn’t even run when it continued to slide down my chest. He squeezed once and let out a small moan.

  I held back my scream as he backed me into the parked vehicle. I knew this punishment was mine to bear. When his hands clasped around my throat, I closed my eyes and tried to go somewhere else. The mantra echoed in my mind as I gritted my teeth.

  I deserve this. I deserve this. I deserve this.

  I braced myself for what was coming next, but nothing happened.

  I heard grunts and a muffled yell, and when I opened my eyes, a man stood before me. Not the man who was going to hurt me, but another one.

  At first glance I thought he was an angel, but the glare of the sun shifted as he did, causing the illusion of the blinding halo to fade from his features.

  He looked to be in his late teens, early twenties. His jet black hair fell across his forehead in waves, and I could imagine the sparkles his eyes made when he smiled. But not today; today face was lined with fury. He stood over the mechanic with a foot against his throat.

  I watched him in awe, and when he saw my reaction, or lack thereof, his brow furrowed deeper. He applied more pressure to the man’s throat while still looking into my eyes.

  “Apologize.” he growled.

  The man tried to make a sound, but all I could hear were gurgling noises. I didn’t mind if he choked; I didn’t mind anything.

  My savior reached down to grab the man’s neck, pulling him up so his eyes were leveled with my own. The dark-haired boy growled again.

  “Apologize.”

  “I-I’m sorry, miss!”

  He threw the mechanic back onto the ground and looked back to me. We didn’t move as the older man crawled across the pavement and into the car. The man gulped as he looked at us from the open car window and sped out of sight.

  “Why are you here, Kitten? Where is your home?” the man whispered.

  His words confused me at the time. I was in shock, and the gravity of the world was about to come crashing down on me all over again. I didn’t have anywhere to go, nowhere to hide. I was a lost cause.

  “I have nowhere.” I whispered at last.

  The man frowned and glanced down the street. No cars or people had seen the altercation that had gone on. I imagined he was hoping to look down the road and see a happy family smiling and waving for me to come join them, but he was badly mistaken. When his eyes met mine again, I noticed how shockingly green they were, the same as my own.

  He eyed the rest of me, and I was certain what he saw wasn’t appealing. I was wearing dirty, days old clothing, and dirt seeped into every pore of my skin. I could smell my own filth. My eyes stayed glued to the pavement, too ashamed to meet his gaze again.

  “Come on, you can come clean up at my house. I live right there.”

  He pointed to a small house on the edge of the street. The white paint was chipped off of the siding, and green shutters sat crookedly beside each window. It was too small to fit a family, and I wondered if he was on his own as well.

  I didn’t complain when he gently placed his hand on the small of my back and guided me towards the house. His touch was soft, and his voice sounded like velvet. I didn’t know it at the time, but this gentle stranger was my salvation.

  He was the one who would teach me how to tame the beast.

  Six Years Later

  The growls had grown quiet for over three hours, and I had finally found the courage to pull my body out of the crawlspace my father had hidden me in. I crept down the hallway that led to my parents' room, listening silently for any noise. It was so quiet in the house that I could hear the clock ticking from the living room.

  When I reached the door, I noticed the bloody handprints. They were smeared all over the white paint, and the doorknob was slippery wet. I slowly twisted the handle and pushed the door open.

  I heard a scream, only later realizing it was my own. The blood coated the carpet, walls, and ceiling. My parents lay in an unrecognizable heap in the middle of the room, and their entrails had been torn from their torsos. I ran back to the door and vomited violently, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sight. I straightened up, empty on the inside, and made my way back to the scene.

  When I reached the middle of the room, I noticed the paw prints. They covered the whole floor and circled around my parents. One set of tracks led me to the broken window. The wind blew in from outside, sending in the fresh smells of cut grass and pine trees.

  I looked out at the moon, trying not to think of my parents that still lay behind me. It was full, shining brighter than it had all summer. I gripped the edge of the windowsill only to pull my hand back in pain. A slice ran down my palm and blood pooled at the cut.

  Something caught my eye on the window, and I pulled on the threads pinched between the broken glass. When I held it up to the moonlight, I noticed it wasn’t thread at all; it was hair. Soft, white fur.

  I opened my eyes, blinking back tears and trying to silence my gasps. The room was dark, and I was wrapped like a burrito in my favorite comforter. After wrangling the blanket off of my sweating skin, I reached my hand to the other side of the bed until I made contact with skin.

  River.

  I rolled closer to his body and grabbed his arm, wrapping it around myself in a tight embrace. He must have sensed I was close, because he hugged me tighter to him and plan
ted a kiss on the back of my head. I sighed, taking comfort in the warmth of the surrounding arms.

  I hadn’t had that nightmare in a while, and it brought back a pain I thought I had already healed from. The young girl who hid while her parents were butchered was gone, replaced by a woman who had control over the life she lived.

  I didn’t know how long I laid awake thinking about the past, but soon light snaked through the soft blue curtains, bouncing onto the white walls and casting a blue shade over our bed. River stirred, and I rolled in his arms so I could look at his face. Never in a million years did I think a man would charge in on his white horse to save me from the world, but he had. He was my prince charming; my one and only.

  His thick eyelashes fluttered open, and a sleepy smile lit up his tan face. His fingers traced circles on my arm as he leaned into me and planted a wet kiss on my lips.

  “Good morning, kitten.” he purred, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Good morning.”

  I smiled for the first time since I had woken up and buried my face into River’s chest. Bu-bump. Bu-bump. Bu-bump. The beat of his heart calmed me, bringing peace back after the horrible dream.

  River had always been my anchor, keeping me from plunging deeper into the darkness of my own mind. After he found me, he kept his distance while also making sure I was cared for. I refused to talk about what had happened for months. When River discovered I was trying to prevent my shifts, he taught me how to ignore the fear and control my blood lust, and how to maintain my humanity during the time I was a panther.