“Please tell me you are not one of them,” he said in a voice so full of agony that it brought tears to my shut eyes. “Just tell me the truth, Maggie, please.”
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “I am like them,” I admitted in a choked whisper.
The gun pushed harder against my head—not the response I was hoping for, yet the response I knew I would get.
“Bridger, please don’t kill me,” I begged. “I’m not evil, I swear.”
“But you are one of them!” he yelled. I jumped and cringed, waiting for his finger to accidentally slip on the trigger, waiting to die. “They used you to get to me! Were you sent to corrupt me? To make me fall in love with you so I wouldn’t be able to kill you? So I would trust you? Are you supposed to turn me to their side? You seemed so innocent, so clueless about the whole thing! Your fear. It felt … it feels so real!”
“It is real! They are trying to kill me!” I insisted. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I lifted a hand to wipe them away and the barrel of the gun jammed into my temple, making stars burst before my eyes.
“Don’t move,” Bridger warned. “Who are your parents?”
I wanted to throw my hands up in exasperation. Of course, I didn’t. I’d be shot if I did. “I don’t know who they were! They died before I was two, and the aunt who got custody of me never mentioned them. I don’t even know their first names!” I cried. Then I had another thought. “Bridger, the Skinwalkers, they have been trying to kill me since I was a child! They want me dead because I am like them, but not like them. They killed my aunt and cousin. For all I know, they killed my parents, too. They’ve been after me a long time.”
I felt the gun falter against my temple for the briefest moment; then the pressure was back. “How do I know you aren’t lying to me?”
I wanted to throw my hands up in exasperation again. “You can feel everything I feel, so you tell me … am I lying to you? I would never hurt you! Can’t you feel that?”
“That doesn’t matter! I am the sworn enemy of those who steal an animal’s skin to take its form,” Bridger said between gritted teeth. “It is my duty to kill you, Maggie, no matter how I feel about you!”
“Steal an animal’s skin? But I don’t need to steal a skin to change,” I said feebly. The gun was off my temple in a flash.
“What?” Bridger asked.
Tentatively, I turned my head to look at him full in the face. Tears were gleaming on his pale, pale cheeks.
“I don’t mean to change into different animals. It just happens,” I said, warily eyeing the gun in his hand.
He lifted the gun toward me, uncertainty plain on his face, though this time he pointed it at my heart instead of holding it against my head. “But you said you turn into animals, not an animal.”
I nodded fervently. “That’s right. Animals. But I never needed an animal’s skin to do it. I’ll show you,” I pleaded between sobs. “Just give me a chance to prove myself.”
His face wavered between hope and despair, and then all emotion drained from it. He grabbed my upper arm in an icy iron grip and pressed the gun hard against my spine, right between my shoulder blades.
“Walk!” Bridger ordered. I walked. He herded me to a part of the house I had never seen, where all the furniture was covered with sheets. We came to a shadowed stairwell. Carefully I ascended, worried that if I accidentally tripped or stepped wrong, a bullet would shatter through my spine and lodge in my heart. I just couldn’t believe it was Bridger who would put it there.
“Do not try anything, Maggie, or I will shoot you,” Bridger warned when my hand started to rise to wipe away my tears. I let my hand fall.
We went up a second flight of stairs. The house was uncomfortably hot and stuffy on the third floor. It smelled strange, too, like a shoe store or a leather shop. I wanted to rub at my nose, but the gun tapped against my spine, reminding me to keep my hands down.
At the end of a long hall was a dusty, ancient door with an antique brass handle. Beside the door was a modern keypad. Bridger typed in a code and I heard a lock click.
“Open it,” Bridger instructed, nodding to the door without taking his eyes from mine. I pushed the antique door inward and stepped into heavy darkness. The strange odor permeating the third floor was so intense, I gagged when I inhaled. When Bridger flipped on the light, I knew why.
My hands flew up to my face. I stood in a large wood-floored room bare of furniture. Centered in the room was a spiral metal staircase leading to a hatch in the ceiling. On the walls, covering every single available spot, were hundreds of animal paws—tiger, wolf, bear, monkey, dog, gorilla, coyote, even the leathery talons of birds. And masks, lots of masks, like the ones that had been in my room.
“This is how many Walkers my family has killed since my great-grandmother married my great-grandfather,” Bridger explained quietly. “If you are a Walker, I will mount your hand on this wall, too.”
I felt sick to my stomach. “Where are the rest of the animal skins?”
“You think we’d keep them? We burn them! Or throw them into the old mine! They are tainted with evil,” he said mockingly. “Now go up.” He swung his gun toward the spiral staircase. I walked.
“I want to warn you, I am a perfect shot,” Bridger said as my bare foot started up the cold metal stairs. “If you try to run or hurt me in any way—”
“Bridger,” I interrupted shakily. “I will never hurt you.”
He laughed, a pitiful, sarcastic sound. “It’s a little too late for that!”
At the top of the stairs, I opened the hatch and stepped out into warm, fresh air. I stood on a large square balcony built on top of the roof, illuminated in steely moon glow. Telescopes and binoculars were affixed to the railing at every corner, comfortable lounge chairs sat beside low tables, and a tall pole extended up from the center of the balcony, a worn, scratched perch at the top.
Bridger grabbed my arm and pulled me to a corner of the balcony, beside a giant telescope and an even bigger floodlight. I wondered for an instant if he was going to push me to my death. Instead, with the gun aimed at my head and without ever taking his eyes from me, he flipped a switch on the light, and the ground far below—just outside the fence surrounding his property—glowed as if daylight shone from the floodlight.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the sun-bright ground. Dark shapes scattered away from the lit patch of dusty earth, like ants marching away from an ant hole. Bridger swung the light to a different spot. Fur-covered bodies darted from the brightness again, running haphazardly toward the dark ring around the perimeter of light. Again he moved the light. Again a multitude of scraggly bodies rushed to the darkness.
“I’ve never seen so many in one place,” Bridger whispered. His eyes locked on mine, curious and wary. The light winked out and I was blind.
“This is your choice, Maggie Mae,” Bridger said quietly, as if all of his strength had been drained away. “I’m taking you down to my front yard and you are going to shift. You can attack and kill me, then slip through the gates of my driveway and run away with your kind and never come back. Or you can stand in front of the gate where all the Walkers can see you and I will shoot you. And I never miss.” Moonlight reflected off of his numb, dead eyes.
“Bridger, please—” He lifted the gun to my lips, its light pressure silencing me.
“Don’t say anything,” he whispered, closing his eyes for a brief moment. “This is hard enough without your pleading.”
Resigned to my fate, I began the walk downstairs. My feet felt so heavy, I could hardly put one in front of the other to move. I didn’t even have the energy to try to come up with an escape plan. I was broken. Ready to die.
One choice remained to me in my short life. Did I want to kill Bridger and try to escape the Skinwalkers, or would I rather be killed by him? The answer was simple. I’d take a swift bullet to the heart over killing him any day.
On the front porch, I turned to Bridger. It was all I could do to scrape my gaze from my feet and look up at him. “Please kill me on your first try,” I whispered, barely able to breathe, let alone speak. His eyes grew round, then filled once again with ice.
Without a second thought, I removed my yo-ih and put it in my pocket, pulled the oversized T-shirt from my head, and slipped out of my jeans. I walked from the porch in my bra and underwear, looking at Bridger one last time. My tears made his face blur. Only the moonlight reflecting off his gun was easy to see in the darkness.
Beneath a tree’s shadow, I removed my bra and panties and shifted into a cheetah. Might as well die as my favorite animal.
With the bravery inherent in cats, I slunk smoothly from the trees and faced Bridger. He was still on the porch, gun aimed at me. He motioned me toward the gate. Slowly, with my head hanging low, I padded down the tree-lined driveway, away from the house.
I knew the very moment the hot summer wind carried my scent to the Skinwalkers because the silent night erupted with the shrieking and howling and roaring of hundreds of excited creatures. My steps faltered. Even a cat’s bravery has limits.
“Keep going,” Bridger ordered. I turned and looked at him again. He was following me. The gun, still up and ready to shoot, gleamed icy blue in the moonlight. I walked forward.
It wasn’t long before I could see the gate, but when I actually saw the Skinwalkers, snarling, slobbering, intent on my destruction, I froze. I did not dare take one more step. Already, wolves and hyenas were shoving their heads through the wrought iron, their teeth snapping, foamy saliva flecks dangling from their snarling jaws. But that wasn’t the worst part. Amidst the rabid animals stood a woman wearing the hooded cloak of an animal skin. Only the hood was an animal’s head, its teeth framing her pretty young face. It took her a moment to see me. When she did, her calm face became consumed with eager anticipation. Her tongue darted out and licked her lips. She wanted me. Whether dead or alive, I couldn’t say. But she definitely wanted me.