Page 1 of Her Rabid Beasts

Prologue

Savage

Nineteen years ago

Before Friday night fights in the town warehouse, Dad puts us in the back room to wait with the other kids. Scythe calls it the nursery, but I call it the TV room. One night, when Dad drops us in there, the TV is already on and there’s a lion cub sitting on the floor in front of it and two other boys sitting on the old grey couch behind him.

The lion cub is in his changed form, golden fur with little round ears that twitch this way and that, and he has little round burn scars all over his back and side.

Scythe and I gape in the doorway because a kid being in his fully shifted form is basically impossible and I’ve never actually seen it. I’ve never fought him in the puppy pens, so he might be from out of town. I also think he’s a bit older than us.

My surprise only lasts two seconds before excitement takes over and I race right for him.

“Hello,” I say cheerily, plonking myself down next to him and blinking at his face with wide eyes. I pick at a scab on my barechest and Scythe slaps my hand away, coming to sit down next to me, his sky-blue eyes stuck on the cub too.

The lion doesn’t say hello back because you can’t physically talk when you’re in your beast form. But Scythe has been teaching me manners, and told me I need to practise every chance I get.

“What are you watching?” I say out loud, looking at the wooden puppet on the TV. “Oh, it’s the puppet movie!” I excitedly jab Scythe in the arm and he grins at me.

The lion still doesn’t move his eyes off the TV, just blinks his wide eyes the colour of apple juice. So I do what wolves do best and talk into his mind.

“Have you seen this movie before?” I ask.

The lion cub snaps his head towards me, and I nod proudly.“I’m a wolf,”I explain, putting a palm on my chest.“So I can do tele patties in your head.”

“Wow,”he says, and I flinch in surprise because other orders usually can’t do mind-speaking back. But he doesn’t actually sound wowed by it at all. His voice is low and serious like an adult’s, and smooth like the handle of Dad’s hammer.

I press on, because if he’s talking back to me, that means his head has all its screws.“Have you seen this movie?”

“Pinocchio? No.”

“Pin oh key oh,”I say out loud and Scythe nods his approval.“Hey, so can you change to a boy? It’s easier to talk that way.”

“No.”His voice turns sharp like the edge of a claw.

“Oh.”I’ve never met someone more feral than me before, but I think this lion has to be. Maybe we can be friends. Feral friends.“Well I’ve seen this movie before. The blue fairy is going to come and make him into a real boy at the end.”

The lion cub turns to look at me. “Do you think she can do that for me?”

“What?”

“Make me into a real boy.”

I stare at his lion cub face for a little while because when he said “no” before, I thought he just didn’t want to change, but maybe he meant that he can’t.

“Yeah, I think she could,”I say confidently. “Maybe she can help me, too. My brother says I’m not enough like a boy either.”

The lion cub turns back to look at the TV just as Pinocchio starts dancing with his cricket. All of us watch together for a while and I get to sing, “And always let your con-shins be your guide.”

The lion says, “I want a cricket to tell me what’s right and wrong, too.”

“Aw, yeah. That’s his job, right?”

“Conscience.”

“Con-shins,” I repeat, nodding like I know what that means.

“What are you saying to him?” Scythe asks in that tone he uses when he’s about to tell me off.

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