Page 97 of Her Rabid Beasts

Finally, he rasps, getting to his feet. “It sure is, brother.”

Chapter 40

Lyle

Ten years ago

The Animalia Police Chief, a powerful, bald-headed tiger, stares at me in disbelief. “You’re… giving yourself in?”

“Yes,” I say earnestly. “I need to be locked up.”

“I don’t understand,” he says flatly, looking me up and down. “What crime are you confessing to?”

I swallow. “Crimes I don’t even remember. My memory goes blank. I don’t even know. The beastly murders I see on the news. I think I did them, but I can’t be sure.”

He sighs. “Son, we get people confessing to things they didn’t do all the time. For attention, for fame, for?—”

“I need to show you,” I press. “What happens when I…” I can’t even say it anymore.

“Shift?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, son. We have doctors for this type of thing. Specialists. I’ll arrange for a unit to meet us.”

And they do. True to his word, the police chief arranges for a team. They put me in a padded room with six animalia guards dressed in prison riot gear. Heavy plastic shields, helmets, batons. Cattle prods.

It happens again. My world turns dark and it’s like I’m hearing through a tunnel, with people screaming from very far away. When I come back around, I’m covered in hot, sticky liquids and there is nothing but torn bodies, cloth and plastic lying on the floor.

“What did I do?” I scream, staring at my red hands, my red legs. “What did I do?”

Through a sliding panel, a set of obsidian shackles are thrown into the room. “Put these on, boy.”

“Please,” I whisper, wiping at my face, “tell me what I did.”

Silence.

Then a door opens, and a woman in white walks in. I’ve never met a beast like her before. Like golden fire made into a human.

“Your animus is damaged, Lyle.” Her smooth voice is kind but not weak. “We think he might be mad. When he comes out to protect you, he… does notsee. He only fights.”

I look her right in her golden eyes. “Will you put me down?”

“I will not lie to you. It is a consideration.”

Still, I do not look away from her eyes. Her judgement. “I deserve it.”

When she considers my face carefully I do not feel like an insect under glass. I do not feel like an animal in a cage. I feel like a boy. A person. “The thing is, Lyle,youdon’t deserve it. The human side of you is very self-aware. Clinically so.”

I know that it’s another way to call mecold. “I don’t want my animus. I hate it. Is there a way to take it away?” I’d rip it to pieces if I could.

“That is asking to take your soul away. But wecando something else.”

My mind is awash with images of electrocution, of waterboarding, of torture. All the things I’ve researched since I ran away from Ulman’s property into the city. “And what’s that?”

“We make your human side stronger than your animus.”

My scoff is loud. “Impossible.”

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