James Baldwin - Stained Glass

“Fuck your–”

I twisted and pushed until I felt the skin of his pelvis bow, then give under the relatively dull point of the machete. He broke off into a scream.

“Four.” I pushed again, deeper.

Kir screamed a second time, his voice dry and hoarse. The others were hovering behind me, stunned into silence.

“Okay, what!? Stop… What do you want from me-AAAHHH?!?

“Three,” I said. “How did you get the children, Kir? Speak English.”

Panting quickly, Kir looked down. Blood was beginning to spread through the weave of his pants. It was only embedded into his body a quarter of an inch or so, but that bundle of nerves just below the surface was to protect the bowel wall from traumatic injury, and they were very twitchy. I twisted the point, just a little.

“Drugs! Cargo!” He stuttered the words out in a thick accent. “Kids! Take it out, Molotchik. T-Take it out!”

I kept my hand on the haft, feeling the muscles of his abdomen spasm around the blade. “Tell me about the kids.”

“They is f-for movies,” he stammered. “Vanya Kostyovych… he sells the movies. The kids.”

“Where does he keep them?” I lifted the knife a little, permitting him with some relief. He exhaled sharply. If he’d known how small the wound really was, he’d be ashamed.

“Everywhere, Alexi, I don’t fucking know!” He babbled in Russian, unable to keep his English in his terror. There was blood on the tip of the machete.

“English.”

“Ask him! Ask Vanya and Avtoritet . We just… hold them here… we film the fuck…”

Before I could stop him, Duke surged forward. “You fucking mongrel piece of SHIT!”

He got in two good punches on Kir’s head before Zane was on top of him and pulling him away. Duke snarled, writhing in the larger man’s grasp and thrashing like a wildcat. His eyes turned bright gold, pupils drawing to slits.

“Duke!” Jenny shouted his name as Zane hauled him back. “Duke! Cut it out!”

But he couldn’t hear her. He snarled again, deeper and throatier as he shoved himself away from Zane’s chest with an explosive burst of strength. Zane stumbled and hit the wall hard enough that a crack tore through the plaster, and Duke’s back bowed, distending like an underwater explosion before his body burst with a wet welter of clear fluid and shredded clothing. The transformation from man to leopard was so fast, so incredibly fast, that I didn’t actually see it: just the two hundred and fifty pounds of tweaked-out fanged fur and muscle flying at my face.

I stumbled out of the way of the oncoming leopard, swiping with the machete. He wasn’t interested in me: he landed on Kir. The trapped man screamed a blood-curdling, high-pitched pig squeal that cut when Duke slapped his lower jaw with his forepaw and almost casually tore it off his face. It hit the opposite wall in an arc of gore and bounced, sending Binah scattering from her nest of clothes.

A tiger – fully twice the side of the cat who had quite literally ripped this man’s face off – charged past me as I backed as far as the floor allowed for. The tiger leapt onto Duke’s back, pulling him off to the floor to roll, snarl and tumble over the ground. The camera was taken to the floor, smashing open.

Duke was no match for the bigger cat, but fought anyway. They hit the window and burst through it in a shower of glass and plaster, screeching out on the fire escape. The leopard, bloody and panting, tried to clamber back into the room as the tiger caught it around the torso with paws the size of dinner plates and lay on top of it, pinning its comparatively small body to the floor. Comparatively. One was the size of a very large mastiff; the other, the size of a pony.

“Fucking hell, Duke!” Zane’s shouting finally cut through the racket. He surged forward, trying to help Jenner restrain the hissing, spitting leopard. The Twin Tigers moniker made sense now.

I rushed to Kir’s side. He was convulsing, fingers opening and closing spasmodically as his body flopped on the bed. His lower face was simply gone, his throat open, his guts torn out from his belly like so much offal. He was going to die, and I wasn’t much inclined to try and help him.

Duke was helpless under Jenner’s bulk. He yowled and clawed at the floor, but the club president, in her animal form, was far larger and far stronger. When he finally calmed down, she let go of the scruff of his neck and looked at me with an alien intelligence. It was Jenner and not-Jenner at the same time. It was like looking at someone’s Neshamah.

“How the hell are we going to clean this up?” Zane’s voice had a note of hysteria. He pushed both hands over his shaven head. “Jenner, Duke just fucking killed someone!”

“Forget about him. We have to get out of here,” I said. “The cops will be here any minute. Don’t touch anything, for GOD’s sake. The more we touch, the longer we stay, the more evidence we leave.” If we were lucky, the Mafiya itself would be blamed. I wasn’t stupid enough to have bought an apartment under my own name, but the police had any number of ways they could identify me. I’d lived here for most of my life. They’d find something I had missed. “I have to get some things.”

“I got your suitcases and the medical kit. They’re in the car. Give me the cat.” Zane held his arms out.

I bundled Binah up in Vassily’s old suit jacket and handed her to him. She was too tired to resist or care, and her frailty was evident in his huge hands. “Don’t waste too much time.”

Lights had turned on in the house across the street. Shit.

Duke shuddered, and went limp under Jenner’s weight. When she was satisfied, the Siberian tiger stood upright on her hind-paws. Limbs and fur folded back into her center mass as bones popped and changed shape, expelling clear, sweet smelling gel that splattered to the ground. It was both grotesque and oddly elegant, every part moving smoothly into place. The clear gel fell to the floor in clumps, vanishing almost as soon it touched the bloody carpet and taking the blood and dirt with it. I recognized the high, mouthwatering floral smell of the stuff over the stench of viscera. It was Phi. Weak Phi, compared to Zarya’s blood, but it was Phi nonetheless.

Duke followed soon after. The leopard crawled on his belly towards Jenner, shifting back in the same oddly mechanical way. When he was back in human shape, the naked woman kicked him in the jaw and sent him sprawling.

“You fucking idiot!” Jenner shouted at him. She bent down and hauled him up by the arm. Duke didn’t have cat ears anymore, but if he had, they would have been laid back flat along his skull. “What the fuck? WHY the fuck?”

“I’m s-sorry, Prez, I—”

“You fucking lost your shit, is what you did. Get up and get out! Into the car!” Jenner shoved the much larger, much taller man like he weighed nothing. Without a word, he picked up his sword – still nude – and stumbled out the door.

“There are coats in the wardrobe,” I said. I was sweeping up anything that the cops could use to identify me or Vassily. Photos, his zippo, but there were just too many things that could be used to incriminate us. A dull radiating pain ached through my hands with the knowledge of what I was going to have to do.

Jenner sniffed. “You think I’m worried about being naked? I was born this way.”

“No, but the NYPD may be less than impressed by your assets if we’re pulled over.” I didn’t turn around to look at her, but I wasn’t able to put any force in my voice. “Get out.”

“What about the tape?”

“The tape that now ends with Duke turning into an animal and murdering someone?” I pointed at the floor. The cassette was shattered amidst the ruins of the camera, the tape pulled out in a mockery of Kir’s corpse.