AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You should rest,” He said gently, his face holding no expression.
“Who are you?” Yuri asked, still trying to understand. “My head feels like somebody opened it up and dropped hot lead in it. How did I…?”
Lucius crossed the ten meters in a flash to gently catch her head before it hit the floor. He placed the head of his peri gently on the pillow of his king-sized bed. Her breathing felt even against his wrist as he did so.
Yuri woke the next morning, Sunday, in her grandfather’s house with more questions than answers.
“Who were those people?!” she asked, through the pain in her swollen, left jaw.
“Bear shifters,” her grandfather said nonchalantly as he applied medicine to her injured wrists and jaws. “Luckily you had a tiger shifter watching over you. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened to you?”
“Ouch,” she said as she tried to bend her head to look into his light-skinned face, and inadvertently pressed her jaw against his hand. “Did you just say shifters? You mean like in the movies? You mean like vampires and werewolves?”
“Hold still young’un,” he admonished gently as he resumed his treatment. “Now I have never seen a vampire. Don’t know if they exist but I do know those are no wolf shifters or werewolves like you call’em in these parts. The bears won’t allow it. They’ll probably chase’em out the first week they show up here.” He chuckled at his own remark.
Yuri’s head, for the first time in hours, was not spinning because of the headache. “You mean Lucius is a tiger shifter?” she asked incredulously. She almost stammered on the word shifter. It sounded fantastic.
Old man Joe shook his head in gruntlement, “Can’t you see that walk, like he is gliding. I don’t think I have ever seen him stumble before. Always looking regal and self-sufficient…” he trailed away.
“Like a cat!” Yuri finished it for him, “Ouch!”
“Hold still.”
“How come you and papa never talked about this none?” Yuri asked, the childish pout on her lips causing her grandfather to chuckle.
“I don’t think your papa has ever seen one before. We certainly did not talk about it with him; your late grandma and me. The bears keep pretty much to themselves, and the tigers, restless spirits had started leaving town to search for excitement elsewhere. I am talking maybe fifty years ago; your papa was still a wee toddler back then”
“It’s not only papa-the whole town seems clueless about this whole other community within their community. I mean there is a tiger walking around in human skin, and they don’t even know!”
“Well not everybody is oblivious,” Old man Jacob’s eyes glinted with soft laughter, “The really old folk know. I mean we know about the bears. We know enough to stay away from their paths, and to shut up about them. Their ways are simple; you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone.”
“And Lucius? What about his kind?”
“Well, all of us old folk in this community grew up with him around. He was already a young man then. I mean he looks a bit older now, but he is still the guy we remember: the cat who could not find his peri!”
“Peri? You mean as in Peri heights?”
“Well yes and not exactly. You see for tiger shifters, and I am sure this goes too for other cat shifters, there exists that one person, for whom they are willing to go any lengths to protect. That person is a peri. It means shiny, and you know how cats love shiny. This town is so named because it was founded by a bunch of tiger shifter couples-a bunch of peries!” So that is why he went all out to save you that night. He would have died trying!”
It was all so fantastic to Yuri. She had a thousand questions all struggling to reach the tip of her tongue, she wanted to know more, but she could feel sleep coming over her quickly. She only had time to mutter one before she passed out again.
“How is he?”
Old man Jansen put the medication away, as she slept. He knew Lucius was out trying to find out who the second tiger was so that peace could be maintained with the bears.
Chapter 8
Yuri resumed her duties the following Wednesday, she had healed remarkably quickly, and that day bore no marks on her body of her previous struggle. She went head first into the school milieu, taking her classes with added vigor, happy to be alive. She told nobody of her debacle. It would have been too hard to explain anyway.
