Coyote

The summer of my forty-seventh year. Memories, real and imagined, flood my mind in a far corner of the earth, under the influence of something put in my drink.

I am sure they meant to simply steal my credit cards and cash. Maybe not, but at my age I never quite connect with why I would be an object of lust. Maybe it’s just anger against what I represent, a foreign object, thinking it is safe just because of where it is from.

The room flashes and spins, I feel my head loll back on my neck and the rafters slide through my field of vision. I would like to say I know what happened.

I do not.

The next time I become aware, my head feels as if it could explode, I breathe shallow to prevent it. Just cracking an eyelid causes a violent surge in my stomach.

Random things being said in a language I can’t decipher when one word begins and another ends. Drool pools in my mouth and I can not get a seal on my lips to keep it from trickling out. I can’t even tell what I am laying on. I assume the floor.

Except the voice I can not understand is next to me, not above. It is surprisingly gentle. I realize I am in a great deal of trouble. I have no one who can be extorted if this is a tourist kidnapping for money.

I crack my eyelid to see … well anything at all.

I am surprised by the beauty of the creature standing next to me. Androgyny draped in flowing finery, I look them in the eye with my shaking half lidded gaze.

“They really did a number on you my dear.” The voice was a smooth contralto, full of sex, it is still unclear if it has a gender.

Then it hit me that it was spoken in English. I braced and tried harder to see.

Beautiful long glossy black hair, epicanthic folds and long lashed eyes under high arching brows, smooth luminous skin. They were leaning in close, whether in concern or malice was unclear, the perfectly expressionless face giving nothing away.

Fear felt like a solid object suddenly, it rose in the back of my throat and my body heaved it immediately. The shadowy haze of the room went black and throbbed a bit before I lost consciousness.

The next moment of lucidity was an indeterminate amount of time later.

“Tell me, little one, do you want to live?” Same voice as before, again in English.

I croaked that I did. To be perfectly honest at that particular moment I was not sure.

A sound like a wind chime echoed through the room, my head spun and I realized it was laughter.

The shadowy haze was still present, it hadn’t just been my vision.

I was able to open my eyes a bit more and see that I was actually on a raised platform of sorts. The individual who had been speaking to me periodically leaned over and seemed to speak directly towards my ear instead of speaking out into the room. That made sense as to why it felt like they were not above me before, even though they were each time I tried to look at them.

I had never in my whole life been called “little one”. For some reason that resonated in my head as I woke slowly up. The person had moved away from me as I struggled to move myself and relieve pressure. My clothing was bunched and ripped and tangled, nothing was comfortable, but there were no extreme points of pain, so I realized I had not been assaulted, at least not in a damaging way.

My head was pounding but the nausea was gone. I was so fascinated with the person in the room with me that I only made a perfunctory effort to straighten myself before looking for them as I sat up.

Standing across the room from me was a tall slender individual dressed in black. Every last inch of skin was covered with dark fabric, the only visible epidermis was their face, which seemed to glow in the depths of the shade of the room. Assuming they had tucked their hands in somewhere I was shocked when the figure moved its arms from its sides and I realized they were also wearing dark gloves. The effect in the dim light was of a floating mask.

“It is surprising that one of your clan would venture here unaware, or is it that you do not know?” The voice sounded amused and perhaps a bit mocking.

“I, I … do not know what you mean.” I realized I had not spoken and I needed desperately to clear my throat but I was loathe to do something so gross in front of this person. So my voice sounded hoarse, lower than normal.

“That explains a great deal.” The speaker sounded as if they had expected me to say just that.

“You do not even know what you are…” This time the voice resonated with pity.

I shook my head feeling as if the sound was somehow different from a normal voice. Then I realized that the figure had never once the whole time since it first came into view, moved its mouth. Why it had taken so long for my brain to grasp that, and the fact that the beautiful thing was actually a mask, left me disoriented for a moment.

An uncontrollable shiver traversed my exhausted spine.

“I suppose I could educate you, you have come half way across the planet after all…”

The dark figure moved, appearing to float because of the shadows, and dark cloth, and within a blink, was standing directly in front of me. I could see the sheen and weave of the cloth on the figure’s lower belly, the edge of their waist band was nose level from where I was sitting.

The movement and flutter of my own hair caused me to wince and cower.

“What I am about to tell you will cause you to never cower again in this lifetime.” The voice was coming from behind the mask. “You have been living a lie, little one… and which way you decide to proceed hence will be not unlike a beast being unleashed…”

The words flowed for what seemed like an eternity. Part of my mind denied every single syllable. That part was violently devoured later.

…

“Have you heard? There is supposedly an alpha coyote in your sector …” The enormous russian looked down and away from the man smoking beside him. “Were you just going to let it roam?”

“Are you worried?” The voice was soft and sounded suspiciously like a growl.

“Well… about that…” The silver haired man shifted his weight and glanced at his companion.

“You heard it was female… “ The smaller man said with no inflection whatsoever.

The sigh that escaped the larger man was theatrically sad.

“If it causes issues I will have to step in, but it did not know it was one of the ‘kind’.” the smaller man dropped the butt of the cigarette and ground it out with his shoe. “It has been dormant for decades aside from being female, it may not even survive awakening.”

“It was just a tourist, how is it that this happened? Shouldn’t it have been gone before we even knew it was here?”

“A branch of the Yakuza drugged her and were going to sell her, from what I understand one of the Priests stepped in.”

The taller man visibly shuddered at the mention of the priest.

“Did they visit you too then?” The concern was palpable in the larger man’s voice.

“No, I could smell the brimstone, So I sent a beta to report. It isn’t like the monkeys could do things without us knowing every move.”

“A heavy seed female.. It could get ugly, shouldn’t we make sure she gets on a flight back to the states?”

“From what I understand, she had no reason to turn down the priest..”

“What!?! Who would willingly allow those things to … ugh.”

“She was near fifty years old… I am not sure I would have turned them down at that point…”

“Still…”

“You are so squeamish… are you sure you’re in the right pack?” The shorter man sounded amused.

“I am glad this is funny to you… that collar is no joke…”

The smaller man dropped the amused look and looked directly at the bigger man.

“I haven’t forgotten …” The voice was like cold steel.

The larger man hung his head, ashamed but there were no words.

…

Monkeys are what my kind call humans. I was one until two months ago. Most of the world is blissfully ignorant primates eating, shitting, grooming each other.

Before the monkeys were the other divisions, to lump them all together and sum up simply, the ‘Kind’. Several different branches of different evolution have resulted in non monkey evolutionary results of people who, if awakened, further their lines through interbreeding with others like them. They were the original totem animals, shrine guardians, monsters and angels of the world only remembered as fiction through the ages.

I am the descendant of two different lines of Kind. Russian wolf, now extinct or more correctly, mutated and Native American coyote, hunted but resilient.

It is the mix that was the reason the Priest came to me. This country has a single wolf left. All pairings with him have resulted in the maternal line being dominant. The priest’s proposal was that he “reset” me. It came at a price of course. I wear a collar, a literal collar… and I am required to perform a job. His (their?) idea was that another predator in the wolf territory would make it more likely to produce a dominant offspring. Being the only one, because of the pheromone balance, had put him at the top of his food chain, the result was no need for more of his Kind.

With a new pheromone introduced, it supposedly would shake up the ecosystem.

The reset was surprisingly simple. The priest killed me, sort of. The price of being resurrected was the collar, I am a grim reaper of sorts now but we can talk about that later, I haven’t even had to do that part of it yet.

I guess I won’t have to try to find my passport after this, oh and forget botox. I will never need that shit again. I look easily 15 years younger, even if it is at the cost of having to run around in dominatrix gear, and eat raw meat on impulse.