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I signal behind my back to Scratch, and he moves away to alert our brothers.
My father does not seem to notice. He is too busy enjoying the sound of his own voice.
“Your mother thought I was a carrier for a genetic mutation. She was wrong about that, but I didn’t bother to correct her.” His muscles get bigger, ripping his clothes while his skin darkens. His face is still his, but his skin is changing, shining with scales. “Do you know there are many different kinds of chimera?”
Chimera?Vague memories of a monstrous creature from a scary story I probably shouldn’t have been reading come filtering back to me. It was a strange, mutated being, made up of different parts of animals. A snake’s tail. A feline’s head. A … wolf’s body?
I don’t remember that last part, but he did just say there are many different kinds.
They don’t live as they are. They disguise themselves as something else in order to live undetected amongst others, while they find different ways to feed off of the people around them.
Blood, sex, life energy. There are many ways for a chimera to feed, and each of those ways only make them stronger.
Panic starts to set in as I watch his transformation.
Of all the things I remember about chimeras, there is one important blank spot.
Why can’t I remember how to kill them?
Oh, right. In that story, the villain won in the end.
It was a horror story, of course the villain won.
When I see the end result of my father’s transformation, I understand why the normal kid couldn’t defeat the supernatural monster. The creature standing in front of me now is at least three foot taller and twice as broad as I am, with a similar looking wolf-like upper body, but with a massive snake tail for his lower half and the head of a what appears to be a tiger.
Well, I guess this explains Snake and Fox.
My pack brothers are also my brothers in blood.
This vicious creature fathered all of us, and by the look in his glowing eyes, he’s ready to end us, now, too. None of our plans included facing down a chimera, and I do not see how we can beat this guy without some kind of divine intervention.
The roar he gives out as he cranes his head skyward is deafening.
Oh, shit. There is one more thing I forgot about these monsters.
They usually have some sort of elemental based power.
The hail of rain that follows from the clouded sky above seems to be in answer to his shout, the crack of thunder from above making me feel extremely ill-prepared for this battle.
I thought I knew what I was coming out here to do. I thought I’d kill this terrible man with little effort.
I’d assumed the only real difficulty would come from knowing he was the man who’d given me life.
I was wrong, horribly, terribly, hideously wrong, and that’s going to be the death of us all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Snake
Crazyweathermakestheground wet and the sky crackle and howl. The monster our brother came here to slay is much bigger than we are, and it is not a fair fight. We see this clearly from the back yard of the Alpha’s home, when he turns his head to the sky and roars loudly.
He made the crazy weather. That does not make sense, but it is so.
I look at Fox, but he is staring at the monster with shock in his eyes.
He is upset about something, and it is confusing. He is breathing as if he might be about to start crying. It is not the right time to be emotional, but when I hiss at him, he is too distracted to notice, or the weather is too loud for him to hear me.
It is frustrating. We need to help our brother. I am not used to being the one who thinks of ideas. That is what the others do.
