Scratch (Feral Aliens) Read online

  Scratch

  Feral Aliens

  Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2020 by Loki Renard

  Cover images via depositphotos @anthonypaz, @salivit @s_derivanko, @vishstudio

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  1. Hard Landings

  2. Not Dead

  3. Boned

  4. Enemy Lovers

  5. Separating Trouble

  6. Rebellion

  7. Lies

  8. Past is Present

  9. Missing

  10. Emptiness

  11. What A Girl Wants

  12. Home Again

  13. Convincing Conversations

  14. Playing House

  Epilogue

  Read next!

  1 Hard Landings

  Scratch

  “What will it take for you to learn your lesson?”

  I growl the words into my human mate's face, my fangs flashing less than a quarter of an inch from her impudent mouth.

  “Everything and nothing,” she hisses back through clenched teeth. Her eyes flare at me with the disobedient rebellion which made me fall for her. This human is the most maddening, perfect, adorable troublemaker I’ve ever met. And I’ve met me, so that’s impressive.

  This conversation is a waste of time for us both. She thinks she is unbreakable. She refuses to fit in, and absolutely refuses to follow the rules. She made herself an outcast on Earth and she’s determined to do so here too. I’m an outlaw myself, so I get it. But you can’t stay outlaw forever. Not if you want to survive in the wild. There’s all kinds of rules you can break in this world, but you can’t break nature’s rules. Not without getting broken yourself.

  I am going to have to tame this brat of a human. And it starts with making her scream.

  She still doesn’t believe I’m really going to do it. I can see it in her eyes, even now. She thinks she has gotten away with everything.

  But nobody gets away with everything forever.

  Not even her.

  I remember the first time I met her. I wasn’t in a position to properly see her, definitely not in any state to actually want her. Now, wanting her is all I can do. It is a consuming force which drives my every thought and my every move.

  She squirms in my arms, her soft flesh so delicate beneath my rough fingers. I inhale her scent and it makes every part of me throb with desire. She’s mine in every way - and I’m about to show her exactly what that means.

  Moons ago….

  Mr Tiddles

  I yawn, stretch, and take another step through the woods. It’s not easy being a fugitive. Or maybe it is. When I first took this skin it felt small and limited, but my human has done well by me. My old identity is a distant memory. I am Mr Tiddles now. And Mr Tiddles I shall remain. Unless, of course, a handy almost-dead corpse should happen to provide an alluring home for my cramped consciousness. That’s unlikely to happen.

  My paw touches something.

  Ugh. Gross. I shake it and lick it. Tastes dead. Hm. Maybe worth investigating after all. Sniffing at the bodies of the dead yet to be moved, I have to remind myself that nibbling on them, even the tastiest parts, would technically be cannibalism. Or catnibalism. Or catnibbleism. However you say it, it would be probably wrong, and not just in a moral way. In a way which might get me sick as hell.

  I am, after all, walking through the remnants of a battlefield. This is the place the far off city launched their attack on this pristine place of peace. Now the bits of forest that used to smell like dirt and birds smell like blood and death. I like it.

  “Blah blah blah…”

  “Blah blah blah blah blah…”

  The feral cats are having a discussion inside the clearing. After the city attacked, a lot of debris was pulled through the closing portal. It’s complicated, and as a cat, I don’t have to care about that at all. So I don’t.

  But something is making my whiskers twitch, and I always follow a twitchy whisker.

  “I need to get back to Kitty.”

  Skoll is cross. He’s been whiny and protective ever since Kitty gave birth to his baby. Those things change a grimalkin. I’m glad I never mated anyone. It would have slowed me down, probably gotten me caught. The city would have had leverage over me. It’s best a guy like me stays attachment free. In this world, caring for something or someone is just like handing fate a knife to stab you with.

  “Soon,” Falkri says. “You are the only one who understands this technology. We’ve found something that doesn’t fit. We need you to check it out.”

  “What do you need me to look at that you can’t identify….” Skoll trails off as Falkri points to something laying on the ground. The very thing which made my whiskers twitch.

  “Is that another human?” Falkri asks. “It looks like yours, but different.”

  “It is a human,” Skoll says. “She must have been pulled through the walking wall when it was destroyed. It must have been open to the human world in some way. An accidental redirect, of sorts. The city must have used almost all their power to walk the soldiers this far. It probably relocated all sorts of things that weren’t supposed to move.”

  That’s a lot of must have’s and probably’s, but I’m not going to point that out because I’m inside a cat and cats can’t talk. The urge to speak was almost impossible to deal with when I first slipped inside this body. Now I’m much more used to it.

  I wander over and give her a good sniff.

  She has caramel colored skin, dark curly hair, and the smile of an angel. It’s strange that she’s smiling while unconscious, almost as though she’s laughing at a joke none of us are in on. She’s very pretty for a human. Pity that the journey through the portal in the middle of a battle seems to have killed her.

  I feel the urge for a nap coming on.

  “She’s still breathing!” Skoll declares, hoisting her up onto his shoulders. “I’m taking her to Shanti. She might still live.”

  I yawn. I used to care about things like this, before my consciousness was stuffed into a cerebellum six sizes too small. It’s too tight in here to worry about what happens to other people.

  Pixie

  Best. Night. Ever.

  Or maybe worst night ever?

  It’s all kind of a blank blur, which usually means I’ve done some off-the-hook crazy shit. I can’t wait to find out what. I can’t feel my face. Or my legs. Damn. It must have been epic. I should check my phone.

  Before I even open my eyes, I’m reaching out for it. I can’t find my bedside table. There’s thin air where my furniture should be. What the literal fuck. Did I lose it?

  If I’ve dropped my phone somewhere, it will be the third phone this year. But it would be the first time I ever lost my bedside table.

  “Stay still,” somebody says. “You're hurt.”

  It’s a female voice; sounds like Eartha Kitt broke into my bedroom. Fucking weird. I open my eyes, slowly, because my head is throbbing, and a hundred hangovers have taught me you don’t just go flinging your eyelids open like some kind of maniac. You take it carefully. You take it slow. Little bit of light at a time, so you don’t get speared right in your eyeballs.

  What I see when I partially crank
my eyes open, is weird. It is not my bedroom. It’s not a bedroom of anybody’s house that I know. The roof is thatched with sticks and things, sort of like a primitive cabin. Maybe I went to Vegas and forgot about it. They have all sorts of weird shit there.

  “Did I win?”

  “I think it is safe to say you did not," the voice says. It is so pleasing and deep and warm and husky. It makes me feel safe enough to open my eyes all the way — and promptly wish I hadn’t.

  There’s a woman leaning over me. She’s wearing a cat mask, and it’s super fucking realistic. Like a prosthetic or something.

  “Dude! What the fuck!?”

  I try to sit up, but a blazing pain emanates through my head.

  “Stay down,” she says. “You’ve been injured.”

  I’m trying to work out which one of my friends this is, but I really don’t recognize the voice. This is weird. Even for me. And I once sneaked onto a Saudi prince’s plane and made him take me for burgers.

  Everybody has been telling me for years that I’m going to wake up dead one day. Today might actually be that day. Nothing feels real. Nothing feels right. My head hurts, my body aches, and even the simplest of motions feels almost impossible.

  “Where’s my phone? I need my phone.”

  “I don’t know what a phone is, but it is probably back on your planet.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Comedowns make me bitchy. It’s one of my least favorite personality traits. I usually take a couple days off on my own, drink some smoothies and watch shitty television and get back to normal.

  The closer I look at the woman over me, the more freaked out I get. She has eyes the color of the sun and teeth sharp enough to eat me with. I’m tripping again. Jesus. I need to stop taking shit just because somebody tells me it is awesome.

  My memory is not good right now. I assume I took something because I’m always taking something. And I assume it was probably new, because I like new. I’m kind of a pioneer that way. A crash test dummy for drugs.

  I start to get up, thinking that she’ll disappear like the hallucinations usually do when I try to touch them. But she doesn’t. She stays very, very real above me. Fucking weird. She has a body like a human, arms, legs, that sort of shit, but her face has very feline features, a broad flattened nose, golden eyes with round, black pupils. Her hair is similarly raven, woven into a single thick braid sitting over her shoulder.

  “You’ve been injured,” she says. “Lie still.”

  “Fuck off, bitch.” That’s something of an extra response given she’s being nice, but she’s also a cat-faced lady. So. You know.

  “You have a wound in your side,” she says. “If I fuck off at this moment, you will finish bleeding out. Is that what you want?”

  That’s when I realize she’s pressing on my stomach, just around my ribs.

  I must be in the hospital. I must have hurt myself. Makes sense. Getting blackout fucked up can do that to you. Whatever my eyes are telling me is a lie, but the pain and injuries are probably very real.

  I do the only thing that makes any sense. I pass out.

  The next time I wake up I’m all wrapped up around the midsection. I guess I survived surgery. Good for me. I wonder what I did to get this fucked up. I wonder if it’s on the internet.

  “You’re awake.”

  That woman is still here. She’s sitting next to me, knitting something. She turns to look at me and she still has those eyes, those golden fucking eyes set in that face with way too much fur to be human.

  “Oh fuck off, no way are you still a cat. Am I still high?”

  “I am a grimalkin, but I understand your confusion. If you stop cursing long enough, I may be able to explain what has happened to you.”

  “Okay, fine, cat nurse. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “My name is Shanti.”

  “Cool. Cool.”

  I do feel like hell. Aside from the fact I’m seeing cats, there’s a coldness in my limbs, like they’re not properly there, or like I’m not properly here. This isn’t like any trip I’ve ever had before. It’s fucking weird. I am going to kill Tony if he slipped me some dirty shit.

  I know I’m probably in a hospital and the cat-faced lady is probably some sour-faced nurse who is tired of junkies coming in all tweaked out. But goddamn, I am seeing some weird shit and it’s hard to keep myself together.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Pixie.”

  “You’re a human, aren’t you?”

  “Uh. Yeah. What kind of question is that?” I try to sit up, but she pushes me back down. She’s way stronger than most ladies. Usually nurses ask you what drugs you’ve taken, and then if you're pregnant. Those questions always come one after the other, the second with the implication that you better not be pregnant on account of all the drugs you’ve done. At least, that’s how it usually goes for me. I don’t know what it is like for other people.

  Shanti does not ask me what drugs I have taken. And she doesn’t ask me if I am pregnant. Instead she says a whole bunch of weird shit.

  “Pixie, you are no longer on your world. You are the casualty of a war you had no part in, but you have to behave for me. If you keep fighting, I will have to subdue you. We have done our best to mend your wounds, but we do not have the technology you are accustomed to. You are still very much in danger of dying.”

  All I hear in all of that is the threat of being subdued.

  “Subdue me, bitch? You ain’t gonna subdue me. I will…”

  And then she’s subduing me. And by subduing me, I mean she’s tying me down. There are leather straps going over my arms and being secured to the bedding. She must have had these ready to go. All she had to do was press me down with one big furry clawed hand, pull them into place and tighten them.

  “What kind of a fucking hospital is this?”

  “This is my home,” she tells me. “You have been thrown across space and time and landed on another planet.”

  “Hahaha! Okay, good one. Super fucking funny. I’m reporting you to the relevant medical board just as soon as I sober up. What’s your name?”

  “My name is Shanti.”

  “I know. You told me that already.”

  “You did just ask again,” she says, making me feel silly for not having remembered that I asked. It Is hard to keep track of things when you’re talking to a talking cat lady after surgery in some kind of hut.

  “Shanti? Is that your first or last name?”

  “I have only one name.”

  “Convenient. Man, when this wears off…”

  “So, we have a second human!” A male appears overhead. He’s handsome. But he’s also a cat. Or, not a cat, but like a panther man. More man than panther, but still more panther than most men.

  “I am tripping balls,” I announce. “I can’t believe how long this is lasting. I’ve never woken up high before. Holy shit.”

  “She’s very confused,” Shanti says, talking about me as if I’m not even here. “It’s probably best to leave her be, Fenrir.”

  “You guys have some weird-ass names. And you both REALLY look like cats.”

  “We are grimalkin,” Shanti explains. “We’re a species different from your own, and we live on a different planet. You have been transported here by accident.”

  I am tripping all of the balls.

  2 Not Dead

  Scratch

  “This one’s not dead!”

  It takes me far longer than it should to realize he’s talking about me.

  It takes even longer for me to realize I’m no longer in the body of the cat I’ve inhabited for over three years. When I try to move, my body isn’t lithe, claws and teeth attached to a super flexible spine. It’s fucking heavy and its big and and it’s familiar in all the wrong ways.

  This shouldn’t be possible. Or maybe it is not only possible, but also what I was trying to do? I can’t remember.

  I must have lost my hold on my furry host,
and been sucked into the body of a seriously wounded city cat. The realization is confirmed as I turn my head and watch as Mr Tiddles stalks away, apparently unharmed by my stay in his cortical regions.

  There was never any guarantee that this would hold forever when I transplanted my consciousness into the Earth animal. I just needed a temporary place to hide out away from the city's bounty hunters. I never thought I’d spend years in that cat’s body. My consciousness doesn’t really fit a cat body. It’s always looking for a grimalkin body. And it just found one.

  “FUCK!” I curse at the top of my lungs, defaulting to a human curse.

  “This one is alive. We should kill him.” Dwight says, looking down at me with that broad, flat face of his. I never liked him, and I like him even less now.

  “We don’t kill the wounded,” Falkri says. “There’s been enough waste of life already. Bring him in. And be careful about it. Survivors have worth in the wild, no matter which side they originate from.”

  Dwight and Fenrir lift me onto a makeshift stretcher. They say nothing to me, and I say nothing to them. I know who they all are because I’ve hung out with them all when I was stuck inside Mr Tiddles the cat, but they think I am nothing more than a wounded city soldier. An enemy.

  I never expected the years I spent hidden inside the cramped cerebellum of a pet cat to be the best three years of my life, but as agony racks me from head to toe, I think they might have been.

  They carry me back to the village. I don’t want to go back among them, especially the one who used to be a bounty hunter, the one who tracked me across the universe and back and still didn’t catch me. I’m afraid he’s going to know me as soon as he looks at me. If he works out who I am…