Free Seven Kinds of Hell by Dana Cameron

later. Burn that bridge when we came to it.
    Snake-man was talking to me. Actually, now in place of the humans, there were
two
snake-men, a wolf-man, and a wolf-woman.
    Holy Anubis, Batman.
    I shook my head. I’d seen this in the cemetery, but with the rain, even with my good eyesight…I’d just been in denial. This was daylight and I was definitely awake.
    He was a snake, with large eyes, scales instead of hair, and fangs. A snake, but lizardy, walking on two feet.
    “…And I don’t know what you’ve been told, or what you’ve learned about yourself, but we can help, Zoe. Family, understanding. A history. You don’t need to be alone, if you trust me—”
    I could have listened to his voice all day long. As a matter of fact, I had to shake myself. It was like I was about to fall asleep, but suddenly I found I was nearly five feet closer to him than I had been. That wasn’t right; I didn’t even remember doing it. I whined, shook my head, backed off.
    Suddenly there was a snake-man missing.
    An unearthly scream from somewhere down the path we’d come.
    A man’s scream.
    Sean.
    I was still backing off, getting ready to run toward the scream, when the others melted into the shadows. Not waiting to find out what they might be hatching, I turned and bolted.
    Directly behind me, I saw two people, a young man and woman, walking toward us.
    Damn it. It was still early, but none of us could afford to be seen by anyone.
    I hit the shadows, ran like the devil. Maybe I
was
the devil, maybe I was the devil’s daughter, but that didn’t mean I’d abandon Sean.
    Sean sat in the middle of the Cambridge side street, alone and dazed, as if he’d had too much sun or too much to drink. He looked OK…then I saw it.
    Sean had two red marks on his neck. They were already fading, but I leaned in and sniffed hard: the smell of the fleeing snake-man was all over him. It was like…it took me a minute to decide, my Beastly brain familiar with an encyclopedia of smells, but not having the words to describe them. Definitely not like the reptile room at the zoo. More like…clean things. Grapefruit, lavender, rubbing alcohol…not those smells, exactly, but those…feelings.
    I stumbled, bare feet under me now, staggering to keep balance as my hands/paws left the ground. The Beast was leaving me, and I was becoming human again, but in the wrong position in my clothes. I hoicked up my panties, wrangled my bra, and adjusted my shirt as soon as I had something like hands. I still had sharp claws and barely managed to escape tearing my clothes beyond repair.
    It occurred to me how odd I must have looked: a small black wolf in a white shirt, black skirt, and denim jacket with rolled-up sleeves.
    My shoes. My bag. Still back in the middle of the lot where the Beast had found me.
    Shit.
    Making sure Sean was OK, woozy but otherwise unharmed, I ran back, cursing the uneven asphalt and pebbles and glass beneath my naked, human feet.
    Shit encore.
The two strangers were still there. Right next to my bag. The guy stooped down to examine it.
    I ran faster. “Hey, that’s mine!”
    He straightened; they both looked toward me. I felt foolish, barefoot and childish, as I approached them. He was broad, dark, and tall, probably had been a football player, with that easygoing, entitled corn-fed look. He was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. He’d never had to work for anything. I just knew it.
    Immediately, I didn’t like him.
    She
reminded me of too many school principals who’d called me down. With her jeans and the little twinset, I knew for a fact that this was as casual as she ever got. This one never let her hair down, and as if to prove the figurative point, the knot of her chignon was one crank off “amateur face lift.” I don’t know why, but somehow I trusted her more. Women need to work for what they get in this world. If Ma hadn’t caught that lucky break, with her friend recommending her for the senior administrative job, I never