Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

SIZZLE

Mmm.

A wrapper hadn’t tasted this good in a long time. Not quite crinkly, but not limp and cheap. Tiny flecks of nutrient paste had melted into the corners, and if I flicked my tongue over the surface, a metallic zing popped against my taste buds as I sauntered through the red fern glades back towards the hangar.

The buttery mist of palm oils and dirt and sweat… That’s what tasted so good.

Jihae.

Tinsley had commed me to let me know someone was working on the trail and to help if I could. I didn’t understand the importance of these festivals the humans were so drawn to, but it made them bark and chime with happiness, and that was good enough for me. As long as they kept their mittens off my scrapyard, we were square. Happy humans, happy hound.

Besides, a human working alone along the loop trail? It had a reputation for being creepy, and creeping was one of my best skills. Even if I didn’t stay to help with hanging useless trash in the trees, any bilong would perk up at a little lighthearted stalking.

When I saw it was the teacher with straight black silk though…

I practiced better judgment.

She was one of my more fragile pets. Timid like a quivering rodent with a button nose. I licked my muzzle, thinking about her little gasp and how she spun in her boots, looking for the big bad monster in the fog. She was such expressive prey, using her whole body to react to the littlest things.

Except the tremor. Many species shook when their blood was… something. Depleted? Too sweet? Too bland? It was a miracle I knew how to speak Black Clack at all, so fuck if I knew the words a doctor would use. Whatever the reason, eating usually solved it.

Perhaps she wasn’t feeding herself well enough…

No matter.

Eating was my expertise. I could provide her with ration bars from our many patrol blinds whenever she forgot.

The wrapper’s adhesive dissolved in my saliva and it slid into two pieces. I tucked one side into my cheek with my mouth claws and swallowed the other, determined to savor the way it inspired a tight tingle in my lower abdomen. It made me more aware of my gait, how my back legs followed my claws and my shoulder blades rolled like locomotive drive rods when they were positioned vertically.

It made me want to hunt.

I hadn’t felt like hunting living things since I was a pup, but the pep in my step was unmistakable. I wanted something to run away while I snapped at its heels in chase.

My snout wrinkled without warning and I sneezed with a stone-cracking skrrkrkreck!

Predictably, the canopy erupted in a flurry of feathers and wings as birds shat their branches and took to the muggy skies.

Unpredictably, my instinct took the wheel. I jumped up the length of a biria tree with my claws extended far above my head and snatched a bird in flight. My entire mouth opened, exposing the cavern of my throat and splaying my lower jaw wide. Its little body crumpled as I snapped my maw shut, and my muscles expanded to constrict it.

Contrary to all the scary stories other species told their offspring about bilongs, we didn’t bite or shred our prey. Instead, we pushed our throats together to trap them. If we could manage their whole body, the pressure would cause the heart to stop. If not and it was just the head, vessels in the brain would rupture.

A rush of adrenaline shivered down my spine as the little fowl’s racing heart grew erratic and stopped, all before my claws touched the ground.

Then I sat on my haunches and opened my muzzle to pant while my throat worked through the unexpected meal. My ears quirked, examining the flavor. Feathers? Not so bad… But I hated the grisled squelch of joint sockets dislocating. And the way the skin tore from the muscle caused my hackles to rise.

“Yegh,” I complained with a scowl, letting my tongue loll. The urge to hunt was gone in an instant as I licked my major fangs with distaste, knowing that my burps would taste disgusting the rest of the day.

Sights set on a carburetor I’d been saving for a special occasion, I trotted the rest of the way back to the hangar. Battery acid! That would wash away the bird’s aftertaste for sure.

I emerged from the ferns alongside the corrugated wall of my scrapyard where they pushed up against the barrier like a wave crashing on a cliff. I shook the pollen from my overgrown coat, spraying the air with a dusting of pink, and a cord hit me across the nose. I blinked at it with my eyes crossed and snorted it away.

It wasn’t a cord. It was Davor’s fucking tail.

I squinted up at the top of the wall to find the advenan lounging, swaying his lazy appendage with a cold smile. I snapped at it and a purple feather ejected from my mouth.

“Sorry, cousin. Damn thing always gets in the way, doesn’t it?” Davor said, grinning as his eyes tracked the feather’s fall to earth.

“What do you want?” I barked, licking my throat teeth back into order.

“Do I need a reason to visit? We’re the only chimaeri in the colony, after all.”

I rolled my eyes. Bilongs and advenans were both solitary and territorial. What a load of shit. I exploded in a storm of saw blade teeth aimed right at Davor’s ankles. He jumped three feet high, then glanced off the ledge of my scrapyard and landed soundlessly in front of me. I blew steam at his tall ears and iridescent shoulders.

“Yessss,” I hissed. “You do.”

He adjusted the roots of his major fangs and scratched the top of his muzzle with his claws. “You smell different.”

My cheek tingled over Jihae’s wrapper scraps.

“I did just eat a bird,” I mused. “That’s unusual.”

Davor’s tail thwapped the ground like an idle whip in disagreement, but he didn’t argue. Still, I squinted at his flared nostrils and the way his slitted pupils dilated open. He was still rolling me around in his superior olfactory senses.

The prick.

“It’s probably all the plas decorations,” I drawled, sitting on my haunches. I inspected my foreclaws and used one to pick my fangs clean, polishing the enamel with my tongue until they squeaked. “They’re decorating the loop trail.”

“Ah,” Davor said with a slow tilt of his head. “Yes. That’s it.”

“Glad we cleared that up. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to guzzle some battery ac—”

“The teacher.”

I stopped in my tracks. My pupils reduced to slashes the width of a whisker as I turned my head sideways to Davor. I sized him up with one eye the width of his palm, every blade of fur rising in warning.

“What did you say?” I rumbled.

Unperturbed, Davor tapped his snout with one long finger. “You smell like the teacher. She’s the one decorating.” The advenan met my eye with a quirk in his lips. Not quite a smile but brimming with amusement. “How was the bird, by the way?”

This motherfucker.

I hacked the carcass up right on his boots.