Skinwalker

From the Town car I hadn’t had a true opportunity to see how much Hellsgate has changed since my time here. A two-mile-long strip that used to be called Pyke Street has been renamed Péché Street, a French word meaning sin. To many, that’s what subhumans are, sinful creatures created by Satan. The humans who rededicated the street thought they were being clever, but the business owners accepted it for its irony, and used the new name as to lure in even more tourism. Visit Péché Street in Hellsgate Louisiana.

Similar to Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the road is frequently blocked allowing for pedestrian movement between businesses. Every building and every sign are trying to sell someone something: vampire tours available here, full moon hike, fortune telling, magic potions and love spells, psychics, graveside animators. There are even restaurants selling species-based foods: Witches Chopp, Gluttonous Werewolf, The Taste of Blood. The list goes on for exactly two miles worth of street front shops.

Many of the buildings date back to the 19th century; most have been remodeled, even if that just means pluming and electricity have been added or safety regulations have been maintained. Some of the buildings are two stories with multiuse space. Bars and restaurants leak out onto the streets with tables and seating while merchants display tourist memorabilia in windows and entry spaces. The second story seems to be dedicated to homes or apartments that have been turned into rooms for tourists to rent, keeping them right in the middle of the subhuman attractions.

Last time I walked down this street many of these businesses were homes. There had been a bed and breakfast in the cute yellow cottage house that now sells magic related items and teaches wiccan classes. The red brick building with iron bars over black shuttered windows is now a thematic bar that sells exotic adult vampire beverages. The shutters used to be white and always open during business hours, letting sunshine into what was once a quaint French coffee shop and bistro. The immigrant couple who owned it lived upstairs with their three young children.

The street isn’t as family friendly as it once was.

I spend the afternoon going from one shop to another and the employees are about as hokey as one would imagine. Fake vampires are fitted cosmetic fangs and have been given corn syrup movie blood to use as they please; gothic werewolf groupies wear too much black, leather, and chains, and the hippy wiccans are all higher than kites selling cannabis as part of their plant-based remedies. If there’s a mainstream stereotype, the humans have embraced it and the subhuman business owners must encourage them.

It’s the early afternoon and most of the places I’ve dip into don’t even have a subhuman on shift. When the daytime rolls into the evening things begin to change. Working humans are replaced with subhumans and the streets begin attracting the people who’ve come for the supernatural alure of Péché Street instead of those with a mild curiosity and a desire to stay safe. The once quiet street fills with people, pumped music, and lit neon signs.

Getting away from the early evening crowds, I dip into werewolf restaurant to grab dinner before heading back to the government buildings, where my old apartment is, for the night.

“What can I get for you?” the waiter inquires as he places a napkin and a glass of ice water on the table in front of me.

I meet his generic silver aura and easily accepting it for what it means. On the other hand, he does a double take on mine. “I’ve seen a lot of things come through that door over the last year, cher, but I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that before.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Not a damn thing.”

An arched eyebrow tells me he believes I’m lying. I am, but I’m not going to come out and tell a stranger when I’ve barley just told the people I care about back home.

“Uh, huh.”

I close the menu. “I’ll take whatever the chef wants to make.”

“Temperature?”

“Medium rare.”

Taking the menu from me and as he walks away, he mutters, “Not one of us, then.”

I get the distinct feeling he isn’t going to let this go.

From my table in the back, I watch how this place is run. It’s different than Tails, not because it’s a restaurant instead of a strip club but because they’re all men. Werewolves and male shifters, with name tags boasting what they are just below their names. There isn’t a tail anywhere, it reminds me that the pack back home is unique. Education I got from Kendal.

Five years ago, the only duties a tail had was to breed, bring up pack children, attend to the werewolves, and uphold tradition. At the time, Noah owned the club, but it was called Jiggles, and he operated it with a fully human staff. Tala had just won alpha and among the things she wanted to accomplish as alpha, the priority was bettering the lives of her people. With her new position, and her friendship with Noah, she was able to do just that.

For the first time in werewolf history, the women were given the opportunity to work so long as pack traditions were upheld. Tails was born from this arrangement and over the following year, the wealth of the Benally pack improved immensely. People who once lived far below the poverty line successfully moved into the middle class.

With Tala no longer present, the pack was fortunate Tate maintained her changes. He could have reverted to tradition, allowing only the males the opportunity to work, allowing the wealth of the pack to backslide.

“Pinot noir,” the waiter explains setting a four ounce pour in front of me followed by a hot plate. “Duck breast in a Bordeaux wine sauce with asparagus and a potato puree.”

“How incredibly French,” I say looking at the delicious meal.

“Welcome to Louisiana.”

It’s obvious he’s taking mental notes on me which means he doesn’t need to know that I’m technically from Hellsgate. “I just wasn’t expecting this...”

“From werewolves?”

I’ve surrounded myself with werewolves, and I know they can be as into fine dining as anyone else in the world. I also know they can slurp down fresh, raw, bloody organs, just as easily, but that’s neither here nor there.

I catch his nametag: Lief, werewolf. “From a tourist trap,” I correct.

“Tourists like to eat nice meals, too.”

The waiter sizes me up once more before dismissing himself. “Bon appétit.”

I roll my eyes.

This restaurant, like everything else around it, is just as much of a show as Tails is. Here, the waiters aren’t afraid to give the customers a glimpse of what they are, though. While I eat and continue observing, I hear an occasional werewolf growl or bark mixed in with the rare howl. Shrieks of excitement and terror come from humans when a shapeshifter transforms some part of their body into something not human, like a hand turned to a paw, or sprouting a tail and ears. Because we hide what we are at Tails, the theatrics in this place seems risky to me.

“Banshee?” Leif says, checking on me.

“What?”

“Are you a banshee?”

I shake my head. “No, why?”

“They’re incredibly rare, maybe they have a weird aura.”

“Can you not?” No one in the club has spiked an interest in me yet, except for my waiter, but if he goes on like this, they may.

“Succubus?”

I sigh. “Are you dreaming?”

He pinches his arm like a smart aleck. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Look, Leif.” I pronounce it leaf.

“Layf,” he corrects. “Siren?”

“They have silver auras.”

He sits opposite of me, enthralled with the information I provided. “You know a siren?”

I swallow the last of my wine, look at my dinner plate then pull cash from my pocket and set it in front of him. It’s an educated guess of how much this meal should cost from the menu prices I saw, plus a little extra for a modest tip despite how annoying he’s being.

“Have a nice night.” I grab my plate and head toward the cubby where the to-go boxes are.

“Oh, come on.”

I dump what’s left of my dinner in a box, leave the plate on the stand, and head toward the door.

“I just wanna know what you are!” he calls after me.

I pull my hood over my head and walk more ambitiously to the exit. I’ve had people recognize that my aura is unusual many times in my life. None of have been as stubborn or as disrespectful.

The further I get from Péché Street the thinner the crowds get and the more confident I become that Leif isn’t following me. I glance over my shoulder as the streets begin to darken and turn into quiet neighborhoods, just to ensure I’m not being tracked down. When I’m certain I’m clear, I lower my hood and calm my pace. The capitol buildings are about 3 miles from here, close enough to walk to and far enough to clear my head.

The neighborhoods turn from houses, to apartments, to mixed communities with grocery stores attached to shopping complexes and gas stations. Buildings begin getting taller, just like any reasonable downtown district, but none of them match the majesty or the height of the capitol buildings. They’ve always been beautiful to me with their reflective glass and gothic structures.

I enter through a side door that’s easily overlooked by outsiders. It’s the only door that leads to the government apartments. It’s a small hallway that looks uninviting at first but when it opens up, there’s a small yet elegant lobby. The woman at the concierge desk is wearing a black, feminine business outfit. She glances in my direction with a generic aura but says nothing. It’s clear she was expecting me even though I don’t know who she is. She wasn’t working the desk when I lived here and if she didn’t know my business, she’s supposed to stop me.

The elevator dings when I press the up arrow.

“Good afternoon, miss Monáe,” the elevator attendant greets before pressing button 5.

He’s the same elderly attendant, a mute, that worked this elevator the entire time I lived here. “Hello, Maxwell,” I return.

“Did you enjoy Péché Street?”

“No, not really.”

“My sentiment, also.”

The remainder of the ride up is quiet; he doesn’t inquire into my absence, though I’m certain he noticed, and I don’t offer up an explanation. I could offer small talk like I used to, back then I had it to share. Today, I don’t.

When the elevator door open, Maxwell says, “Miss Pyke asked me to give this to you.” He extends a key on a chain. “She thought you may have forgotten yours.”

“Thanks.”

My feet know exactly how many strides to take down the hallway before stopping at the boring brown door that belongs to me. I put the key in the slot and the lock gives with a twist.

I push the apartment door open and flip on the light switch, exposing the space I haven’t occupied since the night I left. Miraculously, it looks the same. Someone must be tending to the cleaning and the plants because the place is spotless, and the plants have grown.

The apartment is French cottage themed, which isn’t too terribly different than the way Kendal has decorated our home. Instead of being mostly earth tones, this place is more whites and greys, with soft pops of color here and there. The sofa is a soft yellow, with a pleated back, and there’s a matching accent chair that has blue and grey stripes in the print. There is a wicker basket filled with throw blankets next to the fireplace and a storage ottoman with the lid propped open, filled with throw pillows.

I place my coat on the rack next to the front door, set my food on the table and wander through the place. With each photograph I see I’m given a memory to smile about. Catherine and Leona were my Kendal back then, these people were my life. There’s a bookshelf that’s mostly decorative but the bottom shelf is lined with government issued material from when I was learning law. In the bedroom, on the nightstand, next to the sheets that smell of laundry detergent, is an old photograph from when I was a kid. It’s the only one I kept after being abandoned and the only reason I kept it was because it was in the backpack my stepfather had me pack.

It’s me, my older brother Alexander, and younger sister Alaina. I pick up the picture frame and sit on the bed to soak up the smiles in the photograph. It was taken a few days before Alexander died in a car accident. After that, I mutated, and was disowned. I thought it would happen to Alaina, too, someday. But she never stood at the front doors of the capitol without a soul in the world to care about her anymore.

Last time I checked on my sister was when I was nineteen. She was still human, living with our quell mother and her human father. They looked like a happy family. I wonder if our mother would take the vaccine?

“Pft,” I scoff and set the photo down. “Of course, she would.” She loved her fake human life more than she loved her subhuman daughter. “She’d probably be first in line,” I add to myself.