Lucia and OPEN- the Midway
She'd been working. That was the last thing she remembered. Or more accurately, the last thing that the normal, two-legged version of herself could recall.
There had been gunshots. Her heightened hearing had picked up on them even before the smell of blood had hung heavy on the air, before she had seen the woman, the elderly Nonna with kind eyes that had touched her hand when she'd brought her meal, lurch forward into her table, clutching at the crimson stain that blossomed at her shoulder. She had instinctively lunged forward to help the woman but had been knocked roughly aside; she heard a bullet lodge itself into the wall just behind where she'd been standing, and from there things had felt somewhat like a dream. There had been screaming. A flurry of movement all around her as she had crawled back toward the kitchen, patrons who stumbled over and around her in a mad dash to escape. Her own pulse thundering in her ears. Confusion as her senses were overwhelmed by the bedlam. A burst of pain, dulled by adrenaline and shock, as someone's foot collided with her ribs.
But then a different pain.
She had clenched her teeth to keep herself from crying out as agony, white-hot and unexpected, blossomed in the very marrow of her bones, a ragged gasp as she recognized it.
It couldn't be. The moon wasn't full. She kept track of it now. She was careful.
But regardless of her denial, the transformation came on, quick and violent, spurred by the adrenaline coursing through her. Spurred by the fear. The second time she screamed she made no effort to stifle it, the sound somewhere between a yell and a feline yowl as her bones and muscles contorted beneath her own flesh, creaking, snapping and pulling her slender form into something decidedly less human. She writhed, reaching out for something, anything, her clawed fingertips blinding finding some of Arnaud's pots and pans and bringing them thundering around her. And then, when she felt as though she could not possibly endure another moment of it, there was a flash of green, and she was gone.
The lioness that remained pulled itself from the floor as though waking from a particularly deep slumber, blinking dual-colored eyes blearily to take in its surroundings. She was not used to being caged. She was not used to waking without the familiar scent of her Man nearby. Her nostrils flared to search for it, but all she was met with was the same smells of blood and gunmetal that her human form had endured. She flinched at the racket still going on beyond the kitchen's doors, and pulled herself low to the ground as that same door opened to reveal a man. But it was not hers.
She did not know what the thing was that was pointed at her, nor did she need to. His split-second moment of surprise was all she needed to launch herself at him and take his throat between her jaws. He was dead when she lifted her head again, the tendons of his throat still dangling from her teeth.
She opened her mouth and let loose a roar, further adding to the panic of what few patrons had taken cover rather than flee the Lady's Table completely, and then, posture low and menacing, made her way toward the second man who was not her Man. He had the wherewithal to fire his strange weapon at her, but it was as her bite enclosed around his arm. His was the second life she claimed.
As she slunk out the door and onto the Midway, she lifted her head and sniffed at the air, trying to find the smell that belonged to the one she sought amidst the carnage happening around her. Another shot fired near to her sent her off running through the crowd.