Chapter Nineteen
It seemed as if all of Darwin was flooding the streets in front of Ruben’s house. Ruben’s guards had all been killed and lay abandoned on the street. Several dozen dead shifters who had fought against Ruben’s men lay in rows, covered by tarps. The injured were being carried away to medical clinics in both territories. Shifters of all species – cats and canines and bears – mingled together.
Flora climbed up on top of an abandoned car, and Krystle scrambled up beside her. Finn and Liam leapt up and stood next to them. Flora cleared her throat nervously. “Um, excuse me, everybody.” A few shifters glanced up at her, then looked away.
“Louder,” Krystle whispered to her. “Access that inner bitch.”
Flora took a deep breath. She thought of the dead shifters sprawled out on the ground, and the women Ruben had abused, and everyone who’d lived in fear and poverty to feed his massive ego.
“Listen the hell up!” Flora shouted at the top of her lungs, and everyone turned to stare up at her. She fought the urge to apologize for raising her voice and using bad language. “These shifters did not die in vain,” she yelled, pointing at the bodies of the fallen. “They died to end Ruben’s reign of rape and terror! Outside these borders, your life was controlled by the government! Did you come here just to be oppressed all over again?”
“No!” the crowd bellowed.
Liam cleared his throat and yelled out to the crowd. “From now on, we join together as a city! The borders are eliminated! All bears are welcome in our territory, and we will share our resources! You have internet connections, we have medicine that you need! You have the car mechanics, we’ve got the canning factory!”
“We have better beer!” one of the bears yelled, and there was a ripple of laughter from the crowd, despite the grim circumstances.
“Yes, you do! I’m not too proud to admit it! And we have better tequila!” Liam roared back. Now the crowd was laughing out loud. “And you have the best bakeries, and we have the best butcher shops! Let’s work together! Let’s patrol together! We’ll form a council of all shifters to make Darwin the best damn town in the Badlands!”
There was a loud cheer from most of the bears. A small but sizeable contingent, those who had once supported Rueben or who had benefitted from his criminal reign, booed and let out threatening growls. They glared intimidatingly at the bears who were cheering.
“One more thing!” Flora called out. She looked at Krystle, who nodded. “No woman, whether she is bear or cat or any other species, will be forced into a relationship with a man, ever again. Any woman who wants to leave a man can do so. Any man abusing a woman will be banished from Darwin forever.”
“You cats can’t tell us how to live! We rule by strength! What are you going to do about it?” a tall, angry bear shifter with a scarred face yelled threateningly at her. He was standing with a crowd of several dozen male bears, apart from the shifters who were mingling together.
With a mighty roar, he shifted into bear form. He shot up to a height of at least eight feet, snarling and waving his massive paws with long, curving claws.
“I’msoglad you asked!” Flora shouted back.
He was standing next to a red maple tree. She and Krystle stared at it, and it burst into flames as if it had been soaked in gasoline and set ablaze. He was caught in the fireball, and the fur on the left side of his body lit up. He ran screaming and flaming, then fell down on the street, rolling frantically on the road to put the fire out.
“If we ever hear of a woman being abused again in Darwin, by a bear or a lion or anyone else, we will hunt the abuser down and burn them like torches!” Krystle shouted.
She grabbed Flora’s hand, looked down the street and glared at a parked car. The car exploded into an enormous fireball.
“Any more questions?” She put her hands on her hips and glared at the crowd. She was answered by dead silence.
Krystle sat down on the car roof, slid off, and landed on the ground. Finn jumped off in one graceful motion and gestured to Flora, who slid off into his arms. He held her cradled there like a groom about to carry a bride across the threshold.
“Am I too heavy?” she asked him. “You can put me down if you want.”
“What did I say about calling yourself heavy?” he purred in her ear. “You’ve earned yourself a spanking tonight.”
“But how will you punish me?” She smiled at him as he gently set her down.
“Oh, Flora, you are becoming a very naughty, naughty girl. I like it.”
* * * * *
Flora, Finn, Liam and Krystle sat in folding chairs in the office of the new Darwin Town Hall, located right in the middle of bear and lion territories.
Three Council for Shifter Affairs representatives sat facing them. They were accompanied by a squad of twenty Enforcers, all armed to the teeth and still looking very uneasy. Their kind was not particularly popular in the Badlands.
Ameera Radwell, the representative who used to check in with Flora once a month when she lived with the Wilkinsons, was there, with an eager smile pasted on her face.
“I want you to know that we began investigating your report of TerraDyne as soon as you called it in,” she said to Flora. “And, of course, their infiltration of our own organization.”
One of the other representatives, a man who’d introduced himself as Kelmar Drake, cleared his throat. “Well, infiltrated is perhaps overstating it. We found that three of our employees were passing along certain classified information to them, in exchange for certain financial considerations, and—”