Tianna's lips parted in a feral grin as she leaned over the handlebars of the 1098 Ducati Superbike. She sped recklessly around the curves of the road, the thick forest to her left, the sheer drop of the cliffs to her right.
Shandaken was a blue-collar town of around 5,000. And though the town was flooded with yuppie skiers in the winter months and whenever fresh powder fell, it was a place that prided itself on its hometown values.
Tianna Moore did not exactly fit in with those small town values but the town served its purpose and gave her what she needed, simplicity. The miles of forest surrounding the town and the respect for individual privacy that was commonplace suited her perfectly.
She'd grown up in the city, on Manhattan's upper east side, the privileged only child of a CEO and a socialite. But she'd never put much stock in interest in extravagances. She preferred to live simply. The Ducati was practically the only luxury she allowed herself; a present from her father, much to her mother's dismay.
Her parents had attempted to convince her to remain in the city, to stay with her family and friends and attempt to lead a normal life. But Tianna wasn't normal at all. Her father, Dominic Moore, was hereditary loup garu. Unbeknownst to Tianna's father at his daughter's conception, his current lover, Alaina was a mystic, a shape shifter. Tianna's mother's shape took the form of many different variations of bird and she came from a long ancestry of shape shifting going back hundreds of years with each generation of her family sharing the same shape.
When Dominic Moore had learned that Alaina had given birth to a daughter, there had been little cause for concern. For the Pack, to be loup garu was an inherited trait. The werewolf gene was only passed on from father to son, and those sons would be taken from their mothers in infancy to be raised by the Pack. Alaina would get to keep her daughter and Dominic Moore disappeared from her life. That is, until a five year old Tianna had thrown a tempter tantrum, bared her teeth and smoothly shifted into a sleek black wolf cub. Alaina's shock was evident.
Though Dominic Moore had disappeared from Alaina's life he was not a difficult man to find. Unlike most of his kind, he did not shy away from public life. He was one of New York's most eligible bachelors and a notorious playboy, whose exploits were often cataloged in one gossip column or another. Alaina's shock was nothing compared to Dominic's. There were no female loup garu that he'd ever known of in the history of his race. For Pack werewolves, the werewolf gene resided in the male chromosome. Mutts were those who had been bitten. The bite of a werewolf and the after effects of the transformation placed extreme trauma on the body's central nervous system and psyche. Most bitten, didn't even survive the sickness that accompanied the bite, much less the first transformation itself. No woman had survived the change in over three hundred years. And here his young daughter was, effortlessly changing between her human form and wolf form, with swift fluid ease and without the pain that even Pack werewolves expected upon their transformation. He had wanted to take his daughter immediately.
But Alaina wouldn't allow it and Dominic did not dare defy her. Her people could prove as dangerous as his own. Alaina, did however, allow him to take his daughter to the Pack who fawned over her and treated her as a little princess. Despite that initial visit and due to her mother's protests, Tianna had not been to Pack territory in the fifteen years until she was allowed to move to Shendaken in upstate New York. Her mother and father remained at odds over the years though she loved them both, she truly needed to get away from the city for a while. Her father suggested Shendaken, to which her mother had actually agreed.
Tianna pulled into the gravel lot in front of a small dive bar on the outskirts of town. She parked the black matte superbike amidst the Harley Davidsons and pulled the helmet from her head, shaking out her long dark locks.
"Nice crotch rocket, sweetheart," came a gruff voice from behind her. Tianna rolled her eyes skyward as she swung her leg over the bike and placed the helmet in the compartment under the seat. She turned to face the biker behind her. He was tall with grizzled graying hair and a scraggly beard that reached halfway down his chest above a rotund belly. He wore a dingy white t-shirt under a black leather vest that had seen better days. He patted the seat of the bike beside her own, a lewd grin spreading over his face, revealing quite a few missing teeth. "You should try getting something with real power between your legs."
Tianna gave shot him a disgusted look and brushed by him.
A large hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, halting her suddenly. His voice had grown low and menacing. "Don't walk away from me, girl."
Tianna halted. She turned slowly and looked down at her wrist grasped in his large meaty hand. Her voice was stony. "Let go."
He did not. "Well, maybe if you were a little nicer to me, sugar."
A slow smile slid over her pretty features. "Nicer?" Her gaze took on a yellow iridescent glow and she held up one slim hand. "Sure." She stepped closer to him, fighting the revulsion as the smell of alcohol and unwashed body greeted her. He was too focused on her nearness to notice the nails of her free hand lengthening. He released his hold on her and she ran that hand down his vest. Her voice was saccharine. "I need something powerful between my thighs huh?"
He nodded dumbly.
She shook her dark hair behind her shoulders and nodded towards the Ducati. "That 'crotch rocket' is the most advanced, most powerful twin-cylinder motorcycle ever built. It's got a one-hundred and an eighty horse power L-Twin Testastretta Evoluzione engine That's power." Her gaze slid caressingly over the smooth lines of the motorcycle. "But you..." she sneered, her pretty lips parting to reveal elongated canines. Her gaze glinted strangely in the moonlight.
The large man started in fear and jerked away from her only to have her lift a hand and grab a handful of his t-shirt in a fist. His eyes widened as he struggled to pull away but she did not release him, her muscles showing no strain as she held on. She yanked him back to her. And raked her nails down over his broad belly. The cloth of the cotton t-shirt tearing though she was careful not to break the skin, yet. "Would you think it was nice if I gutted you from stem to sternum?" She drew the tip of her nail from the center of his chest downward. "Would that be nice enough for you?"
The man was trembling with fear in her grasp.
"Is everything alright out there?" Came a voice shouted from the porch of the bar yards away.
Tianna glanced over her shoulder at the tall sinewy male figure standing on the porch, a baseball bat in hand.
"This guy giving you trouble, Tianna?"
Tianna released the man immediately, smirking slightly as he stumbled backwards. His mouth opened and closed though no words came out. "No," she chirped sweetly. "No trouble at all." And she turned on her heel and strode on towards the bar, hearing the revving of an engine behind her and the skitter of gravel as the Harley roared out of the lot.