Caged View by Kenya Wright Read Free Book Online

the speciest term Combo Trash to refer to
Mixbreeds was what got me and my organization involved. As far as I
was concerned, they had not only crossed the line, they’d pulled
down their pants and taken a crap on it.
    The Earth Witch checked Nona and Ray’s
forehead brands, saw that they were Purebloods, and waved them
through without checking them.
    Figures.
    “I’ve watched you fill with darkness in the
past few years,” Ray whispered as we entered the nightclub. “You
need to work on your spirituality. Clean up that gloom inside of
you.”
    I grunted in response.
    Nona trailed on my other side, smirking.
    White laser lights sliced through the dark
club, blinking on and off our faces.
    Zebra prints now coated every free space of
the wall. Soon, the club would change form, like a Shifter, into
another type of nightclub, and minutes later, it would change
again. No one but the witches that owned the place knew when,
where, or how it transformed into something else. It was just what
happened in Club Metamorphosis.
    Hundreds of Mixbreeds crowded the dance
floor, rocking, jumping, and frantically swaying to the electric
beats.
    MFE had been so persistent with our
picketing that the Witches immediately took down the sign and
opened the club to Mixbreeds on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Granted,
we’d gotten over two hundred Mixbreeds to picket. Surely, one of
the Witches had seen the possibility of more future, paying
customers.
    Tonight was Club Metamorphosis’s Mixbreed
grand opening.
    “Hey, Zulu.” A woman’s voice sounded at my
side.
    I kept walking, without saying hello.
    “ And I miss you, blue-eyed girl with the
curls.” The Vamp singer York walked on the air, three feet
above the dance crowd, singing the lyrics. “We were both from
two different worlds. But we held on!”
    “We held on!” the crowd screamed. Many of
them jumped high to touch his feet.
    “ We held on.” He twirled in the
air.
    Everybody screamed again. “We held on!”
    I scanned the club, searching all of their
excited faces.
    A strawberry-red-haired woman seductively
waved at me.
    I peered around her.
    “How long do we have to be here?” Ray
nervously gazed at the bar on the right.
    “You don’t,” I corrected. “I do, to show
MFE’s presence.”
    “Isn’t it enough that you got the club to
let Mixies in?” he asked.
    “I didn’t do that. Lanore did.”
    I’d actually thought the whole picketing
thing wouldn’t work. Holding signs and chanting crap? My plan was
to go in on one of their busiest nights, rip two of the owners’
heads off, and nail them to the offensive sign.
    Lanore disagreed. She’d spent hours
cornering me in my office, holding open history books, and pointing
to this or that social movement. When I caved in, she thought it
was because of her arguments.
    I leaned Nona’s way and asked, “You see
her?”
    “No, mon, but me smell her coming from over
there.” She pointed far off to the right.
    I shifted my eyes to black to get a better
view and headed that way.
    Where are you, Lanore?
    And then I spotted her.
    My heart sped up to an erratic pace. My
cords vibrated on my arms. I knew that they glowed under the
shirt.
    It was what always happened when she was
near.
    Lanore swayed back and forth with the beat.
A strapless plum dress wrapped around her cinnamon body. The silky
material ended in the middle of her thighs but didn’t cover
everything. Her waist, tiny belly button, and the top of her ample
cleavage were exposed.
    I licked my lips in anticipation, just happy
to be near her for a few hours.
    She kept MFE and me out of the rest of her
life, never letting me take her home, and didn’t stay too long at
any of MFE’s social functions.
    I grinned as she raised her hands and waved
them around. Amethyst gems hung from her ears and dangled all the
way to her shoulders. I’d slipped them in her jean satchel, without
a note, one night when she wasn’t looking.
    “ And in this cage, behind these bars,