Broken Soul

CHAPTER 15 If Vamps Could Wet Their Pants

I grunted once just as the doors opened into utter blackness. The stench of death and rotten things whooshed into the elevator. I breathed in through my mouth. The back of my tongue was instantly coated with the reek of the grave, the stench of unwashed bodies, long-dead herbs. Cloying and vile. I steadied myself.

In turbo mode, the flash provided two hundred fifteen lumens and threw a narrow, concentrated beam three hundred seventy-one feet into the darkness. It wasn’t enough. The darkness swallowed the beam of light like outer space. The silence was so profound that it filled the elevator, a hollow, echoing absence of light and sound and life, a long moment of nothingness as I swept the flash from side to side and up and down.

All I saw beyond the elevator lights was darkness with unfinished ceilings and rough-hewn beams far overhead, clay floor just beyond the elevator doors, damp and slick-looking. Old bricks appeared out of the gloom to one side, barely visible, wet and oozing and smelling of magic that held back the ground water. But there was no sound. Only an emptiness so acute it might have echoed into the next universe. I took a breath and it reverberated like a hissing, asthmatic snake. I pulled on Beast’s hearing and vision. And still heard nothing.

Then there it was. A single, soft drip, bright and clear, the resonance sibilant, as the sound ricocheted around the room. I tried to determine where it originated, but chasing the bouncing sound was like chasing a bunch of rabbits—everywhere at once. The drip sounded again and I followed Mario’s eyes to the left and ahead. I lifted the light there, moving it slowly left to right.

From the dark, a glimmer of something red, flashing to silver. Again. And a breath, like a winter breeze. Beside me, Mario repeatedly pressed his palm on the scanner until the doors whooshed closed. The vamp was swearing like a sailor as his hand jammed onto buttons. The elevator rose. He swallowed, his vamp tissues dry as bike tires, and he started cursing in English to make sure I knew what he was saying. Finally he wound down as the elevator opened to light and the smell of vamps and blood and humans and sex. Normal vamp smells. “You are psicotico,” he spat. “Insane.”

I grabbed his arm before he could disappear. “It was a vamp, wasn’t it? Down there?”

“It might have been Lucifer himself,” he said, jerking free as he strode from the elevator. “Stay away from me.” Mario’s clothes were dark, so I wasn’t sure, but if vamps could wet their pants, he just had. And I wasn’t sure why he was so negatively affected. Vamps always kept their scions chained to walls when in the devoveo, the ten years or more of madness after a human was turned. The sub-five basement had a vamp prisoner. Only one, by the smell. But I could drop that from my inquiries. A scion, no matter how important he or she might have been when human—even a king or queen—wasn’t anything that Satan’s Three would want. If the three were coming after something here at HQ, then it was likely that they were interested in something stored on sub-four. Could Leo have put magical items and artifacts in storage? In the safe hidden in the piles of stuff?

I left vamp central and headed across the river to Aggie One Feather’s place. I needed knowledge and wisdom and oral tradition. I needed someone who knew stuff and would share it with me openly and honestly. And for free. It was hard making do with bits and pieces of history offered by people who might have reasons to hide that same info. Now that I knew enough to know what questions to ask, Aggie would dish, and the only thing she would make me pay was more honesty and self-assessment. Aggie was all about shining light on one’s deep inner truths and banishing the shadows.

Because of Aggie, I wasn’t the same Jane who had first come to New Orleans. I had learned too much about myself and about my Beast. Too much about what it meant to be a victim and to make others victims. Too much about the dark night of the soul—a poetic way of describing the internal loss of meaning of oneself, and depression. I had looked it up. Because of Aggie, I had survived all that learning and maybe grown up a bit. A very little bit, according to Aggie.

Because of Aggie, because she (and sometimes her aged mother) took me to sweat and took me to water—Cherokee rites and rituals—and because she forced me to remember who and what I was, I had discovered that my inner soul home was my place of greatest strength. I had discovered the first cracks and fissures into the emptiness that was my own past, the first passageways into my own Cherokee memory.

I hadn’t told Aggie much about Beast yet, and I might never. But because of her I had discovered that Beast lived in that same soul home, that same deep cavern of inner sanctum. There, nothing and no one could bind us. There we were invincible, the two of us. I had discovered that our souls, Beast’s and mine, were not only in the same place; they were, to some extent, intertwined, which, so far as I knew, had never happened to a skinwalker. I had no idea what it might mean to me as I aged, as time took us to new and different places, but it had to mean something.

I turned into the road and cut the engine, coasting the SUV until it stopped, well back from the shell-based drive. I pulled the key and sat in the dark, studying the house and grounds. The security light on the pole at the end of the drive was off, the house and lawn cloaked in the night and illuminated by the moon. The light’s globe was broken. Shattered. The house was dark, though Aggie’s car was in the drive. No TV flickered through the windows. No lights anywhere.

I stared at the house for the space of time between heartbeats. Quietly, I opened the vehicle door, sniffed, and caught the residue of gunfire on the air. Someone had shot out the light. What else had they shot? If someone wanted to hurt me, by hurting my friends, would they know about the One Feathers? Not likely. But anything was possible. Would the two women be able to protect themselves? No. Not against a sniper or a bomb maker.

I let my Beast senses free, questing. The night crashed in, full of the buzz of mosquitoes and the croak of frogs, but empty of any human sounds. No TV laugh tracks. No radio. No conversation. Worse, there was no smell of food on the air. No smell of wood smoke from the sweat house. I raced into the shadows to the house.

I hadn’t noticed when I drew my weapon, but I was holding it in a two-handed grip beside my right leg as I crept around Aggie’s house. As I stepped toward the back porch a soft creak met my ear, slow and repetitive. I halted and timed the sound to about once every two and a half seconds. Someone was on the porch, in the rocker, rocking. Shades of the Bates Motel slashed through my memory.

“Nice night.”

I jerked, just ever so slightly.

“I forgot what it was like to sit out here without the light.”

It was Aggie One Feather speaking, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking to me. I achieved a breath that didn’t whistle in fear. Inside me Beast chuffed with laughter and thumped the wall of my soul home with her tail.

“Yup. It nice. How much time till the power company get here?” uni lisi, the grandmother of many children, a Cherokee honorific for an old woman, asked, her tone garrulous.

“In time for your show, Mama.”

“Them kids, they gonna fix our light?”

“Their parents said they’d pay for it, Mama. And Deputy Antonelli said he’d make sure or he’d help us press charges.”

“That good. Good enough.” The rocker rocked on, a peaceful sound in the night. “If I get to watch my Jeopardy!”

I holstered my weapon and called out, “Aggie? It’s Jane Yellowrock. Ummm . . .” I thought about the fact that I always just dropped by. Maybe that wasn’t the nicest thing I could do. “Ummm, are you taking callers?”

“Come around to the porch, Jane,” Aggie called back. “Some kids looking for a place to neck shot out our security light and hit the electric lines.”

Neck? Instantly I thought about vamps and fangs and blood-meals. Then I realized she was talking about hooking up in the backseat of a car. Old-people slang. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” I made my way to the porch and up the stairs. Aggie was right; the porch and the night were nice. The house’s foundation was several feet high, to protect it against hurricane storm surge, and it looked out over a backyard I had never paid much attention to. There were fruit trees and a garden behind a chicken-wired fence, smelling of freshly turned earth and frustrated rabbits. A row of bee boxes stood at the back of the property, the bees silent, the smell of honey soft on the air. I closed the door behind me, making out the location of the two women and the mama cat sitting on uni lisi’s lap. I took a chair. Aggie moved in the dark and I heard a gurgling sound, and smelled cold tea and fresh mint. She pushed a glass across the table to me. I took it and sipped. “Thank you.” A silence filled the space between us, uncomfortable on my part. “Ummm,” I said again.

Aggie made an amused humming sound. My lack of social skills was not a secret to her. Not that she would help me through it.

I puffed out a breath. “That bomb maker I called you about? If she’s who I think she is, then she’s also a sniper and she smells like The People.”

I smelled Aggie’s shock, so strong it might have actually burned through my skin, like an electric spark. Maybe I should have tried some small talk before I jumped into the mess of my life. The weather. Their health. Too late now. “She is War Woman,” Aggie asked, “like you?”

“No.” I hesitated. “I don’t think so. She’s female, and a human blood-servant. I don’t think a War Woman would allow herself to be fed upon by vamps. And she’s not someone I’ve ever smelled before.”

“You being a skinwalker,” uni lisi said, unperturbed. “That true?”

I sipped again, my mouth suddenly dry. “Yes, ma’am.”

“That how you can smell what this woman is?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And this woman who smell like The People. She chasing you?”

I started to answer and stopped. Not just targeting me at my house to kill me, but chasing me? If so, was she trying to get me to lead her somewhere? Tracking me everywhere I went? Like to here? “Maybe,” I said, as the possibilities bounced around in my head. What the heck did Satan’s Three want? The things in my possession that were magical. That was all that was left for them to be after.

“I see on the TV, ’bout them little things people stick to cars,” uni lisi said. “So they can follow peoples. You got one on you car?”

My hands went cold on the iced tea glass. I hadn’t checked. I wasn’t used to being a target myself. If I had been a client, I’d have been over the car with a microscope. I set down the tea glass and hit the button for Eli. “Yeah?” he answered.

“You didn’t think to check my vehicle for tracking devices, did you?”

“You were clean this morning. The only way we can be totally sure is to put a camera on it, check it every day, and park it in a vault.”

“Excuse me,” I said to the One Feathers, and left the porch at a run. I still had my flashlight and clicked the light on as I neared my SUV. “Anything new I should be looking for?” It might sound like a dumb question, but the market for monitoring and tracing equipment was changing and evolving so fast that keeping up required constant attention to company updates. I’d left that to Eli.

“Second- and third-gen magnetic trackers are smaller and adhere better than the first generation. They still can be fired from a cannon or tossed over a fence to land anywhere on the exterior, but even the old trackers cost five hundred bucks apiece and none of them always stick. The math sucks unless you have bottomless pockets. It’s easier to walk by, open the door, and toss one under the seat, except you keep your vehicle locked. A public street is not the place to disable the alarm and attach one inside the engine compartment or the trunk. So that leaves walking by, pausing, and sticking a GPS tracking device under the wheel well or bumper. Old-style craft. They can be small enough to hide between two fingers, but those cost. Most people still use the ones the size of a pack of cigarettes. You checking now?” I grunted the affirmative and he said, “I’ll hold.”

I walked around the vehicle and saw nothing on the exterior. I bent and checked each wheel well. Empty except for mud from where I’d gotten stuck earlier, and the rain splashing up from the roads hadn’t completely washed it clean. Anything pushed through the mud to adhere to the metal would have left an impression different from ones nature left, and the mud coating all looked uniform. I lay down and rolled under the front, then the back. Nothing was stuck to the bumpers. “I’m clean. But I want a more thorough inspection when I get home.”

“Okay.” He disconnected.

Back on the porch I asked, “You have a gun?”

“Course we have a gun,” Aggie said, as if I’d asked a stupid question. Maybe I had. These were country women facing rabid animals, carrot-stealing rabbits, and kids with nefarious and salacious intentions. And maybe evil people looking to rob, rape, and steal.

I sat and drank half of my tea, my mouth as dry as a bone from dread. “My vehicle looks clean, but there’s no way to be sure. And since I’m here now, it’s too late. I’m sorry.”

“We be okay,” uni lisi said. “What you come here for tonight?”

Not to get you killed, I thought. I said, “Are there any Cherokee stories about dragons?”

“Some,” Aggie said.

“There Uktena,” uni lisi said. “He a dragon-like serpent with horns.”

I repeated the name. “Ook-tay-nah?”

Aggie said, “Close enough. The first Uktena was said to be transformed from a human man in a failed assassination attempt on the sun. Most other Uktena tales have to do with Cherokee heroes slaying the Uktena monster. The dragons are malevolent and deadly.”

“The assassination attempt on the sun sounds a little like Apollo. So maybe the dragons are made of light?”

“Or they aliens like that professor with the hair say.”

I wasn’t sure who uni lisi was talking about, but the idea that the arcenciel was an alien was a possibility—though not an alien who came to Earth in a spaceship. Rather, one who got here from another universe at a liminal threshold, a place where one universe touched another.

“Then there’s the Tlanuwa.” I cocked my head in question and Aggie produced it again. “Tlah-noo-wah.” I nodded and she went on. “Tlanuwa are giant birds of prey with impenetrable metal feathers. They’re common to the oral tradition of many southeastern tribes and may be the same things as the Thunderbird in southwestern tribal mythology.”

“Now, that sounds like a spaceship,” I said, but thought that it could also be a storm god. An Anzû. I had never actually seen one without its glamour blocking the way and I had never seen one fly.

Aggie shrugged, her shoulders rising and falling in the dark. “It has a strong resemblance to a jet fighter. Noisy, sleek, powerful, dangerous, and darting through the sky with a roar. You want to tell us what you’re looking for?”

I described the arcenciel. And the Anzû. Aggie watched me as I talked, her eyes holding me in place like spears. “I’m wondering if they are real creatures that came to Earth through a liminal threshold. A weak place in reality where creatures can get to Earth.”

“That old man,” uni lisi said derisively, “that Choctaw old man. Him talk about seeing strange things down in the bayou.”

“The Choctaw are south of Houma?” I asked. That was one place I’d seen the arcenciel, playing in the waters of a bayou.

“No. The Choctaw tribal regions went from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border,” Aggie said. My eyes went wide in surprise.

“But in the last war, our people beat them good.” Uni lisi sounded satisfied, the way a soccer mom might when recounting an old high school rivalry.

Aggie ignored it and said, “Locally the tribal members are represented by the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees, but they’re composed of an amalgamation of several tribes which include Biloxi, Chitimacha, Choctaw, Acolapissa, and Atakapa.”

I nodded, but current tribal politics didn’t help me.

“Each community is governed by its own tribal council and advised by their respective Council of Elders,” uni lisi said. “That old man, he talk about thing he see in the bayou and the swamps. Him a member of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, but there the Isle de Jean Charles Band, and the Bayou Lafourche Band too.”

“All three bands are ancestrally related. Mama was being courted by a leader of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, but he was killed trying to save a family during Hurricane Rita. That’s the old man she’s talking about.”

“Him too old for me anyway. I need me a young man.” Uni lisi cackled with glee.

“Was there any specific place where he saw the creatures?” I asked.

“Nah.” Uni lisi waved her hand in the air as if it was all unimportant. “He seen them when he smoking wacky weed. He a crazy old man.”

Aggie added, “He did say once that the Uktena tried to talk to him. That his ancestor killed one with a steel knife and drank its blood, and that it made him strong. But he didn’t say where any of this happened.”

“How about a Cherokee flood story?” I asked.

“There a silly story about a dog who tell a man to build a raft, and then that dog, he tell the man to throw him into the water to kill him. Stupid dog, he was. Then the flood came and the man on the raft lived but all the other peoples were just a pile of bones.”

“Their spirits danced,” Aggie said, looking troubled. “It sounded like the pile of their bones dancing. Mama’s beau said he heard it once.” She nodded and sipped her tea, her eyes far away, in the past of the old stories. When she spoke again, she sounded uneasy. “Like a pile of bones . . . dancing. I always hated that image.”

Uni lisi waved her hand again. “Some stories silly. This one silly. You don’ be unhappy about this silly story or about that old man. That a long time ago.” But her voice no longer sounded like the story was silly, or that she had stopped grieving for her old man.

Out front I heard a truck turn into the cul-de-sac. Truck lights swept the property as it went around my SUV and circled the small turn-around of the cul-de-sac. I slipped out and determined it was indeed a power company truck, and its diesel engine was idling as a man with a powerful flashlight stood beneath the pole, looking up at the damage, muttering imprecations about kids these days. I returned to the One Feathers’ back porch, offered my thanks, and said my good-byes. I slipped out and to my SUV. Checked my GPS.

I called Derek and asked, “If I give you a GPS, can you send a guy to sit in a tree and keep an eye on two old ladies? Like you’re doing with Leo’s clan home property? I can pay.”

“Sure, Legs. I’ll send Blue Voodoo. He hunts. Sitting in a tree will be like a day off with pay for him.”

I gave Derek the GPS and the address, described the layout, and left it to Derek and Blue Voodoo. I didn’t know the guy well, but he was one of Derek’s longtime men. The One Feathers would be safe from anyone targeting my friends to get at me.

Without turning on my lights, I started the engine and backed out of the street. Where would a tribal elder have heard a sound in the bayou, a sound like bones dancing?

I was no closer to discovering anything, spinning my wheels. But something about dancing bones sounded important. And sad.

With the night off, I could have changed and let Beast hunt, but it felt too dangerous to shape-shift and play. Too much was going wrong and I had too little information. And yet, the arcenciel had gray energies like the ones where I changed form. So . . . maybe it wasn’t play. Maybe it would be research. I didn’t know but I decided to stay human, for now.

I was still on the west side of the river when I saw an SUV like the ones I’d seen before, maybe tailing me, though this one was grayish in the night, not black. I asked my cell to dial the Kid, and when he answered, I said, “You remember the license plates Eli and I got you for the black SUVs that were tailing us?” I knew the Kid would remember, so I didn’t wait for an answer. The question was rhetorical. “What did they come back as?”

“Local leases. Both came back to a Paul Reaver, not Revere, but Reaver.”

“Fake name?” I asked, as I slowed, letting the vehicle close the gap on me.

“Probably, but the credit card is good, so whoever created the ID did a good job. The cars have GPS, which I got, and I’ve been following them. Both are currently near the corner of Beryl Street and Jewel Street, hear Harlequin Park. Eli rode by, talked to a neighbor who says they are nice people. Nice house. Rental. You need me to send you a photo?”

The tail vehicle pulled up fast and its lights hit my mirrors, blinding me. My heart rate sped and I reached to the passenger seat and pulled a nine-mil from the thigh holster. “Is there another car rented under the same name?”

“No. I checked. Why?”

The SUV took that moment to pull around me and roar off. It was full of people and was blasting some heavy bass beat into the night and trailing odors of weed and booze. Teenaged rockers, full of hormones. I let the tension drain away, even as I memorized the license plate. “No,” I said, hearing the relief in my voice. “But just for grins, run this plate.” I gave him the number. “And is Soul there?”

“She went out about half an hour ago.”

“I’ll get back to you.” I ended the call and wondered how much of what I was seeing and worrying about was nothing and how much was various supernatural beings hiding things from me. Maybe it was time to beard the lion in her den.

Pulling over, I parked in the shadow of an abandoned warehouse, the front of the vehicle snugged up against the building. There were lots of warehouses up and down the Mississippi, some old and fancy with intricate brickwork and some thrown together out of metal and steel. This was a newer, and therefore uglier one, with tall grasses growing up in cracked concrete and birds flying through broken glass in the ventilation windows high off the ground. There were no security cameras that I could I see, and I was far enough off the road so that traffic cams would have a hard time picking anything up, if there even was a traffic cam on the isolated road.

I rolled down the window and sniffed the night air, smelling rats and feral cats and exhaust. A far-off skunk. Dead fish. Water. No people had been here recently. I made sure that the thigh holster Bruiser had provided was secure on the passenger seat beside me. Loosened both nine-mils and chambered a round in each. Standard ammo, not silver. It would likely be rednecks or gangbangers, not supernats, who would bother me out here.

I slouched down in the vehicle seat and took a chance; I dialed Soul. She picked up instantly. “What have you learned?” she asked.

“Too much and too little. I need you to confirm that you are the same species of creature as the arcenciel that attacked Leo and Gee DiMercy. Gee hints that it might be so. And I need to know what the gray place of the change is—that’s what I call the shape-changing energies that seem to operate outside ordinary Earth physics and time. And I need to know now.”

Soul didn’t answer at first, and I rolled the window down an inch so I could hear anyone or anything approaching. The window was still cracked from when the light-dragon hit my vehicle. I really needed to get that fixed before a cop pulled me over and ticketed me. By the unchanging scents, there was still nothing anywhere around, only the smells of small animals, the heady heaviness of freshwater, the soft susurration of the wind, and the deeper, more powerful vibration of the river on the other side of the levee.

“I will call you back,” she said, and the call ended.

I waited for perhaps two minutes, before I began to wonder whether she had blown me off, or if maybe she had meant she would call me back later. Then my cell rang, an unknown number on it. Burner phone?

“Yellowrock,” I said.

Soul said, “Some have hinted that you are dangerous, with your questions and your species-gifts untaught and unproven. Those same have proposed that you be removed to lessen the danger to the rest of us.”

Removed? Meaning killed? But before I could ask, Beast pressed down on my mind with her paw. In the darkness of my mind, I saw a mental image of a puma high on a ledge over a trickle of water. Waiting, still and silent, for prey.

Soul went on. “I have offered my recommendation that you be allowed to hunt for truth where you might find it and use such truth as you might wish. An experiment that might lead the imprisoned into the light.”

“Thanks,” I said, my tone offended. “It’s nice to have someone in my corner when I’m being judged without the chance to speak for myself. Some who?”

“Some of my ilk. My species, as you said.”

“Okay. So there are a lot more of you than I was thinking.”

“The lines are open again. For now, yes.”

Which meant nothing to me. “I’m not in the mood to play games,” I said, feeling tired. I closed my eyes and rubbed them with my fingertips. They felt hot and dry. “Please just answer my questions. Just this once will someone please just answer my questions without making me bleed for the answers. Please?”

Soul laughed, not unkindly. “I am of the Light, what some have called arcenciel or essendo luci. Light-beings. Rainbow dragons. Humans have worshiped us and witches have imprisoned us and used us for their magics for eons of time. We have come and gone upon your Earth and others like it for millennia. We like it here. Were we not hunted, more of us would choose to stay here. To raise our hatchlings here. There is water aplenty and we like the water planets best.”

Finally. Finally someone who could talk to me. Would talk to me. With my eyes closed I felt some odd sort of darkness float out of me, a shadow heavy as a stone lifting away. “And the gray place of the change?” Please answer me that.

“It is here and not here. It is a place that exists within and without. It is life and death, healing and illness, light and darkness, good and evil, time and not-time. It is neither this nor that, and yet is everything. It is energy and matter as they play together like streams colliding and re-forming and flowing around boulders and islands and obstacles, ever moving forward, yet able to pool and stand still. It is the Gray Between.”

I laughed, the sound broken. “That doesn’t help me much, though I have figured out that it comes from inside me as much as from outside me.”

“Call your energies. I will come to you.”

I sat up slowly in the car seat. “You can find me when I go into the gray place of the change?”

“Of course. If I am physically close enough, I can see you through the Gray Between even when you do not enter there. Can you not see us when you are there?”

I remembered back to the sparring room when the light-dragon had come through. Had it been zeroing in on me? But then the sequence of events settled into me and I recalled that Bruiser had asked me to go into the gray place after the arcenciel had appeared and started biting. But . . . I had been pulling on Beast’s strength, her speed. Were they the same thing? Did Beast’s strength and her ability to slow time come from the same place, from the gray place of the change? And at my house, when I shifted into the dog . . . I had felt magic. Had the arcenciel tried to find me? Had it been trying to find me for a long time? Was it zeroing in on my location every time I shifted?

What about the first time I was attacked by one of the things, on Bitsa, in the city streets? I hadn’t been drawing on Beast then. But maybe it had been close and had seen me in the gray place anyway? Dang it. I didn’t know enough to make a guess, which meant experimentation was on the schedule for the night’s activities.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Let’s see.” I set the clunky cell to the side and slouched down deeper in the SUV. I didn’t try to meditate or to call upon Beast. I didn’t try to find my own genetic makeup in the coiled snake of my own DNA structure. I just looked inside for the energies. And there was nothing there.

Beast rolled over in my mind, a cat on her back, looking at me upside down, her belly exposed. She chuffed at me. I was pretty sure she was laughing. Cat laughter. Which was always snark at another’s expense. Fine. You try, I thought at her.

Instantly the gray energies rose, lifting through me, sliding around me. Great. My cat has the power, not me. Again Beast chuffed with laughter. And then I smelled exhaust. I opened my eyes to see lights in the rearview, lights on bright, blinding me. Doors opened. The deep basso beat of music followed multiple shapes as they left the vehicle, the SUV that blocked me in. “Soul,” I whispered. “I might be in trouble.”

“I see you,” her voice said, over the open cell line. “Stay there.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered again, knowing she would hear me. I reached over and took one nine-millimeter, tucking it into my waistband at my back, the other into my fist. I rolled down, lower in the seat, into the floorboard, sitting on the accelerator. I moved the seat as far back as it would go to give me room to work. I watched the windows, and cursed the broken window that left me partially blind. I let the weapon move with my eyes, holding it in a two-hand grip.

Shadows floated beside the vehicle as the human shapes moved along the SUV. Satan’s Three? Or gangbangers? I took a breath and smelled vamp, unfamiliar, powerful. Floral, like Grégoire but with hazelnut undertones. And several humans smelling of booze and weed. One of them smelled like the sniper. I was so freaking stupid.

Deep inside me, Beast growled, and I realized that she had kept the gray place of the change open. It was muted but shining, a silvered shadow of energies misting across my skin. I could change. But it would do me no good. I had blocked myself in like a mountain lion in a den. I knew better. I couldn’t run. Not in time.

I heard the soft shush of leather on concrete and placed one of the three at the back of the SUV. Another was at the cracked window and it was a vamp. I didn’t know for certain that they intended me harm, but I didn’t care. I lifted the weapon to the crack at the top of the window and fired. The report was insanely loud, my hearing stopped dead, my nose clogged with the stink of a fired weapon. The shadows shifted and I heard a sound like a mouse, but recognized that it was a vamp, screaming in agony, a high-pitched ululation, the sound they make when they think they’re dying, a death wail. And I could barely hear it.

I was now head-blind, except for sight. Not my best sense. I shimmied back into the knee space, my neck crooked by the steering wheel, the floorboard warm beneath me. The passenger window shattered, bowing in as if under terrific pressure, but holding together; then it was rammed a second time, spraying me with pebbled, rounded bits of glass. Instinctively, I ducked. The locks on both front doors popped. And swung open. I fired, over and over again, until the magazine was empty.

The gun was jerked from my hand and I saw it whirling into the dark, arching up high, as I was yanked out of the SUV. I landed hard on the broken concrete, banging my head. My breath whooshed from my lungs. A foot kicked down on me, hitting my chest. And my breath just stopped. Tears gathered in my eyes, reflexive to the glare of a flashlight aimed into my face.

The gray energies rose around me, burning. Change, Beast thought at me. Change now!

I reached for my skinwalker magic as a man leaned over me, pale vamp face and the long fangs of the older ones. He rested something on my chest, and I felt the freezing energies through my clothes. “You have proved useful after all,” he said, his words muffled behind the gunfire-deafness, his accent Italian, or Sicilian. He leaned in and smelled me, holding me still. “I would ride you and drink you down, slowly, were there time.”

Change! Beast screamed inside me.

I . . . I can’t. The cold thing on my chest, I thought. It’s doing something to me.

A pale hand holding a crystal—like a quartz crystal, about four inches long and as thick as a big man’s thumb—descended and rested the quartz on my chest. Gray energies gathered around it, sucked from me, and I grunted with pain, as breath pulled back into me, like into a vacuum bottle. But the energies gathered at the crystal tip swirled around and up into the quartz . . . or diamond. Was it a diamond? And dark shadows flooded downward and inside the crystal. “You are more than you first appear, my Amazon Chelokay. Perhaps I shall take you with me after all.” Light flickered at the edges of the night. Barely, I heard screams, smelled something fishy, and the under-tang of burning, green vegetation. The smell of bayou, maybe. It smelled familiar. This was the thing that had attacked me on Bitsa. And had attacked us in the gym at HQ. This thing had been, what? Following me?

In the dark there were shapes like a head and jaw, glowing eyes, an iridescent silver. Wings. Scales. Dark and light, moving away. A light-dragon. Fleeing the vamps.

A fist swung down through the glare and connected with my jaw. My head rocked back. The gray energies swirled high as my vision telescoped down. As my field of vision grew smaller and smaller, I saw two vampires chasing a rainbow, humans running, right at the edge of my failing eyesight. And then the last of my vision failed me and all I heard was shouting and an engine revving. I slumped down into the blackness of an internal night.

I woke when a palm slapped me so hard it rocked my head as badly as the fist had. Soul was standing over me, the open door of my SUV visible behind her. She hit me again, the pain and the sound ringing along with my groaning. “Stop. I’m awake.” Soul seemed satisfied with her untender ministrations. She bent over the armored window, the one that was still cracked from where the arcenciel had rammed it, studying the cracks in detail, including the nick at the top, where my round had damaged it more.

I moaned as I rolled over, and pressed against the pain in my chest. Sitting up, I held my jaw. Soul whirled, set her eyes on me, and growled. Okay, that’s weird.

Soul was pretty, tiny, and delicate. But as I watched, she proved that she was definitely not human. Her jaw opened way wider than a human’s can. She was showing me her teeth the way Beast would show another predator her teeth in threat. I had a feeling that I was missing something crucial to this situation. “Soul. It’s me. Jane.” I rolled away from her, one hand behind my back gripping the nine-millimeter that was still in my waistband. The teeth looked like a warning, a predator response, not just to see me squirm, but to make sure I knew I was about to be eaten. My hand sweaty on the gun grip, I froze into stillness. “Soul? What is this?”

Magic tingled and sizzled along my skin. A wind sprang up, cold and hot at once, burning with both ice and steam. Soul’s mouth elongated again. And again. Alligator long. Crocodile long. Full of teeth like needles and knives. And wrong, wrong, wrong. Soul was not the same person in this form, as if . . . she lost her humanity when she shed her skin. “Soul, you just saved my butt. What did I do wrong that—”

Soul hissed and spat, narrowly missing me as I flinched away. The spittle hit the metal building behind me with a whistling splat. I heard sizzling and smelled hot metal and acid.

“Holy crap!” I pulled the gun in my waistband and fired. Three fast shots. And nothing happened, not to Soul. The rounds seemed to leave no mark at all. Or in my panic, I missed.

Beast shoved-rammed-punched her way into the forefront of my brain. Change, she screamed, clawing at my mind. Pain ricocheted through me. I inhaled and thought of Beast. Rolled over into the shadows. Until the cool metal of the warehouse at my back stopped me. Acid ran down from where she had spat at me, burning a patch of bare skin in my shoulder.

Soul lunged.

Light and shadow wrenched and twisted. The earth rearranged itself beneath me. I aimed, blew out my breath, and fired. Once, twice, three more times. Nothing hit her. The rounds passed clean through her. Through the light that was Soul. Her teeth came at me, big as a T. rex. They caught my arm and snapped down, just as she solidified and dropped onto my belly. My breath, my one precious breath, was shoved out in a strangled half scream. The smell of my blood was hot on the air. There was no pain yet. Just the sound and vibration of teeth on my bones. My stomach turned over and tried to defeat gravity. She shook me like a dog with a rabbit in its jaws. Slung me up and to the side. She let go and I landed in a spinning roll. Realized I was still in the gray place of the change. With Soul. In her natural form. Or one of them.

She leaped at me, her mouth open again. I focused on it. More cat than gator now. Striped black and yellow. Tiger, Beast thought. I/we snarled. Soul snarled back. With much bigger teeth.

Pelt sprouted along my arms, healing flesh and tendons on the one she had mauled. But I was twisted in my clothes. I wrenched my hips and legs, trying to get them free of the jeans and boots.

Soul pounced again and bit down onto my healing arm and shook me—clearly her method of choice for killing small prey. Like me. This time I heard the snap-snap of breaking bones. The pain that had been hiding exploded inside me. I heard a roaring in my ears. Which felt like a really bad thing. Beast? I’m in trouble here. More pain raced along my jaws and through my gut. The roaring grew louder. My body went limp.

Face wrenched in agony. Changing. Shifting. Beast screamed. Buried fangs in tiger’s throat, latching down. Fur and blood and meat and . . . rich, tasty blood. Beast shook tiger. Swallowed good blood. Tiger growled and gurgled. Tiger could not breathe.

Beast played dead. Then attacked. Beast is best hunter.

Tiger whined. Blew bubbles of blood. Tiger lay still. Beast let her go and leaped to three legs, whirled and reached for tiger. Tiger was gone. Sniffed, searching for tiger. Saw light and movement among trees beside cracked, broken concrete. Light like gray place, but brighter. With wings and scales. Growling and snarling. Roaring and chuffing. Singing like birds. Soul cried, “Where is the hatchling?”

And she was gone.

Pain raced up broken leg. Beating like blood and heart. I/we gathered up Jane boots and clothes. Carried them to ess-u-vee. Leaped to front, to top of chest, above beating heart, warm from life of ess-u-vee, alive but not alive. Curled into ball on top of Jane clothes. Put jaw on boots. Closed eyes and thought of Jane.

I woke up on the warm hood of the SUV, disoriented and nauseated. Hair unbraided and draped all over me. And naked. I groaned and rolled over. Sat up. Making sure that Soul and Satan’s Three were gone. No growling, no light show. No vehicle behind mine. Nothing but the smell of crushed plants, Soul blood, gunfire, and vamp on the air, mixed with something vaguely familiar that skittered around in my brain like a rat in a box before disappearing like a magic trick before I could identify it.

I rolled off the hood and dressed quickly in my blood-damp, shredded clothes, except for the panties and bra that were a total ruin. This was why I didn’t invest in expensive undies.

No one drove by as I dressed; no sirens sounded in the distance. I was glad I was in the boonies with no nearby, nosy neighbors. Going commando—which was not at all comfortable, the zipper cold and pinching my skin—I shoved my feet into my boots and hunted for my guns and my cell. Seconds after becoming human again, I slid into the car, the tires ground into the concrete and spit shale, as I gunned the motor and got the heck outta Dodge, thinking, What the heck just happened?

I was halfway across the river before my heart rate slowed and I figured out three things. One: Driving with no windows was a lot like riding Bitsa. Two: I wasn’t hungry. I had been beaten and cold-cocked by a vamp, shifted, fought a tiger, been wounded, shifted back, all in a matter of minutes, and I wasn’t hungry. Shifting always used energy, energy that I took from food calories. But I wasn’t hungry. In fact, I felt amazing, like I’d had a good meal and a beer. And like the beer worked on me like it did on humans. I wasn’t buzzed, but I was amazingly relaxed. Which I clearly shouldn’t have been. And using the term amazing a lot. And I had no idea why. Three: Soul was a shapeshifter. Which meant that the arcenciels were shapeshifters. A light-dragon and a freaking tiger and maybe other forms as well. And not a shifter who required that mass and energy remain unchanged. In her human form she weighed maybe a hundred twenty-five pounds. In her tiger form she weighed more than three hundred, if her weight on my belly had been an indication. Unless she could convert energy to mass all by her lonesome. Like maybe she had a pocket of energy she could draw on as needed to change shape and mass. That would be handy. The arcenciels had—or were—magic like I had never imagined before.

I thought through the last few minutes in the warehouse parking area as I drove, analyzing it from every memory—smell, sight, pain, taste, roaring sound, and time. Something about it was familiar in a mathematical kinda way. Like A equals B, and B equals C, so A equals C. Like that. I was doing math. My high school teachers would be so proud. I pulled up my sleeve to see an undamaged arm, healed by the shift. My life was good. Weird but good. “And I can do alphabet math. Cool.”

And the best thing about the whole thing? The taste of Soul’s blood. Which was why I wasn’t hungry, I thought. Whatever kinda dragon-cat-shifter/l’arcenciel Soul was, her blood was full of power. “I gotta figure out what she is. Someday,” I said to the road in front of me. “For now, it’s all good because I know for sure who’s trying to bomb me and sniper me and tailing me. Well, it’s all good, except that Soul tried to kill me.” I frowned at the street because it wanted to waver to the left. “And Satan’s Three are after me and it has something to do with my energies in the gray place of the change. Which is bad. Very bad. So it’s not all good.

“Oh crap. I’m talking to myself. And I’m feeling really good. Okay. Soul’s blood is full of power and happy juice. Like the arcenciel goop from the sparring room floor and from the drugged scale.”

Car lights flashed into the SUV through the broken windows. My T-shirt was clawed and ripped and stiff with blood. Cool night wind touched my skin through the rents. Since I was over the river and off the bridge, I slowed, parked, and yanked the shirt off, tossing it into the passenger floor, without looking. I twisted my hair up in a bun and stuck some stakes through it to keep it in place, then pushed the stakes down because they hit the roof and hurt my scalp. Dang stakes. A toiletries bag was in back and I crawled through the SUV to get it.

From the zippered bag, I pulled a thin, short-sleeved tee and slid it over my head, which would have been easier had I done it before I staked my hair. I wasn’t thinking straight yet. But my head felt light and airy and I thought that was new and different, so maybe I was metabolizing the drug like the lab’s research had suggested.

I looked down at my chest. I needed to shop. I was running out of bras and work clothes, getting sword-cut and claw-slashed. This brown, yellow, and pink tee had a cute pig on it with the words Bacon Is Meat Candy. Ugly, though it was a perfect tee for Beast. And at least all my girlie parts were covered.

In a rush, all the manic energy drained out of me, like water flowing from my fingertips and puddling on the floor of the vehicle. My limbs went weak, my eyes were too heavy, and my head lolled back against the backseat. I was pretty sure I was passing out. I said something bad just as unconsciousness took me. My last sight was the sun trying to rise, a gray haze on the eastern sky, reflected in broken window glass everywhere.

The sun was high in the sky when I heard a hollow knocking and my cell buzzed at the same time, waking me. I picked up my cell and looked around at traffic. It took a moment to remember why I was sleeping in the back of the SUV on a crowded city street. There was a parking ticket on the windshield wiper. Great. And Eli stood at the broken passenger window with a peculiar look on his face. I waved Eli in, opened the cell to answer the call, moistened my cracked, dry lips, and said, “Speak to me, oh genius, geek, and computer prodigy.”

“Those are pretty much all the same thing, you know. Ummm. Are you okay?” the Kid asked. “You sound kinda . . . I don’t know. Happy.”

“I’m always happy. Tell me something I don’t know. And say hi to your brother.”

I held the phone out so Eli, who was easing into the SUV, could hear.

“Yeah. Sure. Hey, Eli. Whatever. Is she okay?”

Eli closed the door on the traffic, looked me over, and shook his head, bemused. “She looks like a homeless person who spent the night in the back of an unsecured SUV, wearing a bacon shirt.”

“Yeah? Get a pic. Jane, the car tailing you was a lease that came back to Florence Falcon. Florence is a false ID, with a social that originated at the same birth month and state as Paul Reaver. Florence works for Paul Reaver. Whoever created the fantastic IDs did a pis—uh, a poor job of separating the locales and the timelines. You want me to send this to Jodi?”

“Yeah. Tell her I was being tailed. And that they boxed me in and tried to kill me.”

“What? Are you okay?” Alex sounded weirded out, which didn’t make much sense because people were always trying to kill me. “Eli?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m ducky,” I said. Eli grunted agreement. “Jodi might want to—wait,” I said. “Send the info to Jodi and to the ATF officer in charge of the bomb delivery. What’s his name?”

“Special Agent Stanley. Got it.” I could hear bewilderment in Alex’s voice. “Eli, is she really okay?”

“She looks fine but the SUV is damaged.”

“Later, Kid.” I hung up and looked at Eli. “What’s up?”

“We lost track of you on the far side of the river,” he said, mildly. “It took us four hours to find you, and when I did, you were asleep.”

“Oh. That was . . .” I realized he had been worried. Both of the Youngers had been terribly worried. Thinking I was hurt. Or dead. Which was really sweet, and would probably insult them if I said so. I settled on, “That was horrible of me.” I crawled back into the driver’s seat, explaining. “I was talking to Soul and she said she could find me in the gray place of the change, so I went into it. And I was attacked by vamps. And they beat me up and were planning to kill me or kidnap me. Then I think . . .” I pulled the tangled memories back into place, and examined the different scent patterns from the attack. “I think, maybe, an arcenciel came—not Soul—and the vamps did something to it or tried to, but it got away. And they knocked me out.”

Eli was staring at me with an indecipherable expression. “Unconscious.”

“Yeah. Mostly. I think the vamps were chasing the arcenciel and that’s why they left me. And then Soul came and woke me up. And attacked me, maybe because she thought I should have saved the other arcenciel? Or maybe because she thought I had attacked the arcenciel? Anyway, then I shifted into Beast. And that’s when it got strange.”

“That’s when it got strange.”

I had a feeling that Eli was making fun of me and I squinted at him in threat. “We fought and she turned into a three- or four-hundred-pound tiger and I bit her throat and swallowed her blood. And then she took off. And then I shifted back to me. Only her blood left me drunk as a skunk, ’cause she’s an arcenciel too and their blood’s really tasty.” I chuffed a laugh. “So, anyway, I got dressed and back in the SUV.” I looked around me again at the traffic. “I think I drove here and fell asleep. Because of the druggy blood. But I’m sober now. Mostly.”

Eli shook his head slowly, still looking me over. “I thought I’d be bored in civilian life, out of the service. I had no idea.” Eli got out of the SUV and bent back in, his head low enough to see me. “Check your messages.” He closed the door, took the traffic ticket in his fist, and walked down the street. He got into his own SUV, a battered, unarmored, older model, and drove into traffic. He didn’t look my way as he passed.

I checked my messages, sixteen from Alex, each increasingly more panicked as he called and pinged my location. And one from Bruiser. I returned his call and left a message, ending with, “I’m bringing lunch. I’ll be there in an hour if the traffic is willing.” I tossed the cell into the seat, wondering whether he would be there at all. I was taking all sorts of chances. How weird was that? I wondered whether it was the drugged blood, and decided that it wasn’t, as I was now starving, moderately anxious about visiting Bruiser, and not feeling the least intoxicated.

I pulled into the stream of cars and turned on the radio to catch the Doobie Brothers singing “Black Water,” which was appropriate in so many ways. I was solving problems, identifying bad guys, discovering that things were much weirder than they seemed, and protecting the sorta innocent. Things were starting to happen here on the Mississippi. Oh yes, they were.

Only, not all of my conclusions were correct.

It was out of the way, but after a quick side trip to Cochon Butcher, I made my way to the French Quarter, turning onto St. Philip Street. Luck was with me and I slipped into a rare open parking spot on the street and locked the doors, which was stupid because I had no windows. Pocketing the keys, carrying the food bags, I walked in through the arched door to find the entrance empty. The old, Mediterranean-style building was tall-ceilinged and cool, a typical, comfortable French Quarter building. There was something homey and maybe a little well-loved-shabby about the place that was unexpectedly soothing. The entrance was quaint, the lighting modest, and the central courtyard was old-fashioned and relaxed with a burbling fountain, tropical plants and vines, table and chairs, two rockers. Old brick was exposed by broken stucco. Lots of tile. Nice. Quiet.

Standing in the arched entrance to the enclosed central courtyard, I thought about the step I was taking. I was sober, single, mostly sane, so if I was making a mistake, it wouldn’t be for the wrong reason.

I stuck my free hand into a back pocket, catching my reflection in a small hanging mirror in the archway. I was too tall, still too skinny, even with the added twenty pounds. Bronzed skin. Bacon T-shirt. No makeup. Hair up in a messy mass, stakes twisted to hold it in place. I considered my ghostly reflection. Not a pretty woman. At the moment not even striking. Lanky and plain. Except for my amber eyes. They were almost exotic. Almost. But not quite.

Inside, Beast was strangely silent. As if she had withdrawn completely. Or was watching me like prey, hidden in the deeps of me.

I turned my back to the courtyard and looked at the empty entrance; pulled on Beast’s hearing and listened to the voices muffled by the thick walls. Smelled fresh paint and mold and age. And I was surprised that I felt no desire at all to run.

“Miss Yellowrock?”

A large woman came toward me from the shadows, dressed in black from sneakers Velcro-ed on her wide feet to her bottle-black hair. “Yes. I’m Jane Yellowrock.”

“Mr. Dumas left you a key.”

“Unit eleven, right?” I took the key—a brass key, not one of the new electronic card keys.

“Up the stairs to the third floor. There is no elevator.”

I nodded and followed her finger to the stairs. They were long, curving at the landings, with a wrought-iron railing and bare wood treads. I carried the key in one hand, the heavy paper bag from Cochon Butcher in the other, and recalled what I knew of the old building. Useless knowledge filling an empty mind. The St. Philip was constructed in 1839 as two separate but identical residences, built by a wealthy Sicilian immigrant for his family and his daughter’s family. At that time, this section of the French Quarter was called the Sicilian Quarter, home to Italian families and businesses.

Over the years since, the building had fallen into bad disrepair, and was used as rental units through the Depression. In the 1940s the building was operated as a gentlemen’s hotel by one of the most notorious madams of New Orleans—Katie of Katie’s Ladies—originally my landlady, and Leo’s heir, though she had owned the joint under another name. All of it unimportant. My mind was swimming through murky, narrow passageways of insignificant memory, trivial inconsequence. As my feet climbed the stairs.

The building was cool, but not cold, and I could hear window units purring and gurgling through doors on the landings, trying to take away some of the early-season humidity. On the third floor I found unit eleven. The door was marked as the Owner’s Suite and, like the others, was rented out. I knocked and then looked down at my hand. Watched as it inserted the key. The lock turned, clean and well lubricated with graphite, but ancient.

I pushed open the door, closed my eyes, and inhaled, smelling more fresh paint, adhesive, stone, carpet, and his citrusy cologne. Beast moved finally. Tilting her head. Mine . . .

He called out, “Come in. I was just preparing a salad.”

I stepped inside and closed the door. Watched as my hand locked the door latch and turned the dead bolts. When I faced the room, my boots scuffed on the carpet, the kind of carpet that you glue down in squares. The kitchen had dark wood cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and what looked like white quartz tops, similar to what Leo had going into his new clan home. An island and tall, white, upholstered bar chairs separated the cooking area from the rest of the apartment. The couches in the main room were contrasting burnt peach and brown. A wine cabinet was off the sitting area. A bedroom to the left, shrouded in shadows. The unit sported a double balcony looking over Philip Street—a pricey view, but the rooms were less ornate than I had thought he would require.

Feeling light, as if I weighed nothing at all, and at the same time as if every move I made was weighted with importance, I walked in and pivoted carefully, entering the kitchen. Bruiser stood in the small kitchen area, concentrating on the salad, letting me acclimate to being there. His attention was deeply focused on the clear glass bowl filled with greens, white cheese, cranberries, walnuts, sliced grapes, and cherry tomatoes. I set the bag on the bar, watching as he poured balsamic vinegar and olive oil over the salad concoction and tossed it with two silver spoons. Bruiser handling silver was odd. Maybe the oddest thing about the moment. Until I noticed his clothes.

I had seen him in jeans and leather and dress slacks and tuxedoes. Never in thin cotton pants, wrinkled and hanging low on his hips. He sported a thin white cotton T-shirt, his body outlined clearly. His feet were bare. I always had a thing about men’s bare feet, and Bruiser’s were beautiful, his toes long and dusted with dark hairs that lay flat against his skin.

His face was unshaven, the whiskers a paler brown than the roots of his hair, closer to the sun-kissed golden brown of his hair in late summer. Mine . . . Beast said again.

Still without looking up, he reached for the bag and removed the contents, the chilled bottle of wine first. “A good choice. Buttery with a hint of lemon.”

I lifted a shoulder diffidently. He knew I hadn’t picked it out myself. It was one he had ordered at Arnaud’s. I didn’t know whether he even remembered that. But he had liked it then, so . . .

Deftly, he opened the bottle. Poured two glasses and tasted one. I lifted the other and held it. My fingers trembled, a faint and delicate vibration. The glass was cool against my palms.

He began to remove the take-out packages. “Cochon’s duck confit and . . . Andouille sausage,” he said, approval in his voice. He opened another and said, “Their roast oysters on the half shell and . . . goat-stuffed biscuits. A little piece of heaven,” and this time there was reverence in his voice. “Steamed vegetables and a side of pickled baby squash. Roast asparagus.” A smile in his voice, he said, “You brought green things.”

I shrugged, pleased. “I was feeding you.”

His teeth showed, white and even when he laughed. “And for that I thank you. But this is a feast, Jane. There’s enough food here for days.”

I lifted my eyes from the food to Bruiser’s face and said, “So we don’t have to leave anytime soon.” He stilled. His pupils widened slowly as he stared at the food in his hands. Even more slowly he lifted his gaze from the packages on the island to take me in. His mouth opened slightly and his scent changed, heated and . . . heated. It was hard to breathe. Impossible to stand there, waiting. Uncertain what he would do.

He met my eyes, an electric spark at the connection that shivered through me from the arches of my feet to the short hairs on the back of my neck. He gazed at me—hair, stakes, mouth—as if the sight of me was the air he breathed. The sun that lit his world. The moon in the dark of a perilous night. As if he’d been denied breath and sunlight and moon-glow for too long.

Something turned over in me, something liquid and heavy, like some unfinished thing in a womb, waiting to be born. It settled low in my belly and heat spread through me, thick and viscous and sweet, like warm honey. Mine . . . Beast murmured. Mine . . .

Ours, I thought.

Ours, Beast purred back. Ours . . . ours . . . ours.

Carefully, but without looking at what he was doing, Bruiser set the packages on the bar. They landed with a papery sliding and the sharper snap of plastic. His lips parted and I thought he might speak, but instead he came around the island, stepping as if in a martial movement, carefully balanced, ready for a strike. When I didn’t back away, he lifted a hand and slid it around my neck. His palm was warm, feverish in a human. But we weren’t human. With the other, he reached up and removed the stakes, one at a time, setting them on the counter. My hair slid and tumbled, a languid glide. His hand followed, smoothing my hair. Like soothing a beast.

I licked my lips. Went stiff all over. Bruiser’s hands went motionless.

I whispered, “When I was five years old, I was on the Trail of Tears. My grandmother forced me to change into a bobcat. Wesa. Then she shoved me away, into the snow. Alone. I was starving. Freezing. A long time later, I don’t know how long, I found a buried carcass of a deer in the ice, a rare find then, after the white man had paid our young men to kill off so many. I was eating. Not paying attention.”

Bruiser’s hand slid down my hair again, once, as if he stroked the pelt of a cat. His eyes held mine, giving me time.

“It was the kill of a mountain lion. She came back and caught me. Attacked. Was trying to kill me. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was terrified, fighting for my life, but that was no excuse. I dropped into the gray place of the change and I stole her body. It was black magic. Her soul is inside with me still. She’s a killer. Predator. So am I. If we—”

Bruiser’s mouth landed on mine. He crushed me to him. If I had been human, I would have broken. I hadn’t even seen him move.

His mouth slashed across mine, our teeth clacking. Bruiser’s tongue scoured my lips. They felt burned, almost painful. I opened my mouth and sucked him inside. Pain ripped at my fingertips as Beast’s nails pierced my flesh, and dug gently into Bruiser’s sides. He didn’t pull away. He laughed, into my mouth, the sound desperate and joyous. His leg separated mine, a tango step, had there been music, had we been dancing. Holding me against his body, he bent over me as we kissed, our feet moving in synchrony. He whirled us slowly, my hair slinging out.

I slid my hands up his back, beneath his shirt, claws scraping. Beast’s claws, extruded from my fingertips, scraping hard enough to hurt, not deep enough to break skin.

No gray place of the change, just us, just Beast and me, in one body, at one place and time.

Bruiser slipped one hand under my shirt, his palm fevered on the skin of my belly. His scent was heated metal, citrus, and need. His hand found my bare breast and he hissed as he inhaled. Gently, he cupped me, gathering up the firm flesh. His warm fingers tightened on my nipple. His mouth disappeared and so did my T-shirt as we danced through the room. Cool air brushed across me. His lips landed on my breast and he sucked the nipple into his hot mouth so hard I gasped. Grabbed his head, pulling him even closer.

He growled. Bit my breast. A nip. “Harder,” I growled back.

Instead there was a mass against the backs of my knees and the world tilted. I was falling. I wrapped one arm around him. Landed on the bed, his weight trapping me.

Trapping me.

His kissed my throat. Teeth grazing.

Trapping me! Like the night when Leo—

I tensed, my body suddenly cold. I shoved, fought. “No! Nononono!”

Bruiser pulled away, horror and understanding in his eyes. His voice fierce, he said, “This is not then. This is not him. This is you and me.” He gripped my head in both hands so hard it hurt and he held me with his body and his eyes, the golden lights of my Beast dancing, reflected in his depths. Beast pressed a paw on the panic I hadn’t even known was there. Isolating it, pulling it away from me. Her claws held me safe.

I felt the fear float away as if it fell over high falls and downdowndown, to disappear into the froth of nothingness. “Yessss,” I hissed, my voice too low, too deep.

Mine . . . mine . . . mine . . .

Ours . . . ours . . . ours . . .

“Yessss.”

“Mine,” Bruiser said, unknowingly echoing Beast.

The parallel shocked me. I searched his face to see him staring at me. Into me. I saw the golden reflection of both parts of me in his eyes. “Yesss,” I said again.

My jeans disappeared, the zipper drawing blood along my shin. The scent mixed with Bruiser’s, where I’d accidently pierced his skin in my terror, both blood-scents full of need. The cool air went colder along my body. I ripped at him with my claws, and his clothes were gone. His body naked and hot. A fire of need and want. I lifted my legs and wrapped them around him. “Now,” I demanded. He shoved into me. No gentleness, no tenderness. Ramming in so hard he hit the back of me. My body arched. With a scream I claimed him.

There was no more talking.

It was dusk when he managed the next coherent words. “Holy hell,” he muttered. His voice was ragged and rough, his breathing not yet smooth. We lay on our backs, side by side, staring at the rough-hewn ceiling beams. Our fingers were intertwined, our hands between us. My legs rested over one of his. My hair was tied in a knot and pulled to the side out of the way. He had tied it there, his hands stroking, after we had nearly scalped me when we rolled over and fell off the bed.

My skin was abraded from his beard, all around my mouth and jaw. My breasts. Lower. He had seen the raw places, when we still had sunlight, and tried to get up and shave. I had refused. Told him about big-cats and how they marked their mates. After that, Bruiser, my Bruiser, had marked me. Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

I had bitten him, drawing blood once. Beast had kept claws out and hooked into his flesh. It had to have hurt; it had to have been excruciating. But he hadn’t stopped. Bruiser was healed now. Onorios are hard to damage. Good thing.

Out front, a car horn honked. A woman laughed. I sighed, low and long.

“You’re awake,” he murmured.

I smiled slightly, my mouth still bruised and tender. “Mmmhmm.”

He rolled over in the shadows, propping his head onto an elbow so he could see me. “No woman, in all my long life, has ever come to me”—he tipped his head forward and quickly licked my breast, his tongue leaving the nipple to grow cool and tight. Laughter and satisfaction filled his voice—“wearing jeans and a bacon T-shirt, and nothing else.” I tilted my head to see him better. The widow’s peak on his forehead was a pointed darkness on his pale skin, picked out by the streetlights coming through the open balcony doors, and into the bedroom.

“Everything’s better with bacon,” I whispered. He rolled over and collapsed against me, his laughter so exhausted it was little more than a rough breath.