Skinwalker

CHAPTER 2 Okay, I was paranoid

“Where’dju hide the weapons?” Troll asked, his voice conversational.

I smiled as I slid into my jacket, not ignoring the barrel of the .45 pressed into my neck, but not reacting to it either. “You’re human. Sure you want to risk standing so close to me?”

I felt him hesitate and whirled. Set my head to the side of the gun. Knocked his right arm across his body with my raised right fist. Twisting my hand, I took his wrist and lifted. And slammed against his left shoulder with my left hand, forcing him to the floor. It took maybe a half second. Deep in my bones, I felt my Beast spit. This was fun.

“Not bad,” he said, his inflection still composed. I knew I’d been baited. Had known he would want to know if he could have taken me. “What discipline?”

He was asking what form of martial arts I studied. I thought a minute. “Dirty,” I said. He chuckled. I pressed down just a bit on his shoulder joint. “Put the weapon down.”

He placed the .45, a well-kept Smith & Wesson, on the floor and pushed it away. He could still get to it, but not before I hurt him bad. I took my weight off his shoulder and released his wrist, stepping back and setting my feet, balanced for his next move. But he didn’t make one. He stood and tucked his thumbs into his waistband, a surer sign of peace than palms out. Thumbs in meant he couldn’t strike out fast, while the universal gesture of peace was an easy way to mentally disarm an opponent and then kill him when he let down his guard.

“There’s a hapkido black belt, second dan, practices after hours in the back of a jewelry store on St. Louis. I’ll call in an intro if you want.”

“That’d be nice.” I waited, easing down a smidgen. Just enough for him to see it, but not enough to get sucker punched.

“Anything else I can do you for?” he asked companion-ably.

“Sure. Where can a girl buy a good steak for grilling?” Meaning where can I get good raw meat, but phrased in a socially acceptable way.

“Place I stocked your fridge from is the best. Thirty pounds of sirloin.”

This time I controlled my reaction. My love of animal protein wasn’t on my Web site. Not anywhere.

“I left directions to the butcher and a fresh market on your kitchen counter. Butcher delivers,” he said, “seafood, beef, any kinda bird, alligator”—my Beast perked up at that—“mudbug, veggies, you name it.”

“Mudbug?” I let a small smile cross my face, sure I was being baited again.

“Crawfish. Best steamed in beer, in my opinion. I left directions to eateries, too.”

“Much appreciated.”

He sighed and dropped his weight to one hip. I smothered my grin. “You’re not going to tell me where you hid the weapons, are you?” he asked.

“Nope. But I promise not to break your knee if you’ll reposition your weight back on both feet.”

He laughed, the happy laugh of a contented man, and adjusted his weight back evenly. Still dangerous, but not sneaky dangerous. “Not bad, Jane Yellowrock.”

“Right back at you, Tom.”

“You can call me Troll. I kinda like it.”

I nodded. “Sounds dangerous. Mean.”

“Not me. I’m a pussycat.”

I glanced at the armoire and back at him with a question in my eyes.

“Sorry,” he said and took three steps back.

Without taking my eyes off him, I reached into the armoire and gathered my weapons in small batches, inserting them into the proper straps and sheaths, all but one stake, which I leaned into the darkest corner. I carried the shotgun. I had to work to get its harness strapped on and I wasn’t taking chances with Tommy Troll. I grinned at the thought and he thought the smile was for him. Which it was, sorta. “Thanks for an interesting evening,” I said.

“Welcome to New Orleans. See you tomorrow night.” He lifted a large mailing envelope off a table at his side and handed it to me. I felt several things inside: what I took to be a stack of cash, trifolded papers (most likely the contract), flat pages, and a couple of keys. “Thanks,” I said. I nodded and opened the narrow door, stepping into the night.

I stood with my back to Katie’s, remembering to breathe, forcing down the fear I had controlled, subjugated, strangled till now. I grinned. I’d done it. I had faced down a civilized vamp, had lived to tell the tale, and had successfully taken away both cash and a job. Beast found my relief amusing. When I could walk without my knees shaking, I stuffed Katie’s folder into the envelope and went to my bike.

The night wasn’t dark, not in Jazz City. The glare of streetlights and neon beer signs fell in odd patterns and cast warped shadows across the cityscape, the effect of moisture in the air from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchar train. The bodies of water bracketed New Orleans, giving the city its famous stink and air so wet that rain sometimes fell from a blue sky. So I smelled the Joe before I saw him. But I knew where he was. Upwind, relaxed. The smell of gun oil and ammo no stronger than before.

He was sitting on a low brick wall one storefront over, a balcony above him, the old building at his back. He had one leg up, the other dangling, and the shadows hid the left side of his body. He could have a weapon hidden there. Okay, I was paranoid. But I had just bested a vamp on her home territory and then made nice-nice with her bodyguard. My glands still pumped adrenaline and my heart was suddenly pounding.

Keeping him to my side, I went around my bike and strapped the shotgun harness on top of my jacket, sliding the weapon into the special sheath made by a leathersmith in the mountains near Asheville. I checked the saddlebags and saw the finger smudges on the polished chrome. Gloved. No prints. But I bet touching my locks had hurt like a son of a gun. Making it look like I was getting a closer look, I bent and sniffed. The Joe’s cigar scent was faint, but present. I raised my head and grinned at him. He touched the brim of an imaginary cowboy hat, a faint smile on his face.

I straddled the hog and sat. He slid off his glasses, and his eyes were dark, nearly black, a sign of mixed European and American Indian lineage. “Still hurting?” I asked, letting my voice carry on the damp air.

“A little tingly,” he admitted easily. After all, if he had intended me not to guess it was him, he wouldn’t have stayed around. “Witchy-lock?”

I nodded.

“Expensive. You get the job?” When I raised my brows politely he said, “With Katie. Word on the streets is the council brought in out-of-town talent to take down the rogue.”

“I got the job.” But I didn’t like the fact that everyone in town knew why I was here. Rogue vamps were good hunters. The best. Beast snarled in disagreement but I ignored her.

He nodded and sighed. “I was hoping she’d can you. I wanted the contract.”

I shrugged. What could I say? I kick-started the bike. Fumes and the roar drove Beast back down. She didn’t like the smell, though she did approve of my method of travel. To her, hogs were totally cool. I wheeled and tooled away, keeping an eye on the Joe in the rearview. He never moved.

Moments later I switched off the Harley, sitting astride the too-warm leather seat as I looked over the narrow, two-story, old-brick French house. It was around the block and backed up to Katie’s Ladies. The front door had a stained-glass oval window in the center and was protected from the elements by a three-foot-wide second-story veranda with a freshly painted black wrought-iron railing. A similar door opened on the upper porch, and neither looked particularly secure. There was a narrow lane down the right side, locked behind an ornate seven-foot-tall wrought-iron gate. Lots of wrought iron, half the spikes topped with fleur-de-lis, the rest with what could have been stakes. Tongue-in-cheek vamp humor. Before coming here, during the preliminary research phase of this job, I had learned that the fleur-de-lis was New Orleans’ official city symbol and had been popular for ages in France, from whence many of the vamps had emigrated during the pre-Napoleonic purges of the French Revolution. Seemingly useless bits of knowledge often were the difference between success and failure.

House and gate had to be two, three hundred years old. I tried the larger, older of two keys, four inches in length, a heart shape on one end. The lock clicked and I squeezed the latch, two bars that compressed to unfasten the gate. It opened without a squeak. Boots on cobblestones, I walked my Harley inside and pulled the gate closed behind me. The latch clicked and I relocked it before walking the bike down the two-rut garden lane beside the house. Or storefront, or boardinghouse. From the smells, it had been lots of things at one time or another.

A careful driver could have gotten a car back here. A small car. But the lane was clearly intended for walkers, or maybe horseback riders. There were all kinds of plants, some with long stems and elephant ear-sized leaves of various color combinations. There were climbing roses and jasmine and a few other things I recognized, but my knowledge of botany was limited. Several plants were flowering and smelled heavenly. I caught a hint of catnip. Beast made a hacking sound deep inside. I wasn’t always sure what that meant, but it was a reaction of some sort used during both positive and negative discoveries. In this case, maybe it was a sign of recognition.

The house was narrow on the street side, but long, with a deep second-story wooden balcony covering a ground-floor porch that overlooked the tiny side lane and back garden. I could see chairs on the porch, a few tables. More wrought-iron trellises and rails served to keep people from falling off. The porch on the lower level was slate floored, with more iron. The house had tall windows closed with French shutters, five windows on each story, and there was one door on each floor with stairs near the back leading between. Four doors total, all flimsy. Not much security.

I could check out the interior of the house later. The back garden first. I pushed the Harley on around. The garden widened into a thirty-by-forty-foot rectangular space at the bottom of the lane, and was exquisite. It was surrounded by ornamental yet entirely functional brick walls fifteen feet high, and was lined with plants of all varieties. A big fountain splashed in a corner, water pouring from a huge marble tulip with a miniature naked woman sitting atop. The sculpture was finely detailed, a masterwork, and I noted the statue’s resemblance to Katie. Tiny fangs were a dead giveaway. I wondered how many houses she owned on this block. Maybe all of them. You could do some powerful estate planning when you had lived over two hundred years. Maybe three hundred. Maybe more.

Over the city sounds and even with the roar of the Harley still affecting my ears, I could hear the tiny motor powering the pump. Other than that, and the sound of an unfamiliar night bird, the garden was silent.

Across from the fountain, sown with dozens of healthy plants, were three large boulders and half a dozen smaller ones brought in by the crane Troll had mentioned. Katie was right. The gardener had done a good job; the boulders looked like they had been here forever.

I set the kickstand and walked the garden, looking for wires, scuffs on the brick, signs of work other than the gardener’s. I spotted them fast, a scuff near the left back corner, too high to be from a spade, and a well-concealed electrical line running from the security light down to the brick wall.

I pulled off the straps that secured my shotgun and set it aside. The jacket followed, and, sitting down on a conveniently placed bench, I tugged off my boots. I gathered three loose cobblestones and dropped them into my T-shirt. They landed against my skin at my waist, held in place by my belt. Then I pulled the bench to the wall, spat on my hands for effect more than necessity, and leaped.

The brick wall was irregular, with some bricks forming depressions and others sticking out just enough for a rock climber to know what to do with them. I hadn’t climbed Everest, but I’d lived in the Appalachians and had taken a few classes. I had taken at least a few classes in lots of things.

I caught a slightly protuberant brick and swung out, catching another with my toes, pushing up for a second handhold, another toehold. I reached the top of the fence and studied it. There was no barbed wire, no broken glass embedded in concrete, no trip wires. Nothing. A half-assed job, security-wise.

I pulled myself to the top and stood, surveying the yard next door. A small dog, more hair than meat, growled at me. Beast was rising in my mind as the moon rose and darkness fell, and she spat at it, not that the stupid little dog could tell. I reined her back and, because she understood that the safety of the den was paramount, she let me. I was better at human things, and she didn’t mind me taking over as long as it wasn’t dangerous. Then it got a bit harder to submerge her instincts.

I walked along the wall, taking in the scents of the place, the brick warm beneath my bare feet as I scrutinized the garden with eyes and nose and considered the walls on the houses adjacent to my freebie-house wall. I came to the back corner where the scuff was and toed a tiny lump, brushing away dirt that had been carefully sprinkled there. I reached down and pulled the miniature security camera from the duct tape holding it in place. The tape made little snapping sounds as it broke.

The electrical wires powering the camera came free as well, and I turned the camera lens to me, holding it level. I smiled at Katie, or maybe Troll. Or maybe a security firm. I shook my head. I held up the index finger of my free hand and shook it slowly side to side. Then I raised the camera and brought it down on the wall, lens first, and broke it into pieces. I did the same thing to the other two cameras.

I wasn’t worried about ticking off Katie. My Web site was firm about my privacy requirement, and I insisted it be part of my contract. What could she say? “Oh, dearie me, I forgot they were there . . .”? Yeah, right.

When I was sure I had all the ones within easy reach, I positioned myself and studied the camera mounted on the neighbor’s wall. I didn’t want to smash the window next to it. I pulled my T-shirt out and caught the three cobblestones. I hefted them, getting their balance and weight. I had never been as good at throwing as I was at other sports. I threw like a girl. It took all three stones but I smashed the last camera.

Satisfied, I dropped from the wall, not bothering with the brick handholds. With the cameras gone I didn’t need them. I gathered up my belongings and, barefoot, unlocked the door with the smaller key on the big ring. I went through the house fast, locating cameras. I busted two hidden behind grilles, one in an air return, one in a fanlight in the twelve-foot-high ceiling, which I hit with a broom handle. Several others. Finding security devices in a house was a lot harder than in a garden. I’d have to go over it later in better detail, but for now, I had a lot to do. First things first—a call to Molly.

Molly, a powerful earth witch and my very best friend, answered, children giggling and splashing water in the background. “Hey, witchy woman. I’m here. I got the gig,” I said. Molly gave an ululating yell, and I laughed with her.

Vamps and witches came out of the closet in 1962, when Marilyn Monroe tried to turn the U.S. president in the Oval Office and was killed by the Secret Service. There was a witness, Beverly Stumpkin, a White House maid, who ran for her life. The Secret Service quickly set up a suicide scenario for the actress and staked her in her bedroom. Not that anyone believed she had offed herself with a wooden stake to the heart and a garroting wire that beheaded her. The government tried to track down the maid, but she got away clean. Sloppy work all the way around.

Some gossip rag got wind of the real Monroe story and managed to do what the Secret Service couldn’t.They found the maid. Within weeks the lid was blown off the age-old myth. Vamps, and then witches, came out of the closet. If there had been other supernatural beings, it seemed like a good time for them to come out too, but so far no elves, pixies, wood nymphs, or merpeople had appeared. No weres or skinwalkers or shifters of any kind either. I was a singularity in a human world that wouldn’t like me if it knew about me, which meant I had to keep my secret close. And that meant that I had to live without true backup. Except for Molly.

“I’m proud of you,” she said. “Here, talk to the dirtiest child in the world. Maybe she’ll let me finish her bath.” The phone made muted rubbing noises, as if she held it under her arm. I waited patiently.

Molly Meagan Everhart Trueblood, the witch who had spelled my saddlebags, knew all about me. Mol came from a long line of witches. Not the kind in a pointy black hat with a cauldron in the front yard, and not the kind like the Bewitched television show. Witches aren’t human, though they can breed with humans, making little witches about fifty percent of the time, and normal humans the other fifty.

Young witches have a poor survival rate, especially the males, most dying before they reach the age of twenty from various kinds of cancers. The ones who live through puberty, however, tend to live into their early hundreds. Mol was forty, looked thirty, and was fearless.

I had wondered whether witches and skinwalkers had similar genetics.The witch trait is X linked, passed from generation to generation on the X chromosome. About ninety percent of the witches who live to maturity are female; only a few sorcerers, the term some call the male witch, survive in each generation. Nobody knows why witches have such a poor survival rate, but Molly was one of the lucky ones when it came to kids. So far. She had married a sorcerer, Evan, and they had a son, Little Evan, and a daughter, Angelina—Angie. Both have the witch X gene. The girl is a prodigy. And she is only six years old.

Most witches come into their gift slowly, around puberty. Angie came into her gift at age five, and it was atomic bomb potent. Mol postulated that her daughter has a witch gene on both of her X chromosomes, one from her dad, one from her mom, which, if true, would make the girl one of the most powerful witches on the planet, and someone that everyone would want, from the U.S. government’s black ops programs, to the council of witches, to the Chinese, the Russians, you name it. And anyone who didn’t have her would want her dead. Molly kept Angie’s power level under wraps, a lot like I kept what I was under wraps. And she and Evan warded their children and their property with protection, healing, and lots of prayers.

A delicate, sweet voice said, “Hi, Aunt Jane.” My heart started to melt. Beast stopped pushing and sat, panting, in my mind. Kits, she thought at me, happy.

“Hi, Angie. Are you giving your mother a hard time in the bath?”

“Yes. I’m being a bad girl.” She giggled again. “I played in the mud. I miss you. When you coming home?”

“Soon. I hope. I’ll bring you a doll. What kind do you want?”

“Long black hair and yellow eyes. Like you.”

Cripes. My melting heart was a pile of goo. “I’ll see if I can find one,” I said past the lump in my throat. “For now, let your mama get you clean, okay?” Molly had needed backup when Angie’s power erupted. I had been there for her and we had been friends ever since, back-to-back, including when I took down the rogue vamp’s blood-family last year in the Appalachian Mountains, rescuing her sister in the process.

“Okay. Here, Mama. Aunt Jane wants you. And then she’s gonna go play.”

Into the phone Molly said, “Play, huh?”

“Yeah. You and Evan checked the wards around your house?”

Molly made a sound, half pshaw, half grunt, and I heard water falling into water as she lifted Angelina out of the bath. “Twice tonight. You have fun. Call me.”

“I will.” Feeling twenty pounds lighter, I left my belongings in the middle of the parlor floor and opened the fridge. Thirty pounds of fresh meat took up the center shelf. Beast hissed in anticipation, even though she hated to eat cold. I ripped the butcher paper off a five-pound stack, stuck it in the microwave for a bit, just enough to take the chill off, and, while it heated, gathered supplies. When the bell dinged, I carried the meat outside, a roll of paper towels under one arm, my travel pack and a zipper satchel under the other. Already it felt weird walking on two legs, as Beast moved up from the deeps into my thoughts.

I set the stack of raw, bloody steaks on the ground and wiped my hands. Beast wanted to lick them, but I refrained. I had that much control left. I stripped off my clothes, leaving them in a pile. My stomach was rumbling. I was panting, salivating. Hungry, she thought at me.

I am a skinwalker, and so far as I know, the last of my kind anywhere. If I have the right quantity of genetic material, I can take the shape of most any animal, though it’s easier if the species is the same mass as I am. Borrowing mass to fill out the genetic requirements of a larger animal is painful and dangerous, and I haven’t tried it often. It’s equally difficult to skinwalk in the body of a smaller animal, as I have to release mass, dump it somewhere, and that always means dumping some of what I am, some of my consciousness, and leaving it behind. The fear that it won’t be there when I return is enough to keep me my own size most of the time. Beast hissed at the thought; she didn’t like it when I shifted into the form of another animal.

Beast. She is something outside my skinwalker nature—a whole other entity, sharing my body, and sometimes my mind. If I try to rein her in when she wants to come through, she sometimes forces her way in anyway; I don’t have complete control over her. And I know, in my bones, that if other skinwalkers exist, they don’t have a Beast soul living inside. I’m not sure how we ended up together, and thinking about it always leaves me feeling vaguely uneasy, though I have an inkling that Beast knows and is keeping it from me.

I pulled the travel pack over my head and positioned the gold nugget I wear around my neck on a double gold chain, usually under my clothes, but now swinging free. Together, they looked like an expensive collar and tote, like a Saint Bernard rescue dog might have carried in the Swiss Alps. I bent over and scraped the gold nugget across the uppermost rock, depositing a thin streak of gold. It was like, well, like a homing beacon, among other things.

Yesssss. Hunt, Beast thought at me. Big!

Beast was ready to scope out this new territory, but she had an unfortunate aggressive tendency and had, upon occasion, taken on a pack of dogs, a wild boar, or some other animal it might have been smarter to leave alone. When I first shifted in a strange place, her aggressive tendencies always came to the fore and she demanded that I take on mass, adding to my natural one-hundred-twenty-plus pounds, drawing on the fetish of the African lion to skinwalk. “Big is dangerous,” I murmured to her. “We’re just looking around tonight. Big later.”

She panted in derision. Big always better. Big now!

But I could tell she wouldn’t push the issue. Beast, while always present in the depths of my consciousness, was talking to me as a separate entity now, as a self-aware creature with desires of her own. And for her, hunting was more important than winning an argument tonight.

Going back to the steaks and the paper towels, I placed the three bloody vamp cloths on the ground, securing them with a pot of geraniums. I climbed the boulders and sat, the rock warm beneath me. Mosquitoes swarmed, biting. I had forgotten about them. Beast hissed.

I opened the zipper bag and pulled out one of the bizarre necklaces inside, the one I used the most, like a totem or fetish, but so much more. The necklace of the mountain panther, commonly called the mountain lion. It was made of the claws, teeth, and small bones of the biggest female panther I had ever seen. The cat had been killed by a rancher in Montana during a legal hunt, the pelt and head mounted on his living room wall, the bones and teeth sold through a taxidermist. The mountain lion was hunted throughout the western United States but was extinct in the eastern states, or it had been. Some reports said panthers were making a comeback east of the Mississippi. One could hope. I didn’t have to use the necklace to shift into this creature—unlike other species, the memory of Beast’s form was always a part of me—but it was easier.

I held the necklace and closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, still sickle shaped, hiding below the horizon. I listened to the beat of my own heart. Beast rose in me, silent, predatory.

I slowed the functions of my body, slowed my heart rate, let my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. I lay on the boulder, breasts and belly draping the cool stone in the humid air.

Mind slowing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, so I wouldn’t lose it when I shifted, when I changed. I dropped lower. Deeper. Into the darkness inside where ancient, nebulous memories swirled in a gray world of shadow, blood, uncertainty. I heard a distant drum, smelled herbed woodsmoke, and the night wind on my skin seemed to cool and freshen. As I dropped deeper, memories began to firm, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast’s.

As I had been taught so long ago—surely by a parent or perhaps a shaman?—I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. Science had given it a name. RNA. DNA. Genetic sequences, specific to each species, each creature. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been “the inner snake,” the phrase one of very few things that was certain in my past.

I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts. And I dropped within. Like water flowing in a stream. Like snow falling, rolling down a mountainside. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold as the world fell away. And I was in the gray place of the change.

My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped up. And my bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Pain, like a knife, slid between muscle and bone. My nostrils widened, drawing deep.

She fell away. Night came alive—wonderful, new scents, like mist on air, thick and dancing, like currents in stream, yet distinct. Salt. Humans. Alcohol. Fish. Mold. Human spices. Blood. I panted. Listened to sounds—cars, music from everywhere, voices talking over one another. Gathered limbs beneath, lithe and lissome—her words for me.

Ugly man-made light, shadow-stung vision.Yet clear, sharp. She never saw like this. Scented like this. I stretched. Front legs and chest. Pulling back legs, spine, belly. Little clicks fell away. Things from her hair rolled off boulders. Delicately, with killing teeth, lifted necklace she dropped. Hopped from boulders. Landed, four-footed, balanced. Studied garden. No predators. No thieves-of-meat. Dropped necklace near food. Sniffed. Hack of disgust. Old meat. Dead prey. Long-cooled blood. Tip of tail twitched, wanting chase. To taste hot blood. But stomach rumbled. Always so, after change. Hunger. She left this, an offering.

I ate. Long canines tearing into dead meat. Filled stomach. Cold food did not appease need to hunt. Afterward, licked blood from whiskers and face. Pack and collar in way, but . . . important. Her things.

Memory she buried under skin began to stir. Ahhh. Hunt. For one of them. Drew in night air. Delicate nostril membranes fluttering, expanding, relaxing. Many new smells, some with value, some without. Unimportant: close-by smell of flowers, fresh-turned earth, mouse cowering in boulders, small snake on brick. Important: fish, pungent, sour. Salt. Old, still water full of tiny living things. Houses, many, ancient wood and brick. Bike she rode. She—Jane.

Strolled to it, muscles long and supple. Foul smells: gasoline, rubber, metal, wax, fainter smell of new paint. Magic tingle on whiskers. Good bike. Silent-not-dead now, roaring heart still. I approved of it and of her, sitting in wind, smelling world. Fast speed, too swift for hunters to follow. Her territory wherever she wished it to be. Jane hunted wide.

Stepping with care, though new den was walled and safe from humans. Prowled garden and lower porch of house. Drank from water running over man-carved stone. A good place. I coughed softly, approving.

Hunt, the command came again, from her. Long hairs along shoulders lifted in anticipation. Scented air. Food on breeze. Human food, dead, cooked. Human urine. Dog. Domesticated cat. Hacked in disapproval of being owned. Even she didn’t own me.

Smells of den grounds settled in olfactory memory. Went to pot. Sniffed cloth trapped there. Drew in scent. Blood. Fear. Humans, three. Alive when blood spilled. One female, ovulating, ready to mate. One man, old, wizened. Likely stringy, tough. New smell to skin.

Melanin, Jane whispered. He was a black man.

Last one was male, no melanin, young, healthy. All smelled of fear.

Beneath it all . . . was scent of rogue. Drew it in over tongue, over roof of mouth. Isolating. Parsing scent. Old. Very, very old. Anger. Madness. Many scents in layers, different parts of rogue.

Complex scent, she thought. Like many scents overlapping, compounded. How strange. And what is that smell? Image of her wrinkling weak, useless human nose.

Smell of madness, I thought at her. Strong. Smell of decay, rot. Rot . . . Ahhh. I remembered. Liver-eater. Long years since smelled a liver-eater. Felt her puzzlement. Pushed it away. Sucked in scent, opening mouth and pulling air over fluid-filled sacs in roof of mouth. Tongue extending, lips curling back. Tasting. Scenting.

Set liver-eater scent signature in memory. Named it mad one.

Complex, she thought. Compounded scent signature, many individual scent molecules, pheromones and elements make up its essence. I’ve never smelled anything like it.

Many, yes. Many scents for mad one. In a single bound, leaped to top of boulders. Small mountain. Nothing like my territory—no tall hills, deep crevasses. Easy hunt here in land of flatness. No challenge. Tail-twitching disdain for flatness, no tall trees and wild streams. Gathered self. Jumped to top of wall. Standing. Four feet in line on brick. Crouched, making smaller target. There. Scented vampire. Easy hunt. Only feet away.

No, her voice came.

Drew in night air again. Scent was wrong. This one female. Kill it anyway?

No. Hunt the rogue, her human memory whispered.

Dropped to ground, tail twitching. Eager. Liked hunt. Liked challenge. Liked danger. Moved through shadows of neighbor’s yard to street. No dog scent. Good place to come and go. Sat beneath big leaves of low plant, watching. Learning. Scenting.

Saw him, hidden in shadows, sitting on stoop. Watching house, preying on new den. The male she liked, human with bike. Not hunting. Lazy, giving away position. Breathing smoke, scent like scat, marking territory. Strong enough to defend her? Possible mate? If he could catch her. If he could best her. Not likely. She was strong. Beast made her so, long ago.

Felt her puzzlement. Ignored it. Ignored her. Pondered, breath a soft, thrumming pant of throat tissues. Long past time for her to mate. If he could catch her. Fun.

Moved through shadows, into night. Humans and pets still about. Stupid little dogs barked. Hairy things, smelling of human perfume, dead food, rotten teeth. Scented me, scented Beast. All fell silent. Crouched, tails down. Scuttled away. I hunted, padding through darkness, feral and sleek. Night fully fallen. Humans never saw.

The French Quarter, territory she wanted to hunt, was small. Streets in squares. Buildings built close, squeezed together. Prey could not escape. Hidden gardens. Exhaust. Alcohol, fresh and sweet, and old and sour. Tar on streets, stinky human world.

Sound of music everywhere, loud, raucous. Horns, drums—drums, like sound of beating heart, racing in fear, ready to be eaten. Smell of money, drugs. Pong of sex without mating. Lonely sex. Many female humans standing on tall spikes. Easy prey. Stores filled with paint and canvas, stone and metal. Much food and smell of sleeping. Restaurants and hotel, she thought at me. Smells of her world.

It stank. But underneath stink, other smells sat. Under reek of sewage and stench of dirty river. Under spices humans cook into food. Under odors of humans themselves, perfumed and breathing smoke. Scents of vampires. Many.

Vampire stench was part of ground, part of earth. Their ashes wafted along street, carried in air. Their bones, ground to powder, settled into cracks. Vampire territory, for longer than I lived, even counting time of hunger when I was alpha and Jane was beta. Didn’t know numbers beyond five, but there were many more than five vampires. I marked their territories, setting Beast scent. A challenge.

Centuries, the thought came from her. They have been here for centuries. A long time by human reckoning. Too long for me to understand, or care. Turned back to hunt. Prowled, hiding often in night, scenting, searching. Finding hiding places as moon crossed sky. Crafty, silent, good hunter.

Saw/smelled vampire. Walking alone. Unnoticed by humans. Gliding. Predator. I hunched down in shadow. Jane wished for a cross and stake, Christian symbols to kill evil.

Not evil, I thought at her. Predator. Like Beast. She curled lips as if thought was spoiled meat. Together, we watched vampire stroll out of sight.

Long before dawn, scented old blood. Found street where mad one took down many humans, ate best parts. An alley. Narrow, confined. Walls, straight up like water gorge, but without bold river. Strong reek of blood, blood, blood, much blood. Pong of wasted meat. Scented mad one she hunted. Trying to drink enough to find health again. It was dying.

They cannot die, she whispered.

Dies, I thought back at her. This one sick. Smell of rot.

Above its reek I smelled angry, frightened humans morning after. Telltale stink of guns. Hacked softly at remembered smell. She liked guns. She hunted with guns. I remembered other. Long barrels, gunpowder, pain, fear, scream of big cat. Hated. Long ago in hunger times.

Placing paws carefully, walked through dark, under yellow ribbons, past dying flowers in tall piles. Along middle of narrow defile. Found place where ovulating female fell. And stringy old one, to her side, cobbles saturated with his need to protect, as if she were his kit, his cub. Healthy young male, three paces away. And more-than-five others. Mad one killed, ate slow.

She said, It took its time. She understood time when not measured by moon. Confusing.

Strolled back to alley entrance. Crouched low, belly held off dirty street. Humans walked past, singing, reeking of strong drink and vomit. Then gone. Searched for mad one’s trail. Found none going in. None going out.

Looked up. Coughed approval. After mad one toyed with humans, after eating its fill, mad one went up, along wall like spider or squirrel. Tasty meat, squirrels. Not enough to fill belly. Mad one climbed wall like squirrel. Faint scratches where claws dug in. Worthy prey. Even I could not climb wall like this. I hacked excitement. Good hunt. Mad one powerful, smells captured in blood-stench memory. Humans tried to wash away. Could not hide it.

Heard more humans. Close. Two turned into alley. Dirty, reeking wine, sweat, filth. Humans moved in, trapping. I melted slowly into shadows. Soft warning hack. Beast here. Not hunting, but will defend.

They ignored warning. Stupid humans. They crawled into large paper box. Sounds of crackling cardboard, shifting humans. Dirty smells wafted. Their den. I had passed it without knowing. Dropped head. Shamed. Foolish as cub. Too intent on mad one and smells of hunt, blood, kills. Foolish. Stupid. Kitten mistake.

Two humans bedded down. Sleeping in open. Easy prey if I wanted diseased, sinewy meat. They talked. Quieted. One snored.

Crept along alley to opening. Dawn coming.

“Pretty pussy. Come here, pussycat.”

Looked to side and saw human, eyes open, shining. Hand out. “Come here, pussycat. I got a treat for you.”

Hacked, insulted. Not domesticated. Beast big. And free.

He held out hand, gesturing. Come. Eat. “Pretty pussy.”

She was amused. Beast sniffed, mouth open. Beef. Hamburger. Dead, cooked. Jane liked them. I padded slowly to human, shoulders arching, belly low, pads silent. Human unafraid. Drunk. Sniffed offered treat. Stared at him with predator eyes, seeing Beast reflected, golden, in his. Prey should be afraid. Was supposed to be afraid.

“Pretty pussy, I know you’re hungry. Have some.”

Took offered hamburger. Flipped it back, into throat. Meat and mayonnaise. Swallowed. Walked away. She laughed.

I padded back along own scent trail before sun rose. Important, sun rising. She couldn’t take back her skin once sun rose. She would be stuck in panther form—a good thing—but she would not be grateful. The night belonged to Beast. Only night. Daytime was hers.

Leaped to top of wall. Dropped down inside garden walls. Strolled, loose limbed and satisfied. Drew in scents. Smell of rotting blood was strong—old cattle, dead, killed by others. Rot, sped up by heat, trapped by wet air. Stench of blood in cloths—slain humans and mad one. Mad one had strange blend of scents, small parts of different things, some known, some not. Sniffed at aged blood on cloth. Familiar. The hunt. Yes, good hunt. With flex of muscles, leaped to top of rocks and lay flat, belly to stone. And thought of her.

Grayness covered me. Light and shadow. Bones and sinew flowed and shifted. Cracked and snapped. Pain stabbed deep and she/I groaned with pain. For a moment, we were one. We were Beast, together.