by Faith Hunter
“How soon can you be here?”
Eli took cell and said, “Take the helo.” Handed cell back to Alex.
Mercy Blade and killer of devoveo vampires said, “Yes. That I can do. I’ll be there soon.” Call ended.
I growled low, pulling back lips, showing killing teeth. The Kid backed away, moving slow. Frightened prey.
Eli laughed. Showed white teeth in dark-skinned face. “Not coming to kill you, Janie girl. Coming to heal you of the were-taint. Meanwhile, let’s get you into the SUV and back to the hotel for a bath.” He unhooked seat belts.
I/we stopped growling. Looked around. Had not noticed where we were. Were back at boat landing near hotel. Saw ess-u-vee near. Thought about humans. Thought about humans with guns, afraid of big-cat. I chuffed. Stepped from airboat and into water. Lay down and rolled in water over rock called cement. Mud and blood came loose from coat. Rolled into water and rolled. Rolled. Stood and walked to shore. Walked to the Kid. And shook water from pelt.
The Kid yelped. I chuffed with laughter, walked to Eli. He raised hair over eyes and pulled steel claw. “Try it,” he said. Eli had hungry look on face, as if would try to hurt Beast with puny steel claw. As if he wanted to fight big-cat. Jane watched deep in brain, saying nothing. Waiting. I blew deep breath like sigh. Walked over to ess-u-vee. Climbed into back onto blanket Eli had spread there. Blanket was green and smelled of man chemicals for cleaning. Stinky. Stuck nose into middle. Smelled old blood. Much old blood, Eli blood hidden beneath smell of chemicals. Looked at Eli, reaching up to close door of ess-u-vee. Saw scar on Eli collarbone.
Eli had died on this blanket. Was blanket of warrior. Of hero.
Curled up on blanket, laid head on paws. Closed eyes.
• • •
Metal and glass bird with noisy wings settled onto road, in wide broken pavement of old parking lot. Helicopter, Jane thought.
Stupid bird. Too loud to catch prey. More like a buzzing bee, but with no stinger. And vomits out live people. I chuffed with laughter, watching as Mercy Blade climbed from bubble stomach of noisy, stinky helo. Narrowed Beast eyes. Will not ride in bird again. Do not think you can force me.
I don’t. I won’t try.
Mercy Blade was pretty human by Jane thinking, small, with long, lean muscles, long hair in tight braid, narrow pelvis, and wide shoulders. Moved like dancer or hunter. Like swan on water. Wore denim jeans and boots and long-sleeved shirt that glimmered in sunlight. Wore magics like cloth layered over body; hard to see real body under magics, but maybe bird form. Blue and green and silver magics in Jane’s vision; green and silver in Beast-vision. Gee carried sword on belt, on side, in green leather sheath.
Muscles tensed to leap out of ess-u-vee, but Eli put hand on head. Scratched behind ears.
“Easy, there. I won’t let him pull that sword.”
Looked up at Eli, sitting on back of ess-u-vee. Smelled gun oil and bullets. Eli had pulled gun, hidden by side in edge of blanket where Eli died one time. Chuffed with laughter.
Mercy Blade stepped to ess-u-vee. “Jane?” he asked.
I chuffed. Kept narrow eyes on him. Pulled back lips to show killing teeth.
“Hello, little goddess. It has been many years since I dealt with a shape changer in animal form.”
Jane sat up tall inside mind. How long? What kind of shape changer?
Mercy Blade did not hear. Did not answer. I closed lips over killing teeth. Leaned into Eli’s hand. His fingers started scratching head again, and up under jaw. Yawned to show teeth and happiness with Eli.
“Well. Let’s get on with it, then,” Gee said. He moved slowly in presence of big-cat, and reached toward head.
I growled.
Eli swatted ears. “Stop that.”
I showed killing teeth to Eli. Growled louder.
“I’m not impressed, Jane. Not even a little.”
Inside Jane laughed. I huffed and stopped growl. Laid head on paws. Glared/stared at Gee, sniffing air, delicate nose membranes fluttering. Last time when he healed me/us, it was a one-day moon and we were in Jane form. He smelled then of jasmine and pine. Today he smelled of pink flowers and green grass and pine needles. And a little of catnip. Catnip is good. Like to roll in catnip.
Gee touched face. I/we flinched. Then lay still. Fingers of Gee’s hands cupped face and curled into bristly hair. Pressing over scent sacs in jaw and over eyes. His magics flowed down his arms and across his hands. Toward Beast.
Hot and cold, green and silver. A net of many magics that crawled over Beast and into Beast. Stinging. Hurting. I/we spat. Hissed. Snarled. Pulled away from Eli and Mercy Blade.
Gee DiMercy released head and stepped back. He smelled confused. Face looked strange, lips drawn up and pointing like bird’s beak. “I don’t understand. There is no were-contagion.”
Jane looked through Beast eyes at Gee DiMercy. Heart was beating hard. Was thinking of Rick. Of mating Rick. Of not getting were-taint through mating.
“Was she in human form when she was bitten? And then changed into the puma form?” he asked.
“No,” Eli said, his voice without emotion. But his body smelled of fear and worry. “She was in dog form, a Newfoundland. She was injured, the werewolf took out her throat—carotids, jugulars, trachea. She was dying.”
“And when she shifted, she became”—he made a sweeping movement with arm and hand like swan’s wing over water, but over Puma concolor body—“this? Not her human form first, then into this?”
“No,” Eli said, smelling now of protection. Inside Beast, Jane crouched, listening, not sure what was wrong but certain that something was wrong. Eli’s fingers clenched in Beast pelt, at neck. Holding on, like kit in den to mother cat. He pulled we/us to his side. He smelled of den and home, of kits and littermates. “From dog to this.”
“You are certain?”
Eli looked at Mercy Blade with thin eyelids. “Yes. Why does it matter?”
Gee DiMercy stepped away from ess-u-vee. “When she died, she should have resolved into her natural birth form. Jane is not a were-cat to be born in her cat form and then later to find a human shape. She is a—” He stopped, tilted head, looking Beast over. “I thought she was a little goddess, but perhaps I was wrong.” He looked back at helo-bird and whipped arm in circle. Helo-bird made whirring noise that rang in ears. Strange winds began to turn. Beast bent ear tabs down to protect ears. “I don’t know what she is, but whatever she is, or whatever bit her, she is free of were-taint. Without my services.”
Changing from dog to me would have left me with the taint? But changing from a dog to Beast means I don’t have it? So being with Rick would . . . what? What? I’d have to have sex in dog form and then change into a cat? Ewww. Not gonna . . . Just ewww.
But Gee DiMercy was in helo and the clumsy bird was lifting away. Jane cursed inside mind. Beast stayed silent and still, remembering presence of angel Hayyel and . . . things he did to me/us. Things Beast could not tell Jane.
“You okay, Janie?” Eli whispered.
Beast pressed head into Eli side, demanding scratches. But Beast did not purr.
• • •
“I like your hair down,” Rick said.
I was in human form, sitting at the top of the hotel steps, watching the day end, waiting for him to arrive. He’d ridden up in a small red car, a rental, and had gotten out, walking straight to me in the dying light, his car door left open.
My body reacted to the heat in his voice and I shifted on the cold step, orienting to face him. He stood below me on the staircase landing, halfway up. The light was mostly gone and he looked like a black silhouette against the dusk, lean and feral, dangerous. He smelled of cat and human and lust. Earbuds hung on his neck, playing magic music, the musical spell that kept him from going insane from the pain of being a were-cat who couldn’t change form.
I turned f
rom my sorta-boyfriend to the last glimmer of sunset and moonrise. The moon was full and huge and bright, resting in the clouds on the horizon—a pumpkin orange ball nested into bloodred bright clouds. The moon’s reflection spread across the water like blood and flower petals, like the promise of spring and the curse of death. I looked back at him, moving just my eyes. “You okay?”
He shrugged, the movement uncannily catlike. “As well as can be expected.”
I shook my head, my hair sliding across one shoulder to pool on the steps. He watched it move. Like a cat intent upon a toy. I knew without asking that he wanted to gather up my hair and run his claws through it. I almost asked if he knew about the pronouncement made by Gee, and then I closed my mouth on it. Eli and the Kid wouldn’t tell him. Nor would Gee or Leo.
And I didn’t know if I wanted him to know or not, that there was some small possibility that we could be together and me not get the were-taint. Before I could tell him that, before we could explore that remote possibility, I had to ask some tough questions, and even asking them was . . . probably stupid. Frustration zinged through me like a pinball, alarms sounding. I took a breath, knowing I had to ask. Knowing as I did that it might break us. “I gotta know, Ricky Bo. Did you know you were sending me into a life-or-death situation? One where a werewolf was trying to start a pack? And had a female?”
I watched Rick’s face fall as he remembered his own past as a hostage, kidnapped by a werewolf pack. “No,” he murmured. One hand reached up to massage his shoulder where the werewolf bitch had tried to chew off his tattoos. “No. No females. Not possible.”
“Yes. And not only possible. Fact. Two males, one huge, big enough to be a dire werewolf, coat color gray. The other male was smaller, more familiar in size, reddish, like the pack that attacked me once before. Attacked you. And died, the whole sick lot of them. Or so we thought.
“One of the males must have survived, and he made a female. She survived her first turn and now lives, if you can call it that, as a crazy bitch in heat. I know. I smelled her.”
Rick climbed the steps slowly, his boots slipping out and up. He stopped two steps below me and sat, his scent surrounding me, hot and rich, with just a hint of Old Spice. An odd choice for a young man, but maybe his cat liked it. My Beast did.
He shook his head, looking up at me as the yellowish lights of the hotel stairwell came on. “Are you sure?” I hadn’t noticed, but he had a blade in one hand, the center plated with sterling silver. He turned it, the sterling catching the light.
“Yeah. I’m sure,” I said. “The small one smelled like the bitch who tortured you. He smelled like her pack. The bigger one smelled like . . . like something else.”
The white form of Rick’s partner—the white werewolf stuck in wolf form—climbed the steps behind Rick. The irony of a were-cat stuck in human form and a werewolf stuck in wolf form being partners for the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division wasn’t lost on me, but that didn’t mean I’d cut him any slack. “Hey, Brute. What’s kicking? Anyone broken your nose lately?” He snarled at me, fangs white in the darkness, and I chuckled. “Try it, big boy. How many times do I have to break your ugly snout to make you understand that you’re only a wolf?” I made the last three words an insult, and I heard a chittering in the night, though I didn’t see the source. Staring the wolf down, I said, “Sorry, Pea,” though I knew she could smell the lie on me.
I heard a scrape in the hallway behind me as Eli decided to reveal himself. He knew he needed to be downwind if he wanted to spy on creatures with better-than-human noses, so clearly he had wanted his presence known. “LaFleur,” he said.
“Younger,” Rick said back, measuring the former Ranger.
It was like a testosterone factory out here. I sighed and stood, pivoting on a boot heel and walking down the hallway to my room. Hand on the knob, I pointed three rooms down. “Room fourteen.”
Rick looked at the door of room fourteen and back to me, his face suddenly playful. “Is that a challenge? Because if it is, consider it taken, darlin’.”
Heat sang through me. Pea, Rick’s supernatural grindylow, the mythical creature charged with keeping were-animals from spreading the were-taint, chittered angrily and stood up from her perch in Brute’s fur. Eli, instead of taking my side, laughed. “She needs to get laid, man, can’t say she don’t, but my room’s right next door, so keep it quiet.”
“Good grief,” I muttered, and went into my room, closing the door with finality. To the empty room I said, “Men.” And not in a nice way. Then I turned to my weapons, laying them out on the bed. These I understood. Men, not so much.
Moments later I heard a tap on the door and soft music from outside. I opened the door a crack. Rick stood in the hallway’s yellow light, that same expression on his face—laughter, playfulness, teasing. Dear God in heaven, I’d missed that look. The heat that had started in the stairwell bloomed and spread through me. He leaned in, smelling totally delicious. “You’re really gonna make me stay all the way down there?”
“I really am.” The words were more whisper than I wanted, and I cleared my voice.
Rick’s smile widened, and I knew he could smell my need on the air. “You gonna join me?”
“I’m really not.”
Rick nodded, his lips drawing into a thoughtful frown. “Well, then. We should take advantage of the moonlight. Let’s hunt.”
My Beast reared up in me, staring through my eyes at a man she had claimed as her mate. Mine, she purred. I didn’t bother to push her down but opened the door to reveal my room with my weapons spread on every surface. “Was kinda hoping you’d wanna hunt,” I said.
Rick whistled and Brute trotted up. I looked at the wolf. “He willing to chase down a wolf who might have been his hunting buddy once upon a time?”
“He’s good with it.” Rick nodded to the adjoining room. “Your pals up for a night hunt?”
The adjoining door opened. “Thought you’d never ask,” Eli said. “Where do we start?”
“That restaurant we ate at last. The werewolves have eaten there. I smelled the house-made, Cajun-style rémoulade sauce on them when they changed back to human. By the stink, I’d say they’re regulars at Joe’s Got Crabs.”
• • •
The waitress at the restaurant wasn’t interested in talking to me about the threesome who ate there every night. But when Rick walked in, things changed fast. He turned that million-dollar smile on her and I thought she’d toss off her clothes right then and there and take him on the floor.
I sat at the bar and watched, nursing a beer so they wouldn’t toss us out, Eli with a Coke standing behind me. The waitress bent over Rick and let him get a good look at her cleavage while they chatted. I couldn’t decide if I was jealous or if she was pathetic. Both probably.
Eli leaned over me and said, “So. You want to rip her head off or tear her a new one lower down?”
“Both. Neither. She stinks of mango, jasmine, and rose perfume with a dash of fried fish and horseradish. He can act interested all he wants, but I can see his nostrils. To him? She reeks.”
“Even with those boobs?”
I looked down at my own chest and back to the waitress. “There are the boobs,” I acknowledged. “And the long blond hair.” And the fact that Rick was a pretty boy and generally unfaithful. Minutes later Rick walked back to us, a strip of paper in his fingers.
“Her number?” I asked, hearing the snark in my voice, which—hopefully—disguised the hurt.
“A license number, a credit card number, a name, and an address,” he said with pride and not a little swagger. He handed me the strip of paper.
“And you didn’t get her number?” Eli asked, disbelieving.
“Oh, I got her number.” Rick pulled out another strip of paper and extended it to Eli. “For you.” Eli’s eyes went wide as he looked from Rick’s hand to the waitress. She gave him a
little wave. “My good-looking friend who is smitten with her down-home Southern looks and charm, but who is too shy to get her number.”
“You didn’t.” There was a Beast-worthy growl in the words.
Rick tucked the paper into Eli’s shirt pocket and patted it down. “Oh, but I did.”
Chortling with laughter and more relieved than I wanted to admit to myself, I waved to the waitress as I followed the men out the door. “Be sure to burn that,” I advised Eli, “before Sylvia sees it. She wouldn’t bother with ripping off your head. She’d let Smith and Wesson do the talking.”
• • •
The water sped by us in the rented airboat, the moon now cold and icy, bright on the black water. We had given the Kid the information that the waitress had provided, matched it with newcomers to the area and missing-persons reports in the parish—information provided by the police—three prime addresses to work with, all easiest to find by boat. Eli drove, Brute sitting beside him, Rick and me on the lower, front seat, his arm around my shoulders, seat belts holding us in place. You really needed the nylon flex straps in an airboat at any speed.
The first place was a vacant mobile home that had been used for target practice by the locals for so long that it was mostly a hole. Neither Brute nor I got a whiff of werewolf. And it felt weird to be working with the wolf, asking him if he smelled our prey. Beast growled low in the back of my mind, and I had to soothe her raised ruff. It’s just for now, I thought at her.
Want to fight wolf. Scratched his nose one time.
You did? I didn’t remember that, but I thought it might be prudent not to continue the conversation. And when Eli whirled the airboat in a tight arc to take us to the next place on our list, I used the centrifugal force as an excuse to hold on to Rick and not respond.
• • •
The second place was more likely. I smelled werewolf stink from yards away. The airboat roared up onto land in front of a house; the engine cut off.
