“Ummm. Yeah. No. But thank you.” I was certain that I couldn’t keep up with wolves in a gay dance bar, and I had work to do that limited my time to hunt. He insisted. I desisted. When I finally convinced Ziggy that I really wasn’t going off with the pack, he kissed me on the cheek and hopped into one of the topless cars, fingers fluttering in a wave as they drove off.
As the rest of the guys closed up, I ordered a car and texted my plans to my partners. Have a few free hours. Need some alone time. Back after dusk. When the driver arrived, I told Shemmy to take me to HQ.
It was daylight and I went through the usual security measures, accepted a comms unit, and headed to sub-five to have a chat with a white werewolf. The elevator doors swooshed open and I stepped out onto the clay floor. The lights were focused on the SOD on the far wall, leaving the rest of the huge room dim, but my eyes adjusted quickly. I moved across to the SOD and the white wolf at his feet.
The subbasement reeked of old blood, the odor of damp werewolf, and the peculiar stink of the Son of Darkness. The sour, bloodless, heartless creature hanging on the wall would have garnered my pity if I hadn’t seen video of him drinking down and killing a barroom full of dancers and partygoers. The thing I hadn’t been allowed to kill was watching me, his dark eyes dull yet full of malice. That was new. I’d hoped me cutting out his heart and giving it to a cop would have kept him totally down and out. He was healing. That sucked.
At his feet, Brute was watching me, head on paws, looking sleepy, crystalline eyes content. There were two stainless steel bowls on the floor a few feet away. One held water. The other smelled of raw roast beef and blood.
I dropped to one knee beside him. “Hey.”
He yawned, showing me his killing teeth.
Beast perked up. Fight Brute?
No. He’s on our side. I think.
Beast padded away, her tail twitching, catty and irritated.
“Werewolves came here because they thought you were being held against your will.”
Brute chuffed and his big mouth grinned, tongue lolling.
“I know, right? You can timewalk, so there’s no keeping you anywhere you don’t want to be.” I could change time back to before something awful happened if I wanted. If I was willing to risk the time-paradox possibilities. I’d done that a few times by accident already and it was scary. Brute could do that too. I studied the wolf, who was watching me back. We hadn’t fought on the same side very often, and one of those times he was being eaten by a demon, so I doubted he remembered my part in that. “The angel who saved you, Hayyel? He left you in wolf form so he could give you the ability to timewalk, didn’t he?”
Brute blinked and yawned again. Bored.
“Hayyel wanted you here, to guard the Son of Darkness, didn’t he?”
Brute slanted his eyes to me, suddenly interested in what I had to say.
“He wants this psycho thing alive for some reason that’s more important to the timeline than human lives are.”
A low vibration trembled up through the clay floor into my knee, and I realized Brute was growling so low it wasn’t audible, even to me. Brute shook his head no, a foreign human gesture on the huge wolf head.
“Ooookay. So you’re here to bite the SOD? That’s it?”
Brute’s eyes narrowed, but the growling stopped, so I went on.
“The werecats might try to come back and steal the SOD.”
The werewolf’s eyes narrowed further in an expression that said the cats could die trying.
“Right. Okay. FYI: There are two different wolf packs in town and one of them may be the crazy kind.”
Brute raised his head, chuffed, and licked his lips.
“The other pack seems to think you’re something like royalty and would be honored to have you hunt the crazy pack with them.”
Brute dropped his head, as if bored by the suggestion.
“Yeah. Well. Thanks for the chat.” I looked up at the thing on the wall over me, speaking to it. “Someday Leo won’t be around and I’ll take your head. Just so you know.”
Joses Santana, the SOD, stuck out his tongue and curled it up at me, as if licking the air. And then he laughed. It was silent but mocking, his desiccated lips curling up and the flesh around his eyes crinkling. Brute chuffed up at me as if the idea of my killing the SOD was long overdue and I might save us all a lot of trouble if I just killed him now. Or maybe that was my fond imagining and the wolf just had indigestion. What did I know?
I took the elevator up, checked out, and took an SUV from the motor pool.
I drove by my house and spotted a PsyLED car out front, a tiny sticker on the back window the only clue. I slowed and rolled down the window, taking a sniff of the car, expecting to scent Rick. I got Ayatas instead. Dang.
I drove on past, thinking about the unfriendly werewolves loose in New Orleans and making pacts with gangs. About Ziggy and the friendly werewolves. About the Sangre Duello and the emperor, who I had ignored for hours as I dealt with were problems. Titus Flavius Vespasianus had been a powerful Roman general who became the Roman emperor. As a human, he and his human second in command, Tiberius Julius Alexander, besieged and conquered the city of Jerusalem. Inside the besieged walls were the Jewish, Christian, and Mithran defenders. The siege ended with the sacking of the city, the destruction of the temple, and the enslavement of what pitiful humans remained alive inside the walls. Titus returned home and gained the throne, ruling Rome for two years before he was turned by his vampire concubine, a woman captured from the fall of Jerusalem. He became the undisputed ruler of the Roman Empire and the European Mithrans. He had ruled for two thousand years. Technically, Leo owed him fealty. The legal challenge of Sangre Duello meant Leo was aiming to behead the king in personal combat. But Titus had been fighting with a sword for hundreds of years longer than Leo. To win, Leo would have to cheat. Fortunately he was pretty good at that.
* * *
• • •
Miles away from the city, my weapons and shoes left behind in the SUV, my feet in flops against the mud, I stepped along the path to the bayou, conscious of the tracks of raccoon, dog, deer, turkey, and boar, and evidence of hog destruction, all around me. Wild hogs used their tusks to dig up edibles and left the signs behind. A single wild hog could destroy large swaths of otherwise useful habitat. Beast had killed a boar once and had been badly injured from the experience, but that only increased her desire to hunt and kill another one. This one was in heat, and her musky odor seemed to have settled across the ground all along the path, into the foliage all around, even into the mud itself, obscuring the scents of the other prey and predators.
Hunt boar. Or alli-gator, she thought. Hunt and kill and eat. I hunger.
You’re always hungry.
Yes.
I found the low-hanging branch of a scrub tree and stripped, wrapping an extra pair of flops, my shorts, shirt, and throwaway burner cell tightly in a zippy in my gobag, which I secured around my neck. Adjusted the gold nugget and Puma concolor tooth on the doubled gold chain necklace. I sat on the low branch and rocked my feet back and forth, securing my flops in the mud to give me a balanced tripod perch on two feet and my backside. I relaxed. Closed my eyes. Sought the Gray Between of my magics.
Skinwalkers weren’t traditionally moon-called, like were-creatures, but the time of day and phase of the moon did make a difference. It was easier to shift on the three days of the full moon. Easier to shift at night, and harder to shift in the daytime—unless I was dying and a shift meant survival. And the shifting wasn’t a balanced thing. It was a peculiar effect of my skinwalker magics that while I could shift from human shape to Beast in daylight, I was unable to shift back to human until night. I wondered if Ayatas had that problem. The thought pushed the Gray Between away from me.
I admitted that I was feeling weird. Different. Emotionally different from my normal. Because of
the man who claimed to be my brother. Who had been at my house just now. And I had run away from him.
Coward, Beast thought at me. Must make peace with littermate.
It was the same word she used to describe Eli and Alex. I asked her, Littermate. Like from the same parents or littermate in the same way the Youngers are?
Beast didn’t answer. Dang cat. But that might be why I wasn’t ready to face him, to make peace with him, yet. I wasn’t sure he was the man he said he was.
Coward, Beast thought again.
I blew out a hard breath and turned my thoughts inward. This time I gripped the Puma concolor fang on the gold chain and sank into the genetic structure stored there. This time the gray magics rose. This time I slid sideways into the magical forces, studying the new Vitruvian shape of my energies. They looked stable, like an illustration on a wall in a nuclear reactor.
Beast, ever impatient, reached out and extended her claws. Pricked the magics. The shift took me. Pain, pain, pain. I grunted breaths as my back arched and whipped forward, throwing me to the mud. And then I was lost to the shift.
* * *
• • •
Beast sat on Jane’s shoes, front paws in mud, sniffing, pulling in air over scent sacs in roof of mouth. It was good to be puma form. It was good to be in hunting territory. But it was also bad. Jane had seen prints in mud on track. Jane had smelled hog in heat. Jane had not looked beside track, in green plants. Where hunter had paced. Where hunter had followed deer, days past. Hunter on Beast’s territory. Jane had not smelled scent of trespasser.
Jane still slept. Beast did not know yet what to tell Jane.
Beast leaped into low tree and climbed high. Perched and scented. Hunter was werecat. Three werecats. One was female lion; one her lion mate. One was black wereleopard. Werecats had been on Beast’s hunting grounds. Werecats had pissed and shat, leaving spoor. Werecats had scratched on trees to sharpen claws. Werecats had left Beast and Jane messages on Beast’s own territory.
Asad and Nantale and Kem-cat had chased Beast’s deer but had not killed them. There was no scent of blood or death on air and no buzzards circled over old kill. Asad and Nantale had sharpened claws on trees and pissed on ground where Beast had pissed. Asad and Nantale had left message to say they knew where and when Beast hunted. To say their claws were long and could have killed Beast or Beast’s prey. It was threat, but it was weak like watered blood.
Weak because hunt on Jane’s land had occurred before Jane/Beast had hurt Kem-cat. Before Jane had torn claws through Asad’s plans and left them dead and ruined.
Kem-cat had wanted to be more than beta to Jane. Had wanted to kill Jane. Kem was now house kitten, mouser cat. Tamed to Rick’s hand. Threat that was no threat. Rick had pride to mate with and to protect like African lion. Kem was threat no more. Rick was Beast’s beta.
Asad and Nantale were humans in cat skin. If they challenged Beast, Beast would kill them. Beast thought about ways to kill lions. Must fight one at a time to win. Or grindy might fight and kill them.
Beast had much to think on but was hungry. Leaped to ground, landing silently. Pawpawpaw to pile of scat on ground. Beast bent and drew in scent, what Jane called flehmen, pulling air over scent sacs in mouth. Kem had smelled healthy and full of male hormones. Also of anger and hunger and frustration and longing.
Kem was tamed. But Kem had access to witches. If Kemnebi did not stay tamed, if Kem-cat came back, Beast would kill him too. Kill him and leave his body to rot and to feed buzzards. Jane might not like this, but Jane was asleep and Beast would not share territory. Beast turned away from spoor and leaped into trees, moving from branch to branch toward water.
Beast hunted alli-gator from trees, along water that coiled like snake. Leaping limb to limb. Silent. Beast found sleeping alli-gator, stretched out on bank of water, half-buried in mud. Alli-gator was longer than Jane body. Alli-gator was longer than Beast body and tail. Female alli-gator was big. Beast hungered after shift. Needed food. Beast territory had been invaded. Beast needed to kill. Beast needed to fight. Wanted to fight and kill and eat.
Gathered paws close beneath body. Slowed breathing. Stared at place on back of alli-gator neck, just below head/skull. Place where spine joined head.
Beast dropped.
Landed. Four paws to mud. To either side of head. Fall gave fangs and jaws power. Slammed down, mouth open. Bit down on alli-gator.
Alli-gator whipped whole body. Rolled. Rolled over Beast, through mud. Beast bit deeper, through hard skin. Through flesh. Into bones. Gator rolled. Rolled. Trying to throw off Beast. Rolled toward water. Other alli-gators were there, watching. Beast fought roll. But Beast paw was too close to alli-gator teeth. Gator teeth bit down on paw. Painpainpain, like shifting but more. More pain. Alli-gator shook head, tearing Beast flesh. Holding Beast paw, alli-gator rolled. Beast shoved down with three paws to stop roll. Alli-gator would roll into water. Would drown Beast and feed Beast to all alli-gators if she could. Beast did not let go of alli-gator. Alli-gator did not let go of Beast paw.
Alli-gator thrashed. Whipped tail. Hurt Beast. Would win if Beast did not kill now. But alli-gator skin was harder than last alli-gator Beast had hunted. Alli-gator was bigger than last alli-gator.
Beast bit down and down and down. Clamping jaw tight. Bones crunched. Teeth passed bones and into spongy meat. Was brain. Alli-gator mouth opened. Dropped Beast paw. Gator closed eyes. Opened eyes. Thrashing slowed. Stopped. Except for tip of tail. Was dying. Beast is best hunter.
Limping, Beast carried/dragged long alli-gator into brush. Dropped alli-gator on bluff of ground and lay on top of prey. Licked paw. Was bad bite. If Beast could not shift into Jane and heal, Beast would have only three legs. Beast would die. Injury had happened before, many times, when Beast was alpha and Jane was beta. Shifting to Jane had kept Beast alive. Beast had learned to be glad that Jane had stolen body. But Beast had not told Jane this. Would not tell now. Beast licked own blood and chuffed at thinking human thoughts. Beast was more than puma.
* * *
• • •
I woke to the sound/scent/taste of fresh-caught gator being devoured. Fangs ripped through hard, knobby, armored skin into meaty flesh. Mud was everywhere, all over the gator and all over Beast, a thick, gummy, drying, crumbling, dark mess. Blood was mixed with the mud, a deeper, darker gray in Beast’s sight. Flies were buzzing me/us, lazily dropping to feast and lay eggs. I caught a glimpse of two buzzards in a tree, patiently waiting for Beast to finish her meal. The sky was less bright, the sun only a few inches over the horizon. It would set soon. It was time to get back to HQ, to work, to politics which I hated, to security measures which I loved. But it was peaceful here, in the mud. Calm, despite the death that made the meal valuable.
I felt pain, however, and when Beast blinked, I saw the damage to her paw. Two toes were ripped nearly off, claws hanging. The central pad of the paw was torn. Not all the blood was the gator’s. The gator got you. That your only injury?
Beast tore through entrails and gorged on organ meat. It was an odd taste combination of intestinal/fishy/livery/lung-ish meat.
You not talking to me?
Beast is best hunter.
I know. I caught sight of the tail. Wait a minute. How big was this gator?
Was big. If Beast had kits, would take tail to den to teach kits how to eat meat.
Holy crap. This thing was, like, twelve feet long.
Was big.
It bit you, but you sound pleased with yourself.
Alli-gator bit Beast. Alli-gator is dead. Beast is best hunter.
Okay. I agree. Crap, that’s a big mama gator.
Beast is best hunter. Beast must kill Kemnebi.
I went still and quiet. Kem is tamed.
Kemnebi has hunted in Beast territory. Kem left spoor. Challenged Beast. Beast must kill.
I thought how to explain the
danger her plans presented. To kill Kemnebi outside of self-defense means Ricky-Bo would have to fight Beast. And Rick is PsyLED.
Beast stopped ripping flesh. Swallowed a large gobbet of meat from tail. Rick would fight Beast? Rick could become alpha over Jane? Put Beast in cage?
Technically yes.
Beast will kill Kem-cat where Ricky-Bo cannot find kill. Or in what Jane calls self-defense. Beast tore more food, thinking. What is self-defense?
If Kem attacked Beast in cat form, for no reason, and Beast killed Kem, that would be self-defense.
Beast licked her jaws. Flipped the tip of her own tail at the buzzards to show them alligator food was still Beast’s. Will think on self-defense. But will kill Kemnebi if Kem-cat comes onto Beast territory to hunt again.
I figured it was the best I was going to get. Okay.
Want to go home. Home to mountains.
I had nothing to say to that.
* * *
• • •
At dusk, I woke up in human form in a decent place, no mud, not lying in the middle of a dead gator, which I had halfway expected, and close to my SUV. That part was fortunate because Beast had spent so much time rolling in mud that the gobag was muddied through and through, including my clothes, which had somehow come out of the plastic zip bag. I had more clothes in the SUV.
Standing in the falling light, I dressed in the chill of early evening, feeling the familiar gnawing pangs of hunger. I could have gone back to the extra pair of flops in the mud, but I could also get them next time. Hunger helped me decide on not going back into the swamp after the flops, though the thought that I was littering on my hunting grounds bothered me.