He followed. The mist was swirling now, dense and thick. Ahead their guide stepped to the side and vanished. He reached out with his left hand. Julie took it, her strong dry fingers grasping his. He reached forward with his stick and tapped like a blind man, listening for the splash. The stick landed into water. He tapped until he found solid pavement and they carefully skirted the hole, making their way toward Pillar Rock.
He kept tapping, guiding them between the holes. They passed another. Then another.
His stick landed into the water again. Something yanked it. He jerked back, pulling with all his strength. The mist burst, and the bloated woman lunged at him from the water. His mind registered the long claws protruding from hands with a scaly membrane between them and the enormous fish maw with the sharp pike teeth, but his body had already moved. He dodged, grasped her arm, and used her momentum to slide behind her, clenching her to him, her back to his chest, pinning her arms. Julie swung, her expression flat, and buried the three-inch spike of her tomahawk in the left part of the creature’s chest. The scent of blood shot through him, like a jolt of electric current.
The woman flailed in his arms, trying to rake at him with her claws. He strained, keeping her still. He could snap her neck, but the fear still rolled from Julie. She needed this kill. Once she killed one, everything would fall into place.
Julie pried the tomahawk free and chopped at the woman’s bulging stomach. It split like a water skin, and a half-decomposed human head rolled out. The sour stench drenched him and he nearly gagged.
The woman thrashed, kicking. Julie dodged, jerked a knife out of the sheath on her waist, and drove the six-inch blade into the woman’s chest. The blade sank in with a scrape of metal against bone. The fish-woman screeched, her spine suddenly rigid, and sagged. The mist around them turned red and thinned, melting.
“Heart’s on the right side,” Julie said.
Claws grabbed him from behind and yanked him into the cold muddy water. He went under.
A body rushed at him through the coffee-colored water, long, pale green, clawed hands outstretched, a fish mouth on a human head gaping. A white light exploded in his head. The chain of will and restraint imposed by human part of him creaked, and he let himself off it. A knife was in his hand, and as she came at him, he locked his hand on the rough lip of that gaping toothed mouth and stabbed his knife into her side. He yanked the blade free and stabbed her again and again, driving the knife in with controlled frenzy. She clawed at him. He ignored the sharp flashes of pain and kept stabbing. Her side turned into raw butchered wound. She jerked now, trying desperately to break free, but there was no hiding from his knife or the white burning rage inside him.
Circles swam before his eyes. He realized his body was telling him it was running out of air. The creature floated limp, the right side of her chest a bloody hole. He thrust his hand into it, felt the deflated sack of the dead heart, and tore it out. Never leave things unfinished.
His chest hurt as if a red-hot band squeezed it. The first pangs of drowning panic scraped at his insides.
Darker shapes streaked toward him. Fish, he realized. Narrow and long, as long as his arm, with big mouths studded with teeth. They swarmed the body. He let go of the heart and kicked himself up.
He broke the surface and took a huge, lung-expanding breath. The air tasted so good.
Ten feet away, Julie spun like a dervish, her tomahawks slicing. She rammed the butt of her left axe under the third fish-woman’s chin. The blow snapped the woman’s chin up. Julie buried her right tomahawk in the creature’s exposed chest. Blood gushed.
He pulled himself out of the hole.
The fish woman swung at Julie. The girl leaned back. The claws raked the air inches from her nose. She chopped at the woman’s right side with her left tomahawk. Ribs cracked. The fish-creature dropped to her knees. Julie cleaved her neck. He heard the steel slice through the vertebrae. It sounded sweet.
The thin mist turned red again.
A shadow appeared behind Julie, rushing at her from the fog. He ran, picking up momentum, and leaped over Julie and the prone fish-woman. He rammed into the charging creature and tore into her. She broke like a rag doll in his hands, and he laughed. He snapped her arm, wrenching it out of the socket, her leg, her neck, her other arm, happy to finally release the rage he kept carefully pent up inside him.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder. “I get that this was terribly exciting, but she is dead. We killed everybody.”
He snapped his teeth at her, playing, and broke the woman’s forearm with a dry snap.
“De-rek,” she said, turning his name into a song. “Come back to me.”
Not yet.
“Look up,” she whispered. “Look up!”
Fine. He raised his gaze. The moon looked back at him, cool and calm, glowing, serene. It washed over him, sinking deep into his soul, soothing the old scars and closing the new ones as it rolled through him. He felt the hot rush of fury receding, dropped the corpse, and stood up.
She handed him his knife. He must’ve dropped it during the jump. The parking lot spread before them, the mist a mere memory above the dark holes. He inhaled deeply and caught a trace of familiar blood.
“How bad?”
She lifted her shirt, exposing her side. A long scratch marked her ribs, swelling with angry red.
He opened his mouth.
The water exploded out of the holes, shooting up in filthy geysers. Julie swiped her backpack from the pavement. He grabbed her hand and sprinted to the pillar. They dashed, zigzagging between the water. The evil dark fish churned within the geysers. Dirty water chased them, flooding before them. He picked Julie up and ran. Pillar Rock loomed before them, and he leapt onto it. He ran all the way to the apex and lowered Julie next to him.
Below them, the parking lot became a lake. Long sinuous bodies writhed in the shallow water, feeding or panicking, he couldn’t tell. He and Julie watched them quietly.
“Looks like we’re going to be stuck here for a few minutes,” she said, then gave him an odd look.
“Yes?”
She raised her backpack. “I have food.”
He laughed.
NO MATTER HOW HARD KATE tried to remind him that he was first and foremost human, Derek knew himself to be separate. He was a shapeshifter. He never forgot it, and if he had, things like watching Julie wince as she smeared antibiotic ointment over her scratch reminded him. He could vaguely remember when he was human too, but that memory felt false, almost as if it had happened to someone else. Between it and his current reality lay things he didn’t want to remember. If he reached down to stir them up, like old ghosts, he would recall them, but he didn’t want to.
“Okay,” she said.
He unrolled the long sticky strip of adhesive bandage and carefully placed it over her skin. The ointment would keep it from sticking to the wound itself.
Her ribs were no longer sticking out. He remembered when she was so skinny, he was worried she would walk into a lamppost by accident and break something.
She pulled her shirt back down and rummaged in her backpack. A plastic bag came out, with the second bag inside it filled with jerky, a bag of nuts and granola, and cheese. His mouth watered. He’d burned too many calories, and now he was ravenous.
She passed him the bags. Julie always had food. And she always wrapped it so it was hard to smell. It came from living on the street.
He snagged a long piece of jerky and chewed, reveling in the taste.
“You skipped the hunt again,” she said, snagging a piece of cheese and a cracker.
The monthly hunts in the Wood, a big forest sprawling north of Atlanta, were a pleasant diversion for most shapeshifters. A way to blow off some steam. For him it was a necessity. He needed the wilderness. Without it the rage grew too fast. It would always be with him. Curran had told him there was no cure, and he was right. It was the price Derek paid for not turning loup like his father.
“Maybe,” he said.
“What was so important?”
He shrugged. “Work.”
She chewed her little sandwich, taking small bites out of it. She ate like a human too—a shapeshifter would’ve stuffed the whole thing in her mouth and would’ve been on her third sandwich by now. It was a test, he knew. She ate slowly to prove to herself that she could, that there was enough food and no need to rush because she wasn’t starving.
“Lobasti,” she said.
“Mhm?”
“The women. I think they were lobasti. Mermaids.”
“Mermaids?” Somehow they didn’t seem hot enough.
“Evil mermaids,” she said. “I was so glad when that head rolled out. I thought I was fighting a pregnant woman. If I’m right, they only attack at night.”
“Makes sense. The plan was to have those idiots recover the rock and bring it here. The mermaids would kill them, and then Caleb Adams would come in the morning, pick up the rock, and go home, his hands clean.”
“That wereleopard doesn’t know how lucky he is.”
He won’t feel lucky when he wakes up. He laughed quietly under his breath.
He was on his fourth piece of jerky. The burning fire in his stomach was subsiding. He would eat a big breakfast when they were done. Pancakes and sausage and bacon, and then he would sleep. . . .
“If we find out why the Iveses died over that rock, I’ll make you all the bacon you want.”
He startled.
Julie shrugged and bit her jerky. “I can always tell when you’re thinking about food. You forget to be the Serious Wolf, and you get this dreamy look in your eyes. You know, most people would think you were thinking about a girl. They have no idea that her name is bacon.”
“Dreamy look?”
“Mhm. Lighten up.”
“I’m light enough.”
He lay down on his back and looked at the moon, a strip of jerky between his teeth like a cigar. He slowly chewed on it.
“Thanks for the food.”
“You’re welcome. You used to joke more.”
“You want jokes, talk to Ascanio.” He yawned. “He’s the funny one.”
“Maybe you need a girlfriend.”
“I left my pack. You know what that makes me?”
She sighed and recited, “A lone wolf?”
“Lone wolves don’t have girlfriends.” He put a little snarl into his voice. The injuries to his vocal cords didn’t need much to make his voice into a low lupine growl. He’d used it more than once to make opponents rethink their battle plans and start looking for an exit. “We move around the city unseen, congealing out of the shadows when there’s trouble and melting back into them so someone else can do the cleanup.”
Julie laughed.
He grinned at her.
“Why is everything so grim all the time?” she asked.
For some people, the stars aligned and everything went right. For him everything went wrong, every time. When he wanted something, when he reached for it, life broke him, yet somehow he always survived.
All he’d wanted was to be a kid in the Smoky Mountains. His father had turned loup. He’d watched him torture and rape his mother and his sisters until he finally murdered the thing his father had become. The house had caught on fire. He’d been meant to die in that fire, but he’d survived.
When the Pack had found him, he smelled like a loup. The Code said he had to be killed on the spot, yet Curran had saved him. Again, he’d survived.
Then he’d wanted to be a shapeshifter, just a rank-and-file wolf, but by the time Curran finally coaxed him out of the deep dark mental well where he’d curled up and hid, it was too late. He was Curran’s wolf, held to a higher standard. He was mocked. Normal avenues within the Pack were closed to him. The Renders wouldn’t take him, so he went to work for Jim. His face was an asset. He could walk into a room and start a conversation with the prettiest girl and she would talk to him and smile, and her eyes would sparkle when he said something funny. He was good at gathering information, and he won respect, at first grudging, then well-deserved. He was good at being Jim’s spy. They called him “the Face.” He’d decided then that this was it. This was what he would do. This was his place.
He’d met Livie. She was beautiful, vulnerable, and gentle. She was trapped. She needed his help. She told him she loved him. He tried to help, but it ended with molten metal poured onto his face. He’d survived again, and went after her, putting everyone and everything at risk. In the end they broke her free, and the first free moment she had, she thanked him, said good-bye, and walked away to never return. He’d survived that, too.
The Face was gone. He still had the skills. He could throw witty one-liners, he could be charming without sounding smarmy, and he knew how to get people to open up and tell him things they normally kept to themselves. But his face was a barrier he couldn’t overcome. Working for Jim had no longer been an option.
He’d tried other things after that. None of them felt right, until Curran and Kate separated from the Pack. He’d signed his separation contract half an hour after Curran signed his. He was the Grey Wolf in the city; the one who came and found you if you fucked up and hurt the wrong people. He helped those who needed it. He stood between those who were hurt and those who did the hurting. He removed threats, and soon his name alone would be enough of a deterrent. This new thing, it felt right. His face matched him now, matched how he felt and matched the role he chose. Jokes didn’t.
There were other things he sometimes thought about. But those things were out of his reach. He got the point. Reaching for what he wanted would bring him pain. There was no need to share it with anyone. Explaining all this would be too long, and it would sound too melodramatic.
“Is there any cheese left?”
“Swiss?”
He wrinkled his nose. Swiss stank.
“Picky, picky, picky.”
He liked cheese in general. Mozzarella was best. He snagged a piece of Swiss and held it on his tongue inside his mouth to see if the taste would make up for the smell. It didn’t.
Julie leaned over. “The water is receding. Another half an hour and we can go.”
A shadow dropped from the sky. He lunged forward, pulling Julie out of the way. A basketball-sized rock smashed into the pillar, a foot from her legs. He looked up in time to see a black bird shadow block out the moon and sickle-sized talons aimed for his face. He jumped to his right and up, punching into the bird from the side. It whipped around, huge wings beating, enormous yellow beak coming down on him like an axe. Talons tore at him in a flash of blinding pain. He locked his left hand on its throat, his right on its left leg, and pulled, trying to rip the huge raptor apart. It screeched, the high-pitched shriek nearly deafening him.
Julie screamed behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder. The rock was empty. Fear bit at him with icy teeth. He looked up and saw her dangling from a second huge bird twenty-five feet in the air.
He hurled the bird away from him, sinking all of his strength into the throw.
Julie fell.
Desperation propelled him into an insane leap. He caught her in midair, relief shooting through him as his arms locked around her, and then he twisted, trying to land on the pillar. The rock punched his feet. He landed hard, the shock reverberating through his legs, and fell backward, trying to keep them from hurtling over the edge. She landed on him. For a tiny moment they were face-to-face, and then she jumped off him. “The bag!”
He rolled to his feet. The two birds soared above them, melting into the night sky. He squinted and saw Julie’s backpack hanging from the right bird’s claws.
“They have the rock! And the sample! Damn it.” Julie stomped on the pillar. “Damn it!”
She’s alive, he told himself. Relax. She made it.
“They’re flying northeast,” he said. “That’s the opposite way from the Warren and Adams’ base. Can you see anything?”
She stood up and walked to the very edge of the r
ock and stood an inch from falling, looking into the city as if it were an endless indigo ocean and she was searching for that one sail at the horizon. She turned slowly and pointed. “There.”
“Another glowing rock?”
She nodded.
Predictably, he couldn’t see anything. “Where?”
She pointed northeast, in the exact direction the birds flew. “Maybe five, six miles.”
He glanced behind them. “The Warren is there.”
She turned and looked at the Warren. “Nothing there. If the birds belong to Adams, then he took what he had over there, or else the birds belong to someone else, and Adams knows how to hide his rock.”
He searched the dark city. “And you haven’t seen it before?”
“No.”
“Let’s say I’m Caleb. I want the shiny rock, but I don’t like getting my hands dirty. I send some assholes to retrieve the two pieces of the rock. They get one from Luther, but they botch the other job, kill people, and cops are called. So I hire some idiot shapeshifters to go get the rock for me and bring it here. I break the linked ward guarding this place, so the fucked-up mermaids will eat the shapeshifters.”
“Then, when it’s daylight, the lobasti will hide and I’ll come and get the rock,” Julie said. “Easy.”
“Except that if I were Caleb, I’d want to make sure that everything went according to the plan.”
“You’d stay and watch.” Julie’s eyes narrowed. “You’d see us kill the lobasti and then hide on the pillar. You’d know we would be trapped up here for at least an hour. Plenty of time to make a new plan, summon some birds, and take the rock away from us. And then have them take it there?” She pointed to northeast. “Why?”
If Caleb watched, it was from afar, because Derek hadn’t smelled him. He could’ve hidden in any one of the ruins around the place. Tracking him down was pointless—he’d left already, gone northeast with his own chunk of the magic rock. He would expect they would follow. He had all the time he needed to set a trap.
“Two possibilities. Either he has to do something with the rock over there, or he has figured out that you can see it. We keep interfering and screwing up his plans. He could be baiting a trap.”