Anger rose in Beast. Beast thought,Beast is not stupid cat. Beast is not prey. Beast is best ambush hunter.
You better hope so, stupid cat, or this city is about to be overrun by a world of darkness. Now get outta here and close the door behind you. I may be a glorified guard dog, but a guy’s gotta get his beauty sleep.
Beast stood and stepped on Brute before sliding to floor. Wolf-dog-human grunted with weight and prick of claws but did not fight. Brute was human in wolf shape. Had been biker human. Used to like to fight but did not fight Beast. Beast trotted upstairs, scratched on wood. Door opened and Beast left lair, shutting door firmly behind. Then Beast realized. Was a long way from Jane house. Brute had left Beast here.Stupid dog.
Keeping to shadows, Beast began slow walk getting back to Jane house. Was glad was not summer-hot. Was glad was not raining. Was glad to have time to think as Big Cat and slide from shadow to shadow.
***
Her claws in my mind, I woke up in Beast’s body at dusk. I was still puma, and Beast was silent.
My bed was full of cat hair and the fitted sheet had been scratched and torn. Beast’s paws were filthy with what looked like asphalt and the sheets were stained with dark smears.
Dang cat,I thought.What did you do today? Where did you go?
The cat didn’t answer. I could feel her inside with me, but she wasn’t talking. She wasn’t even running her body. She was letting me be in charge. Weird.
I caught a whiff of werewolf and Leo, and tried to sit up too fast. My paws were trapped in the twisted sheet.
A knock came at the door and now I caught a whiff of Eli and Alex. I chuffed for them to enter as I worked to get my paws out of the grimy sheets. As I landed on the floor, I pulled the flat sheet and comforter off the bed, and heard something rip. I’d damaged Bruiser’s good sheets.Dang cat.
“She’s still puma,” Alex called back behind him, to others I could now smell in the living room and the kitchen. He shuffled on his socked feet, back toward his desk. Alex was the younger Younger, the electronics specialist of Yellowrock Securities, and Eli was the elder Younger, and he was pretty much everything else—weapons specialist, tactics guy, the one who helped me design security protocols, and my second in duels that didn’t requirehim to fight for me. The Youngers were the only people I totally trusted to be in charge of my security. Eli was also not quite healed from the very bad injury that had nearly taken his leg and his life. He had worn an external pin support for a week, removed sooner than expected due to the copious and steady amounts of vamp blood he’d consumed, but he wasn’t a hundred percent. He still limped when he was tired or cold. He suffered from pain he tried to hide. Worse—saving his life and his leg had bound us together in some weird way I didn’t know how to fix.
Molly, my BFF, and a powerful witch, called it being soul-bound, which was a little like being ananamcharabut without the volition and desire to be able to share experiences and thoughts and emotions. In fact, whatever had happened between us when I saved Eli’s life, this new communion was often way too personal. And kinda icky.
“Are you Beast?” Eli asked me. When I shook my head no, he asked, “So do you know where you went today?” I shook my head.
“I’d hoped it might have something to do with the attack we’re watching at the null prison. Come see.”
I padded after him to the big screens where the security cameras for Vamp HQ and all the vamp clan homes were displayed. On the biggest center screen was a nighttime shot of a house I recognized. It was the NOLA witch council’s maximum-security null prison.
In the middle of the street, in front of the house, were three witches in a circle. To the side of the circle was a short male. Behind him stood a row of warriors, all heavily armed. The dark of the night and the quality of the cams (never good enough unless they were Eli’s multi-light cameras) made it hard to tell if the fighters were human or vampire, and impossible to identify anyone by facial features.
The witches in the street turned toward the camera, which, from the angle, appeared to be mounted on the corner eave of the prison, and held out their hands. As one, they said a single word, their mouths open wide.Even on the mid-quality cameras I saw flashes of scarlet light. Each witch gathered light in their hands and swirled it, as if each of them held a ball made from sunset storms and lightning. Beast rose and stared through my eyes.Is danger, she thought.
Yeah. And who’s in charge, the witches or the warriors? What are the warriors? Vamps or humans?
The witches threw the balls of light. The camera feed died.
Beast thought,Shift. She reached into our skinwalker energies and pulled at the silver mist that powered my shape-shifting. I overrode her for just long enough. We raced to the bedroom and slammed the door. Pain hit, as if my muscles were being sliced from my bones with a blade. My joints cracked and popped and I fell to the floor.
***
When I came to, I was half-form, starving and very furry, dang it. Beyond the door I heard shouting and clanking and the snapping, clicking sound of weapons being checked.
I stood and stuck my head out the door and demanded, “What?”
Eli barked, “Witches and a group of non-witches—possibly vamps—are attacking the null house.”
“Have they called the Dark Queen for help?”
“Negative. Not yet. They will. And even if they don’t call for assistance, vamps attacking witches falls under the purview of the Dark Queen’s duties and the Master of the City’s duties. You have to respond, Janie.My Queen,” he added in what might have been snark.
I closed the door and opened the closet.
Shoving aside the low-power magical trinkets and amulets I kept at the front of the high shelf—the high-powered ones were stored beneath the smallhedge of thornsat the back of the shelf or in the not-so-secret weapons room beneath the stairs—I grabbed the Glob and mundane weapons, and yanked a set of armor off the hanger, on the rod below them.
Dressing fast, I strapped the armor into place, aware that armor, any kind of currently available armor, hadweaknesses, places between the Kevlar layers and the Dyneema where a bullet or a blade could penetrate. Armor wasn’t a full safety measure. It just made most core-based instantly mortal wounds potentially more survivable. For me and for my people.
