Amused, Koun said, “I approve.”
Jane frowned, but lifted her head and spoke into the room. “Alex, record.”
From invisible speakers, Alex, head of electronic security, said, “Recording, my lady.”
“We proclaim. Shiloh maygo with the hunters,” she enunciated, “to identify the males. But the team will take a trank gun, sedate the bitch, and bring her in, alive, for testing, because sheshould not be insane after theChange.” The Dark Queen considered, and added, “We have previously approved a death sentence upon any werewolf who bites a human or one of mine. That proclamation stands.”
Shiloh considered the exact words of the pronouncement. She wanted all the werewolves dead. If she had to be bitten again to kill the bitch, that could happen. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
The queen made apfftsound and said, “End recording.”
“Done, my lady,” Alex said.
Shiloh drank her coffee.It’s over.
“While we’re chatting so nicely,” Jane said, “tell me how the werewolf prions have altered you.”
Shiloh nearly choked on her coffee.
“I’ve watched vids of you sparring. You’re faster, more precise, and holding back to keep us uninformed.”
“Beats the hell outta me. I’m a singularity, remember?”
“Language, girl.”
“Sorry, my lady.”
The queen snorted. “You aredismissed.”
Shiloh narrowed her eyes at the royal dismissal, stood, and left the room.
Her repaired armor was too tight on her shoulders, too loose in her waist, and short in the inseam. The undead can’t grow. Unless starved of human blood, which makes them skinny, their body shape, when changed, is theirs for eternity (or until they’re beheaded).
Forever the same. Except her. She’d added two inches since she was attacked.
Armor was expensive, hand-tailored layers of anti-spell Kevlarand Dyneema, to protect against explosive weapons and close-in fighting: bullets, blades, darts, talons, and magic. Because of the damage hers had sustained in the werewolf attack, and her growth spurt, she needed new armor. Instead, she had poorly repaired, blood-stinking armor.
Crappy armor or not, she needed to try out her new abilities, which meant getting in front of the team. She looked overhead at the waning moon and climbed into a tree. “I’m checking ahead.” Without waiting for a reply from the others, Shiloh turned on normal fanghead speed and leaped over a storm-downed oak. The trunk was ten feet high. The vamps followed. She cleared a twelve-foot white water creek, landing on the other side. She jumped, gripping a branch fifteen feet up. Feet pushing off the trunk, swinging, she landed in the next tree, five feet higher, like a gymnast on steroids. The vamps made the creek but failed to follow her into the tree limbs.Interesting.
Through the winter-dead treetops, she sprinted and swung. Eluding them, she dashed full speed. Seconds into her mad sprint, the nagging razors dissipated. It was so unexpected, she laughed, the sound echoing, brittle and crazy. The air resisted her, a steady crackling and a loudpop-whooshas it shoved aside and filled in behind. She scaled a cliff face like a spider, flipped at the top, and descended, weight on her palms and the tops of her boot toes, re-flipped herself, and climbed to stand above her personal rock climbing wall. She was hungry, needed to feed, but adrenaline and speed and a lack of pain created euphoria. She raced on.
She was using vamp vision, her pupils so wide her irises were nearly invisible, the night world bright. Her fangs were secured on their little hinges in the top of her mouth. In control.
Thiswas what she was. Faster, stronger, more predatory and dangerous than the oldest vamps.Unbalanced? Crazy? Yeah. So?Witch, fanghead, with were-prions. If it wasn’t for the razors—currently soothed—it would be cool.
A scent trace stopped her cold in a dead tree, fifteen feet up. From a thicket of rhododendrons beneath her rose the sickly sweet stink of rotting blood, faint, after the recent ice storm.Werewolf. Vamp. Some of the old blood was hers.
The reek of blood marked the place where she and Atticus had fought the wolves until running out of ammo, too bloodied and exhausted to escape. The memory rose through her again.
The wolves had encircled the thicket, limping, wounded by silver-lead rounds. There was no way they could change back until the silver had been surgically removed from their bodies. But she and Atticus had made no kill shots. Werewolves, even crazy, even bleeding and full of silver, werefast.
Her breath came rapid and shallow as the sensations, the remembered fear, engulfed her, a hallucinogenic nightmare. Image upon image, wound after wound.
Atticus, ripped to death by werewolves.He had died, badly.
Shiloh pushed the memories away, reached inside a pocket of her armor, and wrapped her fingers around thecalm of stonesamulet, a cut agate. Its striations were psychedelic, haphazard, but the magic within soothed her crazies. The pain of Atticus’ death eased. The lacerating madness faded.
It worked. She hadn’t been sure it would.
