I had no idea what the question or answer meant, but now wasn’t the time to ask.
“Did the wolves enter the campsite from the same direction each time?” Kem shook his head no. “Can you track both trails?” Kem nodded, but ducked his head slightly, raising his shoulder blades. “One trail is going to be harder to follow?” Kem nodded. “The older one,” Rick said. Kem nodded. “Now?”
This time Kem didn’t answer. He turned in a single sinuous swirl, leaped over his own shoulder in a motion that appeared to defy the physical laws, and headed into the laurel thicket. I looked at Grizzard. “Coming?”
“Not this time.” He turned hard eyes at Rick. “You’re that cop from New Orleans, the one PsyLed called me about.” Rick’s mouth tightened but he nodded, the gesture oddly like Kem-cat’s. “You’ll know what I need to see, if anything. For now, I have a crime scene to work up. If you get something, call. I’ll find you.” Grizzard turned his back and stamped through the wet, his shoulders rounded with fatigue.
“PsyLed called him?” I asked.
“First I heard about it. Come on. We have a cat to chase.”
By four p.m. I was tired, cold, wet, hungry, and probably permanently deaf. The constant rain was a white noise that drowned out every other sound, a steady, deadening, deafening roar that only got louder when we had to cross swollen streams and cascades. The falling temperatures had made everything miserable, with a low-lying fog shrouding the ground like heavy gauze, hiding puddles, runnels, holes, roots, protruding rocks, and ruts. Laurel and rhodo thickets had meant crawling bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and my palms were torn and blistered and wrinkled up like raisins. The wind was traitorous, delicate and warm one moment, buffeting us with cold the next.
Not even Gortex is designed to resist a hurricane, and my boots and jeans had failed the stream-crossing test. Even my underwear was sodden. Rick had brought several pounds of raw steaks in his backpack for Kem, and a jumbo-sized pack of high-cal trail mix for us. If not for the nuts, coconut, and dried tropical fruit, I’d have been tempted to try to steal from Kem-cat, which would have been gross and stupid.
To make the experience more wretched, as far as I could tell, we were lost. I had no idea what the leopard had discovered. We hadn’t seen a real road—one paved in the last century—in hours, and we had crawled up and down steep slopes until east and west were alien concepts, even for me. If Kem wanted to lead us out into unknown territory and leave us to die, he couldn’t have found a better place for it. Grumpy. That was me. Ahead, I saw two dark mounds emerging from the fog. Once we were upon them, they resolved into our vehicles. I lay across the hood and panted, my relief so strong I wanted to weep.
“Big, bad vamp killer, reduced to a whining mass of female flesh by a little water,” Rick teased. The look I gave him shut him up and he backed away, palms open wide in a mock protective gesture, eyes laughing. The first time we’d been alone together I’d taken him down, but something about the way he backed off, with a confident swagger I hadn’t seen before, suggested that now I might not have it so easy.
I crawled into the SUV and turned the seat warmers on high, the heater on max, and the windshield warmer on. I sat in a miserable heap and shivered until the interior was toasty and my core temp started to warm. Then I crawled around in the back for anything that might keep me warm, coming up with a tire iron, a tool box, a ragged fleece blanket, and a pair of cargo pants left balled in a corner by God-knows-who. The scent wasn’t familiar and the pants were none too clean, having been used as a towel to wipe a mechanic’s greasy hands, but I stripped and pulled them on, hoping I wouldn’t get body lice or worse. The blanket, I ripped a head hole in with a screwdriver and tore a ribbon off one end to use as a belt. I was just barely presentable when a human-shaped Kem and Rick got into the vehicle with me, Kem in the passenger seat, his feet on my soaked clothes, and Rick lounging in back. Rick, wearing dry clothes, looked me over and laughed before passing me a king-sized Snickers bar. After the laugh, I should have refused on principle but I took it and started chewing.
Kem wasn’t impressed either way, though he accepted a Snickers as well, and ate it in huge, half-chewed bites. He opened another, gesturing with it in what sounded like a non sequitur in his elegant African accent. “The grindylow no longer function according to its previous and proper purpose. It should be able to track the werewolves once it has taken their human and were scents, and it should have killed them long before now. It isn’t, it hasn’t. Its scent pattern has change in ways with which I am not familiar. It appears to be moving much more slowly than normal, spending long moments in one place, doing what appears to be”—he stopped, as if unable to find the right word—“nothing. Perhaps it is . . . resting.”
The emphasis on the word resting made it sound foreign to the little green-skinned grindy. “They don’t rest?”
“No. Never. Not as long as human is in danger. Perhaps it is . . . ill.” But he didn’t look fearful, Kemnebi looked ecstatic at the prospect. The grindylow had killed Kem’s mate for trying to infect Rick. Kem hoped he’d die.
I frowned, adjusted the blower at my midsection, and ate another candy bar, curling one leg under my butt for comfort as I angled myself to face him. “The grindy didn’t stop the weres in New Orleans from repeatedly biting Rick. Torturing him.” Rick went utterly still, and I could suddenly smell the stress and fear-memory leaching from his pores. He was remembering.
Kem’s lip curled at the smell. He slanted a look to the back, at Rick. “The grindylow was beleaguered in New Orleans. His mistress broke were-law with this human.” Kem’s eyes took on a voracious glow at the word. “He knew that were-law required her death. He . . . loved Safia. Her death was painful to him and was responsible for the delay in tracking the wolves.”“Yeah?” I remembered the state of the grindy’s room at vamp central. It had been shredded, as if in a rage. Or in frustration. Another of the dominoes fell. I cursed softly, and Kem turned away when he saw the understanding in my eyes. “Coulda been that. Or, you caged him in his room so he couldn’t get out and stop the werewolves from torturing Rick.”
Kem turned hot golden-green eyes back to me. His beast eyes peered at me in threat. I wondered what I’d learn if I pushed at the cat. Beast stirred, flowing up through my veins and nerves, intrigued by the big-cat. It almost felt as if she had been waiting for this moment, primed for some action she expected. Wanted. Heat and power flooded through me and she stared back at the leopard, her claws unsheathed and painful, holding me down. When I spoke next, it was her thoughts I spoke. “To punish Rick for Safia. She was going to leave you. To mate with him.”
Kem growled. Time did a shift and seemed to step sideways, slowing into overlays of still-shots. Kem’s lips drew back. Revealed fangs. Male big-cat musk saturated the air. Claws burst through the tips of Kem’s fingers; black fur sprouted on the backs of his hands.
Beast slammed through me. Pain cut through my hands and mouth like razors. My jaws ached and I tasted blood as big-cat canines pushed through my gums. She hissed, showing killing teeth. I pushed up with the foot beneath me just as Kemnebi launched himself across the cab. One claw swatting at my face.
My leap lifted me over the swipe. Golden-furred hands tore into Kem’s neck. My hands, Beast’s fur and claws. Blood spurted. My fangs tore into his throat. Latching to either side of his esophagus. I bit down, not hard enough to tear out his throat, just enough to cut off his airway. His claws ripped into my middle, catching on the fleece and the belt, hooking deep.
Behind Kem, the door to the cab opened. Rain and wind swept in. I got a glimpse of Rick. We tumbled backward, my body over Kem’s, to land with a splash on the watery earth and sink into the mud. Beast took over my mind. Kem could get no air. He thrashed. And went still.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Is This a Proposal or Something?
Battle was over. Kem, trying to pant, lay back his head. His claws retracted. Forelegs spread, his belly exposed to me. Accepting Beast/Jane dominance. I/we shook him, teeth tearing through tissue only a little. To wound, not to kill. Kem relaxed even more. Proving his submission.
Kem fights like human in leopard skin. The I/we of Beast fights like puma inside human. Better hunter. Better killer.
Beast. Pull back. Let him go, Jane thought.
Will not harm my mate.
Okay. I’ll tell him that. Just . . . Just let him go.
Fights like human. Humans cheat with dominance. Will let go when he gives up. Soon, Kem-cat’s stomach muscles relaxed. His legs went limp. Finally, really, giving up. Now. I let go and Jane stepped up and aside. Pain raced through me as big-cat teeth and claws reshaped and reformed to human mouth and hands. Painpainpain.
I lay on the hood of the SUV, on my back, the rain pelting me, panting with agony. Oddly, the first thing I thought was that I was once again soaked to the skin. I laughed, the sound chuffing, half puma. The second was, “Oh crap.” I lifted my hands. They were human, but they hurt like I had boxed a brick wall barehanded. I put fingers to my face, to my teeth. Human and human. I was still wearing pants, so I hadn’t shifted totally. If I’d shifted into Beast in daylight, I couldn’t shift back until night or moonrise, whichever came first. So . . . I hadn’t known Beast could do a partial change. And Rick had seen it. Crap.
I rolled over, fast, to my hands and knees. My hair was undone, hanging in long wet strands to the engine. It was still running beneath my body, an unvarying, uniform purr. Rick stood a little ways off, Kem once again in black were-leopard form at his side. A leash was around his neck, the prongs pressing into the flesh of his throat. Blood coated his throat and chest, watery in the rain. He was lying on his belly, head down, eyes looking up. When he saw my stare, he crouched lower. A moment later, as if he thought his crouch was not enough, he rolled over again, giving me his belly.
Prey response. Accepts my alpha for now, Beast thought, but will still try to take what is mine.