Blood, Fangs, and Going Furry

He didn’t remember much about that first full moon except the pain, the burning, scalding, skin-crawling pain when his pelt wanted to thrust through his skin, when his bones begged—demanded—to shift. When his eyes went green gold, and the night came alive in rich blues and greens and silvers, and the detail of the world was so intense that it was like nothing he had ever seen before. When the scents on the air became acute, almost brutal in their concentration.

The sensory overload was like being tossed off a high bridge to land at the bottom of a rock-strewn crevasse and find himself broken, bloodied, but miraculously alive. Only to have a Mack truck run him down and crush out whatever life had been left. At the same time it was like having a live current rushing though his body, icy and burning, his brain on fire, his skin roasting, and no evidence of it except the funky green gold of his eyes.

He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t make it go away, couldn’t shift into his cat to ease his pain. Kemnebi, the only other black were-leopard on the continent and arguably the highest alpha black were-leopard on the planet, had refused him aid, standing back and laughing at his torment. Even when Leo Pellissier, the Master of the City, had threatened to kill Kem if he didn’t help, he had refused, saying that Rick had brought it on himself. Which he had. Totally.

He’d FUBARed it all the way, losing his humanity, the girl he had flipped over—Jane Yellowrock—and probably his job too.

Gee DiMercy, Leo Pellissier’s Mercy Blade, had told him Jane could help. Which made no sense. Jane worked for the vamps as a security expert and rogue-vamp killer. Jane wasn’t a were. But something in Gee’s voice had been convincing, and Rick had found himself on his bike, blasting down the roads and across the Mississippi, into the Big Easy, believing Jane could—and maybe would, even after he’d betrayed her—help him.

Pain raging in him like a rabid cat clawing the inside of his skin, Rick had bent over the bike and roared away from the MOC’s Clan Home. Later, when he was on the edge of dreams, still-shot moments of that ride came to him: taking the bridge east, flying in at nearly a hundred miles per hour, threading the needle between two eighteen-wheelers, hearing his own voice screaming with rage. Taking a curve, one boot on the pavement, the sole actually smoking. Dodging a car as it ran a red light, his reflexes like lightning on meth.

One thing stayed in the forefront of his mind—he had to get to Jane. She would know how to help. Help him to shift or help him to resist or maybe put a bullet through his brain if nothing better presented itself. He knew, because they’d had something once and because there had been no closure yet, and because Jane Yellowrock had saved his life.

He ended up on her street. She was half a block down, standing beside her bike in the middle of the street, her helmet off, her hair streaming back in the heated breeze, as if she had heard him coming and was waiting for him. He downshifted the red Kow-bike—the Kawasaki—and puttered to a stop. Put his feet down, bracing himself. His head and face were hidden by his helmet and face shield, and for a long moment, feeling anonymous yet knowing he wasn’t, knowing that she had to know who he was, he watched her.

As the breeze that carried his scent reached her, her eyes did a feral shift and glowed golden. A lot like his tonight, except her eyes were always amber and his had been Frenchy black until this full moon. His first full moon with the taint of were-cat blood rushing through his veins, making him half-crazy with the pain.

Jane stalked toward him, her booted steps muffled beneath the sound of his bike, her body moving slowly, a liquid, feline heat in her walk. He keyed off the bike and slung his leg over it. Threw back the face mask and pulled off the helmet. Dropped it, knowing he’d scarred it, not caring. He took a breath.

The night was alive with smells, so rich and intense that it was like being hit with a bat at full swing and being stroked along his entire body all at once. His eyes closed in something akin to holy rapture. He smelled fish and coffee and hot grease and tar from the streets and water everywhere. The slow-moving bayous that wend through New Orleans, smelling of grasses and heated mud and rain-washed animal offal, nutria and deer and old blood. Lake Pontchartrain with the reek of old pollution and oil and the warmth of the sun on its waters. And the Mississippi River. He had never thought that water might smell of power, but it did, a heady mixture of mountain and snow and rain and animal, of the scents of tugboats and fish and water treatment plants. Of every source of its water all along its course through the nation. And riding over it all he smelled the Gulf of Mexico, fresh and salty and . . . amazing. The odors twined with the pain racing under his skin, becoming one with it. And he could smell his pain, like old meat and rancid butter. He never knew that pain had a smell.

Jane’s boots drew closer, the leather soles abrading on the asphalt. The wind shifted, capricious, and he smelled her before she reached him, and he knew instantly that she wasn’t human. How could he have missed that scent before? She was redolent of big-cat but not leopard, not Kenyan jungle nights and African tribal drums. She smelled of wild rushing streams and craggy passes clogged by snow; her scent sang of wildfire, of the cold taint of iron in the water trickling from cracks in the stone faces of mountains. Heat and blood pooled deep in his groin with an ache that wanted release. “I can’t ssshift. It hurtsss,” he said, his voice a growling hiss.

“I know,” she whispered.

His eyes still closed, he felt her hand lift. The warmth and texture of her energy were like spiky vines, thorny and sharp, as her palm came close to his face. Her skin was like silk as it slid across his cheek. Tears burned beneath his lids, hot as acid. He had betrayed her.

“I can’t ssshift. Kemnebi ssshays . . .” The words growled to a stop. He couldn’t shift into his were-cat, but his vocal cords weren’t working right either. With the rise of the full moon, his body had leaped toward the change and slammed to a halt, like a motorcycle hitting a rock cliff wall at a hundred twenty. His sense of smell was acute, his eyes were funky, and his voice was gone. His teeth felt weird against his tongue. Pain rode him like he was a bitch in a prison cell—no way out. None.

Her hand was hot, smelling of cat and clean sheets and the remembered smell of sex. He leaned his face into her palm, breathing deeply. She stroked his cheek, and her skin smelled better than anything he had ever smelled, better than Safia. And far, far better than the werewolves who had tortured him.

“Kem says what?” she whispered.

“Kem shasss shometing isss w’ong wi’ me.”

“And he let you go free? Into the night?”

Her question was weird. He knew that from the part of his brain that was still human. “Not Kem. Jzeee.”

“Gee? Girrard DiMercy?” Jane’s words came softly, gentle on the night air.

He rubbed his head against her palm, feeling her fingers thread into his hair. Massaging. Some of the pain in his scalp eased, and he heard his own sigh of pleasure. He wanted her to touch him everywhere like that, to relieve his need, release his pain, set him free from this agony. He raised his hands and curled them around hers, his fingers trailing up her wrists as far as her leathers allowed. Her skin was like silk, if silk could be electrified, if silk moved over muscle like rich oil over the bayou water, but sweet as honey.

“Leo’s Mercy Blade?” she asked again. “He let you go?”

“Yesh.”

“And Leo? Did he—”

Rick laughed, remembering only then the flashing image, the single snapshot vision of Leo Pellissier, Blood-Master of the City, his mouth open in shock. The sound of his voice roaring. The barbed, spiked texture of his power as he drew something electric and molten-smelling out of the air. And the stink of vamp blood, like pepper and green leaves. “I hit him. I sthink I . . . hurt him.”

“Oh, Ricky Bo.” Her sigh was like the first breath of spring on the air. “I’m so sorry.”

The punch was faster, harder, deeper than he expected. Air exploded out of him like a balloon run over by an earthmover. She’d hit him before but never like this. Who knew Jane Yellowrock had been holding back all this time?

•   •   •

He woke in a cage. Raving and furious. He threw himself at the bars even though he knew—with that tiny human part of him—that he was hurting only himself and that there was no way out.

Someone turned a hose on him, hitting him with icy spray, the water like needles. He rammed the bars again, and the cage shook with the strike. And again and again. With each blow his body came away more bruised. He heard/felt/smelled the bone in his right arm break, and the added pain sent him to the corner of his cage to whimper and lick his wounds.

He smelled vamp and age and bricks weeping with the Mississippi. Mold and sickness and blood rode the other scents like the top note of a really expensive but foul perfume. It was the smell of blood that brought him back. Beef blood. Steak so rare it would grunt if you kicked it was piled on a plate, steaming hot, thin blood pooling on white china.

He caught himself. Found himself. Remembered who he was and what he was. And he saw the red fletching on the dart sticking out of his butt. They had drugged him, tranqed him. With an old-fashioned tranquilizer dart. Like a wild animal.

Forcing his fingers to bend in ways that paws would not have, he reached back and gripped the dart. Slid it from his flesh. Tossed it out of the cage. The drug was running through his veins like good bourbon, pushing back the pain, pushing back reality. He blinked, shook the wet hair out of his eyes, and focused on the room.

He was underground with no way out. The windows were small, arched on the top, set high and barred; the door was barred; the cage they had put him in was eight feet by eight feet, with bars for walls and a barred ceiling. And all those steel bars were set into stone. The stone smelled of old water and mold and had been in place for centuries. At the far end of the room, watching him, was Jane.

She was sitting on a tall, backless stool, her leather-clad legs loose and relaxed, one booted foot on a rung, the other on the floor. Her arms were back, elbows resting on a tall table pushed against the wall behind her, and her leather jacket hung open, revealing a thin, skintight knit Lycra T, the lines of the black bra under it barely visible. She smelled like sex and craving, and his body responded, growing hard and ready.

She tilted her head, her long, straight black hair falling in a slide that shushed as it slithered to the side as if alive. “Do you know where you are?” she asked, sounding lazy.

He thought about that for a moment. Or an hour. Time was doing crazy shit, and he wasn’t sure. He finally forced the words out. “Warehouse? In the Warehoush Dishtrick? The Nunnery?”

She nodded once, a single dip and lift of her chin. “In a temporary holding cell for young rogues. They’ll let me keep you here for the three nights of the full moon. I couldn’t take the chance that you might lose control and infect someone. I’m sorry.”

He touched his jaw. “You hit like a guy.”

She chuckled. “Thanks.”

The three nights of the full moon. Yeah, right. He was less than a third of the way through this torture. But with the drugs circulating through him, holding the pain at bay, he at least remembered that he had once been human. He worked his jaw, and it felt normal. This time when he spoke, the words came out properly. “They let you keep me here?”

“Leo.”

“Mmm.” He thought about that for a while as water dripped and ran across the stone. He’d hurt Leo. Raising his hand, he curled his fingers into a fist. Already he was healing, his bruises fading. And the arm bone he had broken on the cell attack was little more than a bump that ached when he touched it. His skin felt hot, and the water was drying on his body more quickly than normal. Part of the benefits of the furry life: quick healing and a higher-than-human body temp. If not for the moon-change pain that fought the drugs in his system, he might have laughed. “What’d you have to promise Leo to get him to let you use this cage?”

“Nothing. Oddly. He called me on my cell just after I took you down, and offered. He’s upstairs, and he’s not his usual unruffled public self. His shirt is bloody.” Her lips tilted up on one side. “Your work?”

“Probably.”

“You took down a vamp,” she deadpanned.

“I got the drop on him. Even vamps can be sucker punched.” He shrugged. “And you took me down.” He was suddenly conscious of being naked and aroused, sitting on a cool stone floor. And he was thirsty and more hungry than he’d ever been. He nodded to the food. “That mine?”

Jane uncoiled from her perch and sauntered to the plate. With the toe of her boot, she pushed it through a small space between the lower bar and the floor. She hooked a finger around a tall, narrow thermos with a built-in straw, like a kid’s sippy cup, and passed it through too.

“No utensils?”

“Not until after the moon.” She walked back to her perch and sat, her back to him this time, giving him privacy. He dug into the beef, stuffing it into his mouth, and the taste exploded through him like a bomb going off. When he had licked the plate clean, he drank the water. Tap water—chlorine and dankness and something slightly salty. He licked the half-cooked, watery blood from his fingers.

Jane seemed to know he was done and swiveled around on the stool seat, the leathers squeaking slightly. He pushed the plate and cup back through the bars, waiting, reading her body language better than he ever had before, and he knew that she had a lot to tell him. But first she took a satchel and threw it at the bars. It hit with a quiet thud and slid to the floor. “Clothes,” she said. “Get dressed. You’ll have visitors at eleven thirty.”

He pulled the satchel through the bars and zipped it open. Inside were jeans, a T-shirt, and a package of new boxers, his size. They were made of some filmy material that seemed kind of girly, but he didn’t complain. The T-shirt hid his scars and the mangled tattoos that were all he had left of the art on his shoulder and arm. As he pulled the shirt on, he caught a flash of gold from the eyes of the mountain lion tattooed there, but when he pulled up the sleeve to inspect it, the glow was gone.

“Visitors?” he asked as he stepped into the jeans.

“Local witches. Leo called them, and they said they might have a way to spell you through the shift, force you into your cat.”

He stilled. Fear crawled up his spine like a snake up a tree. He’d been in the power of witches before. It hadn’t been pretty or easy. He zipped up the jeans, feeling her interest, her gaze on him. Without looking at her, he asked, “You’ll be here?”

“If you want me to.”

“Yeah. I do. And if they try something hinky, you stop whatever it is they’re doing.”

“I’m supposed to know what’s hinky with witches?”

He looked at her from under the too-long black hair that curled into his eyes. “I trust you to make an educated guess.” She nodded again, that little chin-drop thing. He used to love that. Still did. But the wary look in her eyes held him off from saying anything about them, about their relationship or current lack of one. They had unresolved business, but it had to take a backseat. He understood that. Jane was always all about business and let nothing stand in the way of that, except sometimes dancing. He had a memory of her dancing once as he played the sax, her body writhing like a cobra on ecstasy, like sex on a stick, hot and sweaty. He went hard again just thinking about it. Jane laughed low, and he could smell his own arousal.

The heavy wooden door opened, and Leonard Pellissier, the Master of the City, walked in, followed by three others, but Rick kept his gaze on the MOC. The stink of vamp, peppery and minty, and blood, thick and slightly chilled, filled the room. Rick’s arousal faded quickly, and he stepped back against the far bars, feeling the damp of the iron through his T.

Leo wasn’t vamped-out like the last time Rick had seen him, but Leo was still wearing the bloody shirt, which said something about his state of mind. Rick crossed his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits, knowing that made him look defensive, but looking defensive was marginally better than looking aggressive. He got in the first salvo. “I apologize to the Master of the City of New Orleans for hitting you. Him.” Rick wasn’t good at the royal third-person speech, and thees and thous had always just confused him. Of course, Jane talked to Leo like she would to any other person, but he had a feeling that Leo allowed a lot of smack talk from Jane that he wouldn’t from anyone else.

Leo, his chest not moving with breath, his eyes so black it was hard to read anything in them, studied Rick. Leo was dead. Or undead. Yeah. Standing there like a dead man, no sense of life left in him at all. Nothing in the room moved. No one coughed or sighed or shifted on the stone floor. It was so silent that Rick could hear his heartbeat and the sound of air breathing in and out of his lungs. A good two minutes too long later, Leo took a breath, and the movement startled Rick. He blinked, and that quickly, Leo was smiling.

“You have my blood. I have fed you more than once at the brink of death.”

Rick nodded once, unconsciously mimicking Jane’s little chin-drop nod. “The first time, I was on a slab of black stone, being spelled by a witch and drained by a vampire.” He saw Jane start. He had never told her the story. He needed to remedy that. He had a lot of things to tell her, if she chose to listen. Later. Much later.

“I feel the pain that crawls under your skin like acid, burning like flames, like silver through your blood. One of my blood-servants prepared the medicine”—Leo flicked a finger at the tranq dart—“but he did not know what dosage would be required. It helped?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I tried to bring our priestess to assist you, but she refused, saying she might be injured. I cannot force her, and my own blood was not enough to prevent your contagion, nor were the services of my Mercy Blade. Neither of us can cure you now that the taint has taken firm root.”

Rick looked away, discomfort squirming though him. He remembered—in bits and snatches—the first days after Jane brought him, more dead than alive, to the MOC’s Clan Home. Gee DiMercy and Leo had carried Rick to a bed and climbed in with him, healing him as best they could. It had been way more intimate than he was comfortable with, but they had kept him alive, so he couldn’t bitch about their methods.

When it was obvious that Rick wasn’t going to respond, Leo said, “The local witches wish to assist you. If you will permit.” Rick looked back at him quickly. “The female who spelled you originally is no longer with the coven. You will be safe.”

“Can you keep me drugged through it?”

“Of course.” Leo moved closer, inhaling. “I smell your pain. It grows. I shall send in the witches.” He turned to the man beside him. “Keep him comfortable.” Moving human slow, he walked from the room.

“Yes, boss,” George Dumas said, the words sounding odd when flavored with his faint British accent.

Rick dropped his arms and nodded to the blood-servant. The man was holding an oversized handgun, a tranquilizer gun. Rick had never liked the MOC’s primo blood-servant and especially didn’t like knowing that the overage half-human blood-sipper had shot him in the butt, but there were better times than now to complain about it. That gun was loaded with his sanity for the next three days. “Dumas.”

“You’ll be in charge of the dosing. Ask and I’ll shoot. I understand the pain will likely be more intense whenever the moon is up and easier to bear when the moon is below the horizon. Of course, if they get you to shift, you’ll be fine.”

Rick’s mouth twisted up. “Furry.”

“That too.” There was compassion in the blood-servant’s eyes.

Hell. George Dumas was probably more human than Rick was now. He sighed. “Okay.”

Moments later, five witches entered the room. A tiny blonde approached the bars, getting closer than anyone had since he’d woken up in the cell.

“We’ve met. You might remember me? Butterfly Lily?” She pointed at an older woman. “And my mom, Feather Storm?”

“I remember.” He also remembered that they had claimed to be “not real powerful. Mostly we’re used as routing for group workings.” He’d rather have the most powerful witch in the city here, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Thank you for coming.”

She introduced the others as Rowan Rose, Running Doe Poppy, and Orchid Sunrise. Rick nodded, not smiling at the silly monikers. If they could help, they could call themselves Catwoman, Batwoman, and Hercules-etta for all he cared. Rowan Rose looked around the room, checked her watch, and shook her head. “We have eighteen minutes to get the circle drawn and the ritual started. This is not going to be fun, girls.” It wasn’t. And that was an understatement.

By one a.m., Jane had left the room. By two a.m., Rick was on the floor of his cell, writhing in his own vomit, gagging like the worst case of dry heaves any drunk had ever had, shrieking, panting, screaming like a banshee, and begging for the next dose of medication. He got it. And he didn’t wake until the moon fell below the horizon near dawn.

The sound of mocking laughter woke him. His eyes fluttered open, and he blinked, trying to focus on the floor of his cell, his left cheek on the cool, wet stone. His eyes were working but independently; his brain wasn’t able to make the dual images into one. Water ran along the floor and trickled into a drain, running off him in fresh rivulets. He remembered where he was. And what he wasn’t. And his stomach did somersaults until he gagged. His abdominal muscles cramped hard with the retching, and he wondered how bad his sickness had been to make him hurt this badly afterward despite the healing properties of were-taint in his system. He had a bad feeling that this hell-on-waking sensation was going to become overly familiar for the rest of his life.

He had been hosed off again and was wet to the skin in the clothes Jane had brought him, but at least he wasn’t lying in his own filth anymore. His stomach churned, but he shoved an arm under himself and rested on his elbow as the world whirled around him.

Kemnebi was standing outside the bars, his hands on his hips, a feral smile on his face. He was wearing loose white cotton pants and a button-down shirt, the set woven of cotton and many times washed into a softness that Rick could see. The African smelled of black leopard and jungle nights and freshly killed prey. And cruelty. And anger.

“You survived your first night,” he said. “Good. Now I can watch you suffer again. And again. And eventually you will die in agony on the floor of that cell or by my fangs, my claws, and my killing teeth buried in your throa—”

The blur was faster than Rick could see. Faster than Kemnebi could react. It was less than sight, almost a sound, as of air being displaced. A snarl that echoed off the stone. Followed by the twin thuds of two bodies hitting the wall. The growls, hisses, and snarls of combat. A flash of a silvered blade. A shadow of black and yellow and scarlet. The smell of blood. Movement Rick couldn’t follow except as smears on his retinas. Somehow, he was standing.

He knew by the smell that it was Jane fighting. Defending him. But his eyes wouldn’t focus. He fell toward the bars, hitting face-first, breaking his fall with his cheek. Pain shattered through him like lightning through a lightning rod, bright as the beginning of the universe, tinted with stars and blood. “Fuck,” he said of the pain, of the fight, of his helplessness. “Fuckfuckfuck. Jane? Jane!” he screamed.

An instant later George Dumas was in the room, moving almost as quickly as the other two, pulling Jane off the black were-leopard. But she didn’t let go, and lifted Kemnebi with her, holding him off the stone. She held a knife at Kemnebi’s throat.

Red blood ran into the man’s white shirt, staining it scarlet. Rick growled, more vibration than actual sound. The blood smelled so . . . good. Kemnebi slanted a gaze at the cage, his eyes going wide. His irises were green gold. And they were afraid. Rick hissed. He hadn’t seen Kemnebi since the first night of the full-moon cycle, and the man had changed. Or Rick had. He just hoped he’d remember that when the drugs wore off. “Being stoned can be a bitch sometimes.” Only when the others all looked his way did he realize he had spoken aloud.

Jane pressed the blade into Kemnebi’s neck and snarled, the sound so unlike her that Rick jerked in surprise, his skin moving over his muscles as if he had a pelt. Her growl echoed off the walls, and she said, “Bruiser, I swear by all that is holy in the highest realms of heaven, if you don’t let me go, I’ll kill him while you hold him. And I’ll smear his blood onto your clothes so the other weres will think that you, and by extension Leo, are responsible for his death.”

“You won’t cause an international incident,” George said. But Rick could smell the uncertainty in his sweat. When Jane didn’t reply he said, more softly, “Kemnebi is here under the auspices of the International Association of Weres and of the Party of African Weres. He has diplomatic immunity.”

“Won’t stop him from dying.”

“No. I suppose it won’t.” George relaxed his arms and slowly set both Jane and Kemnebi on the floor. Jane sprawled over the dark-skinned man, her knee pressed hard into Kemnebi’s crotch, one hand holding back his head. Her silvered blade was at his throat, and his blood trickled down his neck into his collar and around to the back, where it gathered and plopped to the floor in soft splats of sound. Jane’s eyes were golden and glowing. “I am alpha. Say it.”

Kemnebi curled his lips back as if to show fangs. He growled low, the vibration a thrum passing through the stone beneath them and into the soles of Rick’s feet.

“Say it. Or die.”

“You are alpha. For now. But you will die beneath my claws, and no one will ever know that—”

“Forever. I am your alpha forever.” She pressed the blade into the cut in his throat and her knee into his testicles. Kemnebi grunted with pain and shock. “What?” She chuckled, actually sounding happy. “You think I didn’t take precautions? Look over my shoulder. The other one. See that small round thing in the corner of the wall and ceiling? That’s a camera, Kemmy-boy. And I just got you declaring me alpha. So in this country, you are subject to me until you find sufficient reason to challenge me. I can do anything I want to you under were-law.”

Kemnebi’s eyes flashed green fire. His teeth were bared, gnashing; but his body language disagreed; he was pinned to the floor by his alpha. Rick smelled his capitulation.

“Yeah. I thought you’d say that,” Jane said. “Leo has very good lawyers. I paid them a small fortune last night to research all this crap, and we both know I’m right. So say it again. I like the way it sounds.”

“You are my alpha.” The words were spitting, hissing anger.

“Good. You will take Rick under your kind and loving tutelage and teach him how to be a good were. You will teach him to shift. You will care for him. For now, he is my kit and under my protection. You are his guard. He dies, and you die. For every wound he suffers, you will suffer two. Got it?” When Kem nodded, the motion jerky, she said, “Repeat it. For the camera. For posterity. For the leader of the International Association of Weres. Just so we’re all clear.”

As if fighting himself, Kem repeated the words, sputtering as his eyes spat sparks. Rick could smell his humiliation and his subjugation. Satisfied, Jane rose and stepped back until the beta cat Kem, George, and Rick were all visible in her field of vision, but she didn’t put the blade away. “We have plans to make. Bruiser, Rick’s hurting again. Tranq him.”

Rick saw George lift an arm, heard the soft spat of sound as the shot was fired. Felt the pain in his upper thigh. Without looking, he reached down and gripped the metal dart, pulled it from his leg, and tossed it at the blood-servant. It clattered to the floor. That was the last sound Rick heard as he toppled and the stone came at him, slowly filling his vision until gray, wet rock was all that there was in the world.

The floor hit and he bounced slightly, but the drugs were racing through him and he didn’t feel the landing. He lay there, the earth itself wavering, swimming, the stone beneath him leaching out his body heat.

He had been a cop until the weres got him. He had been Jane’s boyfriend and lover until the weres got him. Now he was in a cage, trying to go furry and still keep his sanity, hoping to survive the pain, while the primo blood-servant of the Master of the City of New Orleans shot him full of drugs.

The drugs lifted and carried him like a small limb on the mighty waters of the Mississippi. Down and down and down. And now . . . he was nothing.

Rick woke to the sight of daylight through tall trees and the scent of mountains. Jane’s mountains. He was lying on a sleeping bag in a tent staked on a bed of leaves, its sides unzipped to allow air and light in through the mesh walls. He was out of pain, drug free, and alive.

Rolling to his back, he stared out, seeing mountain on one side, rising high, and a path on the other, leading down. He smelled people, strangers, though not close by; Kemnebi, beer, and food were very close. Fainter, he smelled Jane, the scent telling him she had gone. She had gotten him out of New Orleans and away from vamps and witches and a barred cell. Once again she had saved his life. He owed her. Especially he owed her an explanation, but it might be a while before he got that chance.

The still shots of the past three days raced through his mind, images of people, of Leo, of George, of witches with coven names that hid their identities. He vaguely remembered Leo telling him that he had an extended leave of absence from the NOPD—New Orleans Police Department—negotiated by a lawyer Leo kept as dinner.

And Rick was mostly sane, though he could still feel the moon. He had three weeks to learn whatever he needed to be able to shift. The wolves had done it. So could he. And then he was going after Jane. They had some talking to do.