Chapter One

Liz

She stared at her cell screen, at Eli’s name and pic, her finger ready to tap the call.

It was an excuse. She knew that. She also knew Eli was heading to New Orleans for his friend’s wedding, and she hadn’t been invited along as his plus-one. That was a thing, being a plus one at a wedding, and this was the first big social event since they had started seeing one another again.

Eli didn’t talk a lot, no chitchat, no chain of consciousness patter, no gushy mushy stuff, so she seldom knew where she stood with him. Not that she needed that kind of emotional validation. Not her. Never. Or, she never had before she met Eli. It had never mattered what a man thought or felt about her until now. Maybe because she had never really been in love with a guy, not with that desperate, weak-in-the-knees, want to spend her life with him kind of love.

He’d be gone for weeks, a trip that also involved his political and security work for some kind of coronation involving Jane Yellowrock, the Dark Queen of the Mithrans, the Master of the City of New Orleans, the master of Clan Yellowrock, and more titles, on and on. Jane was a very important person in the world of paranormals, especially vampires, and she had done a lot of good for Liz’s kind too, bringing peace and providing protection for witches that they hadn’t enjoyed in hundreds of years. Jane was also Eli’s adopted sister and, so far as Liz could tell, his best friend.

Liz was just… his girlfriend? Lover? Friend with benefits?

Her mind circled back to the importance of that wedding Eli hadn’t invited her to. She knew that he would be working throughout the planning stages and during the wedding. She hoped the reason she hadn’t been invited was because he’d be working, and not because she and Jane had an uneasy relationship.

Uneasy. Hah. Jane had killed her sister. The fact that Evangelina had summoned a demon and tried to kill her own sisters, and therefore had been targeted with a “take-down” order didn’t help a lot. Evie was dead. Jane was still alive.

Those upcoming weeks when Eli would be gone were looming empty, like a black hole of boredom and loneliness. Calling him for something that might be nothing was just an excuse to talk to him, maybe see him.

Liz looked down at the tracks that had her hesitating.

She shouldn’t need an excuse.

She shouldn’t need to see him either. This was a weakness she hadn’t dealt with before. Ever.

“Gah,” she said. She hit the cell’s off button. She knelt on the ground and studied the paw prints. They were big. Bigger than black bear. But they were the wrong shape for bear.

There were a lot of creatures in the Appalachian mountains that had been explained away by the revelation of were-creatures, but there were a few that were still unaccounted for, the Virginia Devil Monkey, the Dwayyo, and the Snallygaster among the better known others, like Sasquatch.

The Devil Monkey was a dangerous, wild, part wolf, part monkey creature that terrorized vehicles driving through remote areas at night. Not the people inside. The vehicles themselves. The Devil Monkey had a thing about cars and trucks.

The Snallygaster had the head of an alligator, a massive bird beak, and a 25-foot wingspan. The name had Germanic origins from the 1730s, when German settlers called it Schneller Geist, which meant “quick spirit,” and it could have been a pterodactyl. Snallygasters were afraid of five pointed stars—pentagrams—and therefore witches, which suggested intellect. Pterodactyls were supposed to be extinct, but these days, who knew?

And the last was the Dwayyo, which could have also been Big Foot, for the size—nine feet tall—and the fact that it walked upright, except the Dwayyo had wolf components and a bad attitude. Sasquatch were peaceful, whereas Dwayyos were violent and willingly attacked dogs and other beasts. Local cattle mutilations had been attributed to the wolf/human-like creatures.

Liz took a few shots of the clearest pawprint, and then put her hand above it and took another pic with her cell. The print was longer than her hand by about six inches. The claws were either non-retractable, or were simply extended from their claw-sheaths. They were a good two inches long, with sharp points like a cat’s. They looked nothing like a bird’s print, and they didn’t just appear and disappear, as if dropped from the sky. This thing walked upright on two legs, with a six foot stride. Long-legged bugger. She followed it back and forth, seeing something odd. The tracks didn’t go in a straight line. They meandered. Almost off balance. Its gait nearly a stagger, it ran up the hill and into the woods. Running upright, however erratically, and the print shape suggested it likely wasn’t a Snallygaster.

There was a convertible Mercedes-Benz C-Class with a ragtop only twenty feet away, and it was undamaged. The prints were not particularly primate looking. The unharmed car and the weird prints tended to rule out the Devil Monkey.

Which left the Dwayyo. Liz stood and followed the trail of blood-stained feathers, fourteen inch long critter-prints, and her own footprints back to the edge of the yard and the fancy chicken coop she had checked out when she first drove up.

From the back porch a few yards away came soft sniffles, followed by wails, hiccups, and boohoos.

Liz ignored the grief and tried to concentrate on the tracks and the bloody feathers that led from the chicken coop to the woods. The coop was silent, no clucks, no gurgles, no twitters, no sound at all. The mesh and chicken-wire in the door and one screened wall had been slashed and torn away, and the chickens inside had been killed.

All of them. It had been fast, as the homeowners had slept through it all.

Liz dropped into a squat again and studied the messy scene. There were bloody feathers, chicken parts, and the stench associated with all of the above. Liz was a country girl. She had seen the scene after coyotes got into a chicken coop. After an owl or hawk or raccoon or snake took a hen for a meal. This wasn’t caused by those predators. This killing scene didn’t look like anything she had seen or heard about before.

The laying hens were expensive—silkies and some kind of fancy crested breed, chickens that were worth big bucks. They hadn’t been brought down with claws and fangs and devoured on site, nor had the leftovers been dragged away for a later dinner, as she might expect from a typical predator. This was chaotic. The coop had held fifteen chickens. Eleven chickens had been chewed on and discarded, leaving behind the bloody feathers, bodies ripped and munched. Three chickens had no bite marks at all. Their necks had been broken with a twisting motion, much like Liz’s grandmother used to do on the family farm. Pick up a chicken by the head and whirl it like a ball on a string. Of course Gramma had then cut off its head and hung it up by its feet to bleed out, the memories as fresh and horrifying as the first time Liz and her sister saw Gramma prepare fried chicken dinner “from scratch.”

Her twin, Cia, was still a vegetarian. The memory was bad.

Liz took several photos of the damage and the dead. Using a yard rake propped against the coop, she gently rearranged a few chicken parts to look underneath. There were a number of partial prints in the gore that matched the one clear print in the mud at the edge of the yard. Liz took more shots and secured her cell. She sniffed gently, trying to determine if there was some unexpected scent present, but her nose was human, and she had never attempted a magical working that might differentiate one scent from another. The complexity of such a working would be boggling.

However, there was fresh blood on the torn screening, as if the attacker had hurt itself while ripping through the screen, and the double-layered metal screen had been ripped from a height of six feet, down to two feet above the ground. Big sucker. The blood was at a five foot height. She took a clean cloth out of a zippy bag and wiped the cloth over the bloody metal, before resealing it and sliding cloth and bag into her pocket.

What she needed now was a … a paranormal creature with a really good tracking nose and the ability to understand English.

When she was in half-form, Jane Yellowrock had a great nose, but smelling a bunch of dead chickens to determine cause and creature of death seemed a lot to ask the queen of the vampires. It surely was beneath her dignity and not the kind of job Jane took these days. These days, her responsibilities were more along the lines of killing rogue-vampires with royal titles, and upsetting the political stability of the entire paranormal world. She had a mouth on her and few social skills, so maybe that part was easy.

That left Brute—a huge, monstrous, white werewolf trapped in wolf form after her elder sister Evie summoned that pesky demon. That demon had been eating the werewolf when Jane and the angel—like a real honest-to-God, from heaven, angel—got him free. The angel’s actions had left the werewolf permanently a wolf for reasons Liz and her magic didn’t understand.

Brute might still hold a grudge against her sister, Evangelina. Liz’s feelings were certainly conflicted and she hadn’t been chewed on. But what if Brute’s unhappiness stretched to all the Everhart sisters? Would he refuse to help? She and the white werewolf had never spent a lot of time together, and she had no idea if he would help her. And even if he did help her, she had no idea how to kill a Dwayyo. Silver bullets? Garlic? Bug spray? Maybe waffles were terminal to them.

Her best bet was to not take the job. That would save her from getting a bad review from the potential clients. Except they had money. Lots and lots of money. To track down and kill the creature who had killed the Mrs.’s pet chickens, Mr. Moneybags had promised Liz a check for a thousand dollars in addition to all expenses and her hourly rate.

Liz stood and stared at the back porch and the woman who had called her. Felicity Hogg Drake was resting against her husband’s chest, weeping theatrically. She had been weeping since Liz got to the chicken coop. Loudly. Felicity was a drama queen, a tiny-waisted, double-D-breasted, bottle blonde, with the problem-solving IQ of a jar of mayo and the survival instincts of a cockroach. Mr. Moneybags was older and clearly doted on his wife.

A thousand dollars over expenses and the hourly rate.

Liz needed cash for next month’s rent. A grand would help meet that requirement.

She put on a solemn expression, made her way across the yard, and placed a foot on the bottom step. This left her about ten feet from the couple. The wife wailed. The husband patted her shoulder.

Gently she said, “The chickens appear to have died at the hands of a paranormal—or a previously mythical—creature.”

Felicity wailed. “Can you bring them back to life?”

“Ummm. No. Sorry.” I’m not Stephen King, she thought, trying to keep the expression that might say, “Idiot,” off her face. “The tracks lead into the woods and up the rocky hill behind your house.” She nodded to the security cameras and motion sensor lights. “Nothing on them?”

“All the security was pointed toward the front of the house,” the man said. “This thing came in from the back, in the dark, on a hill that would tax most hikers in the daylight. Was it a mountain lion? A bear?”

“No. Neither.” Which he already knew, or he’d have called a mundane tracker with dogs. Instead he’d called a witch who found lost things and lost people though her magic talent. Liz studied him, not sure why he set her teeth on edge. Maybe just the air of privilege and condescension. “It’s a paranormal predator of some kind.”

“I saw the track. I assumed as much. We’ll have our security company do some upgrades so there won’t be a next time, but Felly and I want it dead so it can’t come back.”

Liz made a ruminative sound. “Tracking and capturing most paranormal predators is within my skillset. But this isn’t a lost dog hunt or a werewolf hunt. It will take time, expertise, and tracking skills to pursue and eliminate the killer, assuming the killer isn’t sentient or some form of human-based shapeshifter. If the killer is sentient, I’ll be unable to kill it, and will have to capture it and hand it over to PsyLED. But honestly, I don’t think the Psychometric Law Enforcement Department of Homeland Security will have much interest in a chicken killer.”

Mr. Moneybags winced.

Felicity wailed again and fell against him.

Liz shifted her attention to the husband. “I can try to track the creature and kill or capture it. My expenses alone are likely to be costly, and it will take a lot of man-hours. Certainly more expensive than the thousand offered for the job. Probably more expensive than repairing the coop, buying new chickens, and installing a good security system on the coop. And I didn’t get your name.”

“Charles Drake,” he said as if that should mean something to her. “Money—to a certain degree—isn’t the issue. If my wife wants you to chase a ghost into the mountains, fine, chase it. I’ll pay for it, mainly because we have small dogs, including a male Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that placed Best Of Breed and Best In Show at the National specialty.”

“My Sugar BooBoo,” Felicity said. And went back to wailing.

Drake frowned. “This thing gets that dog? We’re out a lot of potential cash from sperm sales.”

“Stud rights,” Felicity whispered.

“I don’t give a shit what it’s called. It’s an investment. And not just an investment. Felicity’s distraught.” As an afterthought, he added, “And there are kids in the neighborhood too. So chase it down and kill it. I want its head mounted over the fireplace.”

What a charmer, Liz thought. “I don’t kill paranormal creatures unless they’re previously proven to be non-sentient, and that is questionable at this point. I’ll have to bring in bigger guns, including a huge scent… hound. And the price goes up with all that. So it will be two thousand up front, nonrefundable, to hire the proper breed of paranormal hunting scent-dog, and his handler. An itemized bill, due upon delivery, will be hand delivered afterward, and there’s no thirty day grace time. I hand you a bill, you pay it. And the contract will stipulate what I can and can’t do legally.”

“Fine.” He handed her a credit card and a business card. “Send the contract to my email on the card, I’ll print it, sign it, and bring it to the door. If you can’t kill the thing that killed Felly’s chickens, capture it. I’ll call a friend at the governor’s office if we need PsyLED to assist in removing the beast. Come on Felly. Let’s get you a cup of coffee and your blankie.” Drake turned away and led his weeping wife inside.

Blankie?

Liz took the VISA to her Subaru and ran it through her credit card system. Then she altered a contract and sent it to the email on the card. Four minutes later Drake opened the back door. Liz returned his card and accepted the contract, all properly signed and legal. Drake shut the door without a word. Liz, careful of possible cameras, kept her expression neutral until she was half a mile down the road. Then she pulled over and did what she had wanted to do from the beginning, and called Eli.

Eli

“Hey Lizzie girl.” Eli grinned into the warm fall sunlight, cell at his ear. She hated being called Lizzie, and ‘Lizzie girl’ made her grind her teeth, but for once she didn’t react.

“Check your texts,” she ordered. “I just sent you some pics. And for reference, my hand from wrist line to the tip of my middle finger is six and a half inches.”

Eli laughed softly, her words taking his mind into a direction he hoped she intended.

“Mind out of the gutter, Captain America,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice. Lizzie Girl knew him well. “That particular Marvel superhero does not have sex. The photos are because I might have a job for you and Brute. And/or maybe PsyLED and Rick LaFleur if it comes to it.”

The mention of PsyLED grabbed his attention and took it off more pleasant images. He was Jane’s number one, and sometimes that meant keeping the peace between local paras. “Hang on.” He slid images around and found Lizzie’s photos. They were not what he had been hoping to see. The pic of her hand in the footprint suggested a creature with a fourteen-inch-long foot, sixteen counting the claws. And the scene at the chicken coop was bad enough that he would have expected a stronger emotional reaction from her. Her tone was unfazed and it shouldn’t have been so calm. This thing, whatever it was, was dangerous. And big. Lizzie was calm as if she was at a garden party. She was always a surprise. “Okay,” he said, paging through. “I see them. Use words. Start with, are you currently tracking this thing?”

Lizzie ignored his question and told him about the tracks first. “The one prefect print wasn’t made by a guy in a chicken suit or fake monster shoes. The weight wasn’t concentrated in the back half or the front half, and the distribution wasn’t flat like a mold pressed into the earth. This showed weight transfer like a human foot but on a bigger scale.”

Eli’s eyebrows went up. Lizzie knew tracker stuff. Guy stuff. He approved. “Agreed.”

“If you widen the pic, you’ll see a strange place on the biggest knuckle of the little toe, like a large callus; one also visible on the ball of the foot. This looks like a real print, though the monster fakers are getting better with their tech and silicon molds, so I could be wrong. The chickens weren’t all killed by teeth and claws. At least a few had their necks broken, like the way my Gramma used to kill a chicken. She’d pick it up by the head and whip it around, breaking its neck.

“It was fast. The family house is within forty feet and they slept through it. They have midsize yapper dogs inside and the dogs didn’t react either, so the chickens didn’t have time to make a ruckus before they were gathered up and killed. The creature didn’t take its dinner with it, just killed, ate, made a mess, and took off. Clients want me to track and, preferably, kill the predator, but have been made aware that I don’t kill sentients, so if I only have the option to capture it, I still get paid. It’s in the contract, which is signed.”

“And you want me to help you chase a chicken killer.” He let a little humor into his words, because honest-to-god how else could he react to this? “Into the woods. At night. Like a camping trip, again. You remember what we went through the last time we went camping.”

“Yes I do. And I want you to bring Brute, if he’s willing to come. Tell him it could be a Dwayyo, and read the specs to him. I may have a smear of its blood on a cloth, and— Aw damn it. I got its blood on my new jeans. Tell Brute he can get a scent. I’ll be at the Inn in forty minutes. Damn it. I really liked these jeans.” She ended the call.

“Dwayyo?” Eli did a quick search on four different spellings before he called his brother and asked for intel on a mythical creature.

“Got it, bro,” Alex said. “Think of sasquatch meets werewolf on meth and anabolic steroids, with claws and fangs, a bad hair day, and a sucky attitude. And it likes the taste of meat, any meat, but with a preference for dog, cattle, and pig.”

“No pics?”

“Not a one. An artist’s rendering from the early nineteen hundreds. Sending you a pic of that.”

Eli stared at the sketch. “Fur. Fangs. Claws. Snout of a wolf. But it’s wearing pants.”

“With a tail sticking out a rip.”

“Shapeshifter? Werewolf?”

“According to witnesses, it’s nine feet tall and muscular. So take Jane in half form, give her three feet in height and add a couple hundred pounds. Then take away her humanity. Even when she’s fully Beast, she doesn’t kill just to kill. This thing does.”

“So, if it’s a human-based shapeshifter, and if he can’t take on mass from elsewhere like Janie does, then when he’s in human shape, he’s tall, and close to three hundred and fifty pounds. Linebacker? Sumo wrestler?”

“Yup. But you’re assuming gender based on this drawing. You wanna tell me what’s going on, bro?”

“Affirmative,” Eli said. He briefed his brother and hung up the phone. He had a woman to meet and an op to plan. And he wanted steak. Quickly, he arranged to pick up a meal, calculated the time and distance back to the Inn—the Winter Court of the Dark Queen—and began a mental list of supplies they might need. This time, he wouldn’t be caught on the wrong side of a hedge of thorns working. He’d have his weapons on him, and some would be magical in origin.

Brute

The stench whirled through the house the moment the front door opened.

The growl started in his ass and vibrated out his snarling snout. The rumble reverberated like a generator. His ruff stood on end, his shoulders hunched high, his body crouched.

His predatory reaction was all reflex, shit he was used to, having been stuck in wolf form for the last few years, but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this one was bad. The, “I’m fucked,” reaction started in his instinctive hind brain and came snarling out his mouth. And he couldn’t stop it.

Footsteps headed his way. Eli. Liz Everhart. And the scent of a “thing that must die.”

Alex swiveled in his chair. Carefully, the Kid said, “Brute? You okay?”

Brute shook his head left to right once. He was salivating, drool dropping from his lips. It splattered against the wall.

In an eyeblink, one of the damn grindylows popped into existence and landed on his head. It grabbed his ears and tugged. Hard. The steel claws of the were-creature killer extruded and cut into his ears. It chattered and snarled in anger.

Brute’s reaction was instant. He sat and he whined. And when the supernatural neon green grindy didn’t stop cutting, he dropped to his stomach on the cold floor. The grindy cut deeper. He whimpered, carefully not shaking his head again.

This is not a good day to die, he thought. There are no good days to die.

Liz Everhart walked into Alex’s office and straight up to Brute. The stench of evil, of death and demons and the darkness of caves in the famine of winter ice sailed toward him as she moved. An ancient instinct from a time of glaciers and blizzards and never-forgotten hunger, long buried in his subconscious wolf memory.

Brute’s heart raced. He started panting. His drooling got worse. The grindy chittered louder. The smell of his own blood was tart on the air, and he wasn’t fighting back, he wasn’t losing it. He was in control. But the grindy wasn’t backing down this time, even when he cowered. Fuck this shit, Brute thought. He half rose and shook his entire body, his wolf coat sliding back and forth, slinging.

The grindy went sailing. Liz caught it midair. She was holding it by its ears, like a rabbit, exposing it’s strange teeth. “You try to kill me,” Liz said softly to the grindy, “and I’ll turn you into a toad a few decades early. Now put those claws away or I’ll wring your neck like that critter did the chickens.”

Brute wasn’t sure, but Liz threatening his nemesis might have been sexiest thing he ever saw, back when he was a human. He licked the drool from his lips and also from where it had landed, cleaning up his were-taint. When he was done, he lay down, gave a friendly whine, and thumped his tail on the floor.

Liz had glared at him the whole time, but the whine and tail thumping made her face relax. He thought she might be the prettiest thing he had ever seen. Too bad the Ranger had claimed her, not that he’d ever be human again to tell her any of that.

She said, “I’m sorry my sister gave you to a demon for dinner. Like, really sorry. But I need a favor chasing down the thing that you smell on my jeans. It’s the blood of a paranormal predator. Maybe a Dwayyo. It killed chickens like a human does and ate some of the dead birds in the coop.”

The witch transferred her, ‘turn you into a toad if you annoy me,’ look back to the grindy. “He lost control. You cut him. He’s fine. Even I can see that. But you hurt him even after he restrained his wolf. Shame on you.” She shook the kitten-like critter by the ears, its body juddering. “He’s bleeding. Apologize.”

The grindy’s wide-open eyes swiveled to him. Its claws retracted. It mewled. Close enough. Brute had learned to forgive. That was the first thing the angel had demanded when it healed him and let him live. Brute snuffled softly and belly-crawled a few inches toward the witch and her trapped prey. It brought him closer to the blood, but he had himself and his wolf nature under control now. He snuffled again. The grindy chittered quietly.

Liz said, “Don’t let it happen again. I’m putting you back down on the wolf.” She bent and placed the kitten-sized killer on his back.

The grindy licked all the blood off his ears and vanished into thin air, just the way it had appeared, leaving behind cuts that now stung like someone had poured cheap rum into his wounds. The pain was enough to keep him sane, even with the blood-reek, so he’d take it. It was better than being killed by one of the were-creature judges and executioners for losing control. Damn grindylows.

“You okay?” Liz asked.

Brute chuffed and gave a happy dog smile to her, wagging his tail. She was just the kind of woman he had wanted back when he was human. All curvy, with hips that were just right for—

“What did you smell that made you go all werewolf-nutso?” she asked. “Paranormal killer?”

Brute nodded and looked at Alex. He stood and patted his front paws on the floor as if playing drums.

“You want the soundboard?” Alex asked.

Brute chuffed and nodded.

“You refuse to even look at it,” Alex said, “until a grindy makes you bleed, and all of a sudden you’re Mr. Agreeable.”

No. I ignore it until a pretty woman needs a favor. No way to say that. Besides. Eli had weapons and knew how to use them.

Alex pulled a mat from under his desk and slid it into a clear place on the floor. To Liz he said, “I saw this online and made one for Brute and Beast. Until recently they’ve both ignored it.”

Brute walked around the mat and studied the words beneath all twenty-four buttons. Each button, when pressed with a paw, said a word and provided a punctuation mark. He nodded at Alex and looked at Liz. Deliberately he stepped on the button, that said, “Yes.” Then on the one that said, “Talk.” It was better than a typical computer generated voice, sounding deep and growly, like he used to sound when he was human. He missed being able to talk. Missed having fingers. Missed a lot of shit.

Could be worse, though. He could have been turned into a three-hundred pound mouse, or a snake, or something that would have gotten him killed by the witches in a heartbeat.

Liz said, “Did it smell evil?”

“Yes.”

“Magical?”

Brute thought, his head low, tail tip twitching slightly. He tapped, “Maybe.” Then he tapped, “Human.” And, “Female.” Thinking about the scent and why he had reacted—and still was reacting, though he had a handle on it now—so violently. He tapped, “Human. No. Human,” in quick progression.

“So human, but not just human, and female, and maybe magical?”

“Yes.”

“Werewolf?”

He cocked his head. “Maybe.”

She asked, “Was it sick?”

“Yes.”

“Rabid?”

Brute thought. He had a wolf’s scent brain and every scent he had smelled since the day he was changed from normal mundane human to werewolf was engraved in there. He never forgot a scent and he had smelled a rabid raccoon once. Werewolves stank bad enough. His kind were often insane, unless a pack could be found and the moon-called insanity reined in by a strong alpha. Rabid lone werewolves? That was bad. He tapped, “Yes.” Tapped the question mark, then “Maybe.”

“Doesn’t rule out a Dwayyo,” Liz said. “Dwayyo’s could have always been rabid werewolves.”

Brute sat, thinking. Rabid werewolf? If so, where was the grindy associated with it? There had been a time when were-creatures in this hemisphere were rare, and grindy’s even rarer, having never followed the weres here when his kind made their way over—crossing the ocean or walking across an ice age icepack. The local tribes had killed most of them, and the few remaining went into hiding, under the control of alphas strong enough to control their packs. But from the moment the grindy’s were introduced as a species, they had popped back and forth through space policing were-creatures. He stared at the buttons and tapped the question mark.

“You have a question?” Liz asked.

“Yes.”

“Is it about the creature?”

He tapped, “Small.”

“A little bit about the creature?”

“Yes.” Brute put a paw to his ears, wiped off a smear of blood, and showed it to the humans. He tapped, “Small,” again.

“Oh,” Liz said. “Are you talking about the grindy?”

“The grindylow didn’t react to the blood on your jeans,” Eli said. “So it wasn’t a werewolf. We’re dealing with a different kind of shapeshifter, who has rabies.”

Brute tapped, “Yes.”

Eli

Chewy answered his cell, “S’up, Hoss?”

Chewy didn’t answer calls except from a select few people. Like the ones who had survived a firefight in some little border town in Mexico, tracking drug cartels under orders from a former president who authorized the illegal incursion across international borders. They successfully rescued an American citizen from them, along with eight Mexican females, all destined for the international sex trafficking trade. That created a bond between brothers and Chewy always answered his calls.

Eli explained what his problem was, how high the level of danger was, how much the pay was, and then said, “Yellowrock is calling the governor to see if we can dip into the para cleanup fund to help defray any extra expenses. You want in?”

“Hell, yeah. My old lady wants me to stop drinking beer and keep the damn grass cut. That kinda money, I can hire out the grass cuttin’ and drink better quality beer while I supervise. When and where?”

Eli gave him the particulars and the address and Chewy ended the call with, “Copy. Dawn.” No see you then. No later or goodbye. Just a disconnection. Chewy was efficient like that.

“Paranormal cleanup fund?” Liz asked from behind him. There was an edge to her voice.

He had known she was in the doorway to his suite. There had been the faintest alteration of the lighting and the air currents had shifted, bringing to his nose that soft hint of vanilla and stone that was uniquely hers. Lizzie had watched him when he left Alex’s office, had followed, and had been listening in. “Ummm,” he said, without turning around, texting the list of supplies he thought they would need to Chewy and to Alex.

“You involved Jane in this?”

Yeah. Definitely an edge. He knew Liz still had feelings about Jane, complicated feelings because Jane, his adopted sister, had killed Evangelina, Liz’s sister, as part of the way to send a demon back to hell. It should have been an Everhart problem, not a Jane problem, but she had been forced to clean up their nasty, demon-calling, black-magic, and blood-magic problem.

They had talked about it a lot. Rationally, Liz knew there had been no choice. Her heart was a different thing entirely. It was all tangled up in love for the sister who had been lost long before she died, shame for her actions, horror, and mostly, “what ifs.”

“What ifs” were the most useless emotions in the world. They were like the brain gnawing on a bone, or maybe like the heart sucking on poison candy, knowing that nothing can change but still going over and over and over it. A form of even more PTSD. He knew all about that.

He finished his texts and turned to her. She was standing in the doorway, arms on her very curvy hips, frowning. Eli said nothing. Giving her time for the emotional reaction to fade and time to let her think. She looked good standing there, her red hair loose on her shoulders and her eyes glaring.

After a good minute, she took a breath and blew it out, her boobs rising and falling with exasperation.

And yeah. Boobs. He loved her boobs.

Her eyes narrowed as his lingered on her chest. He ignored the warning.

Her breathing was better than when they first started dating. Her lungs were healing, lungs damaged when her sister, Evil Evie, dropped a boulder on her and crushed her. She’d nearly died. That caused tangled emotions Liz was still sorting out. The pneumonia had also taken its toll.

But… boobs. It’s a guy thing.

“So. Fine,” she said. “You called Jane because she’s in charge of keeping all the dangerous paranormal creatures in line, and this thing is sick and might endanger a human. It’s her responsibility.”

Eli tilted his head and gave her a sideways nod. Still waiting.

“Are you staring at my boobs?”

He let a slow grin spread across his face. “Lizzie.”

She blushed but frowned harder. “Stop that. You’re distracting me.”

“Kinda what I had in mind, girl.”

“Does this mean I don’t get paid for this job?”

He knew about the state of her finances. He had a feeling the boobs were going to be off limits until the chicken killer was dispatched and she got paid. “Not necessarily. It means that if the costs go higher than expected or humans are endangered or injured, you won’t be held accountable for any criminal or civil lawsuits.”

“My contract with the Drakes covers all that.”

“If they get hurt, yes. If you and our crew gets hurt, yes. If a third party gets hurt, and if the governor and his legal team haven’t signed off on the op, then that third party can sue you. And me. And Chewy.”

Lizzie’s posture relaxed and she shoved her hair back behind her ears. “Are we deputized or something?”

“No. Not as long as it’s a private matter, and not a public one. It’s just legal language put together by the Roberes and the governors of Louisiana and North Carolina, the two states where Jane has an official residence. In return for legal protection, if the creature gets away and/or does harm, Jane and her crew take care of things.”

“I’ll still get paid?”

Eli laughed softly. “Yeah, Lizzie. You still get paid. We leave at four a.m.. And this time, bring more magic woo-woo stuff. Amulets. And those stone batteries. And there will be no cutting yourself to feed any spells with your blood. Understood?”

“You’re still looking at my boobs.” She smiled and pointed at her face. “My eyes are up here.”

“I’m multitalented at multitasking.”

“Yeah?” she stepped inside and closed his door. “Let’s see how that goes for you.”

She dropped her amulet necklace on the table at the door near his keys and his wallet, pulled her clothes off, and walked to his bed. Naked. All that firm rounded flesh and that swinging red hair down below her shoulders, pointing to that amazing ass.

Ho-ly hell.

When he just stood there with his tongue metaphorically hanging out, she pulled down the covers and faced him. And gave him the “Come here,” gesture, curling her index finger in to her fist.

He went.

Liz

“You’re right,” she gasped when she could talk again. “You’re pretty good at multitasking.”

“And you have amazing boobs.”

Laughter spluttered up out of her and she rolled over to lay beside him, still breathing hard.

“It’s a guy thing,” he said, staring up at the ceiling with a soft smile on his face.

“I get it’s a guy thing.” She didn’t tell him that plenty of women probably liked boobs too. And she didn’t hide her body from him. She wasn’t as slender as she used to be, and even all the cardio and weightlifting he was forcing on her to rehab her entire body, hadn’t left her slender yet. Probably not ever. And that seemed to be just fine with Eli. He liked her just the way she was, and that had made her more confident and secure in her looks and the whole body image department. “You’re breathing as hard as I am.”

“Sex with you is a pretty good workout.”

She hoped it was more than that, but they hadn’t done the whole “I love you” thing yet. No. Despite her gramma’s warning about giving away the milk for free, they had jumped right from defeating a demon and a pack of insane werewolves into bed. Well not right away. They waited a few hours for her to recuperate from all that spent magical energy. But it had been worth the wait. The sex had been glorious. It still was. But… still no, “I love you,” and she was not going to say it first. And since he still hadn’t said it, he was going to have to work for it.

Releasing the hand he had taken, she rolled over and off the bed, to her feet, and into the bathroom. When she came out, she picked up her clothes from the floor and dressed, ignoring him. When she was fully clothed, she met his warm brownish-greenish eyes and said, “I’ll see you here by 3:30 a.m..”

All that warm light drained out of his eyes. “You’re not staying the night?”

“Things to do, gear to pack, people to talk to.” She patted his foot. “See you in the morning.” And she left his room, picking up her necklace as she went by it. The look on his face was priceless.

Liz

“We think it might be a Dwayyo. One with rabies.”

A look of constrained fury and disbelief crossed Cia’s face, and she plopped her fists on her hips. “And you’re going after it? Are you crazy?”

“Yes. And nope.” Liz went back to checking the power levels in her magical batteries. They were large stones that could hold raw energy, which could then be transferred to amulets holding workings—or spells as mundane humans often called them. The batteries were great at what they did, but they were also freaking heavy, as rocks tended to be, and not easy to carry on a hike into the mountains. She put them in the bottom of her backpack and adjusted the positioning of both against the special, super strong mesh. She could now tuck an amulet into the mesh pocket on the outside, which rested against the mesh on the inside, and recharge fast, on the go, without having to take the batteries out and position them with the amulet. On the necklace were the new workings, the ones she had sorta tested, but not really, and certainly not under dangerous conditions, but ones that might come in handy. Including the curse amulet that was technically illegal according to the US council of witches, people who might put her in a null jail if they found out. So, she had to be careful how she used it.

“Liz. You can’t do this.”

What? The untested amulets? She glanced back and Cia was still standing there, arms akimbo and murderously angry.

They were identical twins, and though they had once looked alike, they had changed a lot in the last few years. They did, however, still share bone structure and a lot of the same mannerisms. Cia had always been the adventurous one, had been born with more freckles and had a hotter temper. Over the last few years their body types, fashion sense, and hair had grown in diametrically opposite directions. Cia was model thin and now wore her hair in stripes of blondes, browns, and something closer to her more natural reddish shade. She was also taller in the stellate boots. Cia had a thing for very expensive footwear and even more expensive pocketbooks. And now that she was engaged (secret from the press, but Liz had seen the ring) to the country singing superstar Ray Conyers, she had the money to indulge her passion for fashion.

“Jane Yellowrock talked to the governor. We’re authorized to track down the rabid Dwayyo and capture it or euthanize it.”

“You’re working for … her?” Cia was beginning to sound angry. Maybe even incensed.

“More like she’s working for me,” Liz said nonchalantly. “I got the gig all by myself and pulled Eli and Chewy into it. Eli notified Jane’s legal team about the possibility of the creature’s species and the rest is history.”

“But you hate her.”

Liz frowned and went back to packing, adding a pair of long underwear, extra wool socks, and a commercially packaged first aid kit, to go along with her healing stones on her amulet necklace. She touched the necklace on its charger stone, to find it was nearly full. It would be stuffed full by three a.m., which was the time her cell was set to wake her. “Not hate. Hate is stupid.”

Cia stepped up and took her sister’s hand.

Liz stopped. Everything took on a stronger impact when they touched: the magic seemed to spark between them; the lights seemed clearer and brighter, though they were turned on low in the house they had bought together; and the pain of losing her sister was suddenly sharper, more cutting.

They had planned to live here together forever, bringing their husbands in and adding on bedrooms and baths as needed, raising their children together. She knew that had been a childhood dream, lost forever now that Cia would be marrying Ray. The two of them would live at his place outside of Nashville and they would travel the world together, doing concerts. Their children would be homeschooled and raised on the road and in another state when they were home.

And Liz would live here alone. Forever.

Keeping all that off her face, Liz pulled her twin into the living room and gestured at Cia’s chair. “I have tea. Blueberry Merlot. If you can stay awhile.”

“I’m staying.” Cia removed her fancy leather bag from her buttery-soft leather recliner and pulled out her fancy cell to text her rich fiancée. Knowing she was jealous and hating herself for it, Liz went into the kitchen and poured tea in the prewarmed cups, bringing both of them into the living room. Using the remote, she turned on the gas logs. They had been a gift from Ray. Along with the chair. and all the other stuff he had delivered.

Ray Conyers said he wanted to keep his love in style. But mostly he wanted her all to himself. Or that was what it felt like to Liz, not that she would ever say that to her twin again.

“I’m all yours,” Cia said. “Talk to me.”

Liz curled up in her chair, an old, comfy Lazyboy in a dark blue cloth that didn’t show stains. Just like the one Cia used to sit in, that had been thrown out when Ray sent his presents. And changed their lives.

“This is overdue, I guess,” Liz started. She sipped. Pulled a crocheted afghan over her legs and scrunched her butt deeper into the seat.

“Use words,” Cia commanded. And sipped. “Good tea.”

“Mmmm. Okay. I have to make a living. I can keep working at the restaurant, but that isn’t enough for upkeep on this house, taxes, and a car payment.”

“I can—”

“Stop,” Liz interrupted. “I’m not a charity case. I don’t want Ray’s money.”

Cia winced. Liz knew the wince was because she kept saying she didn’t want Ray’s money either. Except, Cia wanted nice things. And a cushy lifestyle. And so… Yeah. Cia wanted all that Ray could offer her. And she was willing to compromise everything she had been to keep him and live that life.

Liz accepted that because she had started making compromises too, to win and keep Eli Younger. To transform his interest in her into love and make him want to stay with her. To keep her around. And she’d move to New Orleans with him if he asked her.

So… So, she really had no right to be upset with Cia. Damn it.

“I want to make a living,” Liz continued. “I’ve been growing our magical investigative business. My investigative business. A contract with the governor’s office, the contacts I can make on this gig, and a successful conclusion to this case, could help that a long way. I want this, Cia.”

“You want Eli.”

“Yes. I do.”

Cia looked around the house they had bought together and Liz didn’t know what she saw anymore. To her, it was comfy and cozy, and warm and worn with love, but the kitchen and bathrooms needed to be remodeled, and the hardwood floors needed to be refinished. The furniture was mostly old and frayed and soft, and held memories of their youth, and only Cia’s chair was new. But the house was theirs. They had fought for it. Bought it together.

Liz couldn’t keep it without an influx of cash, because she still had to buy Cia’s half from her. Money. She needed a lot of money.

“Liz,” Cia said, bringing her attention back to sister. “I haven’t said anything, but I’ve had my lawyer draw up the papers. I’m deeding the house to you.”

Liz’s eyes went so wide, she felt her eyebrows hit her hairline. “What!” Her tone was not pleased. It was downright angry. And Cia seemed to expect that reaction.

“As part of my prenup with Ray, we’re both giving away—not selling—our current homes and buying one together. Ray’s giving his old house to his mama. I’m giving you this place, and my half is paid for.”

“With what? You don’t have any money! Everharts don’t do money!”

“This Everhart does,” Cia said softly. “I’ve been working for the band, enhancing their music with workings I got Molly’s husband to teach me.”

Liz pushed back in her old lounger as if to put distance from her twin. “What kind of workings?” she whispered, as if PsyLED might be listening with an ear at the door. “It’s illegal for witches to bespell crowds.”

“Not anymore. Not if that’s advertised as part of the act. It’s a legal loophole Ray’s lawyer found. Now all the advertising promises a magical glow at the live concerts. It’s a huge part of Ray’s rising popularity. I’m a huge part of his rising popularity. So I get a bigger cut. Way bigger. And I can sell similar things to other bands and touring singers. I have my own money now. And Ray?” She smiled slightly, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “You know how you said that Ray wants me to be his kept woman? Well, that’s off the table. Now that I have my own freedom, my own power? His lawyer and my lawyer put their heads together, and not only am I protected, I’m likely to get rich. Like really rich. So I paid off this house and I’ve deeded it to you. The only catch is that if Ray ever pisses me off, I get to move back in, no questions asked.”

“You gave me our house.” Liz’s tone was emotionless, waiting for the ba-da-boom next line of this gag.

“I did. Remember when we used to play the game of ‘What if?’ back when we were kids, on long trips?”

“What if I won the lottery?” Liz smiled slightly, staring at her gorgeous twin, or this really good imitation of her. “I remember.” Where was the ba-da-boom?

“Do you remember my answer? It was always the same.”

“You’d buy us all houses so we didn’t have to share rooms and closets and bathrooms.”

“Finding Ray and learning how to use my moon magic to enhance Ray’s fans’ listening experiences has been like winning two lotteries. And yours is the first house.” Her words sped up, as if she was trying to convince Liz of their truth and validity. “Amelia and Regan get the next house. They want to live together, and are looking for a bigger house, which they say they’ll share and then sell in a few years, when they can parley it into two smaller houses, next door to each other, with a pool, and still make a profit. And Molly, since her house burned to the ground and she’s getting a new house anyway, said that instead of a house, she wants college funds for all her ankle biters. And Mama said she doesn’t want a house either but she’ll think about what she wants and tell me later.” Cia stopped, her eyes wide. She put her tea down and scooted out of her chair, over to the old recliner. She perched on the edge of the chair arm and touched Liz’s shoulder with tentative fingers, and gently put Liz’s cooling tea cup on the table.

“Liz?” Cia touched Liz’s chin, nudging her to make eye contact.

“That’s no ba-da-boom.”

“No. I’m not joking. What’s wrong? This is all good stuff. Different stuff, but good stuff.”

The weight of her twin’s words landed on her. Cia was giving her their house. But the words that came out of her mouth were about a different subject entirely and she didn’t expect them at all. “What if I fall in love with Eli?”

Cia chuckled and squeezed her fingers. “Then you can go live in New Orleans if you want. Sell this place or rent it out and follow your heart. Just like I’m doing.”

Liz grabbed her sister in a bear hug, her face in Cia’s middle. Her twin’s dress was soft, not silk but something just as fancy, fitted around Cia’s too thin waist. “You’re too skinny.”

“And you have muscles. Dang. You been lifting weights with tall dark and scrumptious? Or maybe just lifting tall dark and scrumptious himself?”

Liz laughed, a chattering sound that stuck in her throat. “Something like that.” She pulled away and looked up at her twin. “You really did that? Gave me the house?”

“I really did that.”

“Nothing’s ever going to be the same again is it?”

“Nothing’s been the same since Evie died.” Her twin’s mouth turned down in a hard line. “Maybe this is the new normal. New business opportunities. New men. New workings. New lives. But whatever we have now and in the future, it’s all rooted in the past, growing up in the Everhart house.”

“Together,” Liz said.

“Together.”

Eli

Eli had one pack strapped with a bedroll, medical supplies, MREs, a lighter, and necessities. The other rucksack was for weapons. He and Chewy double checked their gear for balance and duplicates. They had no idea how many creatures they might face and they had arranged the gear accordingly.

Liz seemed to assume there would be only one creature, and also assumed it was a Dwayyo, but civilians tended to not think worst case scenario. Since nothing was known about the thing they were tracking, it could be a pack.

He had talked to Rick LaFleur late last night and had PsyLED backup if needed. If they got in a jam. If they happened to have a cell signal.

On a sling, he’d be carrying an old M4 Benelli tactical shotgun. In double thigh rigs were two Beretta 92FS semi-automatic pistols, one loaded with silver-lead composite rounds, the other loaded with standard lead. In his weapons rucksack were multiple shells and slugs for different paranormal creatures and fully loaded mags, color-coded for quick replacement. On his belt were stun grenades, AKA flashbangs. He had two vamp-killers strapped close, and two fixed blade knives for close in work. Alex had provided him a loitering recon drone and its control system.

Chewy said, “I still think we should take the Switchblade.”

Eli grunted. The Switchblade 600 was a man-portable tactical missile, launched from a tube using compressed gas. The system weighed fifty pounds, which they would have to carry up and down mountains. “The drone can scout ahead. If there’s a pack, we can have backup in two hours, and that time falls easily under the hedge of thorns wards Lizzie can set up. If there’s a pack, we just dig in and call for help.”

“With what cell system? Hoss, we’re going in-country.”

Eli stared at the Switchblade in the SUV. “Only use would be if there’s a pack and they’re all in one place: house, vehicle, barn. If they’re scattered, moving through underbrush, in a cave, it’s no use to us.”

Chewy gusted out a breath. “Daddy won’t let me play with the new toys.”

Eli grinned and got in the passenger seat of the vehicle, riding shotgun. Chewy drove while Eli tried out the new earbuds that worked as talkies and noise reduction, automatically gaiting ear protectors, muffling specific wavelengths of sound, increasing others, and instantly closing down at dangerous noise levels to protect ears. The headsets with full ear protectors were better, but these utilized their own signals and were supposed to be better than traditional talkies. He’d see if they lived up to the hype. The old-fashioned talkies were stored in the gear bag. Comms redundancies were vital. He also had a portable cell signal enhancer, but he had no idea if they would be able to make use of it.

He glanced at Chewy’s choice of weapons, calculating firepower. Decided they were good.

Eli

Eli expected Liz to be late, but her Subaru was already in the Drake’s driveway when he arrived. Lights came on in the house as he turned in.

Lizzie had told him about Drake’s attitude, and when the man came out onto the front porch he was everything she had said. He was wearing a robe and house shoes, real pajamas showing at wrists and legs, shiny material that caught the porch lights, like satin or silk.

Eli didn’t believe in pajamas. There had been too many times when he’d had to wake from a dead sleep and throw on battle gear. Removing clothes would have been wasted seconds.

And shiny sleepwear was for girls.

Liz walked toward the front porch, and if his body language was an indication, Drake instantly started giving her a quiet tongue lashing. Which pissed Eli off.

His first instinct was to go defend her, but Chewy, who wasn’t much for physical demonstrations, put a hand on his shoulder. “Negative, Hoss. She won’t appreciate you jumping in to help her. Her job, her client, her responsibility. Chain of command. Besides, she’s a witch. Lizzie can take care of herself. Turn him into a fucking rabbit or something. Park the vehicle.”

Eli cursed softly under his breath and maneuvered his personal SUV in next to her car, both vehicles out of the way and not blocking either the drive or the street. Moving quietly, he and Chewy got out and unloaded, though he watched the scene unfolding at the front of the house.

Chewy was a mountain of a man, and a mountain-man. Bearded, graying early (because he was only in his forties, and that was still young for a civilian), Chewy was wearing camo overalls and carrying a pack, one that had to weigh eighty pounds, as if it weighed ten. Chewy looked like a modern day version of a farmer melded with a boulder and a silverback gorilla. His knees had both been replaced after they were damaged in an accident in Kuwait, and he once again moved with the grace that had resulted in him being named after a Star Wars character.

They closed the hatch and Liz walked to them, Drake watching from the corner of the porch. She was dressed in loose, water-wicking hiking pants, her old hiking boots, and a T-shirt under a pink plaid shirt, her pack and her hiking stick on the ground beside her car. “Hi. Where’s Brute?”

“He’ll be here. He’s excited at the idea of a hunt.”

“But—”

“Liz, you remember Chewy,” he interrupted, and pointing to the far side of the vehicle. He wasn’t about to tell Liz and Chewy that Brute could bend space and time and get where he wanted without a car.

“Chewy,” she said, spotting him in the shadows of predawn, “thanks for helping out on this job.”

Chewy shrugged, and his beard moved with the motion like a graying groundhog was hanging onto his chest. “Good friends, nice hike in the woods, and I might get to shoot something. And a payday. I’m all in.”

That was a lot of words from Chewy. Eli hid a smile. His girl had bewitched his old friend. Before he could tease Chewy, something white blurred at the edge of the road.

Chewy had a weapon drawn and aimed on the target in the blink of an eye.

“Stand down, Chewy,” Eli said.

Chewy complied, but it was slow and the man swore under his breath about working with the natives never being like this before.

Brute trotted up the driveway, a massive white wolf, shining in the dark. His tongue was doing that thing he did to look innocent, hanging out the side of his mouth.

“Where did he come from?” Liz asked.

That was a question he could answer. “Beats me.” He checked the backyard with low-light and then with IR vision goggles and said, “Clear,” before shouldering his packs on and Liz’s amulet bag to one shoulder. The stone amulets weighed as much as his pack. Too bad she wasn’t an earth witch; her gobag would have been a lot easier to manage.

Liz frowned at him but didn’t argue, and gathered up her overnight personal pack by the straps, her walking stick in the other hand.

“Let’s check out the chicken coop,” Eli said.

Through the predawn light, the team of four moved around back.

Eli knelt and shone a tiny high-beam light inside. The coop had been stick-built and had been constructed out of good material, sturdy six-by-six corner posts set into the ground, two-by-four roof and wall construction set on twelve-inch widths, high quality plywood, cedar-board exterior siding, a metal roof, with black screening and chicken-wire over the front area. He’d seen houses not this well-constructed. In some parts of the world this would have housed a family of four comfortably. He bet Drake never even thought about that reality.

The chicken-wire and screen had been ripped and torn, showing that the creature had incredibly sharp claws, nearly as sharp as grindylow claws. At the longest cut, a good four foot length, the two-by-fours that had once been horizontal supports for the screening were broken. The wood had broken instead of the nails pulling out, as if something heavy had dropped onto them, hard and fast. This thing was huge, or fast, or strong—or all three.

The birds had been removed and the coop had been shoveled out and hosed down. Drake probably had a chicken-coop guy, like a yard-guy handyman type he kept on call. He couldn’t see the man in silk pajamas doing any kind of manual labor himself. Might mess up his manicure.

Eli smelled nothing, but the wolf was having a different reaction. He heard it first, as if his own chest had been hit with a sonic weapon, a deep thrumming.

Brute had stopped six feet out and a growl started at the tip of his tail, reverberating up through his massive chest and out his mouth. It was like standing on top of a generator.

A grindy popped into place on top of his head again and chittered. But this time the cute neon green kitten-like critter didn’t flash its claws or cut the wolf, instead it bopped him on the head with its little fists until the growling stopped. Then it chittered some more, as if to say, “Stop that.”

It jumped to the ground, raced over, and climbed up Eli’s back to his shoulder. Right in his face. Eli went still as stone, not even breathing.

Its claws came out.

Six inches of steel sharp enough to slice through his neck in half a second.

The grindy chittered in his ear, softly, and raised one hand, clicking its claws together. Then it leaned to him, its whiskers brushing his face. It had black eyes and very sharp teeth, all of them visible in the glow from his flashlight. It chittered again and pointed to the left.

“That’s … new,” Liz said, her voice quiet.

“No shit,” Eli murmured.

“That’s the direction the tracks led,” Liz said.

To the grindy, Eli said, “Are you going with us?”

The grindy nodded.

“Is this thing we’re after under your judgment?” Meaning are you going to kill it.

The neon green kitten-like creature sheathed its claws, hiding them somewhere, which had to be magic. It bounced on all four paws on his shoulder, leaped to the ground, and bounded across the lawn, its nose down and tail up. From this angle, it looked sorta like a ferret.

“Hoss, you got some strange companions.”

“If it isn’t a were-creature we’re after, why is it sticking around?” Liz asked. When Eli didn’t answer, she said, “Brute?”

The wolf chuffed. The sound was different from his usual chuff, almost as if he was as confused as Eli was. The wolf trotted after the grindylow. Together they stood at the edge of the grass, where the lawn met the tree line, noses to the ground. In the FLIR ocular, the grindy jumped onto the werewolf’s back and the wolf trotted into the woods.

“I guess there’s five of us,” Liz said. “I wonder how much the grindylow expects to be paid.” She positioned her pack, gripped her walking stick, and followed. Ruminatively, she said, “I figure the grindy wasn’t invited, so it doesn’t get paid except in food.” She walked into the dark under the trees, her walking stick glowing like a Star Wars light saber.

Eli grinned, his reaction hidden in the dark.

“Like I said, Hoss. You got some strange companions. But your lady, I like her.” His voice took on a gravely note. “I suggest you do right by her.”

Chewy followed Liz, leaving Eli to cover their six and ponder over his friend’s warning.

Liz

Before Cia left she had given Liz a present, a working that coated her walking stick and caused the wood to shine like neon. It gave off just enough light to see several paces in front, but didn’t mess up her night vision as badly as a flashlight. She was able to step over roots and rocks, around trees, and under branches without tripping or putting an eye out in the dark. The working also turned the wolf’s fur green and the grindy nearly black, and made her slacks glow a weird olive color.

Cia claimed she had made it from the glow of the full moon itself, but Cia was also apt to take liberties when it came to gifts and workings. Similar to the liberty of giving away houses, so she could marry the love of her life.

Liz had a house.

All her own.

That was … weird.

Maybe even more weird than following a werewolf and a grindylow up a mountain, on what looked like a goat trail, before dawn, to hunt down a rabid shapeshifter from legend. Or maybe not. The grindylow’s presence cast doubts on that probability. Liz pulled on her gloves, checked to see if the stone she had embedded in the walking stick was still full of power, and started up the hill, her stick glowing like a wizard’s staff in a fantasy movie, in the lead.

Well, not exactly. After the werewolf and his passenger.

Liz

The path was steep and Liz was breathing deep but not hard or fast or in pain. She was getting better, she thought, as she grabbed a rough tree trunk and pulled herself up and over and hard to the left. And stopped dead.

A yard in front of her, the wolf leaped high, landing a good two feet above her head; her eyes followed the movement and the height and she knew there was no way she could follow. The path was totally blocked by a wall of rock in front of them: a stone wall to their left and front. To their right was an east-facing vista that revealed the coming sunrise and a drop almost straight down for… too freaking-many-hundred feet.

Liz sat, pulled off her pack, and opened a thermos and a high-protein energy bar for breakfast. Chewy dropped his pack, stretched beside her and began to pull out his own breakfast. Eli didn’t even pause, just set her stone pack beside her, climbed a tree, and followed the wolf.

“Hoss’ll be back in a bit,” Chewy said after a while, laying back on his pack and crossing his feet.

“Mmmm.” They watched, silent, as the sky lightened and turned golden, though the orb of the sun was still below the horizon. “Gonna be a nice sunrise,” she said after a while.

“Better than being shot at on some desert mountaintop in fucking Afghanistan. Begging your pardon, ma’am.”

“No pardon necessary. I’m grateful for your service,” Liz said, nibbling her energy breakfast bar and sipping her highly caffeinated tea.

There was no sound of traffic. No sound of planes overhead. Morning birds started calling into the silence. The sky lightened into golds and peaches and shrimps and purples as they waited.

Chewy ate several sticks of jerky, his hand waggling up and down, the gesture necessary to bite-tear-rip through the tough dried meat clenched in his teeth. It was a signature jerky-eating maneuver.

“You like venison jerky?” he asked after a while. Chewy opened another paper bag and extended three strips of dried meat, holding them by the paper. “I make my own.”

Hikers used paper for everything they could, so they could burn their biodegradable trash as part of starting a fire at night. Liz approved. She took a slice and handed him an energy bar, also wrapped in paper. “It’s from Seven Sassy Sisters. Our restaurant. My sister Molly makes them.”

“Sure.” He ate it in two bites. “Tasty,” he said, as she bit down on the jerky and began the up and down hand waggling.

“So is this,” she said around the meat. “I like the rosemary flavoring.” And it was true. The deer jerky was delicious.

“Glad you like. I usually prepare three deer a year as jerky, and rosemary is my favorite. I can use it on the trail to make a really good stew. Hoss likes it too.”

They ate in companiable silence as the sky continued to change color. Chewy drank coffee that was thick as tar and about the same color, from a thermos that, while it looked to be permanently stained, might have started life as some tan shade.

By the time they were finished and all the wrappers were cleaned up, a rope dropped down the boulder. Liz leaned back and shaded her eyes, looking up and behind her. Eli was standing on top of the seven-foot-plus tall boulder, outlined in the brightening light, his face in shadow.

“You missed breakfast, Captain America,” she said.

“Captain America?” Chewy started laughing, a sound like the boulder beside them might make if it pulled loose and rolled from the stone wall. “Captain America,” he wheezed.

“It’s what my niece and nephew call him.”

“Yuck it up, Chewy,” Eli said, sounding bored. “Liz, I have a Z-drag assembled and I can pull your pack and then you right on up. Chewy’s a different matter. He weighs in somewhere between a small horse and a young bull.”

“I’ll manage Hoss. Me and my new knees got this.” Chewy started rummaging in his pack again.

Liz tied her packs and the walking stick to the rope and her… boyfriend?… pulled her packs up hand-over-hand. When the rope came back down, the end was tied in a loop. She put one foot in it, protecting her knuckles from the stone in front of her, and her shoulder from the stone beside her, studiously not looking out over the cliff to her right as Eli pulled her up and away from the edge. She rose in jerks and pauses, which was embarrassing because she was so… not skinny… but she didn’t hear Eli grunting, so that was good. And when she rose over the edge, he secured the line and lifted her as if she weighed nothing.

“Hey Lizzie.”

He looked up and around, taking in everything, before he kissed her soundly and noisily. “What say we leave Chewbacca behind and do this alone?” He looked around again, and the fire of embarrassment and anger shot through her before she realized he wasn’t ignoring her, he was watching for enemies. Soldier boy at work.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He has really good venison jerky.”

“He’s dead weight.”

“I can hear you,” Chewy said.

Eli kissed her again. Looked around. Kissed her again. When he pulled back and stepped away, Liz was slightly breathless, and not from climbing the mountain. She said, “Are you kissing me to punish Chewy for something?”

“Happy happenstance. Mostly I’m kissing you because I like kissing you. A lot.”

His dark eyes returned to her, gleaming with something she didn’t see often, the light that was both reckless and totally aware, heated and cold all at once, the light of battle. She put a hand to her face. His beard, which he hadn’t shaved this morning, had scraped her delicate skin. Not that she was complaining.

“But I guess we should help the poor old man up the boulder,” Eli said. “We’ll need something slow to run after us if a bear decides to chase us.”

“I can still hear you, Hoss. Don’t make me come up there and whip your ass.”

“You cussing in front of my girl?”

“I apologized for the language. She thanked me for my service. We’re good.”

With a horrible rattling sound, a rope shot up over the boulder and Eli caught it one-handed, pulling it up. The rattling got worse as the top rung of a flex, leather, and chain ladder appeared. Eli grinned at her and secured the ladder to the drag line he had created around various trees. A minute or so later, Chewy pulled himself up over the boulder, taking in everything with eyes nearly as intense as Eli’s. The man was limber and nimble for such a seriously big guy.

Liz blinked when the ladder was pulled up. “You’ve been carrying that? All this way?”

“’Course. What do I look like? A monkey? Like Captain America, here?” Chewy made that rumbling laughter as he tossed the bulky, and clearly heavy, ladder into his pack. In a high falsetto, like a child, he said, “Hey. Captain America. Would you please carry my pack? It’s soooo heavy.” Chortling, he shouldered said pack and walked up the path and around the curve of the hill, leaving them behind.

Liz looked at Eli, who still had a bored expression on his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he would make fun of you.”

Surprise flashed across his face and was gone. Eli said, “Lizzie. I’ve been called worse. When we were in the field he used to call me Shit for Brains. A superhero is easy. Now gimme one of your energy bars. Saving the world uses up a lot of calories.”

Liz handed him an energy bar and followed Chewy. Shit for Brains. Yeah. Captain America was much better.

Brute

Chewy and the others were back along the trail and several hundred feet lower in elevation when the scent he was following got stronger. A lot stronger. The grindy chittered softly in his ear. Brute crouched low, belly to the dirt and pebbles, doing the predator crawl around the hill and through the twisted limbs of laurel. Not the trail the others would follow. Only the four-footed could make this trail. Or a monkey.

Before him, a clearing opened out, with a small shack built up against the hillside. It wasn’t much, maybe ten feet by ten, with a rusted metal roof. It had a leaning stone chimney that looked as if it would fall down with a slight wind, probably crushing the small shack. Place hadn’t been painted in decades, only a trace of green paint here and there, lots of moss and mold and rot. Twenty feet away, an old fifty-five gallon drum marked the spot where a springhead had been tapped and water trickled down, collecting into what looked like a sun-damaged kiddie pool. The pool was full and water trickled out of it, along the ground, out of sight. There was no driveway. No car. No motorcycle. No trail in. Not even a fire burning, no faint scent of smoke on the air. Nothing.

From the smell, there was no outhouse and the occupant… no. The occupants just used the weed-filled clearing. There was more than one, though how many he had no idea. He wasn’t even certain what they were.

Brute moved forward on his belly, but a cluster of burrs just in front convinced him otherwise. From the climb, he already had a few burrs stuck in his fur and there was no point in snagging more. They itched and stung.

He wondered if the pretty, redheaded witch lady would pull them out if he rolled over and begged nicely. That was a happy thought.

The wind shifted and he caught the stench of rotting flesh. A lot of rotting flesh, a familiar stench his wolf nose knew instantly. His snout wrinkled at the smell, exposing his fangs, and he had to fight the growl that wanted to vibrate into the weedy clearing.

He looked up and saw buzzards circling. There were more in the trees. Buzzards were scavengers, probably attracted to the rot he smelled. He watched a buzzard land behind a rim of land.

Brute crawled backward, then slowly half-circled the shack, trying to see everything there was to see, while still staying downwind. About a hundred yards from the ramshackle hut, he came upon a boneyard. It was more of a bone-pool, a water-filled pit with partial skeletons, animal skins, and bones inside. Most were deer, though he spotted what might be a goat, and two well-chewed dog skulls. A bear skull lay at an angle, still with black fur attached. A skunk coat was draped artistically over a large rib cage, one that was still intact with bits of flesh dangling from the ribs.

Nothing he could see from this vantage point looked human, so that was good. Water from the kiddie pool had eroded a track in the soil to fill the pit, keeping it full. The edges of the bone-pit were lined with a solid wall of cockleburs.

There were buzzards standing on the ground on the far side of the pit, looking at him, as if trying to decide if he was going to fight them for the dead. Brute blew out a resigned breath. He needed to be closer. Even if the ugly birds pecked him. Even if the cockleburs chewed and knotted into his fur.

Both would hurt, but he needed to see if there were human carcasses inside with the other bones. Ignoring the burrs that pierced the thin skin between his front legs and his belly with every movement, he edged closer to make sure.

Two buzzards spread their wings and flapped at him. They hissed, grunted like pigs, and raced toward him, threatening, and only stopping a yard away, close enough for him to grab them if he’d wanted to eat scavengers for dinner. Idiot birds. No wonder the dinosaurs went extinct.

He stopped on top of the burrs. Nothing in the pit looked human. Brute belly crawled away, taking the burrs with him, thinking.

On the way here, he had smelled no wildlife bigger than squirrels, and seen no deer pellets, no evidence of wild goat, elk, boar, raccoons, or possum. No wild dogs or feral cats. The Dwayyo had cleaned out all the prey wildlife in the area.

That was bad in so many ways. That explained why it had gone down its mountain looking for prey. And why its next meal might be human. It. They. How many? The smell of rot kept him uncertain. And skirling beneath it like the scent-equivalent wail of a bagpipe was the smell of sickness. Rabies and something else.

The wind swirled and the stench of sickness churned high. Something thumped inside the shack. Something was home and moving around. How many? How sick?

Brute crawled back to the trail edge and began trotting to the others, the burrs piercing his skin between his legs and chest. He was thirsty and bleeding from the burrs and the tangled shit hurt. Worse, he had no way to tell the others what he had found. Being a werewolf stuck in wolf form and under orders from an angel had always sucked, and more so in the communication department than any other. Well, except the sex part. He missed that more than anything.

Eli

He felt Brute coming before he saw him. That wartime instinct more than anything else because the wolf was silent. In case the wolf was being followed, he freed his weapon and aimed it up, where the trail—if you could call it a trail—narrowed and disappeared over a downed tree and a small rock fall.

Brute—sans the grindy—appeared at the top of the rock pile and eased his way down, walking with less grace than usual. When he got to Eli, he whined and licked his chops. It was cool at this elevation, but the wolf’s tongue was dry. Eli got out a bottle of water and a paper bowl and poured the wolf water. Brute drank it all and then lay down and rolled over, exposing his belly, which was matted with cockleburs.

“Oh. Poor baby,” Liz said, coming up beside him.

She dropped to her butt without recon just like a civilian out for a stroll. Eli took in the trail, above them, below them, and kept his weapon at ready. Liz pulled a tiny knife out of her pack. At some point she had put on gloves to protect her hands from rocks and roots, and she began to tease away the hair that trapped the burrs. Big burrs, little burrs, stuck in the wolf’s fur, nature’s hitchhikers. Eli figured that meant the trail was going to be difficult up ahead because he hadn’t seen anything like these burrs yet.

Chewy came up behind them and they exchanged a glance before they both sat, drinking water. That one glance had communicated everything. They were currently safe. Liz drank, too, as she worked. Time passed. Chewy shared his jerky.

“There are a lot of these things,” Lizzie said eventually. “What did you do, Brute? Roll around in them?”

Brute raised his head and whoofed softly, staring at her. Intense.

That look nudged something in Eli and his eyes roamed the path ahead.

Softly, her tone altering into something that had Eli’s instincts rising, Liz asked, “Where did you get all this, Brute? Cockleburs prefer waste areas and disturbed soil. They tend to grow around and in poorly nourished soils, like old barns, places where livestock are kept or butchered. We’re way too high for a pasture or cattle.”

Brute nodded and showed his teeth.

“Really,” she said, her tone thoughtful, her fingers slowing. “Your fur is damp here and there too. Cockleburs are especially common around the edges of ponds and places where drainage water has been trapped. Did you find the Dwayyo, Brute?” she asked.

He whoofed again and tried to roll over but Liz shoved him back down. “I’m not finished.”

Eli, already on high alert, was back on his feet, two packs still on the dirt. He pulled a sidearm with his offhand and moved in front of Liz, shotgun in the other hand and armpit. Chewy stood, only a little slower, his weapon out, his eyes taking in everything. Eli tossed his rope and ammo pack over a shoulder, sent Chewy a different look, and jerked his head toward the trail. Chewy gave a slight nod.

Following the trail, Eli scouted ahead. Behind him he could hear Liz talking.

“Let me get the rest of these, then we can do the werewolf Q and A.”

Her voice disappeared as Eli maneuvered up the steep trail, and when it turned into a ravine, he followed it up away from the cliff edge. The foliage changed. The trees were larger here, as if they hadn’t been harvested in nearly a century. Trunks and limbs coiled out and up toward the daylight in every nook and cranny where they had taken root, laurel and rhododendron thickets in between the tall trunks of oak, sweetgum, hickory, walnut. The birds fell silent as he pulled himself up the hillside, grabbing trees and hauling himself higher. When he reached the top, a crest of a hill, the faint track he had been following disappeared. This would be a good place to set a drone to look ahead, but he wanted his team together first.

Eli secured a rope at the top and dropped down fast, back to the narrow place where he had left his team. He whistled a single note before he came around the corner at the rock slide. Didn’t want Chewy to shoot him.

“Coulda shot your ass anytime for the last hundred yards, Hoss.”

Eli raised his head to see Chewy, well-hidden by his camo overalls sitting in the fork of a tree, his rifle pointing in Eli’s general direction. “First rule in country?”

“Always look up,” Eli answered. “Did look. Good camo.”

“The old lady made it for me. You find anything?”

“Big ass hill we gotta climb. I secured a rope at the top.”

“Your girl talks to the dog like it’s human.” Chewy pulled himself to standing position and eased down the hill toward Eli. “Damn dog talks back.”

“Brute’s a werewolf stuck in wolf form. He’s as much human as wolf most of the time.”

Chewy grunted. “So you said. Figured you were shittin’ me.”

“Not shitting you. Let’s go see what she’s figured out.”

Liz

She didn’t notice when Chewy disappeared, but it was shortly after she started questioning Brute. Once all the cockleburs had been removed from his fur, the wolf drank three bottles of water and relieved himself against a tree. Then the werewolf sat in front of her, waiting. The grindylow wasn’t around.

“Did you find the creature we’re chasing?”

Nod.

“Do you know what it is?”

Head shake.

“So, not a were creature. Not something common. Still possibly a Dwayyo. Did it smell sick?”

Nod.

“Rabies?”

Nod and head shake.

“Something like rabies but maybe not exactly rabies?”

Nod. Shake.

“Rabies and something else too?”

Slow nod, his eyes holding hers.

She remembered the staggering prints, as if the creature had been drinking. There were other things that could result in that kind of gait. “Maybe something like mad cow disease but in a paranormal creature?”

Brute’s head tilted and his eyebrows went high. He gave a soft whoof.

“Was there anything peculiar about it?”

Nod. Brute extended a paw to the pile of white fur and cockleburs.

“The cockleburs? Something I said about the cockleburs?”

Nod. Pause. Nod.

Liz thought back. “Badly kept farm earth and livestock and poorly drained water?”

He gave three distinct nods.

“Okay. But something else too?”

Brute stared at her, his crystalline eyes penetrating. She felt he was willing her to ask him something.

“Were there any other people there?”

Head shake.

“Were there any animals there?”

He gave a slow nod, but didn’t relax.

Her questions came faster. “Cattle?” Shake. “Pigs?” Shake. “Chickens?” Shake. “Goats?” Partial shake.

“Half goats?” Shake. “What else is there except forest animals?”

Softly, he, “Whuff.”

“Really? What kind? Wait. Wrong question. Penned?” Shake. “How do you keep forest animals unless you pen them?”

Brute rolled over lay belly up. When she didn’t say anything he sat up and rolled over again. And then did it again.

“Are you playing dead?”

Brute rolled up to a sit and nodded.

“Dead forest animals?”

Nod. “Dead Goats?” Nod. “Buried?” Head shake.

“So we have cockleburs and dead animals, but not buried? Soooo. Like in a pit partially filled with water?”

Slow head nod. His right paw patted the ground.

Liz frowned, not sure what he might mean.

From somewhere away, Chewy said, “More than one. Fuck.”

Brute whuffed again and nodded.

“Oh. Well. That’s not good. Do you know how many?”

Brute shook his head.

Eli reappeared around the narrow path ahead. “We’ve got a hike ahead of us. What did you learn?”

“The creature, maybe a Dwayyo, maybe not, with something like rabies but not just rabies. Maybe like rabies and mad cow disease. There’s more than one, and no humans are nearby. The location is close to a pit filled with water and the dead bodies of its dinners. Forest animals. Maybe a goat.”

“There’s a deer version of mad cow working through the deer population,” Eli said. “If the creature ate a diseased deer brain, got its blood in a cut, something like that, he could have contracted the disease. I haven’t heard of it passing to predators, though.”

“Come to think of it, Hoss, I ain’t seen no scat. No sign of deer rubbing on trees or eating small shoots. No sign of animals picking at dead trees. Raccoons and bear dig for grubs in trees, this time of year. Bear and boar eat nuts. We’ve passed trees everywhere with nuts beneath. The ground was undisturbed. This time of year that ain’t normal.”

Brute whuffed again, his front paws patting the ground up and down as if excited.

Liz asked Brute, “Did the creature eat all the prey around here? Is that why it went down the mountain?”

Brute nodded slowly several times.

“Rabid animals have a lot of trouble swallowing,” Liz said. “That might explain why the chickens weren’t carried away and why so many weren’t eaten. And Brute says there are more than one. Maybe not all of them have rabies.”

“Hoss, if it’s out of prey animals, means it’s likely to take on a human next. Or maybe it already did and the body’s under the surface and piled with the other bodies of its prey.”

Liz checked her watch and then her cell. No signal. “We can’t call for backup. We don’t know when it will need to eat again. If it’s sentient, and there aren’t any dead humans, can we kill it?” she asked Eli.

“No.”

“So what do we do?” she asked.

Eli grunted.

“Honest to God, talking to you is sometimes like pulling teeth. Or talking to the werewolf.”

“He’s thinking,” Chewy said. “It’s in the eyes. He goes away inside, doesn’t focus on anyone, but without losing any situational awareness.”

“Oh.” Liz thought back to all the times she had tried to draw him out. He had been thinking. That had to make her terribly annoying. “Well, dang.”

Eli blinked and said to her, “Chewy and I draw them out and you capture them in an inverted hedge of thorns.”

Liz stared at him. “Say what?” He repeated what he had said, and Liz laughed. “So, I’m going to create multiple circles of stones, set an undetermined number of hedges to be working cages, and you’re going to encourage,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “an insane paranormal creature with unknown magical gifts and abilities to step inside it, so I can activate the hedge.”

“Pretty much.” He grinned, his full lips slightly teasing. “I figured I’d let them chase me and I’d run across the circles. Is that a problem?”

“Yeah. What if it can leap fifty feet in single bound. What if it can fly? Teleport? Spit poison? Turn you to stone with a single glance? What if there are a dozen, some under the ground, or they have young that are hungry? What if they’re fast and they eat you before you take a single step?”

“I like your girl, Hoss. She’s smart. And what she said. What if all that shit?”

Eli ran a hand across his head, his military short hair making a scratching sound. “You got a better idea?”

“No,” Liz said. “Not until I know what it is and what it can do.”

“How ‘bout we not depend on the eye witness account of a nine foot tall wolf and go look ourselves,” Chewy said. “No offense,” he added when Brute showed his fangs. “Big teeth you got there grandpa. Now I know where that fairytale of the big bad wolf came from. Good thing I carry an ax, like any self-respecting woodsman.”

Brute showed them all his butt and went bounding back up the trail.

Chewy grinned at Eli and said, “I ain’t had this much fun since that weekend in Frankfurt.” He shouldered his pack and followed Brute.

Liz pulled her pack on too, and asked, “What happened in Frankfurt?”

“Neither one of us remembers, except that Chewy woke up after three days of drinking to discover he had a tattoo of Chewbacca on his butt. And no, that’s not how he got his call sign. That’s a different story entirely.” Eli walked away, carrying his packs and Liz’s stones.

“All I need is a yellow brick road,” Liz said, as she clambered over a rock fall and up what had to be a forty-five degree hill. “At least I brought my magic wand / walking stick.”

Eli

“At least I brought my magic wand / walking stick,” Liz grumbled. Eli smothered a laugh and led the way, up a slight hill, hearing her breathing, steady and deep, and her feet on the animal track, steady and sure. Yeah. She was getting stronger. She was holding. And though she looked all curvy and soft, she could take care of herself. He kept saying those words to himself, but in the back of his mind, she was a woman. She was weak and easily broken. And he knew if he gave into that fear and she saw it, she’d be pissed. Especially after she saved them on another mountain, on another type of hunt entirely. Of course, a pissed off Lizzie was the best kind… He grinned into the day, his eyes automatically taking in the surroundings, high, low, left, right, ahead.

Eli

At 13:42, they reached the crest of the steep hill where he had secured climbing ropes to help Lizzie and Chewy and the gear to the top. Autumn had been on hold this year, the weather too hot and dry since August for the leaves to change color much in the North Carolina mountains. But at this elevation, it was already autumn, and brown leaves lay in piles on the ground.

While Chewy and Liz put food together for a late lunch and chatted like besties—he was for damn sure gonna rip Chewy about girl-talk—Eli assembled the drone and got it ready to fly. It was cool under the tree canopy, and the wind was steady, and slow. Should be a good place to launch.

Food was cold seared bratwurst from an insulated pack, served on buns, with chips and trail mix, and water flavored with electrolyte tablets. Liz heated up the brats with an amulet, which had his old friend love-struck for sure. As Eli worked, he watched Chewy mull things over.

Chewy finished off four brats ‘n buns before he asked, “How much for one a them amulets? I can’t tell you how many times I had to eat cold MREs, and in winter, cold food ain’t shit. Pardon, Miss Lizzie.”

“Tell you what,” Liz said. “You take a healthy deer for me, I’ll pay for processing, and you give me half the processed venison, no pork fat added, and whatever you think is fair in jerky sticks. In return, I’ll give you two permanent amulets to heat up food and liquid, two tick and mosquito amulets for summer hiking, and one battery stone to keep them charged. Oh. And you call me Liz, not Lizzie. We had a lizard in fourth grade named Lizzie, and the kids teased me about being a lizard all year. Deal?”

Chewy frowned and scratched his chin through his beard. Eli had seen him use this slow, thoughtful process while bargaining over trinkets for his mother and then also for his wife, in various tribal bazaars across the world. “I don’t know,” he rumbled. “I kinda like Lizzie.” He pulled up his left sleeve to reveal his tatts. The left was the safe arm. The right had lots of art of naked women engaged in sex-capades with other women. The left was mostly animals and pithy sayings. “When I was growing up, we had anoles. I used to feed them these little worms my mama bought for me. Mealy worms, she called ‘em. My first tat was mama.” He revealed a heart with a red banner across it, and the word MAMA in fancy caps below it. “My second tat was this right here,” he turned his arm over and showed her a green lizard. “I call her Lizzie, and when I was a kid I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, just like you. So while I can agree in principle to the rest of the bargain, I can’t agree I’ll always remember to call you not-Lizzie.”

The drone ready to fly, Eli leaned back against a pack and watched his usually-silent friend become seriously loquacious with his girl. It was cute. Like BFFs. Like they should paint their fingernails and braid their hair. Chewy would be adorable with his beard braided. Which he would razz his friend about after this was over. Over beers in Chewy’s favorite joint. “You trying to make time with my girl, right under my nose, Chewy?”

“Hell no, Hoss. This is serious bargaining right here. If I promise to not call her Lizzie and I slip up, then I’ve broken my word. So this bargain? It has to be airtight and fair to us both.”

“Okay,” Liz said. “I can allow the rare slip up, but for each one, I get three extra sticks of the rosemary jerky. And I’ll keep count.”

Chewy held out his hand. “Deal, Miz Liz.”

Slowly she took his hand. “I guess I should have added that I also hate Miz Liz?”

“Too late. A deal’s a deal and you are hereafter Miz Liz. We even have a witness.” He pointed a thumb at Eli, who offered a slight smile and tipped his head.

Beyond the crest of the hill Eli heard the faintest rustling, the sound in a Hertz his earbuds amplified. Before he thought, he was on his feet, his Beretta in hand, shotgun ready to fire and shoved deeply into his shoulder, striding uphill. Beside him, Chewy moved into position with a firing angle down the hill and hard to their left. The big guy put a hand on Lizzie’s shoulder, keeping her down, behind the packs. A roar came on the air, a thrumming like a big diesel engine.

The wind, which had been nothing but a faint leaf-rustling far overhead, swooped in, a hard downdraft that followed the shape of the hill. It carried brown leaves and smaller debris, like a dust storm.

Brute leaped to his feet. Growled. His ruff stood high. Lips pulled back to show teeth. Eli changed out for his other Baretta, this one holding silver-lead composite ammo. Chewy pulled his long-rifle. The wind increased. Trees bent, swaying like dancers. The leaves slashed down and swirled like waterfalls and waves.

Liz shouted over the wind, “Don’t move.” She touched a stone on her amulet necklace and opened a hedge of thorns around them. It glowed a startling red and hummed with power. Leaves and debris smashed into the hedge, gathering on the upwind side. The wind itself beat through to them. Against them.

That was the direction it would come. Eli ground his feet into the dirt, dropped to one knee, and held his ground.

“The wind’s origin are magical energies,” she warned. “Raw power.”

Chewy cursed softly, barely heard over the gale.

A half-form wolf-bear-human hybrid landed on top of the hedge. It screamed a howling, raging, singing sound of hate.

“Hold your fire,” he shouted to Chewy.

“Holy shit, Hoss. What the fuck is that thing?”

“That,” Liz said calmly, “is a Dwayyo. I’ve activated a recording amulet, audio only, and my cell is taking video. For the record, there’s no stone directly below us, so I can’t hold this hedge for long. The Dwayyo is attacking us,” she said holding her cell into the roar of the wind, videoing the attack. “We are in mortal danger. Eli. Does the law allow us to defend ourselves?”

“Yes. As long as it’s attacking. If it runs away we have to let it go.”

“My hedge is losing power fast. On three, I’ll drop the hedge. And you shoot that thing. One. Two. Three.”

The hedge of thorns vanished. Eli emptied his weapons, both of them, into the creature. Which was directly above Lizzie and dropping. Chewy fired three shots, fast, dead center. Blood splattered everywhere. Hot, Burning.

The Dwayyo screamed so loud it hurt his ears even over the deafness of the weapons’ fire. It landed on Lizzie’s pack, snapped at her, and raced away, back across the crest of the hill and out of sight.

Brute galloped after it, his body blurring as the werewolf did whatever magic the angel Hayyel had given it. He disappeared.

The wind died. The stink of sick, wet dog hung on the air.

Chewy reloaded. Eli reloaded. He had hit it with both standard ammo and silver-led composite shredders. And it had still had been able to run way. Fuck this shit. He should have let Chewy lug the Switchblade 600.

From the corner of his eyes, he evaluated Lizzie. She looked calm and collected. Unexcited.

She swept away the fall leaves, which were thicker and deeper in some places now, bare ground in others. She lay cleansing wipes out on the bare ground. She met his eyes and said, “That thing’s saliva and blood is caustic.” She tore open a cleaning wipe and unfolded it, wiping her face and hands, and even her hair down, then opened packets for Eli and Chewy. “Wipe your exposed skin and hair. Chewy, its eating a hole in your beard.” She pointed.

Chewy cussed and took the wipe, patting himself down. When Chewy was done and his weapon was again in place, Eli accepted the wipes. He found burned places on his arm and hand and wiped his head and neck.

Liz continued checking all their gear, wiping it here and there too. When she was satisfied, she pulled one of her battery stones out of the stone pack and placed the amulet necklace on it to recharge. Scrubbing her hands into the soil, she closed her eyes and blew out a breath. He knew she was reaching down for rocks below the surface, reaching deep. She frowned, which meant she wasn’t finding undisturbed stone, a bad thing for a stone witch looking for untapped power.

Her words quiet, she said, “We know several things about it and its power. It’s not moon called, because we’re close to the new moon, which makes it harder for were-creatures to achieve animal form. It isn’t any single animal we’ve seen before, but rather an amalgam of at least three: wolf, bear, and human, or possibly also something like chimpanzee. Its shoulders were built for swinging from trees. It’s carnivorous. It has fangs but also grinding teeth.” Casually she added, “I got a good look inside its mouth as it fell on top of my ward.”

Eli knew that meant they would likely have been dead or seriously wounded had her hedge of thorns ward not gone up in time.

She continued, “Its saliva and blood are caustic. It’s not cleaning itself. Its claws were caked with filth, and so was its hair. It’s been in this form for a while. It’s sick. It can control wind, so the primate part of it—” She stopped. “Her? There were four visible teats but it was wearing pants, so external genitalia was hidden.” She shrugged, but she was frowning as she watched her cell.

Eli glanced at Chewy, who repositioned for a full range of cover fire. He moved behind her to watch the video.

Eli had no idea why the gender of the creature should matter. Unless… He studied the creature as it fell. Again. Mouth open, raging. The teats were stretched across its chest, but they didn’t lie flat, like on Chewy’s chest.

It was feeding… “Pups,” he said. “Probably weaning. Old enough to not need mother’s milk, but young enough to still need to be fed.” He cursed inside. “Pants, so the primate part was likely human. Chimps don’t wear pants.

Liz nodded. “Its human part is potentially an air witch. That downdraft was full of power. And I can’t reach significant stone here until I hit the outcropping at the base of the mountain, which is very strange. I’m getting scree and rounded pebbles and larger rock, but nothing tied to bedrock. Sand mixed with clay. It feels like a huge embankment, like sand piled up from a river.”

“There’s dirt like that in the Carolina foothills,” Eli said, “probably the result of the massive floods at the end of the ice age.”

“This ain’t no hill, Hoss.”

“No,” Eli said. “This is the top of a low mountain ridge. Which means the river that created it had to be huge.”

Chewy indicated downhill. Way downhill. “There’s a small river down there. If my internal compass is right, it’s part of the Broad River Basin. But it’s a tiny thing. No way it reached up here.”

“Maybe the entire Broad River basin once came through here for a while,” Liz said. “Then changed course, leaving only one small tributary. Doesn’t matter why. I’m going to be nearly powerless up here.”

“Our weapons didn’t seem to hurt it much, Hoss.”

Eli finally located the drone. The wind had smashed it into scrap. He took in the rolling crest of the hill, down the way they had come, along off to both sides, and then over territory they hadn’t covered yet—the direction the Dwayyo had vanished in. There were no screams, yowls, howls, or other sounds of fighting, so he figured Brute had not engaged the enemy. Or had been ambushed and was dead.

As if he had conjured the werewolf, Brute appeared, the grindy again on his back. The wolf was unbloodied and there were no burrs in his fur, so where had he gone?

“Brute,” Liz said. “The female Dwayyo. Does it have young?”

The wolf gave a slow nod, his eyes on her.

“Damn, damn, double damn,” his girl said. “How many? And are they mobile and able to hunt and fight?”

Brute

Finally someone was asking the right questions. His eyes on the witch, Brute shook his head yes and then no. An ‘I don’t know,’ answer. He hadn’t managed to see the pups but he’d smelled them on her.

“Is the Dwayyo’s nest or home close?”

Nod.

“Are there any big rocks near the nest, like boulders buried in the dirt?”

Brute chuffed and nodded. He whirled and considered the faint scents on the breeze, nose in the air. Then he adjusted his angle and stuck his tail out straight, pointing his nose in the exact direction. Like a damn pointer dog.

“You are brilliant,” Liz murmured.

His ears flicked. Compliments went a long ways to assuaging his ego, but he’d be glad when his penance and his jobs in this form were over.

“Brute,” Eli said. “Can you get me up close and personal without us being scented or seen?”

Brute shook his head no. That thing knew they were close, and it was now in full on mama-beast-protective mode. Even as he thought that, the wind changed, blowing uphill, hard and fast. Overhead, limbs cracked. Leaves shot up at them in a whirlwind.

The direction of the wind would hide its scent as it approached.

Brute showed his teeth and growled, the sound long and low. Turning his nose into the scents, trying to determine patterns and location.

He thought about the angel and the power that Hayyel had made available for him to draw upon. He sank into that hard, cold, distant place the angel had shown him. Darkness and light. The place of the void before and after time. He could get lost there, forever, if he wasn’t careful. But he needed to see what had happened ten minutes ago.

The grindylow chittered with what sounded like irritation as his angel-magic rose. It grabbed his ears and handfuls of hair with its paws. It mewled and yodeled softly.

Time and space twisted. Brute stepped forward and yet back in time, five seconds. A lifetime. The channel of time and space was a tunnel, like a curl of a wave open in front of him. He gathered himself and the moment before the wave would have collapsed, he raced through.

He dove the last few feet (Years? Seconds? Miles?) and landed in the woods, a hundred feet in front of the small house the Dwayyo called home. He was crouched in the trees, hidden behind branches that still carried the browned leaves of autumn. He wasn’t in a spot he had reconnoitered before, the angle more toward the east and about twenty feet higher, so he could see down into the clearing.

The Dwayyo was standing in front of the shack in a rough circle, composed of trees. The creature lifted its arms into the air and sang a wyrd. It was a complex set of notes that seemed to have no equivalent to music as he understood it, but was more like the soft yowling of wild dogs combined with the hooting of monkeys. Around it—around her—wind swirled and gathered. Magic danced across the clearing, hovering over the pit filled with bodies. The air working gathered power, picking up leaves and twigs, dust and small rocks, becoming visible as the things around it were incorporated into the whirlwind.

The female might be going insane with rabies, and whatever other sick scent he could smell, but at this point she could still think.

Two small creatures toddled out of the house. They were spotted and furred things with claws and fangs. They were walking wobbly. Just young, or something else? That mad deer prion disease they had considered?

Killing a creature’s young, even sick young, went against his orders from the angel. Killing the mother would mean the pups were dead too, as they were too young to hunt on their own. One cub fell over and twitched. The smell of sickness reached him, carried on the scent of the pups. The disease carried by the Dwayyo had been transferred to the pups.

With a final note, the Dwayyo shoved with her front paws and the whirlwind raced toward the not-too-distant crest where the witch and the humans waited.

Fast as the wind, the Dwayyo followed, loping on four legs, fangs and claws fully exposed. Attacking. The moment the creature disappeared, Brute raced for the shack. Leaped over the two pups, now lying in filth. Landed inside. To focus on the small space.

Son of a bitch, he thought.

Liz

The wind rushed uphill.

Brute vanished in a spill of magic she could feel but not see.

Eli pushed her down and took up a protected spot behind a tree. Chewy lumbered to a bigger tree a good thirty feet away.

The wind increased in speed and abruptly cut off.

Liz opened a seeing working.

She rolled to her feet. She shouted. “Whirlwind!”

Eli moved. He grabbed all the gear in one hand, her arm in the other, and shoved them against the tree he had been leaning against. In seconds, he wrapped a heavy flex around the tree, gear, and both of them.

Three seconds. It had been inhumanly fast. Nearly Jane Yellowrock fast. And it proved how changed he was, how different he was, since his assorted healings with vampire blood. He wrapped his arms around her, still tying them to the tree.

“Chewy get over here!” she shouted.

Chewy hollered with what sounded like glee and strapped himself to his own tree.

The trees all around began to whip.

“Chewy!” she screamed.

“He ain’t coming,” Eli said, his voice battle hard.

The wind began to roar, a freight train in a forest. Tornado.

Though her face was pressed against bark, she pulled her amulet necklace around and pinched a special, one of a kind, hedge of thorns amulet between a finger and thumb. Hoping to provide them some protection.

Thirty feet away, Chewy was tied to the tree and was crouched down like a boulder in camo-overalls. Laughing like a maniac.

“What do you see?” Eli demanded.

“Air magic. Lots of it. Probably a prepared offensive working, so all the Dwayyo had to do was speak or sing or whistle and…”

The wind roared. It was unbelievably loud. Air pressure changed. Her ears popped. She tucked her face and closed her eyes. Eli was at her back, one arm and one leg wrapped round her and as much of the tree as he could reach. The other leg fixed against the ground and his free hand held a shotgun, braced against his shoulder.

The noise rose. Her ears popped again.

The whirlwind churned through the trees. Twisting them. Splintering them. Ripping them off at head height. Poised at the top of the hill, it danced back and forth. And then slammed at them.

Liz closed her eyes and pinched the amulet that held the untested working. Shaping the chained power with her will, she spread it gently, to include the bottom twelve feet of tree, all of them and the gear, and yet leaving Eli’s gun barrel exposed and separate. She had no idea if it would work.

It was a new working, what she was calling a shaped hedge, and it would be the coolest thing since sliced bread—if it worked, and if she lived and got to tell anyone about it. It was a version of a protective ward devised by her family, one she had been working on alone, without Cia because her sister was too busy to help with workings these days. And—

The wind howled and roared. Branches, whole trees, birds, and a squirrel slammed against the tree and the shaped hedge. The tree they were tied to juddered and shook. Eli’s body shuddered, hard as a rock at her back.

Everything larger than air molecules stuck to the outside of the working.

Clung there. The debris cut off the wind, like a clogged filter on a vacuum cleaner.

She opened her eyes, but could see nothing except for the dead animals and the trees and leaves plastered there. One dead bird had been stripped of feathers and crushed into her working by a tree. But before it died, its throat had been sliced open. The storm had been called with a sacrifice. A blood magic ritual. Beyond the physical, her seeing working showed her incredible energies, a maelstrom of directed force.

The tornado didn’t move on. It stayed on the crest of the hill. And it lasted. And lasted. More trees fell. The earth vibrated beneath her feet with the force of the destruction.

After what felt like an hour, but was likely only minutes, the violence and power of the air magic fell to a trickle. Her seeing working showed the magic leaching away into nothing. Eli started to pull away but she gripped his am. Things began to fall from the sky. Branches. Animals. Trees.

The ground bounced beneath their feet as an entire tree landed nearby. The air felt strange. Waiting. Sharp as thorns. As if more was to come.

“Chewy?” Eli yelled, right into her ear, which was still deaf from the wind. “Chewy!”

“Aoowww. Stop yelling,” Liz said, elbowing him in the gut. “Son of a witch, that hurt.”

“Chewy’s not answering. Drop the damn ward.”

“When I let the working go, all this stuff is going to hit us. Hard.”

He cursed, a single hard word of fury. He restrung the harness to support a tree that was leaning on the shaped hedge. “Can you see Chewy?”

“No, but—”

Something roared as loud as the wind had been.

Gunfire sounded. Three shots. Three shots. Then the boom of a shotgun.

Chewy, shouting. It sounded like “Die, you fucker!”

Another shotgun blast shivered the weird air and the tree leaning against her working slid to the side and fell to the ground with a huge thump.

Eli released the harness holding them together. Yanked Liz to the side. “Drop the ward.”

She did.

Large branches and small trees and dead animals slid, fell, dropped, and smashed to the ground. Liz wasn’t hurt. Eli raced away. Fingers nimble, she prepared to cast three workings, finding the necessary amulets.

She stepped around the tree.

Chewy was on the ground. Arms straight up and braced. The Dwayyo was above him. Its much longer arms were clawing his face and neck. Eli was racing toward the two. His body between her working and them. Stupid man. As he sprinted, Eli fired in multiple three round bursts, which the Dwayyo didn’t even seem to notice. He slowed. Then three blasts of the shotgun.

Eli advanced. Firing. Firing. Five shots in total. Adding rounds, or slugs, or whatever they were called to the shotgun and firing some more.

For some reason, the creature staggered back at the sixth round.

Liz stepped to the side and the moment the creature fell away, she cast the obfuscation working on Chewy.

The creature roared again.

Eli fired. Fired. Fired. It fell back. Bleeding. Nine shots fired.

Liz was utterly deaf.

The Dwayyo was on its knees. A bloody hulking mess. But still alive.

She pulled a stone from the quick release on her amulet necklace and tossed it at the Dwayyo. It hit and activated. The working instantly stopped blood from clotting inside the Dwayyo.

When someone had a clotting problem, the working was a life saver. A similar working had been used on Liz herself after her sister dropped a boulder onto her chest and she developed a clot in her lung. It was intended for healing. But it didn’t have to heal. It could also kill. When the working touched an injured creature, it was a curse working, intended to kill.

The Dwayyo wailed in pain. Its blood was red, a slightly darker, browner red than human, and thicker than human blood.

Eli fired once more and began to reload. The Dwayyo tried to get to its feet.

The darkness, usually quiescent inside her, woke. Not a demon. Not possession, but the grime and filth that had tainted her soul when she and Cia accidently called up a demon spawn when they were young and invincible.

With that darkness awake, it was easy to toss in a reverse pain-free amulet. The Dwayyo grunted with agony. Both workings, used as she just had, were illegal as hell, a ruling set up by the witch council of the US, but what those biddies didn’t know couldn’t get her in trouble.

Eli fired.

The Dwayyo screeched and raced into the woods. Limping. A trail of blood flowed behind it.

Knees bent, Eli chased after, still firing, reloading. Firing. Faster than strictly human.

She released the obfuscation working and knelt at Chewy’s side. There was blood everywhere, and he had rolled to his side, coughing up gouts of blood and gore. She removed a fresh clotting amulet from her necklace, activated it, and placed it into a long gash in Chewy’s throat. Activated three healing amulets and placed them on his face, throat, and upper chest.

So far as she could tell the creature hadn’t gored him, pierced him, cut out his eyes, or sliced his carotid or jugular. The scores were deep, but not immediately deadly. She darted back to Eli’s pack and dumped it out on the ground before she saw the first aid kit tied to the exterior. She unhooked the carabiner and sprinted back to Chewy. She found sterile pads, rolls of gauze, alcohol wipes, and that brown stuff, Betadine. She began cleaning him up, stanching the blood flow with gauze pads and wrapping him with the rolls of gauze and then with pink sticky wrap. Not tight on his neck. He had to breathe. Pads went to his face, and she secured some with tape, others with more sticky wrap. Head wounds bled a lot. She knew that. But this looked like a real lot. Blood was pooling beneath him on the dirt as she tried to stanch it.

She was muttering as she worked. “More. Thicker padding. Too much blood. Breathe, damn it. Agh! Cough in my face again and I’ll let you die right here. More pads. Soaking through. Have to risk another clotting amulet. You die and I’ll kill you. Out of sterile pads. Hang on, I have some clean underwear.” Liz sped to the tree where she and Eli had hidden beneath her ward and upended her own pack. In a moment she was back with cotton undies and two padded mitts for a fire pit. They went around Chewy’s neck too.

He coughed some more, not in her face, which she appreciated, and then he gasped, “Is my beard hurt?”

“What? You’re bleeding to death and you’re worried about your beard?”

“I think it tore out my beard. I love my beard. I’m a beard guy.”

“You’re showing some bleeding skin on your cheeks and your chin. Okay, a lot of hairless places. It took some deeper flesh too.”

“I’ve had a beard since the military. Damn it.”

“How’d you survive the tornado?”

“I slid to the other side of the tree. There’s three trees close together. Or there were. Besides, the tornado seemed interested in y’all, not me. It left me alone.”

“Tornadoes aren’t sentient.”

“Whatever. You weren’t watching it work.”

“We got the tornado and you got the insane Dwayyo?”

“Seems so. Got water? And sit me up against a tree. Hand me my weapons.”

“You’re bleeding to death you idiot. You can’t shoot.”

“Watch me.”

Liz looked around. The crest of the hill looked like … like a tornado hit it. Haha. She sucked in a breath. Her chest was tight. She felt lightheaded. A little like she might hurl. But she stretched out her back and then did her best to get the big man propped against a tree stump. Limbs and debris were piled behind him, giving him protection. Movement made him bleed again, but she didn’t think he would survive another clotting amulet. She found his pack and his weapons. By the time she got that done, they were both breathless, and she figured they were about out of time.

Trying to control her heartrate and breathing, mentally creating scenarios that would give them a chance to survive another attack, she dropped two stones from her amulet necklace onto the ground, one at Chewy’s feet, one three feet behind him, before turning her attention to the packs she had emptied. She stuffed things back inside in case they needed to get away. Gave Chewy a bottle of water and took one for herself.

She felt the magic happening, a cold, hard, brittle power that made the hairs on her arms stand up. The Dwayyo was drawing up power again.

There had been no gunshots. Was Eli in trouble?

Fear, which had been strangely absent until now, shot through her like lightning.

Brute

He trotted out of the time tunnel and into the clearing. Stopped short.

He’d heard the wind. The gunshots. But the twisted, blasted, ripped trees and the blood smell from the big guy were still a shock. Brute opened his jaws and dropped the pups on the ground by Chewy. Sniffed the man. Not dead. Not even dying, if he got medical help. Brute walked to Liz, who had glanced in his direction when he appeared but hadn’t bothered to pay attention. She was stuffing things into the packs.

Brute stopped and chuffed.

Liz looked up and focused on him. “Son of a witch on a stick,” she muttered. “What did you bring me?”

Brute lay down and the grindy held out to her the other thing they had found in the shack.

Gingerly, she took the bundle of rags and placed it on the ground. The grindy chittered, worried, and hopped off his head to lean over the bundle. Liz opened the cloth. Inside was a human-wolf-monkey-bear hybrid. A baby Dwayyo. She looked at the two pups. Back to the… the thing. “Two forms of young? Two born as animals and one as a human hybrid?”

“What the hell?” Chewy asked.

“Dwayyo pups. I’m guessing it’ll be back and it’ll be mad.”

“You think? Hey dog,” Chewy said.

Brute showed his teeth. The grindy chittered in anger, but this time at the human and not at him. The grindy defending him? Brute laughed, which, in wolf form, came out like he had something caught in his throat. A hacking cough.

The grindy stood up on his back and scolded Chewy.

Brute laughed some more.

Chewy looked like the Michelin man from the chest up, if the cartoon was bloody and bearded. He’d positioned his weapons all around him, extra ammo, shotgun, handguns. “I ain’t scared a your teeth, dog. Can you find that thing’s trail? Eli is after it. He’ll need backup.”

Brute trotted toward the shack and into the trees, turned around and came back. He locked eyes on Liz. He whoofed and then growled. Patted the ground with his front paws, like a cat kneading.

“It’s coming back, isn’t it?” she asked.

He nodded slowly.

“Okay.” She looked at Chewy. “I can get a ward up, but you won’t be able to fire through it.”

“No. I got the right ammo now.”

He held a shotgun shell in his blood-smeared fingers and she noted that the blood was dry, well clotted, not slick.

“Eli tossed it at me when he took off. It’s what he hit the thing with, the shell that caused the damage. Lead shot and steel shot allowed it to heal as fast as we pumped into it. Same with lead and silver composite rounds. But the special packed bismuth and zinc shot rounds did the trick. Hurt it.” He put a hand to his upper chest and breathed for a while.

“You dying?” the witch asked him.

“Not yet. And thanks for the … whatever took away the pain.”

“Welcome,” Liz said. “They’ll make you drunk in about half an hour. Be prepared.”

“I can hold my liquor.”

“Right. Sure you can. I’m going to sit and see if I can locate the boulders Brute told us about and set up a trap. You get to be bait.”

Brute chuffed with amusement.

With a wood splinter long as a human leg bone, Liz began scraping circles into the dirt and activating them. She put the pups into a small center one. Carved an outer one, that would double ring the pups. She dropped stones here and there, pulling them off her amulet necklace as she went. She was baiting a trap.

Brute figured it might save them. Or kill them all.

She sat down between the edge of the outer ring and Chewy and shoved her hands into the dirt.

Close by, something howled. Brute’s hair stood on end.

Eli

The howl echoed against the rock wall behind the shack, then faded. Silence descended on the open area, that strange, intense silence that falls on nature after some great storm, but this time without the dripping of rain or smell of ozone from lightning. He waited. His weapon was trained on the path from the shack to the crest of the hill, where Lizzie and Chewy were out in the open, unprotected except for any magics Liz might be able to draw up.

He breathed, his senses searching out in every direction. Nothing happened. Nothing moved. He scanned the trees, the rock face ahead, every shadow.

Ten minutes passed. There was nothing.

The wind shifted lazily, and he caught the stench of rotted corpses.

So. Something.

Placing each foot with care, he approached the shack. Letting out a slow breath, he darted inside. It was empty, except for the dead creature propped up in the corner, in the darkness across from the door. Naked, internal organs well chewed, maggots, rot and filth. He’d been dead for at least a couple of days, though death looked different here, at this altitude, in autumn, from the way it did in a desert country. The body had clearly been dinner for the pups and the mama Dwayyo. There was enough left to determine that even if the man had started out life as a human, he hadn’t been one when he died.

Human-ish torso and abdomen, overdeveloped shoulders, human thighs and upper arms, hairy lower limbs. He had long claws at the tips of each finger, and his feet were shaped like long wolf feet, but with raptor-length claws on them. Where his face hadn’t been eaten away, he had fangs and a skull shaped like a large primate, but more along the lines of a gorilla or a large chimp, than human. And his head had been bashed in, repeatedly. There was a good sized rock nearby, dried blood on one side, with a bloody partial handprint on the other. The Dwayyo had killed her mate.

Maybe more importantly, she had eaten at least two humans. Partially gnawed human skulls were stacked neatly near the male’s elbow, against the back wall. Beside them was the skull of a big dog or a wolf. Humans, dead at the hand of a paranormal, meant he had an automatic license to kill.

Eli stepped into the clearing. Breathing deep to clean the stench out of his nostrils.

In the distance he heard another howl, long and echoing, and yet absorbed by the trees and the rolling hills. As the sound ululated away, Eli realized what had happened. The Dwayyo had gone around. It had circled back.

Adrenaline spiked through him. Using that little bit of extra speed he had been given as he healed, various times, that speed that came from drinking too much vamp blood, he sprinted back to the hill where he had left the others. Burst into the wind-ravaged space. But there was no wind. No Dwayyo.

Lizzie was okay. So were Chewy and Brute.

Liz had drawn several circles and attached them by lines to where she sat, inside a circle that wasn’t sealed. Her amulets and her battery stones were all around her, her hands were in the soil, eyes closed. He’d seen that expression before. She was searching through the ground for a source of power. A stone witch could take power from anything stone, but the good rocks were underground at least partially. Like the boulders back at the shack. Or bedrock. She was facing that way, not north, not east, but right at the shack.

Inside another small circle, surrounded by a larger one, were pups, one looking human-ish, like the body back at the shack. Without asking, Eli knew they were beneath a reversed hedge of thorns, a trap but a safe one, like a puppy pen. If something happened to them, anyone on the outside could break the working and get to them. There was another larger circle around them. He knew how her mind worked. The double circles were a trap waiting to be sprung.

The howl sounded again. Liz shivered but didn’t open her eyes.

“Hoss. It’s coming back. How much ammo you got?”

“It’s downhill,” Eli said. “Coming back around. Get in a protective circle,” he ordered Chewy.

“That’s what your girl wanted. And there’s one set up round me if I decide I need it. But I can’t fire from behind a ward and I ain’t going out as dead weight.”

As they talked Eli had been scanning the area, the broken trees, two that had fallen across each other, with one at an angle, the trunk tilted, and a spot that might make a shooter’s hide, about twelve feet off the ground. He bet the Dwayyo could jump that high, but the trunk nexus was the highest ground now that the trees were all down. Except for the debris, this was now a treeless clearing. Eli tossed a bag to Chewy. It contained all but three rounds of his bismuth and zinc ammo.

“Keep that thing busy. Stay alive. We can get you out on a medic helo.”

“I ain’t drinking no vamp blood. I’m too pretty as it is.”

But he looked too pale, and Eli knew the signs of shock, but had no way to treat it until the creature was dead. It was too late for him to open the blood-soaked padding and apply his own clotting sponge gel. Anything he did now would make things worse. “Hospital, my friend. Stay alive.”

Chewy threw him a rough salute and settled his shotgun into his shoulder. Eli glanced at Lizzie. If she could reach through the ground to a boulder, then of them all, she was most likely to survive. If. Something oddly painful and confusing twisted through him, but it wasn’t something he could focus on right now. He needed to be in position.

Eli grabbed his pack, which was no longer well balanced and had clearly been upended and stuffed again, and ran up the angled tree. There were batches of tattered leaves that might conceal him, but still allow him a good firing angle. He settled himself and sipped from a bottle of water. Shoulda peed before he got into place. Too late now.

Brute appeared near the edge of the woods. He and the grindylow walked slowly around the crest of the hill, the werewolf taking in everything. Seeming satisfied, they melted into the woods.

He prepared himself for a long wait and instant action.

Liz

This was the worst kind of soil for a stone witch to work through. It was neither sand nor rock nor clay, but a strange mixture of all that, just like a creekbank, a shoreline that appeared out of nowhere, hundreds of feet above the river so far below. But Brute had said there were boulders ahead, so she pushed her power along the hill line, just under the surface, around roots, through a curve of rocks the size of basketballs, shaped like ovals and oversized peanuts. Water shaped rock. Weird to find at the top of a hill line. But she took the energy stored in them by Mother Nature and used it to push through. She was maybe a hundred yards further when she finally hit stone—a big slab of granite on top of another slab, both angling deeper into the earth. Power flooded into her. Just as suddenly the ground changed and she was beyond the strange soil mixture and into more typical Appalachian soil, rich and full of nutrients and life and death. And… death magic.

Liz recoiled, back to the angled slabs, and hovered there. Remembering the dead bird with the sliced throat. She hadn’t had time to put that together. The Dwayyo had air magic and also death magic. It—she—had sacrificed the lifeforce of animals and humans to her magic. What was she trying to do?

She perched her power on the granite slabs and let the memories of the earth and the magic wash through her. Darkness, sludge, a heavy energy, sad, destructive, desperate, and… Ahhh. Disorganized, as if the Dwayyo was untrained and working by feel instead of with established rules and with the mathematics that went into every magical working of any competency.

Except for the normal leakage of power that always took place over time, the magic was contained in one area, away from the boulders she sensed just ahead. She dipped her power along the angled stones, deeper into the earth, and followed the contours to the stone heart of the mountain. It reached down thousands of feet, and then steeply up into weathered, rounded points that rose in the air. So much power here. Raw. Like razors on her flesh, hot pokers into her magic. She drew it in, knowing it was too much to hold for long.

“Lizzie?” The voice came from far away. On the surface. Eli. It was Eli. “Lizzie, Brute says the Dwayyo’s coming back.”

Without opening her eyes, Liz pulled a hand from the dirt and thumbed a stone on her necklace. All the circles she had drawn lit with power, so much power it hummed as it passed through her, using her body as a conduit that filled and activated the interconnected workings.

Wards sprang up. She felt them sizzle and snap. Eyes still closed, she smiled. “Hey Eli,” she said softly, knowing the former army Ranger would hear her. “Remember how I shaped a ward around us, with your gun barrel outside it? Tell Chewy to stay low, keep his shotgun barrel where it is in relation to the stone that’s six inches from his feet. He can fire. Limited range, and still have protection. But if he pulls the barrel to him, inside the small stone I put there, it’ll reset the ward. If he fires after it resets, he’ll have no protection at all. Firing after that will break it entirely.”

“I like your girl, Hoss. You gonna put a ring on her finger?”

The grunted non-reply came from above her, in the trees and her smile went wider. “You think I’d want him?” she asked Chewy, her eyes still closed. “Talking’s like pulling teeth. Sharing’s all one-sided. He’s grumpy and closed in and annoying. And God help us if he doesn’t get his coffee.”

“I’m not annoying.”

Liz chuckled. “I see you only disagree with one of my estimations.”

“But I’m great in bed.”

“Too much information, Hoss.”

“No, Chewy. He’s right. That’s why I keep him around. For his body.”

In the tree, Eli made a soft snorting sound, maybe laughter.

“I’ll tell you all his secrets, Miz Liz, if you fix me up with some a these amulets that take the pain away. Holy shit. Better than H.” He laughed drunkenly. “Not that I ever did heroin. But this shit is the bomb.”

“Secrets on top of our previous bargain? Done.”

“Hoss, you are in serious trouble, cause I know all your secrets.”

Eli said nothing. Liz laughed.

Brute growled, the vibration making the air itself move.

She opened her eyes. “Which way, Brute?”

The white wolf was staring behind them. The growl grew louder and deeper.

And the Dwayyo dropped into the clearing. Right on top of the ward holding its babies.

Liz touched the final stone at her knees and the prison ward blazed with power. The creature was trapped. It gathered its young to it. It howled and growled and yodeled, lifted its weird shaped snout and sang like a wolf.

Liz blew out a breath. “Thank God.”

Eli

Brute wavered, appearing, disappearing, and solidified at the side of the Dwayyo’s prison. He snarled and snapped at the trapped creature.

“Brute. Don’t break the ward,” Liz warned.

The werewolf whirled and snarled at her.

Not sure what was happening, but knowing that something was off, Eli took careful aim at the wolf. He wasn’t loaded with silver-lead composite slugs or even the silver fléchette rounds Jane had special made for para-creature hunting, but at this range, he’d kill the white werewolf anyway.

He slowed his breathing.

The cute neon green grindy did the unexpected.

It leaped from Brute’s head, through the ward, to the Dwayyo’s back, breaking the wards with a shower of sparks.

Steel claws out, the grindy cut into the Dawyyo with a sound like swords clashing.

The creature screamed, made it to her feet, her pups in her arms, and dashed for the tree line. It stumbled. And headed down the hill.

Silence descended on the clearing.

“What just happened?” Liz asked.

Eli tilted his head, putting things together. He murmured, “Yeah. That explains a lot.”

“Son of a bitch,” Chewy said, clearly following Eli’s train of thought. “Am I gonna turn furry?”

“Furry?” Liz asked. “Is it coming back?”

“No. Let the wards down, Lizzie,” Eli said.

She touched the ground in front of her.

Eli walked down the angled tree and drank two bottles of water. Took that pee break. Then, his face schooled, he approached his friend. Knelt near him.

Silent, Chewy had watched him work. and when their eyes met, he said softly, “I asked you a question, Hoss.”

“I don’t understand,” Lizzie said.

“Best I can tell or deduce,” Eli said to Chewy, “the Dwayyo made a series of bad life choices and had a run of really bad luck. First it ate some deer with mad-cow. Then it had a run in with a werewolf.”

“Get to the point, Hoss.”

“Blunt. With few exceptions, werewolves, of all the were-creatures in the world, are never sane unless they have a pack structure. And even with a firm alpha pack leader the females never regain sanity. This one is Dwayyo and part human. Maybe Dwayyo are all part human, maybe shape-shifters, which is the direction I’m leaning. Maybe the healthy ones are moon called. Lots of maybe’s. She was also bitten by a werewolf. She ate her mate, she’s leaving her kills in a pit. Best guess is that she’s insane.”

Chewy cursed long and hard. Eli touched his friend’s shoulder and went to work. He emptied and repacked his rucksack, placing the gear so the weight was properly distributed. As he worked, he created a smaller gobag of water, ammo, a pack of food, an unopened military surplus metallized polyethylene terephthalate blanket, and a lighter to start a fire should he get stranded over night or need a signal fire, old school-style. He checked his earbuds. Working.

“Why do you think all that?” Liz asked, finally. “About the werewolf?”

Without looking up from his chores, Eli said, “I saw a wolf head in the shack. Saw the dead mate. He had been dead a while, and not of natural causes. They had been eating his corpse. Brute said they had something like rabies. Mad cow fits that bill, and it’s a fact that the disease is making its way here in deer. And if all Dwayyo left pits of dead animals around they’d be easy to track and kill. And mostly because the grindylow is interested in all this, but seems uncertain what to do next.”

“And grindys kill were-creatures that infect humans,” she said softly.

Chewy cursed again.

From his peripheral vision, Eli watched Liz. She was standing inside her circle, staring down the hill where the were-Dwayyo female had vanished, a tiny executioner on her head. Lizzie looked weird. Like she was thinking too much. He hated it when she thought too much. It always ended up being bad for him.

The silence stretched on too long. Eli was ready to go, knew he had to go, but also knew if he did, he was leaving them unprotected. And that Chewy would die if he didn’t go and bring back help. His eyes met those of his old friend, both of them saying too much, and not nearly enough.

Chewy gave him a single, jutting nod. “Hoss.” His voice that too calm of the wounded warrior facing an uncertain future, Chewy said, “Shoulda seen that up front. Damn grindylow with Brute. Grindy’s have one job in life.”

Liz walked to Chewy and dropped down, to sit on her heels. She put out a hand and touched Chewy’s bandages. “Ohhh.”

“There’s a treatment,” Eli said, “if it gets started right away. I’m heading downhill fast. As soon as I have a signal, I’ll call for evac to this location, and also call Jane to get the Mercy Blade to come to the inn. If he’ll come, and if he can get there in time, and if he wants to, he can heal you.”

“What do you mean if he wants to?” Liz demanded. “Why wouldn’t he want to?”

“Can’t prove it, but the timing suggests that he knew Jane’s former boyfriend had contracted the taint and he did nothing to stop it until it was too late,” Eli said, his tone cold. “But I can put pressure on Gee DeMercy.”

“We can’t leave the werewolf corpse or the pups…” She stopped. “What do we do about the pups?”

“When I find the corpse, I’ll pin the location and send a team back to burn the body. The pups were showing signs of mad cow disease. If they’re diagnosed with it, they’ll be given palliative care until they die. There’s no treatment or cure. If they have the were-taint …” He shrugged into his lightweight pack, not finishing the sentence. The Grindy had that kill. “If they don’t have mad-cow, rabies, and do have were-taint, maybe they can go to the Montana werewolf pack. We’ll figure it out later.” He slung his shotgun on its strap over his shoulder and divided the ammo with Chewy. His friend didn’t look so good. Skin heading toward ashy. A little clammy. “Right now, I need a signal to call out for help. Liz, get a fire going. Keep Chewy hydrated. Treatment for shock as needed. You know how?”

“Yes,” she said, as if the orders were a lifeline. She looked pale but suddenly more in control. “Okay. And I’ve got more healing amulets. I’ll put one under his tongue.”

Eli gave her a hard jut of his head and half-leaped into a run—not much more than a controlled fall—down the hill. He’d been fully human once, no fanghead blood in his system. There were times when he hated that he was something a little more now, except when those attributes—being a hair faster, a skosh more agile, with better healing abilities than once before—could save his friend’s life.

He’d seen men die. Chewy was closer to that final breath than he wanted to think about. Something caught his eye. He slowed. Came to a stop.

Ahead, there was splash of blood against a tree.

Brute

He chuffed in approval as the former army ranger tore down the mountain. As the ranger disappeared, Brute’s tail wagged, pretty much all by itself. His wolf nature was still strong, despite the angel doing some kinda holy-magic-shit to give his human mind better control over it. His tail, his nose, and his snarl still had a wolf mind of their own, and he was grateful it was nearly the new moon. The three days of the full moon were a bitch on his instincts.

Brute jogged back uphill to Chewy. Dude looked like shit. Smelled like death. Too much blood loss. Were-taint in his system. If Eli didn’t hurry, Chewy’d die. If he did hurry, Chewy would be a werewolf, and he’d be sent to Montana to live with the pack. Brute had visited the pack. Bunch a pansies. But Chewy was a seriously big dude. Maybe Chewy could hold his own with the ancient werewolf on the gulf coast, Sarge. Or maybe he and Chewy could start their own pack. Or maybe Chewy would just die.

Brute sat down and sniffed Chewy. He looked at Liz and gave a little bark. Like a whuff. But he was thinking, Idiot human can’t smell death.

Liz lugged a rock over, about the size of his foot when he was human. He didn’t notice where it came from, but it smelled like meat, so maybe one of the guys’ packs. She took off her necklace and pulled four stones off it. One was a blue stone carved like a hippo. He didn’t get a look at the others before she tucked them into Chewy’s bandages.

Chewy sighed a soft, “Thanks,” and closed his eyes.

Brute frowned as the big guy fell into a deep sleep. Sleep amulets?

On the foot sized rock she had placed beside his elbow, Liz piled small red stones. Near them, she put three bottles of water and an MRE. Pasta alfredo. That was nasty stuff. She should have used the roast beef.

Brute was hungry, but he’d starve before he ate that alfredo shit. Still watching, Brute went to Chewy’s pack and nosed around until he found the venison jerky. He ripped through the paper and wolfed three down. Haha. Wolfed three down. Someday he’d share his one liners again.

She carried Chewy’s shotgun and all the ammo to the angled tree Eli had used as a firing hide. Then she dragged a tree branch over and shoved it close to the bleeding man, draping Chewy’s legs over it, high enough to make a good treatment for shock.

Chick was working hard, breathing hard, sweating. And damn she looked good. It sucked being a wolf.

She took her sharp, broken stick and carved a new circle around Chewy. She activated the circle she had just made, and softly, she whispered, “I hope this is as strong as I think it is.”

She grabbed an MRE for herself and two bottles of water. When she saw he was watching, she poured out a bottle for him, into the paper bowl. “Water.”

He chuffed and brought her the last packet of jerky.

“Thanks. I’ll be in the tree. You smell something, you let me know, Okay? And then get out of the way. I can hit the side of a barn with a handgun, but shotguns are not my strong point. I’d hate to hit you.”

She was gonna try and shoot any attacker. Crazy ass witch.

She carried the shotgun and ammo up into Eli’s hide.

He drank the water.

And then the wind shifted hard. Blowing from the east, He caught a whiff of rabid dog.

No. Werewolf, one he hadn’t scented before, coming over the mountain range… Female. Young. In heat.

Fuck.

Inside, his wolf soul sat up and howled.

Eli

The creature came from his left and behind. Despite his training and experience, if Eli hadn’t received so much vamp blood in the last months, he wouldn’t have heard the body falling from a tree. That barely-heard whisper of sound.

Battle reflexes kicked in.

He dove to the side, rolled up to one knee.

Sighted his weapon.

The creature landed where he had been standing.

Rose to its feet. Roaring in rage and frustration.

Took a step toward him.

Eli fired. Fired. Fired. Fired. The bismuth and zinc shot took the Dwayyo mid-chest. Face. Mid-chest. Mid-abdomen.

When it fell, its torso was ground burger. Its face and part of its head had been shredded.

The air was wet with blood and thick with the stench of his fired weapon. Eli pulled his shirt up over his face to keep from breathing in so many microscopic blood particles. Reloaded. He checked the trees above. The rock wall to his side. No more Dwayyo. He took two steps to the creature. It was still breathing. Clawed hands reaching. Opening and closing. He fired point blank into the thing’s head. Three more shots.

It was no longer breathing. No longer had a nose, mouth, or throat to breathe through.

It had been male. Probably young. The Dwayyo version of a teenager. He’d just killed a kid. Fuck. Had there been another way? No, his battle reflexes said. But.

Guilt was a huge part of his soul. Had been since Afghanistan. It wasn’t an earned guilt, but guilt isn’t logical. Unearned guilt was something he and Jane shared. He shoved this fresh guilt and horror down deep. Out of the way. He’d deal with it later.

Reloaded.

He checked the trees again. His hearing would take a while to come back online, even with the buds to protect his ears. He had shifted into hyperalert mode at the top of the mountain, and yet he had still been ambushed. His eyes took in everything, every leaf movement, every odd little smell.

Satisfied he was safe, he checked his cell and found he had a signal. He retrieved Chewy’s GPS and sent that first. The signal sucked. It took forever. He pinned the dead Dwayyo’s location and sent it to Alex. Once it was clear, he texted: 1. First set of coordinates for medic helo evacuation. One human male for delivery to nearest trauma center. 2. Get Gee DiMercy on hand for were-taint treatment. 3. Dwayyo-werewolf with transmissible prion-based disease at second location. Cleanup required, deep burial.

Alex replied, On it.

Eli moved away, following the blood trail, which was much heavier now.

He had made his way to the trail that was not much more than rock wall on one side and a nearly sheer cliff on the other, when he found the body. The female Dwayyo was headless, the head having rolled against the rock wall, stump side up. The two fully Dwayyo pups were dead and headless too. The position of the bodies suggested they had been fighting each other when their heads were removed.

He didn’t see the half-human pup.

Sitting a little way from the pile of headless bodies was the grindylow. Its neon green fur was covered in blood; it was licking the blood from its claws. He hadn’t remembered its tongue being so weird colored. Sorta olive green.

And…

It was weeping. He had no idea they could weep. Or would weep.

Beside the Grindy was a lump of flesh. It was the pup creature that had looked more human. Its head was still in place but parts of it were missing. Its abdomen and chest were a single gaping cavity. Teeth marks were everywhere. Tiny little pup teeth marks. As if it had been killed and partially eaten by its siblings.

Eli checked overhead again for another Dwayyo, before sliding his weapon out of the way on its strap. He knelt and removed a bottle of water, opened it and held it to the grindy. “Hey little buddy,” he murmured. “I can pour this on you and you can get a nice rinse. Okay? But the deal is, you don’t kill me.”

The grindy hooted soft, like an owl in distress, before scooting close and holding up its hands. Eli poured water over its head, body, and claws. It turned and adjusted so the flow washed away most of the blood.

It was still weeping.

“Are you crying because you had to kill the Dwayyos?”

It nodded, pointed at the pups, and moaned that odd owlish sound.

Eli found a wipe in his gobag and tore it open, giving it to the grindy. The kitten-like killer took the wipe in its odd little hands and finished cleaning its claws before re-sheathing them.

While it cleaned itself, Eli pinned the location. He sent another text to Alex for a cleanup team and burial and informed his brother he’d be back at the helo rendezvous site at the first GPS pin, and would have a signal fire ready to light if needed.

GPS was iffy in the mountains, and the lack of a good cell signal made his coordinates unreliable.

He got a, Roger that, back from his brother.

The grindy extended the filthy wet wipe back to Eli, and he tucked it into his gobag for burial with the Dwayyo’s. The grindylow lifted its arms up to him.

Eli went still as a statue. It looked as if the tiny killer wanted to be lifted. Like a baby.

It had just taken out a full-grown, insane Dwayyo and two pups. With claws.

And it wanted to be carried. Like a kid.

It was a kid. He’d seen its mother, a toad-like, leathery thing the size of a small adult human.

Eli cursed under his breath. Already today he’d cussed more than he usually did in a week. Being around Jane had tempered his mouth in ways that weren’t always comfortable.

He considered the little hands, the tear-wet face. Cursed again, which made him feel moderately better.

He lifted the baby grindylow were-killer into his arms. It grabbed on to his shirt and crawled up to sit on his shoulder, holding on to his ear and his collar.

“Easy on the ear. I’m not Brute.”

It released his ear and took the edge of the weapon-strap instead, and chittered what sounded like thanks.

“You kill me or pee on my shoulder, and I’ll be pissed.”

The grindy laughed.

Eli texted Jane Yellowrock to call in a favor from Gee DiMercy, to heal his friend.

She texted back, Done.

Eli chuckled. “If only all of life was so easy.”

From far away, a shotgun boomed and echoed.

Eli turned and raced back up the mountain.

Liz

Liz saw the wolf, reddish coat, the hairs tipped with black, black socks, feet, and face. Pretty as a fox. Drooling. Staggering. The stench was horrible.

Brute growled deep in his chest. His body was quivering.

She braced the shotgun hard against the tree just below her shoulder. Aimed like Eli had shown her. Squeezed the trigger.

The boom deafened her.

The recoil nearly kicked her off the tree.

The werewolf flipped hard into the air and to the side. It lay on the ground, shaking as if it had epilepsy. It took on a haze of magic, which Liz could still see in the seeing working.

It—she—was shifting shape, becoming human. To heal.

“Son of a witch,” Liz cursed, beneath the deafness. “I needed the special silver rounds.” Which were somewhere else. A different color. Something. She braced her weapon again. Fired. Mostly missed.

She raced down the tree, pulling off her amulet necklace. Watching the wolf shifting to human. Her fingers found the distinctive shape of the only true curse amulet she had ever made. She slid the beads around and removed the pink pig carved from feldspar.

She tossed it onto the writhing furred-naked-skinned-body. And ran back to the cover of the trees.

The curse shattered open. The magic around and inside the wolf stopped.

The wolf went still. All the magic that allowed it to shift was halted. Temporarily. It would start to replenish its magics soon, but for now its shift to human and healed was halted.

She tried to figure out how to open the shotgun and empty out the bullets. Rounds. Whatever. She had never fired a shotgun like this. It wasn’t like the one she had seen Eli use.

“Son of a witch,” she cursed. Her hands were shaking. Guns were basically all alike, right? “How do you open this damn thing?” she whispered.

“Miz Liz,” a voice whispered over her deafness. “Give me the shotgun before you shoot your foot off.”

She looked at Chewy. He looked like he was lying on death’s door. But his hands were steady and he was holding three bullets. Rounds. Shells! That was it. And each had stripes applied with silver marker.

She dropped to her knees and released the ward protecting him. He took the shotgun and stuck in the shells. Aimed at the werewolf. She thought he said, “This is gonna hurt.” He fired. Fired again.

The werewolf went still.

Chewy aimed at a place to her right and said calmly, barely above her hearing, “Don’t make me kill you too, wolf.”

Liz followed the direction of the shotgun and saw Brute. He was staring at her with his teeth and fangs exposed. She rolled inside the circle and keyed on the ward.

Brute hit the ward like a raging bull.

The Grindy landed on his shoulders and sliced into his throat.

“No!” Liz screamed.

Brute flipped backward. Landed on the grindylow. All three hundred plus pounds of massive wolf.

The grindy squealed. Stopped cutting.

Everyone breathed, too fast, too hard.

Eli crested the hill, weapons ready to fire.

He slowed, scanning up into the remaining trees, around the tornado-created clearing.

His eyes met hers, scanning over her for wounds. Evaluated Chewy. Battlefield eyes. Cold, remorseless, determined. Checked on Brute. Said something to the grindy. Bent over the werewolf.

Her hearing must have been coming back online because she heard him say, “Nice shooting, Chewy.” He leaned his head at an odd angle so he could meet the grindy’s eyes. “Any more werewolves?”

The grindy made little spitting sounds and shook its head no. It looked frustrated. And it held it hands up to Eli like a baby. Eli tossed the kitten sized —cat sized, actually—critter up onto his shoulder as if it didn’t have homicidal tendencies and steel claws. It sat on his shoulders like a pet monkey.

Eli knelt at the edge of the hedge of thorns and gave her the smile she always adored.

“We make a good team. Maybe when the world settles down a bit we can take a vacation. Together. One without paranormal critters, blood, danger, and the need for killing things. What do you think about Maui?”

Liz laughed. She sat back on her butt. Laughed some more. “Maui sounds nice.”

“What about me, Hoss?” Chewy said, his closing. “I like Maui.”

“Sorry, Chewy. This is my girl and me.”

“Sucks. You got this were-wolf shit under control? I got no desire to howl at the moon. I already piss off the old lady as it is.”

“Affirmative. But you’ll owe Jane Yellowrock a boon.”

“What the fuck’s a boon?”

“It’s like a favor. You belong to her for one favor. No questions asked.”

“So, I’m fucked no matter what?”

“Pretty much,” Eli said.

Brute whuffed in agreement.

Liz tucked another carved hippo into the bandages. Chewy went to sleep.

Two hours later, Eli heard helo blades. He stood and walked to the center of the tornado ravaged hillcrest and waved his arms. The helo wobbled and headed his way.

---

The End