In book three of the Jane Yellowrock series, Jane is
adjusting to a job change from being a well-traveled vampire
hunter for hire to settling in the Big Easy for the next six
months, working for of all things, a vamp. Jane is easing
into her new position as security specialist on retainer to
the Louisiana Vamp Council under Leo Pellissier, the Blood
Master of New Orleans. Leo has ordered a full upgrade of the
security systems at the council headquarters.
As the book opens, she and Rick are closing down her old
place and preparing to move her things to a new home in the
French Quarter. This has been the most she's seen of Rick in
recent weeks. His work as an undercover cop means his duties
aren't ones he can share. She has her own secrets. She
hasn't yet told him of her skinwalker powers, counting on
the tattered and confused memories he retains of the night
she saved him in beast form to keep him from asking too many
questions she is not ready to answer.
The rogue skinwalker who attacked Rick was the only other
one she had met, the only other like her in the world as far
as she knew. In order to save Rick's life, she had to kill
him, leaving her the last of her kind; or so she thought.
After packing all but a few of her things she wakes up to
find breaking news on CNN. The BBC has interviewed an
African claiming to be a Were-cat, a member of the Party of
African Weres (P.A.W.) If it is true, and not an elaborate
hoax could there be other forms of shapeshifter out there,
other skinwalkers like her, as well? As the news continues,
she learns not only are there other forms of were coming out
of the woods, the leader of the Lupus Clan out of
Cheyenne, Wyoming is accusing her boss Leo of stealing their
hunting territory and murdering his grandfather. Cell phones
ring, calling them back to New Orleans as quickly as they
can get there.
Faith Hunter has created one of my favorite characters,
ever. Jane Yellowrock is full of contradictions. Her
childhood was spent mostly running wild as a bobcat, then
she was raised in a Catholic orphanage, all the while living
with the mind of a cougar within. The contrast between her
good-girl soul and the Big Cat's amusement at any sort of
guilt is one level of complexity, add in her public persona
of a kick-ass killer who rides a bastard Harley (named
Bitsy) and it only adds to the intrigue. As with the other
books in the series, good and evil are far from clear-cut,
with sympathetic villains, and many fascinating characters
with shades of gray. Highly recommended.
Jane Yellowrock is a shape-shifting skinwalker - and a
vampire killer for hire. But lately she's found herself
taking blood money from the very vampires she used to
hunt...
Things are heating up in the Big Easy. Weres have announced
their existence to the world, and revived the bitter
tensions that run between them and their old enemies:
vampires. As a trusted employee of Leo Pellissier, Blood
Master of the City, Jane finds herself caught in the cross
fire.
When Jane is attacked by a pack of marauding werewolves,
she is thankful for the help of a mysterious stranger named
Girrard. He explains that he used to be Leo's "Mercy
Blade," a sacred position charged with killing vampires who
have gone insane. What Jane doesn't know is why this
powerful assassin left New Orleans - or, more troubling,
why he's now returned. It's definitely not to make Jane's
life easier...
Excerpt
Chapter One
I Didn’t Know You Had a Brain
I rolled over, taking most of the covers with me as I
stretched. I felt like a big, satisfied cat—well fed, well
loved, and nearly purring with contentment. Beside me,
still snoring softly, was Rick LaFleur, my boyfriend—Crap.
I had a boyfriend. I was still trying to get used to the
idea. We’d been together for over a month, when he wasn’t
disappearing into the underbelly of New Orleans
investigating—well, investigating something he had yet to
share with me. Or when I wasn’t tied up with vamp HQ
security systems. The Master of the City had ordered a
total upgrade of the grounds; I was earning my retainer.
Our jobs meant stealing moments when we could.
The relationship with Rick was still new. Still scary. I
still wasn’t sure when to push the barriers of
conversation, or sharing of info, and when to hold back.
Rick is a cop, and so some things he can’t share; my job
means keeping client secrets, so ditto on the not sharing.
It puts a barrier between us at times.
Worse, part of me was still fighting having him around.
It wasn’t that I resisted commitment. Really. Part of me
just resisted sharing my territory. I mean, I already
shared my body with another soul, and having another person
around so much had seriously affected my lifestyle,
stealing time from the other half of my dual nature. I
hadn’t shifted into Beast in two weeks, and while she had
nothing but good stuff to say about my sex life, my big-cat
was pacing unhappily at not being allowed out to hunt.
I sat up on the side of the bed and retied my hip-length
hair into a sloppy knot at the back of my head, tucking
silver-tipped stakes into the makeshift bun. For a rogue-
vamp killer, it was an action similar to a cop carrying his
weapon with him to potty. Overkill, paranoid, but once it
had kept him alive, so it became habit. Stakes twenty-
four/seven had become my new habit.
I eased out of bed and padded naked—except for the gold
nugget necklace I never took off—to the bathroom of my
tiny, one room apartment in the Appalachian Mountains. I
had given my landlady notice on the place, and Rick and I
had motored up from Louisiana on our bikes, his
Kawasaki and my bastard Harley, rented a small truck, and
cleared out my stuff. All that was left to load was the TV,
the bikes themselves, and the last of my linens and
clothes. Even the bed had come with the furnished
apartment, and I didn’t own much except things I could
carry—clothes and weapons. My job usually required a lot of
travel, and I wasn’t in a position to own or keep a lot of
stuff unless it helped me stay alive.
Starting to wake up, moving in the murky light with
ease, I put on water for tea and turned on the coffeemaker.
As I worked, I checked on the weather through the window to
see a very dark, gray dawn, with lowering clouds, and
intermittent rain. The thermometer on the tiny porch read
seventy-two, not bad for summer in the mountains, though it
might hit ninety by noon. We had arrived last night, and
had only today in the high country before heading back to
New Orleans, where I was living for the next six months,
thanks to the retainer I had accepted from the Louisiana
vamp council. When that gig was over, I’d have to make a
decision where to live, but the last few months had been
profitable enough to make that much less worrisome than
during my once-upon-a-broke-and-destitute time. And with
Rick in my life, well, it was nice to be sticking around
one place for a while.
I sat in a pink painted chair at the kitchen table,
waiting as water burbled in the coffeemaker and the flames
hissed under the pot. Pink was my landlady’s color, not
mine. The shade had never bothered me, as I wasn’t here
often enough to care one way or the other about the décor,
but Rick had teased me unmercifully about the frills,
ruffles, tucks, buttons, and florals that Old Lady Pierson
had thought appropriate for the rental space under the
eaves of her house.
I clicked on the TV to check the time, muting the sound.
CNN was on, showing a still shot of a good-looking man with
fierce eyes, very black skin, and short-cropped hair. The
words "Breaking News" lit the bar at the bottom, followed
by the words, "BBC claims existence of Were-Creatures."
"Crap," I whispered. Beast woke inside me with the
instant attentive awareness of the predator, and focused
through my eyes at the screen. I eased up the volume one
notch and drew on Beast’s excellent hearing to listen to
the commentator, whose voice-over spoke about the picture
of a reporter, blond-haired and fair-skinned, holding a
microphone.
"Though no independent confirmation exists, BBC
investigator Donald Cooper, seen here on the center screen,
has released an interview with an African man, referred to
only as Kemnebi, pictured on the upper screen. Kemnebi
claims to be a werecat, a black leopard. In the footage
that follows we see Kemnebi remove his clothing and shift
into a jungle cat. We caution our viewers that the BBC
footage is graphic and depicts partial nudity common to his
culture."
I leaned toward the screen and watched as footage began
to roll. The man from the still shot, who was carefully
filmed above the lower hips for decorum’s sake, began to
remove his clothes, dropping them one by one to the floor.
He bent, most of him disappearing from the screen as if to
remove his pants, and then crossed the room. He was tall
and thin, muscles well defined, his skin stretched over a
frame without an ounce of fat. He moved with a lissome
grace uncommon in humans other than dancers. Still silent,
the man knelt on a cushion on the floor, the camera viewing
him from the side, the long lean length of his body
gleaming—a lot of skin for an American cable TV network.
Tension raced through me. It could be a joke. No new
supernatural being had appeared on the world stage since
the vamps and witches came out of the supernat-closet after
the Secret Service staked Marilyn Monroe while she was
trying to turn the president in the Oval Office. No elves,
no pixies, no trolls, no brownies, no nothing. Certainly no
weres or skinwalkers, or there weren’t since I killed the
only one of my kind I’d ever met. That very old, very nutso
skinwalker had stolen the form of a vamp and taken to
killing and eating humans and vampires, so it had been a
sanctioned kill. Since then, as a shape-shifter-in-hiding,
I was a singularity in the world of humans, vamps, and
witches. No longer, if the BBC’s claims were real. If.
I closed my fingers on the arms of the chair, digging in
with my nails. I’m a skinwalker, not a were; I didn’t know
if the magics would be the same, totally different, or only
subtly dissimilar. If it was real.
The man began to lose focus. A pale fog seemed to sift
from his skin and surround him, blurring him, the mist
moving slowly, as if caught in a breeze. Dark lights
sparkled through the haze, looking like black crystals on
the digital footage. It wasn’t exactly the way I looked
when I shifted, though a lot of things might affect what I
was seeing, from the digital processing software to my
cheap TV. But it was familiar. Very, achingly, familiar.
The black lights surrounding Kemnebi increased as the
mist above his skin darkened, deepened. His bones popped, a
sickening sound, as they shortened or lengthened and the
joints reshaped. He threw back his head, mouth open in what
looked like a silent scream, like gut-wrenching pain. Black
hair sprouted all over his body. His spine bowed and
arched. Canines grew up from his gums, an inch long on the
bottom jaw, longer on top. His jaw and skull took on
different contours, flowing into a catlike form. I could
see the effort and agony as his flesh rippled, stretched,
and restructured into something else.
I couldn’t look away from the screen. Cold sweat broke
out on my body. I could hear my breath, coarse and uneven
over the soft patter of rain on the metal roof. My
heartbeat raced and stuttered.
Beast placed a clawed paw onto my mind as if to calm me,
her gaze intent on the screen before us. Beast is not prey,
she thought at me. Will not be afraid.
Yeah. Right, I thought back. I never looked away from
the transformation on the television. My eyes burned, hot
and scratchy. I shivered, skin prickling. Two minutes
passed. The fog that was a man wisped away. A jungle cat
sat on the floor where once the man had knelt. It had a
black coat, with barely visible, muted spots that caught
the light. Its paws had retractable claws like my Beast’s,
but its tail was long and slender, unlike my Beast’s heavy,
clubbed version. The black leopard looked into the camera.
Huffed. And, I swear, it grinned.
Beast trembled deep inside, her coat bristling against
my skin, coarse and almost painful. Big-cat. Like Beast.
But not like Beast. Beast opened her mouth and chuffed in
displeasure, pulling back her lips, showing her fangs deep
in my mind, as if the leopard on screen could see her
challenge and her strength. Beast is better. I/we are
better hunter. Stronger.
"Is it real," the CNN voice asked when it flashed back
to a still of Donald Cooper, "or is it a hoax? Or maybe
it’s only special effects for an upcoming British action-
adventure blockbuster. Or . . ."—his voice
dropped lower—"maybe other supernatural creatures like
Kemnebi, the African black were- leopard, have been
living among us all along. More on this breaking news as it
develops."
I flipped to the BBC, finding only footage of a war zone
somewhere, and began flipping cable news stations for more
on the were. There was nothing. Not yet. From behind me, I
heard the bed squeak and had a moment to school my face as
Rick rolled over and glanced at the television, then stared
at me, sitting naked in the stark shadows created by the
TV’s glare. He smiled slowly, his eyes roaming over me in
the bluish light, his teeth white against his black, two-
day beard. Even with the stubble—or maybe in part because
of it—he was stunning. Black-eyed, slender, my six feet in
height or an inch more, he had the smooth golden-olive
complexion of his mostly French and American Indian
heritage. With his shaggy, bed-head black hair, he was by
far the prettiest man I had ever known. Just looking at him
could make my heart speed up, dance around, and melt into a
puddle of happy hormones. Even this morning when the world
was changing around me. "Morning babe," he said, voice
gravelly with sleep. "What time is it? I smell coffee."
"Morning yourself. Sorry I woke you. It’s five a.m. I
put on a pot."
"The rain woke me, not you. How did you live here with
the noise?"
The question was rhetorical and I didn’t answer. I’d
scarcely noticed the rain on the metal roof. As he slid
from the sheets, the light from the TV caught the scars on
his chest and abdomen, white against his skin, big-cat
claws in harsh relief. He’d nearly died fighting the
skinwalker in sabertooth lion form that tried to kill him
while he was undercover for the New Orleans Police
Department, something he’d half forgotten. He was alive
today only because Beast and I had chased off the
skinwalker and called the vampire Master of the City of New
Orleans to save him.
Rick stretched his way into the bathroom, the flickering
light dappling his skin, his tattoos looking dark and
menacing—the golden eyes of the crouching mountain lion and
the bobcat on one shoulder visible in the gloom, the globes
of red on their claws too bright. I shivered again, seeing
them. I didn’t believe in fate or karma, but the presence
of my two cats painted on his body had always seemed like a
sign, a portent, that we should, and one day would, be
together. And now we were. When one of us wasn’t
working.
The bobcat had been my first animal to shift into when I
was a child. The mountain lion was my adult beast, and my
Beast, the other soul sharing my head. That she was inside
with me wasn’t skinwalker magic, but something darker. She
was there by accident, but even an accident didn’t make the
black magic any cleaner, purer, or more acceptable.
Beast is amused by my guilt, any guilt, even the guilt I
feel about stealing her soul. My Beast goes by many names:
cougar, puma, panther, catamount, screamer, devil-cat,
silver lion, mountain lion, and even the North American
black panther, but they all refer to one beast—the Puma
concolor, which once was the widest ranging mammal on
the North American continent, and is still one of the
largest, modern-day land predators in the continental U.S.
other than humans, bears, a few large wolves, and the
vamps.
Rick moved toward the coffeepot like steel to a magnet
and found a mug in the dark. My heart did a little pitter-
patter and a blood flush touched my skin, evidence of
Beast’s appreciation of my boyfriend. Since Rick and I had,
um, gotten together, my own emotional roller coaster had
smoothed out, and her rut had faded. I’d had no more
peculiar crying jags, and Beast had begun to purr more
often. When Beast is happy, everybody—or everyone in my
body—is happy. I heard coffee pouring into the mug and the
softer sounds of swallowing. Rick sighed in pleasure, a
sound I was learning had many different meanings—food,
music, and sex each had its own sigh, a breathy pleasure.
Coffee, however, was in a category by itself, being as much
relief as bliss.
I looked back at the TV, back on CNN, and saw a still
shot of a sitting leopard. I gestured with the remote,
keeping my voice light, slightly wry. "Big news. Guy claims
he’s a black were-leopard. I just saw him change shape on
BBC footage."
Rick went still, staring at the screen, studying the
jungle cat that was sitting with front paws close, ears
pricked forward, preening and purring, making nice with the
camera. "Pretty cat," Rick murmured finally, his voice
oddly casual. The "pretty cat" comment made me smile and
made Beast huff with something like possessive jealousy,
which was amusing on all kinds of levels.
Rick’s fingertips brushed the cat-claw scars on his
chest, an unconscious gesture. "It’s got green eyes and a
round pupil, like a human. Not cat eyes."
Shock chased the contentment away. The sabertooth lion
that had almost killed him had had round pupils. Rick was
remembering. "Big-cats have a round pupil," I said, my
voice sounding calm despite my speeding heart
rate. "Housecats and some smaller wildcats have a slit
pupil."
Rick grunted, eyes fixed on the screen, his tone mild in
counterpoint, as if saying, Well, how ’bout that. "Turn it
up."
I did as he requested, and flipped to the BBC channel
where the werecat news was on again, and Donald Cooper was
saying, "—quite keen on the hunt, he is, when in cat form.
Vegetarians and animal protection organizations the world
over will likely put out quite a stink at his diet, which
is fresh meat on the hoof, and, according to him, tastes
better if he brings down his prey with his were-teeth and
claws."
Beast agreed with the statement, sending me images of a
big-cat bringing down bigger prey. It was graphic and
bloody and beastly. Beast huffed with amusement and
retreated back into the darker parts of my mind.
Rick took his mug to the bed and sat, patting the
mattress. Over coffee-scent, I smelled tea steeping. He’d
poured hot water in the pot, over the leaves in the
strainer. I smelled a strong black I particularly loved, an
organic Darjeeling first flush that I would have all the
time if I could, but at a hundred twenty bucks a pound, it
was too dear for regular drinking. This pound was a gift
from Rick, unexpected and generous and thoughtful.
In the kitchen, I removed the leaves and joined him in
bed with my own mug, tea sweetened and topped with a dollop
of Cool Whip, and carrying a box of Krispy Kremes that had
been Hot ’n Now last night, and were still fresh enough to
melt in my mouth. I curled into the crook of his arm, not
easy when there was no height disparity, but not impossible
for the truly determined. It was cozy and warm and well
established, as if we cuddled this way every day instead of
only when we could grab the time.
On some level I felt guilty for sleeping with Rick, for
being so homey and comfortable with him outside of
marriage. My housemother in the Christian children’s home
where I grew up would have chided me for it. A lot. It was
that guilt that pricked me now as I lay against him,
watching the flickering screen. And that guilt that I
shoved away, deep inside, to worry about later. A lot
later.
Overhead, the rain’s metallic pattering grew into a
drumming roar. Rick turned the TV up another two notches
and I snuggled close to him, skin to skin, watching the
events unfurl across the globe as America woke to a world
quite different from the one they’d left behind in dreams.
There was an unconscious tension thrumming through Rick as
he watched, and his hand strayed often to his scars.
We had missed the interview with the black were-leopard,
but tuned in for an in-depth and politically astute
dialogue between Donald Cooper and Raymond Micheika, a rare
African werelion who said he was the leader of the
International Association of Weres, and of the Party of
African Weres. Rick spelled out the acronym—PAW—and said he
thought it was amusing, while I thought it was disingenuous
and too cute for the raw power of the man. Raymond Micheika
was an alpha predator, bigger than Beast and twice as
vicious.
I can be big, she reminded me smugly. The I/we of Beast
can be alpha male sabertooth. Kill any male big-cat in
personal challenge.
"Some cat species run, live, and hunt in packs," I
murmured, to Rick as much as to Beast. "Take on one, I bet
you take on them all."
Rick said, "Yeah. I’d hate to meet him in a dark alley,
especially with his cronies around. ‘We need a bigger
gun,’" he paraphrased the old Jaws movie, his
voice tight in contrast to the light words. I turned and
watched his face. "If there’s cats, then there’s gotta be
other things," he said, sipping his coffee, his fingers
still tracing his scars. "Maybe whatever gorilla-type
creature Big Foot is. Maybe that fish thing they see in the
Great Lakes. Werewolves," Rick said. "The B-grade movie
variety." He knew I was watching him, but he kept his gaze
on the TV, avoiding my eyes, not letting me in. He took a
slow breath and said the words that had been playing around
inside his head. "Sabertooth cats." When I didn’t reply, he
said, "Like the one that got me. You killed it. And it
changed back to human."
"Part human," I said, watching his face, my breath
tight, "part vamp, part sabertooth."
"If they only change partway back when they die, why
haven’t we found any half-human skeletons?" His fingers
caressed his scars, his eyes glued to the TV, tension
buzzing through him, almost singing from him.
"He wasn’t a were," I said slowly, knowing we were
straying perilously close to the word skinwalker.
"He was something else." His hand slid from his scars,
his tension softening. That was what I liked most about
Rick, other than his sex-on-a-stick smile, his tats, and
his ability to let me do my job without being overly
protective. He was smart. He didn’t overanalyze things. He
just . . . accepted what was.
"Yeah."
The thing I liked least about him, however, was job
related—the fact that we couldn’t share much of our lives.
So far, though we’d been sleeping together for weeks, he
hadn’t talked about the attack that nearly killed him. He’d
been undercover at the time, and the story he had been told
was that I had followed him in human form, chased off the
cat that had mauled him, and later killed it. But his
memories had to include two cats not one. Some day we’d
have to address that. Some day we had to address a lot of
things, if our relationship was to continue.
I sipped my tea, waiting, giving him a chance to draw
whatever conclusions he might be heading toward. He opened
his mouth, stopped, closed it. It was like missing a step
in a dance. As if something had gone astray, been omitted,
and I had no idea what.
A half beat later, Rick indicated the TV with his mug
and veered the subject onto a different course, his tone
forced, but lighter, his voice the cop-tone he used when he
was telling something he knew for fact. "That’s a slick bit
of video. This wasn’t filmed fast and dumped on the
airwaves. They spent time with it, which means the BBC’s
known about weres for a while."
I shifted slightly to see his face better. But he didn’t
look my way. "And?" I asked, trying to read his body
language, recognizing the slight trace of adrenaline
leaching from his pores.
"There’s no way they could keep it totally under wraps.
Word probably got out that it was going to hit the
airwaves. And whatever weres we have in the U.S. will have
been informed it was going to break and will make a
statement. Fast." He said it like a pronouncement rather
than just guessing.
When Rick was undercover, he had been investigating the
vamps, and though he’d been outed to them, any
weres . . . Crap. Any weres would never know
he was a cop. He could fit in anywhere, which had made him
so good undercover. And Rick had been mostly unavailable
for the last couple of weeks, appearing for quick breakfast
dates, late-night dinners, and for this trip into the
mountains to move me to New Orleans. Suddenly I realized
why Rick had been working undercover. It had something to
do with weres.
My cold chills returned, lifting my skin in tight points
as if my pelt rose. Beast rumbled inside, watching Rick,
curious, focused, like a kitten watching a fluffy toy
twisting on the end of a string, not sure if attack was
warranted. I breathed in through my open mouth, Beast-like.
The scent of his body was like the color of daffodils,
yellow and tart. Rick did know something.
He took a donut and ate it in three bites, washing
it down with coffee. "This announcement," he said, sounding
more certain than prophetic, "will be followed with one of
several reactions." He licked the sugar from a finger and
held it up. "One. The press will go wild. That’s axiomatic,
actually." He held up another finger. "Two. More weres’ll
come out of the closet. Three. The white supremacists and
the xenophobic human extremists’ll join hands and vow to
hunt down and exterminate the nonhumans."
"And they call you a glass-is-half-full kinda guy." I
could hear the low timbre of concern in my voice.
"Hey, I’m an optimist, babe," Rick said. But he still
hadn’t taken his eyes off the TV; he still hadn’t looked at
me. He chuckled and took another donut, gesturing with
it. "It’s gonna be a zoo. You know. Wild animals. Zoo."
I made the requisite groan over the humor. "You know
something, don’t you?"
He lifted a shoulder, noncommittal.
Apprehension started to churn in the pit of my stomach,
heavy, bitter tasting, a dark recirculating whirlpool of
possibilities. Wondering what he knew. Wondering if—okay,
hoping that—skinwalkers would come out with the weres.
Hoping that I finally wouldn’t be alone. And worrying what
Rick might do when—if—he learned he had been sleeping with
one. "Pretty cat," he’d said of the black were-leopard, as
if he had liked it. But it was a heck of a lot easier to be
blasé about a theory; it might be quite different in a
relationship reality. And lastly, wondering what he had
been doing undercover with weres.
I hadn’t smelled anything on him, but his sisters had
cats, and there were at least a dozen barn cats at his
parents’ place. If he’d been with werecats I might not have
noticed.
Back on the BBC, Donald was chatting with the big-cat,
Kemnebi, once again in human form, about how he became a
cat, the interview we had missed. The werecat spoke
English, the dialect one of those liquid African accents
that flowed like water down stone. "We reproduce much as
human do, mating and having baby. But we have litter, some
small, some large, some with cat baby that have potential
to change to human, some with human baby that have
potential to change to cat. Some with both. Potential is
there, ready to be awakened."
"You don’t bite to make a werecat?" the anchor asked,
clearly surprised.
"No. To bite a human, even in self-defense is against
all of our laws," he said, his black-skinned face
compelling. "To bite a human, hoping to turn him into one
of us is a death sentence. We may not mate with human, for
fear of passing the contagion. For this crime, there is no
mercy."
Rick started to speak and stopped. A broken instant
later, he said, "Jodi’s gonna love adding that to the woo-
woo files." Jodi is Rick’s boss, in charge of all
paranormal investigations in the party city of the
South. "Especially the part about a human-shaped mother
giving birth to a litter of kittens and humans all at the
same time."
I didn’t reply. We watched, switching channels between
the networks and the cable stations as the sky lightened
outside, despite the din of rain. We didn’t talk, though I
wanted to ask questions, wanted to know what Rick was
thinking. I had a feeling that a normal girl would have
been pumping him for answers about his were-knowledge. But
I had no idea what to ask or how. Unlike most girls, I
hadn’t spent my early years absorbing the social
interactions between humans. Impossible to do while living
inside the body of a mountain lion; nearly as hard to do
while living in a children’s home, the amnesiac outsider
with no English and no past. So I sat on the bed, my
shoulder under Rick’s, snuggled close, with him, but
alone.
Near six a.m., Rick changed to FOX, which was running an
interview purported to be with one of the leaders of the
U.S. werewolves, the Lupus Clan, based in Cheyenne,
Wyoming. "What’d I tell you?" Rick said. We’d slid down in
the bed, under the covers, mugs replenished and a box of
cereal open between us as we ate it, dry. "Werewolves. B-
grade movie version." The purported wolfman was muscled but
slender, strawberry blond, tough-looking, aggressive,
angry, gesticulating in a hostile manner, his words being
bleeped as he cursed at the reporter.
Rick said, "Bet it’d tick him off to hear this, but he’s
mean as a pit bull."
It struck me as funny and I chuckled, mostly in relief.
Rick slanted me a grin and I snorted, feeling better,
though not sure why. On TV, the pit bull/werewolf was still
going at it.
"He stands about six feet tall," Rick mused, "and
probably one eighty. How big do you think he’d be as a
wolf?" There was something odd about his tone, but then
there was something odd about Rick today altogether, so I
didn’t know how to categorize this new odd.
"If the law of conservation of mass and energy holds
true," I said, thinking about what happened when I shifted
into any animal that genetically might equal my body
mass, "then he’d be a wolf weighing in at one eighty." Rick
looked at me in surprise. "What?" I asked. "I took physics
in high school."
"So did I but I’d never remember the name of a law. I
didn’t know you had a brain," he said, teasing. I made a
fist and mimed socking him. He took my fist and kissed my
fingers, one at time which had my toes curling. I gripped
his hand, holding it tightly, as if it might disappear. As
if he might disappear. "Besides," Rick said, his lips
moving against my knuckles, "it’s magic. Why would the
physical laws hold true?"
"Why wouldn’t they? Those black motes that floated
around him when he changed looked like sparks of some kind,
which is energy." I muted the TV and rolled over so I could
look up at him, and so he’d have better access to my
fingers and any other parts of me he might want to reach,
wanting to touch him, wanting him to touch me. I slid my
other hand up his arm, his skin warm against my palm. "When
the man became a black were-leopard, the cat looked big
enough to weigh one eighty."
"So if a fat guy got turned into a were, he’d be a fat
were?"
I laughed at the mental image of a pudgy black leopard,
rolls of fat undulating as he walked. Beast showed fangs,
not amused. "No. Remember, that Micheika guy said the
caloric requirements of shifting were enormous."
"So fat people could get bitten by a were and lose
weight every time the moon was full."
"You’re a funny guy. Funny, funny guy." But the mundane
dull chitchat and the texture of his skin had relaxed
me. "They get killed for biting a human. Not a good way to
promote weight loss."
"There is that. And they go furry once a month. Hard to
hold down a job with that." Rick returned his attention to
the TV and switched between news channels to stop on CNN
again, where they were playing an early morning telephone
interview with a Texas senator named Jones about
the "problem with the supernatural creatures in our midst,"
as he put it. Jones, his speech pattern stolen from small-
town Southern Baptist preachers, said, "In species that
live for cent-u-ries instead of decades, of what use are
sta-tutes of lim-i-ta-tion? And, how long is a life
sentence for vampires, who live decades longer than real
humans? How will we deal with the cost to the prison system
in terms of prison cells that will be occupied for cent-u-
ries? In terms of feeding the bloodsuckers? Keeping them
safe from the sun? In terms of the confine-ment require-
ments to hold a creature that is so much stronger than
humans. How do we control the foul things?"
"For vamps, you hire a vamp-killer," I said to the
screen, "and give them true-death, according to Mithran
Law. Human law can’t apply. Which Congress will figure out
sooner or later."
"They haven’t so far," Rick said, cynical and
disparaging, "and it’s playing havoc with the legal
system."
Just to round out the hater-of-nonhumans, Jones
added, "And these witches. The Holy Scriptures tells us
that we, ‘must not suffer a witch to live’." He raised a
finger toward the sky. "Our great coun-try has already
fallen far from God’s i-deal by allowing—"
Rick lowered the volume and switched through the news
channels, the TV glare flashing with each channel-jump. He
said, "Even money says Jones likes small boys, and that
he’ll propose a law that allows law enforcement officers to
shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to weres,
vamps, and witches."
"Did you hear that?" I rolled back upright and took the
remote, found the channel and raised the volume on the TV
to hear the wolfman say, "—killed my grandfather, Henri
Molyneux, and stole our hunting territory from us. Murder
and grand theft." He snarled, "I can prove Leo Pellissier
is guilty of it. And"—he glared into the TV camera—"there’s
no statute of limitations on murder."
"Oh, crap," I muttered, seeing a sidebar photo of Leo,
vampire Master of the City of New Orleans, dressed in a
tuxedo, looking gorgeous and suave and anything but
dangerous. I’d seen him wearing his other face, his vamped-
out, creepy, and dangerous as a rabid wolf face. Though the
wolf thought may not be politically acceptable now.
Rick laughed, half mocking, slanting his eyes at
me. "Vacation’s over," he said. "Your boss is accused of
murder. You know he’ll want his pet rogue-vamp killer at
his side." He looked at the time on the screen. "It’s ten
minutes to dawn. He’ll call. Five bucks." He held out his
hand to shake on the offered bet.
"You knew all about this," I accused. Rick shrugged, not
denying it. "And you offer me awful bets," I grumbled. "No
thanks." Five minutes later, my new cell phone
chirped. Rick rolled out of bed, hunting up his clothes.
I answered the phone, which displayed Leo Pellissier’s
private number.