Excerpt of Once Bitten by Kalayna Price

In the last ten minutes I’d gone from miserable to totally
screwed.

An hour ago I’d thought a city named Haven would be good
luck. Now I wondered who it was supposed to be a haven
for—polar bears and penguins? Next time I snuck aboard a
train, I would remember to check whether it was headed north
or south. The snow-laden streets were the miserable bit;
“screwed” began two blocks back when I picked up the scent
of something never meant to exist in the human world. Well,
a something other than me.

A woman cut a beeline through my path, her attention on a
curbing taxi. I stopped, the man behind me didn’t. He
shouldered by with a grunt, his briefcase slamming into my
thigh. I scowled after him but he didn’t look back, let
alone apologize.

I hated crowds. Any one of the bundled-up people trudging
down the street could be hunting me. Of course, that same
anonymity protected me. Shivering inside my over-large coat,
I resisted the urge to glance over my shoulder as I matched
pace with the pedestrian traffic. Remaining inconspicuous
was key.

A “Do Not Walk” sign flashed, and the crowd stopped on the
corner of Fifth and Harden. Horns blared and drivers
shouted, but despite the green light, there wasn’t much room
for the cars to move. Some of the more impatient foot
traffic wove through the vehicles, earning a one-fingered
wave from a cabbie as another car slid into the space that
opened in front of him. I debated crossing, but decided
keeping a low profile among the suits on the corner was
safer. Shifting my weight from foot to foot, I held my
breath as a city bus covered us in a dirty cloud of exhaust.

A hand landed on my shoulder.

“Kita Nekai,” a deep voice whispered. “Come with me.”

I froze, unable to turn for fear any movement would betray
me into running. Breathe. I needed to breathe, an impossible
task around the lump in my throat. My first gasp of air
brought the hunter’s scent to me, and the skin along my
spine prickled in a response more primal than fear. Damn.
Wolf. The blood rushing through my ears drowned out the
street sounds so the crowd moved silently, in slow motion.

The fingers digging into my shoulder tightened, and my eyes
darted to them. The manicured nails and white cuff peeking
out under his brown coat sleeve marked the hunter as a suit.
He’d blend in nicely with this crowd.

“Let go of me.” I didn’t bother whispering, and the woman
beside me coughed as she glanced at us.

A half-turn put me eye level with the hunter’s red-silk tie.
I grabbed his wrist, a weak illusion that I was the one
doing the restraining, and cleared my throat.

“Thief! Pickpocket! He stole my purse!”

People turned, their eyes taking in the hunter’s pristine
pinstriped suit and my Salvation Army duster with its
patched elbows and frayed hem. The suits closest to us
shuffled further away, casting leery glances from the
corners of their eyes. But they watched. They all watched,
and the hunter couldn’t just drag me off the street with so
many human witnesses. I saw that realization burn across his
amber eyes.

The light changed, and the crowd surged forward, filling the
small gap that had opened when I created my scene. The
hunter clung to my shoulder, but the push of bodies
dislodged his hand, and I let myself be carried away. The
businessmen in tailored suits and women in pumps towered
over me. I never thought I’d be grateful for being short,
but with any luck, that would hide me from the hunter’s
view—if only I could cover my scent that easily.

The crowd flowed down a set of cement stairs to the subway.
The voices of hundreds of commuters bounced off the
underground walls, a symphony of impatience accented by
flickering florescent tubes. As they pushed into lines in
front of the turnstiles, I realized the flaw in this plan:
money, or really, my lack thereof.

Okay, no time to panic.

A weathered sign advertising public restrooms hung on my
side of the turnstile, and I hurried through the door. The
hunter wasn’t likely polite enough to obey the little girls’
room sign, but I was willing to bet the line of women
waiting inside would give him pause.

I bypassed the line, ducking inside the first open stall and
locking the thin door against the angry murmurs of protest.
The cramped space boasted dingy walls covered in scrawled
insults and just enough room to stand in front of a
rust-rimmed toilet. What a lovely hiding place. The need to
pace itched my heels, and I rocked back and forth on my
toes, hugging my arms around my chest.

Someone pounded on my door.

“Stall’s taken,” I said.

“Hurry up,” an agitated, but clearly female, voice said.

I ignored her. There were two other stalls she could use.

I rocked on my heels again. I needed a plan. The
bladder-heavy humans aside, if I tried to out-wait the
hunter the afterwork crowd would thin, and I needed human
observers to protect me. The bathroom had only one door, and
if the hunter saw me enter, all he had to do was watch for
me to exit. Of course, if I could slip out without him
recognizing me . . .

How much did he know about me? He knew my name and clan, but
did he know anything else? It was a chance I had to take.

Balancing on the toilet seat, I tucked my knees to my chest
so I wasn’t visible under the stall walls. Around me,
agitated voices complained about everything from the wait to
the grey weather. I closed my eyes and tuned them out. I
needed to center myself. Mentally I stroked the coiled
energy inside me. It boiled. Spread. I anticipated the pain
but still drew a ragged breath as the energy burst to the
surface.

A sharp sting shot down my back, and the skin split open. My
clothes vanished as they always had for my change. A whimper
trembled in my throat, and I choked it back, but it escaped
as my skin slipped off and reversed itself. My joints popped
loudly as they reformed.

Someone banged on my door again. Could they hear the fleshy
sound of my muscles and organs rearranging? I hoped they
were just impatient. Then I passed into the seconds of the
change in which I had no awareness of my surroundings.

My skin sealed around my body again, and the dingy stall
snapped back into focus. My right foot slipped, and I fell
up to my hips into the toilet bowl. Hissing, I scrambled
over the seat and landed with a wet plop on the tiled floor.

Great, now I resembled a half-drowned rat.

Twitching my tail, I shook my back legs and tried to
dislodge as much of the water as possible. I only
accomplished further soaking the gritty tile. My back paw
slipped, leaving grey streaks in its wake across the brown tile.

Disgusting.

I craned my neck, then hesitated. Did I really want to give
my fur a quick bath? That was toilet water. It was better
for it to be on my fur than my tongue, right? I struggled
with that thought a moment, my instincts demanding the
offensive substance be removed.

“Anybody in there?” Someone shook the stall door.

My attention snapped back to more important matters—time was
of the essence, a bath would have to wait. I was taking a
risk by shapeshifting into my second form. If the hunter
found me, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself—at least not
in anyway that would matter, and no one would question him
chasing down a cat. But, I had to get out of this subway
station.

A child pointed as I crawled under the bathroom stall.

“Look Mommy, a calico!”

I sauntered closer to the girl, staying just out of
reach—children had the tendency to pull tails.

“Stay away from it,” her mother said, jerking the child
back. “It might be rabid.”

My lips curled to hiss at the insult, but I curbed the
desire. Hostility wouldn’t get me anywhere.

Purring, I wound around the legs of the next lady in line.
She pressed a tissue to her nose and backed away. Great.

Who was my most likely ticket out? My gaze landed on a woman
washing her hands. She’d been shopping, and several large
department store bags stood staunchly at her feet. Slinking
over, I dove into a fancy white bag and curled up beside a
hat box and hoped she wouldn’t notice the extra weight.

I repositioned myself to balance the load as she claimed her
belongings and bustled out of the bathroom. The bag swung in
her grip, propelling me into something hard. The turnstile
was a nightmare. She pushed through it, and one of the
packages squeezed all the air out of me. I thought the worst
must be over as the bags swung free again, but the swaying
made my stomach threaten to rebel.

No, I won’t be sick. I refuse to.

I got sick all over her hatbox.

Shaking, I eased away from the box. The swish of the train
doors opening initiated another barrage of attacks as people
crowded into the car. The train lurched into motion, but the
movement of the bag settled.

I peeked out and found myself at eye level with a startled
brunette. She screamed, dumping the contents of her lap to
the floor. I guess the cat was out of the bag—well, not yet,
but I needed to be. Dashing through a forest of legs, I hid
under the seat of a man in mud-caked construction boots.

From the limited shelter, I sniffed the recycled, train-car
air. Not a hint of the hunter’s scent.

Thank the moon.

In the past five years I’d caught a hunter’s scent maybe
half-a-dozen times. Most cities had at least one hunter
stationed somewhere to watch for rogues and strays, but I’d
never before had any reason to believe they were hunting me
specifically. This wolf obviously was.

Closing my eyes, I mentally touched the tight coil inside
me. It would be awhile before I could return to human form.
Well, chances were good that the station where I ended up
would be far from the hunter. Tucking my tail around my
body, I resigned myself to a long ride.