I caught a hint of motion out of the corner of my eye and dropped to one knee, lifting the vamp-killer. The bitch was in midair, midleap. Her body lancing through the space where I had stood. My blade took the bitch along the side of the belly, the point penetrating deepest beneath the back left leg. She screamed with rage and ducked her head, tumbling in midjump. Her fangs snapped close to my face with a click I heard over the deafness of the nine-mil firing. I fell back. Into the mud. Rolled to my knees.
The bitch landed two feet away, spun on three legs, and rammed me. Lifting me high.
I slammed into something. Took a broken branch to my lower ribs. Right side.
I fired at the bitch point-blank. She yelped and raced away, into the sawgrass. The monster whirled and followed her, limping. The third wolf was hanging in Brute’s jaws, dangling and broken.
I was injured. I knew it was bad because I was hung on the broken tree as if I’d been skewered for cooking, bleeding like a stuck pig. I was having trouble getting a breath. Rick and Eli dropped to either side of me. Both turned flashes on me, so bright I closed my eyes. Or maybe it was the sight of the wound, vivid and slick with blood. I smelled bowel. Saw what might have been a strip of liver. Inside me, Beast hissed, and I hissed with her.
“If she was human, we’d cut the limb and take it with us to an ER,” Eli said to Rick. “But maybe she’ll—”
“Pull her off it, fast, before the pain sets in,” Rick said.
Before? I thought. Too late.
“Under her arms,” Rick said. “On three.” They grabbed me under my arms, braced their bodies, and Rick counted. On three they lifted and jerked me off the branch. I didn’t even scream. I couldn’t. I had no breath. My chest ached, heart suddenly beating unevenly and with pain in each contraction. Lung collapsing maybe.
They let me down, gently, into the mud. I was under the branch I’d been impaled on. It was covered in gore for the first five inches. And yes, there was a piece of tissue hanging on the wood that looked suspiciously like part of my liver.
“Idiot damn woman!” Eli spat. “Just because you can heal is no reason to keep dying.” His voice was gruff, not even trying to hide his worry/anger/fear. “You could try to be more careful.”
“What’s the fun in that?” I whispered. Huh. My lips were numb.
“Someday you’re gonna wait too long,” he warned.
I managed a chuff of laughter as he turned my body to the side. I was facing the water. It was closer than I had thought. Just beyond where the girl’s body lay, her blood trickling into the canal. At the edge of the water something glimmered, an arc of bright light, all the colors of the rainbow, swimming through the water, moving with the up-and-down sweeps of a dolphin or porpoise. It was beautiful. Cool and bright and muted all at once, like a rainbow come to life and shot through with silver. I tried to point, but my hands weren’t working.
The light being, so much like Rick’s partner, Soul, but not, most certainly not, cavorted in the cold water, leaping in and out of the canal without a splash. When it came close to the shore, it halted, the light of its spirit body coruscating. It slithered closer, like a water snake, and seemed to dip part of its energies into a trail of the dead girl’s blood. It wrenched itself back, leaped into the air, and was gone. Something indefinable inside me mourned. And the light, what little there was of it, began to go.
“Shift,” Rick said as he cut through my clothing and loosened my holsters and my Kevlar vest. “Shift, Jane. Now!” He unbelted leather and zipped my pants down. Eli unlaced my boots, their flashlights dancing pools of light on the scrub around us. If the wolves came back they’d never know in time. I tried to tell them, but my mouth wasn’t working. I shivered in the cold air. Or in the cold of death. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
I sought the gray place of the change, the place of my skinwalker energies. But it eluded me, like phosphorescent water slipping through my fingers.
Beast? Can you help?
Jane is stupid human. But deep in my mind, I felt her bend and pick me up by the scruff of my neck. Holding me in her killing teeth as tenderly as though I were one of her kits.
And together we dropped into the gray place of the change.
The energies of what I had determined might be quantum mechanics, of the movement of electrons and neutrons and all the trons, were a nimbus of light, arcing and racing and waving and dancing in a silver cloud of light. The energies were struck through with darker sparks of black light and blue-white sparks of brilliance.
The pain increased, but a different kind of pain, sharper, cutting. As if my flesh was being stripped from my bones.
Beast leaped away from men, shaking free of boots and clothing and racing up a stunted tree. Screamed into the night, big-cat scream. Claiming life and hunting grounds and calling to spirit being that had fled the dead.
“Jane?”
I hissed. Am Beast. Not Jane. Jane is asleep inside. Then smelled blood. Not Jane-blood. Not dead-girl-blood. Not werewolf-blood. Rick-blood. I dropped to ground, sniffing. Opened mouth and pulled air in over scent sacs in roof of mouth. Tasting/smelling mate. He was injured.
I walked to him and stuck snout to arm. Rick held still, not even breathing. Smelled Rick and smelled werewolf. Rick was bitten. Backed away. Hissed, snarled. Turned to Brute and snarled again. Brute and Pea were Rick’s pack. His den-mates. Should have protected Rick like kit against predator, I thought at them. I growled and walked toward them. Angry. Should have protected mate.
Wolf backed away. Lowered head. Dropped dead werewolf. Like offering. Pea chittered from Brute-back. Sounded sorry. Beast looked at Pea. Will mate become werewolf? Werewolf and werecat too? Will mate die?
Pea jumped from Brute and raced to Rick. Climbed up his leg. Studied bite mark. Rick lifted Pea to shoulder and bent over Jane clothes.
“You’re hit,” Eli said, opening box with bandages. Voice was toneless, but Eli-body’s smell changed, unhappy. Thinking many things. He put flashlight in mouth held it with blunt human teeth. Ripped open large bandage. Cussed at sight of wound. “It bit you?” Placed sheet of white over Rick’s arm.
“Yeah.” Rick wrapped wounded arm and bandage in Jane T-shirt. Pea chittered softly. Sad. “Tie it off,” Rick said. Eli wrapped T-shirt-bandage in stinky stuff that changed shape to wrap arm. Pressed on wound. Rick hissed with pain. “He tried to rip off a hunk of muscle, but he got distracted when Jane shot him full of silver.”
“Bad?”
“Hurts like a mother. But I’ll heal.”
“But . . .” Eli stopped. Bent and gathered up Jane clothes and weapons. “Let’s book. We got a hike to make. And two pissed-off wolves between us and it.”
“And you with their keys,” Rick said, laughter in tone. Rick said, “Brute. That thing dead?” Brute nodded head up and down, human gesture. Looked stupid. Pea chittered in triumph, claiming kill.
“Okay,” Rick said. Slung weapons over shoulder. Rick stood, wavering on two feet. Should be on four feet. Would not waver.
Brute looked at girl, dead on ground. She smelled of meat. Of food. Beast was hungry. Needed meat after change. Did not look at girl-meat. Growled at Brute. Wolf dropped own head and turned away from prey-meat.