Were- Read online

  Chills raced over me. U’tlun’ta was what my kind became when we got old and went insane and started eating people. “Pretty much, yes.”

  “Is the Anzu alive, and will you eat her flesh?”

  “No!” I looked at the blank screen in revulsion, put the cell back to my ear, and said, “No. She’s dead and I didn’t kill her.”

  “What do you use for the snake that resides in the heart of all beasts?”

  The words Sabina used froze me for several heartbeats. They were skinwalker words, for a skinwalker concept. “A feather,” I whispered.

  “With this action, you walk the sharp edge of a blade between light and dark. You do not cross that edge into darkness, but if you slip, you may bleed.”

  “I’ll try not to slip.”

  The call went dead. I dropped to my bed. I had no idea if I’d be able to shift into an Anzu. No idea if there was enough genetic material in the core of the feather to allow me to shift. No idea if Gee would kill me at first sight. Or, for that matter, how much an Anzu weighed. Even though I’m a magical creature, I am still bound by the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy. Taking on extra mass or leaving part of myself behind is dangerous. Flying by the seat of my pants never got any easier. No winged pun intended.

  Stepping around piles of clothes and boots, junk mail, and a small stack of the Times Picayune, I picked up my gobag and shook the grindylow out of the folds. The neon-green, kitten-sized thing spit at me and showed me her steel claws. “Stop that,” I scolded. She wrinkled her nose at me and leaped to my shoulder. Grindys kill were-creatures. It’s their mission. This one liked nesting in my clothes. Absently, I patted her, and she cooed at me, nuzzling under my ear.

  I packed a special gobag with a change of clothes, lightweight shoes, and my cell phone. I laid out the weapons candidates and then weeded them down, ending with a nine millimeter, extra mags, six stakes: three ash-wood, three sterling. And one vamp-killer—a steel-edged, long-bladed, silver-plated knife created especially for beheading vampires.

  It’s what I did, or had done, prior to taking the gig as Leo’s Enforcer. I was a rogue-vamp hunter. And no way was I leaving home without the tools of my trade.

  Packed, I left my room and skidded to a stop. My business partners were standing in the foyer just in front of my bedroom door. Alex Younger had a mulish set to his jaw, though at nineteen, he pretty much wore that expression all the time. Eli Younger, the elder Younger, stood with arms crossed, a speculative gleam in his eyes. I handed him the note.

  He un-clumped it, read the three sentences, and some infinitesimal hint of tension in his face relaxed. “Payback’s a bitch,” he said, giving the note back. And I wasn’t sure who was getting paid back, me for making a bargain, or Gee for enforcing it. “I guess you won’t be needing us?”

  I shouldered my gobag. “I have no idea where we’ll fly for this hunt, but Gee said something about elk or moose when this first came up, so I’m guessing somewhere far north.”

  Elk? Moose? Beast perked up. Moooses and elks are bigger than cows?

  Pretty much, I thought back at her.

  Do not eat note.

  I chuckled and passed the grindy to Alex. “Start your vacation early. Go play. Take in a movie, go visit Sylvia, start a new video game. Whatever. I’m sure I’ll be somewhere way off, where there aren’t many people. And then I have plans.”

  “Fly for this hunt?” Eli quoted me.

  “Yeah,” I said, going for casual. “Thought I’d try to shift into an Anzu.”

  Things took place behind Eli’s eyes, things too fast to catch, but the tension was back, hiding beneath the skin of his face. “Watch yourself,” he said, heading up the stairs to pack a bag. “It’s hunting season in some northern states and it would ruin my weekend if you got shot out of the sky. I’d have to go find your body. Track down and kill whoever shot you. Spend the rest of my life in jail. Totally not in my long-term plans.”

  “What my bro said.” Alex tossed me a box wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. I caught it as he continued, “But I’ll be here, so keep your official cell on, and wear that.” He pointed at the box. “I can track you anytime you’re within range of a tower or within range of a satellite, which should be nearly universal coverage these days. If you stay too long in one place, I’ll assume you’re in trouble and send Captain America.” He thumbed at his brother.

  * * *

  Sunset had freshly bruised the skies. I was in the backyard, holding the Anzu feather, sitting on chilled boulders, naked except for my gobag (full of clothes, weapons, and equipment) and the necklaces around my neck. My gold nugget necklace and the new tracking necklace—looking like gold, but much more useful—and gobag were extra loose. I took several slow breaths. Concentrated on my heartbeat. Let my shoulders droop. The first stars came out as the sky darkened. I dropped into a meditative state, reached down into the tip of the blue feather, into the snake that lives at the center of all creatures: the double helix of DNA, as understood by the Cherokee of my own time. My skinwalker magics rose, vibrant, luminous, the silver and gray of the Gray Between. I dropped deeper, into the dried flesh at the base of the feather.

  Anzu genetic structure unfolded before me.

  The DNA wasn’t a double helix, common to Earth creatures. It was a tangled mass of strands, spun in circles, glowing like glass, pale blue and green light. One ovoid spot in the slowly spinning circle was denser and darker. It opened its eyes and looked at me. Unfolded slowly. The genetic structure was a snake, holding its own tail in its mouth. Ouroboros, the name came to me. The ouroboros focused on me, in the Gray Between, a place where energy and mass are one.

  The snake opened its mouth. Let go of its tail. And struck. Before I could jerk away, snake fangs pierced me. Pain shot through me as if I had been hit with a Taser. I screamed. Bones bent. Darkness took me, blazing and icy.

  * * *

  I woke. The night was cool, humid, strangely scented. Chemical stinks of exhaust, gasoline, diesel fuel, coffee, food, and hot grease were familiar, but sights and sounds were different. The world was orange and silver, my vision so intense it was like looking through a scope, each line of light and shadow vibrant and intense. Something moved. My eyes found it instantly. Even in the dark, I could see individual hairs on a small mouse, hunting along the brick wall, hear its nails click on the concrete.

  The music from a club several streets over was a booming din that hurt my ears. The house band’s off-key rendition of One Way Out would have made the Allman Brothers cringe. A motorcycle engine in the distance was cutting out. Cars motored through the French Quarter. A jet overhead slowed, descending for landing.

  I lifted my arms and my right fingers brushed the wall nearest, ten feet away. I jerked back, rolled to my feet, and looked around, my head swiveling and turning; I had shifted shape. A warbling sigh sounded in my throat as I took myself in.

  I was blue and scarlet and some sort of glowing color that might only be seen in ultraviolet. The glowing feathers were up under my wings and on my belly. A darker version overlay the tips of flight fathers and tail feathers, glowing with black-light intensity to my bird eyes. My feet were long, with clawed toes, ten inches from back claw to longest toe claw, with glowing orange skin over knobby joints. My beak was pointed and curved, a vicious hook on the end. It matched my orange legs. I spread my wings again, carefully, inspecting sapphire flight feathers, with a band of scarlet near my shoulder and another on the back of my neck—which I could see with the head-swiveling thing I could do. I had a twenty-foot wingspan. I shivered, settling my feathers, and I could feel each one as it found its place. I was freaking gorgeous. I also wasn’t hungry, which was a change from all my other shape-shifts. Usually I had to fuel my shifts with prodigious amounts of food, but something about the soft-lit magic trembling along my wings suggested that I had pulled the energy from elsewhere.

  Beast can kill many mooses with claws and strong beak, she thought.

  My hearing
grew clearer, sharper. People were talking everywhere. A whiteout of noise.

  In the house, I heard Eli speak, his voice soft and dangerous. “Bro.” My head tilted that way. “You go out there and I’ll deck you.”

  “But it’s been an hour. Aren’t you worried about her?”

  “No.” But there was the sound of a lie in the single word. Aw. Eli was concerned about me. I should razz him for it.

  But…I was shaped wrong to go inside. I was shaped wrong to open a door. I imagined raising my huge foot and trying to grip the doorknob. I laughed at the vision, the sound warbling, unexpectedly loud. The back door opened on the last note. “Jane?”

  I froze. But…parrots could talk. I warbled again, trying to say hello. It came out a rippling trill. As Eli and the Kid raced out, I tried again, and this time, there were words mixed into the warble. “Thish ish warble warble intersh-ting.”

  “Janie?” Alex asked.

  “Babe?” Eli asked. And he started laughing.

  I lifted a clawed foot and said, very distinctly, if slowly, “Crack your skull like walnut.”

  Eli shut up, but there was still laughter on his face. The Kid went back inside where I could hear him laughing his head off saying, “Big Bird. Big blue bird. Holy shit.” Laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.

  I narrowed my eyes at Eli.

  “Babe. I know you could crack my skull like a nut. But you’re also funny looking.”

  I swiped at him with my wing, which banged into the porch support with a thump that freaking hurt. I warbled a word that I never would have spoken in English. Which made Eli laugh harder. Mid-laugh he drew a weapon and injected a round into the chamber. Aimed at me. I ducked. But he didn’t fire.

  Air whooshed down. Nearly knocked me off my perch on the cracked boulders. A foreign warble, an interrogative, carried on the air as I regained my balance. I turned to see an Anzu, smaller than my hundred forty-five pounds but a far brighter blue, alight on the brick wall surrounding the backyard.

  He gleamed in my bird vision, ultraviolet blues and purples and a shocking ruby at shoulders and throat. He smelled like feathers, heat, and the down we line our nests with. He settled his feathers and cooed.

  “Gee?” I managed.

  “Jane? How have you…?” his words wisped, warbling but crisp and clear.

  “Ummm. I had a feather.” The consonants sounded like sharp tocks, but it was understandable. Sorta.

  “You took a feather from Urgggglllaaammmaaah’s body.” He tilted his head. “Did you ask her consent?”

  “She was kinda dead. So I asked Sabina. She said it was okay.”

  “Did she?” Gee considered that. “This is acceptable to me. Come. We must hurry or our prey will escape us.”

  I cocked my head at my partner. “I’ll call when I’m back.” He nodded. I hunched down and leaped, hopping to the top of the brick fence surrounding the backyard. It was easier than I had expected.

  “Tis only the launch that is difficult.” Gee said, trilling what might have been laughter, expecting me to face-plant. He threw himself into the air.

  I know the glory of soaring, wingtips splayed, tail feathers twisting in subtle harmony with updrafts. And how to land, wings tilting just so, feathering down into a controlled fall with flight-feather positional changes and wing angle alterations, the variation slowing the descent, carrying me to a perch.

  I gathered myself and dropped down until my knobby toes touched my breastbone, a position I might achieve in human form—if I broke my legs first. I leaped and threw out my arms. Wings. Air caught beneath me and I beat down. The long wingtips hit the earth and brushed brick before I managed a second stroke. And then I was lifting, wind in my face, air heavy, full of moisture. I tucked my feet, caught a rising thermal over the street, hot asphalt stink in my lungs. Beat downward again and again.

  Below me, New Orleans glittered like diamonds, the Mississippi a black snake slithering through. I caught a second thermal and soared upward, Gee just ahead. I adjusted my flight position to his left, which decreased my wind resistance, things I knew by instinct and genetics. We rose higher, leaving the earth behind. Intermixed below us I could see circles and triangles in all the colors of the rainbow and long lines of something blue below the surface.

  In this form, I could see magic far better than I could in human or Beast-form. The magic of full circles and smaller workings. And the long blue lines beneath the surface were…ley lines. I had never seen them like this before. And they were so beautiful they made my soul ache.

  Anzu is good, Beast thought at me, sniffing the air. Like Anzu.

  I cooed back at her.

  I had no idea where we were going and I didn’t care as my wings carried me, untiring, across the darkness of the world. Hours passed.

  * * *

  After midnight, Gee descended toward the faint lights of a small township. In the distance, ley lines glowed bright. They seemed like a nexus of some sort, a snarled clump of earth magics. I knew next to nothing about ley lines but they looked dangerous. Overloaded. As we spiraled down, they fell from view and I smelled freshwater lakes and streams, the richness of untouched earth and uncut forests, stone, crude oil, and much more faintly, the stink of old blood.

  The scent grew stronger. A lot of old blood. And the stink of were, species unknown. It was a type I had never scented before. Not wolf, not big-cat, something more musky, though the scent was overpowered, fading even as we flew by.

  Gee circled and dove, alighting on the edge of a house roof. I landed atop an abandoned car. The huge ranch house was in a clearing, at the end of a long empty road, the sharp piney scent of trees all around, trying to overcome the stink of vampire and human blood. The battle was at least a month old, the season having frozen, melted, and washed most of it away. What was left was the stench of fury, desperation, fear, and death.

  I remembered Leo’s words, quoted by the blood-servant who had delivered my invitation. “May your hunt be bloody. May you rend and eat the flesh of your prey.”

  Leo had known what Gee was taking me to hunt. “Well, crap,” I said.

  Gee trilled with mocking laughter.

  Beast, who had been remarkably silent, growled to me, Jane should have eaten note.

  I squatted down on the hood, chest to toes, and fluffed my feathers against the cold, trying to piece together the battle. My Anzu night vision picked out the entire house as if it was day, not darkest night, body fluids glowing as if they were under a black light.

  The attackers came in through the front door, through the front windows, through the garage doors at the back, like a home invasion on steroids. The damage looked as if battering-rams had been used, huge holes punched right through the thin wood of the garage door, the front door knocked off its hinges, the frame shattered. I leaped to the front door and leaned inside.

  The fight had been bloody, but the invaders hadn’t used guns. All the gunfire destruction was from the back wall and hallway, toward the entrances and windows. At least five vamps and ten humans had died in the parts of the house I could see. And so far as my senses could tell me, not one of the attackers had been injured. I still couldn’t identify the species of were, their scent hidden beneath the grizzly stinks of death.

  There were no bodies. They had been carried off and buried or burned. But the crime scene hadn’t been worked up. There was no crime scene tape, no sharp smell of fingerprint powder, no carpet taken up for analysis. The house hadn’t been cleaned. Something was really wrong here.

  * * *

  “You coulda warned me to bring a coat,” I grumbled as we trudged down an unpaved road, pea-gravel crunching beneath my thin-soled shoes. Suddenly, just bam, the road became paved, for no reason, but it was easier to walk, so I wasn’t griping. I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged myself for warmth. Gee seemed unaffected by the cold, but glamour and shape-shifting were very different things. I was cold and starving. He wasn’t. “Where are we? It’s still fall and there’s f
reaking snow on the ground.”

  Gee drawled, “We have alighted in Foleyet, little goddess, a tiny hamlet in Ontario, Canada.”

  “I’m not a goddess,” I said by rote. I checked my cell. Nothing. Nada. No bars. Ducky. Just freaking ducky.

  Gee turned off the road and around an abandoned building, the windows boarded over. The back door opened before us, light pouring into the night. The herbal stink of vamp and the rancid smell of old blood boiled out. I dropped my arms, leaped back a dozen feet. When I landed, I was holding a silver stake and a vamp-killer. Gee laughed, sly, mocking.

  Holding the door was a vamp, a tribal woman, black-haired, black-eyed, tall and lean, similar to my own six feet of height and build, but she was utterly gorgeous. “It’s our honor to receive the Enforcer of the Master of the City of New Orleans,” the vamp said. “Why do you draw weapons?”

  I slammed my weapons back into the sheaths. “Because I wasn’t informed I would be meeting with Mithrans,” I said, catching up with Gee. “Your species likes to play games.” And I stuck out my foot, neatly tripping Gee over his own feet and mine, feeling better when Gee landed face first in the hard dirt and dusting of snow. “His does too. My apologies,” I said to her. I drew on my training and said, “Additional apologies for my scent. It’s considered a provocation by many Mithrans and that’s unintentional.” I took the two stairs and stopped in the doorway.

  The woman leaned out and sniffed delicately before backing inside, her hands indicating welcome. “Namida Blackburn, of Clan Blackburn. We’d been told you smelled of predator, but all I detect is wind and storm clouds.”

  Interesting. “No insult was intended with the weapons,” I said. I turned around and shut the door in Gee’s face. My big-cat liked to play games too. Grinning, I faced Namida. “How may the Enforcer of the MOC of New Orleans assist you?”