Inhuman

World of the Lupi – 3.5

By

Eileen Wilks

Chapter 1

KAI Tallman Michalski stood at her kitchen sink looking out the window. In daytime she would have seen mesquite, tumbleweed, and the pale grasses of winter stretched across land as flat as her frying pan. But it was after eight o'clock at night in late January, and her apartment complex perched at the very edge of town. Beyond the reach of the parking area's lights, across the wide road that ran along the back of the complex, darkness waited.

Lightning stitched from one black-hung pocket of sky to the next. Eight seconds later, thunder rambled like a giant's empty belly.

Her own belly tightened.

"Where's your plastic wrap?"

She twitched all over like a nervous horse.

"Chill," Jackie said. "It's just me."

Kai turned away from the window to see her friend standing in a tiny kitchen aglow with color. Ghostly patterns swam through the air, some soft as a soap bubble, some so vibrant they seemed almost solid.

She clenched her fist, digging her fingernails into her palm. Pain was a quick way to focus—handy, too, since it was always available. The colors faded to a transparent overlay, barely visible. "Sorry. I phased out watching the storm rolling in on us. Listen, y'all don't have to clean up."

Jackie rolled her eyes. The transparent sea around her was olive shaded with royal blue. Small, discrete shapes swam in her colors like agitated minnows. "Plastic wrap," she repeated. She jiggled the platter she held, still half-full of broccoli, carrots, and bell pepper.

As usual, the vegetables had gone largely unappreciated. Kai always put them out—she liked them, even if no one else did. "In the bottom drawer by thestove. But there isn't much mess, and the storm—"

"Now, Kai." A chunky blonde zipped through the arch between the kitchen and the living area, her hands full of glasses. The colors swimming around her were as quick and lively as her hands as she plunked glasses in the dishwasher. Ginger was twenty years older than Kai and Jackie, but she didn't move like it. "That storm will bother you a lot more than it does us. You need to learn to accept help gracefully, like Jackie does."

Kai's smile stretched across her face, slow and amused. "Jackie does almost everything gracefully. Then she opens her mouth."

"Hey." Jackie's eyebrows lifted above eyes almost the same warm mocha as her skin. "You think I can't chew on my foot gracefully?"

Ginger patted the taller woman on the arm. "We love you anyway, sweetie. So," she said, ripping off a paper towel and turning on the water to dampen it. "Y'all are going to the rally tomorrow, right?"

"Count me out." Jackie's colors looked upset, the shapes breaking up and re-forming. "If what Kai said about those two people who were killed is true—"

"It is," Kai said quietly, opening the refrigerator to put away three unopened Cokes and two cans of Dr. Pepper. "You won't read about it in the paper, but they were both Gifted."

"So we're supposed to band together and march in public, demanding our rights?" Jackie snorted. "Might as well hang a sign around my neck: Gifted here. Come get me. Even if the psycho who whacked those two people doesn't come after me, other nulls might. Like my boss. Or the idiots in Reverend Barclay's congregation. Bet they'd be thrilled to know exactly who to hate."

"We've got to do something." Ginger was uncharacteristically serious. "We can't let them march us off a cliff without speaking up."

"Not everyone has your nerve," Kai said. "But I suppose I'll go. If you…" Her voice trailed off.

Jackie's colors were too jumpy, too dark. She was a deeply reluctant medium who did her best not to contact the dead, but sometimes they pushed their way in. "Hey." She put a hand on Jackie's shoulder. "What's wrong? Is one of the dearly departed giving you a hard time?"

"No. It's nothing. Here." Jackie thrust the wrapped veggies at her.

Deliberate lies were snot green. Something was wrong, but Jackie didn't want to talk about it, so she lied.

Kai didn't call her on it. She accepted the platter and found room for it in the refrigerator. People lied in so many ways, for so many reasons. Most lies weren't malicious. People dodged the truth to spare someone's feelings, to avoid long explanations, to get what they wanted, to fit in, to avoid the consequences of their actions.

Kai knew that good people lied, sometimes for good reasons. She just wished they'd stop. Which, of course, made her quite the hypocrite. She might only lie about one thing, but it was a whopper.

"So how's Nathan?" Ginger asked, whisking herself back into the living room, paper towel in hand.

The question wasn't the non sequitur it seemed. Kai had told everyone who showed up tonight about the two victims being Gifted; she wanted her friends to be wary. She hadn't told them how she knew, but they would assume the information came from Nathan.

As, of course, it had.

"More to the point," Jackie added, "where's Nathan? How come he didn't show? He always comes to your parties."

Ginger laughed. "Comes? He's usually here anyway."

"He had to work tonight." Kai looked around. The kitchen was spotless, so she headed for the living area. "Besides, this wasn't my usual sort of get-together. Ginger, there isn't a thing left to clean in here."

"I guess you'd know his schedule." Ginger tossed her a grin as she wiped down the coffee table, a garage-sale find Kai had painted turquoise and coral and black. "Though I can't believe y'all are still paying for two apartments when you spend most of your time in just one."

Jackie's dark, angular face broke out in a smile. "So you and Nathan aren't just friends! I didn't see how you could be. I mean, the guy is seriously hot in a tall, dark, and uncommunicative sort of way, and you're hetero, right? And the two of you look good together, like bookends. You're both so buff and bony."

Ginger hooted. "Jackie's mouth strikes again!"

Jackie grimaced. "I didn't mean—"

"No, of course you didn't." Kai smiled. "But Nathan and I aren't lovers. We spend a lot of time together because we're friends, and because he's teaching me self-defense. He—"

"And you're teaching him computers," Ginger broke in. "And you run together. And eat dinner together half the time."

Kai looked at Jackie. "Ginger likes to think she's matchmaking with these little comments she makes. It's annoying, but I haven't been able to hint her into stopping."

"Hint!" Ginger laughed. "If I ever learn how to say things as bluntly as you do without people wanting to slap me—"

"It's that Buddha smile," Jackie said. "She smiles like that and you can't get mad."

"I think I'm blushing," Kai said.

"Really?" Ginger made a point of pressing her hand to Kai's cheek. "Nope. Not a hint of heat."

Kai looped an arm around Ginger's shoulders and hugged her. "Okay, not blushing, but I feel like I should be. Now, that gully washer is nearly here, so you two need to be on your way. I don't want to worry about you getting home safely."

Ginger returned the hug. "We'll be fine. But you'll do better if we aren't around when it hits, won't you?"

"What?" Jackie frowned, looking from one of them to the other. "I'm missing something here."

"You know Kai's Gift has a hitch in its gallop?"

"Well, yeah, but erratic empathy isn't such a bad deal. Who wants to feel everything everyone else feels all the time?"

"So true. Problem is, it goes wonky when there's a storm. Sometimes she gets nothing. Sometimes every feeling for a mile around washes right in on her."

Jackie looked appalled.

"Not to worry." Kai patted Jackie's arm reassuringly. "Someone gave me a recipe for a tea that helps. It's got a little magical boost that helps me shut things down. But I'll sleep after drinking it, and I can't do that until—"

"Until your guests are gone," Jackie finished for her. "Got it." She retrieved her coat from the couch and handed Ginger her jacket. "Come on, Ginger. I can't leave until you do, remember? I rode here with you."

Ginger just grinned. "Would that friend who gave you the tea be Nathan, by any chance?"

"If I'd wanted you to know who it was, I would have used his or her name. Go home, Ginger."

"Because I've wondered if Nathan was Wiccan. That's not a big deal in some parts of the country, but here in the Bible Belt it can be. Especially now. With Nathan being a deputy, it could mean trouble if he were known to be a witch. So I thought that might be his big secret. He'd have to be a solo practitioner, since he's not part of my coven, but—"

"Home." Kai grabbed Ginger's purse from the couch and held it out.

A few minutes later, Kai shut the door behind her friends. She breathed a sigh of relief. She loved Ginger dearly, but her friend's inquisitiveness could be a trial, and Nathan's secrets weren't hers to disclose.

Not that she knew many of his secrets, but she knew the biggie. Part of it, anyway. Nathan wasn't Wiccan or Gifted because those were human labels. And Nathan wasn't human.

Kai wandered around her small apartment, fluffing a pillow, straightening a stack of books, too twitchy to settle. It was barely nine o'clock. She didn't want to sleep, dammit, but with that storm… maybe she should listen to the weather forecast. She clicked on the radio.

"The president announced the expansion of the task force initially formed to study the effects of the power winds that shifted the balance of magic five weeks ago. Speaking to a crowded town-hall type meeting in Boston, she said…"

Kai snorted. She doubted a task force was going to help. They couldn't remake the world back into its old shape—though a few dozen more dragons to soak up excess magic leaking from nodes all over the world would help. Maybe they'd find a way to conjure or contact some.

Here in Midland, the Turning hadn't caused as many problems as elsewhere. With only one small node in the city, the ambient magic level hadn't risen enough to interfere badly with computers. They hadn't been troubled with things blown in by the power winds, either, like the goblins that hit a little town near Austin, or the hell-rain in Houston.

That had blazed for days in spite of the efforts of firefighters from all over the nation. It might be burning still if the FBI's Magical Crimes Division hadn't sent three covens to extinguish it.

Of course, the hates-magic crowd thought the covens had started the fire in the first place. Never mind that experts said the Turning was caused by a shift in the realms—they blamed witches.

Now that most of the big, showy problems caused by the Turning had been dealt with, people were noticing another change. The population of Gifted had pretty much doubled. Turned out that a lot of people possessed a potential for magic, but so slight it had gone unnoticed until the power winds blew through in December. Existing Gifts had been strengthened. Nascent Gifts had bloomed into the real thing—delighting some, traumatizing some, and feeding the antimagic hysteria that spread like a fungus in others.

People always wanted someone to blame, didn't they? Fear tied knots in reason and shut down compassion, even in basically decent people.

Not everyone was basically decent. Politicians pandering to fear and prejudice had introduced a bill in the Texas House to require all Gifted to register their Gift. They wanted it put on driver's licenses and employment applications, loans, and several types of professional licenses. It made Kai think of the way the Nazis made Jews wear Stars of David on their clothing.

She bent to pick up a crumpled napkin Ginger had missed in her frenzy of cleaning. The truth was, she was afraid, too—not of magic, but of people. Which wasn't like her.

Kai gave a lot of parties, though she wasn't an extrovert in the usual sense. She just liked people. She especially liked bringing together those who'd never ordinarily have a chance to get acquainted, and her job took her into homes all over the city, so she knew people from all walks of life.

She threw good parties, too. Like a chef, she took a little of this, a little of that, and stirred up a delicious gathering. But tonight's party hadn't been her usual get-together. Tonight she'd asked her Gifted friends and a few concerned spouses or partners over to talk about the prejudice that had blown into Texas along with the power winds… and to pass on Nathan's warning.

Two people had been killed in the past month, their bodies drained of blood. Reverend Barclay and his ilk blamed some demonic cult, but Nathan said both victims had been Gifted.

"In other news," the NPR announcer was saying, "Republican House Leader Brent Trott renewed his opposition to the Dragon Accords, referring to them as 'deals with the devil.' The Accords, sometimes referred to as Dragon Treaties, were passed last week by strong majorities in both the House and the Senate, and the president is expected to sign them into law tomorrow. In China…"

Kai turned the radio off. She didn't need a weather report to know the storm was close. She'd better get her tea brewing.

In the kitchen she got down her teapot, filled it with water purified by more than reverse osmosis, and set it on the burner. Her stomach churned with guilt.

What she'd said outright was true: the tea helped protect her from the effects of the storm. The rest had been half-truth, misdirection, and lies.

The tea hadn't come from Nathan, as she'd allowed Ginger to assume, but from a shaman of her mother's tribe. That misdirection was for Nathan's sake. It was best if even tolerant people like Ginger continued to think him human. Nor did the brew knock her out. It enhanced her focus so she could put herself in sleep—a trance state that shut down her Gift along with her conscious mind. That half-truth had been for her own sake, to spare herself explanations she couldn't afford because of her one big lie.

Kai wasn't an empath.

While she waited for the water to boil, she wandered over to the sliding glass doors that opened onto a tiny balcony. Impulsively she yanked open the blinds, but the lighting tricked her out of a view. Instead she saw her own face, ghostly in its reflected state, looking back.

The face she saw was… bony, she thought, and chuckled. Trust Jackie! It was as good a description as any. Better than plain, which is what she usually thought when she looked in the mirror. Her features didn't rise to the extravagance of real ugliness, but they didn't add up to anything as smooth as prettiness, either. That sharp blade of a nose would have done any Dine warrior proud.

Like her grandfather. She smiled and her ghost smiled back. That beak looked great on that fierce old man. She did have good skin, and she thought her neck was rather elegant. Her hair was okay. It was thick, at least, though straight as poured water, and the color hit a bland halfway point between her mother's shiny black and her father's dusty blond.

The woman in the glass lost her smile. The root-ripping torrent of grief had long since subsided, and memory ran smoothly in its beds, a quietly welcoming stream. Yet she'd never stopped missing them. She'd give almost anything to hear her father's belly laugh one more time, or be back in her mother's kitchen making fry bread.

Her mother had been a pretty, feminine woman. Maybe if she'd taken after her mother more, Nathan would…

Oh, stop. She yanked the blinds closed. There were plenty of pretty women in Midland. She'd never known him to bring one of them home. Nor any pretty boys, for that matter. For awhile she'd wondered if his moral code precluded sex outside of marriage, or if he'd taken some kind of vow. A couple months ago she'd been nervy enough to ask.

He'd looked startled, then said, simply, "No."

Nothing more, just that one word. With anyone else, it would have been a rebuke for having pried. With Nathan, it was a mark of trust that he'd answered at all.

She could only suppose that human women didn't ring his chimes. Pity he rang hers so well.

The whistling of the teapot drew her back to the kitchen. She took down the glass jar where she kept the herbal mixture, filled a mesh tea ball, and placed it in a glass mug. The herbs had an odd, not unpleasant aroma dominated by the anise scent of giant hyssop. As soon as she'd poured the hot water she covered the mug with her left hand and began chanting. Heat and moisture dampened her palm as she repeated the chant three times, then thanked the Powers. She covered the mug with a glass saucer and left the tea to finish steeping.

In the bathroom she pulled on her faded flannel pj's, put her clothes in the hamper, washed her face, and brushed her teeth. Her contacts went into their case and the world turned blurry, but she didn't bother with glasses. She retrieved the mug and brought it into her bedroom, where aqua walls and white wicker unknotted some of her tension.

Color mattered. Kai knew that better than most. She could see the way people responded to the colors around them. She'd painted this apartment as soon as she moved in last year—aqua in the bedroom, a warm tan in the living area, sandy tan in the kitchen, with a turquoise stripe wrapping the two areas to unite them.

She tugged down the covers and turned off the bedside lamp, leaving the one on in the kitchen. Childish, foolish… she promised herself again to stop with the name-calling, but it did embarrass her. Eleven years after the accident, and she still didn't like the dark.

She cozied into her nest of pillows and drank the tea in three big swallows. And shuddered.

The stuff tasted nastier than it smelled, but it worked fast. Even as she snuggled down flat, warmth opened in her middle like a blossom and began sending out tendrils.

She lay in the darkness breathing quietly, listening to the wind as it kicked up a fuss outside. Warmth continued to spread, reaching places that made her think of Nathan and wishes… a wish that hovered in the air, its wistful lavender woven threaded with silver and red. A nice carnal shade of red.

A sensible woman would be glad their relationship hadn't gone in the direction she'd wanted. He was leaving, wasn't he? He'd told her that three months ago. People he worked with were beginning to be suspicious about him. He couldn't stay in Midland much longer.

Surely it would hurt worse when he left if they'd become lovers. As it was, loss already ached inside her like a tooth going bad.

Maybe he wouldn't leave if…

Yes, he would. Dammit, she knew that.

Rain tapped its first, uncertain fingertips on the window. Time to finish putting herself out… not for her own sake, but for everyone else's. Her Gift might not be empathy, as she claimed, but it was skewed.

Which was just as well, since that was probably why she wasn't crazy. Telepaths usually were.

Kai didn't read minds. She saw thoughts and the emotions connected to those thoughts, and sometimes she changed minds. Literally. If she stayed awake for tonight's storm, there was a good chance that some of her thoughts would split off to tangle themselves up in other people's heads.

This wasn't unusual. The biggest null on the planet left a residue of thoughts and feelings behind, but such a faded wash that only a strong psychometry Gift could read anything from it. Strong emotions caused many people to project, and a few others were natural projectors.

But normal thought-bodies evaporated soon after separating from their origin. Kai's didn't. Her stray thoughts might cause her neighbors no more than a brief confusion or bad dream, but it could be worse. Much worse. And with the way her Gift had strengthened since the Turning, she couldn't take any chances.

Kai no longer needed to speak the entire spell aloud. Long practice plus the focusing property of the tea allowed her to carry only a single word deep inside, where she released it. In a dizzy, immaterial shift she slid into white fog, a place diffuse and warm where thought slowed… and slowed… and faded away.

Chapter 2

IT was the sobbing that woke her. Kai hung in the blurred state between sleep and waking, eyes closed, hearing the wash of rain drained of its earlier frenzy, the wail of her neighbor's Siamese cat, and the sobbing: Deep sobs, bereft of hope, aching with a terrible loneliness.

And familiar. She'd heard this before, in other dreams. Oh, sweetheart—there now, you aren't alone, I'm here. I'm…

Her eyes opened. The sound of that terrible sorrow died, but the colors of it lingered for a second in alien shapes of black and silver before dissolving.

Kai sat up, shaken. She'd brought those thoughts back with her. That had never happened before. And she never experienced the emotions connected to thoughts.

Was her lie somehow coming true? Was she was turning into an empath as well as a weird-ass telepath?

That fear, put into words, sounded so silly she was able to set it aside. She'd been asleep, after all—normal sleep, not in-sleep; the trance state never lasted more than a couple hours. She'd connected with someone's thoughts, but her dreaming mind must have translated colors and shapes to conjure the experience of grief instead of the sight of it.

Could it have been Nathan's mind she'd touched?

She frowned, not liking the idea. She'd caught such a quick glimpse of those thoughts… for some reason they hadn't struck her as human, but she wasn't sure why. Nathan was lonely, though. Deeply so. That was one reason she'd reached out to him when they first met, both of them out running in the early morning.

That, and his incredible thighs. And shoulders. And…

And that was enough of that sort of thinking. She shook her head at herself and glanced at the red numerals on her clock, bought because the numbers were big enough for her to read them without contacts or glasses.

Two-ten.

Well, shit. She grimaced and reached for her glasses. No point in trying to go back to sleep. The in-sleep state rested her deeply, and with a couple hours of real sleep on top of it, her tank was topped off. She might as well read for awhile.

Someone pounded on her door.

What the… it couldn't be good news, not at this hour. Kai swung out of bed, heart pounding, mentally sorting through various disasters as she hurried to her living area.

The police, arriving with some terrible news? A drank? A neighbor with an emergency?

Her last guess was right, she saw as she neared the door. Patterns clung to it, coining from the person on the other side—patterns she recognized.

Nathan. And pain. She fumbled with the locks, swung the door open, and let in a rush of cold, wet air.

The man standing in the puddle of yellow light from her porch light didn't move. He was on the lanky side of lean with a long face, black hair, and weathered skin that suggested native or Hispanic blood, though his features were Anglo. His clothes were dark and dripping. No jacket. He was cradling his left arm with his right, but she didn't see any blood.

"Nathan. Come in. What—No, come in first, then tell me."

"There's a bullet in my shoulder."

"An ambulance. I'll call… or do you want me to take you to the hospital? I'll get my coat." Keys. She needed her keys. She turned.

"Eh." One long arm reached out and stopped her. "No hospital. I don't want that. Will you take the bullet out?"

Her mouth gaped. She shut it. "I'm a physical therapist, not a doctor. Certainly not a surgeon."

"I don't need a surgeon. You know how a body is put together."

"I don't know how to—" She heard her voice rising and shut herself up, took a breath, and said more quietly, "I can at least clean it and wrap some gauze around it. Come inside."

"I shouldn't have bothered you." He turned.

This time she grabbed his arm. "In, dammit."

He looked down at her hand, then up at her face, and smiled a singularly sweet smile. That was typical. Nathan's smiles were rare, but each arrived as a new discovery, invented on the spot. "Yes, ma'am."

Standing still, Nathan didn't draw the eye. When he moved, men stood straighter and watched, wary. Women just watched. When he moved, Nathan was power.

Power with a bullet in the shoulder. A bullet. God! Kai shut the door, locked it, and stalked around behind him to look at the wound. How dare he get himself shot. How dare someone shoot him. And he wanted her to cut into him! She wanted to punch things. She was furious and irrational and hoped she'd get over it soon, but she wanted to punch things first.

His cotton shirt clung to his back, soaked through. There was a small, neat hole in the cloth in the neighborhood between his spine and his left scapula. "There's hardly any blood."

"It's usually best not to bleed."

She couldn't help but smile, which made it hard to hold on to her anger. "Bleeding isn't optional for most of us. What about pain? Is that optional, too? Unless you can shut the pain off, it's going to hurt badly if I start digging around in you.".

"Shutting pain off is dangerous."

"Can you do it?" she asked, startled.

He didn't answer. He did that sometimes. If she asked a question he didn't want to answer, he said nothing—no evasions, no anger. And no lies. In the eighteen months she'd known him, Nathan had never lied to her.

The last of her temper poofed out like mummy dust. "Nathan, I'm not qualified. You know that. You need a doctor."

He turned to face her. "Being cut will hurt, but I'm already in pain. Removing the bullet will allow me to heal properly. You're worried that you might damage me, but you won't. I'll direct you. If your hand slips and you cut where you shouldn't, I'll heal it. I heal quickly."

He spoke patiently, as if she were making a fuss over a simple favor. Maybe to him that's all this was. "And if I don't remove the bullet?"

"My body will push it out in a few days, but my range of motion will be impaired until then, and my healing delayed."

Not to mention the pain thing. "I guess a doctor would notice the quick healing. You don't want that."

"Yes. He or she would also have to report a gunshot wound."

Her neighbor's cat had quieted. The apartment was silent except for the shushing of the rain outside. Kai's heart thudded hard in her chest and her palms were damp. Was she seriously considering doing what he wanted?

She met his eyes. They were steel gray like a winter sky, and heavily lashed, striking beneath his dark brows. As usual, they gave away nothing. But the slow, indigo shapes of the thoughts weaving around his head and torso kept spiking into ragged scarlet, toothy orange. Pain colors, when they shaped themselves that way.

He'd given her what he considered enough information to make a decision. He wouldn't ask again. "Who shot you?"

"A city cop. I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be."

"You'll tell me," she said fiercely. "If I do this, you'll tell me why you were shot, what you were doing—all of it."

He nodded.

"All right. I'm insane, but I'll do it."

Chapter 3

NATHAN lay on his stomach on Kai's couch, waiting for her to return with whatever medical supplies she thought she needed. He heard her muttering to herself as she rummaged in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

He'd already selected the knife—a short, sharp paring knife from her kitchen, part of a set he'd given her last Winterfaire.

Not Winterfaire. Christmas. That's what they called the celebration of the winter solstice here. Even after all these years, in the privacy of his mind he sometimes forgot to name things in the common way.

She'd given him a present, too—a suede shirt the color of sand, soft as a mare's nose. He was glad he hadn't worn it tonight… but that was silly thinking. He wanted to keep it for as long as possible, so he seldom wore it. Certainly not for a hunt, even such a limited one as tonight's had been.

Kai had laughed when she opened his gift and said something about the difference between men's presents and women's. She did see him as a man. Sometimes he wanted to ask her why. Was it only his shape that made her think of him that way? Or were his thoughts man-shaped in some ways?

That could be. He'd been here a long time. Perhaps he wasn't as far from human as he sometimes felt.

Feelings spiked in him at the thought. Complicated feelings. Humans dwelled within their complications so consistently, even as they squirmed and disavowed and tried to make the world simple by thinking it so. Nathan had never grown accustomed to human complexities, even—especially—when he experienced them. This wash of huge, contradictory feelings made him want to weep.

Instead he paid attention to the texture of the blanket beneath him, the rhythm of his breath, and the hot pain in his shoulder.

Tonight's shirt was ruined, but it was only cloth, not a gift. She'd helped him remove it. At his suggestion, she'd placed a blanket on the couch to keep it dry, since he hadn't taken off his wet jeans. He'd have been more comfortable without them, but that would have sent a sexual signal.

The blanket would also absorb blood, and there would be some. He could limit bleeding, but he couldn't stop it entirely without prematurely sealing the wound.

The first bright shock of pain from the bullet's entry had long since subsided to a crimson haze, unpleasant but manageable. Controlling pain did not mean setting up some magical shield to deny it, but going into it, accepting it fully. Just as his muscles would accept the knife's message when it sliced into him.

Harder, much harder, was making himself vulnerable to that knife. But Kai would be wielding it, so that was all right.

He lay quietly, waiting, bemused at himself. How odd that he'd come here. It had been instinct, of course. He'd been hurt, in need of help. He'd come to his friend.

His friend. Nathan basked in the wonder of that. He'd known he liked Kai, that he felt good around her, but hadn't realized… gods. He'd just found her. A year ago he would have felt nothing but joy at the finding. Now…

"Okay, I've got gauze and antibiotic ointment and peroxide," Kai said. Her footsteps, soft as they were on the carpet, were audible to him as she approached. "And I found my tweezers. I sterilized them with the peroxide, but I should probably boil them and the knife."

"Not necessary. I'm not susceptible to bacteria or viruses."

"Oh." She took a deep breath. "I'll still clean the area around the wound. It will make me feel better, and I need to get the dried blood off so I can see what I'm doing."

"All right." He slowed his breathing further, closing his eyes. The couch smelled musty; she gave off the fresh, bright scent of a healthy young woman, plus the subtle mix that said Kai to him.

He couldn't go under all the way. Her scent might be enough to keep him from interpreting the knife as an attack, but he wouldn't risk it. Besides, he needed to guide her.

"Where were you that you weren't supposed to be?"

The peroxide was cool and wet. Her touch was firm enough to do the job without being rough. It hurt, but he liked having her touch him. He wished she could do it more often. "At the morgue."

"Are you going to make me pull your story out question by question?"

He smiled at the image of her extracting answers with her tweezers. "I'd prefer to discuss it after the bullet's out."

Another deep breath. "I guess I'm trying to delay."

"Are your hands shaking?"

A pause. "No." She sounded surprised.

"You know how to cause pain when it's needed for healing." They'd talked about that, about how she'd had to learn to allow, even encourage, others to hurt in order to help them reclaim their bodies.

"Yes. Yes, I do. All right. Let's do it."

"You see the entry."

"Yes. It, ah, it's scabbed over and looks about three days old, but I see it."

"Good. The bullet's path was slightly up and to the left, leaving it wedged just beneath the edge of the shoulder blade. I've delayed the internal healing enough that I think you'll be able to see its path. Make a vertical cut, starting about two inches above the entry hole and extending an inch below to give you room to work. There will be some bleeding. I can't prevent that entirely without sealing up around the knife."

The next several minutes went about as he'd expected. Nathan didn't like pain, but it was a familiar enemy. He only tensed once, when her knife skidded across the bullet, sending it deeper.

Otherwise she did well. Kai wasn't trained in this sort of thing, but she understood the basic layout of the body. Her hand remained steady and she followed his directions meticulously. Still, by the time she finished it was a relief to relinquish control and let his body heal. He lay there and panted, exhausted.

She seemed to be doing the same, sitting back on her heels with her eyes closed and her face pale. After a moment she spoke. "It's closing up."

Her voice sounded odd. Spooked, maybe. He couldn't think of what he was supposed to say—agreeing that the wound was, indeed, closing seemed pointless. Perhaps she wanted to know what to expect. "The visible part of the wound heals first, to seal it. Since no vital organs were affected and I'm not in combat, the rest will heal more slowly."

"How slowly?"

"Several hours, probably."

"If you were in combat, it would heal faster?"

"Yes."

"Do you control the healing?"

"No." He reconsidered. That wasn't entirely accurate. "I can, to some extent. I slowed it on the way here, but it's difficult. Tiring."

"Your body prioritizes for you." A thread of humor lightened her voice.

She wasn't too spooked, then. Relieved, he made the effort to sit up. The pain was much less now. "Yes. A good way to put it. May I see the bullet?"

Her eyebrows lifted. "Ghoulish interest, or a souvenir?" She handed him the clump of bloody gauze where she'd dropped the slug.

"I haven't been shot in a long time, and ammunition has changed. It could be useful to know what kind of damage to expect from today's weapons."

"If you're well enough to sit up and examine your bullet, you're well enough to explain why a cop shot you in the back."

"He couldn't shoot me from the front. I was running away." He inspected the smashed lump. Hollow point, as he'd expected. That was standard police-issue and what he used himself. Good stopping power, and less likely to pass through the target and harm a nearby civilian or hostage. Probably a lightweight .38, he decided. Some of the older officers clung to their .38s.

"The officer will be disciplined, I imagine." He lifted his hip so he could slip the slug in his pocket. "He was too hasty in using his weapon. Chief Roberts thinks within narrow channels, but he's correct within his limits."

She huffed out a breath. "That is not an explanation."

He felt a smile start. Kai was angry. If he told her she was pretty when temper brought that flush to her skin, she might pick up the knife again. But she was.

Her Gift was linked to water, and she wore its colors often. The soft flannel she wore tonight was a pale green that made him think of one of the many bright pools in the Summer Lady's land. Her throat rose from the neck of her pajamas, a strong and beautiful pillar the color of warm, wet sand. She would smell so good right there, in the hollow between neck and collarbone.

He took a moment to rein in his body, but the smile lingered inside. "I've been searching for the killer."

"I know that. I don't know why you were at the morgue. Or why you were shot for being there."

"I wanted to see the bodies of the two who were slain. I didn't have permission." The two victims had been killed within city limits, so the city police were handling the investigation. Chief Roberts didn't play well with others, particularly those in the sheriff's office. "I hoped to pick up a… a scent. Traces left by the killer."

"Are you a—a werewolf? A lupus, I mean."

"Eh." The question startled him. Kai had always been careful not to pry, not to ask too many direct questions. But she was his friend. He knew her secret; he could give her more of his. "No," he said, then decided that wasn't enough. "This is the only realm with lupi. They're native to it. I'm not."

She nodded solemnly.

His muscles loosened in relief. She didn't fear him, wasn't upset—and she didn't go on to ask the obvious questions, the ones he wasn't sure he could answer. "I said I wanted to find the killer's scent. I meant the physical scent, but I… there's more, for me. I pick up other traces, psychic traces, but sensually, as a smell. Like you receive thoughts visually."

"Oh." She cocked her head. "I like that. It makes me feel less of a freak to know your talent works a bit like mine."

"You are not a freak."

She tapped her head. "This knows that." She touched her chest. "This doesn't. Did you get a scent from the bodies?"

He grimaced. "I never reached the bodies. The police have them under guard."

"I guess the morgue usually has someone there. An attendant."

"I allowed for that," he said dryly. He'd been sloppy, but not that sloppy. "I didn't expect officers to be stationed at the bodies." He could have killed or disarmed them, of course, but one action would have been immoral, the other stupid. He shook his head. "I don't understand why they were there. Chief Roberts is narrow, not stupid. He must have some reason to guard the bodies, but I can't come up with one."

"He may be thinking of vampires. A lot of people are right now. The bodies were drained of blood, right? So he might have posted people to watch and make sure they don't—well, rise or something."

Nathan snorted. "If he's trying to find a vampire, he's wasting his time. They don't exist. Not the way they're depicted in fiction."

"But… they do exist?"

"Blood-drinkers are real, but not native to this realm. Most of them aren't intelligent, and none of them reproduce by endowing their victims with the ability to rise from the dead."

She grinned. "Or go around seducing young virgins?"

They'd watched Interview With the Vampire together last Halloween. Funny show. He'd chuckled at what she claimed were all the wrong places. "Exactly."

"So you think it's a human who killed those people?"

"Unlikely. A deranged or evil human might drink blood, but he or she couldn't suck out the entire ten pints in the average body. Nor is it easy to drain a body completely in other ways, and the victims were apparently exsanguinated in the same places the bodies were found."

"Then it's an animal of some sort. Something that came in on the power wind."

"Probably." He considered his words for a moment. "By 'animal' I don't just mean inhuman. I mean a species incapable of complex communication."

"Communication? You think that's the dividing line between animal and, uh… I guess I can't say human, but I'm not sure how to put it."

"Sentient is the closest word in English."

"Okay, then. I would have thought the level of sentience depended on intelligence, the ability to reason."

"Reason can be denned in different ways, and intelligence is a slippery scale to apply. Is a severely retarded man a beast?"

She grimaced. "You make your point."

"Sophisticated communication which conveys concepts rather than just 'danger' or 'food' is essential because without it, intelligence and moral reasoning don't develop. A potentially intelligent being that is unable to communicate effectively never develops its potential. Take cats, for example."

"Uh… cats?"

"Cats are potentially sentient, but only those who live closely with other sentients develop fully because they lack the stimulus of clear communication. Not all cats develop a high level of sentience," he added. "But some do. The ones with good telepathic skills."

"Cats." Her voice and expression were blank. Then a smile spread across her face like the early colors of dawn. She shook her head, rueful, smiling. "I think I'm weirded out. Also wiped," she said, rising. "And so are you. Do you want to stay here for what's left of the night?"

"That would be good." Healing drained him. Delaying the healing drained him more. "Did you see that in my colors?" he asked, suddenly curious. "That I need rest?"

"Not the colors so much as the way they're behaving. Droopy and sluggish."

He nodded. That made sense—his thoughts felt sluggish. "Thank you. For the offer of your couch, and for helping."

"You're welcome. I'll get you a pillow and a cover." A yawn caught her, and she stretched.

Long-buried feelings stirred inside him. He had to be stern with his body in order to quiet it before she noticed. "A sheet would be welcome. I don't need a blanket. Is it all right if I remove my jeans? They're wet."

"Sure." Her smile came a shade too quickly, a tint too bright. "I'll get you that sheet."

He didn't remove his pants yet. He'd do that after she was in bed. Kai couldn't regulate her body the way he did, nor could she hide her response from him. He couldn't hide his response from her, either, for that matter—she'd see it in his colors if he allowed himself to become aroused. So he hadn't. He didn't want to raise expectations. But he allowed himself the rare indulgence of enjoying the way her body moved beneath her loose pajamas as she left the room. Maybe…

He wouldn't rush things. But he knew her now for a friend, so… maybe.

Chapter 4

IT was still dark when Nathan woke to three bars from the William Tell Overture. He rolled into a sitting position, reached for his jeans, and pulled his cell phone out of the pocket.

Six-oh-five, he noted. And the call was from dispatch. "Hunter."

The phone had woken Kai, too. She drifted out to stand in the doorway to her bedroom while he listened, acknowledged his instructions, then disconnected. He stepped into his jeans, which were clammy and damp still. She didn't ask any questions, but they hung, suspended, in her eyes.

"There's been another killing," he told her, running a hand over his chin. Bristles. He'd have to shave. "The body appears to have been exsanguinated, like the others. It's about three miles from here, just off County Road 60."

Her eyes widened. "But that—that's our road. Nathan, who was it?"

"I don't have an ID." She'd had friends over last night. Gifted friends. She'd worry that the victim was one of them, and with reason. Last night's party and the proximity of the body might not be coincidence. "All I know is that the victim was male."

"Pete… Pete was with Meagan. They wouldn't have gone that way. Neither would Ryan, but Mark—he and Andrew live in Odessa. They might have taken 60. It runs into 1788, which would bring them back to 191, so—but you know all that." She scrubbed both hands over her face as if trying to rub sense in, sleep out. She dropped her hands. "I'm babbling. You know all those roads."

He could see the fear swimming in her eyes, could all but feel the cold breath of it on her neck. Impulsively he reached out, took her arms. She was warm beneath the flannel. He didn't want to let go. "I don't know when the killing took place. The body could have been there awhile. I don't know yet."

She nodded, mute in her fear.

"I'll call. As soon as I'm able and have an ID, I'll call."

"That's right—you'll be investigating, won't you? That's outside city limits."

"Yes." The sheriff's office would handle this one. He'd be able to hunt openly. Eagerness burned in him, a cold fire since he lacked a target. But not, he hoped, for much longer.

Reluctantly he released her. He seldom touched her, as touch made things harder for both of them, but he couldn't regret it this time. He paused at the door. "We don't know that the killer only strikes at night. Be careful."

She shoved her hair back. "You, too."

"I'm not in the kind of danger you are."

"You may not be Gifted, but you… whatever you are, you're of the Blood. It might want your blood, too."

He couldn't argue with her logic. "Of the Blood" meant one of the inherently magical races, and he surely fit that description. Whatever was drinking blood seemed to be after the punch of magic some carried in their blood. His would do very well for that. Better, probably, than any other in this world.

He nodded. "Maybe it will. That would simplify things."

A flash of temper lit her eyes. "Of all the stupid, macho bullshit—"

"I'm not being… macho." He'd been about to say "vainglorious," but the newer word suited. "It's unlikely the killer could damage me seriously." And it—or he, or she—couldn't kill Nathan. If something powerful enough to do that had crossed, he would have known.

Anger still flew flags in her cheeks. "Define 'seriously.' Oh, never mind." She waved at the door. "You have to go. I know that. But I'm going to ask, Nathan. I thought I wouldn't need to, but I do."

Emotion washed through him, tightening his chest. Words, never his strength, failed him entirely. He nodded at her, acknowledging that she would ask him what he was without having any idea how he would answer. And he left.

Nine minutes later, Nathan started his vehicle. His apartment was directly below Kai's; he'd run down and emptied his bladder, washed quickly, and pulled on a clean uniform. As he pulled out of his parking spot he took his cordless razor from the glove compartment.

For the ten thousandth time he wondered why his queen hadn't arranged things differently. She seldom overlooked a detail, but he could see no advantage to the erratic way his beard and hair grew. Sometimes he went a week without shaving. Sometimes he had to shave three times in one day.

Of course, men had mostly worn beards back when she'd sent him here. Perhaps she'd simply failed to anticipate fashion.

Haircuts were more trouble than shaving, given the need to catch every hair that fell, but less frequent. Kai had cut his hair last time he needed a trim.

Once more feeling sluiced through him, rich as wine and more baffling.

What would he tell her? How much would he be able to say?

Dawn was the vaguest of promises in the sky behind him and the county road taking him west was empty of traffic. Nathan turned on the flashing light but left the siren off. He hated the stupid thing. He kept his speed to a reasonable seventy, wanting to finish shaving before he arrived.

He managed that, barely. The flashing red light on top of a sheriff's department car disturbed the darkness just ahead when he cupped the head of the razor in one hand.

There were very few in this realm who would be able to make use of his hair, particularly such tiny scraps of it. And none, he believed, who knew what he was. But he wasn't one to take chances. With a wisp of intention he crisped the bits of hair caught in the razor.

Seconds later, he pulled up behind the other official car. It was the only vehicle in sight. He reached for his jacket from habit rather than necessity and climbed out.

The patroller had left his headlights on with the car parked at an angle to illuminate what lay in the trampled grass beside the road's shoulder. The air smelled of car exhaust, wet dirt, and humans—and, very faintly, of something else. An alien scent that raised the small hairs on the back of his neck.

He looked around, tested the air. Already that whiff of otherness was fading. Whatever it was, he decided, it was gone now.

The patroller was surprised to see him, but swallowed it. "Sergeant Hunter."

Technically, Nathan handled the day shift personnel, and didn't come on shift for another forty minutes. This pup was on the night shift, so Nathan didn't know him well. He had caught a few comments not intended for his ears, however. Raines, like several others, suspected that Nathan was lupus, just as Kai had. And he didn't approve.

Nathan gave him his name for greeting, then asked, "Who found him?"

"Fellow named Jeffrey Bates. Lives over yonder." The patroller nodded at a small cluster of houses set back from the road about half a mile. "Says he likes to run early, before traffic's a problem. He's in my car."

"How long since Bates found him?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes. He had a cell phone with him. I was over on 1788, so I responded quickly."

"You touch anything?"

"No, sir. Uh… I held a mirror in front of the victim's mouth, checking to see if he was breathing. Just to be sure, you know?"

Nathan nodded. He'd suspected those were Raines's footprints next to the body; they were clear, obviously left after the rain had stopped.

Checking for life would have been instinctive for the young patroller, but Nathan knew the look and smell of death. Even without touching the corpse he could estimate how long this one had been dead: no more than six hours, no less than four.

He moved closer without stepping into the muddy, trampled grass directly around the body. Off in the distance he heard the wail of an ambulance. Wouldn't be long before company arrived, and there were things he preferred to do unobserved. He crouched for a closer inspection.

The body lay on its back, one arm flung wide, the other at its side. No noticeable rigor yet, but it had been a cold night. He'd been young… well, they all seemed young to Nathan, but this boy had been in his early twenties. African American, though the blood loss left his skin an odd, ashy color. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket, all of them soaked through from last night's rain. Tony Lama boots, Nathan noted. Pricey and fairly new.

The jeans had been pulled down. His penis, flaccid and bloodless, hung out of the opening in his shorts. Two visible wounds: one in his neck, another near the groin, over the femoral artery. The wounds were unnaturally neat, with no blood or tearing—a circle of punctures about the size of a human mouth opened wide, but nothing a human mouth could make.

He'd seen something like them once. Another time, another place… when? Where?

Memory didn't return an immediate answer, so he focused on what he saw now. No blood—not in the corpse, not around it. Maybe the killer was exceptionally tidy. Or maybe it had killed and drained this boy somewhere else.

Nathan looked at the arms and hands again. No defensive wounds. He checked the ground around the victim another time. "You pass any parked cars on the way here?"

"I—Yeah, I did. Why?"

"How far away?"

"What does it matter?" Raines's sandy mustache didn't hide the thrust of his lower lip, which made him look like a sulky two-year-old.

Nathan's head came up. He didn't say anything. Just looked at the boy.

"Sorry, sir. I… uh, there's a Mustang parked a couple miles west of here, near the turnoff."

"Run the plates. It's probably his."

Raines stood as stiff as the corpse would be soon. "Yes, sir. I'll have to go back there. I didn't memorize the plates."

"Do it." Nathan looked back at the body, not minded to explain his reasoning, but added, "The sheriff will be here soon. Be nice if we could give him a possible ID without disturbing the scene, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

As soon as the other car pulled away, Nathan stretched out a hand and touched the skin near the wound on the neck, confirming his guess about the time of death. He concentrated briefly, then brought his hand back to his nose, sniffed—and froze, his eyes widening in surprise. Not at what he smelled. At what he didn't.

Surprise unlocked memory. Time, place, and cause tumbled out, making his stomach tighten. Now he knew when he'd seen bite marks like that and what had made them. "Well, shit."

Chapter 5

SHERIFF Randy Browning reminded Nathan of a mastiff. He had the heavy frame, the droopy eyes, and the temperament. Patient and unflappable, he was a guardian by nature as well as profession. He didn't like magic, didn't trust it, but he was a practical man. He'd use whatever was necessary to protect his people.

Nathan respected that. He respected the man, too—enough to work with him and allow Browning to consider himself in charge. In some things, he was.

"You want to tell me why you expected Shaw's car to be nearby?" Browning asked.

Jimmy Shaw, age twenty-five. He'd had a DUI six years ago, a couple of speeding tickets since, but was otherwise clean. The address on record was on the west side in a decent, working-class neighborhood that was mostly white and Mexican with a sprinkling of darker faces. He'd bought his 2003 Mustang new, and his body was being loaded into the ambulance now.

Kai didn't know Jimmie Shaw. Nathan had checked.

Nathan's relief about that made it easier to be amused by Browning now. The sheriff was hoping Nathan wouldn't tell him anything too weird. "Tire tracks," he said, nodding at the imprints in the shoulder he'd noticed immediately. They were blurred—made after storm muddied the ground, but before the rain ended.

"I know about the damned tire tracks. Someone pulled up, dumped the body, and drove away. What made you think the car was nearby? It would have made more sense for the killer to keep going."

"It probably doesn't know how to drive."

A muscle in Browning's jaw twitched. "It."

"It may look human, but it isn't."

Browning gave Nathan a disgusted look. The man wasn't happy about the new shape reality had taken since the Turning. Nathan didn't blame him. The sheriff had spent a lifetime learning how to preserve order under the old rules. It would take time to learn new ones, and while he and others figured out what worked and what didn't, some of those in their charge would be harmed.

But he was basically a fair man. Lips tight, he checked out the busy scene around them, then jerked his head at the road. "We'll take a little walk."

The sky was dull steel overhead with threads of rose and saffron in the east, where a hard ball of sun worked to warm the day. Nathan fell into step beside the other man.

Once they were out of earshot the sheriff spoke gruffly. "All right. Why do you think the killer isn't human?"

"It doesn't smell human."

"I'm not going to the DA with that. I'm sure as hell not telling Chief Roberts the killer doesn't smell right."

"No," Nathan agreed. He had other reasons for thinking the killer nonhuman, but Browning wouldn't want to hear them. Which was just as well. Nathan didn't intend to offer them.

This hunt was his, not the sheriff's. If he was right about the nature of this killer, sending humans after it would just result in dead humans. "The bite marks will provide physical evidence, though. You must have noticed. They're punctures, the sort made by sharp canines. Human teeth don't puncture the flesh that way."

Browning had his jaw clenched so tight Nathan could almost hear the teeth grinding. "It'll be a goddamn circus when that gets out. A goddamn circus."

"You going to notify MCD?"

"Damned well have to, don't I? When the autopsy report comes in, anyway."

In the wake of the Turning, Congress had passed a law making it mandatory for local jurisdictions to inform the FBI's Magical Crimes Division of suspected supernatural crimes or attacks. Not that MCD had the personnel to follow up on every report; there was a long waiting list for trained supernatural investigators. But so far, the police chief had resisted notifying them at all, claiming he was waiting for solid evidence a supernatural agent was involved.

Idiot. But a lot of humans swung between denial and hysteria these days, and Chief Roberts was highly territorial.

Browning chewed on his own teeth for a few more paces, then heaved a sigh. "Guess we've been lucky till now. We didn't have a lot of the weird-ass nasties come through in December the way some places did."

Nathan nodded agreeably, though the lack of nasties troubling Midland had little to do with luck. He'd hunted twice since the Turning. The first hunt had mostly been to create a climate for negotiation. Unlike their larger cousins, river trolls weren't entirely unreasonable once you got their attention, and this was a poor spot for them. No flowing water.

The other had been a hunt in truth. You don't negotiate with a ghoul.

"You think this whatever-it-is can't drive?" Browning asked. "Most nonhumans do."

"Lupi do, certainly. Brownies don't, but gnomes can… or so I've heard," Nathan added with a polite disregard for truth. "But as you said, this creature isn't native to Earth. It came through with the power wind. It wouldn't know how to drive."

"You think it's smart enough to learn?"

Now Nathan frowned. His picture was mixed. "Might be best to think of it as smart, but not in a predictable way."

"Clever enough to fool people into thinking it's human, though. Shaw engaged in sex with it. Her. Him. Whatever."

"Or the preliminaries to sex. Yes."

"So it looks human."

"Or can." This wouldn't be an easy hunt. The bum in his blood approved of that.

"Illusion? Do you… crap." Browning stopped moving to scowl at the plain sedan cruising toward them. "Should've known he'd turn up. You'd better go. We've got Shaw's place of employment—the Exxon station at Midkiff and Wadley. Talk to them, see what you can find out."

"The family?"

"That's my job."

The sedan was slowing. Nathan watched the driver, not the car. Slim and dapper, with a round face that looked like he buffed it after shaving, Eldon Knox was the detective in charge of the city's investigation. He was clever, ambitious, and bigoted, and he hated Nathan.

"Knox is my enemy," Nathan agreed. "But not an important enemy. He won't provoke me."

Browning gave him a look. "Yeah, it's that attitude that makes him love you so much. Fun as it is to see the chief's favorite lapdog froth at the mouth when he gets around you, I'll deal with him better if you're gone. Go on. Clear out."

"Yes, sir." He turned to go.

The detective's car stopped and he climbed out. His door thunked closed. "Hunter!"

Nathan ignored him. Browning could handle the man. When he got in his car he was thinking about enemies, prey, and Kai.

His immediate task was to interview Shaw's employer and coworkers. He didn't expect to learn much; at most he might find out if Shaw was known to be Gifted. That was the way of investigations. Most of what you learned wasn't useful.

But his gut had a different priority.

He'd do both, he decided. It wouldn't take long to swing by the apartments, and Kai wouldn't have a client this early. She'd be home.

Minutes later, he parked and ran lightly up the outside stairs. His shoulder barely twinged. He'd tell her that. She'd be glad to hear that her surgery had worked so well.

He knocked. Nothing.

Knocked again. No answer.

Fear was a startling acid. It flushed thought from his system so fast that for a moment he stood stock-still and saw her bloodless body instead of the bland metal of the door.

Only for a moment. Then his mind performed one of its more human tricks and sneered at him. Was he going to imagine her dead every time she wasn't where he'd expected?

His mind was less amenable to order than his body, but he hushed it as best he could. After a second it produced a more useful thought: She might be running.

Of course. Kai ran when she was stressed or upset. It helped her deal with her Gift as well as her emotions, and both had been given a workout last night.

She'd have her phone with her, he thought as he padded back down the stairs. His was in his car. He could call her, find out where she was. Or he could track her.

The decision floated up from his middle without input from his brain. Tuning in to her scents—both the physical and the psychic—was as automatic as adjusting the focus of his eyes. He set off at an easy lope.

Chapter 6

SWEAT stung Kai's eyes. She had her contacts in, so she blinked furiously instead of rubbing and wished she'd remembered her sweatband. One corner of her mind contemplated laser surgery for the hundredth time, but most of her remained cradled in the steady, reassuring thud of her feet against the ground.

When she ran, when she focused on the physical, her thoughts stayed close, tight to her body. She scarcely noticed them at all, and the residue of others' thoughts slipped past, unseen. The world turned crisp, its edges purely material and lovely to her.

"Kai."

The voice behind her jarred her out of her near-trance. She lost the rhythm, found it again, and raised a hand to acknowledge Nathan's greeting. Though she kept moving, she couldn't find the smooth, centered place she'd been floating in. Her thoughts rose around her in a mist of worry-gray.

Why was he here? He was on duty. Was this official? He could have called, but he'd come to find her. Had they misidentified the body earlier and it was someone she knew, after all?

Punctuating the gray were pops of yellow: Nathan. Nathan's here.

She lacked the wind to sigh. She'd pushed herself hard enough this morning, she supposed. Her thighs were burning. She slowed to a jog.

"What's up?" she asked as Nathan drew alongside her, not the least bit winded. He never was, which had irritated her at first. She was more resigned now. He did sweat, at least. In the summer. If he ran more than a mile or two, that is, and it was really hot. Like a hundred.

"You're out running. A killer wants to drink your blood, and you're out running."

"My blood?" Startled, a little frightened, she looked at him. He faced ahead, his features set in an odd frown. But his thoughts—! They weren't muddy—Nathan's colors were always clear—but they were sure jumpy. Indigo twitched into purple, slid back to blue, flashed into green flickering with tips of angry red.

"You'd make a good meal for it. You've a strong Gift."

"But you don't have any reason to think it's after me, personally. Do you?"

The thought-fish around him slowed and flattened. His voice turned wry. "No. I was… generalizing."

Overreacting, more like. Which was very interesting. She jogged along in silence for a moment. "I take it the newest victim was Gifted."

"I suspect he was, but a body drained of life and blood doesn't tell me that."

"Does it tell you other things?"

"Almost always. This one… didn't." Trouble bubbled beneath the even surface of his voice. She saw it in the dark swirls that lifted from him, then fell again. His breath huffed out in a rare show of frustration. "This wasn't at all what I came here to tell you. I don't know why I… no, I do know. It just… surprises me."

He was seesawing, saying one thing, then another; and that was not like him. When he fell silent she wanted to stop, grab him, and shake a few more words out. She settled for a civilized prompt. "And that reason would be… ?"

His feet hit the ground three more times before he answered. "I was frightened. I went to your door and you weren't there, and I was afraid for you."

She could have sworn her heart slid around in her chest in an unnatural way. "That's natural, I guess. You'd just come from a murder scene."

"I'm not used to it. Sometimes I… friends are rare. I don't find one often."

Now he was squeezing the heart he'd just sent sliding. She couldn't think of what to say. The urge to grab him hit again, but this time she wanted to hold him. To just hold on.

He discovered smiles again and offered her one. "Usually I'm the one who has trouble with words. I seem to have stolen yours this time."

"They'll come back." Eventually.

"I didn't know. That you were my friend, that is. Until last night, I didn't realize you had… come inside me that far." He paused. "This isn't what I wanted to talk about."

"I'm enjoying the subject."

"Are you?" This smile arrived so quickly and so lightly it was almost a grin. "Am I inside you, too, Kai?"

The flush of heat hit too fast for her mind to have any chance of controlling her tongue. "Don't I wish."

He stopped, and he did the grabbing, seizing her shoulders and making her stop, too. "I'm sorry. I should have thought about how that would sound."

Humiliation rolled over her with its very different heat. "Joke. That was a joke. You're supposed to grin and say something stupid back."

"Stupid, I might be able to handle, but I'm not good at jokes. I'm not good at sex, either."

She rolled her eyes. "So not believing you here. About jokes, maybe. You don't always get them, or sometimes you think something's funny that I don't get. But sex?" She shook her head and found her own smile. "Come on."

"I can do sex, of course. But it's too…" He shook his head, clearly frustrated. "This doesn't fit into words well. I need a connection. Sex without that connection is too lonely."

Her heart was pounding and it had little to do with her run. "Friendship is a connection."

"Yes."

She searched his face, seeing something different there, but unsure what. She tried to speak lightly. "You're giving me ideas, you know. If that isn't what you had in mind—"

"My mind has become strange territory. I don't know what's in it myself, so I can't tell you." He dropped his hands. "But you'll get chilled, stopping like this when you're sweaty. We should keep moving."

"I need to stretch first." Stretching helped with lactic acid buildup in taxed muscles, making them less likely to stiffen. It would also give her a few minutes to locate her brain, which had to be around here someplace.

Kai untied the jacket she'd fastened around her waist, shrugged it on, and moved to the curb so she could stretch her hamstrings. "So why did you track me down?" Automatically she reached for his shoulder to balance herself. This kind of touching they'd done often.

"I need to let you know about the killer."

"What about him?" She dropped her heels off the curb. "Or it."

"It may be a chameleon."

"You're not talking about a cute little lizard that changes color."

"No, this creature changes its form entirely, not just its color. Chameleon is the closest word in English."

"Not the illusion of change? It really changes?"

"Yes. Mass is preserved, as is the essential brain composition and metabolism. They can look like anything, though, and unlike demons, they change quickly if they have a good pattern for the new shape."

"Scary." She switched positions, this time pulling her knee to her chest to stretch her quads.

He was looking at her legs. He never looked at her legs, not that way. "I wanted you to be watching for something that seems human, but isn't. You'll be able to tell from the way its thoughts look, won't you?"

She nodded, a frown pleating her forehead. "You have any reason to think I'm likely to run into this creature?"

"Not exactly."

"You aren't giving me a warm, fuzzy feeling. And what about you?" She started back at an easy jog. "Can it trick you?"

He fell in beside her. "Since its metabolism doesn't change, I'll smell the truth if I'm close enough."

"But you're not lupus."

This smile was amused. "No."

Personal questions amused him now, instead of making him run the other way? "Is that all you came here to tell me? To watch out for something like looks human, but isn't?"

He nodded. "I may have exaggerated the urgency. I think the killer is a chameleon—that fits what I know—but I'm not certain. They're extremely rare, for one thing, and normally they exist only in high-magic realms."

"Is that where you come from? A high-magic realm?"

"Yes."

Another answer, offered as easily as if his true nature wasn't a big, fat secret.

He added, "Not the realm where chameleons are found, though. They're constructs. That's not allowed in… my home realm."

"Constructs."

"Made, not bom."

"But—but how could that be possible?"

"As I understand it, the mage—no, it would have to be an adept. He or she would start with—"

"Hold on. There really are mages and adepts? I thought that was just myth, like unicorns or… never mind." She'd been about to say "or dragons," but they'd turned out to be real.

"Unicorns are real, too. Or mostly real. They don't exactly live in any of the realms, but… wait, wait." He held up a hand, forestalling the questions hovering on her tongue. "I'll explain another time, or try to. I don't understand unicorns myself. For now, accept that if this creature is a chameleon, it's extremely dangerous and may be drawn to those with a strong Gift."

They jogged together quietly after that. Kai was comfortable with the lack of speech; the companionship of silence reminded her of her grandfather, who could go days without using more than a handful of words, but was so present he made conversation with a glance or a gesture.

Nathan was present in much the same way. Last night and today, though, he'd dipped often into words, telling her more about himself than he'd ever revealed in one gulp. Yet much of him remained hints and questions, with a few facts swirling around in the mist.

Fact: He lived longer than humans. A lot longer. She'd learned that a few months ago when they were watching the History Channel and he commented on something that happened in the First World War—something he'd experienced. Fact: He healed fast, faster than she'd have believed possible if she hadn't seen it herself last night. Fact: He came from another realm… and oh, but she'd done a good job of pretending her mind wasn't blown by that news. There were stories of other realms, sure, but whatever reality lay behind those tales had been lost or obscured in their telling and retelling over the years.

The Turning had proved that reality was far stranger and broader than they'd known. Other realms were real. So were adepts and unicorns and the creatures he called chameleons.

So was Nathan. Whatever he was.

They reached the parking area of their complex and turned in. "I have to go," he said. "I'm on duty."

"Okay." Which made it all the more strange that he'd hunted her up.

His official car was parked two slots down from her little Toyota. They stopped there. He wasn't breathing hard, but neither was she this time. The easy jog had cooled her down.

Nathan didn't get in his car right away, though. He did something shocking. He put his hands on her face, fingers spread, and ran his thumbs over her jaw. His eyes searched hers, their wintry color alive with something she'd never seen there before. "Why did you not need to ask before now?"

"You didn't want anyone to know, and I respected that." You would have gone away.

"But you need to know now?"

He was confusing her badly. "I… yes." You're leaving anyway.

"You felt it, too." He sounded deeply satisfied. "Things changed for us last night."

Okay, time to roll. She swallowed her fear and plunged ahead. "Are you from Faerie?"

"From one of the Faerie realms, yes. There are many."

That sent a jolt of surprise through her, but as distractions went it couldn't compete with the ripples created by his stroking thumbs. "You're a… an elf?"

"I am sidhe."

He said that the way Elizabeth the First might have said, "I am queen"—fact and power so entwined that one made no sense without the other. "Uh… doesn't 'sidhe' mean elves?"

"Sidhe means… there are many kinds, but we usually speak of three. The High Sidhe are true immortals. A few of them, not many, have an interest in ruling, so they do. The middle sidhe, those you call elfin or faerie lords, have more of a taste for power and caste. Low sidhe is a more fluid term, but is generally understood to mean the less powerful elfin folk, as well as fairies and others you wouldn't recognize. But some sidhe are nothing like humans or elves and live outside those hierarchies. I… eh, I'm not sure what I am now."

His hands dropped and he looked at one, turning it over as if veins, muscles, and knuckles scribed some obscure message in his flesh. "It has been so long… but whatever else I am or am not, I am of the wild sidhe."

Wild sidhe? She shook her head, not understanding.

This smile was old and sad. A parting smile. "A hellhound, Kai. I was born a hellhound."

Chapter 7

THEY called Midland the Tall City because of the downtown, where brick-and-steel stalagmites poked at the sky. The office buildings Nathan was headed toward weren't skyscrapers by any means, but in the middle of the flattest, most featureless land on the continent, they did stick out. To Nathan's mind the skyline looked like it was giving heaven the finger.

He kept that observation to himself. Religion turned some folks belligerent.

He was headed back to the sheriff's office, the hum in his blood clearer to him than the hum of his car's engine. His trip to the service station that morning had led to another lead, then another. Eventually he'd learned where Jimmy Shaw had spent his last night on Earth.

He'd been able to pursue those leads because Sheriff Browning had released him from desk duty for the duration of the investigation. That sort of pragmatic flexibility was one reason Nathan had lingered here longer than was probably wise. But only one.

Since his stranding, Nathan had been many things—mercenary, guard, rag man, monk, tinker, riverboat pilot, and more. So many more. In his last persona he'd been a private investigator, specializing in finding lost children.

He'd found them, of course. It was impossible to shift a hellhound from a trail he'd been set to—even, Nathan had discovered, when he'd been set to the trail by no one but himself. It had taken him a long time to learn how to put himself to the hunt when there was no true prey, but it had been worth the effort. Finding the children had been good. Satisfying. Even when they'd been brutalized, he'd been able to return them to people who loved them.

Sometimes there had been no living child to find, only a body—killed by exposure, by mischance, or by malice. All too often, by malice. When that happened, he'd hunted their killers.

Those had been true hunts.

Humans were peculiar. They were by turns squeamish and appallingly violent. Eventually Nathan had concluded it was their very bloodthirstiness that made them erect so many legal and social barriers against culling the vicious from their midst. They didn't trust themselves to stop with the obviously evil.

So he'd hunted the child killers in secret. Eventually he'd been caught—or as good as, since he'd had to abandon that persona. Eighteen years later, Colorado still had an outstanding warrant for Samuel Jager. The legal system might be ineffective, but it was tenacious.

It had taken time to build a new identity. The current age had much to recommend it—indoor plumbing, cell phones, various advances in medicine. He considered cars and television mixed blessings, and had grown to like computers, though airplanes were an obvious mistake. Humans were inexplicably fond of them, but Nathan had no intention of meeting death while strapped in a giant metal coffin hurtling through the air at the behest of some stranger.

But technology was seriously inconvenient when it came time to reconstruct himself. That was another reason he'd put off leaving Midland—the sheer nuisance of creating a new identity. But again, it was not the whole story.

He liked police work. It was a restful job, at least in Midland. He seldom dealt with real ugliness, and he worked mostly in the open. He liked being part of a team, able to contribute to the common good. If he ached sometimes for a real hunt, if his particular skills were seldom needed, he had a place here. Even those who noticed that he was different didn't always shun him for it.

Kai hadn't.

And there, of course, was the rest of the story. He'd been ready to leave eighteen months ago, needing a true hunt. Needing to return to his purpose. He'd met Kai and decided to stay awhile longer.

His heartbeat picked up. He'd told her. He could scarcely believe he'd done it, yet it felt right. She'd been shocked, yes, but not repelled. He could swear she hadn't been repelled. Even if she no longer wanted to be lovers, she would remain his friend.

But the timing… ah, Lord of Luck, why now? After all the aching years, would his exile end when he'd found a reason to stay?

There was little he could do about that. He'd never known the day or hour when his time here would be over. He still didn't, so he set that thought aside and focused on his hunt. But the tangle of hope and fear remained, along with both yearnings—one old, one new. And opposed to each other.

He would, he thought as his car bumped over the train tracks, probably be rewarded for his candor with a host of questions. His lips quirked. Kai obviously had no idea what a hellhound was. Or much notion of what the sidhe were, much less the wild sidhe.

Questions would be all right. He pulled into his slot in front of the cream-colored building that housed the sheriff's department. Questions would be fine, as long as she remained his friend. He believed… hoped… she would.

He climbed out and set off on foot for one of Midland's institutions—a watering hole called The Bar. It was only half a mile away, on the other side of the railroad tracks. Jimmy Shaw had spent his last night on Earth there.

This was one of the peculiarities others noticed about him—his penchant for walking whenever possible. Pedestrians were regarded with some suspicion in Midland, but walking was a habit he'd been unwilling to give up. He couldn't see the point in shutting himself up in a vehicle any more often than he had to, doing damage to the earth and the air in order to avoid using his body.

People did just that all the time, though. Most claimed they needed to save time. It was true they had little enough of that—their lives were so soon ended. But Nathan didn't see them treating time as precious otherwise. They'd sit in their cars at a fast-food place for fifteen minutes when it would be quicker to park and go inside.

No, he blamed the modern culture of urgency. Only the most urgent sensations, emotions, and situations were considered important. They called it living life to the fullest. Not surprisingly, many sought numbness in alcohol or the pervasive voyeurism of reality TV, while others tried to live a perpetual peak experience through drugs, sex, or celebrity. Ordinary lives, ordinary living, had little value.

Nathan thought people needed to wash dishes by hand sometimes. Prepare their own meals more often. And take walks.

THE Bar was a flat, fading structure with little to recommend it from the outside. Inside it was dim and smelled of grilled hamburgers and beer. The five-o'clockers hadn't hit yet, so there weren't many customers. It still took the manager several minutes to find time for him.

The woman was over fifty and over six feet, with poufy hair and lips greased to an immaculate shine. "Jackie Montoya," she said, holding out a hand. "I'm night manager. Is there a problem?"

"No, ma'am." She had a good handshake, firm without trying to prove anything, and she didn't hold on too long. "I'm Sergeant Hunter. I've got some questions about one of your customers last night. Jimmie Shaw."

Her glossy lips tightened. "Look, I want to help and all that, but I already told that other officer all I knew."

Nathan let that sink in a beat. "Other officer?"

"The detective. Cox, Fox—something like that. Little guy with a shiny face."

"Eldon Knox."

"That's him. He's already got his witness, so I don't see what more I can do for you."

The flush of anger took a second to dissipate enough for Nathan to speak calmly. "I apologize for the inconvenience, ma'am. I know you're busy, but I do have to ask some questions. Is there someplace quiet we could talk?"

She heaved a sigh, looked around, and grimaced. "Might as well make it my office. Your uniform puts some of my customers off. Come on."

She set a quick pace in spite of the heels that must kill her feet by the end of the night. Nathan followed.

Her office was a tiny, cluttered cubby just past the rest-rooms. It stank of ashes and cigarette smoke. She shifted a pile of computer printouts off the wooden chair and told him to have a seat. He did.

Immediately she lit a cigarette. "Okay. Like I told the other guy, Jimmy's a regular. He doesn't—didn't—come in every day, like some. Doesn't work downtown, does he? But he has—had—a taste for the panty hose crowd, if you get what I mean. Women in heels with office jobs. Did pretty well with them, too."

"How did he do last night?"

Her smile was quick and cocky. "Just fine." The smile died. "Or not so fine, maybe, if she's the one who killed him. He left with her about midnight."

"Who?"

"Well, I didn't know her—don't think I've ever seen her in here before. But Ed Bates did. He's a real regular, in here every night, and he knew her, see? That's why that detective took Ed with him, so he could make a statement. Lord, but Ed'll be full of himself." She inhaled hard enough to sink her cheeks in, then blew the smoke out her nose. "If she turns out to be your killer, he's going to be dining out on his story for months."

"Did you learn the name of this woman?"

"I heard Ed telling the detective about her. We all did. She's the one who did his therapy after he totaled his pickup a few months ago." She paused, puffing. "Some kind of weird-ass name. I can't quite call it to mind, but it sounded foreign."

"Kai?" he asked, his hear pounding. "Was the name Kai Michalski?"

"That's her." Satisfied, she mashed out the stub of her cigarette. "That's the name of the bitch who did that poor boy in."

BETWEEN patients, Kai surfed the Internet.

Hellhounds, it turned out, did not have a great rep. Not here, anyway. Maybe in other realms they were considered upright or cuddly or commonplace. Here they showed up in role-playing games as monsters. They were popular in comic books, too, generally as minions of the devil. Of course, those weren't reliable sources—a search on her own name would suggest she was Japanese, Hawaiian, or a character in a violent video game. But they indicated the general outlook.

Her dictionary, consulted on the run, hadn't been much help. It described a hellhound as "a mythical watchdog of hell." Obviously Nathan was no myth, but she couldn't hold it against the dictionary for getting that part wrong. When it was printed, lots of things were considered myth that turned out to be true, like dragons. But they were just as wrong with the "of hell" part.

At least, she hoped they were. Hell. Hellhound. The connection was obvious, but had to be a mistake, a misnaming. Nothing good came from hell.

Hell itself was misnamed, of course, if by that you meant the demon realm, not a final resting place for sinners. Anglos had long since muddied the two, but Dine tradition held that demons came from another world. Nor was it the same realm elves lived in. Kai was sure of that.

Almost sure. It had been years since Grandfather taught her the stories, and few of them involved the far people, the Navajo term for elves.

She liked Wikipedia's entry better. It mentioned the mythical guardian of the gates of hell, too, but it also spoke of spectral hounds who haunted spots in Great Britain. That didn't seem to apply to Nathan, who was hardly spectral. But it went on to say that hellhounds were part of the Wild Hunt.

The Hunt was connected to Faerie, not hell. She was seriously fuzzy on what the connection was, but she knew that much. And Nathan's surname was Hunter.

Clue, Kai.

But she wasn't going to know, dammit. Not until she saw him again and could ask. At the time, she'd barely been able to stammer, "What? You're what?"

Nathan had just looked at her with that sad smile and said they would talk later, when she'd had a chance to think things over. He had duties he needed to tend to. And he'd gotten in his car and driven off.

What was she supposed to think over? She wasn't even sure what a hellhound was! Some sort of supernatural dog, yes, and she had to admit that was a breath stealer, but he wasn't a dog now.

Or maybe he was a part-time dog. Did he Change when he wanted to, like lupi? Or according to some involuntary, arcane schedule? Full moons, eclipses, leap years, alternate Wednesdays…

Part of the sidhe, he'd said. The wild sidhe.

Kai was in her cubby at the clinic looking up "sidhe" on her laptop when Ginger stuck her head in the door. "Good grief, are you still working? It's nearly five. Shake a leg or we'll be late."

Late? Oh, yeah. "The rally. I'd forgotten. I'm not sure—"

"You're going," her friend told her sternly. "Come on."

Chapter 8

THE rally was being held downtown in Centennial Plaza. It was a pretty spot for much of the year, with a fountain perched in tiered stone basins and several oaks slowly growing their way toward stature. In the warmer seasons the trees stood ready to flutter their leaves and freckle the ground with shade.

Not today, though. Today the trees were bare, the fountain dry. But everything else was full.

"There's a lot more here than I'd expected." Ginger sounded torn between anxiety and delight. "I expected to see mostly students. And the coven—several of them promised to come. But this…"

"You did a good job of getting the word out. There must be a couple hundred people here. Maybe more." All of them talking at the same time, all of them revved—uneasy, angry, excited. To Kai, the air was a colorful din. "The TV people showed up, too."

"Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine." Aside from the guilt. Had Kai been a true empath, such a large crowd would have been uncomfortable at best. Kai hated the deceit, hated worrying Ginger for no reason. But not enough to tell her the truth. Ginger would feel sorry for her.

Kai could handle the sting of rejection—and had, plenty of times. She understood why people feared the loss of privacy. But pity labeled her pathetic, and she couldn't tolerate that.

In the eleven years since the accident, Kai had moved seven times. In each new place she'd hoped to find friends. And she had, until she tried trusting them with the truth about herself. Whenever she told someone she saw thoughts, they changed. Most withdrew, fearing judgment or invasion. Those who didn't withdraw physically did so in other ways, watching for signs of insanity… because everyone knew telepaths went crazy sooner or later.

Everyone but Nathan. She didn't know how she'd found the courage to tell him, but she knew why. He didn't lie to her, not even a rosy little social lie. How could she keep lying to him? So six months ago she'd told him. He'd nodded, asked a few questions, and said he'd never heard of a telepathic Gift like hers, but it sounded easier to live with than the usual sort. And that was it.

"You sure you're okay?" Ginger put a hand on Kai's shoulder. "I need to make my way to the front. I'm supposed to speak after Charley."

"You didn't tell me you were one of the speakers!" Kai patted her hand. "Go on. I'm going to hang here at the back." She might not have the problems a real empath would, but the excited crowd made her nervous. "You might see if you can calm folks down a bit. They're wired."

Ginger grinned. "Charley will help with that. He can put a class to sleep in under ten minutes."

"Hey, I'll bet his students stay awake. They'd want to see if he does." Charley, like Ginger, taught at the local community college. He was actually a wonderful speaker, but so laid-back he looked like he might doze off mid-word.

Ginger started threading herself through knots of people. The moment she left, Kai dug her nails into her palms.

She might not feel the emotions swirling around her, but if she weren't careful they'd still suck her in. Kai called it fuguing, the way she could slip away, entranced by the colors and shapes of the minds around her. As a baby she'd apparently been lost in fugue so often that she'd been diagnosed as autistic.

Grandfather had known better. When she was three he'd taken her to another shaman, and together they'd performed a rare ritual that suppressed Kai's Gift. For eleven years she'd been normal—until the day she woke, weeping, from a week-long coma. She'd had no memory of the accident, but from the instant she awoke she'd known her parents were dead.

Therapy had saved her in more ways than one. Therapy and Grandfather. She'd needed the intense physical focus to learn how to mute the Gift that had woken, full-force, while she was in a coma. She'd needed Grandfather to teach her how to go on.

Fugue had never captured her completely, the way she was told it had when she was a baby, but it brought other dangers. When in fugue, she could play with the patterns, change them, intrude her patterns into others. When in fugue, she wanted to. She'd see something in the patterns that needed fixing, and—

"Kai. Kai!"

Startled, Kai swung around to see Jackie a few feet away, trouble writ as large on her face as it was in her colors. "What is it?"

"Damned ghosts." She scowled. "I'm supposed to get you out of here. Or Ginger. Or both."

"AFTERNOON, Doug. This is Sergeant Hunter," Sheriff Browning said. "He has some information you need to listen to."

Midland's chief of police made Nathan think of a whip—quick, taut, and snappish. He even looked the part, being over six feet and under one-sixty. His hair and eyes were dark, his forehead high and getting higher. His mustache might have been laid out with a ruler.

"Randy." Chief Roberts nodded at the sheriff. He had a nod for Nathan, too, but no word of greeting. Nor did he offer either of them a handshake, remaining behind his wide desk, its shine interrupted by very few objects—reading glasses, a file folder, a pen, a phone, a wire basket holding papers. "I imagine you're here to complain that I'm intruding into your territory. I'm behind, so I hope you can make this quick."

"Quick enough." Browning took the seat he hadn't been offered, so Nathan sat, too. "Knox hauled off a possible witness to my case. You want to explain that?"

"If you're talking about the Shaw murder—"

"You know I am."

"There's no evidence he was killed outside city limits, and every reason to think his death is connected to the two Knox is already handling. He found a witness. He brought the man in to make a statement. That's his job. However"—he spared Browning a thin smile—"I'm not trying to keep evidence from you. Here's a copy of that statement." He handed Browning the file folder.

The sheriff took the folder but didn't open it. "Doug, in your rush to make this your collar instead of mine, you've screwed up. I know the gist of mis. Knox found a witness who identified the woman Shaw left The Bar with last night."

Though the smile remained thin, the dark eyes were smug. "That's right."

"Kai Michalski."

Nathan's heartbeat didn't speed up this time. He knew Knox had Kai in his sights and assumed the chief was backing him, so he had his body under rigid control. But deep inside, in a part of him that had never been and would never be human, he was howling.

Beings in thirteen realms would have known that howl, in their blood and bones if not their conscious minds. And feared.

"That's right," Roberts said again. "I assume someone in the judge's office tipped you. I wonder who that was?"

Browning continued as if the other man hadn't spoken. "You persuaded Judge Walker to issue a warrant for her arrest based on that witness's testimony. But you screwed up. Aside from the sheer lack of evidence—"

"I've got plenty to link her." Roberts leaned forward now, his eyes glowing with suppressed excitement. "Delia Rodriguez—the first victim—lived just two doors down from one of Michalski's patients. The second victim used to date another of her patients."

"Good God, Doug, this is Midland. Half the people here have some second- or third-hand connection to one or more of the victims."

"But half the people here aren't witches. She is."

"No," Nathan said, his voice steady. "She isn't. Not that it would be an indictment if she was, but you've got your facts wrong."

Roberts's gaze flickered to Nathan—then darted away. Probably hadn't liked what he saw in Nathan's eyes. "She sure as hell is. Michalski is friends with that witch out at the college. And don't tell me Ginger Hemmings isn't a witch. She's open enough about her perversions."

Nathan kept his voice from descending to a growl. "Wicca is a recognized religion. Ginger is Wiccan. Kai isn't."

Roberts had decided to pretend Nathan didn't exist. He laced his fingers together on top of his desk and spoke to Browning. "We've learned that they had one of their coven meetings last night. Held it at Michalski's apartment just a few hours before she picked Shaw up at the Bar. That's when they prepared for their black rites, when they drained Shaw of blood."

Browning shook his head. "That's all assumptions based on prejudice."

"Don't you accuse me of prejudice. No one has a better record of hiring and promoting—"

"Prejudice against the magical part of the population! Dammit, Doug, you and I have had our differences, but you've always been a good cop. You're so far off base this time you can't even see the base!"

"It isn't prejudice when it's based on facts. I know they met at Michalski's place last night. I know Shaw was later drained of blood. I know Michalski left The Bar with Shaw shortly before he died."

"No," Nathan said. "You don't."

Roberts still wouldn't look at him. "I've got a witness who ID'ed her and three more who gave a good description."

"Mistaken identity."

"What the hell is your man talking about?" Roberts demanded of Browning.

Nathan had had enough. He didn't change position or offer threat openly—but he used a voice the other man would not be able to ignore. "Kai Tallman Michalski was with me at the time your witness claims to have seen her at The Bar."

Roberts jerked. He narrowed his eyes and for the first time looked directly at Nathan. "You're lying."

He was, actually, but the chief had no way of knowing that. "She was with me the rest of the night, too. You think you can get a conviction with an officer of the law swearing he was with her all night?"

The man's lip lifted in a sneer, but underneath it Nathan saw the fear. Smelled it. "You think a jury's going to care what you say? I don't know what you are, but you aren't human." Relief shaded his voice when he turned back to Browning. "That's going to cost you in the next election, Randy. Keeping this—this man, for want of a better word—on as a sergeant even though you have to know that…"

Nathan didn't hear the rest. He was already out the door and closing it softly behind him.

He stopped at the desk where Roberts's secretary sat and forced ease on his voice and body. He gave himself a moment to appreciate the soft floral scent of her perfume so he'd have a reason to smile at her. Humans smiled when they didn't feel it, but, that trick was beyond him. "While my boss dukes it out with yours, I thought I'd see if I could catch up with Knox. Maybe if I'm in on the arrest, the sheriff won't take it so hard. Do you know if Knox has served his warrant yet?"

She tapped her pen against the desk, then said, "Guess it won't hurt to tell you. I haven't heard from him, so he probably hasn't."

He thanked her and left, taking the stairs, urgency riding him and instinct guiding him. Thoughts floated on that sea of need and knowing, crisp and useful.

Knox didn't know where Kai was. Chances were he'd go to the clinic, then to her apartment—and she wasn't either place. Nathan scented her as much closer. Downtown. He could get to her first.

He didn't ask himself what he would do when he found her. He had no plan, felt no need for one. He knew enough: Knox and Roberts intended to arrest her, to lock her away. It didn't matter at this moment if conviction was likely. The arrest itself would damage her. Jail would damage her. A trial would damage her.

So he would prevent the arrest. She was his. His. No one was allowed to harm her.

Chapter 9

"KEEP talking," Kai said. "This haunt has been trying to get my attention since last night." Jackie grimaced. "I should have listened, I guess. When I gave up and let him in, he didn't have much to say. Not even his name, which is weird. They're usually eager to give me their names, their stories. He did give me a picture—this place, filled with people like it is now. So here I am."

"He?" Maybe the message was from her father. A twist of longing tugged at her, because she wanted that to be true.

"Definitely he, though that's about all I know about him. 'Get her out of there,' he said."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Dammit, you'd think… but it's got to be either you or Ginger. I don't know anyone else here well."

"If something bad is going to happen—"

"See, that's just the thing. People think those on the other side have all this insight into events here, when half the time they don't have a clue. But… well, if a message is really specific, there's usually something to it."

Charley stepped up to the mike. His soothing voice drifted out over the crowd as he welcomed them, and the colorful soup began to settle.

"I take it this one's specific?"

"As such things go, yeah." Jackie chewed on her lip. "I'd better tell Ginger, too. Do you know where she is?"

"Up at the front. She's supposed to speak."

"Shit. She won't want to leave."

"I'll go with you."

"No, you won't. You'll leave, then I'll have one less to worry about. Go on." Jackie gave her a little push. "Go."

But once she was turned around, Kai saw what Jackie had come to warn about. Though the colors around the crowd had canned, a small group of men—maybe twenty—kept to themselves off to one side. Kai didn't like the look of their thoughts or the murky swirl they swam in.

"Jackie," she started, turning around—but her friend was gone, swallowed up in people.

It was Kai's turn for some lip chewing. Earlier she'd seen a couple of police officers over by the Midland Center, the brick building whose wall made one boundary for the plaza. Maybe she should find them, see if she could persuade them there was trouble brewing. Or maybe… no,, dammit. Don't even think about it.

Telling herself not to think about something was hopeless, of course. Don't think about an elephant inevitably conjures the image of an elephant. Once it occurred to Kai that she might be able to stop the ugliness before it erupted by calming those thoughts, she couldn't banish the idea by telling herself to drop it.

Okay, then. Consider it logically, pros and cons, she told herself as she began weaving through the packed bodies, heading for the Midland Center.

The pro was that she might be able to prevent violence. The con was—well, there were several. First, ugly thoughts didn't necessarily lead to violence. Second, she had no idea what she might do to any minds she tampered with. That was a good reason, an excellent reason, not to interfere. Third, she didn't even know if she could do it.

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" someone yelled from the back of the crowd.

Kai turned—and those thoughts were roiling now, seething with colors that made her think of storms and blood. There were more shouts, the volume and venom in them mounting every second.

Someone cried out in startlement or fear, someone else in anger. Kai couldn't see what was happening, but the people near her started moving—most trying to get away from the commotion at the rear, some shoving their way toward the trouble. She heard Charley's amplified voice telling everyone to stay calm, stay calm, but no one was listening.

She heard screams.

And the patterns—! The air was thick with the bleached yellow of fear, rippling with electric green and swirls of dark ocher, darker gray, mud brown. The wrongness of the patterns sucked at her. Kai breathed in raggedly—and let herself go, falling into fugue. She had to try—

Someone bumped her, hard. She fell against another someone, which kept her from hitting the ground, and found herself engulfed in a moving knot of people. An elbow jabbed her ribs. She heard screams, cries, yelling., Panic sent her heartbeat rocketing. She fought to keep her feet.

Suddenly she found herself in a pocket of space left inexplicably open in the shoving crowd. She started to reach again for fugue—then saw the body lying on the ground.

It was Jackie.

Kai threw herself to her knees beside her friend. Terror keened her senses, drowning the immaterial in a flood of physical. She shivered as she reached for the pulse point on Jackie's throat… strong. Jackie's heart beat strongly.

Kai shuddered in relief. She ran her hands over Jackie's head, looking ..: there, yes, there. On her temple, a knot. The skin wasn't broken, but something had hit her, knocked her out.

Another shiver hit. The air was freezing all of a sudden. Jackie had on a warm jacket, but was it enough? Maybe—

A woman built like a small rhino lumbered into the open space around Jackie. Kai pushed to her feet, thrusting out a hand and calling out for her to stop. Her voice was lost in the din.

The woman's face crumpled in fear. She pushed right back into the crowd.

Kai blinked. She'd never scared anyone off by waving at her before. What in the…oh. The cold. The cleared space. Even nulls sensed ghosts sometimes. Kai imagined spirits ringing her and Jackie, pushing back at everyone. She'd have to tell Jackie her ghostly friends weren't useless after all. Once Jackie was… oh, God. She had to be all right. She had to.

A sudden surge of people broke past the ghosts' ability to frighten—a mob with neither intention nor control over where it went, pressed willy-nilly by others behind them. The blood drained from Kai's face. She shoved a man aside. Another, a woman, was pushed almost on top of them, but saw Jackie at the last second and managed to stagger over her body without stepping on her.

Too many. There were too many, pressed by too many others. She couldn't—

Then a man in a khaki uniform slipped through the rush of people streaming the other way. Nathan. He bent and scooped Jackie up in his arms. "Get behind me!" he shouted. "Hold my belt."

Kai all but plastered herself against him. She gripped his belt as if her life depended on it, and rode in his wake as he cut sideways through the mob.

They broke out of the crowd near the fountain. Nathan didn't stop, but stepped up into the first stone tier, drained and dry now for winter. Carefully he laid Jackie down, running his hands over her much as Kai had done, then lifting each eyelid. "Concussed," he said, voice raised enough that she could hear. "What happened?"

"I don't know! It happened so fast—these people, the ones with ugly colors, they started yelling at us. At the Gifted, I mean, but I couldn't see what they did. Something that scared people, because all of a sudden everyone was—it was—" Kai found herself horribly close to tears. "I couldn't stop it. I couldn't."

He gave her a look, then rose and wrapped his arms around her. She started shaking.

He lowered his head so he could speak softly, close to her ear. "Adrenaline. You'll be okay in a minute."

"Jackie—"

"Can't do anything for her here. She needs the hospital. It's emptying out now," he added. "We need to go."

"Go?" She lifted her head to stare at him.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't prevent it. I…" He sighed. "A judge has issued a warrant for your arrest."

NATHAN got Kai moving while she was still too stunned and shocked to protest. First he had to make sure her friend received care, though, so he carried the woman to the makeshift stage that had served as a podium. The speakers had made it to safety inside the Midland Center, but the television people remained, avidly filming. The local news anchor hurled questions at him, but she was easy enough to ignore.

Uniformed officers were clearing out the last of the crowd as he and Kai left, some tending the fallen. Sirens sounded. They reached Nathan's official car on Illinois Street just as a car he recognized pulled up halfway down the block. "That's Knox," he said as he shut his door. Kai was already in the car, but he suspected Knox had seen her. "He's got the warrant."

"He's got it? You mean… you mean you aren't arresting me?"

Stunned, Nathan forgot to turn on the ignition. How could she think that? "No. Good God, no." He pulled himself together and started the car. "I came to make sure you weren't arrested. The riot delayed me. Good thing it was a small one."

She made a choked sound. After a moment, he realized it was a laugh. He glanced at her, unsure whether this was a time when their humor diverged or if she was hysterical.

She seemed all right, though pale. "The riot delayed you. God. All right. If you aren't arresting me, what are you doing?"

"Keeping Knox from arresting you."

"But… Nathan, if they've got a warrant, I can't just hide. I don't want to be arrested, but it's a mistake. It's not like they have any real evidence against me. They can't, so they'll have to let me go. But if I evade arrest I look guilty, which will make it harder to persuade them…" Her voice wobbled. "How could they think it was me? This doesn't make sense. Are you sure there isn't a mistake?"

"I'm sure. The sheriff and I discussed the case with Chief Roberts. Roberts is deeply prejudiced against the Gifted. He knows about the meeting you had at your apartment last night, though he's mistaken about its nature—thinks it was a coven meeting. He has a witness who saw you leave The Bar with Jimmie Shaw last night just after midnight."

"The Bar?" She was bewildered. "But I don't go there. I've never been there."

"I told them I was with you at that time. The sheriff believed me. Roberts didn't. He said a jury wouldn't accept my testimony since I'm not human."

"You told them… but I was home at midnight, asleep. Asleep alone. You didn't get there until two o'clock."

"Yes," he said, patient. "But they can't know what time I arrived. Do you mind if they believe we're lovers?"

She waved that away. "That's not the problem. You tried to give me an alibi, and you meant well, but that witness—she couldn't have seen me. It's someone else, someone who looks like me."

Someone who looked like her, yes. Or something. "He. The witness is Ed Bates. He was your patient, I understand."

"Soft tissue trauma to the neck and shoulders. We had several sessions… but Ed knows me. He must know that wasn't… was he drunk? That's it," she said, sounding pleased that something at last made sense. "He must have been drunk."

"Three other witnesses gave descriptions of the woman who left with Shaw. I spoke with one of them. She has a poor memory for names, but a good one for faces. She described you perfectly."

Kai didn't say anything for several moments. He wanted to take her hand, to reassure her with the alchemy of touch. That was what he would have needed at such a time, but he didn't understand human rules for touching, which changed from one culture to the next, from one decade to the next. He wasn't sure when touch was welcome between friends in this era.

If they were lovers…

She spoke before he could make up his mind, looking down at the hands she'd pleated together in her lap. "Do you think I did it, then?"

"No." He was glad to be able to reassure her of that much. "You've never killed."

"Hey. The telepath's sitting over here, not behind the steering wheel. You can't know that."

But he could. He did. Nathan struggled to find words for this knowing, but it was woven of so many threads… Some killers possessed a psychic scent, but not all. Not even most. And some humans who had never Sailed smelled like killers because the potential ran high in them. Those were the ones who wanted to kill, wanted the biood and power and destruction of it. Many killed without having that need—in war or to protect another, because of hunger or fear or a fleeting rage.

And some killed as Nathan did, as part of a hunt, though they hunted nonsentients—deer, rabbits, birds. A very few hunted and killed their fellows, but not as Nathan did. For them, he felt pity. They seemed to have some of the same instincts he possessed, yet they lacked others, those that should have connected them to their fellows, leaving them twisted and terrible. They killed because it was the only connection they understood.

A hellhound did not kill for that reason, but he understood the need for connection, the depth of that need. He'd hunted serial killers because they couldn't be stopped otherwise, but he'd killed them cleanly.

How would Kai feel when she understood that Nathan, too, was a killer? It was a question he didn't want to find in his head, and he tried to shove it out. But it clung like a bramble to the furry underside of his mind. Humans had so many moralities, some of them contradictory.

She would be distressed, he thought. He hated to distress her.

"I know you," he told her at last. "If you had killed for any reason, you would be a… a different version of Kai. You would still be my friend, but different than you are now." He slowed the car as thoughts and questions pinged and bounced around inside, making his head noisy.

"Nathan," she said in a surprisingly steady voice, "why are we stopping at a car lot?"

"I'll get a license plate here. The car… no, I haven't explained, have I?" His eyebrows twitched into a frown. "I'm making decisions for you. That's wrong. I'm sorry." He unbuckled his seat belt and turned to her. This time he went with his impulse and took her hands in his. "I want to hide you so you aren't arrested while I hunt the real killer, but I need another vehicle. Knox saw me with you. So did the television reporter. Once Knox realizes I didn't bring you in, they'll look for this car."

"But this is crazy! You can't throw away your career, and I don't want to be hidden away!"

He wasn't explaining well. "I don't have a career. I hunt. Working as an officer of the law suits me, but I can do that elsewhere, under another name, if I'm allowed to stay here. Here in this realm, I mean. If you don't want to hide…" This was difficult. He swallowed. "I respect your. right to make your own choices, but you need to know you aren't safe. The chameleon wore your face, your form when it lured Jimmie Shaw out of the city and killed him. You may be able to help me catch it."

Chapter 10

THE house was a simple shingle-sided frame structure south of town, just off Cotton Flat Road. It was empty, had been for years. There was no heat, no electricity, no water, and the only furniture was a lopsided couch that had been a home for several generations of mice. The trash on the cracked linoleum floor announced that two-legged residents had come and gone occasionally, too.

Kai had seen all that earlier, when there was still some light and the place still stank. Nathan had done something to fix the smell before he left. Something that involved speaking in a language she didn't know.

It was taking him a long time to get supplies. That, she knew, was her fault—or at least the result of her decision. He was on foot because she hadn't wanted him to steal a license plate or a car, so they'd ditched his official vehicle to walk the last few miles to get here.

It was full dark now. There was a sliver of moon outside, but the grimy window beside the front door let in none of the meager light. That window might still alert people in the nearest houses to her presence, though, if she used the big police-issue flashlight Nathan had left with her. It was for an emergency, not comfort.

Emergency being, she assumed, something more than the mice she could hear scurrying around. Something bigger, like the blood-drinking creature that had worn her face last night.

Kai shivered. Nathan warded this place, she reminded herself. She'd watched him do that before he left, loping silently around the house three times. "I'm no mage to raise wards with a gesture or by singing a little song," he'd said when she asked him about it. "But any of the wild sidhe can wrap a bit of protection around themselves. To do it over a larger area takes a bit more concentration, is all."

The wards were good for hours; they'd keep anything and everything out. But standing in the black, filthy living room with her arms wrapped tightly around her middle, it was easy to wonder how he could be sure. Easy to wonder how she had come to this. How could she have ended up on the run from the police, cold and hungry, alone in the dark and unable to do one damned thing to change any of it?

Stupid question. "Why me" questions always were. She knew that, just as she knew how inevitable those feelings were when life turned topsy-turvy. After the accident she'd been hit by multiple bouts of "why me." Eventually she'd accepted that she wasn't to blame, but neither was she exempt from random tragedy. Shit happens.

If she could just do something! She took two quick steps but stopped, not knowing what she might step on or trip over. She longed for water and a rag to clean a corner of this room, a spot big enough to sit down. And a candle. She'd need light to clean, wouldn't she? Light to hold back the dark that pressed against her skin as if winter itself was running cold fingers over her, trailing shivers and fear.

She should have gone with Nathan. She'd wanted to, but he'd said in his calm pragmatic way that obtaining what they needed would take much longer if she was with him.

Alone, he could move unseen, and quickly. That was undoubtedly true, but she hated being helpless, relying on him to supply her needs.

She hated being alone. If only she could call Grandfather… oh, she wanted him. The need for his voice, his presence, washed over her, leaving her shaky inside as well as out.

If, if, if. "If only" won't get supper on the table, Grandfather used to tell her. Can't start from where we wish we were. That was what he'd said when she lost her parents and he lost his only child. Start from where you are, or you don't start.

Kai consulted her belly and found she'd be starting from cold, hungry, scared… and mad. Anger was a relief. Anger made her less of a victim and shut out the whiny voice. What was she doing, handing control of her life over to someone else? Nathan meant well, but—

The door creaked and her stomach flipped back to plain old scared. She spun to face it.

"It's me," Nathan said softly. "Took longer than I expected."

Nathan was a black splotch against the smudged outdoor darkness, surrounded by the slowly moving shapes of his thoughts as they swam through a faint glow of indigo, lilac, and silver.

Those were not upset colors. "I want to talk to you."

"All right." The door creaked closed, shutting out the bit of moonlight. The grease-and-beef smell of fast food entered with him. "Let me fix the window first so we can have some light."

"Light would be good." To her disgust, her voice cracked.

Soft footsteps approached, along with his colors and the food smells. She felt his hand on her cheek. "Action is easy," he said softly. "Waiting is harder. Has it been bad, waiting here?"

"It isn't exactly bringing out the best in me."

"Hold this." Paper rustled as he pressed a paper bag into her hand. "I'll cover the window."

The greasy-fries scent from the contents of the bag hit her smack in the reptile brain. Her stomach growled as his colors moved to the dirty window. The thunk of a hammer twice announced progress in the window covering.

All at once there was light. A ball of it, rosy and welcoming, perched in the air behind Nathan's head as he turned to her.

"Ah… that's not a flashlight."

"You'd call it mage light or fairy light." When he crossed to her the light followed like an obedient puppy. It wasn't bright—maybe the equivalent of two or three candles—but was plenty for her to see the blanket draped over his arm. She didn't see the hammer she'd heard him use. "It's a simple trick. You could learn to summon one, if you wished."

"I do wish, but later. Nathan—"

Again he touched her, lightly this time and just on her arm. "You have questions, things you need to say. But we should eat first."

Her stomach seconded the idea. "Is that blanket for us to sit on?"

"Yes." He spread it out. "The drinks are in the car, as well as a few other things. I'll get them."

"What car?" she demanded.

"That was my decision. There's no blame to you for it."

Which meant he'd stolen the car. "Did you steal the supplies, too?"

"No. I prefer not to steal, but that wasn't practical with the car."

She sighed, weary with change, fear, and decisions. Too weary to sort through the wrongs and rights. "I'll help bring things in."

"You can, but I'll have to take down the wards first."

"Do you mean I can't leave until you do that? That I've been trapped in here all this time?"

"Eh." He rubbed his nose, looked at the floor. "Well, yes. I'll fix that later, all right?"

She settled unhappily on the blanket.

When he opened the door, the mage light winked out—no gesture or incantation needed. Every time he returned—first with Cokes, bottled water, and two grocery sacks, then with sleeping bags—the light popped back on, too.

She wanted one.

It was an odd and hasty picnic. With the first bite Kai discovered she was beyond hungry, well into ravenous. She devoured most of the burger and half the fries before speaking again. "I shouldn't have run. I shouldn't be here, hiding. I'd like to help you catch the creature, but—"

"They've released your name to the media."

"What?"

"I heard it on the radio. Knox gave a press conference and spoke of the warrant for your arrest. I suspect your image was on the television news, but I didn't see that."

She put down the uneaten portion of her hamburger, her knotted stomach rejecting the idea of food.

Nathan reached for her hand. "Kai. If you don't hide, you'll be in jail by midnight. I don't know if you'll be safe there, if the chief will take the steps to assure that you are. There's ill-feeling toward all Gifted right now, and—"

"And I'm the wicked witch the house is about to fall on. No one objects when she gets flattened. God!" She shoved to her feet clumsily, knocking over her Coke. His hand shot out, catching the cup before it finished tipping in a motion so quick it blurred.

She stared at his hand. He had long, blunt fingers and a wide palm, with a sprinkling of dark hair at the wrist. Such a human hand, in spite of the speed with which it had just moved. She dragged her gaze back to his face. "Why would it want to look like me?"

Nathan rose much more gracefully than she had. "I don't know. There's a link, though. It may select its prey ahead of time and take their shape."

Her eyes widened as fear pooled in her belly.

"I won't let it get to you." He closed the distance between them, setting his hands on her shoulders. "If it does come for you, I'll stop it. Kill it, I hope, because we can prove your innocence with its body. If it remains in its natural state, the shape of the mouth and teeth will match the bites on Shaw's body. If it doesn't, its transformed body will still prove that it could have worn your face."

"Posthumous vindication isn't that appealing to me."

He squeezed gently. "Do you think I'd let it harm you? There are beings, creatures, I couldn't be sure of stopping, but this isn't one of them."

"I love your confidence, but you don't know much about chameleons."

"I know mass is conserved when they change form. This one looked enough like you to fool someone who knows you, so its mass is similar to yours. If it comes after you, I can stop it."

She chewed on her lip, trying to think her way past the fear. If she gave herself up to the police, she might be in danger from other prisoners, maybe even the guards. If she hid out, the monster might come after her.

The chameleon was certainly the bigger danger, but here she had Nathan. In jail she wouldn't. And they needed the chameleon to prove she wasn't the killer. "Do you Change? Like a lupus, I mean."

"Eh. No. I've had a human body and brain for more than four hundred years now. I can't go back to my hound body, not on my own."

Four hundred years? She'd known he'd lived much longer than a human, but that… that would take some getting used to. "Tell me." She reached for the hand on her shoulder, clasped it. "Tell me how you came to be here. How you came to have that human body and brain."

"My queen sent me, and I needed a human form for the hunt. We knew it would take time for me to track the… Kai, are you going to allow me to keep you hidden here?"

"Yes."

Relief stripped him naked. She'd never seen his face so raw with feeling. "May I… is it all right to hold you?"

She didn't bother with words. Arms were better, and hers slid around him as naturally as if they were already lovers. His arms answered, wrapping her breath-stealingly tight for a second, then loosening. He ran his hands up and down her back, buried his nose in her hair. "I have wanted this," he said fiercely. "For so long, I have wanted…" His breath shuddered out.

Silence wrapped itself around them then—a silence of heartbeats and breaths settling into a shared rhythm. Kai closed her eyes so she could absorb the feel of him through muscle, scent, and skin.

Which wasn't touching his, dammit. Though the way their bodies were touching, she knew he wasn't sexually indifferent to her. Not anymore. "I've wanted, too," she said softly. "I still do."

He raised his head. She saw his throat work as he swallowed. "Kai." He said her name the way he smiled—as if he'd just found it, just this moment wrapped his lips around the sound. He ran both hands along her hair. "I can't… if I'm to keep you safe, I can't be distracted."

"You're turning me down."

He grimaced. "I'm turning us both down, but it's hard." His eyebrows lifted in brief surprise. "That was a pun, wasn't it?"

Actually, it wasn't hard. Not anymore. "Ah… did you do something just now? Because you aren't… things changed."

"I control my body. I've been controlling it around you from the first day we met. The wanting is still there, but it isn't reinforced physically."

Well. He'd been controlling his desire from the time they met? That struck her as a good news, bad news deal. He'd wanted her all along, but he didn't want to want her… because sex was too lonely without a bond, he'd said.

But friendship was a bond, a strong one. That tipped things to the good news side, she decided. "Who's this queen that sent you here?"

"I'll tell you." With a sigh he released her. "Sit with me and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

Chapter 11

WHEN Nathan was sent to Earth to find a renegade mage, a redheaded queen was sitting on England's throne. The Spaniards had just founded the first European settlement in North America at St. Augustine, and William Shakespeare hadn't yet set foot on a London stage. In Italy, a young man named Galileo Galilei was disappointing his father by studying pendulums and other nonsense instead of medicine. And the Purge was just beginning.

For thirty-two years, Nathan had tracked the mage. When he finished his hunt, both Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth were dead; Jamestown had been established; and the Purge was over, with thousands of Gifted dead at the hands of the Inquisition, their governments, or their own neighbors. And Nathan had been stranded, cut off from all he knew, even from his proper shape.

"like had violated many laws, committed many sins," Nathan said, "but the queens don't intervene in lesser matters. But he crossed one line too many when he practiced death magic."

Kai lay against Nathan's chest, listening to his heartbeat as well as his voice. His arms were around her; his colors swam with hers. In front of them the mage light burned steadily like a heatless campfire. "Death magic, huh? He' must have been a major bad guy."

She heard a smile in his voice. "Hellhounds aren't set on the trail of jaywalkers. You are… okay with this? That my purpose was to hunt and kill those who broke the queens' laws?"

"I'm okay with policemen and soldiers. Your role was something like theirs."

He fell silent, toying absently with the ends of her hair in a way she found most distracting. Not that she wanted him to stop. Finally he said, "I haven't killed only at my queen's command. When I was stranded here… an able-bodied man can't simply decide to never again use his hands and arms. Common sense and instinct will defeat him. That's how it is for a hound and the hunt. I couldn't simply decide not to hunt, but it was hard, very hard, to learn how to choose my own hunts. The queen never loosed me lightly, so I tried to choose as she might have, but at first I didn't understand human society. Death isn't always a solution. Even when the prey is causing obvious harm, killing can spread ill instead of containing it."

"Have you… here in Midland, I mean. Have you hunted here?"

"Not a true hunt. Not to the death, except for the ghoul. I've learned to take satisfaction in lesser hunts, though. I couldn't be a law officer otherwise."

"Ghoul? You mean there was—No, never mind." She set that aside for another time. "I'm having trouble getting my mind around this. I know you, know your colors, the shapes of your thoughts. I've never known anyone with less anger. You aren't a violent man."

"Anger is too big a response for most things. It gets in the way. You haven't seen me on a true hunt. I am violent then, Kai."

He wasn't apologizing. He was stating a fact.

She didn't say anything for several minutes. She wasn't sure how she felt. Nathan killed according to rules she didn't know, but he'd spent years—lifetimes, maybe, by her way of measuring—evolving those rules. He didn't just come from a different culture, but from a different species.

Was she bothered by the violence in him, or did she just think she ought to be? His arms still felt right around her; his heartbeat still soothed her. She didn't understand, no, but maybe—right this moment—she didn't have to. "It took you years to understand how to choose your hunts," she said at last. "It may take me awhile to understand, but I hope it won't be years."

His voice was soft. "You don't regret our bond."

"No. I don't regret it." Though she wished she knew what it meant to him. Kai shifted so she could look at him. "How did this mage—like, you called him. How did like end up here?"

"He knew his crimes had been uncovered to the two queens and fled. Because he was part sidhe and strengthened by death magic, he was able to leave Faerie entirely, hoping my queen would not set me on his trail once he was beyond her territory. Only a hellhound could track him, you see."

"Sometimes you say queen singular, sometimes queens, plural. Which is it?"

"I told you that a few High Sidhe take an interest in governing. The Summer Queen and the Winter Queen are… eh, you don't have the right words. Call them the High Lords of the thirteen realms. They don't operate a government, a bureaucracy, such as you're used to, but each queen has her court, her dominion. Each steps in when she sees a need."

"Do they rule together?"

"Not precisely. Their dominions overlap at times. When this happens they discuss the matter and decide which of them will act. For them to act together… that hasn't happened in my lifetime."

And how long was that? She decided not to ask. Not yet. "But you speak of 'my queen.' Singular."

"Hellhounds are the Huntsman's to command, and so I was, at first. But the Huntsman is brother to Winter and lover to Summer… I saw both queens often, and one day I knew I must go with zan Al'aran. With the Winter Queen." A hint of longing underlay the words. "So I became hers, and she became mine. It's hard, being queen. Harder for Winter than Summer, because who doesn't love Summer? She'll have been lonely without me."

Kai felt like squirming. It was pointless to be jealous of an immortal—and no doubt supernally beautiful—elfin queen. But she was. Oh, she was. She tried to take the high road. "I imagine she was upset when the realms shifted and you couldn't return."

"The realms didn't shift then. That happened centuries ago, after the Great War. After that your realm was hard to reach, requiring great power. The magic here wasn't replenished, so by the time I arrived there was little left." He sighed. "The hunt took too long. Over the years my own power lessened because there was less for me to draw on, to absorb. By the time I killed Ilke, I couldn't go home."

"Couldn't your queen have brought you back? If she's so powerful—"

"It doesn't work that way. Hellhounds travel between realms without a gate. It's inborn, that skill, and common to many of the wild sidhe. But to bring someone to you from another realm, you must open a gate. After the Great War, the Old Ones forbade opening gates to Earth."

"Old Ones?"

He nodded. "Strange beings, on the whole. I think they're like unicorns."

"I'm getting seriously dizzy here."

"Unicorns have that effect on me, too."

Kai found herself smiling. Unicorns, Old Ones, elfin queens, renegade mages… it all sounded fantastic, even absurd. She accepted that these things were true because Nathan said so, and he didn't lie. But the reality she understood was the warmth of his hand, the chill of the winter air, and the slow, sad song of the wind outside.

Also a steadily glowing mage light. "Did you know you'd be stranded?" she asked quietly. "When your queen set you to track like, did you know you wouldn't be able to return?"

"I knew it was possible, yet I didn't. Not really." His thoughts, usually slow, turned busy—silvery minnows struggling to find a fit as he hunted words. "Hellhounds are sentients, but our brains shape our thoughts, and hellhound brains are not human. What I knew as a hound was different from what I can know as a man. Lesser in some ways, greater in others. I knew I could be trapped here, but that was so apart from my reality that it had no meaning until it happened."

She nodded. "Like unicorns. You tell me they're real and I believe you, but I can't grasp it."

He found one of his smiles, this one holding equal parts sweet and sad. "Yes. The queen told me I could be lost here and I accepted that it was true, but didn't grasp that truth."

"But she sent you. She sent you anyway."

"She's queen." His smile turned gentle, as if Kai had said something mildly foolish. "And she's immortal. A few hundred years isn't long to her. She'd expect me to understand and accept the necessity, and she'd be right. like couldn't be allowed to live. With death magic empowering him and none here able to oppose him, he could have done terrible harm to your world. And those in the thirteen realms needed to know he'd be found and punished."

"How would they know? You didn't find him until years after the Earth was closed to them."

His eyebrows lifted. "The Winter Queen announced she'd set her hound on his trail. Those of Faerie wouldn't need to be present at the kill to know it happened."

A touch of arrogance there. No, more than a touch. "Are you unstoppable, then?"

"Short of death, yes, and hellhounds are difficult to kill. There are few who can manage it."

"A part-sidhe mage pumped up on death magic wouldn't be one of those few."

His gray eyes warmed with amusement. "As you see, he was not."

"Good point." To her surprise, a yawn overtook her. "Wow. Didn't think I could relax enough to be sleepy, but I am. I don't suppose you've got a toothbrush in one of those sacks?"

"Of course." He stretched out a hand and retrieved one of the grocery bags. "Breakfast is in the other bag—fruit, bread, and peanut butter. I didn't get anything for coffee or tea, I'm afraid."

"I'll tough it out." She dug through the sack he'd handed her. Soap, a washcloth and towel, sunscreen, paper plates and cups, deodorant, tampons—tampons! Her usual brand, too, which she assumed he'd seen in her bathroom at some point. She shook her head, smiling. She didn't need them at the moment, but if she was as punctual as usual, she'd want them in another two days.

How many men would have even thought of tampons?

There was also antibacterial ointment, toothbrushes, toothpaste, contact lens solution, and a roll of toilet paper. She took it out, frowning. "With that water you brought I can brush my teeth over the sink in the kitchen, but I'm not using this bathroom."

"You'll want to go outside. I need to set the wards to let you pass anyway, so we'll do that. But first I need to check the area." He stood.

The wards.

While Nathan scouted around outside, Kai thought about those mysterious wards. Once he'd determined that the area was safe, he had her stand in the doorway with her hands outstretched while he loped around the house again. That was to somehow mix her energy with Ids so she could pass through his wards.

When he was done she went out and took care of necessities in the concealing darkness. She came back in and brushed her teeth and washed her face in the kitchen using the bottled water as sparingly as she could—with a tiny bubble of mage light posted to her shoulder. And she thought about Nathan.

To protect her, he'd tossed aside everything. From what she could tell, he hadn't felt an instant of doubt or regret for that decision. She knew the colors of those emotions, the way they muddied thoughts. Nathan's colors remained as clear and true as ever.

The hunt, he'd said, was part of him the way her hands were part of her. She suspected he needed the kill at its end, too, at least sometimes. He'd learned to do without that, but when he spoke of a true hunt, he meant to the death.

He was a killer.

He was the most honest person she'd ever met. He was rare, kind, practical, sometimes too serious, and… and innocent. It was an odd word to use for someone hundreds of years old and experienced in ways she couldn't even guess at, but it fit. There was no taint to Nathan.

He'd bought her tampons. Somehow that summed everything up for her.

When Kai finished washing and brushing and went back to the living room, he'd unrolled the sleeping bags. They lay primly side by side in the middle of the room. She paused. "I smell smoke."

"I disposed of the papers and such from supper. Best not to tempt the mice."

She couldn't agree more. Kai walked up to him and put her hand on his chest. His heart beat slow and steady, but his eyebrows lifted in surprise and his colors warmed. He looked at her, waiting.

"You should have put our sleeping bags together."

"I don't expect to sleep. Are you cold? I can warm the air in here, but it will take power I'd rather save for greater need."

She shook her head. "I'm not talking about sleeping, Nathan."

"Kai—"

"You didn't turn me down because you couldn't risk the distraction. Your wards will tell you if anything comes close enough to be a threat. If you have another reason for not making love with me now, tell me what it is."

For a long moment he said nothing, but his thoughts sped up and a rosy hue brightened the purple they swam in. And his heart beat faster. "You're right," he said at last. "I'm afraid. I hadn't realized that."

"Okay." She nodded. "Good. So am I." And she reached for his head and put her hands behind it, went up on tiptoe, and kissed him.

His lips were warm and, for two difficult seconds, completely still. Then he quivered. And exploded.

His arms took over, binding her tightly to him. He wanted his mouth everywhere, not just on hers. He kissed her chin, the crest of her cheek, and licked her ear, then kissed her eyes closed and ran the tip of his tongue along the base of the lashes. Then returned to her mouth. "Beautiful, beautiful," he crooned, his breath soft and warm against her lips. "So beautiful."

It was true. Nathan never lied. Under the glory of his hands coursing her back, her arms, her hips, with his mouth making magic on her skin, she was beautiful. She tried to tell him the same with her mouth and hands—that he was splendid, glorious, and hers. Hers. In this moment, if only for this moment, he was hers.

"A moment," he said, tearing his mouth away to lean his forehead against hers. His breath came fast. "It's been so long… I need a moment, or my control—"

"Nathan." She cupped his face in her two hands. "Will you hurt me? If you turn loose of your bloody control, is there any chance you would hurt me?"

His eyes were so dark, the pupils dilated. So intent. He shook his head once, his eyes never losing their focus on her. "But it's been so long. I don't… expectations are different than they used to be. I want to do right by you."

Her breath huffed out. "You don't have to do this right. There is no right way because there is no wrong way, not between us. Do you understand? You can't do this wrong."

"Oh." He blinked. "Oh!" And he laughed, delighted, and the sound of it was young and beautiful. Beautiful. "I see. Of course. You're wise, Kai. My Kai." The possessive came out fierce, startling her for an instant—just long enough for him to sweep her into his arms.

He laid her on one of the sleeping bags and crouched over her on hands and knees, tugging off her jacket, then her shirt—a stretchy knit, which was good, because he was not patient with the fabric. And kissing her, kissing whatever part of her his mouth happened to be near as he stripped her.

She was hard put to keep up, but she managed to get his shirt off and his pants unzipped before he yanked her jeans off. And her panties. And her bra. He moved her hands aside and finished stripping himself with the same ruthless efficiency he'd used on her. Her eyes widened briefly as he removed the sheath on his leg—a sheath and a knife she hadn't known was there.

Then he lay down beside her and held her, just held her, pressing skin to skin, touching her hair, her breasts, and whispering to her—English words like "soft" and "beautiful." Words in other languages—French, Spanish, what might be Russian. Words in tongues she'd never heard or heard of.

Her name sounded the same in all of them.

Her hands acquainted themselves with him, too—sandpaper skin on his cheeks, where his beard was growing. Softer skin on his flanks and bottom, coarse hair on thighs tight with muscle. The fascinating flex of muscles in his back and shoulders as he stroked her.

Need pooled in her belly. When his lips closed over her nipple, the liquid tugging turned her as hasty as a kid waking up on Christmas morning. "Now," she said, and, "Oh, yes," as he played with her. "Oh, lovely. Yes. But now, Nathan." She wrapped her hand around him, hard and twitching, and he trembled.

But he wasn't finished. He told her so, and he found more places to touch, turning her on her side, lifting her leg, exploring her until she trembled and clutched him and panted. Before panting turned to cursing—barely before—steady, imperturbable Nathan suddenly shook all over. He flipped her onto her back and centered himself over her and drove home.

With his second stroke, she exploded. On the third, he did, too.

Eons later they lay in the crumpled dark with breaths and legs tangled together, the one still quick, the other limp. Kai found enough wind to say, "I always thought that was an old wives' tale. And I didn't do it myself, either."

"What?" He stroked her hair.

"I've gone blind."

He choked on a laugh. "No, but the mage light… you were right, but so was I. Normally keeping it going is automatic, but I was distracted for a few moments there at the end. Extremely distracted."

The light bounced back into being, but muted now, no more than a candle glow hovering over his shoulder. She could see him smiling at her, and that was good. He'd invented a truly lovely smile this time.

But she'd already known he was happy. His colors were so bright. She smiled back, loving him.

"Sleep." He touched her cheek and sat up.

"Wait. Where are you going?"

"Nowhere." He reached for his pants. "But I need to stay alert, and I won't if I lie beside you."

"I'm not…" But a yawn caught her, making a lie of what she'd been about to say, so she finished wryly,"… not going to argue, I guess. But you'll need to sleep, too."

"I like sleep, but I can do without it, especially on a hunt. One sleepless night is easy enough for me."

There was some shifting necessary so she could zip the sleeping bag up around her. Somehow she hadn't noticed the chill earlier, but she did now. He strapped that sheath with its lethal contents back on his calf and pulled on slacks and shirt, but didn't seem bothered by the cold. Then he settled beside her and took her hand.

The mage light winked out. "Do you mind?" he asked softly. "It's best if I let my eyes accustom themselves to the moonlight."

What moonlight? The air might have turned to ink, it was so black. But she was too exhausted to care, and she had Nathan's hand. Or maybe he had hers, and she pondered that and what difference, if any, it made as sleep drew her down, down, its raven feathers brushing her mind into stillness.

Chapter 12

"KAI." Nathan touched her shoulder, frowning. He'd brought the mage light up again, hoping the cessation of dark would calm her. It hadn't. "Kai, it's all right. Wake up."

She stopped making the distressed noises. Her eyes opened. "What…"

"You were dreaming, I think." She'd whimpered, turning her head from side to side, then stilled. But her hand clasped his so tightly, and she'd kept making those small, unhappy sounds. "A bad dream."

"It was… I've had it before. The crying one." She blinked fuzzily. "So lonely. At first I thought it was you, but this time I knew… she just wanted to be held, so I—What? What is it?"

He'd sprung to his feet. The plucking inside him announced the breach of his wards a second before the beast crashed through the window.

Glass smashed, flying everywhere. The chameleon landed on the floor between the window and him—and he stood between it and Kai. It was eight feet long counting the lashing tail, its shaggy fur like mottled smoke. Feline, with an oddly shaped muzzle, tufted ears, and the oversize pads of a mountain or arctic cat. And it needed only a split second to orient itself before launching all eight muscular feet at him.

Kai screamed. He heard that, but his entire being was focused on his prey. He couldn't move and expose Kai to those claws, so he locked himself to the earth and met the attack.

Claws raked his forearm, ripping flesh from bone, spattering blood. He rocked back only an inch as he smashed his other fist inside the gaping mouth, aiming for the roof of it, where bone was thin and could be driven into the brain.

But the beast was fast. It flung itself back, howling—and bunched its hindquarters, readying for another attack.

"No!" Kai cried. "No, don't—don't—stop!"

The beast shook its head. And looked at her.

That second's inattention was all Nathan needed. He had his knife in his hand as he leaped onto the beast's back, seizing the great head so he could draw the blade across its—

"Don't kill her! She can't help it, and she's so lonely, so confused—don't kill her, please. Please."

He froze, panting. His arm shook with the need to finish.

But the chameleon wasn't moving, either. It wasn't moving.

"See?" Her voice wobbled, but she came toward them. The idiot woman started toward him and his prey. "She won't hurt me. She won't—won't even save herself, because I told her n-not to hurt you."

The beast's muscles tensed. A fine trembling ran through the great body.

Slowly, slowly, Nathan eased the knife away from its throat, but he held his position otherwise, crouched over the chameleon, his wounded arm strobing pain with each heartbeat. "If you stay back, I won't cut her throat. But stay back."

She stopped. "You're bleeding. Your arm. I need to… no, it's stopping already, isn't it? You said you didn't like to bleed in a fight, but… Nathan, she couldn't help it. She's so alone, and she was dying."

There were tears on Kai's face, shiny in the small glow of the mage light. Nathan stared at her, stricken. "What have you done?"

"I don't know, exactly. Only I touched her somehow, or she touched me… I've dreamt of her before, but tonight was different. I—I reached her. I feel her now. She came to me because she couldn't be alone anymore, and I… I told her, in my sleep. I said she didn't have to, so she came to me."

Pity twisted through him. He knew what it was to be cut off from all you knew. So alone… "She'll kill again, Kai. As you said, she can't help it. There isn't enough magic to sustain her here."

Kai took another step. "There's more magic in some places, close to the big nodes."

"Not enough." Eventually there might be, but not yet.

Kai was only four feet away now. She held out her hand, and the head Nathan had pinned struggled. "Let her smell me," Kai said. "She won't hurt me. She won't."

Nathan knew that every being had to decide his or her own course. He'd earned that knowledge one painful step at a time when he'd been stranded and had to learn how to make his own choices, all of them. But he felt sick, physically sick, as he slowly released the chameleon's head.

It—she—stretched her head out, sniffed the hand held out to her. And beneath him Nathan felt a vibration start.

She was purring. The beast was purring for Kai.

"Can you send her back?" Kai whispered. "Back where she belongs?"

He couldn't, no. But he knew one who could.

* * *

THE mage light hung, motionless, in the center of the room, a warm orange ball pushing back darkness. Either the moon had set or clouds had moved in, for outside the night was entirely black. Cold, too, and with the window broken, that cold streamed in unhindered.

Kai paced. Nathan, impervious to either cold or nerves, sat on one of the sleeping bags, eating an apple. And in one corner of the room, the killer sought by the entire city slept, her long body curled into the same sort of cozy ball a housecat would use to conserve heat, the tuft on her tail draped over her nose.

She had a name. Kai sensed that, but couldn't find it. What she got from the chameleon weren't exactly thoughts, nothing that clear—sensations, feelings, and only the biggest of those. She knew the animal was hungry and weak, but content for the moment because Kai was nearby. She felt that contentment as a sort of rumbling at the back of her mind, like a sleepy purr.

"How did she get through your wards?" Kai asked without looking at Nathan.

"I'm guessing it was her tie to you. Your energy is in the wards. Somehow she used your key to come in."

Kai reached the wall and turned. "I don't know how to make this sort of decision." She stopped, frowning. "Come to think of it, I don't understand why it is my decision. It's your life I'm deciding, too."

Nathan finished chewing as calmly as if they'd been in his apartment, talking over a news report they'd heard on TV. "Part of it was mine to decide," he agreed. "But I've made my choices. I could have chosen not to tell you of the possibility, or I could refuse now to call. But for your sake—and also for hers"—he glanced at the sleeping beast—"I'm willing to do it, if you wish me to."

The Huntsman. Nathan would call the leader of the Wild Hunt because he could return the chameleon to her own realm. He would do that… if Kai asked him to.

"But will the Huntsman do it?" she asked.

"I'm no longer of the Hunt, but if I call, he'll come." Nathan gave a little huff of amusement, his lips quirking. "If nothing else, curiosity would likely bring him. The Huntsman keeps hounds, but he has that much in common with cats—a great, throbbing lump of curiosity."

"No, I mean… will he agree to send her back?" Saying it brought a pang deep inside. Kai didn't understand the bond she'd formed with the animal, but sending her away felt hard and sad.

Better than letting her die, though.

"Even his sister doesn't predict the Huntsman. He does what he does, and often won't know himself what that will be until he does it. But he has a fondness for me and a love for all wild things. He might kill your chameleon-cat, but there's a good chance he'll save her instead. Or do something we haven't thought of."

"And…" Her throat was so dry she had to swallow to get the question out. "And will you go home with him?"

"Kai." Her name came out startled. He shook his head. "No, of course you don't know. There's been a suddenness to all of this, hasn't there? I could have left two months ago when the Turning arrived, if that were my choice. I could leave now. There's enough magic for it."

Her restless feet brought her to him. She crouched in front of him, her heart pounding. "Why did you stay?"

"For you." He set down the uneaten apple core and took her hand, turning it to study her palm, her fingers. "Of course, for you. Though I didn't understand how deep you'd gone inside me, not until last night. I knew I wanted more time with you. But also for me." He rubbed her palm gently with his thumb. Slowly he looked up, meeting her eyes. "I'm not a hound anymore, not precisely. I've spent too many years in a man's body, with a man's brain. That I could hesitate at all to return to her taught me how much I've changed. But the queen…"

The trouble in his voice had her turning her hand in his to clasp it. "Yes?"

"I missed my hound's body, missed it badly, at first. I would miss my hands and my speech even more now. And you." He squeezed her hand. "I would miss you terribly if I had to leave."

"Would the Huntsman make you go back?"

"Well, he can't, which is why I'd call him and not my queen. He could kill me, of course, but—"

"Then, no." Her hand clenched hard on his. "Don't call."

"Wait, wait. I didn't mean he would kill me. It's a hunter's way of seeing things, that's all—that he could kill me but can't compel me. He'll come, he'll be curious, he either will or won't do what I ask." He shrugged. "And he'll tell her, tell my queen, about my call at some point, when it occurs to him to do so. But she… she'd have known when the realms shifted that I could return. Since I haven't…" He shrugged, looking away.

He hurt. She settled herself beside him, careful of his arm. It looked whole beneath the bloody rags of his sleeve, and she knew he healed fast. But she'd seen bone earlier. Surely it wasn't completely healed.

She put her hand on his thigh. "You feel torn in your loyalties."

"If she calls me to her, I'll go," he said quietly. "That hasn't changed, but… eh, there's no way to wrap this up in words." He sighed and, oblivious to her worry about his wound, put his arm around her. "It may be I've a choice ahead of me I don't know how to make, but there's no saying when that one will arrive. Calling the Huntsman might hasten it. Or it might not. Your choice is already here, Kai."

I can't let her die. That much was clear, a truth Kai couldn't duck. But she wanted another solution, one that saved the chameleon but didn't draw the attention of Nathan's queen.

One that didn't carry so high a cost, she admitted.

In the corner, the chameleon-cat slept, her mottled coat blending her into the shadows. She'd been beautiful and terrifying in action—built more like a leopard than a lion, only shaggy. She had a lynx's oversize ears and feet, an oddly shaped muzzle, and quiet colors.

Quiet now. During the fight they'd flared in a rage of orange and red, but asleep, her colors softened to a dappled brown, like sun-freckled earth. Her thought-shapes drowsed along in the colors… not forming the intricate patterns of human thought, but neither were they beast-simple.

You are so beautiful, she thought. But what do you want? Who are you?

The great head lifted, the eyes blinking open. Golden eyes. Even in the shadows, Kai could see they were a brassy gold, like old coins. The thought-shapes stilled, then seemed to struggle. Kai felt the struggle as the chameleon tried to answer—felt the creature's need, deep and vital, to be understood. She needed for Kai to know—to know—

"Dell," Kai said, her voice thick with tears. "Her name is Dell, and she trusts me. Call him, Nathan. Call the Huntsman."

Chapter 13

THE wind is never gone long in West Texas. Thirty minutes later, Nathan stood beneath a cloud-hung sky in scrubby dirt that might have once been a yard with that wind tugging at his clothes and hair. Kai was beside him; he doubted she could see at all, for even his vision had trouble picking out details in the darkness.

The chameleon—Dell—had followed, and sat on her haunches on Kai's other side, sniffing the air, unafraid. But she was a night creature, wasn't she? Like him.

His mind was sharp with disbelief. Could his long exile be about to end? Not yet, he told himself, which was true, since the Huntsman was unlikely to bring his sister along.

Yet it felt false. Memories crowded him hard, jostling out the nebulous images of what-might-be. He thought of a name, a scent, a face that had once been the dearest in all the worlds to him. The hand that had stroked his head, the voice that had praised him for a good kill.

The Huntsman. After all these years, he would see the Huntsman again… but other faces, other scents and names crowded into his head, too. People long dead, those he'd known and liked, some few he'd loved.

And beside him, Kai. Kai.

"Is there anything I should know?" she asked nervously. "I mean, assuming your spell works and he and I understand each other, do I bow, or wait for him to greet me, or shake his hand, or what?"

"Ordinary courtesy will do. The Huntsman has little patience with ceremony. He…" Nathan's voice broke. Emotions welled up too strong, too fast, pulling him in too many directions. "He doesn't… aieee," he moaned, as the grief of the long-ago sundering rose up as fresh as newly shed blood.

He scarcely noticed when he started weeping, but he felt it clearly when she moved behind him, wrapped her arms around him, and held on. And it was as if at last, at last, someone held him through that first, terrible grief, when he'd nearly gone mad with despair. At last something closed. It could close now, and the raw place inside could begin to heal.

His sobbing died, and he found the stillness inside he'd touched a few times before. Twice, when he stayed with the monks in Tibet. Once when he stood on the edge of suicide and decided not to step off… a sensible decision, he'd often thought since, for a hellhound was not easy to kill, and he'd have had the devil of a time making sure of himself.

The cold, arid wind was quickly drying his cheeks. He turned and touched his lips to Kai's forehead. "Love," he said, "is very strange."

And then he faced the night again, and spoke the Huntsman's Name.

KAI heard wind, only wind, yet she saw Nathan's lips move. She knew he'd spoken, but something in her mind refused to hear what he said. But the wind kept rising—blowing harder now, whistling scornfully through her jacket, the cold biting deep.

No. Not just wind. She heard… howling.

They came on the darkness, black shapes racing across the black of the sky. Like the darkest of storm clouds they seemed to build, to mount taller rather than draw nearer. Fear, atavistic and complete, numbed her limbs and dried her mouth.

Not Dell's. The chameleon-cat howled back, a wail of fear and defiance. Kai reached for the cat with her hand and her mind, soothing her.

Nathan took her other hand, bent, and whispered, "He likes to make an entrance."

Terror and laughter tangled in her throat, and the choked sound she made was built of both. She held tight to Nathan's hand.

Part of her saw the man come striding down from the sky, his boots as sure on the air as if it were forest floor. Part of her saw him just suddenly here—only ten feet away, standing in the ordinary dirt beside a mesquite bush. Him and his hounds. They were black, and many, and varied—some greyhound-lean, some mastiff-strong, all of them tall. And silent. After that howling, they were silent now, and unmoving.

And she hardly noticed them, for she was staring at him.

She couldn't have said if he was young or old, tall or short, only that the shape of him was perfectly right. He wore a vest over a hairy chest and rough-sewn trousers tucked into hide boots, with a quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder and a sword at his hip. His skin was brown as a nut, his beard the color of maple leaves after they've faded from flame—still autumn, not winter, but no longer burning. That beard, like his hair, curled madly, with bits of dried grass caught in the tangles.

And his colors—! Rich and warm and earthy, but with hints of leaf green, the violet of a twilight sky, and arctic white. The thoughts woven through those colors were smooth and somehow complete.

"Nadrellian." His voice was rich as freshly pressed cider, pure as a bell, and it caught on some strong emotion. "Ah, Nadrellian." And he held out his arms.

Nathan took one step, then another, and the Huntsman sprang forward to meet him, and the two men embraced—the Huntsman laughing, then seizing Nathan's face in his two hands and planting a smacking kiss on each cheek. The hounds crowded around them, tails wagging, wanting to greet and be greeted.

After a moment the Huntsman released Nathan, a grin splitting his beard. "Hoy, so this is odd, is it not? To grab you and be grabbed back! What, you won't lick my face now you have hands? Ah, but I've missed you, boy."

Kai heard him. In her mind, she heard and understood him. But her ears heard different sounds, not what her mind reported. She shook her head as if she could shake free of the disconnect that way.

Nathan's laugh rang clear. He rested one hand on the head of a hound who stood hip-high to him. Another hound butted him in the leg, wanting attention. He glanced down fondly. "Ardadamar, where are your manners? And you, sir, claiming you missed me. You've scarcely thought of me."

"No, but I did… well." He scratched his ear. "Several times, yes, I did. Is my grief less for being inconstant, eh? I missed you. But why did you call me? You don't need me to come home."

"I've a favor to ask." As the Huntsman's face darkened he added, "And stories for payment. Four hundred years' worth."

"Stories. Well." He fingered his beard, then his gaze shifted. He saw Kai and the beast at her side. He nodded. "Ah. So you called me for this, but it's no favor. How could you think so? Queens' law, boy, and you were wise not to take this hunt on yourself." He reached into thin air—and withdrew a bow.

"What? No," Nathan said. "I'm asking you to return the chameleon to her home."

"Oh, the chameleon. Poor girl. No, she can't be sundered again. The hounds can deal with her, or you can. Better you," he decided. "You'll make it easy on her. But I'll take the binder, don't worry."

"Binder?" Nathan said. His voice came out strangled. He glanced at Kai, emotions skittering across his face and spiking in his colors so fast she couldn't track them—but they ended in horror.

He leaped—made one great, impossible leap, and he landed in front of her. He spun to face the Huntsman, a noise rising from his throat he couldn't have made, deep and inhuman, a growl rising straight from nightmare.

The chameleon sprang to her feet, answering his growl with hers.

Kai thought she might wet her pants. "Nathan?"

The Huntsman stilled and said in a voice too much like Nathan's growl, "You defy me?"

"Mine." Nathan crouched lower, hands out—a fighting posture. "She's Kai, and she's mine."

The Huntsman tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. "Or you are hers. She's a binder, boy. She's caught you."

"She's not. Not a true binder, though I… she thinks she's a telepath. I don't know what she is, but she's Kai. I can't let you kill her."

"You can't stop me." All the humor—the fey, Robin Goodfellow pleasantry—fell away, and Kai was looking at death. Beautiful, implacable death was coming for Nathan and for her. The hounds—so friendly a moment ago—spread wide, hackles lifting, heads lowering.

Nathan called out a name.

Kai heard icicles and silence, and silently the air split open in front of them. A woman, all in white, stepped out of that slit in reality. It closed up neatly behind her. She took a single step forward—and Nathan abandoned Kai to reach for his queen, and he held her as she held him, both of them speaking in a liquid roll of syllables that made no echoes of meaning in Kai's head.

Kai stood, stricken and staring. This wasn't the Queen of Winter. She was winter.

Her skin was white. Not Caucasian, but truly white—like snow or alabaster or opals, for there was a sheen to it, as if colors played beneath the surface. Her hair was blacker than the hellhounds' midnight fur and spiraled in shiny curls to her waist. Her long, oval face angled in ways no human face would, and her tilted eyes were silver just kissed by blue. Tears spangled those eyes, glistening like melting snow in the lashes and on the white cheeks, as she and Nathan embraced.

She had no colors.

Kai blinked. She focused harder, but still saw none of the colors every living creature possessed. No shapes, intricate or otherwise. No thoughts. No emotions. Nothing. "She's not there," Kai said stupidly.

The queen turned her head, her arm still around Nathan, to look directly at Kai. "Binder." Her voice wasn't bells or flutes or anything Kai had expected. No, it was husky and warm, the welcoming warmth of a fireplace on a winter's night. She spoke English now. Clear, unaccented English. "Did you think I would leave my thoughts dangling free for you to seize?"

"My queen." Nathan inhaled on a shudder and stepped back from her, closer to Kai. "She is not a binder."

Those tilted eyes swung toward him, and the queen spoke gently. "I see what you cannot."

"Yes. But it may be I see what you cannot, also."

Her eyebrows lifted. "Nadrellian." She cupped his face in both hands. Her fingers were long and thin and indescribably graceful. "My Nadrellian."

A shudder passed through him. He stared into her eyes, and for several moments neither of them spoke. Finally he said, "I cannot step aside. She is mine."

Kai didn't know if it was courage or ego or simple stupidity pushing her, but she couldn't keep still any longer. "She has a name and a voice, and I was raised to think it's rude to discuss people as if they weren't present when they are. Especially if you're talking about killing them."

The queen laughed. "So we are," she said agreeably. And a knife winged through the air, heading straight for Kai.

Nathan's hand slapped out, knocking it aside.

The queen glanced over her shoulder at the Huntsman. "Iss'athl," she said—two precisely inflected syllables that echoed in Kai's mind as something like "lively and clever idiot."

"Control yourself."

"She lacks respect."

"She's human." The queen moved around Nathan to study Kai, her gaze traveling up and down. "Mostly human."

Mostly?

The queen stretched out a hand to one side. The chameleon, who had been oddly still until that moment, inched forward to sniff those white fingers, then lick them. "I will discuss your fate with you, then, Kai Tallman Michalski. How did you bring Dell to you?"

"I…" Kai licked dry lips. Now that she had the chance to speak, it was hard to do so. Those eyes… "I didn't, exactly. I was sleeping, and she asked… I don't know how to say it because there weren't words, nothing like words. But she was so alone, and she hurt. I said yes, and just—I fit her in, or she came in."

"She asked?"

"I told you," Nathan said. "Kai is not a binder. She sees thoughts, but doesn't—"

"Hush," the queen said absently. She tipped her head to one side. In that moment, curious and alert, she looked about twenty. "I would examine you. For that, I need your permission. You do not have a wide spectrum of choices, since if you refuse I must let my brother kill you. But still, you have this choice. I will not undertake such an invasion without your consent."

Kai's head buzzed with questions, a dizzying mass of questions. She couldn't speak them. Somehow the words wouldn't form, not while she stood beneath the gaze of this ancient power. "May I talk to Nathan?"

"Nai-thann." She made the syllables longer, more weighted, and turned her head to smile at him. "It was a good choice, that name. Are you Naithann now?"

"As much as I know what I am, yes."

"Very well." The queen nodded and stepped back. "You may speak with Naithann."

Chapter 14

NATHAN turned and gripped her arms. "Kai. I didn't know—I never guessed… let me hold you. Let me hold you a moment." But he didn't wait for permission, just wrapped himself around her. Gradually his ragged breathing eased.

So did hers. "Okay," she said into his shoulder. She dragged in one more long, uncertain breath and lifted her head to look at him. "Okay. What is a binder, and why does everyone think I am one?"

"They see your energy, your Gift. I don't have that vision, so I can't say what they are seeing, but… the chameleon, Kai. You tied her to you. She asked. You didn't force her, but you… it didn't occur to me because you're so whole, but this is a thing a binder does."

She swallowed. He thought she was a binder, too. He just didn't want to. "So what is a binder?"

"A rare type of telepath who tampers with others' thoughts, binds their will. They are terribly dangerous, because so few can guard against them. Queens' law calls for… it is death to be a binder."

Kai had heard of blood running cold. She'd never experienced it until that moment, and didn't like it at all. When in fugue she could tamper with thoughts. She even wanted to, because some patterns were so sad and wrong…

"No, Kai," he said firmly, as if he were the telepath, not her. "Binders are warped. They are moral infants who understand only their own needs, their own wants. You aren't like that."

"I'm not like a regular telepath, either." Not that there was much regular about telepathy, but—oh, God. These people wanted to kill her—not for anything she'd done, but for what she might do.

She had to think. Kai squeezed her eyes closed and tried. "This examination she wants to give me… it's not a true-false quiz."

"No. It can be—almost surely will be—painful. She has entry to me because of our bond, but to find the truth of you she'll have to force her way in. If…" He ran his hands down her arms to take her hands. "If she finds what I know is true, Kai—that you don't tamper with others' will—she might not kill you."

Kai licked her lips. "I was hoping for something more certain, like she won't kill me."

"She won't," the Huntsman said matter-of-factly. "I will." He squatted beside Dell, scratching behind her ears. The big cat purred for him. "Nadrellian—no, it's Nathan now. I need to remember that. Did you know Dell was a mage's familiar?" He snorted. "Illegal in several realms, to take a chameleon for a familiar, but not a violation of Queens' law. But that's why Dell needed the connection, the communication, so much. Why she knew how to find it, too. When the power winds blew, her master… who seems to have been an idiot," he added, giving Dell's chin a good rub, "wasn't he, girl? He was killed, and she was blown here."

"The power wind blew in Dell's realm, too?" Kai asked, startled.

His eyebrows jumped in astonishment. "Everywhere, girl. The realms all shifted, so the winds blew everywhere." His voice softened in what sounded like sympathy. "I kill much cleaner than Winter does, you know."

If he meant that for comfort, he failed. She looked up at Nathan. "You said few beings can kill a hellhound. I'm guessing we've got at least two here who could manage it."

Reluctantly he nodded.

"All right, then." She straightened. "You are not to throw your life away—No, listen to me." She gripped his shoulders. "I always knew I had you for only a time. Maybe that time will turn out to be the rest of my life." The joke fell fiat. Her fingers tightened. "I don't want you dead, you hear me?"

"I hear." This smile was so sad it brought tears to her eyes. "But love doesn't give you the right to be making my decisions."

Love. This was the second time he'd spoken the word, and neither moment had been ripe for declarations. But… "I do love you. I think you know that, but just in case… I love you." She blinked quickly. Dammit, she would not cry. She didn't have time for it. "My choices seem to lie between death now and a chance that maybe none of us will die. So yes," she said, turning to the queen who waited with the stillness of ice. "Yes, you have my consent."

The queen glided up to her. "Hold her, Nathan."

"I don't need to be restrained."

"It's for your comfort, child. And his." In those silver eyes Kai saw a sadness eerily like she'd seen in Nathan's a moment ago. "I offered you a choice, but Winter's choices are always hard."

Nathan moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her. The queen placed her hands on Kai's face, one on each side, and Kai had a moment to think how normal they felt—dry and a little cooler than human, but they were just hands.

Then a scream of white sliced her open.

KAI came back to herself slowly, her head splitting, her mind wholly befuddled. Beneath her aching head, softness… ah, her mother's lap, and her mother was humming an old lullaby, one she hadn't heard in so long…

No. Not her mother. Kai's eyes opened.

She lay on the ground with her head pillowed on warm fur that rose and fell in a slow, sleeping rhythm. Dell. It was the Queen of Winter who was humming the wordless tune Sitsi Tallman Michalski used to croon to her daughter when Kai was ill or troubled by night fears.

A tune she'd stolen straight from Kai's mind. Kai started to jerk up—and fell back, groaning. Dell gave a protesting grunt.

"Shh. Give yourself a moment. The pain will fade soon." One of those deceptively normal hands reached out to stroke her temple, and the pain receded. "I would like to meet your grandfather. Perhaps Coyote will introduce us."

"I don't think…" But maybe Grandfather did know Coyote. How could she say? He didn't talk about his spirit guides. Maybe he had daily conversations with the trickster god. "I don't think he has a high opinion of Coyote," she said, amending her original thought. "Maybe you should ask Changing Woman or First Man."

Perfect eyebrows arched up. "You are indeed feeling better if you can argue with me."

Kai sat up, moving slowly this time. Her head pounded, but it was no more than an ordinary headache now, and already her memory of what had happened was fading. The examination had taken her to every significant event in her life connected with her Gift… at once. Every memory, even those she could have sworn she didn't possess. She'd been a baby when her Gift was suppressed. How could she have any memory of that? But she'd gone there, and to so many others, all of them laid open to an overwhelming and intimate presence.

Nathan sat cross-legged nearby, his face cleaned of expression, unreadable. Behind him approaching dawn banded the sky in shades of gray, with the widest band the same steel as his eyes.

Dawn. Dawn was near, lifting the blackness. She'd been… away… longer than she'd realized. She searched Nathan's eyes for the answer she needed.

He invented smiles again. This one arrived as fresh as the dawn behind him—a smile holding hints of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Her eyes stung. "She isn't going to kill me."

"No, and nor is the Huntsman. But you may not like the solution she's found."

The Huntsman. Kai looked around, but he was nowhere in sight.

"My brother's a restless sort," the queen said, rising fluidly to her feet. "He's off to other hunts, or possibly to sleep. Dell remains yours," she added, looking down at Kai. "That was her choice. But you can't remain here."

Kai scrambled to her feet. "What do you mean?"

"I've decided on a testing. You have three quests to perform, Kai Tallman Michalski." The rich voice deepened, seeming to echo in the still air. "Three quests that will take you far from this realm, where none can defend against you. You will be allowed to prove yourself and find the true nature of your Gift. Do not suppress it any longer, or it will take you over."

"I don't—"

"The fugue, child. What you call fugue. You must learn to use your Gift fully." Solemnity dropped from her as suddenly as it had arrived. She made a little huff of sound, exasperated. "Human-sidhe mixes produce the oddest results sometimes."

"I'm not sidhe!"

"Only a little, true, but that little has had quite an effect. Nathan was correct when he said you weren't a binder, but neither are you precisely not a binder. Your Gift is unlike any I've seen." She turned to Nathan and held out her hands, smiling.

He rose and took them. "It is very strange to get what I've needed for so long, and what I wanted even more, and find I was wrong about the one."

"And right about the other." There followed more of those liquid syllables that had no meaning for Kai.

Nathan chuckled. "Fare thee well, my queen."

"And thee, my hound." She dropped his hands, turned, and a slit opened in the air before her. But she paused to glance over her shoulder, a spark of glee in those silvery eyes. This time she looked about ten, and full of mischief. "Do not worry about your grandfather, Kai. I will explain to him. Nor will the police chief trouble you again."

"But what—"

She was gone.

NATHAN felt the queen leave as clearly as he saw it. Yet she wasn't fully absent, not as she had been for all the long years of separation. She had come when he called—come the second he called her, leaving her court, the press of duty and love and need and laughter there. She had come.

As he would go to her if she called. That had always been true. But now he knew that she, too, would come to him.

Yesterday he hadn't known he needed that. Today he did.

"Did you think," she'd said, "I'd gone through all the grief of setting you free—and put you through it, too—only so I could force you back into shapes of body and mind no longer yours? You are still my hound, as I am your queen. But now you are your own, as well."

Today many things were clear to him. He'd been foolish. He could see that now—how foolish he'd been in thinking the queen hadn't known from the moment she sent him here that by the time he could return, he would no longer need to.

He went to Kai and slid an arm around her waist. "Axe you…"

"Okay" wasn't the right word. What was? She'd be struggling—her life nearly lost, then saved, and now overturned. "Unbearably confused," he finished, "or simply overwhelmed?"

"Yes! Yes and yes." She laughed, or choked—the sound held both. "I'm to leave? To leave Earth?"

"Yes." He pressed his face into her hair and breathed her in. "I'm sorry. Probably not forever, but the leaving is hard. At least we'll have a little time to gather supplies first."

"We?"

"Kai." He smoothed her hair back from her face. "Of course. You and I and that great cat of yours will go together, since she couldn't stand to be parted from you, either."

"I thought… you love the queen so much. You've missed her and your home so much. And she clearly loves you."

"I do, and she does, but I've loved many over the years, and in many different ways. She isn't mine, Kai. Not as you are." Words. He would have hated losing speech, but words didn't come easily. How to put this feeling, this certainty, into something as limited as words?

He looked at her beautiful face, so uncertain, and finally found the question in her heart. "Eh. You want to know… but of course I love you. I am yours as much as you are mine. That's what I wasn't saying, isn't it?"

She laughed and kissed him and hugged him hard. "Yes. Yes, it is. You are such a man."

That was the word for him, he realized, happy. He wasn't fully human, nor truly hound. He was sidhe—wild sidhe—and he was a man.

[end]

Content

Inhuman
World of the Lupi – 3.5
By
Eileen Wilks

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14