Faith Hunter: Jane Yellowrock World Companion

“No,” Eli said, his voice without emotion. But his body smelled of fear and worry. “She was in dog form, a Newfoundland. She was injured, the werewolf took out her throat—carotids, jugulars, trachea. She was dying.”

“And when she shifted, she became”—he made a sweeping movement with arm and hand like swan’s wing over water, but over Puma concolor body— “this? Not her human form first? Then into this?”

“No,” Eli said, smelling now of protection. Inside Beast, Jane crouched, listening, not sure what was wrong but certain that something was wrong. Eli’s fingers clenched in Beast-pelt, at neck. Holding on, like kit in den to mother-cat. He pulled we/us to his side. He smelled of den and home, of kits and littermates. “From dog to this.”

“You are certain?”

Eli looked at Mercy Blade with thin eyelids. “Yes. Why does it matter?”

Gee DiMercy stepped away from ess-u-vee. “When she died, she should have resolved into her natural birth form. Jane is not a werecat to be born in her cat form and then later to find a human shape. She is a—” He stopped, tilted head, looking Beast over. “I thought she was a little goddess, but perhaps I was wrong.” He looked back at helo-bird and whipped arm in circle. Helo-bird made whirring noise that rang in ears. Strange winds began to turn. Beast bent ear tabs down to protect ears. “I don’t know what she is, but whatever she is, or whatever bit her, she is free of were-taint. Without my services.”

Changing from dog to me would have left me with the taint? But changing from a dog to Beast means I don’t have it? So being with Rick would . . . What? What? I’d have to have sex in dog form and then change into a cat? Ewww. Not gonna . . . Just ewww.

But Gee DiMercy was in helo and the clumsy bird was lifting away. Jane cursed inside mind. Beast stayed silent and still, remembering presence of angel Hayyel and . . . things he did to me/us. Things Beast could not tell Jane.

“You okay, Janie?” Eli whispered.

Beast pressed head into Eli side, demanding scratches. But Beast did not purr.

“I like your hair down,” Rick said.

I was in human form, sitting at the top of the hotel steps, watching the day end, waiting for him to arrive. He’d ridden up in a small red car, a rental, and had gotten out, walking straight to me in the dying light, his car door left open.

My body reacted to the heat in his voice and I shifted on the cold step, orienting to face him. He stood below me on the staircase landing, halfway up. The light was mostly gone and he looked like a black silhouette against the dusk, lean and feral, dangerous. He smelled of cat and human and lust. Earbuds hung on his neck, playing magic music, the musical spell that kept him from going insane from the pain of being a werecat who couldn’t change form.

I turned from my sorta-boyfriend to the last glimmer of sunset and moon rise. The moon was full and huge and bright, resting in the clouds on the horizon—a pumpkin-orange ball nested into bloodred bright clouds. The moon’s reflection spread across the water like blood and flower petals, like the promise of spring and the curse of death. I looked back at him, moving just my eyes. “You okay?”

He shrugged, the movement uncannily catlike. “As well as can be expected.”

I shook my head, my hair sliding across one shoulder to pool on the steps. He watched it move. Like a cat intent upon a toy. I knew without asking that he wanted to gather up my hair and run his claws through it. I almost asked if he knew about the pronouncement made by Gee, and then I closed my mouth on it. Eli and the Kid wouldn’t tell him. Nor would Gee or Leo.

And I didn’t know if I wanted him to know or not, that there was some small possibility that we could be together and me not get the were-taint. Before I could tell him that, before we could explore that remote possibility, I had to ask some tough questions, and even asking them was . . . probably stupid. Frustration zinged through me like a pinball, alarms sounding. I took a breath, knowing I had to ask. Knowing as I did that it might break us. “I gotta know, Ricky Bo. Did you know you were sending me into a life-or-death situation? One where a werewolf was trying to start a pack? And had a female ?”

I watched Rick’s face fall as he remembered his own past as a hostage, kidnapped by a werewolf pack. “No,” he murmured. One hand reached up to massage his shoulder where the werewolf bitch had tried to chew off his tattoos. “No. No females. Not possible.”

“Yes. And not only possible. Fact . Two males, one huge, big enough to be a dire werewolf, coat color gray. The other male was smaller, more familiar in size, reddish, like the pack that attacked me once before. Attacked you. And died, the whole sick lot of them. Or so we thought.

“One of the males must have survived, and he made a female. She survived her first turn and now lives, if you can call it that, a crazy bitch in heat. I know. I smelled her.”

Rick climbed the steps slowly, his boots slipping out and up. He stopped two steps below me and sat, his scent surrounding me, hot and rich, with just a hint of Old Spice. An odd choice for a young man, but maybe his cat liked it. My Beast did.

He shook his head, looking up at me as the yellowish lights of the hotel stairwell came on. “Are you sure?” I hadn’t noticed, but he had a blade in one hand, the center plated with sterling silver. He turned it, the sterling catching the light.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” I said. “The small one smelled like the bitch who tortured you. He smelled like her pack. The bigger one smelled like . . . like something else.”

The white form of Rick’s partner—the white werewolf stuck in wolf form—climbed the steps behind Rick. The irony of a werecat stuck in human form and a werewolf stuck in wolf form being partners for the Psychometry Law Enforcement Department wasn’t lost on me, but that didn’t mean I’d cut him any slack. “Hey, Brute. What’s kicking? Anyone broken your nose lately?” He snarled at me, fangs white in the darkness, and I chuckled. “Try it, big boy. How many times do I have to break your ugly snout to make you understand that you’re only a wolf ?” I made the last three words an insult, and I heard a chittering in the night, though I didn’t see the source. Staring the wolf down, I said, “Sorry, Pea,” though I knew she could smell the lie on me.

I heard a scrape in the hallway behind me as Eli decided to reveal himself. He knew he needed to be downwind if he wanted to spy on creatures with better-than-human noses, so clearly he had wanted his presence known. “LaFleur,” he said.

“Younger,” Rick said back, measuring the former Ranger.

It was like a testosterone factory out here. I sighed and stood, pivoting on a boot heel and walking down the hallway to my room. Hand on the knob, I pointed three rooms down. “Room fourteen.”

Rick looked at the door of room fourteen, and back to me, his face suddenly playful. “Is that a challenge? Because if it is, consider it taken, darlin’.”

Heat sang through me. Pea, Rick’s supernatural grindylow, the mythical creature charged with keeping were-animals from spreading the were-taint, chittered angrily and stood up from her perch in Brute’s fur. Eli, instead of taking my side, laughed. “She needs to get laid, man, can’t say she don’t, but my room’s right next door, so keep it quiet.”

“Good grief,” I muttered, and went into my room, closing the door with finality. To the empty room I said, “Men.” And not in a nice way. Then I turned to my weapons, laying them out on the bed. These I understood. Men, not so much.