Pardon me if we don't bleed for you, babe

My arrival at the house woke everyone, the bike's roar better than an alarm. Before I entered the house, I jogged to the pile of broken boulders and scraped my gold nugget across a larger piece of stone - a lodestone of sorts to the shift I'd need soon. Moving fast, I grabbed five pounds of steak out of the fridge, shoved them into a Ziploc, and tossed them onto the porch. Tossed a bag of Snickers on top.

I made it to my bedroom and back out before Molly and Evan met me at the bottom of the stairs, following me and babbling questions I refused to answer. I just didn't have time. But Molly noticed the two zippered bags and the fetish necklace I'd come for and blocked the door back to my bike with her body. I thought about taking the ruined window, but when I looked that way, it had been boarded over with a sheet of plywood and Evan had taken up a stance in front of it, his arms crossed over his barrel chest, his red beard sleep-tangled. Sighing, I looked Molly in the eye, letting a bit of Beast rise in me. "You know better than to pen me in."

Her white gown outlined her rounded curves, making her look too soft and feminine to best me in a fight, but her expression belied her size. She looked as if she'd try to take me if I pushed past her. "Tough." When I scowled at her, she said, "Not until you tell us what's happening. Why you're going to . . ." She pointed at the necklace and didn't finish the sentence.

"It's the first night of the full moon. And I think - I hope - I can find the site of the rites tonight. But I need to gonow ."

"And you think we'll let you try to stop an act of black magic, a major working of blood rites,alone ?" She was aghast, her tone asking me if I was out of my mind. "Jane Yellowrock. Someonestole our children . If you think you know where they are, then we will be there. Like it or not." Her face hardened. "And besides, the vampires who took our children are witches. You'll need us to stop the rites without making all the magic go haywire.

"What?" she demanded of the surprise on my face. "You didn't know you can't just interrupt a major working without consequences? You'll need us to fight. And you'll need us to protect the children."

"I knew," I grumbled, remembering the smell of the torn and blasted wards. "But you'll be in the way of me finding them." My eyes told her I'd be in Big Cat form. "I have some . . . guys . . . who will be close by. They'll have guns."

"Which will not stop a blood rite without a detonation big enough to take you all out."

"Crap." I hadn't planned this well enough.

"We'll be close by," she bargained, "with whoever you're working with. Out of sight.

You'll have your phone. You'll call us when you find the site. Then we'll come. And we can bring your weapons."

"Why wouldn't she have her weap - "

Molly cut her sister off with a single motion, a cutting swipe of her hand. "Not important." Evangelina went silent. She had appeared at the opening to the kitchen, her presence blocking another exit, a fact Beast did not like at all. Three angry witches had her cornered. Her claws came out and cut into my mind. "Where will you be?" Molly asked.

I sighed. Beast wasn't the only one feeling trapped. Molly had just backed me into a metaphorical corner too. I knew what could happen when a spell went wrong, when magic went haywire and escaped the confines of the working that contained it. It wasn't pretty. And it had been known to interfere with my own magics in unpredictable ways.

Grudgingly, I said, "I'll be at New Orleans City Park in an area called Couturie Forest.

It's several hundred acres, and I'll be off the beaten paths. You won't be able to find me in time."

Without taking her eyes from me, Molly said, "Evangelina?"

Her sister, dressed for sleep in a long sleep shirt, stepped around me in the dark and handed Molly something. Molly rubbed the surface with a thumb, and brought it to me.

It turned out to be a river stone painted with a black symbol. It was wrapped with silver wire and hung on a silver chain large enough to wear in either of my forms. "Put this around your neck. It works like a tracking device for maybe a half hour. Hold the rune for ten seconds between your thumb and forefinger to activate it, and we'll have a good idea where you are. We can find you." She pointed at the rune, which looked like a capitalF with the horizontal arms broken down at an angle. "Ansuz, a rune meaning a revealing message or insight, communication."

I sighed, long and frustrated, but slipped the silver chain around my neck. "Okay. Fine.

Wait for me near the soccer fields at the park. But if you get hurt or shot I'll make you regret it."

Derek Lee and his men met me at the entrance to the projects, their dark van under a rare functioning street-light. The side door slid open when I wheeled up. The smell of exhaust mingled with the hot grease of fast food and weed from inside. The men were all decked out in the latest military and paramilitary toys. My own personal army. Even with my worry, I couldn't resist the grin when I pulled up and cut the engine. "Dude.

You guys look seriously whacked."

"Dude? Whacked?" Derek laughed at me from the driver's seat, his teeth white in the moonlight. "Girl, that is so white-chick."

I chuckled, the laughter easing my tension. "Not me. I'm part of an enslaved, seriously abused, cheated, lied-to, and ripped-off minority. Two, if you count that I'm female."

"Pardon me if we don't bleed for you, babe."

I knew sarcasm when I heard it and my smile widened. I had too many people depending on me tonight. And I still wasn't sure what the heck I was doing. The snarky retorts reminded me that these guys, at least, could take care of themselves.

"What we got?" one of the men in the back asked.

"Did you get a look at the paintings you dropped by from the raid?"

"We saw."

"We're going to rescue two witch children, a witch adult named Bliss, and maybe a human or two, being sacrificed by witch vamps under the full moon. Blood magic, black magic, and secret weapons," I said, thinking of the sliver of wood in its velvet bag.

The men laughed, something appreciative and eager in the sound. "That's cool. Long as there ain't any cops around to spoil the fun."

"No cops. They're busy elsewhere." I got a thumbs-up for that and Derek tossed me a small metallic device. I caught it one-handed.

"GPS. So we can find you. Or drop it any place we need to get to and we'll be there."

"Handy." I tucked it into my jacket. My pals and their find-Jane devices. "We'll be in the New Orleans City Park. I want you guys to wait on the soccer fields for my call.

And, uh, a group of witches will be joining you." At the look on the men's faces, I added, "They'll be there to provide shielding against magical attack."

"Witches are nothing but trouble."

I found his face in the cavern of the van, Hicklin, the good-looking guy they had used to flirt with the shop girl. "It's the parents of the kidnapped kits. Children," I corrected.

"You want to be the one to tell them no?"

He sighed. "No. But they won't think like soldiers. Won't think like shooters."

"So tell them what you want in terms of protection. And if they disagree, invite them to stay home."

Hicklin shook his head in disgust and slid the door shut. I wasn't making a lot of fans today. I kick-started Bitsa and wheeled her into the murky streets. Exhaustion settled around my shoulders like a heavy blanket, heated and scratchy.

The moon was still high in the sky, a distant white orb that pulled at me, a tide shaping my animal self. I gunned the engine and bent forward over the bars. Dawn was still hours off.

Hurricane Ada was a distant memory, and I knew right away it wasn't going to be a piece of cake getting into the park this time. The thirteen hundred acres were gated and its keepers were patrolling. I left my bike two blocks out on Fillmore and jogged in, slipping past a guard standing in a guardhouse. Finding the shadows. Locating the forest by smell and need. Vanishing into the trees. It would have been poetic, but for the weapons and the raw meat in the Ziploc . . . and the hard stone of fear I was carrying under my breastbone.

There weren't any boulders in the park, not like my home in the mountains of the Appalachians, and I knew it was going to be hard to shift here. But I'd not find the blood site any other way. Not in time. If it wasn't already too late.

Beast stretched under my skin, eager, her pelt pressing against me.The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep , I thought at her. Robert Frost. One of few things I remember from high school. And one of even fewer things that Beast and I agreed on totally. With the quote, I began to relax, slipped beneath a branch and off the path, deep into the woods, using Beast's senses to orient myself in the forest. It didn't take long.

Beast stopped me just short of the place where I'd beheaded the young rogue I'd watched rise from Ada-soaked ground. The wind was warm, wet, fitful, a breezy frustrated child, prevented an outlet for her anger. I smelled only growing things and fertilizer, exhaust from the surrounding streets, the sour tang of bayous that trailed around and through the park.

The tree I'd stood on to wait for the young rogue had been left in place, a convenient seat, though its branches had been cut away, leaving only piles of sawdust and the mixed smells of many humans in their tangled stead. I liked the spot and I set the steaks on the bent arch of tree, removed my weapons. And my new butt-stomper boots. Folded my clothes over the trunk.

Standing barefooted on the loamy ground, I breathed deeply, centering myself. Taking in the park and the dense, ancient trees. The scents came alive, small animal smells, individual tree scents, the tang of something blooming and oily. The sounds became a racket now that I listened: shush, slither, slide, tap, and patter of animal movements.

The nearly soundless flutter of owl wings. The sounds of man faded into the background, the gift of the forest's peace sliding under my skin.

I needed to shift. Needed senses that I didn't have in human form. I needed Beast's night vision, her acute hearing, her keen sense of smell, because, like the sites around Sabina's chapel, there would be more than one grave site in this forest, and I had found only one. It meant leaving behind weapons I could wield only in human form, like guns and knives, but the trade-off would be worth it.

Holding the fetish necklace, I sat on the tree and closed my eyes, letting the forest soothe me. It wasn't my forest, but it was still earth, living things with roots pushing deep, soil rich and fecund with years and seasons and the power of the moon, animals to inhabit it. I was so tired and woozy from lack of sleep, I felt as if the ground were tilted beneath me. But Beast had slept more than I, and I'd be refreshed as soon as I shifted.

Beast rose into my eyes, pressed against my flesh. It was the full moon and she was ready to hunt. To kill. To be Big Cat.

When I was centered, my beast close to the surface, our minds mingling and twining like our souls, reveling in the coolness, I checked the zippered leather bag and made sure my stakes, derringer, cell, and lightweight clothes were there. This time, instead of hanging it on my neck, I tucked it into the larger zippered bag, and added my vamp-killers, several more stakes, and a vial of holy water to it. Pushed the GPS device and the velvet bag containing the sliver of the Blood Cross into pouches. When I closed the satchel, I was doubly careful to make certain that it would stay closed, keeping my treasures safe.

I had never hunted with such a large bag on my Beast back, and wasn't sure how this was going to work. But I hadn't ever fought three sane witch/vamps either, and I needed all the help I could get if I found them and was forced to act alone. I adjusted the bag, the gold nugget necklace, and the new silver chain with the rune around my neck. This could get awkward. I had a mental image of Beast tripping over the bag strap and going for a tumble.

Beast snarled, miffed that I'd think she would be so clumsy.

My bare bottom on the rough bark, my feet shoved into the damp soil, I gripped the gold nugget, holding it firmly, thinking of the rocks in the garden of the freebie house.

Thinking of Beast.

I held the necklace and closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the full moon, high above me. I listened to the beat of my own heart. Beast rose in me, silent, predatory. Crouched, claws out, eyes staring at the world.

I slowed the functions of my body, slowed my heart rate, let my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. I lay forward on the tree, breasts and belly scraping on the rough bark in the humid air.

Mind slowing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, so I wouldn't lose it when Ishifted , when Ichanged .

Kits. Find the kits. Keep them alive.

I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness inside where ancient, nebulous memories swirled in a gray world of shadow, blood, uncertainty. I heard the memory of a distant drum, smelled herbed wood smoke, and the night wind on my skin seemed to cool and freshen and whirl about me. As I dropped deeper, memories began to firm, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast's.

As I had been taught so long ago by my father, by Edoda, I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow.

Vaguely, I thought it felt easier since I went to sweat, and went to water. Much easier to find the snake, even at a distance from my mountains and my natural hunting ground.

The snake opened before me, thousands, millions, all alike, caught in the cells of the fetish necklace.

I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts and I dropped within it, like water flowing in a stream. Like snow rolling down a mountainside. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold; the world fell away. And I was in the gray place of the change.

My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped up. My bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Pain, like a knife, slid between muscle and bone. My nostrils widened, drawing deep.

Jane was gone. I hunched on downed tree of former hunt. Found balance. Night came alive - wonderful, new scents, heavy on air, thick and turning, like Jane dancing to drums and music. Soil, birds, prey smells, trees - many more-than-five trees - but forest was still small; not like my hunting ground in mountains. Only tiny patch of hunting ground here. Too close, I smelled humans. Rabbit. Opossum. Mold.Blood . I panted.

Listened to sounds - cars not too distant, music closer, voices talking, muffled.

Gathered limbs beneath,lithe andlissome  - always remembered her words for me. Good words. I liked.

No ugly man-made light here, no shadow-stung vision. Clear night and moon, bright.

More stars above than at her den. Good place to become Beast. I stretched. Front legs and chest. Pulling back legs, spine, belly. Delicately, with killing teeth, lifted necklace she dropped. Fetish. Bones of a big cat. Set fetish on her clothes.

Hopped from tree. Landed, four-footed, stable. Studied forest in night. No predators. No thieves-of-meat. Sniffed food. Hack of disgust.Always old meat. Dead prey. Long-cooled blood . Tip of tail twitched, wanting chase. To taste hot blood. But stomach rumbled. Always so, after change.Hunger . She left this, an offering to appease Big Cat.

I ate. Long canines tearing into dead meat. Filled stomach. Cold food did not satisfy need to hunt, but more important things now than deer or rabbit, more important than blood and killing joy. Hunt kits. Save kits. Kill vampires. I ate for strength. For speed.

For killing. Afterward, licked blood from whiskers and face. New pack and gold and silver chains in way, but . . . needed things. Her things.

Hunt, she called.Hunt for kits.

Delicate nostril membranes fluttering, expanding, relaxing. Many new smells, some with value, some without. Most important . . . smell of witches and vampire on the wind. Raised nose to dancing wind. Opened mouth. Longscreee of sound, pulling scents in. Sought place of vampire smell.

Long moments later found trail of wind, of scent. Padded through trees, into small forest. Soil was damp and rich with living things. Birds called in small forest. Padded, silent, following scent of magics and vampire. Jane had come this way before. I found path that wasn't, winding between trees.

Smells grew stronger, humans and vampire and magic. Good smells for hunt. Good prey. Light in trees ahead. Felt thumps in earth, vibration, sound. Like heartbeats, but not. Hunched low, I cat-pawed closer, back paw into place of front paw. Saw through trees. Same place young rogue rose.

Jane looked out through Beast eyes.They came back to the same place? I don't understand. I thought they would be nearby, but not here exactly. It shouldn't be this easy.

Humans foolish. Prey decisions,I thought, haughty.Stupid humans with man-light in trees. Stealing night vision. Stupid prey .

I crouched and we/I looked between trees into open circle. The blood-servants of Adrianna who attacked Jane at the vampire party dug into earth with narrow shovels.

Jane's surprise urged: stand up tall, like cat on two legs. I stayed hunched. Smart hunter, good predator.

The women were short with frizzy brown hair, wiry, fat-starved bodies. Not good eating. Stringy. One was dark skinned, and the other was pale, smelled of onion. They dressed in black and sleeveless shirts that freed their limbs to fight. They smelled of chemicals to ward off buzzing mosquitoes, and they sweated in the night. Making the witch symbols.Sina and Brigit , Jane thought,remaking the circle and pentagram . Sacks of shells sat to the side, piled on a wheelbarrow. Crosses were nailed to the trees. Silver crosses like before. The blood-servants were nearly done making the circle and pentagram.

"If this works," Sina huffed, "I'll help Adrianna kill that bloodsucker. Dark right of kings be damned. He'll never force himself on me again. Never."

"You keep saying that. And I keep agreeing."

Leo forced a feeding, Jane thought,at the vamp party, during the feeding frenzy .

I sniffed, smelled Leo.Yes.

"Bastard blood-sucking vamp."

"Shut up and dig."

Then they talked no more. Head low, shoulders high, I turned and circled around site, searching for path in. Like rabbits, humans always take same path. Easy to track, nose to earth, huffing in scents. Found path, wide enough for buffalo. Moved fast along it, following it back, back, back through trees, to street in park, over bridge for cars, past sitting places where many humans can gather in herds like prey to watch games.

Followed scent to gate and out onto street. Slinking through shadows. To car parked close. Smelling of beer and blood and sex and anger. Looked back.

They'll come through here?

Ignored Jane stupid question. Looked at street sign. Memorized it for her. Harrison Avenue. Car swept by. I crouched in night, still, noiseless. When it was past, moved on silent feet to shadow of gate.

Saw another car move along the road. Long black car, black windows. It slowed. Wind of passage raced ahead of it. Stank of vampire. Smell of kits and fear. Anger raced through my blood, fast and hot.Kits! Found kits!

Car pulled up behind blood-servant car. Vampire opened door. Vampire got out.Tristan and Renee and their brother , Jane thought. Other vampire smells. Some I knew. Two, three more. More-than-five vampire. More-than-five to kill.Kill them now?

No, Jane said.Too many even for Big Cat. Shift. Get my gear. Get Derek Lee's help.

Watched to see how many vampires there were. How many to kill. More-than-five. Jane counted. Fear sputtered in her heart.

Padded through shadow, back to small forest. Found safe place beneath low plant and watched circle, watched blood-servants who worked.