She ran for a long time, and they have a long journey back.

The moon is sinking when her mate blocks her path. The fur on his back has stiffened, his ears pin flat to his head, and his tail sticks straight back. Danger—her own nerves spike with a feeling of exhaustion, because such anxiety, such readiness to fight, feels too familiar.

She catches the scent that he does, that he’s now circling to examine—an intruder in their territory. But not wolf. This creature is strange and musky, female, and she isn’t hiding, not caring if she’s found. Feline, like a mountain lion—but not. This scent is foreign—and like them. Both beast and human.

They lope, following the path until the creature appears, crouched down, flat to the ground, watching. Stockier than a mountain lion, with a broader snout, round ears, large eyes. A long, tufted tail flicks back and forth. The stranger waits.

But not a stranger. Her smell is familiar, striking at those blazing memories. We know her.

She bumps her mate’s flank, calming him, nipping his ear to tell him this is all right. She approaches the lion, head and tail low, sniffing, and finally settling to the ground in front of her. They regard each other.

The lioness stands, approaches. Rubs her cheek along Wolf’s face and ruff. Stands for a moment, as if simply feeling her presence, taking in her scent. Looks over Wolf’s back to eye the mate. Then, she turns and runs, loping into the woods. She’s gone in seconds.

Her mate has to prod her, pushing her with his snout, nipping at her flank, to finally get her to embark on the long run home.

*   *   *

I REMEMBERED meeting the lion on full-moon night. I could recall her smell, and my gladness at seeing her. Worry for what was going to happen to her. I would have brought her home with me and let her into our pack, if she wanted. Back in the daylight, the human world, a week passed, and Skahmet—Samira—didn’t call. Maybe she would, still, someday. But that meeting in the forest felt like a good-bye. Or, good-bye for now. I hoped. I wanted to talk to her. If I could just find out more.

I had to be content with what I had.

The mine where they’d found me ended up being near Leadville. Only about a hundred miles from Denver, but high in the mountains and far from any maintained roads. The place even showed up on a USGS map. But so did a dozen other abandoned mines in the area, and Mohan and Samira had covered their tracks well when they caught me. Eventually, I had to laugh about it—I’d been that close to home, but still five thousand miles and a couple of thousand years away.

I looked up the name Kumarbis. It was the name of a Hittite god, by turns power hungry and tragic. Kumarbis, father of gods, was eventually deposed by a storm god—as many father-gods would be after him. In revenge, he decided to create a rival to the storm god, a creature who would depose him and return Kumarbis to his rightful place. But the creature, a giant made of stone, decided his true purpose was to destroy all of humanity. The other gods had to unite to stop him before he could destroy the world, and Kumarbis was no better off than he was before.

Whatever his name had originally been, the vampire Kumarbis might very well have taken the name as self-inflicted punishment. A man who kept trying to exert his power on the world, out of the best intentions, but who instead just kept making things worse. The father aspect of the god probably appealed to him. The ambition to be caretaker of the world appealed to him. Not the character’s utter failure to do so. On the other hand, the vampire might not have meant to appeal to that part of the legend. Rather, the name might have meant something to him culturally, from some of the stories he might have heard when he was young and alive. If that was the case, if Kumarbis had been Hittite originally, it would have made him well over three thousand years old. That didn’t seem outrageous to me.

I would never learn the truth. Unless I asked the one person who must have known Kumarbis better than anyone else: Roman. There was a thought. Since I wasn’t likely to ever have a face-to-face, civil conversation with Roman, I let the idea go. Another mystery to file away.

*   *   *

THE POLICE sketch artist scratched his pencil, and I had to stop myself from leaning over to look at what he was drawing.

“Eyebrows?” he asked, the latest in a string of questions about eyes, mouth, cheeks, earlobes, all manner of details about someone’s face I’d barely seen over my shoulder during the ritual.

“Dark. Thick. Kind of flat.”

Detective Hardin sat nearby in the conference room at the downtown police station. I’d called in a favor, asking her to help me get a picture of the woman I’d glimpsed. I didn’t tell her why. Just that I’d seen a face, and I wanted a picture.

The pencil scratched a few more strokes, and then the artist turned the sketch pad around. “How is this?”

He’d drawn a square-faced woman with a crown of dark, curling hair, a slightly furrowed brow, and a hard look in her eyes. This wasn’t how she looked when I saw her, but it was undoubtedly her. Somehow, my description had come through. Fierce, determined. She would defend her cubs, her pack. Regina Luporum Prima, I supposed I could call her.

“It’s good,” I said. “Thanks.”

He tore the page from the pad and gave it to me. I studied it, awestruck. The picture made her more real, and also, somehow, more normal. Taken out of the cavern and the ritual, she was just a woman.

“What did she do?” Hardin asked. She wore a jacket over a tank top and dark trousers, and had her dark hair in a ponytail. She was overworked, tough as nails, and dogged. I’d rarely seen her smile. We’d been working together for years now, and I trusted her.

“She lived,” I said simply. “Probably twenty-five hundred years ago or so. Early Roman, probably.”

“So she’s a vampire?” Hardin asked.

“No,” I said, bemused, realizing this sounded crazy. Not caring. “She was a werewolf. I think. I thought she was just a story. But I saw her.”

“Do I want to know?” Hardin said, smirking.

“Probably not. It’s complicated.”

“What exactly happened to you up there?” she asked. She’d been one of the first people Ben and Cormac called when I turned up missing and had been part of the search. I really did have a lot of people looking out for me.

My smile went lopsided, because I didn’t know what to say. “When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”