A noise from inside the house made it past the radio and air conditioner sounds. But something didn’t sound right. He exchanged glances with Dez, and immediately, they opened their doors. Mitch was rounding the corner of the hood when some female and Dee-Ann came crashing through the screen door.

They landed, and the female, a lioness he’d guess, reached for the backpack that had been resting behind the porch rail. She yanked out a weapon, and Dez yelled, “Gun!”

Mitch had started to go up there, but when the lioness saw them, she aimed at Dez and Mitch and started firing her automatic weapon.

How the hell did everything go to shit so fast? One second, she was busting Mitch Shaw’s balls, which she’d found surprisingly entertaining. And the next, some crazy blond bitch had opened fire on them.

Dez used the rental car door as a shield and waited while the blond shot the shit out of her vehicle. When it briefly stopped, Dez crouched and leaned outside the door, her .45 gripped in her hands. She got off three rounds before the bitch shot back. But then the other female, a brunette in nothing more than a T-shirt and shorts, was on her, a hunting knife in her hand.

The brunette didn’t bring her arm up in a big arching move, but instead, she slashed the woman’s face. The blonde roared and backhanded the brunette, sending her crashing back into the house. Then the blonde scrambled to her feet and again opened fire.

Dez ducked behind the car, and she could hear the female coming down the steps, the barrage of bullets breaking for the reload. Dez swung out again, still crouched, and again opened fire. She nailed the cat in the shoulder, but the tragedy with shifters—they didn’t go down easy.

Instead, Dez had only managed to piss the bitch off. She swung her weapon at Dez. But before she could start firing, the brunette came charging off the porch and took the blonde down with one well-placed hit.

The blonde went facedown, but she used her free hand—the one attached to the shattered shoulder—to reach down and dig in another pocket of her khakis. She pulled out another blade, a smaller one, and slammed it into the brunette’s hip.

Dez cleared her weapon and dug in her back pocket for another magazine.

The brunette barked in pain from the knife, and the blonde used the moment to draw herself up, knocking the brunette back. She stood and turned, the gun aimed at the brunette’s head.

Dez popped the clip in, pulled back the slide, and fired. She didn’t have time to aim, but she did manage to distract the blonde.

And then she heard a roar. They all did.

“Mitch! No!”

But it was too late. He’d already shifted and stood at the edge of some frightening-looking woods. He waited long enough for the blonde to see him, then ran off into those woods. And they all knew she’d follow.

She did, too. But not until she had turned back to again spray Dez’srental car with bullets.

Dez dived into the front seat, her hands over her head until the shooting stopped. Since she knew by this time, the blonde would be long gone, she stepped out of the car so she could help the brunette, who was busy picking herself up off the ground.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.”

Dez held her hand out, and the brunette stared at it for a moment before grasping it and letting Dez pull her up. Blood still oozed from the wound on her hip, but Dez didn’t worry about her too much. Like Sissy, she looked strong as an ox.

“Are you going to be okay? I have to go after—”

“No. You can’t. They went in those woods. You can’t follow.”

Dez didn’t know what the brunette meant by “those woods.” As opposed to what? Those other woods?

Before she could ask, cars pulled up behind them. Really nice cars that sounded like rumbling tanks.

Sissy came out of the first one. “Where is he?”

“He led the bitch into the woods,” the brunette told her.

Sissy took off running, shifting in midstride. It was amazing to see. Her limbs fluidly changing from human to wolf, dark black fur bursting from her skin.

“We have to go with her.”

Ronnie stood next to her now, and she grabbed Dez’s arm, her clutching hand like a vise. “We can’t.”

“What are you talking about?” She had always thought Ronnie would follow Sissy Mae anywhere, even into hell, but she wasn’t moving. None of them were.

“No one goes in those woods, Dez. No one.”

Sissy was running blind, following Mitch’s scent. She’d warned him not to come into these woods. And she’d warned him not to for a reason. Grandma Smith owned these woods. She owned this hill. She’d infused the ground with power. Power she’d ripped from the souls and the bones of others.

Mitch’s ancestry, those Irish pagans his kin descended from, would be a bright beacon to that old woman.

Power was what that woman thrived on. It was what had kept her alive for so long. Now, as Sissy tore up that hated hill and deeper into those woods, she had to dig down deep and find her own power. The power her Aunt Ju-ju claimed Sissy had and that Grandma Smith supposedly feared.

Because her Aunt Ju-ju was right…it might be the only thing that saved her heart.

Mitch tore up into the hills Sissy had warned him never to go in to. He ran as fast and as far as he could. But the lioness was faster. Even as human.

And she wouldn’t shift because without thumbs, she couldn’t use her gun. One on one as cat, she’d never take him.

By the time Mitch neared those ramshackle houses and that scent caught his attention, she was sliding in front of him, blocking his way.