Death's Rival

“I got it. It’s in the FedEx box. But when I stuck her she didn’t stop bleeding on her own. Nik had to spit on her arm to stop it. Which, by the way, was gross.”

“Spit? Not lick?”

A familiar pair of headlights pulled behind my car. GMC sedan. Behind it was another car, about a quarter mile back; it had the same configuration as the car riding parallel to me earlier. Beast is not prey, she whispered into my mind. “Right,” I said to them both. “I’m being followed. If I’m not back at the airport in an hour, tell the pilot to—” I stopped. The substitute pilot who had been one of the few people who knew exactly where I was going and when I’d get there. Before I could say all that to Bruiser, the sedan launched at me. I tossed the cell. Took the wheel in two hands. And floored the car.

I wasn’t fast enough. The sedan roared up. I gripped the wheel hard enough to make the leather groan. The car rammed me. My spine whiplashed. The seat belt cut into my chest and abdomen before slamming me back into the seat.

“Jane?” Bruiser’s voice, tinny. Far away. From the floor.

The sedan raced closer. Rammed me again. The tail of my car spun into the oncoming lane. I hit the brakes. The antilock braking system kicked in. The car danced across the road. That shouldn’t have happened, was my last thought as my car hit something slick on the road and its slight spin turned into a twisting spiral. Off the road and down.

The car bucked over the rough terrain. Up into the air, the headlights illuminating the red stone of a low cliff wall and the night sky, and down, into a ditch. The car’s frame shrieked, contorting as its own momentum forced it at an angle up the other side. My window flexed and shattered, raining me with rounded nodules of safety glass. Down the car went again, at a sharp angle, a long, fast slide. A bouncing, jouncing ride that ended suddenly. Too hard. Whiplash took me again, from my toes to the top of my head. The air bags released with explosions of sound. Socked me in the face. I saw stars and then nothing.

I roused to the sound of an engine hissing. My headlights picked out a spiny cactuslike plant through the bashed windshield. Bruiser’s voice called me from somewhere, insistent. Frantic. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t focus to locate the cell. But my brain was starting to work again.

Footsteps were approaching the car. One pair, booted. Skidding downhill over the rock and dirt. In the far distance, maybe near the road, I heard a voice talking, the words lost in the buzzing aftermath of being hit in the face. The breeze shifted, blowing into the car. I smelled gun oil and cheap aftershave. Over it all, I smelled the scent of a blood-servant. But not Rosanne’s. Another vamp. Not quite a stranger, yet not entirely familiar. But exactly like the blue-eyed man I had left bound on Rosanne’s floor.

I fumbled with the seat belt, but the car was at an angle and I was bound by the flex and gravity, leaning into the car’s console. I pushed against it, and when I took a breath, something stabbed me in the chest; I was pretty sure I’d busted a rib. I tasted blood, salty. I’d bitten through my tongue.

Beast flooded my system with strength, claws sinking into my mind, more here than she had been in weeks. The pain in my side faded beneath her claws. My night vision sharpened into silvery blues and crisp greens, the night a thousand shades of black. My heart, beating erratically, smoothed out, fast and strong. I fumbled under my jacket and managed to pull my nine-mil. Focused on the night sky through the broken window. Stars. Millions and billions of them.

The footsteps stopped. To see inside the car, my attacker would have to lean over and in. I steadied my aim at the window opening.

Shuffling of booted feet. He leaned in. I started to squeeze the trigger. He slipped and nearly fell. I didn’t fire, didn’t move. He reappeared in the corner of the open space. Anglo. Light-colored hair. Big-assed gun. Though humans don’t have good night vision, he seemed to see me and adjusted his aim at the same time I fired. Three shots.

He ducked and fired twice, our reports overlaying one another. The muzzle flash blinded me, but I fired again, through the door. He rose into my window, moving freaky fast, and fired two more shots. A punching pain hit me, like a hard strike delivered by a black belt with something to prove. Burning and icy. Chest shot. He’d hit me.

I fired back, emptying my gun before I harnessed my fear. Stupid. Crap! Dumb, dumb, dumb. But I smelled blood, his as well as mine. Blinded by the flashes, deaf from the concussive explosions, I felt along my boot for my backup. My chest stabbed with pain and I couldn’t reach the holster.

Frantic, I pulled a throwing knife. But he didn’t reappear to shoot me again. Long moments later, I saw headlights start to move, bouncing off the red-rock walls as two cars drove away. I dropped my head back. Pain flooded through me, a tsunami of agony. I was tired. So tired. But I had to stay awake. Had to get out of here. I pushed at the seat belt, trying to remember how they worked.

Something wet and warm pooled in my palm holding the hilt of the knife. Blood. I was bleeding out. I needed to shift. Fast. I struggled to get the mountain lion tooth out of my pocket, but my fingers didn’t seem to work. I tried to drop into a meditative trance, but the earth spun when I closed my eyes, a sickening lurch. My gorge rose, tasting of blood, and I gagged. The night sky twirled and tightened down, becoming a pinpoint of velvet black sprinkled with white light. I could hear my heartbeat. Thump-thump, thump-thump, fastfastfast. Too fast. I tried again to find the calm in the center of myself, but there was nothing there, no center, no peace. Just the sound of my speeding heart and wet, raspy breath. I was worse off than I thought. Maybe a lot worse.

I didn’t have the time to shift into my beast to save my life. Beast? I called in my mind. She didn’t answer. No snarky comment. No insult. Nothing. Beast?

Feet padded in the dark, barely heard. Coming closer. I laughed, the sound little more than a wet, raspy moan. I closed my eyes. Beast pressed her claws into my mind again, the pain sharp and demanding. Forcing me down. I dropped. Deeper. Into the darkness inside my own past, where ancient, tenuous memories swirled in a world of shadow-gray and uncertainty. I heard a distant drum, smelled herbed wood smoke. The night wind coming through the broken window chilled my skin, smelling foreign and hot and dry. Beast forced me deeper, memories firmed, memories that, at all other times, were forgotten, both mine and Beast’s.

In the memories, I saw a deer with fawn and knew I would not hunt her just now, but only after the fawn was grown. I saw an old woman bending over a fire, her silver hair in braids, her wrinkled face catching light and shadow like the cliffs and valleys of a river gorge. Her eyes were yellow like mine. I saw a kit straying toward the cliff edge and padded over, taking it in my mouth, his entire head in my killing teeth, held gently. I tasted/smelled/felt the kit struggling, heard his mewling cries. Breathed in his scent. Mine.

My heart rate began to slow. To stutter. The blood pooling in my hand felt chilled. I had held cold blood before. Had placed my hands in it, in the cavity of my father’s chest. And then wiped my fingers across my face in a promise of vengeance. A vengeance I had never taken. The old promise, never fulfilled, scourged me, hatred unfulfilled. A wrong never avenged, never forgiven, I thought. But the concepts of vengeance and forgiveness melted away.

As I had been taught so long ago, I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts. Beast. Beast’s snake, remembered, even without actually touching the fetish tooth in my pocket. Beast’s snake was a part of me. I fell within. Like water trickling down a cliff face. Like fog slowly obscuring the world. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold. The world fell away. I was in the gray place of the change.

My breathing stopped. My heart faltered. My bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Pain, like a knife, slid between muscle and bone.

* * *

She fell away. My nostrils widened, drawing deep. The scent of blood. Jane’s and the predator who had stalked her. Night came alive—wonderful, new scents, heavy on dry, hot air, thick and dancing. Blood. Salt. Humans. Sweat. Strange car. Blood. Faint trace of vampire. I panted. Listened for sounds. In the floor of car, Bruiser’s voice still called, full of fear. But there were no cars, no music, no voices talking over one another. I pushed away the seat belt and pawed from the boots and clothes. Gathered limbs beneath and pushed, balancing on plastic between seats and placing front paws on door/window/opening. Ugly man-made light was far away. Nothing here was thief-of-vision. The world was clear, sharp. She never saw like this. Scented like this. Attackers were gone. I yawned and stretched front legs and chest, pulling against legs, spine, belly.

Gathered Jane’s clothes and dropped them over the car door onto the dirt. Boots. The gun she had killed, emptying its noisy heart out. Dropped everything and turned back for cell phone. Bruiser was shouting for Jane on