rattled one floor beneath him, just as a lean, gray paw reached up to get a hold upon his windowsill. Long claws dug into the sill, allowing a creature with black and gray fur to scale the outside of the hotel and climb up to his room.
Until that moment, Cole wasn’t aware that he could cover so much distance by simply jumping backward. He cleared the floor and flew back far enough to knock his legs against the bed and land on the starched, pale gold comforter. Losing his towel somewhere along the way, he rolled over the bed until he dropped off the mattress and hit the floor on the other side.
Though he didn’t have any weapons and didn’t know what he was up against, he put his back to the wall and stood up. He was sick and tired of running.
After opening the window with just enough force to snap the bracket holding it in place, the animal took its time crawling into Cole’s room. Its body was long and lean. As it slowly crept over the windowsill and dropped onto the floor, the light in the room played off its wiry fur, shifting between hues of gray and black. Sometimes the black patches seemed to overpower the gray. At other times, the gray nearly swallowed up the black. Long front arms stretched out to bury claws into the stained carpeting near the television stand. Shorter, more muscular legs curled up behind the thing’s narrow rump like a freakish cat getting ready to pounce.
Cole met the cat’s glare but found it difficult to hold it for long. Its eyes were clouded over from the inside, but stared back at him as if they could see all the way through to the wall behind him. Thin, pointed ears twitched against the animal’s head and then flicked straight up again. Its mouth remained open just enough to show upper and lower sets of needle-thin teeth that fit perfectly between one another.
“All right, shit bag,” Cole said as he planted his feet and grabbed the lamp from the bedside table. “I’ve already seen much worse than you. Show me what you got or get out of my room.”
The animal slunk around the bed, its fur glistening in the light from the television. It was nearly as long as he was, but Cole had trouble distinguishing where the animal’s body ended and the carpet began. He chalked that up to the fact that a good portion of the room’s light had been snuffed out when he’d yanked the lamp’s cord from the wall.
Lowering its chest to the floor, the gray cat raised its head and opened its jaws wide. Its hissing exhalation and the scrape of its claws against the floor were nearly drowned by the sounds coming from the television, but Cole didn’t need to hear anything to know what was coming. He tightened his grip on the lamp and then threw it at the creature’s head before it could lunge.
The animal pushed off with its powerful rear legs and sprung forward with both front arms extended. Cole jumped away from the bed and heard the muted thump of its body hitting the wall behind him. Reaching for the first weapon he could get, he grabbed a luggage rack that was made of two bent metal bars joined by a pair of screws. It was a weapon better suited for a professional wrestler, but it would have to do. He raised the rack over his head and brought it down on the animal’s shoulder.
Now that he was closer to the thing, Cole could tell there wasn’t a lot of meat beneath that shadowy fur. He raised the rack for another swing but only caught empty air when he brought it down again. The cat hunkered low to the floor and scurried into the corner formed by the bed and the edge of the room. Now that the animal’s back was to him, he was about to make his move when it whipped around to snap at his face.
Cole backed away while bringing the rack down to block the incoming mass of needle-shaped teeth. As the cat’s mouth scraped against bent steel, he grabbed onto the other end of the rack to keep it at arm’s length. He pushed the rack away while the cat-thing chewed on the cheap metal like it was gnawing on bone.
The room was arranged like any other hotel room, with the bed against a wall shared by the bathroom. Gritting his teeth and twisting both arms, Cole knocked the animal’s head against the wall beside the bathroom’s door frame. It wasn’t an earth-shattering impact, but it was enough to rattle the gangly creature. It shook its head and spat the rack from its mouth. After backing toward the same window it had used to enter the room, it let out a barely audible growl.
“Too late to cry now,” Cole snarled as he closed both hands around one end of the rack. Not caring where he hit the thing, he lifted the rack over his head and brought it down in a vicious blow that pounded against the floor and nothing else. He hopped backward while scanning the room.
The cat was difficult to spot. Its shape could barely be picked out against the floor or wall as it paced the room, making it seem as if it had been partially erased from sight. It kept its head low until the last second, but the light from the television eventually glinted off its fur. By the time Cole spotted that, the creature was leaping straight at him with claws bared. He stumbled away from the bed as claws scraped against his shoulder. But before the creature could do any real damage, he hit it with the luggage rack.
The oversized cat let out a hissing snarl and tore up the mattress as it jumped onto the bed. The moment it had Cole in its sights, it bounded forward and bared every tooth and fang in its arsenal before catching another glancing blow from the rack.
Cole turned away from another incoming set of claws while swinging the rack to bat away a paw. That gave him enough time to trip over the chair next to the open window. As he watched, the animal faded into clarity. Black and gray fur shimmered until the cat looked more as it had when it crawled through his window. Its eyes remained on him as it hopped down from where it had been balancing between the bed and dresser. Hitting the floor with casual grace and no sound whatsoever, the creature paced toward the window and faded completely from sight.
Holding the rack in front of him, Cole circled away from the window until he wound up with his legs once more scraping against the bed. A few seconds later he picked out a blurry spot in the air that definitely wasn’t caused by the irregular light from the television. As he watched, that blur dissolved to reveal a creature roughly the same size as the big cat but without fur. In fact, its skin was smooth and flowed like milk as it contracted into a much more familiar shape.
Claws retracted and were covered up by distinctly human fingers. Paws shrank down and flattened into feet and hands. A tail flowed up into a spot at the base of a human spine and just above a very feminine backside. As hind legs became too awkward to crouch upon, the thing straightened them and stood upright. By then the front legs had become slender arms and the feline facial features smoothed out into those of a woman. She locked eyes with Cole and smiled enticingly as blond hair flowed from her scalp to unfurl until it hit her shoulders. Even though she stood naked before him without making a move to cover herself, he was too distracted by her face to notice much of anything else.
“You?” Cole gasped. “The last time I saw you…you were…”
She nodded and finished his sentence for him. “I was running away from a Full Blood in Canada.”
“I thought you—”
When the phone rang, Cole nearly jumped out of his skin. Right about then he realized he was just as naked as she was.
Every time the phone rang, the woman’s ears twitched. “Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asked.
He kept his eyes on her as he walked around the bed and gathered some sheets to hold in front of him. The only move she made was to back away, so he reached for the phone and picked up the receiver. At least he still had something in his hand that he could use as a weapon. “Hello?” he grunted.
“This is the front desk, sir. Is there a problem in your room? I’ve been getting noise complaints.”
“Uh…” As he tried to think of what he should do, Cole watched the naked shapeshifter casually cross her arms. Sure she’d been a cat a few moments ago, but he couldn’t think of anything the guy at the front desk of an Afton Inn could do about that. “Everything’s fine now,” he finally said. “Sorry about the noise.”
“Well, if there are more complaints, I’ll have to take action.”
“I know. Sorry again.” With that, he hung up and reached for the luggage rack.
“This is kind of funny,” the blonde said. “Last time I saw you, we were on the same side.”
“And the last time I saw you, you were human, not some kind of…thing!”
If the blonde still had her fur, it would have bristled. “I’m not a thing. I have a name, you know. It’s Jackie. And you don’t have to take that tone with me. After the way you attacked me, you’re damn lucky to be alive.”
“I attacked
Nodding slowly, Jackie said, “From the moment I came in. I thought you’d be startled, but you really hit the ground running.”
“And you nearly ripped me into pieces.”
“You hit me in the head with a lamp,” she retorted.
