Pushing past the dead bolt on the front door with a nudge of his head, Randolph padded through a sparsely furnished living room and down a short hallway leading to a pair of bedrooms. One was occupied by a solitary man sleeping soundly beneath a patchwork quilt. Randolph was sure not to let his eyes remain on him for too long. Even in their sleep, humans could sense when they were being watched by something as deadly as a full-blooded werewolf.
In the next room two twin beds were set up on either side of a cluttered space. The floor creaked beneath Randolph’s weight as he stalked forward while shifting into something that spread his bulky mass out a bit more. The bed on his right was occupied by a girl in her late teens. On the left was a boy of approximately the same age. Both of them had dark hair that reflected the moon’s rusty glow like an oiled raven’s wing. Their skin was almost the same color as the rich clay found on a desert floor, and their wide, rounded features marked them as descendants of the only humans who had any right to challenge Randolph’s claim to this land.
The boy shifted in a restless sleep, kicking at his covers and pounding his mattress with sweaty fists.
Randolph nodded and cursed silently at the fact that he still couldn’t detect the scent belonging to the only one that interested him. This fault was by design, he knew. A natural way to prevent greedy Full Bloods from thinning out the small number of beings they might consider competition.
When the boy allowed his head to slump and his chest to resume its normal pace, the girl on the opposite side of the room sat bolt upright and sucked a haggard breath into a tightening throat.
She picked out the intruder immediately and stared at Randolph with wide, crystalline eyes. Before she could question his presence there, she grabbed her face, rolled out of bed and hit the floor on arms and legs that creaked and stretched with the first of what could be an eternity of transformations. Her back arched beneath a short nightgown decorated with faded yellow daisies, sprouting up like a ridge of stone pushed from previously unbroken soil. Claws tore through her fingers, and when she tried to scream, her voice was stifled by the agony of daggerlike fangs cutting through her gums.
The boy in the room stirred but was too frightened to move any more than that.
“When one falls, another shall rise,” Randolph growled. “Hopefully you will serve us better than poor, misguided Henry.”
The girl watched him intently, recognizing Randolph but unsure why. Shifting into a taller, unsteady two-legged form, she stretched her arms up to claw at the ceiling and let out a prolonged, wailing howl.
Cole knew what Paige was capable of. Still, he was shocked to see that weapon come toward his chest.
There was no hesitation in Paige’s movement.
There was no trace of anything clouding her judgment.
There was no pity in her eyes.
Sorrow, but no pity as she was about to plunge the crude weapon to the spot that would pierce Cole’s body, destroy his heart and kill the thing currently attached to it.
“I’ve seen it happen, Cole,” she said quietly “And I won’t see it happen to you.”
Without another word or even another breath, Paige dropped the hammer toward his chest …
