released just a touch of lust and shunted it to the coalescing magic. Desire licked through her veins.
She was ready.
Ann dipped her head toward the prone woman and positioned her horn just above the smashed cheekbone. The tendrils that had wrapped around her heart flowed like water to her forehead, and then ethereal wisps spiraled around her horn, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. Power raced through her veins toward her horn and concentrated there.
Finally, the magic coalesced, becoming nearly solid. The tendrils dripped down toward the woman’s cheek. The green evidence of Ann’s magic pooled on the woman’s face. The deepest puddles formed over the injuries, flooding the left side of the wound in a saturated, moss-green plasma.
Within seconds, Ann sensed the healing, her horn registering every microscopic movement in the woman’s injury. Shattered bone fragments found mates and knitted together, stronger than before; broken blood vessels wormed back into their natural positions and reattached themselves, rejoining torn neighbors. Newly grown cells shunted blood from the injuries back toward the woman’s kidneys, and the bruised flesh healed.
Within minutes, Ann’s magic had restored the woman’s health.
“Where—” the woman started to say. “What happened to—”
Sleep, Ann commanded the woman’s body. You’re safe here. Sleep. And the patient obeyed.
As Ann surveyed the woman, her dark hair fanned out around her; guilt snaked through her guts and suffocated her heart. She had caused the woman’s heartache and pain and demoralization.
If she were in this woman’s shoes, she’d be questioning her very being, her femininity and attractiveness. She’d look in the mirror and see the normal changes wrought by time and stress—the crow’s-feet and laugh lines, the gray hair. She’d look at a forty-year-old woman and see a sixty-year-old crone. And she’d blame herself for her husband’s infidelity.
Ann could help this anguish.
She absolutely shouldn’t—but she could. The last time this type of healing had been used, her mother had broken all the rules and done it. Why? Because Ann lost control.
Still, if ever there’d been a time in her life to break a rule, this was it. She owed this woman.
Ann took a deep breath. Aging wasn’t an illness, but it was biological. She would repair the cellular damage. The woman wouldn’t need to doubt her femininity, and Ann could free herself of at least some guilt.
She dipped her horn again and let her healing suffuse the woman again, lengthening the telomeres in the woman’s cells and washing away all but the necessary free radicals. She repaired all the random mutations in the woman’s DNA, washing the cells in antioxidants.
The effects wrought by years and stress evaporated. The veins in her hands shrank; the flesh of her face tightened and lines vanished. Her hair softened and regained a richer hue. The strands became thicker. The curves of her hips, the flatness of her stomach returned, mirroring the beauty the woman had had at the peak of her loveliness.
Ann walked slowly back to the blanket, hooves dragging in the sand. Cold starlight caught the diamond of her supposed engagement ring, and it sparkled on the checkered beach blanket. It’d been such a beautiful thing. It would’ve looked gorgeous on her finger. She would have cherished it and the man who’d given it to her.
If she’d belonged to the human race. If she’d been normal.
As she changed back to human form, her heart bleak, the memory of her happiness hit her in the chest like a truck. When she’d seen Daniel smuggle the ring into his pocket back at the hotel, no woman alive had ever been happier.
What had she done?
Her hooves gave way to human feet, still warm and dry in her boots. She caught her breath as her breasts became human—and filled with lust. Her bra felt too tight, too constraining, and her core ached with desire. She stumbled with her need—and then pushed it aside. She had no time for this.
She leaned over Daniel’s prone form and fished into his pocket, trying not to cringe at the proximity of her body to his. She took out his cell phone and pulled Kai Atlanta’s business card from her purse.
“Hello.” His deep voice rushed through her, lighting up the neurons kindled by her shape-changing. Lust had a physical taste, she realized, a palpable flavor. Her mouth watered for the salt of his skin.
“Kai.” Her voice was too husky, but she couldn’t help it. “This is Dr. Ann Fallon. We met at the hotel—”
“I know exactly where we met.” The deliberate way he spoke, his deep tone, these made her catch her breath. “Your face isn’t something I’d forget.”
His words might’ve stoked her innate lust under normal conditions, but now…so close to her change…she’d be tempted to fuck him silly if he were here.
“I, um—” She paused, wishing she’d thought this out a little better. “There’s a man lying at my feet—”
“Lucky bastard.”
Again, that unwanted lust twined between her thighs. All doubt was gone. If Kai were here, she knew she’d fuck him. Forget that squeaky-clean appearance, she’d teach him to play dirty. “Seriously, Detective Atlanta.” Her voice sounded steadier than she thought it should. “He’s bleeding.”
“I apologize. I’ll call an ambulance.”
“That’s a good idea, but…”
“But what?”
She concocted a plausible story on the spot. “But I was walking on the beach, and I saw him attacking a woman.”
“Where is she?”
“Also lying at my feet.”
“Bloody?”
“Umm,” she hedged. The woman had been bloody, but now…“It’s too dark.” This implied she couldn’t see but didn’t actually say it.
“So…” He apparently searched for the right words. “You’re surrounded by two bloody bodies?”
“Bodies?” She laughed, but it was a nervous sound. A guilty sound. “No. They’re alive.”
“How do you know?”
“I took their pulses.”
“So if he attacked her, why is he unconscious?”
Ann had had enough of this. If he kept giving her rope, she’d hang herself. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I just know that when he wakes up, the woman here might not be safe.”
“And you know this how?”
“Maybe he has a gun?”
“What makes you think that?”
No way she’d answer that one. “This seems like something for the cops, doesn’t it?”
“It
