someone said, a word that had no meaning.
He thumped back into himself as the Change receded. Julia was sobbing, as openly and messily as a child, and sirens pierced the night with diamond stitchery. There was other noise, too—people, crowding around.
The instinct of hiding among prey all his life prodded him. The upir was dead, and he had to get his Family out of here before they were seen, or, God forbid, caught. A Carcajou couldn’t be held for long, but if other Tribes caught wind of their presence after this, it could get ugly.
You mean uglier than this? The Change trembled inside his bones, spikes of pain.
“Zach,” Brun whispered again. It was the sound of a child in a nightmare.
The upir’s body was already just a stinking sludge inside a sodden white shirt and the ragged remains of a pair of leather pants, a pair of boots full of nasty black liquid falling over, skooshing out in a tide of corruption over Kyle’s half-Changed body. Fur receded into his little brother’s skin, his entrails a mass of grayish-blue tangled in a spill, the jet of blood from the abdominal aorta’s cutting black as the upir’s leaking.
His corpse would be fully human—what parts of it the upir’s caustic sludge didn’t eat away.
Another alpha, dead. Zach’s stomach cramped. He hadn’t eaten yet tonight, and the smell was enough to make him glad. My fault again, I should have—
“Come on.” Eric pulled at his arm. “We have to go.”
Where is she? He glanced around, but the woman he’d followed here was gone. A crowd of people had magically appeared—prey, his animal side whispered, casting around for that thread of light brunette scent that he somehow knew.
She was nowhere in sight. He had to find her.
What the hell is going—
“Come on!” Eric yelled, and dragged at his arm. Julia let out a keening sound, and it was like a jolt of fresh bloodscent, jarring him into alertness. He showed his teeth, still searching for the woman, and he and his Family leaped, Julia catching a high-hung fire-escape ladder and bolting, Brun right behind her, Eric using the full measure of his strength and speed to hop onto a Dumpster’s top and land behind the knot of people who had somehow clustered in the bottleneck of the alley. Their surprise echoed off the brick walls.
“Did you see—”
“Holy shit!”
“Jesus!”
Zach’s throat ached, denied another growl and the hunting cry. We are Carcajou, and you are our prey. But not right now. Not when there’s likely another predator around.
He moved among them like a cold wind, quick fingers plucking, and grabbed a few more wallets as he did. They would see only a blur, and the instinct to grab what he could was very close to the surface. Along with other instincts—like the urge to rip through flesh instead of clothing, to spill blood instead of cash.
A few feet clear of the alley he paused, because he smelled her again, very close.
The animal in him snarled. Two drives, possession and revenge, were forcing it to run in circles—and thankfully, giving him enough room to reassert control. Kyle. Goddammit, why? You should have waited, we could have baited and trapped it, and we could have killed it together. And kept Julia out of it. The howling hit, Julia’s voice lifted in a paroxysm of grief, and he had to go. She was likely to hurt herself or someone else, and he was the only one who could control her when she got like this.
But he had to find that woman. She smelled like ice and moonlight, like salvation.
She smelled like a shaman potential.
The scent drifted across his sensitive nose again. He glanced down the alley again—more people were crowding, spilling out of the emergency exits and pressing into the confined space, most with cell phones out.
Stupid herd animals. He could probably scare them, scatter them like the bleating sheep they were.
But the scent of her, close and sweating, filled his nose. He drew in a deep lungful and took off at a lope.
Christ, Kyle, why didn’t you wait? But he knew why. His little brother had taken on the responsibility of an alpha—first into battle to defend his own.
And it was Zach’s fault.
Chapter 5
Her heels hit the cracked pavement with a clattering tattoo, and she didn’t know she was screaming until she had to whoop in enough breath to keep running. Lucy’s little jeweled purse bumped against her side, something in her back tore and ran with pain, and the cold whipped through her throat as she dragged in another breath, suddenly very sure she was going to scream again.
Her legs flew out in front of her as the rest of her was wrenched violently back, a hard hand clapped over her mouth, and she was too stunned and breathless to do more than start kicking and let out a choked cry—a muffled sound, not worth much with the wind rattling the empty branches of a tree overhead.
A motor started. “Get us out of here,” the man said, and tossed her into the van as if she weighed nothing. She landed on something soft, her elbow sinking in, and there was a yelping as if she’d kicked a puppy.
“What the hell is this?” A girl’s voice, young, and there was a sudden sound like a sheet popped smooth before being laid over a bed, resolving into a low rumbling growl much different than an engine.
“Keep your mouth shut, Julia, until I tell you to open it.” He sounded furious. The voice was familiar. Sophie struggled to sit up as the van—it was definitely a van—pulled away from the curb.
What the hell? Someone grabbed her shoulders, shoved her so she half flew across the narrow space and landed hard on something softer than metal but more solid than upholstery.
“Ooof.” A hard huff of expelled breath. “Careful, there,” the man continued. “Be easy with her, dammit!”
“Who is it?” Another male voice.
I’ve been kidnapped. Oh, God. Lucy—”Lucy!” she gasped, and erupted into wild motion. Her elbow whapped something soft, and he oofed again. It might have been funny—if it hadn’t been happening to her. Her wrists were grabbed, and the hand clamped down over her mouth again. He held her still as if she was a little kid.
He was terribly, hurtfully strong, and fresh panic turned everything behind her eyelids red.
“This is our new shaman.” Silence greeted this statement. The sound of growling swallowed the hum of the engine, shook through her before settling down into something like a purr. “You can smell the potential on her. She was back there, near the upir. I think it ate her friend.”
Lucy! She got a good mouthful and bit, as hard as she’d ever bit anything in her life. So hard her jaws ached, and there was a hiss of indrawn breath. Her eyes rolled in her head, and she worried her teeth back and forth. Something
