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Half of Being Married

from My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon Anthology

By

Lilith Saintcrow

When a werewolf marries a vampire hunter, the honeymoon can be a killer…

THE WORST MOMENT OF MY LIFE WAS SEEING Kat go over backward, vanishing under the first bloodsucker’s bulk. I actually half shifted—claws springing free and fur rippling down my limbs with a familiar itch—and flung myself at the sucker, ignoring the second one I’d been feinting with. Pain bloomed as it clipped me on the side, my ribs scraped and a hot spatter of blood splashed moonlit gravel. I crashed into the thing with a sound like locomotives colliding.

I went down hard, little pieces of rock burning up my back where Kat’s fingers had recently brushed. Kat, dear Sun, Kat—

The bloodsucker exhaled foulness, its twisted-root face compressing as it champed, yellow foam splattering. Its eyes burned violet. It had probably been female while human, because it went for my chest instead of my throat. The mistake cost it its life.

If those sucking machines can be said to have a life, instead of a twilight hell.

Instinct took over and I tore the thing open, amber claws puncturing unhallowed skin. We’ve been hunting the bloodsuckers for a long time, and the Sun has blessed us with pieces of Herself in our claws and teeth.

We used to die like flies up against them.

Nowadays, they’re still hard to kill. But we’ve got advantages, and we’re trained. Even a pup knows how to take them out—though getting into a pitched battle on the shoulder of a country road in Virginia is not my preferred method. I’m more of an urban hunter.

The bloodsucker stiffened, screaming without sound because my claws were buried in its chest. A gout of foul-smelling blackness poured from its open mouth instead, slicking my face and getting in my nose. It stank to high heaven.

The point of a birch stake protruded from its chest, dripping. Stinking ash spread as the blessed wood of a Sun-loving tree poisoned the sucker’s metabolism. They run fast and hot, and once they’re poisoned, it takes very little for it to spread. Core damage to their circulatory systems causes critical hemorrhage.

The bloodsucker slumped, ash threading through its flesh. The blood turned to grit, I sneezed twice, and Kat’s face, stained and grimy, rose like the Sun itself over the sucker’s shoulder. She blinked furiously, her blue eyes red-rimmed, and my heart exploded in my chest.

I tried to speak, but the only thing that came out was a sharp yipping sound. When we change even halfway, our mouths aren’t meant for speaking.

Kat stared at me, jaw set and eyes flashing through tears of irritation from the dust. It gets on you and just keeps itching as it crumbles finer and finer, cells imploding and tearing themselves apart. Her hair was full of dirt, twigs, and gravel, and she held the stake loosely, professionally, but her other hand was a white-knuckled fist.

The road unreeled behind her, a single lane of pavement under silver wash from the almost-full May moon. Tree branches whispered and chuckled as the breeze rolled up from the creek. The bed-and-breakfast was a quarter of a mile away down a long gravel driveway, the creek running behind it in a ribbon of coolness. Water sounded really good right about now.

A prickling itch receded toward my fingers and toes as the change melted away. My jaw cracked, working, and I spoke as soon as I could. “Kat—”

“What the hell?” She was spitting mad, her chin up and her clothes torn all to ribbons. The curve of one pale breast showed through a rip in her shirt, and she was bleeding. “You…” For once, Katrina Black, nee Jasperson, ran out of words.

I never thought I’d live to see that.

I pointed at the stake. “What the hell’s that?” A faint jasmine-loaded breeze brushed the bushes. Out here in the sticks, the summer nights are warm and redolent before morning fog rises, and the bed-and-breakfast had whole trellises full of fragrance that had escaped to grow wild.

It was beautiful for honeymoons, but I just wanted to sneeze again. A touch of growl laced itself through my voice, and my face itched like hell. I needed a shower.

She lifted the stake and glanced at it, as if reminding herself what it was. “This is a stake,” she said finally, in her special tone of withering disdain reserved for idiots. “I’ve got lots of spares in case one breaks. You just turned into the Hulk in a fur rug. What the hell?”

“I, um…” Well, great. There’s never a good time for this. “Stakes? I suppose you’ve got holy water and garlic too. No wonder my back went out carrying your luggage.” And no wonder you’re sneaking around at night. Hell of a reason for a midnight ramble, Kat.

That did the trick. She took a deep breath, that maddening slope of breast peering at me, and I checked her for more bleeding. A thin trickle from her temple, another rivulet from her nose, and her shirt was sopping wet with copper-smelling blood on one side. Very low, under the floating ribs on her right.

Merciful Sun, I don’t like the look of that.

Then she blew.

“Mitchell Black, what’s the goddamn idea? Why didn’t you tell me you were a werewolf?”

I winced. “Your pop culture is showing, sweetpea. I’m a Sunrunner.” Not a goddamn “werewolf.” “You never told me you were a vampire hunter. And what was I supposed to do, just lay in bed while you snuck out? On our honeymoon, I might add.”

Good thing I followed you, eh? But I knew better than to tack that on.

She put her hands to her hips, drawing herself up, chin rising yet more. She looked dirty, beaten up, and completely kissable. The nostrils of her cute little patrician nose flared and her eyes went incandescent.

I get weak in the knees when she does that. Her lips thinned before she spoke, and the urge to kiss her got overwhelming.

“I’m a Knight of the Argentum Astrum, thank you very much, and you are in serious trouble. Why the hell didn’t you tell—ulp!”

I took two steps and grabbed her. It wasn’t very graceful, but I wanted to be sure she was all right. Plus she’s just sexy as hell. She tasted like adrenaline, apples, and copper blood, and my fingers explored her side while I kissed her, my free hand cupping her nape. The wound was ragged but not deep.

She shoved me away, and I let her.

“You know, before I marry a guy, I like to know little things like him turning hairy and carnivorous on the full moon.” She hadn’t lost track. Dammit.

“I’d kind of like to know if my wife-to-be’s a Silver Star, too. Night classes, huh?”

“I do have night classes, you jackass.” The silver crucifix winked at her throat. “Hunting sanguinant is all very well, but the pay isn’t shit. I’m filing for divorce.”

I winced. “Any chance we can solve this in bed?”

“You’re a goddamn werewolf, Mr. Black.” She looked magnificent, all tangled and flushed and still breathing heavily. “That qualifies as need-to-know information before we tie the knot, in my book!”

“So does a case of stakes and a working knowledge of dowsing to find suckers.” I folded my arms, grit working its way into my skin. I get it. We’re not going to talk about why you snuck out on a pretty night like this to go looking for suckers. Sure thing, Kat.

Moonlight drenched the small clearing and the wind shifted. I heard the car before she did and leapt, knocking her down as headlights swept the curve of the road. The vehicle—sounded like a Ford—downshifted, taking the hill at an even fifty. I heard laughter and smelled exhaust. They were probably heading up to Lover’s Leap, near where we’d hiked around yesterday after breakfast to look out over the juicy green valley.

My ears told me we were safe from wandering suckers for the moment, at least, but I didn’t want any civilians seeing either of us.

That would only lead to trouble, and I’d had enough trouble tonight to last me awhile.

She waited until the roar of the engine faded into the distance before squirming out from under me. I could have lain there all night. But it was gravel, and she was already torn up.

Hope I didn’t hurt you even more, sweetpea. “Did he get you? On the side?”

“I’m fine.” As stubborn as she ever was after falling down that flight of stairs. She’d sprained an ankle on that one, and refused point-blank to go to the doctor. “It won’t even scar if I treat it soon. Get off me.”

I made it to my feet a little less gracefully than she did. They don’t tell you how sore hunting suckers makes you. Even if a Sunrunner has a higher rate of tissue regeneration.

She checked the two smears of fine ash left over from the two bloodsuckers—probably only unhallowed dead, opportunistic things more used to preying on livestock than humans—and dropped to one knee. Her hair, pulled back in a loose knot, fell in strands and straggles. Her nape gleamed with sweat. Her free hand came out of her jacket pocket and she scattered holy water over the writhing smears. ” O quam misericors Deus est,” she murmured.

O, how merciful God is. The Argentum were optimists. It was, after all, why they were in this line of work. Sunrunners are just born to it.

“I love it when you get all Catholic.” I hunched my shoulders, tested the wind. My ears weren’t tingling, a good sign. No suckers within smelling distance. I relaxed the rest of the way. “I’m itching all over. Let’s go, I’ll wash your back.” And take a look at that wound. That’s not a good place to get hit. Merciful Sun. She could’ve been really hurt.

“You are so sleeping in the doghouse, Fido.” She hauled herself up with a sigh worthy of my old granny.

Granny would have approved of my Kat. “You don’t mean that, sweetpea.”

“Bullshit I don’t. Come on, I dropped my other stake. Help me find it.”

All in all, she took the news that I can change into a timber wolf pretty well. Granny would definitely have approved.

TWO MORNINGS LATER I WOKE UP WITH AN oof! as Kat landed on me. Hot sun poured through the curtains and turned her hair into gold as it fell over her shoulders. The room was done in antebellum shabby-chic, with lots of froufrous and furbelows. The bed even had mosquito netting, as if any mosquito would have dared to intrude where Miz Evans of the Evans Bed ‘n’ Breakfast ran her shipshape little rock of down-home graciousness and army-neat order.

The breakfasts were terrific, and Kat loved all the frilly girly stuff. She’d just about gone wild over the gardens, tea cozies, and the way the bed tried to swallow us both whole. The stackable washer and dryer down the hall still held our stinking, torn clothes, soaking out the last bit of bloodsucker smell. We’d washed them four times already.

This morning, though, she bounced on me like a terrier. “Get up, lazybones. Time to read the paper.”

I wanted to bury my face in the pillow, but she was just too pretty. Kat’s small—only about five-four—but every inch of her is packed with dynamite. She looks like a little blonde ballerina princess, helped along by the hour she spends in dance class pretty much every day, rain or shine. I don’t see where she gets the energy, between night classes, day work in the office, and hunting bloodsuckers. She has these big blue eyes and this sharp aristocratic nose, and her mouth is just made for kissing.

So I pulled her down, and I did.

It took a long time before I was close to done, and she shook herself free before I was even halfway there. “Try to keep your mind on business. I’m still mad at you, you know.”

“Christ, my heart can’t take that.” I gave her my best aw shucks, ma’am grin. It usually works better when I’m not unshaven and bruised—I get my five o’clock shadow before noon. Just one of the perks of being a Sunrunner. “Don’t be mad.” Especially since you didn’t tell me you were an Argentum.

I guess being married involves holding your tongue a lot. No wonder most men think it’s so rough.

The smile that spread over her face was worth keeping my big mouth shut. That’s my Kat, all fire one minute and softness the next. “I’m not mad, I guess.” She was only in a tank top and panties, both candy-cotton pink. Matching the room.

The woman just has no mercy.

“I’m not a field agent, anyway. I’m an intelligence analyst, I track migrations and collate reports. That was my first time staking.”

Are you trying to kill me? “Your first time?”

“Well, I did okay.” She pushed her hair back. Her knees were on either side of my hips, and her weight on me was incredibly distracting. “Now it’s time for you to get up and read the paper. Breakfast’s still warm. You want coffee, don’t you?”

“Coffee can wait.” I got both hands on her shoulders and brought her mouth back down to mine, and things were heading in a very satisfactory direction before she broke away again. “Goddammit, woman. You’re going to kill me.”

“Maybe,” she agreed cheerfully. “But not until after you read the paper.”

“Screw the paper.” I caught her mouth again and ran my fingers over the slim arches of her ribs, my fingers scraping off green herbal paste dried against the wound. Argentum believe in old-fashioned cures. Mugwort and holy water do wonders for bloodsucker wounds.

I went cold all over, touching it, and she laughed, a particular low husky chuckle that just about turned me inside out before she let me do what I was dying to do each time I saw her.

The sunshine had moved on the bed before I stopped breathing heavy, my face in her hair and the little shudders going through both of us. “Nice,” she whispered into my neck. “I like that.”

“Me too.” Better each time, actually. I guess waiting for marriage was worth it. “What do you say we do it again?”

“You’re a menace.” She shivered again, a delightful little movement. The air-conditioning had kicked on. “Move over, I’m cold.”

“Delighted to.” Something crackled as I finally got her under the covers and cuddled up against me, her panties gone and her tank top discarded too.

She didn’t snuggle nearly long enough before fishing around with one hand and bringing up something I blinked at. It was the county seat’s daily, the Cotton Crossing Register. “Jesus.” I managed a moan. “You just don’t quit, do you?”

“A couple of minutes ago you were happy about that.” She spread the paper out one-handed, awkwardly. “Take a look.”

“I don’t want to.” I brushed her hair back, the golden floss tangling around my fingers like seaweed. “All that’s in there is who tipped whose cow or quilted someone else’s corn or something.”

“Shows what you know, Fido.”

“Are you going to keep calling me that?”

“Until you live the other night down, yes. Since you won’t read, I’ll tell you all about it.” She snuggled down, her hip bumping me. “Police blotter says four kids disappeared two nights ago. Their car was found up at Lover’s Leap.”

“Disappeared? In a town this size?”

“You were the one who wanted a road-trip honeymoon; this town is bigger than the last one you subjected me to. At least it’s a county seat. By the way, if our children have tails and floppy ears you’re going to be making the explanations.”

“The change doesn’t happen until puberty. Protective coloration. And I liked the idea of pulling over whenever you wanted to act like a teenager at the drive-in.” I sighed, settling her head on my shoulder more securely. “Four kids?”

“Remember that car? The one that happened by just after we staked those two sanguine?”

“Ford. Four-door. Rounded headlights.” Right after you almost gave me a heart attack by vanishing under a hundred and a half pounds of spitting bloodsucker. A thin thread of unease worked its way through me.

“Was it? I couldn’t see, you were in the way. Anyway, their car was unlocked and just sitting up there, the paper says. What does that tell you?”

“That someone’s going to have to explain why they left Daddy’s car up on the ridge?”

She nudged me with her hip. “No, idiot. It means there’s a nest around here.”

“Good God.” I hadn’t gotten past the two bloodsuckers we’d killed. I’d been too worried about Kat. “You think so?”

“I don’t think, I know. Guess why it made not just the blotter this morning, but also the second page.”

I didn’t want to know. “Why?”

“Because two kids disappeared last week too. Boy and girl, a nice couple. She was a cheerleader; he was the local football star. Want to put even money where they probably disappeared from?”

FOR A TOWN OF THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE, IT certainly looked like a fifties movie set of the proverbial one-horse burg. Kat outright refused to stay in a place with less than two stoplights. I’m not the only urban creature in our relationship.

Of course, Kat’s first stop was the local library, a brick building sandwiched between a feed store and Cotton Crossing’s City Hall, such as it was.

Scratch an Argentum Astrum, and you’ll find both an over-achiever and a great believer in law and order, not to mention a dyed-in-the-wool research nut.

“Shhh.” She laid her finger against my lips before turning back to the screen. “Will you be quiet?”

“There’s nobody in here.” Libraries make me itchy, all that quiet and dust in the air. Librarians always look like they could eat you alive if you make too much noise.

Kat rolled her eyes. The muscle in her shoulders flickered as she moved. “It’s the principle of the thing, Mitch.”

“You and your principles. How did you get to be a Silver Star?” My leather jacket creaked a little. It was ninety degrees in the shade, but I wasn’t about to give up the pocket space. Besides, we weren’t going to be strolling around outdoors, and in this part of the country, air-conditioning was the rule rather than the exception.

“They recruited me in high school. My mother was one before she died.” She spun the dial on the microfiche machine, pushing a little lever and staring at the screen. “Huh. Interesting.”

“I love to hear you say that.” I ran my fingers under her hair, touched the back of her neck. She shivered, but not enough to disturb her concentration.

“So what do you shift into?” She moved the lever again, glanced over her shoulder at the bookcases. Checking to make sure nobody heard us, or checking her blindspot like a nervous Argentum?

Nice change of subject, Kat. “Timber wolf. I’m a Sunrunner.”

“Loup-garou.” She made a note on her ever-present little journalist’s pad. The design stamped into the leather cover—a cross inside a circle—made sense now. “Or are you dents-soleil? Sunrunner is probably dents-soleil. So you’re allergic to ash wood.”

She’d done her research, all right. The only wonder was that she hadn’t noticed before. But we’re careful, we Sunrunners. We have to be. “Only if it’s introduced under the skin, sweetpea, and I’ve had my shots. It won’t kill me. Just gives me a stuffy nose. Like the dust in here.”

“Then go wait outside.” She made another note while I stared at the fall of her hair, paleness streaked with pure gold. “You’re being a nuisance.”

“You’re breaking my heart. I’m hungry.” My stomach gurgled. She’d been at it for hours. I shifted in the hard wooden chair. Why didn’t these places ever have comfortable chairs? “Really hungry.”

“Whiner. I suppose you want to try that greasy-spoon diner you’ve been looking at so longingly.” She closed her notebook with a snap and turned off the machine. “We might as well. I can’t work with you poking at me like this.”

“I thought this was a honeymoon.”

“It is.” She turned in her chair and gave me one of those dazzling smiles. The kind that hits right below the belt and spreads like a supernova. “But we can’t just let a nest breed out here, you know. We’re in the area, we need to do something about it.”

“The population can’t support more than a few suckers out here. They’re creatures of opportunity.” I’m surprised we’re not hearing more about cattle mutilations, actually. Or pigs getting bled out.

“Look, we killed two last night. Those kids disappeared afterward. That’s just too much of a coincidence. It’s a statistical outlier unless there’s a nest out here. A nest will breed if the population starts rising, which it has been—did you look at the bed-and-breakfasts around here? This is a town on the edge of being a city. A stubborn nest in this area when the population explodes is a recipe for disaster. We have to do something.” Her eyes shone with optimism.

“An analyst and a single Sunrunner against a nest? Talk about a recipe for disaster. We usually hunt in packs, you know. Two Sunrunners to a sucker is about a comfortable margin.” My shoulders hunched. If I ran across a lone sucker in the city, I knew my way well enough to get rid of it. It’s what I was bred for. A mongoose doesn’t need to know what to do when it sees a cobra. It’s pure instinct.

But the thought of a nest, with its stink and claustrophobic, sweltering heat, and my Kat in the middle… She pushed herself up, scraping the chair back along green linoleum. “I think we’ll be all right. We can’t just let a nest mushroom out here, Mitch.”

Now what could I say to that? I settled for hooking my arm over her shoulders. “I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.” We’re only here for another night, anyway.

“I told Mrs. Evans we’d be staying another week.” She slid her arm around my waist and did the trick of moving someone twice her size for the door. “We’ll hit the fiche again after you have your corn-fried lard. There’s some interesting things here. Did you know this town’s been here since 1784?”

My Kat. Put an obstacle in her path and she just rolls right over it without noticing.

I was going to have to find some other way of keeping her out of trouble.

THE DINER WAS ON THE MAIN DRAG, A cheerful little place with red-checked curtains in the window and air-conditioning working overtime. Most of the customers were truckers or locals, and no few of them stared when Kat waltzed in the door, with her white cotton tank top and skintight jeans, her hair a bright banner and a thin silver semanario jangling on her wrist. They probably hadn’t seen anything this good since the local goober queen got inducted.

Kat paged back through her notes. “Kids have been disappearing around here for a while. I’ve found an average of one disappearance a month for as far back as the newspapers go on microfiche. Which, granted, isn’t far, only until about 1932. There was some sort of fire that destroyed old records.”

I took another bite of my burger, chewed thoughtfully. Next to her I felt even scruffier than usual. Stubble had broken out along my jaw and my eyes felt sandy after all the dust. My jacket creaked, and my sneakers were almost worn through. The heat was already wet and clinging, a fine sheen of sweat standing out on Kat’s skin, and I liked it. With a higher-than-human metabolism fueling denser muscle and bone, heat bleeds. I spent one winter in Maine and almost froze my ass off unless I was wearing my fur.

“Howza food?” The waitress was probably forty but looked more like fifty-five, with aggressively-large hair reeking of Aqua Net and bourbon. “Freshen up yah coffee?”

“It’s great. Thank you.” My words sounded clipped and unhelpful next to her down-home drawl. We waited until she was gone. “That’s a lot of kids missing,” I said thoughtfully. “I didn’t know they had that many around here.”

“I hear they have them in job lots, but still. You’d think someone would say something. But it’s on the back pages, never makes a lot of news, and I can’t help but think…”

“It seems a nice little town.” And Cotton Crossing was, quiet in a prosperous way. The Appalachian kitsch mixed nicely with antebellum graciousness, to the tune of columns and Confederate flags as well as public buildings from the New Deal era.

Kat took a mouthful of fries and poked at her French dip. “There’s enough grease in this to clog my arteries just looking at it.” She took a long pull of her orange juice and made a small face, probably reminded of her first Southern iced-tea debacle. They drink it sweet enough to rot teeth down there. “Yes, it’s a nice little town. But the media should be ail over kids disappearing. And teenagers are statistically higher at risk for—”

“Well hello there, good-lookin’.” A heavyset man passing the table tipped his hat to Kat, who smiled and nodded. She gets that a lot.

It was enough to make a man feel territorial. But then Kat turned her baby blues back to me and promptly forgot about John Doe Hick, dropping her voice to a confidential murmur. “It’s just weird. Do the math, Mitch.”

Almost a thousand kids. I know humans are sometimes careless with their pups, something no Sunrunner understands. But this… “It’s a little more than weird. It’s downright ugly.” I met the man’s eyes as he sauntered past, marking him in memory—brown and brown, plaid shirt over yellowed wifebeater, jeans riding below his paunch, work boots caked with black dirt, John Deere baseball cap. A walking cliché. “I suppose you want to spend the whole afternoon in the library too.”

“No, just a couple hours. Then we’re going to the courthouse to check out birth and death rates, since this is a county seat.” She took a ladylike bite of roast beef. “We’ll go back to Mrs. Evans’s and crunch some numbers.”

“Numbers.” I tried not to moan. “Come on, Kat.”

“You’ll like it. Crunching numbers makes me want to undress you.”

I suddenly couldn’t wait to get through with lunch.

STICKY JASMINE-LADEN AIR BREATHED AGAINST MY NECK AND back, my T-shirt immediately clinging like Saran Wrap. Kat leaned against the porch railing, framed by trellises full of green leaves and little white star-shaped flowers. Dusk was a purple bruise in the sky, and Kat’s white sundress a floating ghost, straps creasing her tender shoulders.

I rested my elbows on the railing next to hers and leaned against her despite the heat. “Hey, pretty lady.”

“Hey, Rover.” Her smile took the sting out of it. “Look at that.”

The garden spilled away in regimented rows, flowers nodding as nightly exhalation came off the mountains and down into the valley cupping Cotton Crossing. From here you could see the dusty curve of the road and Lover’s Leap, a crag of sharp rock thrust out from summer growth under the worn-down nub of the mountain. It pointed at the town like an accusing finger.

“Still mad?” I didn’t think she was, but with Kat you could never tell. I hadn’t even known she’d consider dating me until that night in the bar, when I’d bounced a couple of drunks hassling her and her coworkers. I’d thought she just came in after that with said coworkers, but later she’d poked me in the ribs and told me she came to see me.

Guess I’m a lucky man.

“No. But you’re still not going to live this one down for a while.”

“I’m going to have to find a cute little nickname that rhymes with Argentum.”

She shifted, her hip bumping mine. She was barefoot, and holding a tall thin glass that smelled suspiciously like mint julep. “I think more time at the library should help you with that.”

I should know better than to open my mouth. “Very funny. I’m still sneezing from the dust this afternoon. And you promised me an undressing.”

“Did I?” A mock-serious questioning tone. She twirled the glass in her slim fingers. “That’s right, I did crunch some numbers. Once you factor in the disappearances, this place has a crime rate comparable to a much larger and more aggressive city.”

“Isn’t that odd.”

“With the amount of lard in the food I’m surprised it’s not higher.” She yawned prettily, took another hit off her julep. “If you count the disappearances as murders and factor in the percentage of missing-persons that could be just kids getting itchy feet or even running across normal foul play, there’s still a significant statistical outlier.”

“I love it when you talk accountant.” Under the cloying of jasmine lay her smell; fabric softener, female, and her cedary perfume. I dropped my head a little and leaned in so I could take a deep breath of her instead of the garden. Water chuckled behind the house, the creek a shadow of itself. “So what does that tell you, Kat?” I had the sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“It’s not just a nest. It’s something else.” She took another swallow of julep. “Which is terrible news. I should call for reinforcements.”

It never even occurred to her to leave the damn thing alone. “Kat. We’re on our honeymoon.”

“You really think we can handle it ourselves?” She stared out at the garden, unseeing, a sharp line between her eyebrows and her mouth pulled down at the corners.

For Christ’s sake. Do you always have to throw yourself in headfirst? I swallowed what I wanted to say and decided to go for tact. “Why don’t we head out tonight, and once we cross the county line we can call it in to the Argentum? You’re on vacation, you know.” I don’t like the thought of you getting mixed up in this, even with me for backup.

I could only classify the wide-eyed look she gave me as shocked. The brownish mint-smelling liquid in her glass sloshed as she straightened and turned to face me head-on, her skirt swishing a little and her baby blues big as plates. “But I’ve done all the preliminary investigation and made all the contacts. I can’t leave now.”

Christ in a casket. “Kat. It’s our honeymoon. I can think of better ways to spend it.”

“Like running and hiding?” Her tone suddenly got very sweet, and very soft.

Danger, Will Robinson. Danger. “That’s not necessary.”

She lifted her glass, took a mouthful, and made a face, wrinkling up her nose. “Sorry.” To give her credit, she did sound sorry. “But we can’t leave.”

I was afraid she was going to say that. “Can you at least call for reinforcements?”

“I’m not sure there are reinforcements to be had. What about you? Can’t you call in the Puppy Brigade or something?”

I took a firmer hold on my temper. “I’m not related to anyone out here. I’m not even sure there’s any Sunrunners in the area. Those suckers last night were awful incautious.” You might not understand it, sweets, but Sunrunners kill suckers because they’re a danger to our pups. Not because they’re a danger to humans. We can only take care of ourselves. The Dark Ages taught us that.

Now wasn’t the time for a history lesson, though.

“Then we might be on our own after all.” She slid her arm through mine and steered me away from the porch railing. “Let’s take a walk. I’m sorry, Mitch. Really.”

“Don’t worry about it.” We stepped down onto the concrete path, and I kept a watch out—her feet were bare.

She took another hit of julep. “I’ll call in when we go back upstairs. With any luck someone should be able to come out from the closest real city.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I almost walked into a rosebush, trying to keep her away from the one on the opposite side. Her skirt caught on a thorny branch and she twitched it free by simply walking forward and ignoring it. “You hungry?”

She made another adorable little face and finished off her drink. “Not so much, lunch was pretty heavy. I wouldn’t say no to another one of these, though.”

“We can do that.” I kept her going down the path. There was a little trellis covered in climbing jasmine, arching over a wide wooden bench. Sitting under the jasmine and maybe getting a little foolish sounded like a good idea.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Amusement colored her tone; she pulled me to a halt. “Here. You go get me another drink, I’ll wait for you on that bench you’re aiming for. And when you come back I’ll give you a prize.”

“What kind of prize?” I subtracted the glass from her unresisting fingers.

“You’ll like it. Go get me another funny little mint drink, Mitch. Be nice.”

“I like being nice to you.” I gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek and headed back for the house. The evening breeze had died down, full night gathering between the trees as the valley tipped under shade. Lover’s Leap still glowed, streaks of naked rock throwing back a last gleam before the sun sank below the horizon.

I had just set my foot on the creaking porch step when I heard the snap of branches and Kat’s short cry.

Instinct took over. I whirled, and the stink of suckers boiled across my sensitive nose. It’s like being hit in the face with a bag of wet cement, that smell, and adrenaline bloomed along my arms and legs as I dropped the glass and launched myself.

One Sunrunner against three suckers is usually bad odds.

“HOLD IT HERE,” MY HANDS SHOOK, BUT I kept the ice to her forehead. My ears had stopped tingling. Why didn’t I smell them sooner? I don’t like this.

Kat blinked, through a mask of blood. “What the hell?” Her voice had a dozy, sleepy tone I didn’t like.

“It bit you. Don’t worry,” I added in an undertone, “I killed it.” I shouldn’t have told her. Her eyes got all wide and the remaining color drained out of her face, leaving her chalky except where drying blood painted her skin. A terrific bruise was plumping up on her right cheek, and she’d damn near gotten a dislocated shoulder. The sundress was ruined, covered in mud and guck, and I wasn’t sure the trellis would ever be the same.

Miz Evans fluttered. “My oh my.” Her steel-colored bun was slightly disarranged, and she smelled of nervous excitement and the high brittle edge of fear, as well as talcum powder and her overwhelming perfume—Tabu, the same stuff my granny used to douse her vacuum-cleaner bag in before her daily cleaning. “The sheriff should be here in a few minutes. Harv said he was right on his way.” She waved her plump hands, the jet beads of the chain holding her bifocals to her impressive bosom clicking.

“Did you call Animal Control?” The story was that a stray dog had rampaged through the garden and attacked my lovely bride. It was lame, true, but the best I could do on such short notice.

“Well, Harv and his deputy mostly take care of that around here. Can I get her anything? Poor dear.” She was shaking worse than I was.

I must have been wearing a mean face. “More water?” I didn’t think Kat needed it, but I had to get the woman out of the room. Kat sucked in a harsh breath, her terrified gaze flying up to mine. She was far too pale, and gasping like she had asthma. The ice in the bag crackled, meeting her fever-heat.

“All right. You just rest, honey.” She mimed patting Kat’s naked shoulder, just touching the air over the skin. One of the sundress’s straps had torn free. Kat crossed her arms over her breasts, hugging herself. Rolling around in the dirt had streaked all over the white cotton, and rose thorns had lacerated a fair bit of her back and shoulders. I couldn’t wait to get her into a bathtub and wash the grime off.

First things first, though. I peeled up Kat’s lip and checked her teeth. Poked at the gums over the canines with one nail. When she didn’t cringe or cry out, I relaxed a little bit. Then I checked her pupils—no vacillation, and her heartbeat was normal, pounding with stress but not stuttering like it would be if the infection had taken hold in her bloodstream.

The first fifteen minutes after a bite are crucial. I picked up the half glass of water left over from Miz Evans’s ministrations and whispered a bit of bastard Latin over it, breathed on the surface until it rippled, and held it to Kat’s lips. She drank without demur, and there was no scorching where the water met her lips.

Merciful Sun, thank you. That was too goddamn close. “We’re leaving. Tomorrow morning. Dawn, if not sooner.” I didn’t sound like myself. “Talk to me, sweetpea.”

“My head hurts.” She didn’t sound like herself either. Kat blinked, and sense flooded her eyes. A little bit of color came back into her cheeks. “It bit me?”

“It did. I killed it, and you’re not showing any signs of infection.” She wasn’t at a very high risk—the bite was just a glancing scrape of teeth, because I’d torn the fucking thing off her and killed it immediately; her immune system wasn’t compromised and the Argentum probably had her on a course of garlic shots as well as the silver treatment to stave off infection. “You’re clean, Kat. It’s all right.” The words cracked halfway.

“You don’t sound convinced.” Her eyes rolled up into her head and snapped back down. She reached up, pressed her fingers over mine, keeping the ice hard against the lump on her forehead. “Hurts. Need my mugwort.”

“In a second.” As soon as I’m sure you’re all right.

“What’s our story?” she whispered.

“Stray dog.”

Amazingly, a pale grin lit her wan face. Her legs were covered in a mass of scratches and claw marks, blood and mud marked the chintz slipcover underneath her. “That’s a good one, Fido.”

“Ha ha.” I tried to feel relieved and failed miserably. “Sit still.”

“I want my mugwort.”

“In a second.” I heard car wheels crunching gravel, tensed, and made myself relax muscle by muscle. “We have to talk to John Q. Law.”

“Crap.” She blinked, a bit more sense coming back into her baby blues. “You look awful.”

I felt halfway to awful, mostly because I’d torn something in my leg. One Sunrunner against three newborn suckheads. The only thing that had saved me was the fact that they hadn’t had time to figure out how to really get troublesome. None of them could have turned more than forty-eight hours ago, still in the wet stage of transformation from human into sucking machine.

Which led me down some very interesting mental roads, in between checking Kat’s breathing and looking at the blood drying on her face.

An engine cut off outside the bed and breakfast, and for a moment I was horribly aware of how alone we were. We were traveling off-season, and there was nobody in the whole bed-and-breakfast but us. The isolation had seemed charming when we’d arrived.

Now I just felt exposed and more than a little weak-kneed.

Footsteps on the porch. A knock, brief and courteous. Mrs. Evans came bustling out of the kitchen as the screen door opened and a wide, portly gentleman in a Sam Browne belt and dun uniform hove into view. He took off his hat, straggles of loose hair combed across the high dome of his skull, and I restrained the tingling in my arms and legs. I was already hairy enough; I didn’t need to change right here to add to the fun. Small, close-set, deep-buried eyes met mine, and I took an immediate dislike to Harv the sheriff.

After all, he stank of bloodsucker. Half-moons of sweat spread under his arms, but the creases in his uniform were still starch-sharp. His skull glistened with sweat.

“Well, there, Miz Evans.” A thin rolling voice, reedy enough to be a surprise from such a hefty man, whistled out. “What have we here?”

“Stray dog.” Evans set the fresh glass of water down and flapped her doughy handsjet beads clicking. She edged away from the sheriff, probably noticing the smell on a subconscious level. “Attacked one of my guests out in the garden. Made a ruckus.”

“I saw one of your trellises was down.” His eyes swung over to me, damnyankee in my torn and muddy clothes. I suddenly wished I knew if or where I was bleeding. “Well hello, son. How’s your lady friend? Needing a rabies shot?”

I was barely prepared for the surge of fury rising to my back teeth. Kat’s fingers on mine were fever-hot, the ice was fiery-cold. Between those two scorches the fury hit a wall, was forced back down. “My wife seems to be fine, thank you. She wasn’t bitten, just scratched.”

“I’ll get you some tea.” Evans passed a little too close to me, and the smell of talcum powder, bourbon, perfume, and hairspray hit the back of my throat. I swallowed another growl, bent down, and took a deep whiff of Kat, broken stems, mud, cedar perfume, and the iron tang of blood. “You want some tea, honey?”

“Tea would be lovely.” Kat’s consonants blurred. A little more color came back into her face. The plastic bag crinkled, a streak of cleanness sliding down her cheek where condensation from the bag had started to drip.

“Can you describe the dog, missus?” The sheriff didn’t step in past the foyer, leaning in the door to the living room. Instead, his eyes roved the surface of the chairs and settees, the dark and dead iron stove, the fringed lamps and overstuffed furniture. The place had once been a nice antebellum mansion, but it looked like the Victorian era had thrown up in here.

“Brown fur and big teeth.” Kat gave him a wide-eyed, tremulous smile full of dewy innocence. “I didn’t see much else.”

The man’s face didn’t so much as crack. “Big dog? Little dog?” His narrow gaze cut over to me, flashed back to Kat, and slid back to me, eyes almost lost in folds of flesh.

I’ve seen that look once or twice, and it always makes my hackles go up.

He knows something.

Well, no shit. Reeking of bloodsucker and sweating like a horse, of course he knew something.

“Fairly big. Mitch scared it off.” Amazingly, Kat actually fluttered her eyelashes. She slumped back against the chintz, her fingers still clamped to mine. “Were you hurt, sweetheart?”

Anyone who knew her would have winced at the sarcasm in her tone. Sheriff Harv scratched at his forehead, dangling his hat in one beefy hand. “Guess you’s both lucky. Dogs is nothing to fool round with.” There it was again, the furtive little gleam in his eye when he said “dog.”

I hate that.

“Well, guess I’ll take a report.” Harv palmed a cupful of sweat from his broad forehead and dug deep for what looked like a genuine smile, directed at Kat. “You and your fella there don’t go nowhere.”

“I don’t think I’m in the mood for any rambles.” Kat bristled, and I suddenly knew it was in my behalf. My heart got four sizes too big for its anchor inside my ribcage. “Not with so many dangerous things on the loose.”

The smile dropped off Harv’s face so fast I was surprised it didn’t shatter on the hardwood—tastefully covered by a rug embroidered with cabbage roses, of all things. “Guess not. Ma’am.” He mimed tipping his hat to Miz Evans, who made a small idiotic sound, and left, banging the screen door behind him.

“He’ll be back with some paperwork.” Evans held two tall sweating glasses of tea I could smell the sugar in. “Here, honey. You need some tea. It fixes all ills.”

Kat gave a weak smile as I peeled the ice away from her forehead. “What a nice man.” Flat and ironic, and completely for Evans’s benefit. “Do I look ready to bolt, Mitch?”

“You look beautiful.” I took one of the teas, so Kat didn’t have to, and she grabbed for the glass of water, reading my mind.

“You’re a good liar.” But she smiled. We were bloody, battered, and aching. But we’d gotten off lightly, and I knew it.

“I’VE BEEN THINKING,” KAT ROLLED OVER, WINCING, AND I suppressed a groan.

“Jesus. Do you have to?” I ached, and the bacon and eggs Evans had whipped up for me sat heavy in my stomach no matter how much of the pitcher of sweet tea I poured down. I was more nauseated than I should have been, my body craving protein to fuel muscle repair. Kat’s desire for a salad was met with something made of cucumbers, tomatoes still warm from the sun, and fresh mozzarella in an olive-oily sauce. She liked it, but had eaten very little.

I’d started packing as soon as we hit our suite, stopping only to take bites off the piping-hot plate. Kat had picked at her food and gone to bed.

Packing didn’t seem to be so much fun when I looked at the shape of her under the sheet. Still, I kept at it.

“I thought you loved me for my mind.” She was smeared with thick green mugwort—and—holy water paste, drying and flaking off now, and the green smell mixed with the rest of her made my entire spine go cold.

Bitten. Second time in as many days she could have been seriously hurt. Goddamn. “Mind’s no good without the body to put it in, sweetpea. Three suckheads—”

“—acting completely uncharacteristically. Seems like someone wants to stop my research.”

The air conditioner droned under the silence that followed.

God damn the woman. “Kat.” I struggled for control. “We’re leaving at dawn. You can call the Argentum from the next town. We’ll stop in a place that has a Starbucks and more than three stoplights, not to mention a decent Italian restaurant. I’ll get you drunk on chianti and take advantage of you and we’ll wend our way toward Disney World. Florida’s nice this time of year.”

“I don’t want to go to Disney World. Do you want to hear what I was thinking about or not?”

I stuffed some T-shirts into my suitcase, higgledy-piggledy. “All right. Fine. But we’re leaving tomorrow morning. You’d better get some sleep.”

“I didn’t sit down on the bench because I had a thought. It struck me there was a pattern to most of the disappearances. In most of the newspaper reports Lover’s Leap is mentioned.” She moved gingerly, settling herself again with a sigh. “Come over here, Mitch. I’m lonely.”

Normally I would have burned up the carpet getting my shaggy ass into bed. Right now I jammed a pair of jeans into the suitcase and remembered the clothes we had soaking in the washer. “Be right there.”

“You’re being ridiculous. I say we go take a closer look at Lover’s Leap tomorrow morning.”

You’re calling me ridiculous? “No way, Kat. Absolutely no way, nohow. No.”

“You can stay here if you’re scared, Fido. But I want to do some scouting. I’ll call in before we go, it shouldn’t take someone too long to get here.”

“This,” I announced into the suitcase, “is not my idea of a good time.” My fists ached, wanting to clench. The room was stuffy, even with air-conditioning.

“It’ll be daytime. Any sanguine is going to be torpid and easy to kill. Anything else is likely to be torpid as well.” She yawned.

My shoulders were tight as bridge cables. “No, Kat. That’s final.”

A charged silence settled into the room, made itself comfortable, and cringed away from Kat’s soft, inflexible tone.

“If I hear the words ‘that’s final’ out of your mouth again, Mitchell Black, they will be.” The sheets rasped as she shifted, irritably. “I didn’t marry you so you could tell me what to do. I’m an adult, and I’m a Knight of the Argentum Astrum. You can either help me or you can drive that Jeep of yours back to Las Vegas and find yourself both a divorce and a nice little husky to have puppies with.”

I don’t think she meant to say that. The nausea under my sternum crested, I swallowed sourness. Christ, don’t fight with her. It’s still your goddamn honeymoon. “I don’t want you getting hurt, Kat.”

She sighed. “We’ve done all right so far. And I’ll call the Argentum tomorrow morning, as soon as I get up.”

I didn’t have breath to agree or disagree, my stomach rolling like a ship during a hurricane. I’d’ve suspected some bad bacon, but any Sunrunner worth his nose doesn’t eat spoiled meat. Still, I abandoned my packing and made it to the bed. Laid down next to Kat, who probably considered the matter finished, because she didn’t speak, just clicked off the lamp on her side. I lay in the dark, my stomach griping, until I passed out.

SOMETHING WAS WRONG, I SMELLED DIRT AND FOULNESS, and there was something in my eyes. It reeked of death. A scattering of something heavy dripped across my face, wet and silken and laden with decay. Everything was black.

Where’s Kat?

Smells. Wet dirt, decaying vegetables, a heavy cologne touching off a chain of association. All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all. Something heavy across my legs, my fingers tensed, dirt crumbling wet against my nails.

Kat? I didn’t smell her.

The men burying me couldn’t have been prepared for the dead body to crackle with shifting bones, sprouting fur and moving in ways their entire experience of reality tells them can’t be so. They screamed, one teenage voice breaking with fear and another deeper male tone adding a jangling harmony, as I woke in the flush of the metabolic burn fueling the change. Halfway there I realized what was happening, but it was too late. I’d already killed the boy and was on top of the older man, snarling meat-laden breath into his face, my muzzle spattered with hot blood.

Blood’s dangerous when you’re in between man and wolf. It can drive you right over the edge into crazy. The wolf knows blood but it takes second place to survival, and a real man won’t let his blood-lust carry him too far. But halfway? Well, that’s the danger zone.

The night breathed, a complex tapestry of scent. Not cold pavement and garbage like a city, but fragrant rotting woodland full of swamp heat and decaying vegetable matter. We were out in the woods, and they had been burying me in a shallow grave. I could still feel tree roots digging into my flesh.

What the hell? I tried to talk, forgetting about my mouthful of wrongly-shaped teeth and tongue. The noises I made weren’t human.

Neither were the noises my captive made. His baseball cap had been knocked off, and he was partly bald, smelling of beer and Lucky Strikes. I’d torn his overalls, slashing with long amber claws.

I finally got my wits about me and slowly shifted back, fur melting away. It was damn hot, and I was in a pair of jeans and nothing else. My knees dug into wet earth. The most pertinent question came tumbling out. “Where is my wife?”

The man gibbered and choked with fear, his glands opening up and pouring chemical terror into the meat. Dammit. Nothing sensible would come out of him for a while.

I decided to try to calm him down. “Hey. Why are you trying to bury me?”

Poison, you jackass. And you lapped it up. I’ve never been the quickest on the uptake, I leave that to Kat. I settle for being the most thorough, most of the time. My fingers tingled and my chest constricted, something foreign burning off through my metabolism and sending a wave of weakness through me. Good thing about being Sunrunner, most poisons run right through us and disperse, defeated by heightened tissue regrowth and our neurological resistances, built to handle the sensory overload of the change.

Bad thing? It hurts like hell, and it makes us cranky.

I didn’t smell anything in the meat. Then it hit me again, a wave of sugar-coated nausea, and I cursed, grinding the chubby man down into the dirt.

The tea. Sweet enough to rot all the teeth, and sugar will cover up all sorts of things where a canine’s concerned.

“OhGawd ohGawd—” A sharp stink wafted up. The man had actually peed himself.

Good Christ. What am I going to do now? I showed my teeth in a wolf’s grin and he cried out, trying to backpedal, his legs and arms flailing wildly. I let him go, standing up as he gibbered and moaned.

Just a good ole boy, never meaning no harm. Huh. I bent down, quick fingers working, and found a heavy ring of keys. It would be worth my while to find out who the hell he was and why he was burying bodies for someone, but I had a bigger concern.

Poison meant Evans was involved. Which meant Kat was vulnerable, and in deep trouble. I wrapped my fist in the man’s overalls and shirt, hauling him up. “Where’s your car, Bubba? Be a nice boy and tell me, and I’ll let you live.”

I CUT THE ENGINE AND LET THE TRUCK drift, rattling, down the long slope. I was about a mile from Evans’s place, and pretty sure she’d know my unwitting benefactor’s vehicle. The man was trussed with duct tape and tossed in the back with two toolboxes and various other odd bits, since I didn’t want to murder him.

Not yet, anyway.

I got out, my boots crunching on gravel. The moon rose, high and white, casting knife-edged shadows along the ditches and under each little rock in the road. It was still hot-humid-damp, so the roostertail of dust the truck left in the air wouldn’t be too visible. Besides, it was night.

But what if you’re not just dealing with suckers, Mitch? It was the voice of panic. Where’s Kat? Dammit. What am I going to do?

I rested my hand on the truck’s hood for a moment, metal pinging as it cooled. The goddamn thing smelled like lit diesel farts and drove worse than a walleyed wino. It was loud and probably well-known in this neck of the woods. If I left it by the side of the road, sooner or later someone would find it, and whoever was behind all this would know I wasn’t dead.

So I either had to dispose of both Bubba and his truck, or I had to work fast.

Of course, if Kat was already dead…

You stop that right now. It’s only been a little while. They had just started to bury you. Chances are Kat’s still alive, they have to figure out what she knows and if she told anyone.

Still, if Evans had poisoned me, she might not be inclined to keep Kat alive either.

Jesus Christ, Mitch, just get on with it!

In the end I decided to leave the truck by the side of the road. If someone found Bubba taped up in the bed, it wouldn’t make a rat’s ass worth of difference.

I’m no murderer. But if they hurt even one hair on Kat’s head we were going to see just what a pissed-off Sunrunner can do to frail human flesh.

THE RAMBLING ANTEBELLUM HOUSE WAS DARK AND DESERTED. My Jeep sat in the gravel parking lot bordered with tall thin willows on three sides and a sloppy mix of kudzu on the fourth heading toward the road. The creek babbled a little under more willows, a long stone’s throw away. It was child’s play to force the back door—deadbolts are strong, but wooden doors tend to tear away from them if you apply enough force.

The kitchen was pin-neat and the downstairs was completely tidy as well. I went up the stairs to the second floor, took a hard right, and found the door to our suite open and the entire room looking like a hurricane had hit it.

Kat had put up a good fight. The window was busted all to hell, humid night seeping in as air-conditioning escaped. Grit lay everywhere, the smell of suckers rasping against my instincts. The mirrors were shattered and the mosquito netting over the bed was ripped up, the bed thrashed out of recognition and our luggage scattered around. Chairs were upended, the plush settee in a corner where she had probably tried to barricade herself, to judge by the damage to the wallpaper and plaster. The lightbulbs were all smashed, the ceiling fixture pulled out and dangling by a thread like a loose tooth, the lamps both overturned, their fringes tangled.

Small, my Kat. But packed with dynamite. Birch stakes lay scattered through the room, one driven into the flooring like a straw into a potato.

Damn, girl. If the situation had been otherwise, I might have smiled.

No clues. Just the remnants of a helluva fight. Violence still smoked in the air. Had I been deaf to it all, poisoned by sweet tea?

I made my way back downstairs, moving easily through the darkness. Evans’s office was on the other side of the detached kitchen, in a connected outbuilding recent enough to still smell like fresh lumber to my sensitive nose. The lock was better than the deadbolts on the front and back doors, and the door itself was metal. Fortunately the new drywall wasn’t nearly so resistant, and I walked right in, ducking to avoid the crossbar of the wall’s skeleton, sneezing at clouds of chalky dust.

The office was pin-neat, with a wide tall window that looked out on the garden and a desk littered with paper. I glanced at the door and stopped, my skin chilling and rippling for a moment as I fought off the urge to shift to meet a new threat.

Hanging from the doorknob was a little muslin pouch tied with red ribbon. It stank of death, with a peculiar overtone of horehound candy. The fetish rocked slightly against the door, humming nastily to itself. The sound of its tapping was flabby fingers against a pane of wet glass.

I froze and looked around the office. The air was close, thick, and rank with sorcery. Another step in, and the sorcerer’s den might wake up—who knew what little traps were left in here?

Great, Mitch. You idiot. How did you not smell her out? Her perfume, and that talcum powder—just the thing to dog up a sensitive nose. And she was scared, not of me but of the sheriff. Merciful Sun.

Something caught my eye. I bent down a little, peering out the window. When sitting at the desk, Evans would have her back to the wall instead of the door. File cabinets marched along the other wall. The picture window framed gardens, the ribbon of the road, forest, and Lover’s Leap, glowing slick and wet under the almost-full moon.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, and backed out through the hole in the wall.

Of all the bed-and-breakfasts in Virginia, we had to walk right into one run by a sorcerer. I stared through the Sunrunner-sized hole in the wall at the moonlight flooding over the desktop, a big bad Southern moon drenching everything with dead light. There was probably evidence in that office that would tell me what the hell was going on and why Kat had been taken.

You’re dumb, Mitch, but you’re not that dumb. You’re not a private eye, you’re a Sunrunner, and your wife’s in trouble. You want to finish this honeymoon, you’ll go and get her. You know where.

“Lover’s Leap.” My voice, flat and furious, took me by surprise. The house creaked and sighed its regular nightly song. Old houses are like that, they hum to themselves at night, the heat of the day leaching out of joints and beams. “Hang on, Kat. I’m coming to get you.”

I LOPED ALONGSIDE THE ROAD IN FULL CHANGE, my pads silent on the forest floor. The burn of light on shifting textures of fur ran along my nerve endings, the night exploding like champagne on the back of my throat. There was a thread of wrong along the road, a scent that shouldn’t be, well-traveled, like the passage of a predator at the edge of a herd. It raised my hackles and gave speed to my legs, the wolf’s joy at its freedom matching my urgency.

Kat, honey, just hold on. I’m on my way.

A Sunrunner can cover a lot of ground on four legs, but the moon was lowering in the sky by the time I reached the base of the mountain, where the road took a sharp turn and started winding up to Lover’s Leap. I could either cut across the hairpin turns, or I could follow them and lose time, remaining more cautiously hidden.

Kat. I decided to take a direct route up the side of a sharp rocky incline, covered with all sorts of trashwood and clinging bushes, scrub pine and bare rocks. Instinct told me there was a way.

I made very little noise, scrabbling through undergrowth and using the rocks as takeoff pads. I’m no mountain goat, but a wolf’s hardly the worst animal when it comes to getting up a hill. The faster you go, the easier it is to balance, like a tightrope. Each time I crossed the dusty ribbon of the road fresh urgency pounded behind my heart, each beat saying her name. Kat. Kat. Kat.

The last sharp turn unreeled on my right as I bounded from rock to rock, twisting in midair to land splayed on an outcropping. On my left was a widening semicircle of gravel, the parking area for Lover’s Leap. Instinct drove me into shadow at the far end, avoiding the bright glare of exposure. I nosed around the edges of the lot, trying to catch something of that thread of wrong.

Nothing. The night was still, except for frogs singing somewhere down in the valley and a raccoon bumbling along a ways away, the soft passionless talk of owls sometimes filtering through.

This was the only clue I had, and it was a bust.

Something has to be here. It has to be. Look harder. Look again.

I stilled myself, watching the wide field of pebbles, stamped dirt, and moonshine. Heard the far-off thudding of an engine laboring through the turns. Someone was coming.

I decided to chance it and worked as far toward the edge as I could, nose to the ground. I slunk out into the light, tail held protectively low to keep my profile small, and stepped into the full force of the wind from the valley, the exhalation off the mountain changing to an inhale. Every sense strained, watching, waiting. Little points of light in the valley was the town, stars come to earth.

The knocking engine grew closer. It wasn’t Bubba’s truck, but every instinct screamed for me to get back under cover.

A stray draft touched my nose, teasing with the decaying tang of bloodsuckers. I stiffened, easing out past the rickety rotting wooden fence meant to keep idiots from taking a plunge. My front paws placed themselves delicately, testing the ground before I shifted my weight.

The draft came again, and I dropped my nose. It wafted up from somewhere below, foul death-reek, bloating flesh and old rotting blood. It was a fermenting smell, hot and juicy.

A nest.

I hesitated. The rock face wasn’t quite sheer here, bulging and curving to point an accusing finger toward the town. The change melted away as I lay flat on my belly and swung my legs out over the drop, furry toes lengthening and finding crevices.

This isn’t going to work.

Never mind. You have to make it work. Besides, the smell was close. Close enough to make the fur rippling up my back stand on end in hard bristles, a mane of adrenaline-laden fear.

The knocking engine eased closer, gunning, brakes squealing on the turns. Someone was going fast. I hesitated. My questing right foot stretched for a hold and found only emptiness.

What the hell? Meaty warmth caressed my bare hairy foot, caught between wolf and man. Bones crackled as I shifted, trying to find a better shape, fingers jammed in crevices and my other leg twisted awkwardly, anchoring me to the cliff face.

The thought of a nest here, just under the surface of a high school makeout spot, turned me cold. The thought of Kat, maybe trapped in the close wet decaying heat, maybe waiting for the suckers to straggle back home and find a predawn snack waiting for them, called bitter bile up into my throat.

I moved my left foot to another hold, bracing myself, clambered down another few feet. My right foot still dangled. I was on the edge of a cave entrance, I thought, and shuddered at the idea of my leg hanging out in front of a sucker.

Another few moments of squirming while the engine roared closer and closer brought a gift—my right foot touched something solid and gritty, and I dropped onto a long low shelf in front of a pitch-black horizontal crack in the face of Lover’s Leap. I peered at the shelf and the rock below, my eyes picking out hand-and-footholds. An easy climb for a Sunrunner—or for a bloodsucker powered by stolen life and ravenous hunger, looking for its safe hole to spend the night. A nest like this could go on, hidden, for a long time. Precious few would think to look for it here, or would believe what they found.

The nest was most likely empty, everything that called it home out looking for prey under the moon. I eased into the pitch blackness, miserably compelled. The sorcerer might only have to get Kat up here, easy if she had accomplices, and leave her tied up. A nice little sucker-snack before dawn sent them into torpor.

I couldn’t smell her. The reek of suckers was too thick.

I tried to whisper Kat’s name, forgetting I was half-changed and making only a little whine. The reek stung my eyes and filled my nose with stinging pain. Two more steps brought me to a stone overhang that might have brained me if I hadn’t been warned by the hair-fine sensitivity of the half-changed. I had to go on hands and knees, squirming over a hillock on the rocky floor, a small part of me noting the geological irregularity that would keep daylight from streaming through the entrance.

A foxfire glimmer struck my eyes. The crack widened into a small corridor, one I duck-walked through. Every bad memory in the world was attached to that hideous wet smell. Suckers don’t bring their prey back unless it’s small and easily portable, but they dye the walls of their nests with pheromones and slick excretions that raise the temperature. I rounded a shallow bend in the corridor, and the floor sloped away underneath me, turning into fine sand. A low unhealthy glow came from chunks of rock daubed with something like lichen, and my hackles rose. The cave was large enough for a goodish-sized nest, and bones swam in the sea of rot-laced sand on the floor. Against the back wall was a drift of jumbled things—clothes, broken pottery shards, glass twinkling, all sorts of crap.

In the middle of the cave, sunk down three-quarters of the way, a hump of black obsidian surfaced. The light touching its face didn’t reflect—it fell in, endlessly, dying in the stone’s depths. A sharp tang of sorcery cut through the morass of foulness, and I had to blink several times, eyes streaming, before I realized the shadow in front of the obsidian chunk was humanoid, rocking back and forth as it whispered something lost in the susurrus of warmed air whistling through the crack.

I blinked furiously, trying to clear my vision. Kat was nowhere in here.

And Mrs. Evans, her bun neat and tidy as ever and her house-dress dragging on the filthy sand, crouched in front of me, her chanting suddenly rising from a whisper to a keening. The obsidian sparked, a bloody glow rising from its depths, and I suddenly smelled suckers, up-close and personal.

Now is not a good time to wish you’d studied sorcerers a little closer. But Sunrunners don’t tangle much with them. We’re too busy with suckers most of the time.

Whatever Evans was doing couldn’t mean well. And she, of all people, would know where my wife was.

I gathered myself, legs compressing under me and the change shifting me further toward wolf than man. Sand whispered underfoot, and Evans jerked away from whatever spell she was concocting, too late.

I hit her low and hard, hearing a bone snap as I jolted her across the cave, claws scraping in treacly sand. The chanting vanished, swallowed as her teeth clicked together hard enough to take a chunk of tongue out. She was an old woman, and stout, and hellishly strong. Why had I never noticed before?

Because you weren’t looking, Mitch. Stupid dog.

I clapped a hand over her mouth and got my knee in her midriff, opening my mouth to snarl. Strands of her gray hair came loose as she heaved and struggled, and I had to change a bit to get a mouth human enough to talk with.

“Where is my wife?” I roared, the words splitting and echoing across the cave. “You tell me or so help me I will kill you!”

I still had her mouth clamped closed. How was I going to get information out of her without her mumbling more spells?

Evans shook, her eyes glazed with shock, her leg twisted at an odd angle underneath me. Sweat stood out on her brow, great pearly drops against doughy skin.

I heard, faint and faraway, the knocking of the engine that had followed me up to Lover’s Leap. It cut off, suddenly, and other sounds crept into the cave’s dense wet gloom.

Little soft padding feet, and a hiss. The obsidian in the middle of the cave chuckled like wet clay tearing apart. I knew that sound—it was the noise suckers made when their prey was close and unaware.

I snapped a glance over my shoulder. Against the foxfire, little pinpricks of light showed—sucker eyes, throwing back only a small point of light since their pupils are so far shrunk. They’re all but blind in anything other than almost-darkness, but their heat-sensitivity makes up for it, and a sucker can hear your pulse a mile away.

I heard the faint thud of car doors slamming as they crowded in through the lips of the cave. Some of the pinpricks halted, the shapes slumping as the suckers dropped down to all fours, turning their heads to catch the sound of prey above.

Faint on the wind came a piercing cry, one I’d know anywhere.

“Mitch! Mitchell Black! Where the hell are you?”

Kat? I looked down, and the sorcerer’s eyes rolled back inside her head. They’re tricky beasts, and once a sorcerer’s spell goes far enough it completes itself, whether you interrupt them or not.

I rose unsteadily. A good half-dozen suckers swarmed into the cave, sniffing, probably uncertain of what to do. Without the sorcerer’s will guiding them, they would mill around for a few seconds before their pack mentality reasserted itself.

More cries from up above. “Mitch! Mitch goddammit—” Choked off. Of course, if there were suckers down here there would have to be ones up there, it was one of their favorite hunting grounds. Food delivered right to their door.

This is going to be interesting. Mitch, you dumbass.

No time for thought. I shifted and launched myself toward the cave entrance, for light, for love, for Kat.

A GUNSHOT CRACKED PREDAWN HUSH. HARV TOOK HIS foot from the sucker’s neck as its head exploded into ash. “One thing I’ve always hated about this town.” He paused as Kat brought the last stake down with a convulsive movement. It sank into sucker flesh like an ax biting deep into wood, and I let up on the thing’s throat as it turned to ash. “It’s all the damn vampires.”

The sheriff holstered his gun. Dense cotton fog was filling the valley, creeping in on little cat feet. To one side, a battered Chevy Caprice painted primer-gray stood with both driver’s and passenger’s doors open. Gravel ground into my knees as I slumped, breathing heavily, staring at the carnage even now dissolving into dust.

“Are you all right?” Kat dropped her stake and cupped my face in her hands, examining me. “Mitch? Talk to me. Are you okay?”

I dunno, sweetpea. Am I? I found my voice, and realized with relief that I was in human form. When had I changed back? I couldn’t tell. I was bone-weary, little scrapes all over me singing with pain as the grit worked its way ever-finer against my skin, sandpaper rasping. “What happened?” I coughed hoarsely, hawking a wad of something dry, spitting toward the edge. False dawn was coming up, streaks of gray in the east.

Kat let go of me and sat back on her heels, sparing a glance at the drifts of dust settling in the stillness. “You were asleep, so I snuck outside to take another look at the garden. Something about that attack didn’t seem quite right to me until I found this.” She dug in her jeans pocket and dragged out a small leather pouch, humming as it dangled from its strap. Another fetish, probably the one Evans had used to get the suckers to jump Kat in the garden. “I heard a car and hid in the kudzu. Some man in a truck drove up, went into the house, he and Evans came out carrying something that looked an awful lot like a body. I snuck back into the house to get you, but you were gone. Then Evans came back up and sicced her sanguinant on me.” A small shrug. “They were confused by the fetish, so after the fight I popped out the window and ran like hell. The truck had disappeared, you were gone, and I had a very bad feeling about it. So I hiked to that other bed-and-breakfast—the one you didn’t like, remember? I pounded on the door until they opened up and had them call 911. Turns out Harvey here is an Argentum. Isn’t that funny?”

“Hilarious.” I struggled to process this. Kat was alive, sitting right in front of me, and covered in dirt, blood, mud, guck, and the dried remnants of mugwort paste. She had a scrape on her forehead, her cheek was still glaring purple, and one of her hands was bound with a dirty gauze bandage. Her T-shirt was torn, but she’d tied it together, the knot underneath her breasts, her nipples clearly visible against the thin material.

Harv’s wide Sam Browne belt creaked as he lowered himself stiffly to one knee. He still moved pretty well, for an old fat man. “God have mercy on these poor bastuds. I been trying to figure out what it is with Lover’s Leap for years. Kids vanish all the time, and somehow this place always seems connected. But these suckers is tricky—I could only kill ‘em by one or two. I’ve known Widder Evans for years, never thought she was the sorceress type.”

“She must have learned it from someone,” Kat pointed out. “Where were you, Mitch?”

“There’s a cave.” I swallowed dryly, my throat clicking. “Under the edge there. Something’s in it. Evans is too, and some of her suckers. I think I killed her.”

A few moments of absolute silence ruled Lover’s Leap. Gray light strengthened in the east, and the fog tightened its grip on Cotton Crossing’s points of light.

“Well, goddammit.” Harv sounded disgusted. “I woulda liked to question her, son. A cave, you say?”

I wasn’t thinking of arresting her, you Southern-fried ape. “Right under the edge.” My hands went out, curled around Kat’s shoulders. She was alive and breathing, and her blue eyes sparkled as they met mine. She looked happy enough to bust. “I’d take a few people in there with you, though. Looks like an active nest, and there’s a chunk of what looks like obsidian. Evans was using it for something.”

“Harv called in. There will be a few more Argentum out here by late morning. Can you believe they have to drive all the way from Richmond?”

Sweet merciful Sun. She’s alive. “I am going to tan your hide,” I mumbled. “Out sneaking around at night.”

“I should tan yours, Fido. Going into a nest alone.” But she leaned into my hands, and the next thing I knew she was in my arms, stinking of bloodsucker but under that, warm and alive and my Kat.

“I hate to interrupt.” Harv hitched up his belt, his small eyes gleaming in the strengthening light. “But they’s some more work to be done here, and you’d best help me do it. Then you best be on your way. I can clean this up with a little help from the Ordah, but I don’t want folks noticin’ you tangled up in’m.”

Christ, I can’t wait to get out of this town. I made a muffled noise of assent, and planted a grateful kiss on Kat’s dirty hair before helping her to her feet.

“MITCH.” SHE POKED ME IN THE RIBS, “WAKE up. It’s past noon.”

I groaned, rolling over and burying my face in the pillow. “Go ‘way.” Running around changed and half-changed all night right after being poisoned did not make for a happy morning Sunrunner.

She bounced on the edge of the bed, hardly able to contain herself. Where does she find all that energy? The motel room windows were dusty, but she’d pulled the shades back and a flood of sunlight poured through to touch the tired carpet. We were twenty miles from Cotton Crossing, as far as I could drive without passing out and veering us off the road, and the motel was that peculiar Southern roadside type that took cash and didn’t ask any questions when a dirty man came in at dawn looking for a room.

“I just called Harv. He’s really a very nice man. He had some news.”

Sweet merciful Sun. “Didn’t we agree—”

“—that I’m not going be involved in that investigation anymore, yes, I know, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. I just wanted to check in. Did you know there was an old legend about Lover’s Leap?”

I don’t want to hear it. “Mrph.” I tried plugging my ears with the pillow, but she wrestled it away. I didn’t fight too hard—she was probably tired too, bruised and aching.

Yeah. Like that would slow her down.

“Seems a Confederate bride got news of her young man’s death and threw herself off. After that, kids started scaring each other half to death with stories about Bloody Mary Evans. Mrs. Evans was her direct descendant.” She shook my shoulder, but gently. “Try to act interested, at least. There’s another legend too, an older one.”

“Yeah?” I pried an eyelid open, mostly for the joy of looking at her. She was still bruised, dried mugwort paste daubed on her swollen cheek and gashed forehead. Her hair was still wet from the shower, and she wore one of my button-down shirts. It came down almost to her knees.

Damn, she’s gorgeous. Did I mention the woman just has no mercy?

“The local Algonquians had a legend about Lover’s Leap. They called it something that translates out to ‘hungry rock.’ The legend says it was once a stone belonging to one of their shamans, but the shaman got bit by a beast and died. Only he didn’t stay dead, his spirit went into the rock and got bigger and bigger and made most of the tribe vanish. This was right after the white man got here, so scholars thought it was a story about smallpox. Only—”

“Hungry rock. That makes sense.” I shivered, suddenly fully awake. “Ugh.”

“Whatever’s in that cave, the Argentum will take care of. There’s just one thing that worries me.” Her eyebrows drew together, and I saw trouble on the horizon.

“Oh, no. No. Come on, Kat. Harv told us to get out and stay out. He won’t be able to help us if law enforcement gets wind of Evans’s body.”

“Please.” She gave the notion short shrift. “He is the law enforcement around there. He could really use a hand, though. He’s getting old, and he needs an apprentice. Speaking of apprentice, that’s what bothers me.”

I laced my fingers behind my head and looked at her. Her hair glowed in the reflected sunlight, and even in a cheap motel room she was the best damn thing I’d ever seen. “What, sweetpea?”

“Just where did Evans learn sorcery? Harv knew she was a little eccentric, but he swears there wasn’t a sorcerer in town for a good fifty years. He says he would have known, and I believe him. And the guy you left tied up in his pickup is nowhere to be found.”

I groaned again. “No more mysteries. We killed the bad guy and we’re both still breathing. Chalk it up to a win and leave it alone.”

“I don’t know. It just bothers me.” But she smiled, and leaned down, her hair falling in my face. “You came all the way out there to rescue me, didn’t you?”

Of course I did. “Yep.”

“My hero.” Her mouth met mine, and things were progressing very satisfactorily for a long while until she broke away for some breath. “But I’m picking the next hotel, Mitch. And you’re still in the doghouse.”

Half of being married, I guess, is knowing when to keep your mouth shut. The other half is probably knowing when to open it. Which for any reasonable man is close to never, when it comes to women.

So I settled for diplomacy, us being on our honeymoon and all. “Sure thing, sweetpea. Now kiss me again.”

And she did.

I’m a lucky man.

Lilith Saintcrow is best known for her Dante Valentine series, featuring a trigger-happy Necromance and lots of demons. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her husband, three children, four cats, and various other strays. You can find Lili online at www.lilithsaintcrow.com.

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