Blood Challenge

FOURTEEN

THE largish building Arjenie had passed on her way to the well was nothing fancy—just a long, stucco rectangle roofed with the red tiles you saw everywhere in California. A wooden deck ran the length of the building’s front. The thirty feet that separated it from the road couldn’t be called a yard—it was mostly dirt with some stubborn tufts of native grass.

The windows were unexpected. They were unusually tall, running nearly from floor to ceiling, and she hadn’t seen any on the sides or back, just in the front along the deck.

Those windows spilled light into the darkness now. And voices. Men’s voices.

Arjenie’s feet stopped entirely. From this far back she couldn’t hear what the voices said. She could, however, see inside. Men moved swiftly and purposefully in what seemed to be one huge bedroom—she glimpsed several beds, anyway. No, wait, the beds were on either end; the middle part looked more like a living room. Several of the men were naked. And not everyone was a man.

Arjenie’s heartbeat leaped for the stratosphere. Move, she told her feet, and they obeyed for two whole steps when something happened that made her forget everything else.

A tall, dark-haired man with a wiry build and no clothes stood near one of the windows. She watched, transfixed, as he splintered himself. That wasn’t the right word, but there were no words for what she saw—reality shorting out in a fizz of impossibilities, fractal glimpses of flesh and fur and change.

“Go,” said a man’s voice, deep and commanding. And the wolf who’d been a man a second ago did, spinning to leap out the window—as did four more wolves, launching themselves through four more windows.

They all but flew, those wolves. As if they’d choreographed this, they sailed out the windows and over the porch, landing on the hard ground. And kept going, streaks of shadow cutting across the night like wind made visible.

One of them ran right past her. Not quite close enough for her to reach out and touch, but nearly. Arjenie swallowed and pulled hard on her Gift and remembered her feet, which agreed that it was time to move. Even her poor ankle was on board with that plan.

What had alerted them? Had they found some trace of her? Could the potion have worn off? No, that was stupid—that wolf had raced right past her, which he surely wouldn’t have done if she were leaving a scent trail.

She hobbled forward slowly. Much as she wanted to hurry, that would end badly. Her ankle wouldn’t tolerate any rushing.

Men were coming out now. A couple stepped through the windows like the wolves had, only not in such a rush. Others exited more prosaically through the door. They were all armed, and mostly dressed—at least, all but two wore cutoffs. Arjenie’s gaze flickered over the men, counting compulsively as she walked, leaning on the stupid cane … two, three, five, seven, nine …

The tenth man was in charge. Arjenie knew that the second she saw him. It was clear in the way the others watched him. His voice was a low rumble, too low for her to make out the words—something about the road, or maybe the Rho—and he was big. Big like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilder days. Big like a pro football player or the G.I. Joe doll her cousin Jack used to play with. Big as in all muscle.

His hair was black and straight, pulled back in a stubby tail. He had coppery skin. Lots of coppery skin. He wasn’t quite naked. He had on cutoffs. And a sword. She was pretty sure that was a sword strapped across his back, plus there was a rifle in his hand and some kind of gun holstered on his hips.

She wanted him.

The rush of hunger astounded her. It was so misplaced she had nowhere to put it, no context by which such an absurd upwelling of desire could be understood. She stood and gaped at him.

He finished speaking to the men with him. Two of them peeled off, racing toward the gate, and he—he looked at her. Right at her.

“It’s you,” she whispered.

Did he hear her? She couldn’t tell. His face gave nothing away. He started toward her, moving slowly, like a big cat stalking its prey … would a part-time wolf be insulted if you called him a cat? His gaze never left her.

He made a gesture with one hand, some kind of signal. Two of the other men fell into step with him. “Lights,” he said. A second later Arjenie was blinking against the sudden flood of light—all of it directed out at the yard and the road. The porch itself remained unlit. The men remaining on that porch looked watchful and wary, but she could tell they didn’t see her.

He did.

His eyes never left hers as he stepped off the deck and kept coming. He looked about forty, with crow’s-feet tucked in the corners of his dark eyes. His face had no expression at all. He didn’t so much as blink. Maybe he was a robot? A robotic lupus, because she somehow knew he was last night’s wolf. A Native American robotic lupus, because that copper skin was stretched taut over broad cheekbones bisected by a high-bridged blade of a nose.

Apache? Navajo? She wanted to ask him which tribe, and why he could see her, and why his men weren’t asking him what he was doing, stalking something they couldn’t see. She wanted to stretch out a hand and touch him … and that was stupid, because he was a lot scarier in this shape than when he was a wolf. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

He stopped about five feet away. He’d been a big wolf. He made a very big man. “I am so scared,” she whispered.

“You don’t smell scared.” His voice was so low, rumbling out of him like a big cat’s purr. “You don’t smell like anything.”

“You can hear me!”

“Hear you, see you, but I can’t smell you.”

She blinked. That was interesting. Apparently her Gift didn’t work on him, but Dya’s potion did. “That’s because of the potion,” she whispered. She could not bring herself to speak out loud while using her Gift. Or maybe her voice was strangled by fear.

“You’ll tell me about that shortly.” He gestured at the cane she was leaning on. “You fell last night. Are you injured?”

She nodded. “Are you? I heard shots. So many shots.”

“Nothing significant.”

“Benedict?” one of the men with him said—a redhead with freckles everywhere. Truly everywhere. He hadn’t bothered with cutoffs. “Who are you talking to?”

“You don’t see her,” the robotic lupus Native American said. The redhead shook his head. “Do you not hear her, either?”

“No.”

There was no point in exhausting herself further. She was well and truly caught. With a sigh, Arjenie released the draw on her Gift.

“What the—”

“Where did she—”

“Ohmygod, she—”

Arjenie squeaked. It wasn’t good to startle armed men. A gun had practically jumped into the hand of a blond man on the porch. He aimed it right at her.

The large robotic lupus in front of her never looked away from her face. “Who drew?”

“I did,” said the man who was pointing his gun at her.

“Put it up. You and Saul go to the Rho’s. Wake him and report.” He used another of those hand signals, this one sort of like a beauty queen’s wave. The two men took off at a run in the general direction indicated by that wave.

For a moment she watched them. She couldn’t help it. They were so lovely and so swift.

The one they’d called Benedict shook his head. “Damned if she didn’t deliver you to me. You might as well tell me your name.”