"GPS. So we can find you. Or drop it any place we need to get to and we'll be there."
"Handy." I tucked it into my jacket. My pals and their find-Jane devices. "We'll be in the New Orleans City Park. I want you guys to wait on the soccer fields for my call. And, uh, a group of witches will be joining you." At the look on the men's faces, I added, "They'll be there to provide shielding against magical attack."
"Witches are nothing but trouble."
I found his face in the cavern of the van, Hicklin, the good-looking guy they had used to flirt with the shop girl. "It's the parents of the kidnapped kits. Children," I corrected. "You want to be the one to tell them no?"
He sighed. "No. But they won't think like soldiers. Won't think like shooters."
"So tell them what you want in terms of protection. And if they disagree, invite them to stay home."
Hicklin shook his head in disgust and slid the door shut. I wasn't making a lot of fans today. I kick-started Bitsa and wheeled her into the murky streets. Exhaustion settled around my shoulders like a heavy blanket, heated and scratchy.
The moon was still high in the sky, a distant white orb that pulled at me, a tide shaping my animal self. I gunned the engine and bent forward over the bars. Dawn was still hours off.
Hurricane Ada was a distant memory, and I knew right away it wasn't going to be a piece of cake getting into the park this time. The thirteen hundred acres were gated and its keepers were patrolling. I left my bike two blocks out on Fillmore and jogged in, slipping past a guard standing in a guardhouse. Finding the shadows. Locating the forest by smell and need. Vanishing into the trees. It would have been poetic, but for the weapons and the raw meat in the Ziploc . . . and the hard stone of fear I was carrying under my breastbone.
There weren't any boulders in the park, not like my home in the mountains of the Appalachians, and I knew it was going to be hard to shift here. But I'd not find the blood site any other way. Not in time. If it wasn't already too late.
Beast stretched under my skin, eager, her pelt pressing against me. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, I thought at her. Robert Frost. One of few things I remember from high school. And one of even fewer things that Beast and I agreed on totally. With the quote, I began to relax, slipped beneath a branch and off the path, deep into the woods, using Beast's senses to orient myself in the forest. It didn't take long.
Beast stopped me just short of the place where I'd beheaded the young rogue I'd watched rise from Ada-soaked ground. The wind was warm, wet, fitful, a breezy frustrated child, prevented an outlet for her anger. I smelled only growing things and fertilizer, exhaust from the surrounding streets, the sour tang of bayous that trailed around and through the park.
The tree I'd stood on to wait for the young rogue had been left in place, a convenient seat, though its branches had been cut away, leaving only piles of sawdust and the mixed smells of many humans in their tangled stead. I liked the spot and I set the steaks on the bent arch of tree, removed my weapons. And my new butt-stomper boots. Folded my clothes over the trunk.
Standing barefooted on the loamy ground, I breathed deeply, centering myself. Taking in the park and the dense, ancient trees. The scents came alive, small animal smells, individual tree scents, the tang of something blooming and oily. The sounds became a racket now that I listened: shush, slither, slide, tap, and patter of animal movements. The nearly soundless flutter of owl wings. The sounds of man faded into the background, the gift of the forest's peace sliding under my skin.
I needed to shift. Needed senses that I didn't have in human form. I needed Beast's night vision, her acute hearing, her keen sense of smell, because, like the sites around Sabina's chapel, there would be more than one grave site in this forest, and I had found only one. It meant leaving behind weapons I could wield only in human form, like guns and knives, but the trade-off would be worth it.
Holding the fetish necklace, I sat on the tree and closed my eyes, letting the forest soothe me. It wasn't my forest, but it was still earth, living things with roots pushing deep, soil rich and fecund with years and seasons and the power of the moon, animals to inhabit it. I was so tired and woozy from lack of sleep, I felt as if the ground were tilted beneath me. But Beast had slept more than I, and I'd be refreshed as soon as I shifted.