Rick exited the pickup and walked around the truck toward me, moving like he was half leopard already, with a liquid and predatory grace, despite the water repellant jacket and layers beneath. His hair was blacker than midnight, his eyes blacker still, and something warm and heated flowed down my body and settled in my lower belly. Despite the rain and the chill on the wind and stink of old death, a smile pulled at my mouth.
Rick opened the passenger door and Kem stepped out, a slow, four-pawed slink. The spots beneath his black coat weren’t visible in the dim light, and he looked pure black with gold-green eyes, round pupils wide. He shook once and hissed, looking up at the clouds, shoulders hunching. Black leopards are good swimmers, surpassed only by tigers in their love of water, but getting rained on was evidently different from taking a leisurely swim in a cool pond on a hot, jungle day. Kem had seen me once, from a distance, in Beast form, and he looked at me now, remembering. He hissed again, pulling his lips back, wrinkling his snout.
Rick held out a steel-prong dog collar, the kind that, when the leash is pulled, extends prongs into the dog’s throat. The collar style is used to control dangerous, aggressive dogs, and was the one concession Grizzard had insisted upon for a black leopard on the day’s hunt.
Kem hissed in warning, showing his insult in the way that cats the world over do, by passive aggressive behavior. When Rick bent to put on the collar, Kem jumped to the hood, then the cab roof, and off the other side of the pickup. Without looking back, he started downhill, directly toward the kill site, tail in the air like a modified, upraised, middle finger.
Rick slanted his eyes at me and let his mouth quirk up on one side. “He’s pissed because he’s sober in daytime. He’s worked hard to avoid that state since we got here.”
I thought about Kem knowing me in my Beast form. About Grizzard and the gun-happy deputies. “He’s not going to let you use the collar at all, is he?”
“Nope. Not without a fight none of us can hope to win. And, speaking of fights, he told me that the first time I shift, he’s going to challenge me to personal combat and kill me for sleeping with his wife, which I didn’t do.”
The breath left my lungs as if I’d been socked in the gut. Mine, Beast chuffed, shoving her claws into me. Mine!
“Yeah, that’s the way I felt about it too,” Rick said, as if he’d heard her claim, but reacting to my facial expression. “He says were-law doesn’t allow him to kill me until then. And since I won’t know how to fight, won’t even know how to stand on four legs, I’ll be dead before dawn. Fortunately, the full moon is a few days away, so we can find time to say good-bye.”
“Not gonna happen,” I said. “I’m his alpha. I won’t let him.”
Ignoring my reply, he handed me a fleece shirt and a Gortex jacket, both dry. “Here.”
I curled my fingers into the warm clothes, thinking of Rick and Kem, fighting. Kem would kill him slowly, playing with prey. I pulled the clothes to my nose and inhaled Rick’s scent, warm and masculine and satisfying. “Thanks,” I said. I looked down the hill for Kemnebi, who was mostly invisible, moving in the shadows of the slope. I kept my eyes on the forest as I said, “I’m still his alpha. Remind me before the full moon. I have a feeling that my Beast might have a thing or two to say about some black leopard killing you.”
“Beast?”
I laughed softly. “Yeah. Beast is what I call my cat-self.”
Beast hacked at the words. Not Jane’s cat. Beast belongs to no one.
“Of course, once she kills or chases off Kem-cat, she’ll likely flay your hide off with her claws for cheating on her with the wolves.”
“Uhhhh . . .”
To give myself something to do while he floundered, I pulled my wet shirts off and tossed them to the floorboard of the SUV’s cab. They landed near Evangelina’s scarf with a wet plop. Warm, dry clothes went on over my chilled skin; I was pretty sure he was looking, and I shivered once, hard. To the cold, I assured myself, not in reaction to Rick. I felt so much better inside the warm clothes that I sighed as I locked the door. “Come on. First things first. We gotta catch and dispatch some sicko werewolves who are killing and eating humans.” I moved into the brush and under twisted, tangled laurel. Rick slid into a backpack and followed, silent and thoughtful.
The searchers stopped and watched as the black were-leopard circled the kill site. Kem-cat walked with a fluid, feral grace, leaping across the terrain; he made no sound, a killing shadow crossing cloud-dimmed ground. He was beautiful, wild, and unafraid for humans to watch, which was more in keeping with human thought processes than big-cat thinking. Leopards, like mountain lions, are solitary, hiding by day. That he showed himself with such balletic abandon said it was deliberate, part of his job description as the leader of the Party of African Weres.