Skinwalker

Some of the vamps formed into smaller groups, to chat or plot or whatever vamps did at undead nonfunerals. Oddly, they talked about the stock market and the latest flare-up in the Middle East, like any well-educated group of humans. It was almost as disorienting as hearing them quote Jesus. Then, one by one, they called for their rides on cell phones, and the limo and fancy car procession reversed itself. First to arrive were last to leave. That pissing contest again.

 

When all the vamps were gone, I was ready to take wing back to my garden and shift into something with arms. But Sabina still stood, head down, white skirts fluttering in the breeze. She spoke without raising her voice, her tones heavy now with an accent I didn’t recognize. “It has been many years since I heard the call of the Bubo bubo,” she said. She looked up at the tree, her face bright in the scant moonlight. “I know not if you are real, or prophecy, or the mad imaginings of an old, old sinner.” She shook her head slowly, her predator eyes on me. Though I was raptor, and afraid of little, I wanted to lift wings and fly far away. My flight feathers shivered and my taloned feet danced on the limb. “If you are prophecy, if you are the breath of God on my stained and darkened soul, then know this, and take my words back with you to paradise. We still seek forgiveness. We still search for absolution.”

 

When I didn’t move, she bowed her head and walked to the nonchapel, so graceful her skirts scarcely swayed. She shut and barred the door. I watched as she doused all lights but one, a single flame in the night. Silence settled on the graveyard. I lifted my wings and launched myself, swooping low over the grounds, seeking currents to gain altitude.

 

I banked and soared over the nonchapel, ready to fly home; then I heard the now familiar grating of a crypt opening. I canted once more over the cemetery, seeking with raptor eyes designed to spot the smallest prey, and with keen ears, half expecting to see or hear Katie. Instead, a man walked from a crypt, hunched and gaunt, and reeking of the grave. The rogue.

 

He closed the wood door to the crypt and pushed shut the wrought-iron gate protecting it, his movements uneven, almost human slow. His feet were bare and filthy, his hands sticklike, skeletal. His clothes were ratty and torn, ill fitting, not the same long coat and wool slacks he had left at the water’s edge in the pit behind the shaman’s house. His head was down, hair straggling over his face, obscuring it. But I knew him by his rotten stink, his gait, and the set of his bony shoulders. He didn’t move like any vamp I knew. I soared silently past, so I could read the clan name on the mausoleum. St. Martin.

 

The rogue tripped and swayed across the grassy ground to the Clan Pellissier vault. He fell against the barred doors and gripped them with pale white hands, shaking them. The quiet rattle sounded loud and harsh in the silent night. His actions grew frantic, his fingers beating the locks, clawing past the iron bars into the door, his face pressed against the metal. He mewled piteously, like a small, hungry animal. I could hear him breathing, snuffling, as he smelled the mixed vamp blood, the aroma a rich blood scent on the wind, stronger than his rot.

 

He slammed his palms against the bars and pushed away with a final clang. Furious, he lurched to the nonchapel. I circled tighter, watching. His fingers brightened with heat and gray sparkles of power. An energy signature I recognized. I circled down fast, watching as claws grew on his fingers, hooked and curved, longer than Beast’s. He was shape-shifting.

 

Crap. This thing wasn’t a rogue vamp. It was a were. Or a skinwalker. Beast was right. This was indeed a liver-eater.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 19

 

 

I’m psychic

 

He stopped, drawing in his shoulders, breathing deeply, a wet, hacking sound, familiar from Beast. The liver-eater threw his face to the night sky. And he spotted me.

 

His face was no longer human but a blunted snout, long fangs curving from upper and lower jaws. He had gone furry, a tawny pelt covering his face and arms and down his neck. Jaw elongating, ears rising, pointing. Claws larger than Beast’s by far. His shift stopped there, as if he had control enough to shift only partway. Or maybe he was stuck between forms. The stink of rot was gone, leaving the musky odor of male big cat.

 

Sabertooth, some part of me thought, stunned. Watching, I hesitated an instant. Missed an air current, an uprising thermal. The twisting air threw me off. I tumbled. My wings fluttered uselessly. I started to spin and reached out with wings and taloned feet, spreading myself, steadying my body in flight as the earth rose fast.

 

Below me, the sabertooth jumped, reaching high with a clawed hand. An impossible leap. I caught the air and rotated my shoulders, back-flapping hard. A cry escaped me, raptor anger. The rogue’s claws scraped through my flight feathers. I flailed the air, gaining altitude, and screamed again. The rogue landed on all fours. The back of his coat ripped with a dry, rasping tear, golden fur spilling out, a long and ragged mane, his back striped. The stones of a nearby crypt exploded, breaking with a crack and rumble. He was stealing mass. Stealing from stone. The front door of the nonchapel opened. Sabina stepped out.

 

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