Light and shadow wrenched and twisted. The earth rearranged itself beneath me. I aimed, blew out my breath, and fired. Once, twice, three more times. Nothing hit her. The rounds passed clean through her. Through the light that was Soul. Her teeth came at me, big as a T. rex. They caught my arm and snapped down, just as she solidified and dropped onto my belly. My breath, my one precious breath, was shoved out in a strangled half scream. The smell of my blood was hot on the air. There was no pain yet. Just the sound and vibration of teeth on my bones. My stomach turned over and tried to defeat gravity. She shook me like a dog with a rabbit in its jaws. Slung me up and to the side. She let go and I landed in a spinning roll. Realized I was still in the gray place of the change. With Soul. In her natural form. Or one of them.

She leaped at me, her mouth open again. I focused on it. More cat than gator now. Striped black and yellow. Tiger, Beast thought. I/we snarled. Soul snarled back. With much bigger teeth.

Pelt sprouted along my arms, healing flesh and tendons on the one she had mauled. But I was twisted in my clothes. I wrenched my hips and legs, trying to get them free of the jeans and boots.

Soul pounced again and bit down onto my healing arm and shook me—clearly her method of choice for killing small prey. Like me. This time I heard the snap-snap of breaking bones. The pain that had been hiding exploded inside me. I heard a roaring in my ears. Which felt like a really bad thing. Beast? I’m in trouble here. More pain raced along my jaws and through my gut. The roaring grew louder. My body went limp.

•   •   •

Face wrenched in agony. Changing. Shifting. Beast screamed. Buried fangs in tiger’s throat, latching down. Fur and blood and meat and . . . rich, tasty blood. Beast shook tiger. Swallowed good blood. Tiger growled and gurgled. Tiger could not breathe.

Beast played dead. Then attacked. Beast is best hunter.

Tiger whined. Blew bubbles of blood. Tiger lay still. Beast let her go and leaped to three legs, whirled and reached for tiger. Tiger was gone. Sniffed, searching for tiger. Saw light and movement among trees beside cracked, broken concrete. Light like gray place, but brighter. With wings and scales. Growling and snarling. Roaring and chuffing. Singing like birds. Soul cried, “Where is the hatchling?”

And she was gone.

Pain raced up broken leg. Beating like blood and heart. I/we gathered up Jane boots and clothes. Carried them to ess-u-vee. Leaped to front, to top of chest, above beating heart, warm from life of ess-u-vee, alive but not alive. Curled into ball on top of Jane clothes. Put jaw on boots. Closed eyes and thought of Jane.

•   •   •

I woke up on the warm hood of the SUV, disoriented and nauseated. Hair unbraided and draped all over me. And naked. I groaned and rolled over. Sat up. Making sure that Soul and Satan’s Three were gone. No growling, no light show. No vehicle behind mine. Nothing but the smell of crushed plants, Soul blood, gunfire, and vamp on the air, mixed with something vaguely familiar that skittered around in my brain like a rat in a box before disappearing like a magic trick before I could identify it.

I rolled off the hood and dressed quickly in my blood-damp, shredded clothes, except for the panties and bra that were a total ruin. This was why I didn’t invest in expensive undies.

No one drove by as I dressed; no sirens sounded in the distance. I was glad I was in the boonies with no nearby, nosy neighbors. Going commando—which was not at all comfortable, the zipper cold and pinching my skin—I shoved my feet into my boots and hunted for my guns and my cell. Seconds after becoming human again, I slid into the car, the tires ground into the concrete and spit shale, as I gunned the motor and got the heck outta Dodge, thinking, What the heck just happened?

I was halfway across the river before my heart rate slowed and I figured out three things. One: Driving with no windows was a lot like riding Bitsa. Two: I wasn’t hungry. I had been beaten and cold-cocked by a vamp, shifted, fought a tiger, been wounded, shifted back, all in a matter of minutes, and I wasn’t hungry. Shifting always used energy, energy that I took from food calories. But I wasn’t hungry. In fact, I felt amazing, like I’d had a good meal and a beer. And like the beer worked on me like it did on humans. I wasn’t buzzed, but I was amazingly relaxed. Which I clearly shouldn’t have been. And using the term amazing a lot. And I had no idea why. Three: Soul was a shapeshifter. Which meant that the arcenciels were shapeshifters. A light-dragon and a freaking tiger and maybe other forms as well. And not a shifter who required that mass and energy remain unchanged. In her human form she weighed maybe a hundred twenty-five pounds. In her tiger form she weighed more than three hundred, if her weight on my belly had been an indication. Unless she could convert energy to mass all by her lonesome. Like maybe she had a pocket of energy she could draw on as needed to change shape and mass. That would be handy. The arcenciels had—or were—magic like I had never imagined before.

I thought through the last few minutes in the warehouse parking area as I drove, analyzing it from every memory—smell, sight, pain, taste, roaring sound, and time. Something about it was familiar in a mathematical kinda way. Like A equals B, and B equals C, so A equals C. Like that. I was doing math. My high school teachers would be so proud. I pulled up my sleeve to see an undamaged arm, healed by the shift. My life was good. Weird but good. “And I can do alphabet math. Cool.”

And the best thing about the whole thing? The taste of Soul’s blood. Which was why I wasn’t hungry, I thought. Whatever kinda dragon-cat-shifter/l’arcenciel Soul was, her blood was full of power. “I gotta figure out what she is. Someday,” I said to the road in front of me. “For now, it’s all good because I know for sure who’s trying to bomb me and sniper me and tailing me. Well, it’s all good, except that Soul tried to kill me.” I frowned at the street because it wanted to waver to the left. “And Satan’s Three are after me and it has something to do with my energies in the gray place of the change. Which is bad. Very bad. So it’s not all good.

“Oh crap. I’m talking to myself. And I’m feeling really good. Okay. Soul’s blood is full of power and happy juice. Like the arcenciel goop from the sparring room floor and from the drugged scale.”

Car lights flashed into the SUV through the broken windows. My T-shirt was clawed and ripped and stiff with blood. Cool night wind touched my skin through the rents. Since I was over the river and off the bridge, I slowed, parked, and yanked the shirt off, tossing it into the passenger floor, without looking. I twisted my hair up in a bun and stuck some stakes through it to keep it in place, then pushed the stakes down because they hit the roof and hurt my scalp. Dang stakes. A toiletries bag was in back and I crawled through the SUV to get it.