I soaped my hair and scoured the bottoms of my feet. I scrubbed everything in between as well, every part of me that Bruiser had touched, had marked with his hands and his mouth and his rough, unshaven face. I was abrading the top layer of skin and I didn’t care. If that was what it took to get the reek of Bruiser off of me—

The shower door rammed open, bouncing off the wall. Leo stood there, vamped out, steam rushing to swirl around him. He lunged into the blistering stream. Screaming, “You are—”

Time stood still. Droplets of water stopped, suspended. Steam—minuscule droplets, heated nearly to the point of boiling—vibrated in place. Leo hung in the air, midleap, his face frozen in a rictus of fury. Still dressed in his tux.

There were two-inch talons on each fingertip. His lips were pulled back in a snarl. Three-inch fangs were snapped down in eating/fighting position. Eyes like pits into hell, opening inside volcanos, viewed from above as one fell into the darkness. Vamped out. Vamped out and beyond ticked off. Leo didn’t like to be dissed.

Time . . . time was stopped. Or nearly so. Or I was suddenly outside of it.

Silver lights stood among the shower droplets, black motes here and there. In human form, I was in the gray place of the change. And nothing was happening. I wasn’t shifting. I was just . . . here. The gray place of the change was present and real, yet not overtaking me, not running the show. In the moments since Bruiser suggested that I offer a blood sacrifice, I had wanted time to stop. Now it had. And I had no idea how it had happened except that I had done this. Somehow.

The I/we of Beast is stronger than Jane or big-cat alone. Hayyel made us so. But there will be a price.

Isn’t there always? I thought back.

In the shower stall, the water droplets seemed a fraction of an inch lower. Leo, a fraction of an inch closer. But I had plenty of time. If there was such a thing.

Hayyel was an angel. The Everharts and Truebloods had summoned him to Earth to deal with the demon that Evangelina Everhart Stone had summoned with the blood diamond. The blood-magic, black arts, blood-diamond artifact that currently resided in one of my bank safe-deposit boxes, along with the iron discs made from the spike of Golgotha and a few pocket watches from Natchez, Mississippi—which also had some of the iron in them, powering them. The pocket watches did something about time, but I wasn’t sure what. I had a feeling that I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out, and that I’d eventually have to find a physicist to explain it to me.

When Hayyel was fighting the demon, time did something. It stood still and it rushed ahead all at once, all the pathways and possibilities of the future open at one time. I hadn’t seen much of it. What I had seen was distorted and blended, like a single frame from a thousand movies, overlaid and viewed at once. Madness. Madness I had instantly forgotten, too much for my human brain to see/internalize/analyze/understand.

Those memories now seemed to merge with the steam droplets. Trying to rise. A distinct image in each micro globule of water, vibrating with heat and possibility. And still too much to take in or understand.

Hayyel did something to you, to us, in the moments he appeared, I thought.

Yesss.

What? What did he do?

Hard to think. Hard to think like Jane. Beast shook her head and pawed my mind, frustrated. He showed Jane a way to . . . true life. He showed Beast how to forgive the life that Jane had stolen.

I understand that part. But that doesn’t explain the images in all the droplets. Or the fact that time has stopped now while Leo is trying to kill us. It also doesn’t tell us what to do about it all.

Time slid forward again, a fraction of a second. The droplets skittered. Leo’s mouth opened wider. He was really not happy. When time let up again, the poop was gonna hit the prop and it was gonna get messy.

I/we were not . . . do not understand words. This. This is what he did to us. Beast showed me a memory, one I had seen before. Two streams, roiling with white water, tumbling, plummeting down a mountain, taking different paths. Rushing over and around rocks and deadwood debris. Water dropping and falling. Coiling like living things, angry and lusting and thrusting down the peaks, an image I had seen before, and thought I understood, but . . . perhaps not.

In a tight, narrow spot, full of broken stone and flood-blasted trees, the rivers met. Became one. The eddies and currents exploded into one another. Fought one another for supremacy. Spray, icy with winter, spewed into the air. Wave trains rose and fell, cresting at the tops. Eddy lines lifted a foot above the waterline, like a fence, as the two rivers struggled for power, fought for control. And merged.

This, Beast thought, indicating the eddy line. And this, she thought, showing me the swirling water in a pool below, as the two rivers became one and stopped fighting for supremacy. And found a calm pool of peace. We were broken. Alone. Fighting for dominance. First as two. Then as two merged, but not at peace. Hayyel healed us. Healed our broken soul. Gave us strength and power. But we have not accepted it. Have not taken his gift and made it ours. Have not eaten it and made it part of who we are.

I turned my attention from Beast’s memory of rivers joining to the memory of my soul home, the place/memory where my skinwalker nature was first revealed. The cavern was composed of limestone, the scent sharp and tart. In this memory it was also dark and dank, cold, without the light of the fire that was usually lit. But I knew this place that existed within me, even in the dark. I moved through the large cavern and into a small passageway, to the nook where Beast slept.

She lay on the ledge in the space she claimed as her den, belly to the cool rock. Her chin and jaw were on her paws. Her amber eyes studied me as I studied her. If two broken souls join, are we still a broken soul? But just a bigger broken soul?

Beast chuffed with amusement. If we join, we are stronger. Faster. This place becomes ours, our hunting territory.

And what does that mean?

Stronger, faster. This is always better than weaker, slower. Weaker, slower is prey.

You have a point. Especially with Leo trying to kill us. Again. But . . . you couldn’t tell me this before?

Jane did not need to know before. And price of more power might be much, like Beast trying to eat whole bison. Sickness.

I remembered my last partial shift in the HQ gym. Time had slowed and I had moved even faster than normal then too. And I’d had cramps after. Incapacitating stomach cramps. That would be bad in the middle of a fight.

Beast waited, staring at me through the dark. I had scratched her behind the ears once before. Now I bent into the ledge. And Beast rose to her paws, claws out, digging into the stone beneath her. Oddly, I could feel her claws in the back of my brain, piercing. She stepped toward me. Our faces met, hers prickly and rough with stiff hairs. She tilted her face, lifting her jaw. I rubbed my face over her jaw, accepting her scent, allowing her to mark me. She dropped her head and rubbed the top of it under my jaw, taking my scent.