Kem-cat knows we are Beast, she murmured to me.

I didn’t react, except to stare Kem down. He knows we’re something, but doesn’t know quite what, I thought. As with wolves, a big-cat stare was a challenge, and the hair across Kem’s shoulders rose, a prickling black ruff. He lowered his head in threat, stretched his back, and depressed his rib cage below his shoulders. This time when he showed his teeth and hissed, there was real menace in it, heard over the sound of the rushing water.

Beast shoved down on my mind, her claws sinking deep. My shoulders and head moved forward. I/we drew a steel claw with each hand and hissed. Confrontation and challenge sparked between us, almost alive in its intensity. The pheromones of conflict rose on the moving air, so strong I/we could taste them. I am your alpha. Do not forget.

“Jane?” From the corner of my eye, I could see Rick looking back and forth between Kem-cat and me. When I didn’t answer he said, very carefully, “Did I miss something?”

After a long moment, Kem looked away, staring into the trees. His ruff settled, claws retracted. Beast withdrew and I found myself. I managed a guttural, “He’s my beta. He wants to kill you. I’m just letting him know it won’t be easy.” Rick was silent, weighing my words. I straightened, sheathing the weapons. I moved along the path, showing Kem I wasn’t afraid of him, but not being dumb enough to give him my back either. The air around him was musky and sour with loss of face as the pheromones of anger faded. Keeping Rick alive was going to be difficult. Two leaps later, the leopard was again ahead of us, his long ropy tail held high, showing me his butt, proving that two could play the game of taunt-the-cat.

I followed, watching Kem-cat move upstream, muscles bunching beneath his skin, Rick close on my trail. The path quickly narrowed between thigh-high weeds, briars, poison oak and ivy, native plants and ones that had escaped from gardens, flowering with yellow, purple, and shades of pink and red. It was rocky going, the soles of my hiking boots gripping and releasing. We worked up a sweat, despite the cooler temps near the water.

We had been on the path for a couple of miles when Kem rounded a curve of the creek and disappeared, melting into the shadows of midday like smoke. When Rick and I got to the curve, we discovered a feeder creek, a foot or two wide and only inches deep, with a ten-foot waterfall that was breathtaking. And a pile of scat, marking Kem-cat’s territory for us to step over. The smell of grindy was so intense here, I was sure he was right around the corner, but Kem had trodden through mud and leaped up the ten foot height. He was crouched beneath a laurel, staring down at us, a predator estimating the weight and danger of prey.

Beast slammed into my mind again and glared. Growled. Kem blinked. A moment later, he slid into the shadows. I looked at Rick who was watching me, amusement, speculation, and something warmer hiding in the deeps of his eyes. He held out a hand, indicating the nearly sheer wall, wet with falling water. “After you.”

I grabbed a root and gave a tug. It held. I started the climb. At the top, a fresh breeze slapped me in the face. It was heavy with the stink of old blood and rotting flesh.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Get Your Own Damn Shoes

Two miles and sixty minutes of hard hiking later, we were in a narrow cleft of mountain, far from any path. The temps had fallen, and I was wearing my jacket; my feet, even in my hiking boots, were again wet and icy from walking in the only place a human could—the rill of water. I was out of sorts, the lack of sleep was catching up to me—that and the constant smell of death on the breeze, as if the entire mountain breathed with the stink of rot and grindylow. The hair on the back of my neck went stiff, as buzzards soared overhead, ghosting through the rising air currents.

The way ahead was blocked by dead trees; one gigantic white oak had come down, taking half the saplings on the mountainside with it, and together, they had blocked the cleft and backed up the creek, except for the small rill we had been following.

I started yet another hard climb, using the shattered limbs lodged with stone. I heard Rick follow, and knew he had put me ahead so he could catch me if I fell. It was totally unnecessary, and so sweet I couldn’t keep the silly grin off my face, in spite of the putrid stench and buzzards soaring. Hand by hand, I pulled myself up the dead-tree-and-rock wall and reached the top.

The water was backed up into a pool about twenty feet long, less than ten feet wide, brown with tannins from decomposing leaves, but clear. On the far slope were corpses. Deer corpses, bones and hide in a jumble, in various stages of decomposition; the most rotten ones were at the bottom; a well-picked, fresh corpse was on top. Maybe four deer, all small. There were also fish bones and several turtle shells. Buzzards lined the tree limbs staring at Kemnebi and the human intruders, alien emptiness in their eyes. Mixed with it all was the smell of the grindy. And an occasional whiff of something like the stink of sour cheese, if you first mixed it with dead fish and added in some vomit. Yuck.

“Dead deer,” I murmured, thinking of Angie Baby and her nightmare. Beast-fast, I pulled blades. If she were seeing my future, then something bad might happen here. If.

Kemnebi lay only feet away on a downed tree, his belly off the ground, staring at the corpses across the small pond. He was breathing too fast, a shallow pant, his muscles tense, shoulder blades up high. He looked like a scared cat. I licked my lips.

“Cave,” Rick said.

Beyond the pile of deer was a slice of blackness. The Appalachians were riddled with caves: limestone, mines through solid rock, narrow places where underground creeks once ran. Hundreds had been mapped. Hundreds more had yet to be discovered. And when they were, they were often hard to access. The mouth of this one was clear of brush and detritus. A well-trodden path led up to it, to the pile of bones, and to the water. It was covered with the three-toed and three-clawed paw prints of the grindylow. The entire area was covered with grindy markings, slashed into rock and trees.

I looked at Kem and back to the cave. The vamp-killers felt good in my palms as I stepped up and around the small pool toward the cave entrance. The jumbled bones were covered in flies. Maggots—not my favorite bug—crawled everywhere, big, small, totally gross. A buzzard spread its wings and flapped, irritation in every feather. I’d interrupted their feast. Rick at my shoulder, I stood at the entrance to the cave, letting my eyes adjust, drawing on Beast’s speed, vision, and hearing. Adrenaline flushed through me. Something brushed my thigh. I daggered downward. Jerked to a stop. The tip of the blade was buried in the shoulder hair of Kem-cat, just touching the skin over his scapula. He looked up at me and growled softly in warning. I showed him my teeth. My look promised challenge. Later. He looked into the dark before us. Together, we stepped inside the cave.

It was an underground microcosm of the cleft in the mountain, almost mimicking the shape of the pool. Twenty feet deep and ten wide at the entrance, it narrowed to a point overhead and at the far end, a slash into the heart of the world. Stone slabs composed its walls. The roof was fifteen feet high at the entrance, lower at the far end. The floor was dirt, covered with fresh fir branches. More fir branches lined a small shelf at the back, about three feet off the floor. And on it was the grindy, curled tightly in a protective ball. When I’d seen him last he had been wearing baggy human-style clothes. Now he was naked. Around him were green balls of fur, shocking bright, almost neon. One moved. And mewled. “Holy crap,” I whispered.

Rick said, “He had babies.” He was a she.

The grindy woke, moving from balled up asleep into fighting mad and protective-mother-predator in half a heartbeat. Standing over her litter, she showed us long killing teeth, her arms out, claws spread, legs wide, her head forward, like any predator in danger. Multiple teats like a nursing dog’s hung on her belly, and when she shrieked, it was a high-pitched squeal, her eyes wild, not recognizing us at all.

Kem turned with a liquid grace and leaped from the cave. I backed away, not taking my eyes from the grindy, Rick’s shoulder touching mine. He was holding a nine mil, safety off, ready for firing. I felt better just seeing the gun. I had seen what the grindy’s claws could do to a boulder, and my flesh wasn’t nearly that tough. I also wasn’t immortal. If I lost my head I was done for. If I received a mortal blow, and didn’t have time to shift before blood loss took me, I’d be dead. My father had died that way, too fast for a shift to save him.

In the daylight I blinked at the sight of Kemnebi, on a log, still staring at the cave. He looked at us and patted the log twice with his left front paw before whirling, front feet leading his body, taking off up the hillside. “And that means, what?” I asked Rick, still processing the sight of the grindylow with babies. Babies with neon green fur. Angie had seen this. How weird was that?

“He’s hunting. We get to wait.”

“How about we do that upwind of the bone pile.” We trudged uphill, pulling our way with trees and roots when needed, until we found a stone outcropping overlooking the grindy’s lair, but upwind. We sat, our feet swinging over a seventy-foot drop. Rick opened his backpack, revealing apples, raisins, and nuts. I opened mine, showing packages of jerky made from three types of meats and six Snickers bars. “So how long do we wait?” I asked, taking off my shoes so my feet could dry.

A cat-scream and a roar sounded, echoing through the folded earth of the mountain. I jerked my gaze up, following the sound. The roar rang out again, followed by the challenge of a big-cat. Snarling. It was a fight. “I’m thinking Kem is trying to kill a bear. So not long,” Rick said, his tone wry. He took my feet in his hands and began to rub, his eyes watching out over the mountain below us. The sloppy sentimental thing called my heart did a little somersault.

Want to kill a bear, Beast thought at me, flooding my system with longing and my mouth with the remembered taste of hot blood and fat. Long time since I hunted black bear.

“Not today,” I said aloud. And shook my head when Rick looked at me curiously. I bit down on a strip of turkey jerky and chewed while Beast prowled the back of my mind, pouting. And Rick rubbed my cold feet. This was turning out to be the weirdest job I’d had in a long time. Moments later I was asleep.