Deadtown

I growled, ears back. Tensed to spring.

Another sound, from the west. I swiveled an ear. Shrill, piercing. Getting louder. I sniffed, but I couldn’t smell the source. Looked back at the human. Hungry. Smells of blood and fear so strong.

Still, though, that sound. It bothered me. Something told me: Danger. Louder still. The human glanced toward the sound. Yes, danger. It wasn’t safe here. I had to run.

I leaped over the human that should’ve been my meat. It was on its back. As I jumped, the human shouted. A sting on my leg, like a wasp. But danger was coming. I ran, hard. As hard as I could. Away from these humans. Away from the danger sound.

I ran down the street, around a corner. Behind a building. Hard ground under my paws. High, I should get up high. But there were no trees.

Something was wrong. My legs felt heavy. My head felt heavy, too. Slow. I felt slow. Still no trees. I crawled between a big metal box and a wall, exhausted. Dark, narrow space. Like a den. It felt safe.

Good smells came from the metal box. I was still hungry. But tired, too tired to explore. I sank to the ground.

My back leg ached, throbbed. I turned to lick the spot. Something strange hung there, lying against the black fur. Gently, I took the thing in my teeth and pulled it out. Like a thorn. I tossed the thing away from me. I wanted to lick the sting, but my head felt heavy, so heavy. Too heavy to hold up. I lowered my head to the ground. Closed my eyes. Good smells close by. Food smells. Then darkness.

18

TWO BEADY, CLOSE-SET EYES PEERED AT ME THROUGH THE gloom, an inch from my face. Something moved in my hair, then brushed against my cheek. Whiskers—oh, God, it was a rat.

I screamed and sat up, flailing my arms at the rodent. It skittered away.

It was dark, and I was cold. My shoulder hurt; I’d scraped it against something when I sat up. Where the hell was I? In a narrow space between—I felt behind me—a brick wall and a Dumpster. It had to be a Dumpster. The stomach-churning stench of ripe garbage was unmistakable. And I was completely naked—as in completely, bare-ass, buck naked. Okay, I’d shifted. That much was clear. But into what? What had happened?

Reaching back in my memory, I groped for the last thing I could remember. Phone calls—I remembered returning some phone calls. Mrs. Williams, the little old lady I was going to hypnotize. South Boston, the wrong address, the black van. Thugs in ski masks rushing me.

From there the quality of the memories changed. They became impressions, flashes, actions without words to shape them into thoughts. I remembered smells—all kinds of smells—and hunger, blood, danger, food. I remembered sleek black fur, powerful limbs, claws hooking into flesh. I remembered tearing, biting, running.

A panther. The anger and fear I’d felt during the attack had shifted me into a panther.

I peeked out from my hiding place. The streets were deserted—not that they’d been busy during the day. The moon was descending in the western sky. I had no way of knowing exactly how long I’d been out, except that it was night and I was back in human form. Shifts could last anywhere between two and twelve hours, so it was impossible to tell how long I’d been a panther. But whatever that thug had jabbed me with had really knocked me out, and I had no clue how long its effects might have lasted. For all I knew, I could have been sleeping naked behind this Dumpster for two days.

I felt around me, patting the ground gingerly. My fingertips touched gravel, cardboard, broken glass, but not what I was looking for. I could see a little in the dim light, but it would’ve been nice if I still had a panther’s superior night vision. Leaning forward, I extended my reach and felt the cylindrical shape I’d been searching for: the hypodermic needle I’d pulled from my leg.

Crawling out from behind the Dumpster, I looked around again. Not a soul in sight. I held the needle up toward a streetlight so I could see it better. Light glinted off a clear liquid that almost filled the syringe. The guy who’d stuck it in me hadn’t depressed the plunger, so I couldn’t have gotten more than a few drops in me. Whatever it was, the stuff had hit me so hard that I never would’ve made it to the end of the block if I’d taken the full dose.

I remembered the needle; I’d seen it before I shifted. But the memories of what came next wouldn’t jell; they swirled and changed like patterns in a kaleidoscope. I’d been hungry, I knew, and on the hunt. I held my hand up to the light. There was blood under my nails, staining my fingers. A man’s screams echoed in my ears.

Sirens, I thought, suddenly. I remembered hearing a siren. That was the danger sound that sent me running. So what had happened when the cops arrived? I had a strong feeling, like a memory in my bones, that I’d mauled one of my attackers. Maybe killed him. Shit.

I’d never killed anything besides demons.

The law was strict, no loopholes, about PAs who killed humans. The sentence was always death. Extenuating circumstances, self-defense, who started it—none of that stuff mattered. If that thug was dead, so was I.

HadI killed him? I couldn’t remember.

I needed to know. But the first thing to do was figure out how to get out of here. Even if the cops were after me, I wasn’t going to spend the night sitting behind a Dumpster, hanging out with Boston’s rat population. But I wouldn’t get very far stark naked.

I always carry a spare set of clothes. Always. Precisely in case something like this happens. But not today. My head was so full of worries about Kane and butterflies about Daniel that I’d just stuck twenty dollars, my keys, and my ID in the back pocket of my jeans when I left the apartment. Just a simple hypnosis of a sweet little old lady; I’d be back in two hours. No need to tote all my gear across town.

Brilliant, huh?

Okay, no use beating myself up about that. Right now, my problem was how to get home. It was tempting to shift again. I could turn into an ordinary house cat and run through the city unnoticed. The worst that would happen was I’d get chased by a dog or two. But three things made me hesitate. One, I was still hungry, and this alley was crawling with rats that would taste mighty good to a cat. I didn’t want to burp up rat flavor after I’d shifted back to my normal form.

Two, it was always a good idea to let a day pass between shifts, to let my form readjust to its usual shape before twisting it again. Aunt Mab told me once about a Cerddorion relative—a second or third cousin, I think—who’d done too many consecutive shifts and had ended up with pointy ears and fur on his face. Permanently.

The third reason, though, was the biggie. This was my second shift this month—three weeks ago, I’d had to shift into an eagle to fight some particularly tough Harpies. The full moon, after which my powers would renew themselves, was still a couple of days away. And I was planning to kill Difethwr before that, if I could. I wanted to have at least one shift left for that battle. I needed that weapon in my arsenal— for fighting a Hellion, I needed every morsel of help I could get.

So shifting was not an option. I’d have to figure out another way to slink unnoticed through the nighttime streets of Boston. I half-stood, peeking over the top of the Dumpster, and looked around. Nothing but deserted parking lots, boarded-up buildings, and looming warehouses. Not exactly the fashion district. There wasn’t even a pedestrian whose coat I could borrow or steal. I slapped the Dumpster in frustration.

And bam! I had my solution.

I stood on tiptoe to reach into the Dumpster. The thing was full of crushed boxes, bottles, sheets of plastic—jeez, didn’t people around here know about recycling?—all of it coated with slimy goo that I preferred not to contemplate. Something rustled near my hand, and I batted away another rat. It clambered to the Dumpster’s rim and jumped, squealing, to the street. “Get your own Dumpster,” I said. It sat up on its hind legs and stared at me, eyes gleaming.