Iron Kissed

I started up the stairs at a run, but by the time I hit the top, I was lucky to be walking. In coyote form, I can trot for hours, but sprinting is different. I just didn't have any more ru

Jesse must have heard me because she stuck her head out of her bedroom and then rushed over. "Can I help?"

I looked down to see what caused the consternation in her face. It wasn't my nakedness. She'd grown up with werewolves, and shapeshifters can't afford too much modesty. For the wolves, the change is a slow process and it hurts; if they are tearing up clothing as they change, it just hurts that much worse. Makes them even grumpier than usual—so mostly they take their clothes off first.

No, it wasn't my nakedness; it was the blood. I was covered with it.

Appalled, I looked behind me at the carpet that was stained with my blood all the way up the stairs. "Darn it," I said. "That's going to be expensive to clean."

I heard a roar that shook the house and quit worrying about the carpet. I let go of the railing that I'd been using to hold me up and stumbled over to Jesse's window, which was opened wide. She'd pulled the screen off the window already. With the knives still in each hand, I crawled out and down onto the roof of the porch, where I could see what was going on.

The werewolves were badly battered. Ben was crumpled against Adam's SUV and there was a huge dent in the quarter panel just above him.

Darryl circled the fae, his brindled coat fading into the shadows. If he hadn't been moving, I don't know that I'd have seen him at all. Adam perched on the fae's back, his front paws raking through the fronds like a giant cat's, but I couldn't tell how much damage he was doing. Honey and her husband were working as a team. She'd harry the fae with quick leaping nips until he turned to her and her husband would take advantage of its inattention to dive in and rake it with his sword.

From my vantage point, I could hear Peter mutter, "Can't find flesh in all this seaweed."

"I can't tell if they're wi

"I can't either," I started to say, but I stopped halfway through the last word as a wave of magic brushed painfully over me and dumped me on my rump.

"Careful," I yelled to the wolves below. I was up and on the edge of the roof as quickly as I could manage—which was just in time to see the fae make an incredibly quick move across the stretch of beach and into the inky river. Adam was still on his back.

Werewolves can't swim. Like chimpanzees, they have too little fat: they are too dense to float. My foster father had committed suicide by walking into a river.

I started to jump off the roof. I could have changed in midair, and on four legs I'd have been in the water in seconds—but I'd promised to watch Jesse. Just because a promise becomes desperately inconvenient doesn't mean you don't have to keep it.

Peter dropped his sword and waded into the river without wasting an instant. The porch light showed me his head as it disappeared under the water.

Jesse's hand closed over mine in a bone-crushing grip.

"Come on, come on," she muttered, then let out a yip of joy as Peter reemerged, towing a coughing and sputtering wolf in his wake.

I sat down and buried my face in my hands in relief.

CHAPTER 10

"You are covered with blood and glass," Jesse snapped at me as she helped me drag my tired bones over the windowsill. "All that blood isn't going to do anything to help the wolves calm down."

"I have to go down and check," I insisted doggedly, not for the first time. "Some of them are hurt and it's my fault."

"They enjoyed every minute of that fight and you know it. It'll take them a bit to calm enough to be safe anyway. Dad'll come up when he's fit to talk. You get in the shower before you ruin the carpet."

I looked down and saw that I was still trailing blood. My feet started to throb as soon as I noticed.

With a little more prodding on Jesse's part, I shuffled off to the shower (in Adam's bedroom, since the hall shower was still exposed to the world). Jesse stuffed a pair of old sweats and a T-shirt that told everyone that I loved New York into my arms and shut the bathroom door behind me.

With the excitement done, I was so tired I could hardly move. Adam's bathroom was decorated in tasteful browns that somehow managed to escape being bland. His ex-wife, whatever her other faults—and they were many—had excellent taste.

While I waited for the shower to warm up, I glanced in the full-length mirror that covered the wall between the shower and the his-and-her sinks—and despite the guilt of bringing the fae down upon Adam's unsuspecting pack—I had to grin.

I looked like something out of a bad horror flick. Naked, I was covered from fingertip to elbow and toe to knee with marsh muck: it always amazes me how much swamp there is in the Tri-Cities, which is pretty much a desert. The rest of me sparkled, as though I'd covered myself with some glitter lotion instead of having a window broken over my sweat-covered body. Here and there were larger chunks of glass that dripped off me every time I moved—my hair was littered with them.

And everywhere, I was covered with tiny cuts that oozed blood. I picked up my foot and removed a largish splinter that was responsible for the small pool of blood that was growing around me. All the cuts were really going to hurt tomorrow. Not for the first time, I wished I healed like the werewolves did.

Steam began to rise from the shower and I trudged in and shut the glass door behind me. The water stung and I hissed as it hit tender bits—then swore when I stepped on another shard of glass, probably one of the ones that had fallen out of my hair as soon as the water hit me.

Too tired to fish the glass out, I leaned against the wall and let the water pour over my head and relief rolled over me with it, robbing my knees of their last bit of starch. Only the fear that I'd sit on glass and cut something more dear than my feet kept me from sinking to the tiled shower floor.

I took inventory.

I was still alive, and with the possible exception of Ben, so were the werewolves. I closed my eyes and tried not to think of the red wolf lying in the grass. Ben would probably be all right. Werewolves can take a lot of damage and there had been the others to keep the fae off him while he was helpless. He'd be all right, I reassured myself—but it didn't matter. Somehow I was going to have to work up the energy to get out of the shower and check.

The bathroom door opened, and I felt the wash of Adam's power.

"There's a Porsche sitting in the middle of Finley Road, right in front of Two Rivers Park," I said, though I hadn't remembered it until just that moment. "Someone's going to hit it and get killed if it doesn't get moved."

The door opened again and there was a quiet murmur of voices.

Even over the drowning spray of the water, I heard someone say, "I'll take care of it." Honey's husband again, I thought, because the werewolves can't talk in their wolf shape and he was the only one who had stayed human. Some of the wolves could have changed back by now—but without a good reason to do so, they'd probably just stay wolves for the night. Except for Adam.

Changing so quickly to fight the fae I'd brought him, the actual fight, then changing back in under an hour weren't going to leave him in a cheerful mood. I hoped he'd eaten something before he came up here—changing cost a lot of energy and I'd rather he not be hungry. I was bleeding too much for that to be good.

Telling Adam to take care of Fideal's car was supposed to have given me enough time to get out of the shower and wrap up in a towel, but I couldn't work up the energy to do anything but stand in the shower stall.