The Darkest Kiss

“Now, try turning your arms as you move them. More air motion happens as you twist your arms, does it not?”

I nodded, though to be honest, the difference was negligible. But then, maybe I’d hit the ground one too many times and my skin just wasn’t up to feeling anything anymore.

“This is how it works with a bird. On the down-stroke of the wing, the leading edge must be lower than the rear edge. And it doesn’t just move down, it moves down and back, providing lift and forward movement.”

“Yep, got that totally.” Not.

He clipped me lightly over the ear. “Enough of the smart mouth, young woman. You can do this. You just need to think.”

“All the thinking cells are either too bruised or knocked senseless,” I muttered, edging a little farther along the branch so he couldn’t hit me harder.

Anyone would have thought I was a teenager back at school again. I used to get clips over the ear for my smart mouth then, too.

“Think,” he said. “Down, back, then up. Not up and down. Now change.”

I blew out a breath, then shifted position and called to the magic that lay in my soul—the magic that had been altered to supply the form of the gull as well as the wolf. Power swept through me, around me, changing my body, changing my form, sweeping me from human to gull in the blink of an eye.

“Go,” Henry said.

I spread my wings, closed my eyes, and jumped. Felt myself falling, felt the old familiar sense of panic roll through me, threatening to overwhelm. To freeze.

So I tried to concentrate on moving my wings instead. Down, back, up, down, back, up.

And miraculously, I was no longer falling. I squeezed open an eye, saw the ground sweeping past underneath me, and opened the other eye. I was flying.

“That’s it,” Henry said. “You’ve got it, my girl!”

“Woohoo!” The sound came out as a harsh-sounding squawk rather than any actual word, but for once I didn’t care. I was flying. And it was such an amazing, powerful feeling.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long enough. Maybe I was so wrapped up in the sensation of flying that I actually forgot to fly, because suddenly the ground was approaching at the rate of knots and I was tumbling through the grass and twigs and dirt again.

I shifted to human shape and spat out a mouthful of earth. “Well, crap.”

Henry laughed. He was lucky that I wasn’t up there with him, because I would have damn well pushed him off the branch.

“It’s not fu

“No, it’s hysterical. Most fledglings at least learn to land with some dignity by this time. I fear you and Jack are two peas in a pod.”

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the blue sky that seemed as impossible to reach as ever. “If all this makes me go bald like him, I will not be happy.”

“You flew, Riley,” he said, amusement still evident in his voice. “It might not have been for long, but you flew. Soon you’ll get a grip on the mechanics of it all.”

“Even with my coordination? Or lack thereof?”

“Even with.”

I grunted and hoped like hell he was right. When I glanced at my watch, I saw it was nearly three. I’d been at this whole falling thing for nearly six hours, and I’d just about had enough.

Of course, a crash course in flying was the least of my problems. Jack wasn’t happy that I’d waited so long before telling him about the change, and lately he’d been taking every opportunity to chew me out. According to him, a broken heart was no reason for stupidity. I was begi

“I think I’ll call it quits for the day, Henry. My bones are feeling a little battered.”

“Go on up and help yourself to a shower, then. I think I’ll go for a fly myself, stretch some of the kinks out of my wings.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“You will, my girl, you will.”

He shifted shape and stepped off the branch, swooping low past my head before soaring up into the blue. I watched his brown and gold form until it disappeared, and couldn’t help the touch of jealousy. I wanted to fly like that, I really did, but I was begi

With a sigh, I dragged my battered body to its feet and walked over to the tree to retrieve my clothes. The magic that allowed us to shift shape didn’t always take the best care of the clothes we were wearing, so I tended to shed my outer layer for these lessons and just wear strong cotton undies and a T-shirt. Of course, that meant more scrapes and bruises than I would have gotten if I’d worn jeans and thicker tops. But, like most weres and shifters, I healed extraordinarily fast. Jeans and tops weren’t as easy to fix or replace. Not when I had a brother who kept blowing the family budget.

I grabbed the bundle of clothes and headed back to Henry’s tree house. Not that it was actually a tree house—just an old wooden house built on stilts, so that the living areas were high in the canopy of the surrounding trees. The light that filtered in through the windows had a pale, green-gold look, and the air was always rich with the smell of eucalyptus and the songs of birds. I loved it, despite my fear of heights. It had to be heaven for a bird-shifter.

I rattled up the stairs and made my way to the bathroom, taking a quick hot shower before getting dressed. Brushing my hair took a little longer than usual. It had grown amazingly fast in the last few months, and now streamed in thick red layers to well past my shoulders. The only trouble was it tended to get horribly knotted, especially when falling out of trees onto leaf-littered ground.

Once it was tangle-free, I swept it into a ponytail to keep it that way, then collected my purse and car keys and headed out. But I’d barely made it back to my car when my cell phone rang.

I knew, without a doubt, that it would be Jack. And it wasn’t my strengthening skill of clairvoyance that told me that.

It was experience.

Jack always tended to ring when I least wanted or needed to work.

I dug through the mess of my purse until I found my vid-phone. “You gave me a week to learn to fly,” I said, by way of greeting. “It’s only been three days.”

“Yeah, well, tell it to the bad guys.” Jack’s voice was etched with a tiredness that matched the dark bags under his eyes. “The bastards seem to be going out of their way to be pains in the asses lately. Just like some guardians I know.”

I’d already apologized a hundred times for not telling him about the bird thing, so if he thought he was going to get another one, he was out of luck. Falling to the ground a gazillion times had knocked any sense of regret out of me. Besides, as much as I liked Jack—both as a boss and as a vampire—he could give the rest of us lessons when it came to being a pain in the ass. “So what have you got for me this time?”

“A dead businessman in Collins Street. The Paris end.”

I raised my eyebrows. The so-called Paris end of Collins Street was filled with beautiful old buildings and mega-rich companies and businessmen. They had to be, just to be able to afford the rent there. It certainly wasn’t the sort of place you’d expect us to be called into. Though I suppose when death came calling, it really had no respect for wealth or location.

“So are we talking a street death, or inside a building?”

“Inside. He was found in his office by his secretary. No signs of a break-in, and no obvious signs of foul play.”

I frowned. “So why were we called? It sounds more like one for the regular cops than us.”

“It’s ours because the victim was Gerard James.”

Who was obviously someone I should know, but didn’t. “So?”

“So Gerard James was the head of the Nonhuman Rights League—the party intending to run several nonhuman candidates in the next state and federal elections.”

“And his death is a political hot potato, so the cops have hand-balled it to us?”