by Hattie Hunt
“And what did he do?”
“He…” There was a reason she fought to help the living with the information she had. “He serves death.”
“And you deliver life.”
Not always. “I try.”
“And when you don’t?”
“There’s a very valid reason.”
He blinked and resituated on the log. “So, you travel the world? How?”
Oh, this was a conversation she didn’t want to have. “I specialize in finding rare items.”
“Like?”
Ripley bit her bottom lip. She could lie.
Except that she was talking to a shapeshifter with a strong sense of smell. He’d be able to smell that, especially this close. “Lumber, food, water.” She cringed. “Weapons.”
He jerked in surprise. “What?”
“I’m death walking.” Ripley sighed. “I do support those who need it most.”
“What? How? What?”
So, he was okay with her being a padfoot but wasn’t okay with the fact that her job description occasionally involved weapons dealer. “When my padfoot sees large groups of people about to die, I step in and give them a chance to fight back.”
His eyes narrowed to slits, and his mouth fell open. “The places you listed…”
“Are places where lots of people die and are dying.”
“But how? You said Israel.”
“Which isn’t what you think, for one. It’s very beautiful.”
“But, beheadings. People set on fire.”
“In Syria.”
He shook his head.
“It’s a lot more complicated than the headlines lead you to believe.” And not something she wanted to talk about.
“But how do you cross the borders?”
She raised an eyebrow.
His expression widened in shock. “As a padfoot?”
She nodded once.
“But…your clothes? Your things?”
Some things were different. “As a padfoot, they all come with me. I don’t ever have to worry about destroying my clothes or leaving things behind. As long as it’s something I can wear, I can bring it with me.”
“That’s…”
“Helpful?” she finished for him, with a wry smile.
He tipped his head to the side, his mouth open.
That was probably the biggest thing for a shapeshifter to get over. They had to get comfortable being naked and losing a lot of their clothes. Every time they shifted, their animal selves did a lot of damage to their clothing, and if they weren’t bonded well with their spirit animal, they could find themselves human and naked in sometimes embarrassing situations. Sometimes, the animal spirit did that on purpose.
“But you’re…” He dropped his gaze and his tone. “You’re home now.”
Oh, that man and those sad, bear cub eyes. “Not for long. I was just awarded a pretty big contract.”
“Contract?”
“That’s how I get paid. There are lots of people, desperate people, who are willing to pay for my services. I can do what others can’t, and in some places, that’s priceless.”
He snorted, eyebrows nearing his hairline. “Wow. I didn’t realize you were such a mercenary.” His expression held a slight taint of disgust.
Yeah, whatever. Ripley was used to being judged. “I like eating.” It was just as simple as that.
“Would anything…” He let the rest of the question die before it reached his lips.
“I’m not staying here,” she said softly. “I don’t have the protections everyone else has. My padfoot is in control. He allows me to fight him only if I give him another life in exchange for the life I save. It—” She shook her head. “I can’t do that here. Out there, I can. With ease. I can save a child’s life and kill a terrorist.”
He chuckled. “A real terrorist.”
If he only knew. The headlines and the propaganda were fun here in the states. They stirred people up, made them afraid. But the reality was that a lot of Americans could just as easily be terrorists, and were, though they were treated differently when they killed people. Whatever. It didn’t matter.
“How? Why would he do that?”
“Because.” She took in a deep breath, her padfoot raising his head and sniffing the wind. “He’s death, Joe. He doesn’t see things the way we do. He’s—I don’t know. He just sees things different.”
Her padfoot was less interested in the conversation and more interested in something else. He tugged on her ear and pointed his nose to the north.
She narrowed her eyes but listened.
A howl. It warbled, off-balance. Death was near.
The kids were to the south. She stood between whatever this thing was and the kids. Time to head out. “Look, I’ve gotta go.”
“Why?” He stood, the brown bear fur bristling around his shoulder, his hump raising behind growing shoulders.
“Something’s wrong.”
He lifted his face to the wind, nostrils widening in a bear snout. He huffed, and the snout receded, but his hackles went up. “Wolf. Rabid.”
Not good. She had to find that wolf before it found anyone else.
Chapter Five
Joe hunched his shoulders and turned north, sniffing the air with his mostly human nose.
“Hey, hold up.” Ripley stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
He turned a confused frown on his otherwise blank face. He was concentrating on the scent, and probably communicating with his bear.
Which was all great and good and all, but… “This is my thing.”
He shook his head and turned back to the search. “That wolf’s on our land. We have people out there. My brother. My sister.”
“Emma’s here?” She’d been the only person in Joe’s family that hadn’t hated Ripley.
He lifted a furry shoulder in answer, but kept his nose to the wind, ignoring her.
Damned bears. They got their way. A lot. Mostly because they just turned off their perception ability or their communication skills? She didn’t know exactly. Granted, Joe and his clan were the only bears Ripley knew, but their whole damned clan suffered from the same fucking affliction. So, she assumed it was a bear thing.
Not that she could say anything. She had a death affliction that she was putting off.
Her padfoot growled low, contentment swirling inside her chest.
Yeah. He smelled death. Sure, imminent death. It pleased him. Well, as much as he was ever pleased.
She blinked, looking through her padfoot’s eyes.
The world’s vibrant life glow diminished. Colors leached away. Trees became towering stick-figure giants. Foliage morphed into dark pools of ebony that moved and coalesced with the flow of life-energy. The dead or sick trees pulsed with dull, orange light. The sicker the tree, the louder its color flared. A mouse in his burrow glowed bright white before disappearing completely, leaving behind the echo of his small life. A smear of white, as if the light of his soul had stained the area immediately around him.
The mouse was not her target. If her padfoot had sniffed something, she should be seeing it. Soon.
Ripley stepped forward, mostly blind.
“Hey,” Joe shouted, pulling on her arm.
She shook him off, knowing his concern. She’d probably just phased through something—she wasn’t walking entirely on this plane. Her padfoot’s eyes dwelled on the in-between, and she had called on his spirit, allowed him into her senses. Avoiding the larger things, like trees, she continued forward. She phased through the smaller vegetation, indistinguishable in the piles of inky blackness around her.
“Rip.”
She didn’t have time for Joe, and her padfoot didn’t care. Death waited over the next rise.
“Rip!”
She ignored him again. Maybe he’d get the point. Death was her job. And it beckoned to her.
Death’s odor flowed up her nose, and shivers raced down her spine. She hated that reaction, the rush of energy born
from the smell of tainted flesh. It felt like a betrayal.
But that voice was small in the back of her mind. The Ripley voice, the human voice. At that moment, she was the padfoot, a Ripley padfoot. Not quite death, but definitely not life.
She crested the rise and stared down into a shallow valley of muted color.
Muted color.
Death.
All around.
It burned the brightest toward her right. A smaller animal—the wolf—fought, burning brighter as he growled and snipped at the air.
Her padfoot growled low in her throat. One straw in her quota filled. Though what that quota was, she never knew. She only knew she was checking off one more death. If she fought and saved ten lives, she had to give her padfoot ten deaths. She could never find herself in Death’s debt.
He took those missing lives out of the power in her soul. And once that was gone, there was no getting it back. It wasn’t like she could give him extra deaths in exchange for more soul energy.
The wolf. He wanted the wolf.
Ripley sped into the valley, running faster than her human mind should have allowed.
But before she could reach her hands deep into the wolf’s chest and remove his beating heart, the oozy blur of a black bear swung and knocked the wolf into the woods.
Fucking bear. She shot past him after the wolf.
It stood, blazing a bright white, sides heaving. It raised his muzzle to the wind and shot off.
Her padfoot’s snout twitched to the side. He scented a new death.
No. Ripley pulled herself out of her padfoot’s spirit far enough to let her human heart catch the full implication of what the padfoot smelled. She turned, the trees gaining a little color, the brush becoming less inky.
Brett stood, half bear, half human. Black. Oozy, life-filled black.
With a bright orange flare on his right forearm.
Ripley’s heart raced. She couldn’t let Joe’s brother die. The wolf, she could run down. She could still collect his soul, but Brett? He’d never liked her, but Joe loved him, adored him, worshipped him in no small degree. She couldn’t collect his soul.
But who would she have to trade to keep him alive?
Brett was just sick. The death flare hadn’t fully taken over his soul. Her padfoot wasn’t calling for payment. Yet.
But he was marked, which meant that if she didn’t find a solution quickly, he would die within the week.
Ripley pulled out her phone, blinking away her padfoot vision.
He slipped into the back recesses of her existence with a smugness that meant only one thing. He knew she would fail to save everyone—or anyone. He probably believed he’d be feeding on her soul very soon.
Great. She searched for Tuck’s number and swiped the green button to call him.
“Did you get him?” Joe asked, gripping a hand to his brother’s shoulder.
Brett narrowed his eyes at Ripley. They were so like Joe’s eyes, but she could tell the difference. She always could. Brett’s eyes were meaner, tighter, his jaw more rigid. He was colder, more reserved, and full of blistering judgment. Yeah. It wasn’t easy for her to mistake him for Joe.
“What’s she doing here?”
“She’s on patrol,” Joe said in a tone that didn’t invite additional questions. He glanced at Ripley, concern, and confusion fighting for supremacy. There was a reason most people feared the padfoot. He’d seen her run right through a bush—more than one. Her shoulder had slipped through the low hanging branches of a pine tree, and she hadn’t paused, hadn’t flinched.
She pinched her lips tight as she caught him staring.
The look on his face made her stomach twist. It was that puppy-dog look he used to give her in school, the one that used to make her toes curl and giggles rise to the surface. But right around the edges was doubt.
Joe turned to his brother. “Did you get the wolf?”
Brett rubbed his arm and gestured dismissively in the direction the wolf had fled.
“Hey, Tuck,” Ripley said into her phone. “I have a problem.”
Brett glared at her then stared at Joe in disbelief. “What the hell is she doing out here?”
“Like I said, patrolling.”
“And calling the mundane chief.”
“Who knows about all of us.” Joe hated this conversation. “Would you rather she called the witches?”
Brett curled his lip. “It was just a wolf.”
“A rabid wolf.”
“How would you know?”
Joe shook his head. Sometimes his brother missed things that made complete sense to him. “Smell.”
“Oh. Well, he went that way. How long do they live, anyway? He’s probably dead or will be soon. I hurt him. I hurt him good.”
Blood trickled between Brett’s fingers.
When Joe’s eyes lit on it, his expression went on high alert. “And he bit you.”
“So?”
“Rabid. Wolf.” What part of this wasn’t Brett getting?
“Have you ever heard of a shifter getting rabies?” Brett shook his head. “Aren’t the kids shifting tonight?”
Joe jerked his head to the south. “Wolf headed east. Kids should be fine.”
“I need you to warn Faith,” Ripley said. She paused, listening. “Yeah, no. I’m going after it. I just…” She glanced at Brett, then closed off her expression and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Yeah. I’ll get it. Just warn Faith.” She hung up and stashed her phone.
Brett snarled at her. “We don’t need you.”
“Funny,” she said, turning on her heel, “I was about to say the same thing about you.”
As she blinked back into padfoot vision, the orange flared brighter, coursing up and down his arm through his veins. The virus was moving fast. She had to find a solution quickly, but Tuck was right. The kids had to be her first concern. The wolf had gone east, but her padfoot nose smelled a change in direction.
Could be the wolf had caught a sniff of the kids. They would be a treat in his virus induced madness.
“Rip,” Joe called. He set a hand on her shoulder.
How was it that in this state, she could phase through a tree, but his hand landed on her solidly? Ripley shook her head, pushing away the thought. She had other things to think about at the moment.
“What?” she asked briskly. The wolf was gaining ground.
“We’ll stick together, hunt it as a pack.”
She shook him off. Her padfoot snickered, feeling the death collect slipping through her paws, but there was more. More death loomed over the horizon. The wolf was gaining ground, intent on spreading its madness. “Tell you what,” she growled low. “You keep up, you can help me with the kill.” Which he couldn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.
“What the—” Brett said.
“Keep him alive.” She slipped into full padfoot, her legs slimming, her haunches gaining new power, her hands touching the ground, protected by the thick callouses of her paws. She raced over the terrain, following the smell of death.
And life.
Ripley ran, feeding her legs with more power. She shouldn’t have stopped to see if—what? If Brett was okay? If he’d live? If he’d die? Just how bad his situation was? How she might be able to salvage it?
She didn’t know, but she should have chased after the rabid wolf as soon as he’d dashed into the woods. Now, he was closing in on the children.
Another smell hit her nose, death, but sweeter, gentler. If death had meadows or brooks, this was surely what it would smell like. Ripley had never smelled anything like it in her years as the padfoot. What could it—
The witch.
Shit. A human with no natural abilities to defend herself against a rabid wolf.
She spurred herself on at a hurtling pace, one that no other living wolf would have been able to match, even if he had her size and build. She slipped through the death plane, running along the curves of the living.
A calming blue light glow
ed like an open door, beckoning to her, beseeching her to relax, to find peace.
The witch girl. It had to be.
The bright glow of the wolf appeared right beside her, its haunches bunched, ready to leap.
Not on her watch.
Ripley pushed through the sands of death, slipping through the inky blackness of untainted life. She clamped her teeth around the very real, very much alive throat of the rabid wolf.
They collided with the ground in a heap, jarring out of the death plane and back into the living one. Her padfoot retracted himself from her eyes. With a sad, deflated sigh he disappeared, taking the soul of the wolf with him.
Ripley released the wolf from her clenched jaw and stood, shifting out of dog form back into a woman as smoothly as she changed socks. Assuming she was changing socks in the afternoon and not first thing in the morning. She was not a morning person.
Cool fingertips touched her lips and warmth shot through her like welcome electricity.
Ripley blinked, finding herself eye to bright-blue eye with the witch girl.
The girl breathed, a frown flickering over her face. “You don’t die.”
Ripley snorted but didn’t pull away. “We all die.” The truth was, she’d just bitten down on the neck of a rabid wolf. His blood was in her mouth, on her lips, in her teeth.
She needed to clean her face and find her toothbrush.
And then make out her will because she wasn’t long for this world. How fast did the rabies virus move?
“You’re death,” the girl whispered with a brightening smile. “Like me.”
“Well.” Ripley ducked her head and licked her lips. She flicked her tongue, remembering too late that she needed to wipe her damned mouth before licking anything else. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
The girl paused as if waking up, and embarrassment flushed her cheeks. She took a step back. “You’re safe.”
“From what?”
“The sickness. You didn’t get it. Your death spirit—it…” She shrugged, then offered her hand. “I’m Leah.”
Ripley wasn’t exactly sure what she was supposed to do. Witches were bad. All paranormals knew that. Just the same, she took the hand and shook it. “Ripley.”
“Necromancer.” Leah took her hand back.