“Doctor Vladimir, I’m Cinnamon’s guardian,” I said. Actually, we were still working through the adoption, but as far as the law was concerned I was still legally responsible for a werekin minor. “I don’t want to get sued, or, God forbid, go to jail if something happens-”
“I’m sure we can make adequate arrangements before classes start.”
“Oh, gimme that,” I said, taking the folder and handing it to Cinnamon, who cried with delight. “Cinnamon would love to be a student at the Clairmont Academy.”
“Thank you thank you thank you!” Cinnamon said. “We- ah! ” And then she raised a hand to her cheek, felt her whiskers, and said meekly. “We gots to go.”
We got in the car and drove off.
“Well, that went-are you OK?” I said. “Are you going to make it?”
“Just drive,” she said, leaning back in the seat, eyes closed, holding the folder tightly in her hands. “Just get me home.”
“Damnit, we still need to go by a pet store,” I said. Cinnamon snarled at the word ‘pet’, and I winced, but we still needed to go. I had planned a real safety room in the house we were buying, but the closing was on hold until the Valentine Foundation actually started coughing up the payments they owed me. We still didn’t have a cage at the apartment; we’d been planning to go get one this evening. “We’ve put this off too long-”
“Forget it,” Cinnamon said with a growl, leaping between the seats to land in the back, tail thwacking me in the face as she went. “Take me home. Lock me in the bathroom.”
“That’s too small,” I said.
“You wants me to tear up your bedsheets?” she said, a growl growing in her voice.
I glanced back: she was on all fours, eyes glowing, pupils oval and staring at something ahead of me. I turned-and slammed the brakes before I rammed the car stopped in front of me.
“Jesus!” I said, as the Prius squealed to a stop amidst a chorus of angry horns. Ahead, on Clairmont road, early evening traffic stretched off in an endless line of red taillights. I could see a distant blue flashing light, complete with a knot of rubberneckers. “Fuck! This is not fair-”
And then a low, gut churning growl rumbled through the Prius.
Swallowing, I carefully reached up and adjusted the rear-view mirror, and stared straight into the yellow eyes of a huge tiger. Cinnamon was snarling, nose wrinkled, eyes oval against the sun. The steel collar about her throat had become chokingly tight as her body swelled, and she tugged at it with a paw broad enough to claw my face off.
She seemed to fill the entire back seat with fur and rage. I’d never seen her like this: real tigers had nothing on the werekind. She was absolutely terrifying. But oddly, the threat of messy death was not the first thing on my mind.
That horrible paw raised again to tug at the collar, and I said sharply, “Cinnamon Frost! Stop messing with that, you’ll pull out a claw.”
She snarled, then roared at me, a fearsome sound that stung my ears and reverberated in my gut.
I blinked-I couldn’t not blink at that sound-but did not flinch. She reached to claw at the collar again, and I got worried. “Are you choking?”
The tiger’s eyes tightened, its nose wrinkled up, and I could see huge fangs in the rearview as she flinched back. But among all that, I saw the head twitch… in a clear no.
“Good,” I said. My right ear hurt, and the steering wheel creaked under my grip, but it stopped my hands from shaking. “We’ll get Saffron to fit you with a larger one. I don’t want you choking, but I don’t want some vamp tearing into you because you’re not wearing her collar.”
Cinnamon snarled again, striking the back of the seat with that paw so hard I felt the seat squeak. The car rocked under the blow; I understood her strength, but where was she getting the mass to shake a ton and a half of plastic and metal? The steering wheel grew damp under my death grip, but I didn’t turn, didn’t back down, didn’t give her any reason to strike.
“If I can find a p-” don’t say pet, don’t say pet “-a… store,” I said slowly, swallowing as her crackling snarl rippled through the car, “can you wait in the car until I purchase a cage?”
The tiger lowered her head, shaking it. A definite no.
“Great, wonderful,” I said. But I had an idea, and pulled out of the traffic to the left into a nearby driveway so we could turn around. “Don’t worry, Cinnamon,” I said, reaching up to put the gearshift into reverse; when I did so, my hand was trembling. “I know what to do.”
Only when my hand was calm did I flick the Prius in reverse, put my hand on its seat, and look over my shoulder to back up, coming face to face with Cinnamon’s tiger form. Her head was big enough to bite mine off, her body was twisted in rage, her claws were raking the seat-but her voice was mewling in terror, and the human in her eyes was wide and pleading.
“All right,” I said, backing out. “No choice. We go to the werehouse.”
Jasmine and Steel
The entrance to the Oakdale Werehouse was hidden away on one of South Atlanta Road’s tiny tributaries, a dumpy dirt road hooking off into the forest. Past the bend, almost hidden behind heaped jasmine vines, was a narrow gravel driveway. A NO TRESPASSING sign warned away humans; a triangle of magical runes scared off Edgeworlders.
And to stop the determined driving their Priuses, a simple chain hung over the drive.
I saw it almost too late and slammed on the brakes. The Prius noisily slid forward on the gravel, stopping just shy of dinging her nose on the chain.
Nervously, I glanced back, but Cinnamon did not stir beneath the white hospital blanket I’d thrown over her to hide her from prying eyes. Only the deep sound of her breathing betrayed any clues about exactly what made the lumps beneath its white folds.
I got out. The werewolf defenses were simple: anyone stupid enough to walk the drive would be isolated from their vehicle, easy pickings. But I had no intention of playing their game. I just stepped up to the chain, concentrated, and murmured: “Image of tooth: clear my path.”
The snake tattoo on my left wrist came to life, reared, and struck the chain. It parted with a sudden bang, slipping to the ground with a quiet rattle of its own. “Thanks, my trusty serpent,” I murmured, stroking the glowing phantom with my free hand as it merged back into my flesh.
Then I hopped back in, started her up, and shot us down the drive.
The sun was still up, barely, which meant we wouldn’t be dealing with the werehouse’s nighttime guardians, the vampires of the Oakdale Clan. This was not good news: I was on good terms with Oakdale, mostly through Revenance and his friend and maker, Calaphase.
Then it hit me. I was going to have to break the news to him once dark fell.
I was so distracted by the thought, I almost ran over one of the werehouse’s daytime guardians as he stepped in front of me to bar the road. He was an older man with a wild iron-grey beard. He played a good ol’ boy in a worn woodsman’s jacket, but beneath his black fedora, glinting eyes screamed werekin.
He cried something I couldn’t hear over the rattle of the road, thwacking his walking stick at me as if I was going to stop-then leapt nimbly aside when I didn’t, mouthing a curse as the Prius skidded to a stop beside him. He shoved bushes aside with his staff and squeezed over to my window, but I’d already rolled it down and didn’t give him a chance to tell us to ‘git.’
“I’ve got a werekin turning in the back,” I said, and then, when he opened his mouth to object, I amplified, “It’s Cinnamon-Stray. She needs your safety cage. Where do I take her?”
The man stared briefly, then cursed again, whipping out a cell phone. “Go to the upper loading dock,” he snapped, thumbing a button and jamming the phone into his ear. “Not the lower one. You can back right in. Chris? This is Fischer. We got two comin’ in, one for the safety cage and her handler. Yeah, it’s Stray and her bitch Frost.”
And then he glared down at me. “What are you waiting for? Go!”
I put her in gear and trund
led down the rest of what they called a road. The smell was awful; there had to be a sewage treatment plant or something somewhere nearby, and I couldn’t imagine how the werekin stood it. I rolled up my window just as the road shot through the chain-link fence and ended in the cracked parking lot of the werehouse.
Once it had been an ironworks on the banks of the Chattahoochee, but a fire had taken half the complex, leaving graffiti-covered hulks. I rolled forward, trying to get my bearings; the last time I’d been here had been at night, on foot, approaching from the other end.
I was starting to feel lost when a youngish blond boy, little older than Cinnamon, ran out of one of the least bombed looking buildings. Even from a distance his eyes glittered green. He waved towards a roll-up entrance door, and I whipped the car around and backed it in.
The Prius slid backwards through the door into darkness, and the view through its backup monitor was not enough. Once again I threw my arm over the seat to guide myself. Through the car’s wide windows I saw the huge space swallowing us up, a giant box barely lit by dying light slipping in through stained skylights. Then we were in and stopped, and the boy ran through the door, hit the button and dropped the roll-up, and only then, as the light faded in its groaning descent, did I reach back and begin to pull aside the blanket to check on Cinnamon.
She was in human form again, sleeping in a little curled ball, tail coiled around her so she looked more like a housecat than a tiger, even with her tattooed stripes. For a moment, I marveled at her marks: the Marquis did artistic, masterly work, legal or no. But then I saw her new school clothes: shredded, practically destroyed, just like the upholstery and lining of the Prius’s cargo area. She had not been gentle. She would be crushed.
“Cinnamon,” I whispered. “Wake up. We’re here.”
She just moaned and shifted in her sleep.
I got out of the car and the blond boy stepped up beside me, fidgeting. He looked to be a werewolf, though it was hard to tell: he wasn’t as far gone as Cinnamon.
“Is that Str-is that Cin?” he asked, sniffing, peering into the car. “What gots to her? Is she all right?”
“Yes, it’s Cinnamon, and she changed early. I’m sure she’ll be all right,” I said, patting his shoulder. “Don’t worry-and you get points for not calling her Stray.”
I opened the trunk, thoughtlessly exposing Cinnamon’s curled form, and the boy’s green eyes widened, drinking her naked body in the way only a teenaged boy’s eyes can. “Whoa.”
“You just lost those points,” I snapped, pulling Mom’s death-blanket over her. Really, I was more angry with myself; what kind of mom was I to have exposed Cinnamon like that? Adopting a teen had left me missing a whole lifetime of mom reflexes I was just now learning.
“Tully!” a sharp voice said. “You preps the room. I’ll tend to the stray.”
Tully’s eyes widened again, fearful, and he darted off. I tucked Cinnamon into the blanket, picked her up, and turned to find myself facing a sharp-featured man with severe glasses and even more severely cut red hair. His clothes looked almost normal: a navy turtleneck and brown jacket, almost like a businessman. But his eyes were wrong, the pupils… off. Too wide, almost horizontal slits. He could pass for human. But just barely.
“Here,” the werekin said, reaching as if to take Cinnamon from me and scowling as I made no move. Instead I just straightened, looking down at him, and the werestag reassessed. “Krishna Gettyson, day captain for the werehouse.”
“Dakota Frost, Cinnamon’s mother,” I said, picking a hand out of the blanket and extending it to him awkwardly. “Thanks for taking us in. This was a real emergency.”
“You aren’t the stray’s mother,” Gettyson snapped. His eyes flicked sideways to the car. “And you gots no idea how to take care of a were.”
“Well, I’ll have to learn,” I said, meeting his eerie gaze. “And she goes by Cinnamon.”
He just frowned at me, then cried, “Tully! Where’s the wheelchair?”
“I can carry her,” I said. “She’s light as a feather.”
“You’re an outsider,” Gettyson said flatly. “You shouldn’t even be here, and I sure as hell don’t intends to let you into the dens.”
“I’ll carry her there myself and watch over her, or we’ll go elsewhere,” I said.
“I won’t let you,” Gettyson said.
“You think you can stop me? Mother. Cub. Do the math,” I said, and Gettyson tensed.
“Dakota,” purred a warm, masculine voice, smooth as silk. “How good to see you.”
A stern pale man stepped out of the darkness. A long-tailed coat clung to his trim form, and a glittering chain dangled from the pocket of his vest, but the overall effect was high style, not old fashioned. His once-frosted locks were now wavy and styled, but against his ivory-pale skin, his blond hair looked almost brown, and his blue eyes almost seemed to glow.
Or perhaps they did glow. He was Calaphase the vampire, head of the Oakdale Clan, my second-best ally in the werehouse… and Revenance’s best friend.
“Gettyson,” Calaphase said, smiling icily. Clearly the status of the Oakdale Clan had risen with the werekin. Last time I’d been here, Calaphase had been walking on thin ice, but now there was an edge in his voice as he warned the werestag off. “I’m sure we can bend the rules for Dakota-”
“That’s a bad idea,” Gettyson said. “Every time we brings in an outsider-”
“You said the same about me,” Calaphase said. “But haven’t we proven our worth?”
As he talked, I realized this is how things started first time I met him. Calaphase had shielded me from his fellow vampire Transomnia, ultimately kicking him out of the clan. For his shame, Transomnia had beaten me and nearly murdered Cinnamon. Not again.
“No,” I said. “Wait, Cally. I screwed up. Gettyson, I came here for help and then turned into an ass.” Oddly, Gettyson’s nostrils flared at ‘ass.’ How had that offended him? “I’m sorry. I just get protective about Cinnamon. Not too long ago, someone tried to kill her.”
Gettyson just stood there, jaw clenched, and then I realized what pile I might have just stepped in: perhaps he wasn’t a werestag. So I decided to risk one step further. “And if you’re a were-donkey or something, sorry about the ‘ass’ comment. I didn’t know.”
“Werehorse,” Gettyson said curtly. “There’s no such things as were-donkeys.”
My mouth opened to correct him: from what I’d learned in school, you could make a werekin out of anything with a genome. Then I shut my mouth-there was no point in getting into an argument with him about his beliefs.
“My apologies,” I managed finally. “I’ve never met a… a werehorse.”
Gettyson’s nostrils flared, but he nodded as Tully pushed up a wheelchair, stopping just out of reach of Gettyson’s arm. “Apology accepted,” Gettyson said, in a tone that clearly indicated that it wasn’t accepted. “But no exceptions, and no outsiders in the dens.”
I didn’t even have to think through it: I knew what waking up here alone would do to Cinnamon. “Then we go somewhere else,” I said. “Cinnamon has abandonment issues. I have to be there when she wakes up, or she’ll think I’m trying to get rid of her-”
“Bull,” Gettyson said. “She knows you wants her in your entourage.”
“She is wanted, but she’s not in my ‘entourage’,” I said.
Gettyson reached in and grabbed Cinnamon’s hand, showing me the butterfly that I’d transferred to her skin the very first time I met her. “So why did you mark her?”
“Maybe the Marquis ‘marked’ her when he took her in because all he wanted a canvas,” I said, “but I don’t do things that way. First, it was a free gift, no strings attached, and second, I’d have never transferred it if I’d known she was so young. Tattooing minors is illegal.”
“Illegal?” Gettyson laughed, looking at me incredulously. He turned away, shaking his head. “Illegal. Of all the crazy-all right, all right. Set her down.”
&nbs
p; “I can carry her,” I repeated quietly. “She’s light as a feather.”
Calaphase smiled again. “Give it up, Gettyson,” he said gently. “She’s the only person I know more obstinate than you, you old were-mule.”
Gettyson just stared at me with those eerie eyes, as if he expected me to crack. His gaze drifted up and down, at Cinnamon, then my face, then my feet, then my face again.
“She’s not getting any heavier from you looking at her,” I said.
Gettyson snorted. “You can take her in, stay till she wakes. But that’s it,” he said firmly. “The moon will be damn near full before it sets. You gots to be gone before it gets too close.”
I sighed. He wasn’t just determined to be an ass, he had a point. “Fair enough.”
Gettyson nodded and led us towards the back of the werehouse, into the stack of offices and labs that had been converted into living space. There was no need of worry, they were just rooms and hallways, dirty, poorly lit-and covered with graffiti.
I paused, staring at the dark, spray painted marks. Some of the lettering looked familiar, but they had little of the artistry and none of the movement of the tag that had killed Revenance. I shook my head, and descended the stairs into the depths of the werehouse dens.
Beneath a dim bulb in a damp hallway was a wall of bars with a steel mesh door, locked with a deadbolt. Immediately I could see that it would keep in an animal with just paws, but a human could put his hand through the bars and let himself out. Gettyson opened the lock with a snap and took us in to a small cell with a cot and chair. It was surprisingly cozy.
I laid Cinnamon down on the bed gently and arranged the blanket over her.
“If you have any clothes for her-”
“I’ll get some,” Gettyson said. “You needs to get a room like this.”
“We’re having it built,” I said, patting Cinnamon’s head. “In the new house.”
“Fine,” Gettyson said. “When… Cinnamon wakes, it would help me if you’d vacate. She knows how to let herself out, but the other residents won’t take too well if they finds you in here.”
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