by Molly Harper
Friar Thomas had written a “cautionary chapter” to end his magnum opus, detailing his visit with a dying shifter clan in the northern reaches of Siberia. There were only three elderly members left, something they blamed on the use of a home-blended herbal tea that was supposed to make their shifts last longer. While the herbs helped sustain the shifts, long-term users lost their ability to shift or pass on the trait to their children. Friar Thomas posited that the prolonged shifts “burned away” the shifters’ magic prematurely. My pet theory was that the herbal concoction was toxic enough that it altered the shifters’ DNA and deleted the bits that allowed them to transform. Because most of Russia seemed to be scary, why not its plants?
And if an enterprising shifter could distill those herbs into a highly concentrated serum, Friar Thomas said, he or she could take away another shifter’s ability to change in one dose. And he wrote down the best process to produce this serum. So it was basically the shapeshifter version of an A-bomb, and the only copy of the recipe was in the final chapter of this book.
That recipe would give the owner considerable power. The owner could control the other shifter clans with just the threat of using this serum. Frankly, considering how much sway Friar Thomas’s work had with supernatural researchers, I was afraid to tell Jane about the final chapter in any communication besides face-to-face conversation. I had pretty decent firewall protection, but you never knew who could break into your e-mail. I didn’t want some random hacker guessing my incredibly complicated password and posting that mess on a subreddit somewhere. I’d only told her that there were “issues” with the final chapter that we’d need to discuss in person.
Wait.
“Do I really look like a ‘huge brick of cocaine’ sort of girl to you?” I demanded in my most offended tone.
He ignored the question. “It must be a pretty valuable book for the pilot to be chasing it down this hard.”
“It’s not really,” I protested, grabbing at the plastic bag. I was tall, but he still loomed over me, holding the bag above my reach, tossing it between his hands at a rate that made me fear for the book’s binding. “Sentimental value, that’s about it.”
“So you won’t mind if I break the very carefully sealed wax you’ve placed around two protective plastic bags?” he said, stepping back and giving me a speculative look while tugging gently at the sides of the bag.
“No big deal,” I said with a shrug, making what I hoped was a nonchalant face.
He pulled the lips of the plastic bag just enough for me to hear the wax crackle. I yelped, “No!” and dove for him. He snickered and caught me around the waist, still holding the book out of my reach while he carried me along like a squirmy messenger bag. It was insulting to see the amusement on his face as he walked, as if he did this sort of thing every day. But on the bright side, being carried took the strain off my abused feet, so I enjoyed it while I could. I crossed my arms over my chest, resolved to stay silent while he made this death march just a little easier for me.
OK, fine, I was sort of pouting.
And to be honest, it was a little embarrassing how far he was able to get when I wasn’t slowing him down with my clumsy human footsteps. Over sloping hills, through thick trees, on the marshy, wet ground, we traveled at least twice the distance we had the night before, weary and wet and still in plane-related shock. And Finn’s hold on my waist was constant and sure, as if he hauled around youngish ectomorphic women under his arm all the time.
What was it like to have that sort of strength? To know that you could snap a tree in half with one good kick. To know that you were capable of running at speeds invisible to the naked eye. Hell, just walking down the street at night without being afraid would be pretty awesome. Then again, Finn’s sire had given superpowers to a man with the emotional capacity of a twelve-year-old.
Unable to stand the silence any longer, Finn asked, “So are you going to tell me what the hell is going on with this book? Or can I assume that it contains a tiny brick of cocaine?”
“What is it with you and cocaine?” I asked.
“Mentioning it seems to provoke a response from you.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered.
He turned me so I had to look up at him while he carried me. “So . . . your name is Anna Whitfield, and you are carrying this book around like it’s made of valuable narcotics because . . .”
I sighed. “I’m a bibliographer.”
He pulled a face. “One of those people who has sex in libraries?”
“What is wrong with you?” I demanded, poking him in the ribs.
“So not someone who has sex in libraries,” he said, and while everything about his voice read “disappointment,” he was laughing.
“I’m a book expert. In particular, I am an expert on antique books dealing with the supernatural. My client sent me this book for evaluation, and now I’m returning it to her.”
“In person, so it is a valuable book,” he said, flipping the back over so he could read the spine. Again, while carrying me like a bag of potatoes. I think the possum blood had made him cocky.
“Why would I tell you one way or the other?” I sighed.
“A Contemplation on Shifters from the Old World and the New,” he read, not even squinting in the dim moonlight.
“I can’t comment on that.”
He snorted. “A very valuable book.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.” He wheezed. Suddenly, his grip around my middle faltered, giving me just enough wiggle room that I had time to put my feet on the ground before he dropped me. He collapsed back against a tree, propping himself up, palms against his knees. I grabbed for the bag, but he still swept it aside to where I couldn’t reach it.
The rough patches of skin looked as if they’d opened back up, returning to their previous burned state. Carrying me around like people-luggage seemed to have exhausted what little energy and restoration he’d collected from the possum blood. Clearly, I was hoofing it for the rest of the evening.
“I might have overestimated the nutritional content of possum,” he said. “This has never happened to me before.”
“I hear it happens to a lot of guys,” I said sweetly, earning myself a glare. I managed to suppress my smile. “And hey, you’re still able to keep the book away from me, so you have a little strength left.”
“Well, I do that just to irritate you,” he said.
“And why would you do that?”
“Because it’s funny. You’re like a little kitten, all spitting and claws and making a big show of putting up a fight. You’re adorable.”
Well, now I knew where the irritating nickname came from. “I don’t put on a show,” I insisted. “That’s how I fight . . . as far as I know. Believe it or not, that fight on the plane was my first real physical altercation with someone. Also, I fought off a knife-wielding attacker with a seat cushion. I am proud of that.”
“Eh, there’s a big difference between fighting and managing to survive with dumb luck. Here.” He swung the book haphazardly, without looking up, nearly smacking me in the face with the plastic covering.
I grunted, glaring as I took it from his hand and shoved the book back into my purse. “A bibliographer studies and appraises antique books. I specialize in books dealing with the supernatural. And this book happens to be an old text on the origins of shapeshifters.”
“Shapeshifters? Is that a thing?” he asked, screwing up his face into an expression of disbelief.
“You would know better than I, Mr. Vampire.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, his beautiful, irritated face. “I still can’t believe I’m on the hiking trek from hell because of a stupid book.”
“It’s of interest to collectors,” I said, struggling to keep my tone casual.
“So how do you know it’s not written by some crackpot?”
I thought about justifying the book as the work of Friar Thomas but didn’t want to add any shine to
it in Finn’s eyes. “It’s pretty straightforward for crackpot material. It doesn’t run to flights of fancy or wild tales. It reads like a genealogy, tracing the spread of shifter populations from every corner of the globe, which is, I suppose, how the book got here in the first place.”
“So maybe you should try to find shifters, wherever they are, and give it to them, if they need it so much.”
“Oh, no. I am going to return it to Jane, the rightful owner, and then I never want to lay eyes on it again,” I said.
Finn’s hands seemed to slip off his knees, and he pitched forward, almost face-planting in the dirt. He righted himself, overcorrecting and standing so quickly that he knocked his head against the tree. He hissed, rubbing his hand against his scalp. “Jane? You’re going to the Hollow to meet a woman named Jane?”
I nodded. “Jane Jameson-Nightengale. She’s a vampire client in Half-Moon Hollow. The book belongs to her.”
If he hadn’t already been paper-pale, I would swear he turned even whiter. He cleared his throat and stepped away from the tree. He didn’t even bother dragging me along as he walked. “Yeah, I know Jane.”
“Oh, you’re a friend of hers?” I asked, snagging the spear from the ground.
“No, I said I know her.”
I paused. That was disconcerting. I’d found Jane to be absolutely charming in the phone and e-mail conversations we’d had over the last month or two. Part of the reason I’d been so eager to hand-deliver the book to her—other than wanting it out of my possession and off my liability insurance—was that I wanted to meet her in person. She was funny in a sharp, quirky way cultivated by people who spent a lot of time in their own heads. She seemed like a kindred spirit, someone who would understand a life lived between the pages.
If Finn didn’t like her, what did that say about Jane’s true personality? Or, rather, what did it say about Finn’s? But he didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t want to press the issue.
Finn stayed silent for another few minutes, then stopped, sagging against a nearby oak. He looked winded and miserable, like someone who’d just run a marathon through a minefield. Oh, the woes of vampire bravado.
I carefully cupped his chin in my hand and tilted his face toward the moonlight. “Is that normal, as far as sun exposure goes?”
“The burns are pretty typical.” He nodded. “It would be different if I’d had human blood. I’d recover more quickly.” I dropped my hand back to my waist. “I know, I know, you’re not volunteering.”
And for once, it was me pulling him away from the tree and dragging him in my wake. I handed the spear off to him, thinking he could use it as a walking stick. He examined it, yanking the tape loose and freeing the blade, which he handed to me. I raised my brow at this unprecedented sign of trust. If I were in his position, I would not give the closest available weapon to someone I hardly knew. What sort of vampire just handed a ten-inch blade to . . . someone he found completely nonthreatening. There was no way Finn thought I was going to come after him with the knife. This wasn’t a show of trust. He was probably hoping I would trip and impale myself so he could have a guilt-free midnight snack.
“I didn’t even say anything.” I tucked the blade into my bag and hoped I could prevent impalement. His feet weren’t exactly sluggish, but he wasn’t quite as nimble as he’d been a few minutes before. He wrenched his arm loose from my grip, his tone gruff as he followed behind me.
“Yeah, but you were thinking it.”
4
If there’s a lesson you can take from vampires, it’s “take what resources you can, when you can, even if it’s in a less than ethical manner.” We call this “survival of the sneakiest.”
—Where the Wild Things Bite: A Survival Guide for Camping with the Undead
Trudging was what happened when you were too miserable and tired to want to walk but too scared to stay in one place. We knew we had to keep moving. We didn’t know where Ernie was, and Finn swore that he couldn’t hear or smell him following us. But as hard as Finn was working just to stay upright, I wasn’t sure his senses were up to par.
I could feel my body shutting down, every movement making me ache and creak like an old woman. And to add a cherry to that particularly awful sundae, I didn’t know if those symptoms were genuine exhaustion or based on not having my medications. I’d never been off them long enough to have withdrawal symptoms.
How much longer could I go without water before I did damage to my kidneys? That granola bar seemed so long ago. How much body fat did I have before I started burning off muscle?
Still, it was Finn who had become the burden between the two of us. There were times when I had to sling his arms over my shoulders to help move him along. We took too many breaks and made too little progress. The only advantage was that we were too exhausted to talk and therefore harder to track.
The silence gave me time to think. I tended to shrink in on myself when stressed, retreating into my own mind, where it was safe. I could control all of the moving pieces in my head. And while I was still watching for uneven ground and low-hanging branches, I could mull over that nagging worry in my mind. Something about this situation had bothered me since the moment Ernie abandoned the controls of the plane—something beyond the whole “life in peril” element that had become almost passé in the last twenty-four hours. How did anyone but Jane know that I had the book in the first place?
Jane had sent it to me by the usual courier service, unaware of the treasure she was shipping, but the package hadn’t been tampered with when it arrived. I’d been very discreet while researching the book, as I was with any project. Surely Jane knew better than to tell people who was doing her research for her or the subject I was researching. Jane ran an occult bookstore. She knew how competitive the market could be for potentially valuable paranormal-themed texts. And she was a Council member, so she knew how dangerous and ruthless the supernatural community could be in general. “Cutthroat” wasn’t just a metaphor to vampires. They would actually cut throats, and bellies and any number of other parts, when they didn’t get what they wanted from vendors like me. It was the reason I worked-slash-lived in a secure building and performed most of my customer service online.
In my head, I catalogued all of the contacts I’d made while researching Friar Thomas and his work. I’d barely dropped a hint of what I was working on while searching the online forums for academic paranormal researchers. I’d called a historical society in Madrid for information about Friar Thomas and his monastery of origin, but I hadn’t even mentioned his writing. Heck, all I’d gotten out of the not entirely helpful translator was that Thomas was “encouraged to leave” his order when his superiors found that he was “prone to fantastical beliefs verging on lunacy.” And I’d already known that before I made the call. Friar Thomas was considered the Matt Drudge of supernatural scholars.
I’d consulted a library in Washington, D.C., but . . . sonofabitch. I knew that skinny, pinched-mouth clerk was just a little too “hover-y” while I was doing my cross-referencing. Obviously, she’d seen the book and gotten some idea of how valuable it was and done her own internet searching. Honestly, if you couldn’t trust librarians anymore, who could you trust? I was so going to file a complaint on the library’s customer service page . . . if I lived long enough.
A shift in Finn’s weight dragged me out of my mental composition of a scathing complaint letter. He was practically sagging to his knees, he was so tired, his head lolling to the side. I couldn’t keep this up for much longer. I couldn’t carry his weight and mine, and I didn’t know how to hunt for something to feed him. If we could just stop for a while and rest long enough for Finn to recover fully from his burns, maybe he’d gain enough strength to hunt something more nutritionally fulfilling than possum.
I squinted, taking in our surroundings for the first time in several hours. I’d been so focused on the next rise, the next rock, the next tree root, that I literally hadn’t seen the landscape for the trees. We were ski
rting around a sort of ravine separating two huge limestone outcroppings. The chasm was deep, and I couldn’t make out the bottom, but that wasn’t saying much, considering the darkness. But there were trees growing tall enough that I could see the top branches waving in the breeze like black-green lace fans, so I assumed there was a bottom. The outcropping on our side seemed to go on forever, and I couldn’t see us getting around it anytime soon. Trying would just exhaust us even further.
But just a few yards away, I saw a dark spot in the very bottom of the rock. I gently lowered Finn to the ground and let him rest against a tree while I investigated. The dark spot was a hole, a sort of mini-cave, just deep enough for both of us to crawl in and be sheltered from the sun but not so large that it could shelter a bear or something. It wouldn’t solve the hunger or thirst issues or the fact that I would probably emerge from the mini-cave covered in ten different kinds of exotic fungus. But we would be able to rest for a while without threat of Finn’s impending immolation.
He crawled into the opening and collapsed on the ground. I would have to drag him farther into the recess to shield him from the sun, but this was enough for now. And I could make out his features in the dim light and monitor how he was doing. I wasn’t ashamed of curling into him. He didn’t have body heat, but he seemed to absorb and retain mine, making him a sort of tepid water bottle. And it was reassuring, knowing that he was there in the darkness of the trees, that he hadn’t left me.
Through the night, I kept expecting to wake up and find him gone, the book gone. I had reason not to trust Finn, but I wanted to believe that his promises were genuine. He’d had several chances to take the book already. I wanted to believe that if he was going to take it, he would have done it by now. Instead, he’d slowed down on the mockery. He’d taken my needs into account. Hell, he’d offered me his exsanguinated possum. Either we were trauma bonding, or Finn wasn’t the selfish flirt I’d thought him on the plane.
Finn stirred. His lips were curled back from his teeth, and his fangs had eased out of his gumline. I’d never seen fangs up close. They were sort of beautiful in an odd, animalistic way, white and sharp and inherently threatening. I touched my fingertip to them, like Sleeping Beauty unable to resist pressing her fingertip to the spindle. I felt the sharp press against my skin, splitting the tissue open cell by cell. His lips moved ever so slightly, and I jerked my hand back as if burned.