Magic Stars

Jim would just love that.

All three were young: late teens, early-twenties. A jackal on the left, the tallest of the three, with a loose mop of red hair. A wolf on the right, compact, light brown hair. He hadn’t thought he recognized the scent at first, but now that he’d sampled it for a while, the wolf did smell faintly familiar. The guy in the middle had the build of a wrestler. The scent said cat and a large one.

The cat leaned back and raised his chin. Long dark hair, big round eyes. Confident. They were about the same age, and the cat was clearly sizing him up. His eyes said he liked to fight and didn’t lose often. There was a first time for everything.

“You’re a long way from the Keep,” Derek said.

“You stink like blood,” the jackal said.

That would be a clue, if you weren’t stupid.

“He smells odd.” The wolf wrinkled his nose, trying to figure out what was under the blood. “Almost like a loup.”

He’d heard that one before. Sometimes memories he kept hidden deep under the last six years broke out, and his body reacted. It was the corpse of Lucy Ives that had done it. He’d found his youngest sister just like that, curled into a ball in her own blood. She’d been ten, too.

“He isn’t a loup,” the cat said. “Loups can’t stay human. But he isn’t Pack. If he was, you’d know him. Which means he’s got no business hanging around here.”

“Walk away,” Derek said.

“What?” The cat squinted. “I can’t hear you, outsider. Maybe we should show him what the Pack does to trespassers.”

They were too stupid or too new to know that official Pack policy dictated that uninvited guests were to be politely but firmly directed to visit the Keep or clear out of their territory in three days. The Pack didn’t threaten or intimidate. They didn’t need to. It was a lesson this dumbass would learn quickly. Pain was an excellent teacher.

The Pack had become the largest shapeshifter organization in the country, with the exception of Alaska’s Ice Fury, and it claimed a vast territory, covering the entire states of Georgia and North Carolina, and stretching down to Florida. Unaffiliated shapeshifters weren’t permitted within the Pack borders. They had three days to present themselves to Pack authority and petition for admission to the Pack or be asked to leave. The Pack was strong and many wanted to join, but absorbing the newcomers and settling them into the existing power structure took time. Back when Curran was the Beast Lord and Kate was his Consort, Curran had capped the admission to the Pack. Jim, the current Beast Lord, followed that policy. He didn’t want the Pack to grow too fast, especially not now, since the title of the Beast Lord had changed hands only months ago and his hold on power was still tenuous. For some reason, this particular small pack had been allowed to join. Right now Derek couldn’t see why.

A loud clopping of hooves made them all turn. A rider emerged from the side street. You noticed the horse first. You couldn’t help it. Built like a small draft horse, with powerful hindquarters and a solid body, she had a muscular neck and the stupid hair on the shins that made it hard to see where her hooves were when she kicked you, which she’d tried to do the first time she’d smelled him. The horse itself was black, or rather almost black, spotted with very faint grey dapples, but the leg hair—feathers, he remembered, although why the hell they called it feathers made no sense to him—was white. The mane was white too, ridiculously long, and wavy. It was wavy because the horse’s owner braided it and sometimes put flowers into it. Because she couldn’t get a normal horse. She had to have a draft version of My Little Pony.

“What the hell kind of horse is that?” the jackal asked.

“Gypsy horse.” He couldn’t keep the distaste out of his voice. That and the Friesian were the only two horse breeds he recognized, because he had had no choice about learning them.

The Gypsy horse moved into the moonlight, carrying her rider without any effort, which wasn’t much of an accomplishment, since the rider was sixteen years old, barely five-and-a-half feet tall, and weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. If she was soaking wet and wearing all her clothes and carrying both of her tomahawks.

He opened his mouth and closed it. Julie was wearing a bluish T-shirt with the words Wild Magic stitched on it and a pair of jean shorts. Her long bare legs stood out against the horse’s black hide. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, leaving her long neck exposed. A neck that would be frighteningly easy to snap even for a normal human.

The cat was checking her out. She was a kid. He was looking at her like she was dessert. Nothing good was going through his head.

Derek bit off the words, fighting a snarl. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

The cat grinned, baring his teeth. “Bonus.”

So that was the cat’s plan: Kill him and get Julie. Good plan. If Derek had both hands tied behind his back and his feet chained to the ground.

Julie waved at him and winked at the three shapeshifters. “You shouldn’t corner Big Bad Wolves like him on a dark street. It’s bad for your health.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled. She shouldn’t be here. Not in the middle of the night and not in front of this house. He didn’t want to tell her what had happened in the house.

“I’m working,” she said.

“Why are you dressed like that?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Dressed like what?”