Wild Cat

Shut up and think.

Whatever had pinged hadn’t been a bullet. Too soft. Diego got his feet back onto the catwalk and crawled to find what had fallen to the boards. A dart, he saw, the kind shot by a tranquilizer gun.

Uniforms didn’t carry tranqs, and Shifter Division hadn’t showed up yet. That meant that one of the Shifters he was chasing up here had a tranquilizer gun. Perfect. Put the nice cop to sleep, and then do anything you want with him, including pushing his body over the edge.

Diego moved in a crouch across the catwalk to the next set of shadows. The sun streaked across the valley to Mount Charleston in the west, light radiant on its snow-covered crown. More snow was predicted up there for the weekend. Diego had contemplated driving up on Saturday night to sip hot toddies in a snowbound cabin, maybe with something warm and female by his side.

On the other side of the next beam, Diego found Bud Hooper and Maria Jemez. Maria was fairly new, just out of the academy, too baby-faced to be up here chasing crazy Shifters. The two cops were slumped together in a heap, still warm, breathing slowly.

Diego heard footsteps, running fast—too fast to be human. He swung around as a shadow detached itself from the catwalk in front of him and rose in a graceful leap to the next level.

Diego stared, openmouthed. The thing wasn’t human—it had the long limbs of a cat, but its face was half human, like a cross between human and animal. Did Shifters look like that? He’d thought they were either animal or human, but as he watched, gun ready, he realized he was seeing one in midshift.

The Shifter landed on open beams on the next floor up, then its shape flowed, as it ran, into the lithe form of a big cat. Morning sunlight caught on white fur and the flash of green eyes. Snow leopard? It sprinted along the beam, never losing its balance, and vanished back into the shadows.

Diego heard a step behind him. He whipped around in time to see the flash of a rifle barrel in the sunlight, aiming directly at him. He heard the pop as his reflexes made him dive for the floor.

He came up on his elbows to return fire, but there was nothing to aim at. Whoever had the tranq rifle had vanished back into the shadows.

All was silence. Nothing but rising wind humming through the building.

Diego reassessed his situation. He had a Shifter running around up here, plus one ass**le with a tranquilizer gun. Some one hunting a Shifter? Could be. The laws about humans hunting un-Collared Shifters—those Shifters who had refused to take the Collar and live in Shiftertowns—had loosened in the last couple years.

But this Shifter hunter had pegged Jemez and Hooper with tranqs, and was trying to shoot Diego too. Why, if the guy was hunting the Shifter legally?

Another pop had him rolling out of the way just before a dart struck the catwalk where Diego’s head had been.

As he scrambled up again, the catwalk, loosened and dry-rotted from years under the desert sun, slid out from under his feet. Diego lunged at the nearest steel beam, the metal burning his skin as he tried and failed to grab it.

The catwalk’s boards splintered and came away from the bolts. Diego’s heart jammed in his throat as his body dropped. Splinters rained past him. At the last desperate moment, he got one arm hooked around a girder, and he hung there, stuck like a bug fifty-one stories up.

Son of a f**king—

He couldn’t swing his feet around to get them back on the girder. His arm shook hard. He realized he still held his Sig in his other hand, but for some reason, he could not make himself open his fingers and let it go.

His arm was aching, and he was slipping. He was going to fall. Five hundred feet to the ground. Why the hell hadn’t he asked to be put on desk duty?

Diego tried to swing his feet up again, but he missed the girder. The jolt of his feet swinging back down nearly jarred him loose. That’s it, his hold was going. Damn it, damn it, damn it…

Two strong hands caught Diego under his shoulders; two very strong arms dragged him up and up, stomach grating on the beam, and onto the catwalk. Diego lay there, facedown on the relative solidity of a catwalk, drawing long, shuddering breaths.

When he could, he rolled onto his back and found himself looking up into the white green eyes and ferocious face of the Shifter, again in its half-shifted state. A female Shifter, from the hint of br**sts under the fur and from the sheer, strange beauty of her. She had a wildcat’s face, and the morning light glinted on silver links of a chain around her neck.

Before Diego could find his voice, the Shifter spun away in another gravity-defying leap. She landed on all fours, flowing back into the shape of a snow leopard. Diego sat up and watched her, stunned by the beauty of the long, powerful animal running with inhuman grace fifty stories above the ground.

Another pop of the tranq gun had him on the floor on his stomach again, this catwalk staying in place. Diego raised his head, finger on his trigger. He heard a snarl, the leopard’s angry growl, and then running feet, both human and animal.

Diego pointed the gun through the shadows, but he could see nothing. The rising sun showed that he was on this floor alone, though the footsteps continued above him. Lights approached on the road below, Shifter Division finally arriving, bringing a couple patrol cars and an SUV.

A blinding flash lit up the floor above him. Diego squinted through the spaces in the catwalks, aiming, but the light vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. The running ceased, and all was silent except for the patrol cars’ sirens wailing below.

Diego lowered his Sig and was about to sit up when two feet landed on the catwalk in front of his face.