At the same time, I ripped at the closed bond between Adam and me. It gave in to my frantic attempt, but I’d done something to our bond … it felt wounded somehow, bleeding. But I would worry about that later. I needed to keep George safe.

I turned the corner and saw George closing in on the woman quickly—I was pretty sure she had deliberately slowed her pace. There was a woman curled up against the building in a fetal position, her face pressed against the wall as if she were trying to hide. But she wasn’t moving and my instincts told me she wasn’t a threat, so I ran past her.

“George, stop!” The command rang with the power of an Alpha werewolf because I had stolen it from Adam.

George stopped in his tracks, and so did the woman—who was the smoke beast. They had run past the building and stood in what might have been, in better days, a small parking lot. I stopped, too.

“Get back here,” I told George. In my back pocket, my cell phone started to ring. Probably Adam wondering why I’d torn at our bond. But I was busy. I told George again, “If it bites you, it will steal your will. Aiden says that once it takes you over, it will kill you.” Or he would die. Aiden hadn’t been clear on that point, so I wasn’t, either.

When it hadn’t been able to steal my will, it had tried to kill me, though, so I thought what I’d said was a good bet. The running water had severed the connection between it and the bite—but I thought of the smoke I had swallowed. Maybe there had been enough left in me for it to try again today. It hadn’t worked.

George kept his eyes on the woman, but he obeyed me—backing up rapidly until we stood shoulder to shoulder.

“George,” I said. “There’s someone on the ground against the wall of the building behind us, to my left.”

He glanced over my shoulder and growled, “Missed that.” He strode behind me—paying me the compliment of trusting me to guard us from the creature.

The woman stayed where she was, frowning at me.

“Who are you?” she asked. She spoke as if English was difficult for her, and not as if she spoke Spanish. Her accent was nothing I’d heard before. If her word choice was odd, it didn’t take away from the edge of rage in her voice. “My power is big. Why are you not mine?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “What do you want?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “If the stupid man had not stopped us. There would be many dead and I would have more power. More enough to take you.”

“You get power from the people you kill?” I asked.

“Stupid you,” she sneered. “Death is powerful magic. My puppets kill and give me magic to be this.”

George approached me and stood just to my right. “Dead body,” he told me—and he sounded a little freaked out. It took a lot to freak out a police officer who was also a werewolf. “Her dead body.”

“Dead that one,” the woman said, running her hands down her body in a way that was a little obscene without being sexy at all. “I own this now. In this shape I kill you and the magic is wasted. Cannot eat death in my own body, only through puppets. Rules. Stupid rules.”

She was giving us a lot of information, I thought—but it was almost as if she weren’t talking to George and me. As if she were clarifying her thoughts.

This creature had lived in Underhill for who knew how long— and Underhill was a place where magic was plentiful. Maybe the rules were different here than in Underhill—and this creature was working them out aloud. It sounded like she had trouble powering her own magic and she was killing people to make up for it.

She made up her mind about something—I saw it in her eyes before she spoke. “Dead and you are not a problem, little dog. Regret because much power to eat from you. But prefer dead now to power later.”

And she charged us.

I skidded back, drawing my Sig as George engaged her. He hadn’t had to warn me off—we both knew who was the better fighter in this kind of scenario. I had the gun out and pointed, but the fight was moving too fast for a safe shot.

George wasn’t just better than me, he was one of our best fighters in unarmed human combat. He’d had experience, Adam had told me, before Adam took over his pack, and Adam had pushed him to sharpen those skills.

The beast seemed to be having a little trouble fighting in the form of the woman. I could tell that she was used to being heavier by the way she tried to use her weight. She was also used to fighting with teeth and claws instead of leverage and blunt force. Even so, the fight looked pretty even to me.

“Don’t let her bite you,” I reminded George, though he already knew that. That I repeated it again was more because I was horrified at the idea of something being able to take over your mind.

I wasn’t even certain that it was useful advice, because I wasn’t sure that it was only a bite he had to worry about. She’d turned a semi into concrete. I didn’t understand the rules of her magic and that scared me. Without knowing what she could do, I couldn’t keep anyone safe.

Her weight might not be what she was used to, but she was strong. And as she and George fought, she was getting better at using what she had. She twisted and George—who looked like he should be able to crumple her up and put her in a trash can—flew through the air.

I shot her three times before George hit the side of the building. My Sig held a ten-round magazine and I didn’t quit shooting until it was empty. I wasn’t standing more than fifteen feet away—every shot was on target.

She stopped dead in her tracks when the first shot hit her in the middle of her forehead. The second and third shots went into her cheekbone, just below the eye. The first three shots had jerked her torso a little toward me, angling her body so that I had a three-quarter frontal view.

I put the next three in her chest where a human’s heart would be. Because I didn’t know what she really was, the next three took the other side of her chest. I put the final round in her right eye.

I kept the empty gun in my hand because it could make a pretty good weapon. I set my feet into horse stance—a good balanced position. George had bounced back to his feet and taken two running steps to stand just in front of me, so he’d be the first to engage her again.

She … she just stood there—swaying a little. There were dark holes where the bullets had gone in. But there was no blood, nor even the scent of blood, only the acrid scent of gunpowder and the smell I’d come to associate with this creature.

Behind us, pounding footsteps announced that the police officers gathered at the semi accident had heard the shots and were coming. The creature heard them, too, tipped her head, smiled at me—and dissolved into smoke that quickly dissipated, taking with it the scent of magic. A soft metallic sound accompanied ten bullets hitting the hard-packed gravel.

“Fuck,” said a woman’s voice behind me.

I turned to see a police officer in uniform, her gun out and aimed at the place the woman had been. The next officer, who hadn’t seen the beast dissolve, had his gun pointed at me.

“Drop your weapon,” he said.

George flung his hands up into the air and growled. “Greenhorn.” He sucked in a breath, trying to get a handle on his wolf, as the little space between buildings filled up with Pasco PD. His eyes flashed bright yellow, a sign that the wolf was still ready for a fight, when he said, “We’re all good guys here. Stand down, Patton.”