I touched a talon. Closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, larger than a sickle, growing toward fullness, on the horizon. I listened to the beat of my heart.

I slowed the functions of my body, letting my heart rate fall, my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. Knees folded, arms at my sides in the humid air, I sat on the boulders. Nothing biological would work to steal mass from—even wood had its own RNA—but stone was clean, which was why I required it. Easy to steal mass from. Easy to deposit mass. When I was forced to risk it.

Mind slowing, I sank into the feathers and talons and beak strung on the necklace. Deep inside. My consciousness fell away, all but the location of this hunt. That I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, so I wouldn’t lose it when I shifted, when I changed. I dropped lower. Deeper. Into the bottomless gray world within me. And began to chant, silently, Mass to mass, stone to stone . . . mass to mass, stone to stone . . .

The drums of memory beat a slow cadence. The smell of herbed woodsmoke came on the air. The night wind of The People’s land brushed across my flesh. I sought the double helix of DNA, the inner snake lying inside the talons and feathers of the necklace. It was there, as always, deep in the cells, in the remains of soft tissue. I slipped into it, into the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts, the snake of DNA. I dropped within, like water flowing in a stream. Like snow falling, rolling down a mountainside. The gray place swarmed over me.

My breathing changed, heart rate sped. My last thought was of the animal I was to become. The Eurasian eagle owl, Bubo bubo. My bones slid, skin rippled. Mass shifted down, to the stone. To the rock beneath me with loud, cracking reports. Black motes of power danced along me, burning and pricking like arrows piercing deep. Mass to mass, stone to stone.

Pain like a knife slid between muscle and bone along my spine. Wings slid out along my shoulders, metamorphos ing from arms. Golden feathers, tawny, brown, sprouted. My nostrils narrowed, drawing deep, filling smaller lungs. My heart raced, a heart meant to power flight. My talons clawed across the stone.

The night came alive—everything new, intense. My ears were bombarded by sounds from everywhere. The mouse on the ground. Unaware of danger. The movement of tree leaves a hundred yards away. Chicks cheeping. Bird nest. Food. The house settling.

Eyes meant for the night took in everything, seeing as clearly as if the sun still shone. Light and shadow stung my vision, bright, acute. Ugly human light. I gathered myself, spread my wings, and leaped from the boulder, out over the garden. Beating the air with a five-foot wingspan, the wings of an animal that had never lived on this continent. It had been long since I flew, but the memory was stored in the snake of the bird. I wobbled, stretched into flight, caught a rising thermal, let it carry me up with less effort than beating wings alone.

I looked down, reaching into the night, finding the gold nugget on the boulder, its place in the world. Identifying it amid the grid of streets in my owl memory. My human consciousness merged with the owl’s, dispersed into the cells of the Bubo bubo.

Hunger ripped my belly. Below, a form moved, silent in the night, four paws padding, gray striped with white. I folded my wings tight, and dove. Talons reaching, I slammed into the prey. My forward-curving talons gripped, held. My beak tore into the back of its neck, through the vertebrae. I took down the feral cat. Sitting in the shadows, I ate, ripping bloody flesh with talons and beak until my belly was full. It was always like this after the change. Hunger. There was little left of the cat when I was done. Feet, bones, skull.

The memory of myself, buried under my skin, began to stir. I like cats. . . . My human self grieved. Then memory moved. A map. Ahhh. The hunt. For one of them. I drew in the night, sounds of shouting and gunfire in the distance, foul human smells and sounds and filth of their world. Motors and engines. Cat blood. I leaped into the air. Thermals were confusing in the city, rising and falling over buildings, stirred by unexpected drafts from the river. The river.

I banked and found it, sparkling and whitecapped in a rising breeze. Rain soon. The knowledge of weather was part of a raptor’s native genetic snake. I rose on the leftover heat of day, soaring high. Below me, I found the highway, a ribbon laced with moving lights crossing the river. I followed it, away from the city, along the map stored beneath my skin and in the human part of me. To the place where vampires lay their true-dead and find their healing.

CHAPTER 18

We still search for absolution

From a thousand feet up, the moon silvering the night, stars shining like a million lights, the ecstasy of flight filled me. My heart beat powerfully. My wings spread wide, soaring. Air currents ruffled my flight feathers as I cruised, my belly full, joy singing in my veins.

My attention was caught by a large rat emerging from a swampy place far below. Good eating if I was hungry—good for feeding chicks. Near the wet ground, I spotted a small, whitewashed building at the end of a crushed-shell street. Curious, I half folded my wings and dropped six hundred feet. Spread them again, to circle.Distant memories stirred. I was searching for this place. The building had no cross, but its walls were tall, its roof was vaulted, and a spiked steeple speared the sky. Katie. Vampires. Remembering, I dropped lower.

Narrow, arched windows were pointed at the apex—chapel windows of stained glass. But unlit. Dark. Vampire dark. The white building was made of ancient cement mixed with shells, and it glowed with the light of the moon though no lights lit the windows or the grounds.

The earth all around the chapel-that-was-not was studded with white marble crypts, family-sized mausoleums, shining in the moonlight. They studded the ground, little houses for the true-dead or the living undead. I circled down, seeing car lights drawing in from every direction. Yet here, in this ancient building, no lights burned.

I inspected it all with eyes built for the night and with hearing that missed nothing. As I dropped lower, soaring on the breeze, candlelight bloomed inside the nonchapel and brightened, shining, flickering through the arched windows, throwing muted hues of color onto the white shell walkway. The stained-glass windows were all in shades of blood—ruby, wine, burgundy, the pink of watered blood—bloody light spilling onto the ground.

A vampire stepped from the doorway, smoothing her dress. She was old. Her skin was the white of the full moon, her face grooved. She was dressed all in white, the toes of her shoes, her long dress, the nunlike wimple on her head, hiding her hair; her hands were pocketed beneath an apron like a vampire mother superior. A distant car purred. She stopped moving, the stillness of stone, a carved statue, fit for a graveyard. The sight of her brought me to myself.

She squared her shoulders and raised her chin as if she were going into battle, and I saw that she had black brows and a beaked nose. Mediterranean ethnicity, perhaps Greek. Not beautiful, but imposing and serene, as if she had made peace with herself and her world.

The car crunched down the shell-gravel lane. The smell of vampire rose on the air. I canted my flight feathers and dropped lower, silent on the wind, wings making no sound at all as I chose a tree to land. Tall. Dead. Branches white and stripped of bark. Close to the land where the vampires went to earth. Close enough for my owl ears to hear them speak. I stretched my wings full, spread my flight feathers, and raised my breast. Reached out with legs and talons. Back-winged to break my forward movement. Gripped the barkless branch. I was down. I shrugged my raptor shoulders and fluttered my flight feathers as balance and gravity took over. I settled on the deadwood, my wings folding tight against me.

The woman vampire turned as I landed, seeing me in the tree. I called, owl sound, lonely in the night. Not an owl of this place, but she wouldn’t know the difference. After a moment, she turned away to the first limousine, watching as it rocked near and its tires ground to a halt.

Vampires slid from the long car, seven of them, all moving fast, at full vamp speed, all well fed, the smell of fresh blood on them. All wore black, somber suits and tailored gowns in summer wool or silk, shimmering in the night. They were dressed as if for a funeral or a party.

More cars moved up the drive as the first circled and headed out, lights passing, like birds in flight. Like a dance. Dozens of cars approached, some depositing one occupant, some many, until there were nearly a hundred vamps gathered under the young moon. Lastly came a hearse, white, gleaming pearlescent in the night. It bumped to a stop in the midst of the vampires.

Two males jumped out and raced to the rear of the hearse. They were human, ungraceful, slow moving, and one carried a roll of fat around his middle. No vampire ever managed extra weight, most living at near starvation, gaunt as a winter hunt. The vampires moved subtly closer, tightening a circle around the hearse. The humans’ fear grew as they unloaded a white coffin. Near panic leached from their pores and tainted the night wind.

“You sure you can bury her without . . . ? Never mind,” one said.

One of the vampires laughed, the sound sly and cruel, enjoying the terror that increased tenfold on its echo. The two humans rushed back and slammed the hearse doors. The locks clicked, though mechanical locks and glass windows gave them no protection at all. The mocking vampire laughed again. I saw him lick his lips, heard the smack of dead flesh.

The hearse roared and spat loose shell like gunshots as it pulled away. It fishtailed at the entry to the graveyard, tires shrieking as they caught on the pavement. The hearse roared all the way down the road. When it was gone, the old vampire, the one in the nun’s wimple who had lit candles in the nonchapel, moved to the coffin and placed her hand atop it.

“Gather,” she said, soft and compelling. I leaned from my branch, coercion pulling on my flesh and bones, urging me to come. It was a kind of vamp calling, full of enticement. “Gather and give the gift of blood,” she said, “that our sister might be healed.” Her words rose above the crowd, dancing on the air, full of beauty. Age made her voice potent, mellow. Her words chimed and rang inside my head, commanding and demanding. My talons danced on the old wood. Dark sparks of energy and magic soared through me. I spread my wings to fly to her.

“I challenge the right to blood ceremony,” a man said.