the indifferent paving, and kept going. The way everything was coming down, we were looking at a washed-out road damn soon, and a slog through the mud to get back up to the cabin to collect Graves and pack up if that happened. It was just too dangerous to stick around here now, and I had nobody to blame but myself.
I just kept driving. The all-wheel drive handled the transition to rutted washboard beautifully, and we were halfway up the side of the ridge before I realized it. Trees thrashed, lightning going off in waves and the thunder closer and closer.
This ain’t natural
. Gran’s voice sounded worried inside my head, and that faint ghost of citrus on my tongue taunted me. I sniffed, wiped at my cheek with the back of one wet wrist. It didn’t do much, and the rain flooding in through my window didn’t help. I didn’t want to close it, though. I needed the air.
Another sob dry-barked out of me. I ignored it. The crying was just another storm. I could just hunker down until it passed, couldn’t I?
Ash whined again, the sound coming from way back in his throat. He kept frantically patting my shoulder, and when I snapped a glance at him I found he was visibly shaking and even whiter thanusual. Bedraggled, covered in mud, and wet clear through, his eyes ran with orange light and fastened on me. He tilted his head, the silvery stripe in his hair gleaming with its own weird light. I snapped my nose back forward and stared at the road.
A flash of white drifted across my vision. It resolved with quick charcoal lines, as if someone was motion-capture sketching it on the air itself. It was an owl, and it slid through the heavy rain in merry defiance of normal owl behavior. The
aspect
spiked under my skin.
Turn left, Dru. Now
.
I didn’t argue. Whenever Gran’s owl showed up, it was always best just to follow.
Only it wasn’t Gran’s owl. It was my
aspect
in animal form, and one more reminder of why I’d never be normal. Or strictly human.
I twisted the wheel. We jounced off the road just in time, avoiding a pretty bad deep-foaming washout. There was an alternate route, though, for just such an occasion. The turnoff was conveniently close, but immediately the Subaru started juddering and fighting. We had to slow down to a crawl, and I finally gathered myself enough to roll my window up and turn the defroster on max. Ash grabbed at the dashboard, riding the car’s shuddering like a surfer. He still whined, but instead of patting me he kept his hand on my shoulder, fingers tensing. Not driving in, thank God. He had wulfen claws, and I didn’t like the idea of having my shoulder ground up like meatloaf.
“We’ll be okay,” I said, shakily. Another sob came along; I bit it in half and swallowed it. Rain poured in through the other three windows. This was not going to do the upholstery any good at all. “We’ll take this route. It’ll—”
The car slid sideways. I turned into it, cursing a blue streak—Dad would’ve yelled at me for using That Language, and I neverwould’ve dared around Gran. But neither of them was here so it was just me, the
touch
filling my head and pouring out through my arms as I wrenched the steering wheel and goosed the accelerator instead of the brake. You never want to hit the brakes in a situation like that.
The tires bit; we made it through and bumped up into a pair of overgrown ruts that was the alternate path. It would take us longer, but on this part of the ridge there was less chance of washouts. The trees glowered, leaves falling like the monsoon rain, and I judged we were about a mile from the house. We’d have to cover three miles of rutted track to get there, though.
Good thing there’s moonshine runners in my family tree, right? Along with vampires
.
Oh, God
. I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, exhaled hard, and saw Gran’s owl again, flickering through falling water in a soft blur. It was
dark
, especially under the trees, and my head hurt. Whether it
I just kept driving. The all-wheel drive handled the transition to rutted washboard beautifully, and we were halfway up the side of the ridge before I realized it. Trees thrashed, lightning going off in waves and the thunder closer and closer.
This ain’t natural
. Gran’s voice sounded worried inside my head, and that faint ghost of citrus on my tongue taunted me. I sniffed, wiped at my cheek with the back of one wet wrist. It didn’t do much, and the rain flooding in through my window didn’t help. I didn’t want to close it, though. I needed the air.
Another sob dry-barked out of me. I ignored it. The crying was just another storm. I could just hunker down until it passed, couldn’t I?
Ash whined again, the sound coming from way back in his throat. He kept frantically patting my shoulder, and when I snapped a glance at him I found he was visibly shaking and even whiter thanusual. Bedraggled, covered in mud, and wet clear through, his eyes ran with orange light and fastened on me. He tilted his head, the silvery stripe in his hair gleaming with its own weird light. I snapped my nose back forward and stared at the road.
A flash of white drifted across my vision. It resolved with quick charcoal lines, as if someone was motion-capture sketching it on the air itself. It was an owl, and it slid through the heavy rain in merry defiance of normal owl behavior. The
aspect
spiked under my skin.
Turn left, Dru. Now
.
I didn’t argue. Whenever Gran’s owl showed up, it was always best just to follow.
Only it wasn’t Gran’s owl. It was my
aspect
in animal form, and one more reminder of why I’d never be normal. Or strictly human.
I twisted the wheel. We jounced off the road just in time, avoiding a pretty bad deep-foaming washout. There was an alternate route, though, for just such an occasion. The turnoff was conveniently close, but immediately the Subaru started juddering and fighting. We had to slow down to a crawl, and I finally gathered myself enough to roll my window up and turn the defroster on max. Ash grabbed at the dashboard, riding the car’s shuddering like a surfer. He still whined, but instead of patting me he kept his hand on my shoulder, fingers tensing. Not driving in, thank God. He had wulfen claws, and I didn’t like the idea of having my shoulder ground up like meatloaf.
“We’ll be okay,” I said, shakily. Another sob came along; I bit it in half and swallowed it. Rain poured in through the other three windows. This was not going to do the upholstery any good at all. “We’ll take this route. It’ll—”
The car slid sideways. I turned into it, cursing a blue streak—Dad would’ve yelled at me for using That Language, and I neverwould’ve dared around Gran. But neither of them was here so it was just me, the
touch
filling my head and pouring out through my arms as I wrenched the steering wheel and goosed the accelerator instead of the brake. You never want to hit the brakes in a situation like that.
The tires bit; we made it through and bumped up into a pair of overgrown ruts that was the alternate path. It would take us longer, but on this part of the ridge there was less chance of washouts. The trees glowered, leaves falling like the monsoon rain, and I judged we were about a mile from the house. We’d have to cover three miles of rutted track to get there, though.
Good thing there’s moonshine runners in my family tree, right? Along with vampires
.
Oh, God
. I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, exhaled hard, and saw Gran’s owl again, flickering through falling water in a soft blur. It was
dark
, especially under the trees, and my head hurt. Whether it
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