She rose, a smooth, lazy motion, and he tensed in response, remembering how strong she was, what she was capable of doing. But she didn’t try to approach him. “With me, you have everything that’s made you happy these past twelve months. I can be all the things I’ve been to you from the beginning. Are you worried you might see me another way? Don’t be. You never will. I’ll be for you just what you want. I’ve made you happy. You can’t pretend I haven’t.”
He smiled at her, suddenly sad beyond anything he had ever known. “You’re right,” he acknowledged softly, and all the rage seemed to dissipate. “You have made me happy. But none of it was real, was it, Stef? It was all a sham. I don’t think I want to go back to that.”
“Do you think other people live any differently than we do,” she pressed. She took a step away from the couch, then another, moving out of the circle of lamplight, edging into the shadows beyond. Ross watched, saying nothing. “Everyone keeps secrets. No one reveals everything. Even to a lover.” He winced at the words, but she didn’t seem to notice. She brushed back her hair, seemingly distracted by something behind him. He kept his eyes on her. “We can do the same,” she said. “You won’t ever find anyone else who feels about you the way I do.”
The irony of that last statement must have escaped her entirely, he thought. “How you feel about me is rooted mostly in the ways you hope to use me, Stef.”
He was moving with her now, a step and then two, a slow circling dance, a positioning for advantage.
“You can make your own choices about everything, John.” she said. “I won’t interfere. Just let me do the same. That’s all I require.”
His laugh was brittle. “Is that all it would take to make you happy, Stef? For me to ignore what you are? For me to let you go on feeding on humans? For me to pretend I don’t care that you won’t ever stop trying to turn the Word’s magic to uses it was never intended for?” She was shaking her head violently in denial. “Just forget about the past? Forget about Boot and Audrey and Ariel and Ray Hapgood and several dozen homeless people? Forget about everything that’s gone before? Would that do the trick?”
He saw a glimmer of something dark and wicked come into her eyes. He took a step toward her. “You crossed the line a long time ago, and it’s way too late for you to come back. More to the point, I don’t intend to let you try.”
She was silhouetted against the bay window that looked down on Waterfall Pack, her slender body gone suddenly still. Outside, feeders were pressed against the glass, yellow eyes gleaming.
There was a subtle shift in her features. “Maybe you can’t stop me, John.”
He straightened, clasping the staff in both hands, the magic racing up and dawn its length in slender silver threads.
Her smile was faint and tinged with regret “Maybe you never could.”
In a single, fluid motion she dropped into a crouch, wheeled away, and catapulted herself through the plate glass of the window behind her. Before he could even think to try to stop her, she had dropped from sight and was gone.
Nest Freemark was standing an the sidewalk outside Waterfall Pack when the apartment window exploded as if struck by a sledgehammer, raining shards of glass into the night and sending; feeders scattering into the shadows like rats. She turned toward the .”sound, her fast thoughts of John Ross, but the dark thing that plummeted through The gleam was screaming in another voice entirely. Nest stood frozen in place, watching as it began to twist and re-form in mid-air, as if its flesh and bones were malleable. It had been human at first, but now it was something else entirely. It struck the Jumble of rocks midpoint on the waterfall, bounced away, and tumbled into the catchment.
Nest raced for the narrow park entrance, her heartbeat quick and hurried and anxious. She burst through the un-gated opening as the dark thing climbed free of the trough, a two-legged horror that was already losing what remained of its human identity, dropping down on all fours and shape-shifting into something more primal. Its legs thinned and lengthened and turned croaked, its torso thickened from haunches to chest, and its head grew elongated and broad-muzzled.