Her body ached. Jasmine let out an involuntary chuckle as she recalled the disorienting whirl of dreams and memories she’d experienced, and the fear that she’d found death and there was no coming back from it.

  But she was back, wasn’t she?

  It was hard to tell if this was an extension of her dream. She gingerly tested her limbs, trying to feel the sensation of actual movement, and found only a cold, numb awareness of herself. She closed her eyes and let her body flop back. Mental exhaustion gripped her as she tried to recollect the last shreds of her life.

  She had been in a condo, basking in the glow of the morning after a heavy session of lovemaking. Deshawne had brought her coffee and food…

  And the gun.

  With six silver bullets in the cylinder.

  He’d shown his true colors as he pulled the trigger and emptied the gun into Jasmine. The final shot had sent her careening off the balcony. Jasmine had tumbled through the air, lost in a heady whirl of pain and torture until she had crashed into the ground. The rhythmic beep and clatter of a backhoe was the last thing she heard as pressure blanketed her and she fell into nightmares and visions.

  She gritted her teeth and tasted dirt on her tongue. She opened her eyes, looked down at her body, and found the patchwork of entry wounds in her chest, hip, shoulder, and neck. She raised her hands in an attempt to search her body and discovered a shocking fact: three-inch-long bone claws stood in place of her fingernails.

  She knew without testing them that they were sharp.

  She was used to transformations, to the bristle of fur as she folded onto all fours and sprinted across the city in wolf form with claws where her fingernails should be.

  These were different. They were longer and deadlier. Once again she wondered if she was still in the throes of a nightmare.

  Pain racked her body and drew her attention back to her wounds. She attended to herself, utilizing the mysterious claws to dig into the holes where five of the six bullets had lodged.

  She grunted as she drove the sharpened bone through her skin, following the bullet’s path as her body attempted to heal it. She managed to pinch between two fingers and withdrew the slug with a slow, sloppy squelch. Jasmine breathed a sigh of relief as she discarded the bullet beside her.

  She moved to the second and had to re-break the skin to fish out the silver. Experience had taught her it would be rough, but it was nothing compared to the effects of silver left in her body, sizzling her insides and slowly poisoning her blood.

  Jasmine had asked her grandmother and searched the depths of the Internet to understand the effects of silver on a supernatural body but had yet to receive a satisfying answer. Some things in life were a mystery. It seemed like she had woken into one.

  She worked through the remaining bullets, taking a torturously long time to fish out the first four. The longer she took, the more her body healed around them. Her eyes closed, and her face screwed up in a grimace. At last, the fifth bullet popped free with a final grunt.

  She allowed herself to fall back, using the dirt around her as a bed as she drew long, steadying breaths.

  Another rumble of thunder came from the distance, closer this time. She stared at the distant sky, monitoring as far as she could see.

  A strange sensation crawled over her fingers. She lifted her hands and watched in amazement as the bone claws slowly retracted into her skin. They tucked into an impossible pocket until there was no sign that they had ever existed. In front of her now were normal hands stained with blood and dirt.

  Fear finally set in. Adrenaline coursed through Jasmine as she dug in the remaining dirt around her legs, clawing back heaps of earth until she could shake free.

  Her legs looked pale when illuminated by the street lights. She rose unsteadily to her feet, shaking as she brushed herself off until she was as clean as possible while standing in the center of a major landscaping redesign.

  She drew long, ragged breaths, attempting to quiet her racing heart.

  Wait…what?

  She felt for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. She looked down at her chest, where ordinarily would be the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. There was nothing. Her chest remained still. There was also no heat from the rush of blood around her body, no pink hue to her skin. She felt as if she was mimicking breathing and knew that nothing was happening inside.

  She pressed her hands to her chest in another attempt to feel for a heartbeat. When that turned up nothing, she placed two fingers on her carotid artery.

  Nothing.

  She panicked further, the emotion heightened by the fact that there was no bodily response in increased heart rate or light-headedness.

  She was living, wasn’t she? Living, breathing, standing, and healing.

  And healing?

  As her hands explored her body, searching for signs of life, she noticed that the wounds had healed. There was no sign of where the bullets had entered her body.

  Impossible.

  Her mother had taught her early about the danger of silver in the bodies of werewolves. It wasn’t an immediate killer of supernatural things, but a silver bullet in the right location could stop a werewolf’s heart and end their life.

  If it missed the mark by a few inches, there was a possibility of survival. Silver left side effects after extraction though, taking an ungodly amount of time to heal fully. Even when a bullet was long gone, a puckered silver scar remained in its wake.

  Her head spun and throbbed. None of this made any sense.

  She couldn’t understand Deshawne’s issue with her, the daughter of a father she’d never known. She couldn’t comprehend why he would want her dead, why an encounter that had started so differently had ended in blood and death.

  Death?

  Jasmine also didn’t understand what was happening to her body. Where was her heartbeat? Where were her breaths? What was going on with the oxygen she breathed? How had her wounds closed so fully that it was like nothing ever happened? Especially that quickly?

  Anger boiled within her. A red mist threatened the borders of her vision as she recalled Deshawne’s smug expression when he entered the room. She pictured his bastard grin as he’d handed her the revolver, heard his triumphant laugh as she’d toppled off the balcony and tumbled into oblivion.

  No. Not oblivion. You’re alive.

  In her mind, she saw the scene in an alternate reality in which she held the gun and fired the bullets that ended Deshawne’s life.

  She let the anger soak through her and surge as she folded onto all fours. She thought of the moon, her canines elongating and wolf senses magnifying as she forced the change. She’d understood little as a child, but over the years, she had perfected her knowledge under her mother’s careful guidance.

  She closed her eyes, reaching for the bristling of fur as it rose along her spine and spread to the rest of her body. She waited for her legs and arms to shorten as she folded into her quadrupedal form. She’d take the back way home, avoid humans as much as possible, and sneak through the city using the ways she’d learned young enough to know by heart.

  Except when she opened her eyes, she crouched naked in the same form she’d woken up in. The anger hadn’t initiated her change into a werewolf, but the new claws had returned. They’d burst from the tips of her fingers and spiked into the ground.

  Her jaw felt different when she opened her mouth, tighter and heavier as though the muscles and tendons were stronger, elasticated, and primed for a different use.

  She rose to her feet and drew a few more breaths that gave her body no oxygen. She looked over her shoulder at the distant buildings, past the construction vehicles and the half-built foundations surrounded by scaffolding in the adjacent lot. It would soon become another place for the city to populate. Her gaze settled on a temporary office. A yellow light still showed inside despite the late hour.

  I suppose the first thing I should do is probably find some clothes. If I walk around like this, there’s no way I’m not going to draw more attention to myself than I need right now. She tried to clench her fists but stopped before she impaled her palms, resenting her inability to change as she stumbled forward. Her legs felt alien. She skulked through the shadows, slowing as she approached the temporary office.

  Faint whispers sounded in the distance. She crouched beside the window, staying below its line of sight, and listened for occupants before rising to look inside. If she could find spare pants, a high vis jacket—hell, even a blanket or tarp to cover her body… Her claws picked that moment to retract, and her jaw loosened.

  A bouncing screensaver was the only moving item. The monitor was on a desk littered with papers and blueprints. An empty cup of coffee—no, not empty, abandoned—sat precariously on the corner. Mold spilled over the top. A wastepaper basket full to the brim of wrappers from processed snacks sat nearby.

  Shit.

  The sound of voices rose into a crescendo of laughter. Jasmine skirted the office, remaining in the shadows until they came into sight before her.

  Four men sat around an oil drum that glowed with a flickering flame. Marijuana smoke hung like a cloth in the air. She crept closer, eyeing the four men, determining which one of them was wearing the clothes that would likely fit her.

  They laughed, immersed in their chatter. The oldest could only be nineteen at the most. The youngest was around sixteen.

  They passed around the joint, the cherry glowing as they took turns inhaling. They laughed, reminisced, and chattered about things they wanted to do. Jasmine considered trying to find someone else—someone alone—and take their clothes. Nothing good could come from approaching a group of hormonal teens high on weed when you were naked.

  As she turned, pain racked Jasmine’s stomach. Her jaw tightened. She wrapped her arms around herself and fell to her knees, emitting an involuntary grunt.

  “Hey, what’s that?” one of the men asked. Two of them slowly rose to their feet. The one holding the joint slid it beneath his camp chair, stubbing out the end to hide the evidence.

  “Who’s there?” the eldest called. His neat crew cut and a hoodie that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Gothic vampire flick were his most prominent attributes. The hoodie sported a band's logo that Jasmine had only heard about in passing on the radio. A t-shirt hem showed below the sweatshirt.

  Jasmine got back to her feet using the office trailer for support. They crept toward her. One brandished a knife. Another uncertainly pulled a machete that looked as though it had been stolen from a Greek emporium. The fourth person, the youngest, looked around uneasily. His gaze flickered between the knife, the machete, and the silhouetted figure next to the building.

  “Easy, guys. I thought they were only for emergencies.” His voice shook.

  “This is an emergency,” Crew Cut whispered. “Show yourself, bitch!” he called into the darkness.

  Before the pain could subside in Jasmine’s stomach, one of them lunged forward. His bravery took the others off-guard. He wrapped his hands around Jasmine’s bicep as he indelicately spun her and threw her into the light. She fell on her stomach, and the uneven ground grazed her skin—although it wouldn’t be long before that healed.

  “Oh? What have we here?” Crew Cut’s eyes were dark. A lust emanated from him that Jasmine knew only too well. Of course, she was a woman thrown butt-naked into a circle of hormonal young men. How else was this going to go?

  She pushed herself to her knees, covering her naked parts with her hands as best she could. “Please…” There were only two paths of action, and she’d prefer to take the easiest one if possible. “Please, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know where I am. I just need some clothes. Could I…”

  She nodded at Crew Cut’s hoodie. A small part of her wondered if they would prove her wrong about carnal desires. Crew Cut looked at the others in turn, gauging their reaction. Their excitement buzzed in the air.

  Thunder rumbled, louder this time.

  Crew Cut licked his lips, and she wondered if that was voluntary or involuntary. She supposed it didn’t matter.

  “Sure, you can. Take this.” He held the machete in one hand as he released one arm from his sleeve. His arm emerged from beneath the hem. He switched the machete to his other hand and slid his arm from the other sleeve. He pulled off the garment one-handed and held it out for her.

  She made no move to grab it. He made no move to come closer. The youngest shuffled uneasily, turning to look at the city as somewhere in the distance, sirens blared.

  Jasmine held his gaze, the intensity and intent clear before he dropped the hoodie at his feet.

  “Come get it,” he ordered.

  “Please,” Jasmine asked softly, not wanting to give him what he wanted.

  “Come. And. Get it.” The air fell quiet around them.

  One of the others, a teen with a black and white baseball shirt and a beanie, turned to their group’s leader. “Come on, Carl, what is this? Just give her the hoodie.”

  Carl turned his gaze to Beanie, straightening the machete as he pointed it threateningly at his comrade. “You want to know what it’s like, don’t you?” Carl grinned.

  “You show me all the stuff you look at. You’ve told me all your filthy thoughts. What luck that on the night we wind up here, enjoying ourselves and toking some grade-A skunk, that such a beauty falls into our lap. Naked, at that. It’s a sign.”

  Jasmine turned to the youngest. He looked away, his cheeks flushed.

  “You can have the hoodie,” Carl continued, turning back to Jasmine. “Come and get it. In the meantime, I think you can make us all very happy.”

  Jasmine’s lip curled. She sneered, glaring hatred at him while thinking, Are your balls so blue that Pig Pen’s older sister looks like a fun time? Ordinarily, her heart would be racing, but her body was still, and her biology was calm.

  Carl took his first step toward her, the machete point closing the distance. “What do you say, beautiful?”

  Jasmine leered at him as her bone claws slowly emerged from her fingertips.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Carrion

  At first, Carl didn’t see the claws. His eyes stayed fixed so firmly on Jasmine’s breasts that it was as though he’d turned to stone. When the youngest pointed in alarm, eyes widening, Carl turned his attention to the strange appendages poking out of Jasmine’s fingers.

  “Shit!” he had time to say before Jasmine pushed herself to her feet.

  She sprang at him, her instincts kicking in. Even as a werewolf, the odds would not be in her favor in a four-against-one fight against humans.

  Especially if any of those blades are genuine silver.

  She lunged for Carl, attempting to snatch the machete. She only wanted to get out of immediate danger. As she stood, her legs buckled. She staggered drunkenly, then slammed into the ground.

  A hot, searing pain racked her body as Carl swung the machete down, leaving a long slice in her back. His eyes were wide and fearful despite his previously bold façade.

  He stepped back at the sight of the gash, only now realizing what he’d done. Still, the bulge in his pants was the brain in control. It didn’t take long before he landed on top of her and attempted to pin her arms.

  “Don’t just fucking stand there, help me!” he exclaimed.

  The youngest stepped back. Jasmine wrestled against Carl, attempting to shift his weight from on top of her. She hated the feel of him sitting on her back as the other two approached. The only positive was that the searing pain was already subsiding.

  Was the wound already healed?

  “Get off me!” she cried, spinning and pounding on Carl’s chest. She forgot about her brand new appendages until they spiked through his skin and penetrated his organs. Carl’s mouth dropped open, his breath gushing out in one quick burst. As Jasmine retracted her hand, he slid off her, the bulge still tenting his pants.

  “Fuck,” Jasmine spat, once more attempting to get to her feet. Before she could, the other two were on top of her, each grabbing an arm. They managed to pin her on her back, exposing her to the sky.

  Even after Carl’s death, they still followed his orders. Bloodlust had overcome both, fear mixed with adrenaline, lust, and drugs as one of them looked down at her breasts, his breath coming in big hitches.

  The other turned to the youngest. “Don’t just stand there. Help us. Grab some rope. Grab anything.”

  The youngest froze, standing there shaking his head.

  Jasmine tensed, attempting to free her arms. As she tried to move in a way that had once been easy and instinctual in her werewolf body, she found an alarming, jerky disconnect between her mind and her movements. She jerked her arm, but nothing happened. She lifted her leg and her hips bucked.

  What is wrong with my body? What the hell is this change? What is happening?

  She kicked her leg in the air, striking one of them in the head enough to shift him to the side and loosen his grip. She raised her arm and backhanded him, the claws doing the work for her and slashing red grooves across his face.

  He staggered away, howling in pain as he retreated toward the youngest. The teen stood paralyzed, unable to run, fixated on the action.

  Jasmine turned her attention to the one asshole remaining. He struggled to hold her other arm, his eyes fixed on her claws, knowing that the minute they got near, it’d be over for him.

  Jasmine might be awkward right now, but she was too fast for him. She coordinated her mental intent with her body and struck. Five long gashes opened on his ribs, and her claws bumped against the bone. He grunted as he fell to the ground, bleeding out.

  How do I get out of here? She looked ahead, seeing the way out. If she could make it along the dirt path, all the way to the chain-link fence, she’d be free.

  If only she could get to it.

  She rose and staggered but managed to remain upright. She was so focused on escaping that she didn’t hear the man racing toward her from behind. He clenched the young man’s knife in his hand. Half of his face was a bloody mess as he jumped at her and stabbed the knife into her shoulder blade.