Jasmine fell to her knees. The man pulled the knife out, then struck again and again and again, each blow more painful than the last. Still, she withstood it.

  Her eyes flashed. She bared her teeth, and that strange tightening in her jaw returned.

  He continued until Jasmine bucked backward and wrestled him off her. The man slammed onto his back on the ground. She turned, and a red mist descended over her as she returned the favor, filling his body with holes until no breath remained and he fell still.

  There was a moment of silence when she saw the light leave his eyes. She stopped. Her chest was preternaturally still after her efforts, yet she still felt like she was breathing despite the lack of vital functions. She sat back, already feeling the wounds closing on her back. Her opponent’s blood was a sticky residue on her naked flesh. The bones retracted into her fingers.

  She knelt there, staring at the sky, listening to the coming storm rolling closer by the moment.

  Then she noticed that the youngest group member was still standing there, staring at her.

  “Hey,” she offered. Guilt laced her voice although the others gave her no alternative. Not one she cared to endure, anyway.

  The boy stared at her. There was a dark stain around his crotch.

  “I didn’t want this,” Jasmine stated. “You know that, don’t you?”

  He remained frozen and mute. Jasmine climbed to her feet, trying to brush off the debris and blood that stuck to her body.

  “You’re one of the good ones,” she told the boy. “Remember that. In the face of pressure, when it could have been easy to do the immoral, you chose the right path.”

  The boy’s lips parted, but nothing came out.

  Jasmine gave an understanding nod. She turned her attention to the teen beside her as she worked his baseball top off him. The boy watched her silently, making Jasmine self-conscious. After she pulled the baseball top over her head, she looked at him. “You can go.”

  The boy nodded, tears finally starting to fall as he cried. He turned and sprinted off into the darkness.

  What did it matter if one good one escaped? Jasmine wondered. No one will believe his story anyway.

  She stood, freed the teen of his pants, and pulled them on. They didn’t fit comfortably, but at least they covered her. She picked up the dark hoodie, donned it, and pulled the hood up over her head.

  She looked down at the carnage around her, surprised that despite everything, she was okay. Her wounds had healed, her breath had normalized, and she didn’t have the adrenaline shakes that sometimes racked her after sudden action.

  Realization dawned as she stared into the eldest’s lifeless eyes. I’ve killed someone. I’ve just…

  Life as an outcast werewolf in Boston often had its struggles, but she had never faced this, was never pushed to the point of protecting herself no matter what it took.

  She’d seen things that most others hadn’t throughout her journalistic career, but this, this was new. She fought internally, justifying the sequence of events, knowing there had been no other choice. She’d seen the fog of thought-killing lust in their eyes as their blood flow redirected from the big head to the little one. She’d become a good reader of people over the years, knowing truth-tellers from liars.

  She swallowed as her mouth filled with saliva. More replaced it as she stared down at the body of the nearest and the blood pooled beneath him.

  She frowned and cocked her head, trying to figure out what the sensation and horrible gurgle inside her were…

  I’m starving.

  She turned away from the boy and looked at the city, the hunger in her stomach abating.

  “Oh, hell no,” she muttered, trying to deny what her body was telling her.

  She had been through this before. Years ago, not long after her first change, she had spoken to her mother about the dietary needs of Weres. She knew of a handful of Weres who had eaten a human heart, kidney, or another organ. For the most part, instinct drew them toward pigs, sheep, cattle, and other non-sentient animals to satiate their hunger.

  Then why this sudden driving urge? She looked down at the body, and her hunger pangs doubled as her mouth filled with liquid. What sudden obsession drew her closer as she took an involuntary step toward him?

  She cocked her head, blinked, then shook it and pulled herself away, channeling her thoughts toward finding a safer place to be.

  Squinting up the dirt path showed her an exit from the construction site. The padlocked gate was supposed to keep trespassers out, but for the moment, it kept her inside the chain-link fence’s borders. She staggered drunkenly, unable to coordinate her alien limbs as she closed the distance.

  Another rumble of thunder sounded. They were getting closer and more frequent. Jasmine wondered how long it would be before the rain came.

  Hell, I need a shower. Let it pour.

  Without conscious thought, she patted her clothing where wounds should have hidden underneath, but none remained. She closed her eyes, felt her jaw tighten, and when she opened them, found that her neck had twisted and her tongue was reaching for the blood that stained her collar.

  She pulled herself back, shaking her head violently. “I may be a monster, but there’s no way I’m eating anything wearing that much Axe body spray. I feel like a douchebag just from smelling that shit.”

  She closed her eyes and drew a long breath. “I will not eat any living thing that thinks a crew cut is okay. Urgh, just, no.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Revenant

  The journey home was laborious. Unable to change into her bestial form, Jasmine took her time weaving through the back paths, hiding from others. She was filthy, with blood and dirt blocking her pores. She discovered that no matter how fast or far she ran, she didn’t sweat. That was a pleasant surprise.

  Would be nicer if I could hail a cab home.

  The journey was several miles. One positive was that the looming storm didn’t break overhead, as though even nature was scared of getting anywhere near her in her current state.

  Part of her wished it would rain, that a torrential downpour would wash her skin clean and save her time when she reached her duplex. She anticipated needing multiple showers to scrub, rinse, and repeat.

  As she passed through a narrow alley a mile or so from her house, she couldn’t help but notice the distinct lack of wildlife surrounding the city. She’d grown used to seeing foxes exploring the trash cans and raccoons rummaging through trash bags. Stray cats usually wandered up and down the alleys, protecting their territory until a mouse caught their attention and they darted off in the opposite direction.

  None of them were visible. Occasionally she heard the scrambling paws of a creature fleeing from her vicinity.

  Her mind sifted through what she knew, trying to connect the puzzle pieces of a partially hidden picture.

  “What the hell has happened to me?” she asked again. She expected no response and found no comfort in the question.

  Things grew even weirder. As she reached her street and looked down the empty road, she paused. In the distance, lightning flashed and lit up the horizon. The storm was passing several dozen miles off to the east. At least she hadn’t needed to contend with that.

  Jasmine stumbled down the center of the road, knowing that none of her neighbors would be awake at this point. She was safe here, in the little community she’d moved to after her mother’s passing.

  She’d moved to this area to escape the inner city’s chokehold. It was too busy. The smog from the traffic was too much. The buildings caged her in like concrete limbs. By finding this little suburb on the outskirts, she could have her journalistic career and a place to escape.

  While small, the community was exactly that—a community. Neighbors waved in the mornings as Jasmine drove off to work. An afternoon stroll meant she would encounter half a dozen of her peers exchanging pleasantries and chatting about the weather, their day, their kids, family, and life.

  At this time of the morning, none of that was happening, for which Jasmine was thankful.

  Her feet dragged as mental exhaustion that didn’t match her body’s state swept over her.

  At the end of the street, steps rose to her house’s wooden porch. The yard was more overgrown than she would like, but it wasn’t her priority during busy times at work.

  Something looked strange, though.

  In front of her door, she spotted an array of colors, flowers wreathed with little cards noting personal messages. For a moment, Jasmine wondered who had died, who these flowers were for. She didn’t allow herself to acknowledge her rising thoughts.

  Instead, she darted into a neighbor’s alley and around the back of the house. Her back yard was also overgrown. There were no tributes there, for which she was thankful.

  Jasmine crept across the familiar yard. She opened the door, annoyed to find it unlocked. She knew she’d secured it before she went out the night before.

  The house was quiet, but it was also a mess. Muddy footprints littered the wooden floors. Someone, possibly the police, had turned the place over. All the items she kept neatly stacked on her counters and various surfaces were either not in place, turned on their side, or missing.

  For whatever reason, someone had confiscated her electronics. The clocks that usually blinked, announcing the time, were all gone, switched off, or powerless. She stroked a gritty hand across her brow, the smell of earth reaching her nostrils. She shook her head, knowing what her next step needed to be before she had the satisfaction of her shower.

  She moved through the empty house to the front door, disappointed to find no newspaper or letter on her doorstep that might indicate the date. Something was off.

  Turning her attention to the upstairs, she moved quickly, itchy and uncomfortable in her ill-fitting clothes.

  She explored her bedroom, then her office, finding her computer, her TVs, and any form of electronics that might have held a clock or some time indicator were gone. She ran her fingers through her hair. Dirt rained around her as irritation descended.

  This wasn’t the welcome home she’d expected—not that she’d expected much of one. She had returned to the scene of a person declared dead, not missing. How had they managed that without her body as proof?

  Phantom heartbeats raced through her chest even though no organ beat inside her.

  Her frustration grew as she scrambled through the upstairs, adding to the mess as she turned things over, desperately looking for anything that would mark a date and time. After scouring the downstairs for the third time, an idea struck her.

  She wrenched open the door to the cupboard beneath the stairs, then pulled away stacks of boxes until she found what she had been looking for. The old TV set had been her mother’s from years ago. She hadn’t had the heart to throw it away.

  Wiping the dust from its surface as she walked, she aimed for the nearest electrical outlet. She sat in the hallway with her back to the wall as she plugged in the device.

  Snowy static filled the screen. Snatches of distorted sound met her ears. A little fiddling with the antenna on top worked well enough to tune in to the local news.

  She held the TV in her hands, inches from her face as a grease-haired, smarmy reporter announced the day's tragedies. Jasmine wasn’t listening. She didn’t care how many people had died in a flood halfway across the world. Nor did she want to know which celebrity was the latest to stub their toe on the red carpet and almost trip in front of the cameras.

  Her attention homed in on the bottom right corner of the chyron, telling her that it had just passed 2:00 a.m. Her eyes widened. She sat back, unable to believe the information that followed.

  Here she thought that mere hours had passed since Deshawne had buried her in her unplanned grave. According to the pristine news anchor and the little digital readout in the corner, fifteen days had passed. No, fourteen days. She reminded herself that Deshawne had shot her on the morning of a new day and not during their vigorous lovemaking session the night before.

  “Impossible,” she muttered, unable to process the information.

  But it was possible, wasn’t it? It had happened.

  Even for a werewolf, this was beyond anything she had heard before. She could understand if it had been a few minutes, maybe an hour at some unlikely stretch, but fourteen days beneath the soil? Fourteen days without lungs full of oxygen?

  Fourteen days without water, food, or movement, trapped inside her head as silver poisoned her, death threatened her, and memories reeled like an old zoetrope.

  She placed the TV beside her, not bothering to turn it off as she stared at the wall. Her mind reeled. She thought back to every interaction she’d had with her mother and grandmother. Then she recalled every research dive she’d undertaken on her species and what she had been missing from the pack.

  Nowhere had she come across anyone who’d been buried underground for two weeks and lived to tell the tale.

  Because she wasn’t dead, was she? She was very much alive—filthy, thirsty, and starving…but very much alive.

  She caught a whiff of the stale blood on her chest, then looked at the stain. Maybe that was why my mind turned the way it did back at the construction site. Perhaps I’m not hungry for flesh after all. I’m starving like sailors after weeks of extreme drought and thirst. They sometimes poisoned their bodies with salt water as they desperately drank their fill, longing for water.

  That had to be it. There was no other explanation for any of this.

  She climbed unsteadily back to her feet as if in a fugue state and padded up the stairs to her bathroom.

  The room soon filled with steam as she stripped naked and entered the flow. She closed her eyes as she desperately scrubbed her skin, destroying any evidence of her revival.

  Scrub it all away…

  The water pooled around her feet, turning pink and brown but fading into yellows, then into the clear water of the freshly bathed.

  As she looked down at her arms and naked form, she noticed a lack of pink stains from skin irritation, the heat, or the desperation of her clawing need to get clean.

  In the cold light of the overhead bulb, her skin was pale, almost white. Her veins stood out in stark contrast, a bright electric blue.

  That’s not how someone would look after fourteen days in the ground.

  She shook her head, deciding to turn her attention away from all the strangeness until she completed this one simple task.

  Everything would be easier once she was clean. Everything would be figure-out-able.

  She climbed out of the shower, grabbed the towel, and wrapped it around herself. The air was thick with steam that slowly dissipated as the heat source stopped and the bathroom began to cool.

  Jasmine patted herself dry, still amazed at her skin’s pallor. She rubbed the towel over her hair, drying the worst of its moisture. She was still unhappy about the traces of dirt beneath her fingernails but decided to attend to them later.

  When she was ready to leave the bathroom, she raised her head. The mirror had cleared of condensation, and where she should have seen her reflection, a stranger stared back.

  The stranger looked very much like Jasmine. Her eyes were the same shape, her nose and mouth followed the same contours, and her lips were just as full.

  This twin, this identity thief, got a couple of things wrong. Her skin was pale and her cheeks gaunt, making her appear less rounded in the face and a little more skeletal. Before, Jasmine’s hair color had been the same hue as honey. It was now jet black and seemed to swallow the light. There was no other shade in there—no grays, blondes, or browns. Each strand was as inky black as the last.

  Jasmine stepped back in alarm as she brought her hand to her mouth. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, wondering if she rubbed them hard enough, her reflection would turn back to its original self.

  Only, when she turned back to the mirror, she saw the same black-haired, pale-skinned reflection.

  She made her way into the bedroom, fighting away the onslaught of thoughts, reminding herself that she could ask questions later. She needed to finish getting ready to feel normal again—whatever normal meant for her.

  Despite the number of things taken from her apartment, her closet was relatively untouched. She pulled on a comfortable pair of pants, a t-shirt, and a loose-fitting jacket. Then she combed the hair that she had yet to grow familiar with and readied herself to seek some fucking answers.

  She was finishing her hair when she heard knocking from downstairs, followed by muffled voices. Shit. The last thing I need is for people to find out I’m here.

  She tiptoed to the doorway and peered into the hall. The front door was open. There were shadows from people in the hallway. She heard their whispers, then a female voice announced, “Whoever’s there, come out with your hands up!”

  Jasmine sighed as she wondered if there was somewhere she could hide or if she could leap from either of the windows at the back and land safely without anyone finding her.

  “We know you’re in there,” a male voice added. “We heard you up there. Come down and approach us. Don’t make this a struggle.”

  Deciding there was no other hope for it, Jasmine stepped out into the hallway.

  Staring up at her from the bottom of the stairs were two police officers—one woman, one man—with pistols. They looked straight up at Jasmine with their guns pointed at her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Shelter

  Jasmine held her hands in the air. “Easy now,” she crooned, taking slow steps toward them.

  “Just come down. We’ll do the talking when you’re on the same level as us,” the female officer informed her.

  Jasmine slowly descended as mistrust coursed through her. Her mother had taught her never to trust anyone pointing a gun at her. “Honestly officers, if you put the guns down, there’ll be no problem here.”

  The officers were tight-lipped as Jasmine made it halfway down the stairs.