She was halfway there when a crunch of gravel warned her that someone was approaching. Two people, from the sound of footsteps. Rose looked around frantically, but she was stuck in the middle of an open lawn, away from any cover. All she could do was duck her head, pretending to poke around in the grass for food.
“Damn assignments,” a male voice complained loudly. “I just got back from Brazil, and now they want to send me to some armpit place in the Middle East. Who do those bloody military stuffed shirts think they are?”
“Our employers,” said a second voice, dryly. “Funnily enough, the U.S. government expects a certain level of return for its investment.”
“They can kiss my cat’s ass. I deserve a vacation after that last mission.”
Just a swan. She nibbled at the grass, silently willing whoever it was to pass her by. Nothing to see here.
Two men came into view around some shrubbery. They were both dressed in those strange, long robes, with the unselfconscious ease of people who wore such garments every day. One of the men stalked along as though the gravel path had personally insulted his mother. The other was eating a sandwich.
Neither of those things was what made Rose jerk her head up in shock.
An ocelot slunk behind the angry man. Its spotted coat was dull and matted, the fur thin and patchy on its right foreleg. It stumbled along as though jerked by an invisible lead. Its lips were drawn back from its fangs in a continuous, maddened snarl of hatred.
But its eyes, its eyes…
They were human. Not in shape or color. But in intelligence, and awareness. Rose met that unblinking, tormented gaze, and knew that a human mind was trapped inside that animal body.
The other shifter froze on the path, staring at her. It had recognized her in return.
“Hey, what’s wrong with your animal?” the second man asked, casually waving his sandwich at the ocelot.
Please don’t give me away, Rose mentally begged the ocelot shifter.
It was futile—usually only shifters of the same type could communicate telepathically with each other. And even if she had been a cat, she had a horrible certainty that the other shifter was too far gone in the depths of its own personal hell to understand human words any more.
“Oh, for the love of—I’m not going to let you eat that swan,” the first man said irritably to the ocelot. “Heel, you idiot beast.”
He made a slight, sharp gesture, and the ocelot’s body jerked as though he’d yanked on a choke chain around its neck. Nonetheless, its eyes stayed fixed on Rose.
The ocelot’s jaw worked oddly for a moment. Then it slunk on its belly to the angry man’s side. He made the gesture again, as if in punishment. The ocelot let out a moan, a horribly human sound from that animal throat. Frozen in horror, Rose could only watch as it cringed at the man’s feet.
“You shouldn’t do that,” the second man said to his companion in a tone of mild rebuke. “Your cat’s on its last legs as it is. You keep drawing power from it, you’re going to finish it off early.”
“Then the damn bastard General can’t order me to the ass-end of nowhere to assassinate whatever stupid target he has in mind this time,” the first man said, smirking. “Not until the High Magus finds me another shifter, anyway.”
The second man shook his head, a touch of jealousy shading his voice. “Don’t get cocky. You’ll be lucky if the High Magus lets you have another one, the rate that you burn through them.”
“He gives them to me because I know how to use them.” The first man pulled a cigarette from an inner pocket, placing it in his mouth. He snapped his fingers, and the tip spontaneously lit.
Rose blinked.
“Anyway,” the man said around his cigarette, “rumor has it that the hunters have tracked down an entire wolf pack. Once the High Magus rounds them up, it’ll be like Christmas come early.”
“Finally. I’m sick of theoretical research. In that case, let’s hustle. Never hurts to earn some brownie points from the seniors when there’s shifters coming up for grabs.” The second man idly tossed the crust of his sandwich in Rose’s direction. “Hey, you got enough juice to jump us straight there?”
The first man pushed back his left sleeve. An intricate tattoo twined around his wrist. It was identical to the one she’d seen on her mate’s skin, except in two respects. It was on his left arm rather than his right…and it wasn’t dripping blood.
The man muttered something that didn’t sound like English, holding up his left hand. Rose’s beak dropped open as his tattoo lit up with an eerie golden glow. Sparks crackled over his fingers in flaring arcs.
With quick, practiced motions, the man sketched a rectangular shape, like a doorway. Light trailed in the wake of his fingertips, the glowing lines hanging impossibly in mid-air. Between them, the view of the garden rippled and warped, like a reflection in a wind-blown lake.
Rose caught a glimpse of a white-tiled room lined with laboratory equipment before the two men blocked her view. As casually as stepping through a doorway, they disappeared into the shimmering portal.
The ocelot glanced at Rose one last time as it followed them. Its mouth worked again, making the same exaggerated motion that it had before.
She’d been wrong. The other shifter wasn’t entirely lost to madness.