“Yes. Tell her to bring another deer. She will know.”

“I’m not going to move a finger unless you give me clear and simple instructions without mystical bullshit.”

“That’s not my way,” Anapa said. “You will take your instructions in whatever form I choose.”

“Then I’m out.” Chew on that, why don’t you.

“Is that your final word?” Anapa said.

“Yes.”

“Fine. We’ll do it the hard way.”

A girl walked out of the back room. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. She moved slowly, as if unsure where her feet were. Her eyes, dark and opened wide, were blank. Her dark skin had an ashen tint.

I tensed. Next to me Raphael bent his knees slightly, preparing for a leap.

“This is Brandy.”

Brandy looked at us with her empty eyes.

“Brandy is a shapeshifter like you. From Clan Jackal. The jackals and I share a certain bond.” Anapa studied his nails, looking bored. “I plucked her out at random. Her parents are frantically looking for her by now, I’d imagine. Why don’t you tell them how you feel, Brandy?”

The child opened her mouth. “Help,” a weak tiny voice said. “Help…me.”

I yanked the bow off my shoulder and aimed an arrow at Anapa’s left eye. Raphael exploded in a riot of fur and muscle, snarling as the monster that was a bouda in a warrior form spilled into existence.

“Let the child go.” I sank the promise of death into my voice.

“Every day you do not do as you are told, I’ll take another Jackal child at sunset,” Anapa said. “If the lion gets involved, the children die. If any of your other Pack friends help you fight, the children die.”

I fired. My arrow pierced the wood of the chair a fraction of a second before Raphael’s claws scoured it. The child and the god were gone.

CHAPTER 13

The office phone was dead.

Roman took off “to gather supplies.”

Anapa said the shapeshifters couldn’t help us fight. He said nothing about us telling the Pack what was going on. The Jackals had to be warned. I shifted shape, and Raphael and I ran into the night.

We cut through the decrepit industrial district, moving at the shapeshifter equivalent of a canter. Ruins streamed by us, dark, inky black, like haunted wrecks of ancient ships. Gutted warehouses with steel beams thrusting out, vehicle shells, treacherous caves of concrete hiding hungry things with glowing eyes, born of magic and hungry for a burst of hot blood on their tongues. The beasts looked but didn’t venture close. They recognized us for what we were—predators, built to hunt, kill, and devour—and right now neither of us was in the mood to be merciful.