A man like that would want the magic glowing rock for only one reason—power. Adams had already killed for it once. He would kill for it again, and if he obtained it, he would use it to keep killing. Derek thought of the Iveses. Of the bloodstains and blood scent, sickening because he knew the people it belonged to and because it called to him, threatening to wake up something he kept chained deep inside.

“There is only one thing to do,” he said.

She looked at him, her face apprehensive.

“Let’s go get the rock back,” he told her.

Julie bared her teeth. She wasn’t a shapeshifter, would never be one, but right now, under the light of the moon, she smiled like a wolf.

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

HE JOGGED NEXT TO PEANUT as Julie steered her down the overgrown street. They were moving northeast on Lawrenceville Highway, heading into Tucker. Since the city was now his territory, he took the time to learn about it. After the first Shift, when planes no longer worked and highway travel became dangerous, the industries looked to railroads for shipping. With buildings in Atlanta falling left and right, Tucker became the industrial hot spot for about fifteen years, growing fast until the newly built factories also decayed and fell. This was all ancient history, as far as he was concerned. Now Tucker stood abandoned, all but claimed by the wilderness, as the people pulled in to the heart of the city.

All around them dark ruins stabbed through the growth. A flock of school buses rusted, abandoned in some old parking lot. The remnants of a gas station, all but swallowed by dense kudzu, hunkered down to the right. Two owls sat on the remnants of the Exxon sign, waiting for some hint of movement. This would’ve been an ugly place without the green, Derek reflected. Sharp, rusted, trashed. The plants softened it, hiding the disfigured land underneath the happy leaves. Even the old power lines, dead for years, looked cheery, wrapped in vines and dripping small white flowers like garlands.

A creek had broken free of man-made restraints, flooding the road as it found an easy path down the paved highway. The water ran only a couple of inches deep, three at most, but he didn’t like to get his feet wet, so he moved on the right side, where debris and soil deposited by the water formed a natural shore. Tiny fish darted in the clear stream. He smelled deer. A few moments later he saw them, too, drinking from a stream: a group of three does. Two were pregnant. They raised their heads, looked at him and Julie, and took off.

“Cute,” Julie said.

She’d turned grim after they left Pillar Rock. He decided to yank her tail. “Delicious.”

“Seriously?”