“I guess I don’t understand these clear lines you all have drawn out for yourselves. Who determines what’s right and what’s wrong?” she asked.

The leopard nudged her thigh again, brushing close to her, and she felt her own reaction, the leaping of her senses toward him, a reaching she couldn’t prevent, as it happened too fast, too automatically. The least little touch of man or beast and she reacted with hope, with need, with an almost obsessive response.

Elijah shot her a look. “Are we talking about Jeremiah? Or Conner?”

“Both. All of you.”

“Talk to Conner,” Elijah advised. “He’s more knowledgeable of our ways than I am. I came to the clan late. And everyone makes mistakes, Isabeau. You. Me. Conner. Your father. My father. We all do.”

She kept pace with the leopard, looking straight ahead. Water splashed from the sloped hills into a narrow stream-bed. They walked over the rocks and continued wading through the water toward the other side where the bank was less steep. Isabeau felt a pang of uneasiness and then deep inside, her cat stirred, shuddering awake.

Something tugged at her ankle from behind and then she was down and the water closed over her head. Almost immediately she was tumbled over and over, as if in a washing machine, rolling while something wrapped tightly around her, holding her in strong, steel-like coils. She heard herself screaming in her head, but she had the presence of mind not to open her mouth beneath the water.

Her arm, where her wound was, burned and throbbed. Her left wrist, trapped in the thick coils, felt as if it might burst from the pressure. She tried not to struggle, telling herself Elijah and Conner would both come to her aid and not to panic. The snake rolled her over and she felt the cool night on her face. She gulped air, drawing a deep breath before it rolled her over again. Her face scraped along the rocks as it took her down along the bottom.

Elijah leapt over the leopard, a knife in his fist. Conner exploded beside him, roaring a challenge, whirling around and sinking his teeth deep into the writhing coils, holding the snake, preventing it from taking its prey into deeper water. The green anaconda was large, close to four hundred pounds of solid muscle, and it was hungry, determined not to lose its prey. The head was close to Isabeau’s head, the fangs dangerously near her neck. It didn’t have a fatal bite, or venom, but it would anchor itself there and hold her until it could constrict and suffocate her.