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He shtly beery, spicy, andmeaty And very male Beast was very definitely interested But suddenly no longer in defensivedown hard

"Soers feather light on my skin "Tried to suck you dry And nearly succeeded And you healed fro down each foot, staying centered, balanced Beast rose in e of what, I wasn’t certain--but sorowl, and swat the man around Either wound him or run So he would chaseto our lie "She performed--"

"Not on the full moon she didn’t Your friend Molly is an okay rowing things And dead things, which is why she went in after the blood-family with you and Paul Braxton I did s Like va slowly, his eyes boring into aze Do behavior Beast liked

"No," he said I felt a spike of shock, as if he had heard hts But he continued, his words round, surrounded by a buncha true-dead vaerous

I felt the istered the tension in his shoulders, his hand forht ar clockwise My forearm slammed his arht leg I pushed As he went down, I finished the move A hard slam to his solar plexus Maybe a full second of action His breath whooshed out with a grunt Pain blanched him, then flushed him

I walked away My heart rate hadn’t even sped up

When I looked back, Rick was rolling to his knees, holding hisas if he hurt, as if he couldn’t yet catch his breath No Not Rick Not a hed The laughter hurt; I could see the pain in his face But he laughed Fun, Beast thought at me I curled my lips "Not really," I murmured "Ten bucks says he won’t be back"

Jane can’t kill more-than-five bucks But I can Beast shared awithin her vision The buck had been two hundred pounds, eighty pounds bigger than she His blood was hot, his flesh so full of flavor it made the juices in my mouth run

"Show-off," Ithe only kind of huone when I tooled out of the side garden, braids strea in the hel with a heavy, powerful purr My bike is a Bitsa Bitsa this and bitsa that Mostly parts from two 1950 Harley-Davidson FL pan/shovel bikes, modified, not restored to showroom perfection The bike is dark teal with an iridescent, metal-flake, pearl sheen; it has black shadows offros, curved claws extended as if reaching to grab the handles and take over And in certain light, one can seethe claws It’s a custom, one-of-a-kind job: the paint color, the artwork, and the bike itself

Hunting for transportation afterfor food, and Beast, who seldoer threatened, wakened when I started looking sixaround for the entire search My Beast had very specific opinions about vehicles She had refused to let me buy a car or truck, and had simply spat when I showed her a minivan suitable for stakeouts But the first ti and busted in a junkyard in Charlotte, North Carolina, she had approved

Jacob, the Harley ine/chassis builder in a Charlotte NASCAR shop for ten years, was more a Zen Harley priest than a mechanic He’d not so much rebuilt Bitsa as resurrected her into the perfection only a master mechanic could envision She was still a basic pan/shovel on the outside, but with modern updates, like a dependable, low- Mikuni HSR42 carburetor and hydraulic lifters; she was a dreaunition, but keys are for wimps Bitsa had an old-fashioned kick start and alould

We rolled down the street, the roar of the engine clai our territory as much as Beast’s scream would announce and claim hers Her screaar, puma, panther, catamount, screamer, devil cat, silver lion, mountain lion, and North American black panther, all refer to one beast--the Pu mamest modern-day predators other than man As fierce as they are, purowl, purr, yowl, spit, andwhistles to call their ift of roaring highly overrated and likely to draw in the white hunter and his guns Silent and deadly is better, with screahten prey She didn’t need ure