"That"s no wolf pack. And bears don"t howl. Isn"t a mountain lion, either."

"Then what is it?"

"Something that shouldn"t be here," he said, and under the bronze color of his skin he seemed pale and shaken. "Something wrong, Ca.s.s. Really wrong. Let"s move it."

"But-"

"This isn"t something for just the two of us to handle."

"How do you know-?"

"I know, all right?"

"You know what it is."

He took in a deep breath. "Maybe. But the point is, a couple of Wardens alone out here isn"t going to cut it. Let"s get moving, fast."

I was unconvinced, but Luis"s concern was genuine enough. We increased our pace, though the going remained slow; the trail was rough and treacherous, growing more so as the shadows deepened. It would be full dark before we exited the woods, even barring any delays or accidents.

Within another half hour, our pace had decreased even further, and the howl sounded again - distant, but chilling. I could barely make out Luis"s face in the gloom. The sun was sc.r.a.ping the western horizon, expiring fast, and we were still in the thick of the trees. The temperature was also dropping, bringing chilly gusts of wind to whip the limbs of the pine trees and create a whispering hiss that sounded like a warning.

"We"re not going to make it out before dark," I said. "I"m sorry. I hadn"t planned for two of us. I was going to stay here for the night."

"Flashlights," he said. "Keep moving."

I had packed two, and so had he - st.u.r.dy things, and bright, but the artificial light seemed to only serve to make what it illuminated seem harsh and strange. Our pace increased, but so did our pursuers.

When the howls came again, they sounded closer.

Luis clicked off his light, and after a moment, I did the same. We stood in silence, listening. I felt something echoing through his connection to the earth - something strange and as dark as the falling night.

"What is it?" I asked. "What"s out here?"

"Something old," he said. "Very old. It"s an avatar."

Avatars were rarely encountered in the human world; they were manifestations of old powers, very old. Eternal, but rarely emerging from their sleep to possess and drive a human. The Greeks had known of them, and the Romans. The races and tribes even older had a history of encounters with the dark at the rawest levels - a history the Djinn had observed, even if there was little written record of it in the human world.

But here? Now? Why?

"What kind of avatar?"

"Madness," he said. "Primal madness."

I felt a cold chill sweep over my all-too-mortal flesh. As a Djinn, I had seen the rites of Dionysius and Bacchus enacted. I"d seen the frenzy sweep through the Bacchae as they were driven to leave behind their human, civilized selves.

I had seen the destruction they left behind.

"The missing women," I said. "Bacchae. Following the avatar."

"And they"re hunting," Luis said. "Tonight."

The howls sounded again, a high, wild sound that echoed from the stones. Then the howls dissolved into frenzied screaming, filled with triumph and fury, and I heard beneath it the cries of something that voiced its pain without words. An animal. Something large.

A rabbit burst from the underbrush and dashed past us, frantic and gla.s.sy-eyed. Then another. A family of racc.o.o.ns crossed the path ahead of us, fleeing the same direction, and in another moment, a doe bounded in pursuit.

"Move," Luis barked, and we increased our speed as much as we dared. More animals flashed across the limited scope of our flashlights, fixed only for an instant by the bright beams. None of them paused.

The last, another doe, had long b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.pes down her flanks, and she was running flat out, panting, head down. Running for her life.

I remembered the male hikers, bodies torn and half-consumed by predators. They"d never understood their risks. Never had a chance.

That chorused howl again, closer now. Chilling and yet fevered.

Luis kept moving, focused on the path, taking each step deliberately, but with all possible speed. He knew, at least. He understood what little chance either of us stood against the madness of an avatar. Earth powers might allow us to fight, a little, but our chances of truly defeating one were slim, at best.

These were the nightmares of Mother Earth, thrown up in her troubled, ages-long sleep. And they shared her power, deep in their roots.

The air smelled suddenly rank and sweet around us, drowned in rotted syrup. I whirled, flashlight flaring pale against tree trunks, swallowed in dark gaps, then reflecting suddenly from a face. Filthy, bearded and matted with dirt and leaves. A young man"s face, and a bare, tanned, nude body whipped with scars and bruises and old dried blood.

His eyes were ancient and empty and yet full of something so intoxicating that I felt myself falling ... falling ... I tasted honey on my lips, felt the heat of liquor firing my veins. Felt the universe shattering around me into pieces, fierce hot pieces, and my skin was burning, even my hair, too hot, too hot...

I heard a thump as my pack slipped off my shoulders and fell to the trail, but it seemed so far away now. There was nothing in the world but the glow and fire and dark intoxication of the woodsman"s eyes. I ripped at my shirt, pulling it apart in a frenzy. Too hot. Burning. Had to get cool.

"Ca.s.s!" Hands grabbed me and spun me around, a confusing whirl, and my flashlight beam fell on another face, on rich dark skin and wide black eyes and strong, flame-marked arms. "Ca.s.s, stop! Stop it!"

I slashed at him with hooked fingers, and he flinched backward. I turned, flashlight stabbing darkness in nervous jerks.

The woodsman was gone. I staggered, screamed, and heard the ring of madness in my voice. The rising, disbelieving tone of loss, of need. I still felt the burning in my veins, my skin, and I ripped again at my clothes, shredding, snapping threads like spider webs.

Luis - that was his name, Luis - grabbed me from behind, twisted my arms behind me, and forced me down to my knees on the hard rock, then forward, on to my face. The pain made me whimper with pleasure, and a growl of hunger came out of my mouth. Violence. That would sooth the burning. If I could run, chase, rip, tear, consume...

Luis put his full weight on me to hold me face down on the path as I convulsed, trying to get up, to run, to hunt.

"No," he panted, and I was overwhelmed with the smell of him, the rich male animal musk of his sweat, his body, his s.e.x.

If not the hunt, then this. This.

"Oh Christ," he murmured, and I felt him shudder in response. He was feeling what I felt now, too close for there to be emotional distance between us. The bond that fed his energy into me also echoed back, and he could not fail to know what I wanted. What I needed. "Ca.s.s, stay still. Stay still. Breathe. Come on, this isn"t you. This isn"t what a Djinn does."

I wasn"t a Djinn. My body - my body- It is only a body, the cold core of me whispered. And I am a Djinn. A Djinn. Not an animal, driven by meat and fury.

I shuddered and went limp under Luis"s weight, a submission that made the beast within me shriek and writhe inside. He didn"t move for a long moment, then whispered, "Ca.s.s?"

"Let me go," I said. My throat felt raw with fury, as if I"d breathed in superheated air. "Off!"

He rolled away. I rolled the other way, breathing hard, and crouched with my back against the rough bark of a pine tree. I felt hot, still, and the fury pounding through my veins was maddening, trembling on the edge of uncontrollable. My shirt hung in rags around me, and the fluttering pieces annoyed me; I pulled it free and threw it away, snarling, and glared down at the thin sports bra that I still wore beneath it. I had ripped it in places, but it was mostly intact.

My denim shorts had survived my frenzy, though they were fraying at the hems in untidy strings. I struggled with an urge to strip them off, rip at them with teeth and nails, and closed my eyes to focus on slowing my hot, panting breaths.

The howls sounded again, a longing chorus that pulled at the desire inside me.

"Ca.s.siel." Luis"s voice. He"d ventured closer, but he was keeping a safe distance between us. "What happened?"

"The avatar," I said. "I saw him."

"Him?"

"The Bacchae are followers. They have no mind, only hungers. I saw the avatar. He thinks. We have to stop him if we want to stop them."

But the Bacchae were his guard, his army of teeth and flesh and claws. There was no avoiding a confrontation with them, if we hunted him. Just as there was no avoiding the fact that I remained perilously close to becoming one of them. I had to push aside the memory of the avatar"s eyes, of the furiously empty hunger in them, of the sweet, hot intoxication of honey on my lips and in my blood. I had to. Or I would turn on Luis in an instant, and the first drop of blood I drew would trigger the final frenzy, reduce me to a naked, clawing, biting animal made of hunger and l.u.s.t. I would not stop. I would take everything from him, down to the marrow of his bones, and then I would be lost.

"Can you handle this?" Luis asked me. He sounded tense, cautious, ready to move back at a single tremor from me. "Because I need to know. I can"t turn my back on you if you"re not in control."

"I"m fine," I lied. I had to make it true by sheer will; Luis couldn"t defend himself from other threats if he had to watch me as well. "We have to find the avatar now, if we want to survive the night." Because the Bacchae would have caught Luis"s scent by now, that rich male musk that had drenched me in frenzy. They"d chase him down and rip, rape, consume. It was what the avatar had infused in them. Individually, they were normal human women, probably mild and gentle creatures. But here, in the wild, with the honey and wine in their veins, they were Furies.

I rose smoothly and loped off into the dark. Luis cursed and stumbled in pursuit. I did not need a flashlight, now; my eyes pulled in light in new ways, new colors, painting the world in flashes of red and gold and white. The eyes of the avatar, shared with his hunters.

I could feel him out in the darkness, moving through the forest. Wandering. Seeking ... whatever fathomless thing avatars sought. It was nothing humans could understand, and the human body it was using at present would be destroyed in the process, either from hunger or thirst or sheer overdriven exhaustion. It would leap to another male body if it could, unless there was nothing to receive its spirit. Then it would sink back into the earth, back into sleep.

Luis. Luis would be here to receive it. I couldn"t permit that to happen.

In the next second, I realized that I couldn"t worry about that; I had to think of myself first. The avatar"s presence pulled me like a tide, drawing me closer, and I heard him now, padding through the forest, plunging through brush and thorns, leaving bare, b.l.o.o.d.y footprints on the ground and rocks. I smelled his rotted-honey stench.

I ran, loping like a lion giving chase, feeling the frenzy inside me mount and boil.

I burst out of the trees into a clearing. Overhead, the stars were white cold chips set in an onyx sky. A crescent moon had cleared the eastern horizon, bathing the small meadow in icy light.

The avatar stood in the center of it, staring up at the moon, arms raised. His back was to me, and I saw the claw marks scoring his back, his b.u.t.tocks. The scratches and cuts. The trickling black blood.

Ecstasy was a deadly dangerous, shockingly beautiful thing.

I dropped into a crouch, teeth bared, made all animal in his presence. The pounding of sweet, hot fire inside me rose up, burning all my control to ashes.

All except that ice-cold core that had been mine since the beginning of time. I am Djinn, it whispered. I am not his meat. I will not be turned.

His back remained to me. His worship was aimed at the moon, and I could see the shudders running through him - s.e.xual, most surely. I could feel the pulses from here, booming inside me like a drum.

I could not approach him, not without losing what little control remained. If I did, I would end up pinned beneath his rampant body, screaming, biting, giving and receiving violence and s.e.x.

I reached instead for the rich warm glow of power, grounded through Luis, and brought it up around the avatar"s feet.

The gra.s.ses whipped up, knotting into ropes, growing at a staggering pace. They tied his ankles, then wrapped his legs, his torso ... and a thick, meaty vine whipped around his neck and began to tighten.

Behind me, I heard the hollow shriek of the Bacchae. They had found Luis"s trail now, and I sensed the hot burst of his fear through the link between us. He couldn"t outrun them. Not in the dark. He"d have to turn and fight - a battle he was sure to lose.

The howls and shrieks burst out of the night, and I thought I heard Luis call my name, but my world had narrowed to the avatar, and the vine around his neck. I poured all the power I could muster into it, commanding the living green rope to tighten, to squeeze, to crush the life out of the avatar before his minions tore the life out of Luis.

It wasn"t going to work.

The vine was withering fast. The earth didn"t wish to kill him; the creature was part of it, part of her. A memory, a nightmare, a dream. Something lost and almost pitiable in its hunger and loneliness. I couldn"t fight him with the tools of the earth. Iron wouldn"t kill him. Neither would stone. I could batter at him, and the life inside him would heal all I inflicted, because he was raw, b.l.o.o.d.y power, and nothing else.

I lunged, hit the avatar in the back, and slammed him face down to the gra.s.s. The bonds I"d put around him withered, blackened, and turned to ash, and his slick naked body writhed, bucked, tried to turn to face me. I couldn"t risk that. I put a hand on the back of his head and slammed it deeper into the dirt, snarling, but somehow he slipped free, and his body moved beneath me, and then his eyes...

...his eyes...

I felt sanity pour out of me like water from a broken jar, and the moonlight burned cold and empty, blinding me, and suddenly I wanted ... I felt ... I was ...

No.

I am Djinn.

The thing inside me, the thing in the core of me, that tiny spark of ice and rage that would never be human, seized control of my hands, grabbed the avatar"s jaw in my left hand, the back of his head in my right, and pulled power out of Luis in a blinding flood, a scorching wave that burned my muscles with its force.

I don"t remember twisting his head, but I remember the springy, tough resistance of his neck, his body trying to fight me, and I remember the exact instant that the fight was lost, and his bones snapped with sudden, m.u.f.fled clicks. I kept twisting as the body went limp beneath me. Kept twisting, jerking his head back and forth as if I would wrench his head off his shoulders like a b.l.o.o.d.y triumph.

His eyes...

His eyes faded into confusion, and then into silent darkness.

I felt, then saw, the black flood pour out of the corpse like mist, creeping over the meadow in all directions, searching for a host. It couldn"t take me. The ice inside me wouldn"t thaw.

Luis. It would take him first.

I stumbled away from the avatar"s body and raced ahead of the mist.

I fell over the first of the Bacchae less than a hundred yards out from the clearing; her naked, battered body lay shuddering on the side of the narrow path. She was curled into a ball, shut away from the horror of what had taken hold of her. Without the avatar"s power fueling them, the Bacchae were just ... lost.

I picked her up and carried her. I couldn"t leave her. The mist might reject a female avatar, but it might not. I had to keep all of them away from it.

I found Luis lying another hundred yards out, with the other two Bacchae. He was dirty and scored with cuts, but he"d avoided any serious injury. The Bacchae were, like the one I carried, naked, b.l.o.o.d.y, and pathetically bruised by their time of insanity; the bottoms of their feet were raw wounds, sliced and torn by their rampage through the forest. They had been knocked unconscious. Luis had collapsed, his breath ragged, felled most likely by the raw power I"d pulled from him to destroy the avatar"s body.

I dumped the third Bacchae, and turned to face the black mist. It was mere threads now, spread too wide and too thinly. The last whisper of the nightmare, creeping over the ground, crawling, searching blindly for rescue.

I dragged Luis another twenty yards, as a precaution.

The mist reached the Bacchae, and they twitched and whimpered and whined, even in their deep trauma.

It couldn"t touch them. It had wounded them too deeply already. That was one small blessing.

I took hold of Luis"s limp form beneath the arms and hauled, gritting my teeth, pulling him one torturous inch after another down the treacherous path until finally, I looked up to see that there was no black mist flowing toward me.

It had pooled on the ground, exhausted, and as I watched, it sank slowly into the ground from which it had come.

Gone like the nightmare it had been.

I collapsed next to Luis, my eyes full of the moon, and like the other Bacchae I curled in on myself, cold and empty and sick with what I had felt.

Luis stirred enough to gather me into his arms, and we lay together in the cold with the whisper of pines around us, as Mother Earth dreamed her insane, cold dreams of hunger and fear and loneliness and need.