Page 84 of Prey It By Ear

The chase is short, and I corner the grimy-looking asshole holding a knife. I pounce, digging in with teeth and claws and pure animal drive. When I bite down, the taste is hot and bright and so much better than I remembered. My mouth floods with it, and for a moment, I don’t think about anything at all except feeding.

Fucking weird, that, but maybe it comes from Lucille? She absolutely ate people when she felt like it, and that’s probably where it came from.

When I’m done, the bunny in me is calm, sated, and weirdly proud. I feel my muscles hum with energy, so I head back to the original clearing by scent. Aubrey and Renard are already there. The dragon’s got blood up to his knuckles, which means he found something with a backbone to play with, and Renard’s eyes are a little glassy, the way they get when he feeds.

Both of them turn when I step into the open, and the way they look at me is ridiculous: full-on proud parents at the first-grade play, except I probably have blood on my face.

Renard laughs first, a low, happy rumble that shakes his chest. “Ma petite, you have outdone yourself.”

“You look like you murdered a ketchup packet with your face, Lunchable,” Aubrey says with a grin.

I lift my arm to wipe it off on my sleeve, then frown and push it up so I can use my forearm instead.

Aubrey arches an eyebrow. “What, you don’t want to get Fitz’s hoodie dirty? Since when do you care?”

I grin. “I don’t want to make extra work for Percy. The crew has enough work shadowing me, the laundry is insane, and Fitzy likes this one, so I don’t want it ruined.”

That kills them; I can tell by the way they’re staring at me.

Renard’s expression goes soft, and he quotes, dead serious, “Les petites bontés sont l’architecture d’une bonne âme.⁠*”

Aubrey rolls his eyes so hard I swear I can hear it. “Time to go, snack size, before he composes a sonnet.”

I laugh and wipe the last of the blood on my arm. The cold hits me harder now, but the glow inside is enough to push it away for a while. I scramble back onto Aubrey’s shoulders as he shifts full again, and this time, when we lift off, I’m lighter. Not just in my bones, but in all the places that had been bogged down with fear and worry.

The next flight is easier. We bank south, the woods below us spinning out into a blur, and I dig my hands into dragon scales and whoop into the night.

If this is what being an exiled freak is, I’ll take it over ‘fitting in’ every time.

* Small acts of kindness are the architecture of a good soul.

Blackbiird

Delores

I’m flat against Aubrey’s neck, nose full of scales and the wind coursing over me. The world blurs past below, quartered by the campus architects’ secret love for separation. There’s enough moon to edge everything in silver, but Aubrey’s body blocks most of it. I see over his left ear, just enough for tactical scanning—my favorite new hobby—because reconnaissance flyovers are definitely going on my list of things to do as much as possible.

Aubrey banks low, and I feel every muscle in his back tense before he does it, so I brace. The drop is deliberate; it’s a deadfall over the place Felix flagged for us to check. He was right that something feels hinky, despite the cameras, motion sensors, and patrols that seem to include it in their patterns. If there’s one thing you can say about our Raj, it’s that he is sharp as a tack with this military-esque stuff. His dickhead father had him trained so well that even the slightest thing tweaks him eventually, and this path certainly has a weird vibe, even from the air.

The path is between two dorm buildings, and there are no lights, not even the faint blue of emergency LEDs, at the moment. It’s empty, no movement to catch our eyes. But my gut is reacting the way I assume Felix’s tiger did, so someone or something is using this walkway for nefarious purposes. If it was students or staff, I don’t think the secretly Fae part of me would be sparkling inside right now.

My dragon lifts us again, his heavy wings stirring eddies through the cold as we fly away before a single sensor can ping our thermal signature. Ren is coasting higher, watching the ground for anyone who might see us accidentally and require an explanation of why the two professors were roaming the skies over the school. It’s not that they can’t fly about—plenty of the winged preds do—but it’s late and the way we’re moving would definitely make people suspicious. That’s before they realize I’m on board as well, obviously.

We gain altitude as my fliers swing northeast toward the edge of the school’s footprint, where the lawns yield to a tangle of weeds and stubborn wildflowers before collapsing into the dark wall of the forest. Once we’re there, Aubrey drops us on a patch of frosted grass just outside the treeline, landing so softly you’d think the dragon thinks I’m made of glass. Renard lands a half-second later, his onyx wings angling for a controlled skid. His landing is less poetry than physics, but I grin anyway. Swinging my legs over one side, I slide down Aubrey’s bulk to the ground with a soft thud. I turn to look at Rennie, and he walks over to pull my sweatshirt up gently.

“Are you ready, ma petite? This trip means we will need to stay half-shifted to help us creep around without alerting the beings squatting here.”

Looking over at the forest, I tilt my head as I use the amulet inside my clothes to do what he said and pull my hood up over my tall ears. “Okay, babe. I’m ready to rock.”

The big guy is already in half-form with his arms scaled, chest massive, and claws flexing for effect. He keeps his wings snapped closed so they don’t catch on anything, and Rennie does the same. I don’t have that kind of thing to worry about as my bunny form, even as big as it is, is made for running through a forest to elude predators. It’s one of the few times I’m at an advantage over these enormous mythicals, and I twitch my nose happily in excitement.

Score one for Dolly the mutant bunny/Fae hybrid.

We start with Rennie on point, me at his back to the right, and Aubrey behind to the left. His bulk blocks the line of sight from campus, which hopefully means we won’t encounter any other surprise visitors. While I’m pretty sure no one cares about this quadrant of woods, I also know that unlike Apex, students do not come here at night. It’s odd to me, since it’s a much better place to party than we had at Cappie, but I guess the artsy kids who come here really aren’t the outdoorsy types.

I have my eyes up and nose open to every shred of information possible as we walk slowly and carefully through the trees. The ground is frozen and uneven, but I know Rennie is following the path he mapped out when he did recon earlier in the week. Despite how safe I am with these enormously intimidating preds, my mind runs through failure scenarios. We could run into an ambush and get frog-marched to the vamps’ lair like sacrifices. There could be other shit hiding here, including our angry Fae Lady who hates Rennie and, by extension, me. Someone could get injured, and we’d have to figure out how to get them back without getting caught by baddies.

This is my life since the Fae onslaught started—threat analysis, risk management, and an endless game of What’s Out There Trying To Kill Me. It features regular cameos by ancient grudges and new enemies with self-esteem issues. It’s exhausting at times, but then I remind myself that people only come after those they see as threats. They don’t bother with the weak and useless, especially in the pred world.