the while, she waited for the swipe of claws through her face or the sharp impact of fangs in her throat. Then again, when dealing with Full Bloods there was always the chance of being killed before you even knew you were hurt.
When Minh drew her next breath, she coughed it right back up. As the bed creaked back to its original position, Paige lay down to watch Minh’s paws swell to accommodate her upright form. Now the only thing she had to worry about was being spotted if Minh decided to use her new height to look over the bed.
Minh turned and walked back out of the room. She paused in the hallway, took half a glance over her shoulder, then let out another hacking breath. Apparently, Paige thought with relief, a hyperkeen sense of smell wasn’t always such a good thing when confined in a room with a rotting corpse.
As the Full Blood approached the next room, Paige looked over at Nadya, who was staring intently back at her, but neither woman dared make a sound. Paige pointed to the Nadya and stabbed that finger toward the spot where they were currently hiding. She then pointed at herself and waved at the door. Judging by the intensity in the Amriany woman’s eyes, Nadya had no intention of staying put while she scouted ahead.
They engaged in a brief staring contest before Paige conceded with a roll of her eyes. Keeping low and close to the wall, she maneuvered around the bed while trying desperately not to bump into anything. Leaving the concealing stench behind made her nervous, but she wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to find out what the hell was going on in the next room.
After leaving the room where two women had been hiding, Minh shifted into her human form for all of two seconds before deciding the house was unfit for her lean, lightly tanned nakedness. By the time she got through the doorway to the bedroom with the pit in the floor, her figure had settled somewhere between woman and beast. Her movements gave her all the grace of a drunk stumbling in after a late night, which Paige guessed was due to the ley lines or whatever sort of energy was flowing up from the exposed section of ground. Although she wasn’t sure about that yet, Paige was confident that she hadn’t been spotted. No Full Blood would have allowed a Skinner to see them in a state like that.
Minh dropped to her knees and reached out to the pit with both hands. Her fingers splayed apart, and when they couldn’t go any farther, her hand shifted into something that allowed them to become even more of a trembling tangle. The noise she made started as a wail but slowly rose to a howl. Paige found herself transfixed by Minh’s cry, almost to the point of walking into the other bedroom just to be closer to its source. Fortunately, Nadya was there to place a cautious hand on her shoulder to keep her in place. Still, from where she stood she got a good look at Minh’s powerful back as the Full Blood bowed down to sink her claws into the exposed dirt. Every coarse strand of fur stood on end, then Minh’s head snapped up. She was about to let out another howl but managed to choke it down.
“It’s a real kick, ain’t it?”
Spoken in a thick cockney accent, the question struck an immediate chord with Paige that made her want to jump up from where she was hiding and sink her weapon into the other Full Blood’s neck.
Liam had strode through the front door on two legs but still wearing the pelt of a wolf. By the time he entered the smaller bedroom, he’d shifted down into a human body covered with a thinning mat of fur. He was nothing but a skinny naked man when he crouched near the pit in the next room and allowed his hands to hang between his knees in what might have been a lazy effort to conceal himself.
Minh’s response was a series of grunts and growls that could have been made while she was in pain or in the middle of a vigorous copulation.
“Yeah,” Liam said. “I know just how you feel. It’s dangerous to be here, though. Too much for the senses to be this close to a source this pure.” He stretched out both hands while fur eased out from beneath his