He thumped back into himself as the Change receded. Julia was sobbing, as openly and messily as a child, and sirens pierced the night with diamond stitchery. There was other noise, too—people, crowding around.

The instinct of hiding among prey all his life prodded him. The upir was dead, and he had to get his Family out of here before they were seen, or, God forbid, caught. A Carcajou couldn’t be held for long, but if other Tribes caught wind of their presence after this, it could get ugly.

You mean uglier than this? The Change trembled inside his bones, spikes of pain.

“Zach,” Brun whispered again. It was the sound of a child in a nightmare. The upir’s body was already just a stinking sludge inside a sodden white shirt and the ragged remains of a pair of leather pants, a pair of boots full of nasty black liquid falling over, skooshing out in a tide of corruption over Kyle’s half-Changed body. Fur receded into his little brother’s skin, his entrails a mass of grayish-blue tangled in a spill, the jet of blood from the abdominal aorta’s cutting black as the upir’s leaking.

His corpse would be fully human—what parts of it the upir’s caustic sludge didn’t eat away.

Another alpha, dead. Zach’s stomach cramped. He hadn’t eaten yet tonight, and the smell was enough to make him glad. My fault again, I should have—

“Come on.” Eric pulled at his arm. “We have to go.”

Where is she? He glanced around, but the woman he’d followed here was gone. A crowd of people had magically appeared—prey, his animal side whispered, casting around for that thread of light brunette scent that he somehow knew.

She was nowhere in sight. He had to find her.

What the hell is going—

“Come on!” Eric yelled, and dragged at his arm. Julia let out a keening sound, and it was like a jolt of fresh bloodscent, jarring him into alertness.