That only made his smile creep wider.

Stacey could feel herself wanting to give in. She knew that she had issues with being too submissive. Five years of therapy hadn't fixed that. She wasn't a total slave, not like the girls she knew who cruised the BDSM waters. But she gave up and gave in too soon.

Too soon.

Too much.

Oh, G.o.d, please.

The man's smile seemed to coax her to share her darkest thoughts. It made her unlock the locks and pull open the doors of her mind so that he could see his image there. A dark knight about whom she'd fantasized since before p.u.b.erty. The shadowy stranger who would come and sweep her off her feet.

A man of shadows. From shadows.

With burning eyes.

And he, without so much as a word, drew from the secrets he'd stolen and pasted before her the images of what he would do . . . and it was everything she wanted. Motionless, staring into his eyes, she grew wet with desire.

The man raised his gla.s.s and finished his whiskey, then he pushed his chair back and stood up. Without saying a word, he turned and left the bar.

Stacey followed him.

She felt herself do it and couldn't believe she was doing it.

"Hey, girl!" called Carrie from across the bar, but the thumping beat all but drowned her out. It made it easy for Stacey to pretend she didn't hear.

They left the club.

The man didn't even once glance back to see if Stacey was following but walked on across the parking lot.

"Stacey!"

Hearing Carrie yell her name stalled her in her tracks, and Stacey turned like a sleepwalker.

Here came poor Carrie, looking both angry and concerned. "Wot are you playing at, you daft cow? You're going to abandon me to those carnivores in there? Wot's 'e-"

Carrie's tirade suddenly disintegrated into a meaningless jumble of sounds. Noises.

The man stepped between her and Stacey.

"No," he said.

Immediately Carrie stopped walking, stopped talking, and sat down right there in the middle of the parking lot. Right on the asphalt that was stained with grease and oil. Carrie's rump thumped down, her legs splayed wide, revealing white thighs and blue knickers. Her eyes were as wide as saucers and there was absolutely no trace of anything in them.

"Carrie . . . ?" began Stacey, but the man turned around and focused his eyes on her. Stacey's voice evaporated into a misty nothing.

"Time to go, Stacey."

His voice was like syrup, like the most potent drink imaginable, like heroin.

She forgot about Carrie sitting splay-legged on the ground.

She forgot about her car. Her purse. Her life.

The man took her arm.

She melted into him.

Into his arms.

Into his car.

And into the night.

2.

The sleek limousine drove past him, but no one inside-not the brutish driver, the smiling man, or the drowning woman-saw the figure who watched it go. He was in plain sight, but he stood so completely still that the world seemed to move around him. Nothing reacted to him-not drunks on the street, not the dog searching for sc.r.a.ps in the alleys.

He watched the car with eyes that had grown old and fierce and murderous. As its taillights vanished around a corner, he bared his teeth like a night-hunting cat or some darker predatory thing. Those he was hunting were in that limo: the glamoured one, and a skinwalker as a bonus.

When the street was empty, the figure turned, seeming to detach himself from the shadows. He touched his pockets and belt in a reflexive movement as natural to him as breathing. Checking that everything was where it should be.

His knives, the rdstone, his strangle-wire. All of it.

Without haste he turned and crossed the street to where a motorcycle stood, black and gleaming. Waiting for him. The only detail on the bike was a partial handprint burned onto the engine cowling in angry red. It was not put there as a decoration. It had happened during a moment of blood, of screams and slaughter. And now the mark was burned into the metal.

The man swung his leg over the seat, keyed the ignition, and fed gas into the hungry engine.

The roar of his motorcycle split the air like a cleaver as he rode away in the same direction as the limousine.

3.

The man's limousine was long and dark and sleek, and there was plenty of room for Stacey to get naked.

She did it slowly, but in a dreamy way, not like a vamp.

Piece by piece. Snaps, hooks, sleeves, straps. The hiss of cloth down her skin.

The air inside the car was stiflingly hot. Furnace hot.

Sweat ran in crooked lines down her arms and legs and back, and despite the heat, her skin pebbled with gooseflesh, her nipples growing hard. Stacey's breath rasped in her throat. It was less like the heaving breath of pa.s.sion and more like the gasps of drowning.

Her clothes were scattered around her.

She was naked, vulnerable, unable to resist him.

The man sat on the bench seat, legs crossed, hands folded idly in his lap, eyes hooded in thoughtful appraisal.

Stacey felt her arms lift, hands reaching for him. Her mouth opened, and a low moan came from deep inside her chest.

The man did not move. He watched her, still smiled at her. His lips were red, his teeth glistening with spit.

Stacey closed her eyes and waited to be taken. To be used.

To be whatever he wanted.

No, cried a voice deep down in her soul, but it went unheeded.

The limo drove far out of town, leaving Edinburgh behind. Shadow-shrouded trees whisked by on either side.

All the time Stacey knelt there, arms raised, beckoning to him, aching with a need that no part of her mind could understand.

"Please . . . ," she managed to say aloud.

The man looked at her for a moment longer, then he turned his head and stared out at the night-black landscape.

After a long, long time the car slowed to a stop, the tires crunching over gravel and then dried leaves. Stacey sagged back, her arms falling to her sides.

The limo door opened and the man stepped out. He did not tell her to follow, but she followed. Naked, covered in sweat. Cold air licked at her.

They were in the countryside somewhere. It looked like there were huge ruins in the distance, but they were vague shapes against the underlit clouds.

They walked some distance from the limo. Tiny lights like fireflies began to acc.u.mulate around them, dancing, flitting about until they all flew to one spot ahead, coalesced into a vertical line. Then, impossibly, the line split wider, began swelling into a bright green glow. She looked to him, bathed in that light. He was no longer there. Something transforming, inhuman, had manifested in his stead; it still looked upon her with those eyes that held all she desired.

He went ahead of her toward the green light. Around him were shadow-shapes, not the ruins she'd seen in the headlights of the limo but something else. And distance. It wasn't merely light, it was a place. Once inside it, he turned about and held out a hand to her.

"Come," he said.

Stacey looked from his golden eyes to the proffered hand. Her heart lurched in her chest. The fingers were wrong.

So wrong. . .

They were iron-dark, and all along the back of his hand and down his wrist the skin rose and rippled into dozens of tiny mounds, as if something was pushing from underneath. Then it tore as the needle-sharp tips of small spines thrust outward. Each barb curled out from a knot of gristle, like roses rising from malformed stems.

She watched her own arm extend to take that terrible hand.

Please . . . please . . . please. . .

She could hear her inner voice, her inner howls, but she could not act.

No . . . it wasn't that. She had no will to act, no desire. Those howls were an enraged echo of the Stacey who used to claim ownership of this body.

Was that Stacey gone? Was she dead?

Her hand reached for his, and she took a small step forward, toward the creature who, second by second, was changing. The mottling of his skin ran up his ironlike arm, under dissolving clothes, and erupted all over his throat and cheeks and face. His smiling lips thinned, the mouth widened into an ophidian leer.

The scream she needed to scream burned in her chest.

The owner of the golden eyes chuckled, an ugly noise that was painful to hear.

He said, "Now."

He didn't say it to her. It wasn't a demand for her to do anything, but her eyes widened and her mouth fell open as the night changed, and the green burned away her world.

The man-if it was ever a man-stood revealed as something entirely inhuman. Huge and bulky, with skin like that of a diseased toad stretched over muscles undulating in strange arrangements.

His eyes remained that compelling molten gold. And despite the utter horror of what he had revealed himself to be, Stacey had but to look into those eyes to know that she was still a slave. Still lost. Still haplessly willing.

The man-the thing- turned away as if dismissing her; but that only pulled her harder. He cut her one last glance over his shoulder, and then the green light took him.

He was gone.

Just . . . gone. But the light waited for her.

Finally, the scream that could not find release burst out of her.

Not from fear. Not in horror at his grotesque body or the impossibility of what was happening to her.

No, she screamed because the creature intended to destroy her and she could not help but follow.

Arms outstretched, she ran straight at the light.

"No!"

The bellow came from the shadows, and Stacey turned to see a wild figure emerge from the darkness, running at her with the speed and ferocity of a wolf. He was tall, slim as a sword blade, with glossy black hair whipping in the night breeze. One hand was empty, but in the other he held something-was it a gun? A knife?

Still screaming, he leaped at her, wrapped his arms around her, crushed her to his chest as he fell. They landed together with a bone-rattling thud, but the newcomer turned as they hit, taking the brunt of the fall, the spin of their bodies sloughing off the shock of impact. As they rolled away from the light he opened his arms and she spilled out and away from him. Then he was up cat-quick and he flung himself toward the wall of shimmering green light. He raised the thing in his hand and plunged it down as if he meant to reach into the light and smash or stab the man who'd brought her here. But instead, as the object made contact, the green light disappeared.

The stranger ripped his arm back and forth, slashing at the light, destroying more of it with each swipe.

No, she thought as a splinter of clarity jabbed through the strange muzziness in her thoughts. She cried, "Wait, what are you doing? You're closing it!"

He dropped to one knee and with a last vicious swipe sealed the night. The shimmering green light shivered and went out, plunging the clearing into darkness.