tandem with the pounding of her hooves, even as the wind whipped her mane flat against her neck, she saw him adjust his aim.
He trained his pistol right on her chest, and Ann realized her white coat must shine in the full light of the moon.
“Ann,” he called across the beach as she closed the distance between them. “Just hold still. I won’t hurt yo—”
She didn’t let him finish. Within two heartbeats she slammed her withers into his chest, and he hit the ground with a thud.
6
Ann considered her options as Daniel Hallock lay in the sand, gasping for breath like a netted fish. If she could’ve questioned him, she would have. Who had a bounty on her and why did he think—no, know—she could heal? God, she’d love to ask what he knew about the predators.
She’d have to find some other way. Right now she needed to neutralize the threat he presented—and she didn’t mean that in an FBI way. The bastard needed a head injury. Not something life threatening, tempting as that was, but something no one could ignore. Something that would make listeners doubt every word that came from his mouth from this day forward.
When he started talking about shape changing, she wanted people to ask him about fairies and dragons. And aliens. And yetis.
“Ann.” His voice came out like a frog’s croak as he lay on the ground and stared blindly into the sky. With audible effort, he inhaled. “I love you.” He gasped again. “I love…everything about you.”
She snorted through equine nostrils. She couldn’t believe she’d let this bastard go down on her just an hour ago. What had she been thinking?
“You can…” He inhaled with a disgusting, snotty noise. “Trust me.”
Bullshit. His wife thought she could trust him too, no doubt, and look what that got her. Anger roiled through Ann’s veins, pounding more heavily than the Pacific surf on the beach sand.
“Ann.” He held his hands above his head, and she saw his breath was coming easier now. She didn’t have much time. “I knew you were magic the first time I saw you. I…knew it.”
She snorted again and pawed the sand.
“Don’t hurt me.” He lifted his head to plead with her. “Please. You can trust me. Together we can knock science on its ass. You’re real! We’ll get our names—both our names—in Science and Nature. We can rewrite all the rules of biology and evolution.”
Ann had a different kind of history she wanted to rewrite. Slowly she walked toward him, her ears pinned flat against her head. She concentrated her fury into her legs and neck, into her chest. She didn’t need magic for this.
“Don’t hurt me,” he said again. His features wrinkled as he tried to gather his arms behind him and sit. “Please, don’t hurt me.” His hand crept toward the pistol at his side. He was going to shoot at her again.
She stepped back and snapped her forefoot. Her hoof hit his skull with a disgusting thud, and he passed out cold. Blood poured into the sand from the gash.
Killing him would be so easy. Another lash of her forefoot, a slam of her back feet. She could grab his neck between her teeth and crush his trachea. She could shake him, break his neck. Or hell, she could drag him to the water and let him drown.
Still, death wasn’t hers to give. Her ears flicked toward him, and she listened to his heart pounding solidly in his chest. The breeze whipped through the tall palm trees.
She had a choice at this point: she could heal Daniel’s wife, or she could find Daniel’s phone and call 911. This woman—who’d done nothing but confront her husband’s lies—lay smashed at her feet. Under the care of the best American doctors, she would endure years of reconstructive surgery, and she’d still be scarred from that smashed cheekbone.
No real choice existed.
Ann turned toward the woman, and her hooves churned the damp sand. Swiveling her ears in all directions, she listened for intruders. Nothing.
Standing on the beach where the sea pounded the sand, Ann noticed something she’d only registered in the back of her mind earlier: the earth’s power in this spot was stronger here than in most places where she had worked her magic. More power coursed through her veins here than in the Sierra Nevadas. Perhaps the energy released as the water slammed against the beach gave her something additional to harness?
She didn’t have time to care. Taking a deep breath, she focused on the earth’s strength, letting it connect to her hooves and pour into her veins. She locked that air in her lungs for several heartbeats, letting the earth’s might infuse each and every one of her cells, into each mitochondria and into each ribosome.
Another huge wave crashed on the shore, and her magic coiled around her heart, through her veins. She controlled the lust that accumulated as she’d changed shape now. She would stay in control of it until she slipped back into human form—unless the predator tracked her out to this empty beach. Then control was a less certain thing.
She released just a touch of lust and shunted it to the coalescing magic. Desire licked through her veins.
She was ready.
Ann dipped her head toward the prone woman and positioned her horn just above the smashed cheekbone. The tendrils that had wrapped around her heart flowed like water to her forehead, and then ethereal wisps spiraled around her horn, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. Power raced through her veins toward her horn and concentrated there.
Finally, the magic coalesced, becoming nearly solid. The tendrils dripped down toward the woman’s cheek. The green evidence of Ann’s magic pooled on the woman’s face. The deepest puddles formed over the injuries, flooding the left side of the wound in a saturated, moss-green plasma.
Within seconds, Ann sensed the healing, her horn registering every microscopic movement in the woman’s injury. Shattered bone fragments found mates and knitted together, stronger than before; broken blood vessels wormed back into their natural positions and reattached themselves, rejoining torn neighbors. Newly grown cells shunted blood from the injuries back toward the woman’s kidneys, and the bruised flesh healed.
Within minutes, Ann’s magic had restored the woman’s health.
“Where—” the woman started to say. “What happened to—”
Sleep, Ann commanded the woman’s body. You’re safe here. Sleep. And the patient obeyed.
As Ann surveyed the woman, her dark hair fanned out around her; guilt snaked through her guts and suffocated her heart. She had caused the woman’s heartache and pain and demoralization.
If she were in this woman’s shoes, she’d be questioning her very being, her femininity and attractiveness. She’d look in the mirror and see the normal changes wrought by time and stress—the crow’s-feet and laugh lines, the gray hair. She’d look at a forty-year-old woman and see a sixty-year-old crone. And she’d blame herself for her husband’s infidelity.
Ann could help this anguish.
She absolutely shouldn’t—but she could. The last time this type of healing had been used, her mother had broken all the rules and done it. Why? Because Ann lost control.
Still, if ever there’d been a time in her life to break a rule, this was it. She owed this woman.
Ann took a deep breath. Aging wasn’t an illness, but it was biological. She would repair the cellular damage. The woman wouldn’t need to doubt her femininity, and Ann could free herself of at least some guilt.
She dipped her horn again and let her healing suffuse the woman again, lengthening the telomeres in the woman’s cells and washing away all but the necessary free radicals. She repaired all the random mutations in the woman’s DNA, washing the cells in antioxidants.
The effects wrought by years and stress evaporated. The veins