His power began to push my beast back like boiling water pushing a forest fire back. It worked, but it felt like my skin was singeing and smoking as he forced my beast back. He drove it back to that place deep inside me. He drove it back, and it went whimpering. I whimpered with it, because it felt as if my body had been burned with power. I tried to look down at my body, and the world swam in streamers of color and nausea. I'd seen Richard force people to swallow their beasts before, but I'd never known that it hurt.

When my vision cleared, Richard was smiling down at me. He looked pleased. "I wasn't sure it was going to work," he said, and there was strain in his own voice as if it had cost him something, too.

I whispered in a voice that was broken from screaming, "That hurt."

His smile faded around the edges, but I didn't have time to worry about his hurt feelings, because the leopard spilled up into me like poison trying to find a way to drip out of my skin.

Nathaniel's arms found me, but Micah took me from him. Micah wrapped his arms around me, pinned me to his body. My leopard knew his, knew the smell and taste of it. The energy went into him like a huge hot breath. It washed over his human body, and fur followed the power, like turning a shirt inside out. Micah was one of the smoothest shifts of any wereanimal I'd ever seen. Only Chimera had changed more easily and less messily than he did.

I was left clasped to the front of his furred body. Held by a body that was half man and half leopard. Travis had only two shapes: lion and human. Every other wereanimal in the room had three: animal, human, and half-and-half. Once I'd thought you had to be powerful to do the half-human form. But I'd been spending too much time around really powerful wereanimals. Now, I thought that only the weak couldn't do it.

I let Micah hold me, but I was too weak to hold him back. He laid me gently on the floor and lay down on his side beside me, propped up on one elbow. I stared up into his black-furred face, a strangely graceful mix of cat and human. His eyes looked just as at home in this face as his other one. They were both Micah to me.

"Did you do that to make a point?" Richard's voice, angry.

Micah looked up at him and spoke in that gravelly purr that he had in this shape. "What point would that be?"

"That I caused her more pain making her swallow her beast than you did by taking it."

"I took her beast because I'm not powerful enough to make her swallow it, and because being forced to swallow it can hurt, a lot."

"So I cause her more pain, and you come off the hero."

If I hadn't been exhausted, and aching from head to toe, I'd have told Richard to stop it, not to fight, but I was too tired. He'd slept over. He'd helped me with Marmee Noir. It had all been going so well. I didn't want it to go badly. Damn it, damn it.

"I called her leopard, instead of letting Nathaniel do it, because I can do this." He moved away enough so he wasn't touching me, and then it was like magic. It was as if the black fur were tiny flames that spilled off and blew away in the wind of his power, and everywhere the black blew away there was skin underneath. Everyone else looked as if they were being torn apart and remade, or pulled inside out when they shifted. The best you could hope for was to have the other body melt away and the beast, or the human, pull itself out of the other form. But Micah, Micah just changed. One minute leopardman, the next human again. If I hadn't seen Chimera shift from one form to the other like water spilling back and forth between hands, I'd have said Micah was the best at shifting I'd ever seen.

Micah looked up at Richard. "Nathaniel would have been trapped in leopard form for hours."

I couldn't see Richard's face because I was turned to Micah, and it seemed like too much effort to turn my head the other way. But I heard the disbelief in his voice. "It's supposed to cost if you change back before six hours, sometimes longer. Aren't you exhausted?"

"No," Micah said.

"Are you disoriented at all?"

"I wouldn't want to jump to my feet, but give me a few minutes and I'll be fine."

"I've never seen anyone who can shift back and forth like that."

"I've seen one other who was better," Micah said.

"Who?"

"Chimera," and just saying it caused Micah's face to take on that serious, sorrow-filled expression that I knew too well.

I reached up to touch his arm. I'd have liked to touch his face, but those extra inches seemed too much effort. He smiled down at me, as if he knew what even that small effort had cost.

A woman's voice said, "If this guy could change shape easier than that, I'd have liked to meet him."

Soledad came to stand over us. She wasn't as tall as some of the guards, well under six feet, but from flat on the floor, she looked tall enough. She was slender but curvy, with hair cut boy short and dyed a shade of yellow that didn't occur in nature. With the hair you'd expect more makeup, but she usually did lipstick and just enough liner to accent her brown eyes. She stared down at me with that look she usually had, like she thought something was funny and would laugh any minute. I'd realized a few days ago that it was her version of a blank face.

I might have asked her what she was thinking, staring down at me, but the tiger flashed inside the darkness in me. No, please, no, I thought.

Soledad stared down at me. The smile slipped away from her face, and I saw something I hadn't expected for a moment: fear. I might have asked what she was afraid of, but the tiger started racing up that long dark hallway inside me. I reached up to her.

She hesitated.

Claudia said, "Do your job, Soledad."

She leaned over to take my hand, saying, "In this world I would rather live two days like a tiger than a hundred years like a sheep."

I might have asked what she was quoting, but the moment her hand touched mine, the tiger sped up. It bounded down that hallway, and I braced for the impact.

Chapter Fourteen

THE IMPACT NEVER came. The tiger hit my skin, my body, and kept going. I didn't give my beast to Soledad; it just washed out of me and into her. It didn't hurt me; it was as if all that went down my hand to hers was power. It just happened to look like a tiger. I wasn't sure that was it at all because Soledad didn't change shape. She half-collapsed around me, catching herself with her free hand so she didn't fall on top of me. Her breath came in sharp pants, as if something hurt, but I wasn't feeling it. I was just holding her hand and watching her face.

She managed to whisper, "You don't hold tiger inside you."

"I think you're right," I said. My voice still sounded hoarse from all the screaming, but at least I could talk above a whisper.

"What's wrong?" Claudia asked from behind us.

"I think Marmee Noir couldn't turn me into a tiger," I said. I kept looking at Soledad's face, though. She still looked hurt. I asked, "Are you all right?"

She nodded, but her lips were pressed in a tight, thin line. I think she was lying to me about being all right.

"I think she's hurt," I said.

Claudia knelt beside us. "Soledad, are you hurt?"

She shook her head.

"Tell me you aren't hurt," Claudia said.

Soledad just kept shaking her head. Claudia helped the other woman to her feet, and Soledad's knees wouldn't hold her. Claudia had to catch her, or she'd have fallen to the floor. Remus came on the other side of her and helped ease her to the edge of the bed. He asked, "What's wrong with her?"

"I'm not sure," Claudia said.

Soledad found her voice. "That was not a weretiger."

I tried to sit up, and Micah had to help me. Richard moved in on the other side to help me sit between them. "It was Marmee Noir," I said.