I eventually gathered enough courage to go and talk to Mi, Tony's wife. I was afraid she would hate me. I was afraid she would forgive me. Because I couldn’t forgive me.

  I tried to move like I always do. Smooth, fast, and purposefully, but with all these new abilities I intermittently forgot myself and moved too fast or too smoothly. I must have looked weird, because people were staring at me.

  I slowed down. Slowed my heartbeat and focused on blending in.

  After calming myself and concentrating I moved more easily than I had done. It no longer looked like I was a stalking predator. Even though I guess I really was one now.

  I stopped some hundred yards from Tony’s store. I just stood there watching, taking it all in.

  I hadn’t decided what to do or how, but there was something I needed to do. I needed to give my condolences to Mi and the boys. I needed to take responsibility.

  I had to do this. This was my fault. Oh, Tony could have died years ago, or that time I thumped Simon’s thugs when they were trying to get money from Tony. But this was my fault! He died because of me, and those responsible were going to pay. They were going to die! The guilt and the rage were driving me, whipping me, to do something about Tony's death.

  I saw Mi walking by in the background. I also saw Dahn.

  I took a deep breath as I crossed the street. I knew that Dahn would want to kill me on sight. Nothing like the cause of you brother’s death to walk in the door.

  Tony’s brother’s face contorted in hatred as he saw me coming in.

  “You!” he spat. “Get out! Get out of here you fucking murderer! Get…”

  Whatever he was about to say next was stopped by Mi’s hand on his arm.

  “Stop it, Dahn.” Mi said calmly. “Maria, please follow me.”

  We went into the back. Mi had already cleaned up. It even had a small table and a chair. She sat slowly down, and I could see all that mind numbing grief she was trying to hide. I could smell the acidy tinge of loss and sorrow.

  I dropped to one knee, bowed my head and drew my knife.

  Mi only looked at me. I could feel her eyes on me, even though I couldn’t see her. She was no more than five meters from me. I kept my distance out of respect, and the fact that she might not want me even remotely close to her.

  I slashed my palm deep and made a fist.

  I shook my hand once, splattering blood on the floor. “For the loss of my friend, I offer sorrow!” I started.

  I heard her gasp. “Maria don’t!” She yelled.

  I shook my fist a second time splattering more blood. “For the loss of your husband, I offer blood!”

  Dahn came running back, gun ready. But he backed off as soon as he saw me kneeling.

  I shook my hand a third time. “For the life of your children’s father, I offer vengeance!”

  Dahn drew a shocked breath as he heard what I was doing.

  I drew blood over my face with two fingers. “For each drop of blood spilled, may it be tenfold avenged. May my blood be a sign of my oath! May my food taste like dust, my wine as vinegar, and my life empty until my oath is fulfilled! This I offer you!”

  Mi was crying. I could smell the salt, and the short breaths echoed in my ears as she cried. Dahn was breathing hard, like he wanted something out of his system, but couldn’t quite get out.

  “Before…” Mi started in a small voice. “Before I accept your oath, you must know that this was not a normal murder, Maria.” I nodded for to her to continue. “Those who killed my husband are not…human. And I can’t get to them!” She hissed the last. “They are not human.”

  I moved when she blinked with all the speed I could muster. She never even heard me until I was in front of her. I scared the hell out of Dahn, who almost fired at me.

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  Mi flinched as I was suddenly in front of her. “Neither am I - anymore,” I whispered.

  Mi looked at me. Her eyes held sadness and twisted hope. “Then I accept your oath,” she said.

  I bowed. “The blood debt will be paid!”

  “But…” Dahn started to say.

  “It is done!” Mi said in a voice that broke no arguments. “She is not responsible, and you will leave it at that!”

  “But…” Dahn tried again.

  “It. Is. Done!”

  Dahn bowed and disappeared.

  “I am sorry,” Mi said bowing her head. “He is filled with sorrow and hate. He can do nothing, and those we paid for protection cannot do anything right now.”

  “But I can.” I bowed even lower. “He should have been safe. I had assurances. I am the cause.”

  Mi took my head in her hands and stroked my hair. Silently she comforted me without taking away my guilt. She knew as well as I that Tony’s death was because of me. He might have been killed by someone else and with more than one motive, but he had died because of me. He was targeted because he knew me.

  Tears welled up in my eyes and I started to cry. It started silently, but all the guilt and anger came out as racking sobs as I knelt before her. After a while Mi sat down and held my head on her lap, trying to comfort me. She sat there with my head in her lap stroking my hair, saying nothing. I felt so blessed that she didn’t hate me. I wondered if I could have as strong as her if I was in the same situation. I didn’t think so.

  “Did you find anything out of the ordinary after the police had disappeared?” I asked after I had stopped crying and had my voice under control.

  “No. They took everything.” Mi answered.

  There was sorrow in those eyes that should not have been there. There was pain that she would not have felt, had I kept my distance. Mi would have to raise the boys by herself. She had lost her husband, and her sons had lost their father. Tony's family would stand by her, of course, but Mi wasn't the kind of girl who would let anyone make her decisions for her. Whatever the family had against her before, they had accepted her as family.

  Mi had eased some of my guilt by accepting my oath, but I still felt empty and cold inside. Where my heart used to be was only anger and guilt now. Anger at myself. Anger at the killers. Anger at the world.

  But it was a cold hateful anger. The one that eats you up from inside and makes your life hell. The kind of emotion that will leave you dead inside.

  “Will you manage?” A question that I perhaps should not ask.

  “It will work out.” Mi sighed. “Somehow. We are still a family, though we are not whole. But perhaps that will come in time.”

  Pragmatic words. Empty words when there was no end in sight for the pain and the loss.

  I nodded and stood up. I reached out with my senses as I walked back into the store. The instinctive part of whatever I had become took over.

  I smelled Tony’s scent, days old. And his blood. There was still panic and pain in here. There were ordinary smells, sweat, nervousness, alcohol…and someone else’s blood. There were other scents, odd scents, but too faint to be of use.

  There was something else, some other blood. Something not human. I started inhale powerfully, pumping scents through my new olfactory system. It was faint, but it was there.

  It wasn’t Mi’s. And it wasn’t Dahn’s. I knew Freaky Fred’s scent, but it wasn’t his either. It was someone else’s.

  I hoped to God, that it would lead somewhere, because Freaky Fred and buddies other scents were too weak, so I wasn’t sure I could have tracked him even if he had walked from here.

  I sniffed and followed the faint, faint scent I had picked up. I jumped up on the edge of the counter and moved in front of the AC. It was on one of the flanges of the AC above the counter. There was also a faint smell of gunpowder. I looked down at where the black glass counter had been. It was gone. Shattered probably, but not by the intruders. Tony must have fired his 10 mm Glock he kept under the counter through the glass at an intruder leaning over it.

  I willed my claws out as I stretched for the flange. One scrape and it was on the tip of my claw. I put the tip on my tongue. Oh yes, this was Freaky Fred’s pal alright. The taste, metallic with a trace of the same I got from Freaky Fred’s blood on my floor was definitely not human. Or at least not fully. It was as if I could taste the magic in it. At least I had a scent now, a true strong scent that I could follow.

  It wouldn’t be easy to track this one down. But even these fuckers had to live in the real world. And if all that Johnny Goosan had said about them were true, they must also keep an ear to the ground and that meant they would have to have people to listen and sometimes interact with them.

  Dahn was glaring at me. “Done?”

  I bowed my head. He had had enough, and I wasn’t about to add to his grief. “I have a scent now. I will hunt them down, and I will kill them. Or perhaps they'll kill me.” I paused and sighed. “For what it’s worth, Dahn, he was my friend.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I didn’t need one.

  I was going to see Simon Burns. I wasn’t sure that Simon had nothing to do with this. And I wanted to make sure that he kept himself well away from Tony’s family. I knew that I would have to be careful, because it was now Happy Amateurs Night on my ass. Amateurs move like amateurs and that makes them harder to spot, and therefore the chance of an amateur getting lucky, on a grand scale, wasn’t as low as one might think.

  Being there, smelling Tony’s blood, smelling his fear, made my blood boil. I needed to do some damage to someone. And that would be Simon Burns. And I was damn well going to do it too.

  I knew everything about Simon Burns. As soon as I had got in trouble with him I had looked him up thoroughly. There wasn’t much about him that I didn’t know. Even the size of his underwear, which happened to know because he complained loudly about the prices for size large Gucci boxers, not because of anything else. Ew!

  Simon Burns was going to get a late night visit!