Then, as if in slow motion, the girl tripped, lost her footing, and hit the ground. Hard.

The thud of her fall bounced off the trees.

Kylie watched in horror as the fog moved in. She pushed herself, sensing the need to reach the girl before the strange fog. The fizz in her blood gave her strength.

Coming to a sudden stop beside the lifeless body, Kylie snatched the unconscious girl into her arms. She weighed next to nothing. When Kylie looked up the fog was almost upon her. Running on instinct and perhaps panic, Kylie shot off.

Her feet pounded the underbrush into the ground. She hadn't gotten ten feet when the feeling of being lured hit her again. Come to us. Come to us. The wind, the trees, everything whispered the same message.

She stopped running. Her breaths came short, in and out. She swung around. "What do you want? Who are you?"

Her heart slammed against her rib cage. Cradling the girl closer, Kylie stared at the fog.

The thick gray cloud hovered twenty feet back, pulsating as if a heart beat within. The air around it stirred as if it breathed.

That's when she stopped being able to breathe, because ... because freaking hell, fog wasn't supposed to breathe. Fog wasn't supposed to be alive.

Before Kylie could react, the cloudlike air shifted and separated into two different masses. While she didn't sense an evil presence, she could no more deny the fear biting at her backbone than she could deny her own need for oxygen. Part of her instinct screamed to run, another part screamed to stay.

The fog inched back a few more feet as if it sensed Kylie's dread.

So she waited.

She watched.

She listened.

Listened to her name being called.

Kylie. Kylie.

Listened to the words spoken that came with the wind-whispered softly like a breeze stirring in the leaves. We mean you no harm.

"Who are you?" Kylie called out.

The girl in Kylie's arms shifted. The weight that had felt lifeless now stirred with life. Glancing down, she saw that blood oozed from the girl's brow. The need to get her help pulsed through Kylie's veins. She looked up again at the fog. The two different masses had taken shapes. Humanlike shapes.

Don't go.

Kylie's instinct to move the girl to safety swelled in her chest. To face the unknown alone was one thing. To do it with a bleeding girl in her care was another.

"I have to," Kylie answered, and turned to leave. She got only a few feet.

Stay.

There was something about the voice, a male voice. She glanced back over her shoulder; air caught in her chest.

Her grandfather? Was that not him? Then Kylie saw the woman and recognized her as her grandmother's sister. Tears filled Kylie's eyes.

She started to turn back but the girl in Kylie's arms screamed. She looked down. The girl's eyes shot open. Her dark blue irises stared up in bafflement and sent a bolt of familiarity rocketing through Kylie.

But she had no time to ponder. The blood oozing down the face of the girl came down faster. Kylie's instinct to get the girl to safety made her own blood sizzle. How badly was this stranger hurt?

"Release me!" the girl ordered in a low growl, and tried to squirm free. "Release me!" she screamed again, and started to fight this time. Her strength told Kylie this was no human. Without Kylie's protective powers, the girl would have easily won her freedom, but not now.

"In a minute."

Kylie took flight-holding the squirming blue-eyed stranger close. I'm sorry. Kylie spoke the words in her head and prayed they would be heard by those she'd just left. She'd had no choice but to leave. Her need to protect bit down stronger than her own quest.

* * *

Clutching the screaming stranger in her arms, Kylie jumped over the barbed-wire fence. Once on Shadow Falls property, the silence in the woods seemed louder than the girl's protests. Without warning, Kylie felt one, two, and then three whisks of air fly past her.

Then Burnett, Della, and a large bird-Perry-appeared beside her, all three moving at Kylie's pace.

Kylie stopped running. So did the others. Tiny sparkling bubbles appeared beside Perry as he morphed back into human form.

The three of them stared at Kylie, or rather, they stared at the screaming girl in Kylie's arms.

"Who is she?" Burnett asked.

"Don't know." Kylie's breaths came short, her mind on her grandfather and great-aunt. "She was running from-"

"She's a were," Della interrupted. "I could smell her as soon as we passed."

The girl stopped struggling against Kylie's hold. Her voice deepened as she met Kylie's eyes. "Release me now! Or you will regret this with your dying breath." She raised her head and glared at Della and then Burnett. "All of you will regret it!"

Burnett spoke directly to Kylie's package. "Give me your word that you will not run."

She glared at him.

"If you do, I'll catch you and I'll be really pissed off."

"If you're fast enough," the girl quipped.

"Oh, he's fast enough." Perry tossed in his two cents. "When he was fifteen, he chased down a shape-shifter in antelope form and kicked his antelope ass. There wasn't enough of that animal left to make a rug."

"Fine," the stranger bit out. "I won't run."

Della moved in and stared at Perry. "You knew Burnett when he was fifteen and chasing antelopes?"

Releasing the girl, Kylie's gaze collided with the antelope ass kicker himself. His expression prepared her for what came next. "I thought I made it clear you were not to go into the woods."