And she saw the building, the street.
The thrill of success mixed with absolute bafflement.
The last thing she’d expected was to learn he was in New York, some sixty blocks away, and in the now.
The fates, Glenna decided, were in an all-fired hurry to get things started. Who was she to question them?
She closed the circle, put away her tools and tucked the sketch in her desk drawer. Then she dressed, puzzling over her choices for a bit. What exactly did a woman wear when she went to meet her destiny? Something flashy, subdued, businesslike? Something exotic?
In the end she settled on a little black dress she felt could handle anything.
She traveled uptown by subway, letting her mind clear. There was a drumming in her heart, an anticipation that had been building in her over the past weeks. This, she thought, was the next step to whatever was waiting.
And whatever it was, whatever was coming, whatever would happen next, she wanted to be open to it.
Then she’d make her decisions.
The train was crowded, so she stood, holding the overhead hook and swaying slightly with the movement of the car. She liked the rhythm of the city, its rapid pace, its eclectic musics. All the tones and hues of it.
She’d grown up in New York, but not in the city. The small town upstate had always seemed too limited to her, too closed-in. She’d wanted more, always. More color, more sound, more people. She’d spent the last four of her twenty-six years in the city.
And all of her life exploring her craft.
Something in her blood was humming now, as if it knew—some part of her knew—she’d been preparing all of her life for these next hours.
At the next station, people filed on, people filed off. She let the sound of them flow over her as she brought the image of the man she sought back into her head.
Not the face of a martyr, she thought. There’d been too much power on him for that. And too much annoyance in him. She’d found it, she could admit, a very interesting mix.
The power of the circle he’d cast had been strong, and so had been whatever hunted him. They chased her dreams, too, those black wolves that were neither animal nor human, but something horribly of both.
Idly, she fingered the pendant she wore around her neck. Well, she was strong, too. She knew how to protect herself.
“She will feed on you.”
The voice was a hiss rippling over the back of her neck, icing her skin. Then what spoke moved, seemed to glide and float in a circle around her, and the cold from it had the breath that trembled from between her lips frosting the air.
The other passengers continued to sit or stand, read or chat. Undisturbed. Unaware of the thing that slithered around their bodies like a snake.
Its eyes were red, its eye teeth long and sharp. Blood stained them, dripped obscenely from its mouth. Inside her chest, Glenna’s heart tightened like a fist and began to beat, beat, beat against her ribs.
It had human form, and worse, somehow worse, wore a business suit. Blue pinstripes, she noted dully, crisp white shirt and paisley tie.
“We are forever.” It swiped a bloody hand over the cheek of a woman who sat reading a paperback novel. Even while red stained her cheek, the woman turned the page and continued to read.
“We will herd you like cattle, ride you like horses, trap you like rats. Your powers are puny and pathetic, and when we’re done with you, we’ll dance on your bones.”
“Then why are you afraid?”
It peeled back its lips in a snarl, and it leaped.
Glenna choked on a scream, stumbled back.
As the train streaked through a tunnel, the thing vanished.
“Watch it, lady.” She got an impatient elbow and mutter from the man she’d fallen into.
“Sorry.” She gripped the hook again with a hand gone slick with sweat.