Disclaimer: All concepts belong to L.J. Smith and her publishers and are used here without permission for non-profit entertainment. All characters, however, belong to moi.

Spoilers: Just basic Night World concepts.

Tie-Ins: None. Except for a character who happens to be related to Violet Yarrow, this has nothing to do with my other fanfiction an no previous knowledge of my work is required to enjoy. (Unlike nearly everything else I've written.)

Rating: This story is not nearly as violent or gory as most of my work. I'd give it an over-all PG-13. There's some cursing and some unpleasant things happen to people, but it's not deeply disturbing.

Name Pronunciations: I don't usually, but I had a nightmare that people were mispronouncing Kiria.

Scotch – exactly like the drink

Coalise – co-uh-leese, all syllables evenly accented

Yared – YAIR-ed ("yair" rhymes with fair)

Kiria – KEER-ē-uh, accent on the first syllable

The Puma Trilogy

Scotch's Story

Part One

Scotch Thrithe didn’t care one way or the other how Thursy West voted on the Night World/Daybreak issue.

But that’s what they were talking the afternoon he lost her.

"It’s a perfectly clear issue," he announced, feeling, as he often did, that when she was happy he didn't know what to do with her. He was sitting on a strip of rock between a cave mouth and a two hundred-foot drop, the late-fall breeze running through his hair. Thursy was sprawled on her back next to him, head resting in her brother’s lap while their hands fought over a stick.

"Humans suck, vampires suck, let’s keep them both out."

He glanced at Thursy. She tugged the stick out of Yared’s hands and he grabbed it firmly at one end. Neither one of them were listening, which was ironic because they were the ones who actually had a say in the matter.

Kiria Rhoas was watching them with a carefully concealed jealousy. She was completely in love with Yared and, naturally, he had no idea.

The four of them spent a lot of time at the cave on Mount Aurora. It was only six miles from their village – Scotch didn’t think ten sprawling houses clustered around a cement garden counted as a town – but their parents rarely wanted to make the climb to drag them down. An underground spring ran through the mountain and popped up for a few yards in the back of the cave. The water was clean and cold, flavored lightly with minerals.

"So since vampires and humans should both be kept out, Jinchae is right, we should just distance ourselves from both," he finished.

Yared had the stick by then. Thursy gave it a solid tug and it snapped in half. Yared frowned at her and she laughed.

"Are you listening to me?" Scotch asked.

She glanced at him with her moody green eyes – at that moment, they were bright and speckled with gold – and said deliberately, "Yes."

The answer was a joke, of course. Scotch sighed, smiling despite himself. If Thursy didn’t think the issue mattered, it probably didn’t. She had a funny way of always knowing what was important.

"I was listening," Kiria said. "But you’ve missed the point, Scotch. There are thirty-five people in the pack, and if we decide not to join either group, we’ll still need protection from someone. We have to choose between the lesser of two evils."

"Oh, for god’s sake," Yared said. "It’s not like that at all. Why are you always looking at the down side of things?"

Kiria shrugged defensively. She was one of the most truly dark people Scotch had ever met. Not bitchy, not wicked, not really intense. Just dark. She never smiled.

The sad thing was, he knew she hated herself for it. If there was one thing Kiria wanted more than Yared, it was to be a little bit happy.

"I like humans," Thursy said, breaking the tension. "They’re funny. I like to watch them fall down. Remember when they had those competitions on television, what were they called?"

"The Olympics," Scotch answered.

"Right. And they were falling down all the time. While they were skiing and skating. Bast on a hot tin roof, they fell down a lot."

She started laughing and sat up. Yared dusted the bits of dirt off her back. "What do you think?" she asked him.

He grinned. He and Thursy didn’t look anything alike until they smiled. "I don’t care," he told her lightly.

"Then how are you going to vote?" Kiria asked. "You don’t even know what you’re talking about."

Despite how she felt, Kiria never hesitated to call Yared’s mistakes.

Yared, knowing exactly what it took to push Kiria’s buttons, said causally, "I think I’ll flip a leaf."

Kiria snorted and stood up. "I’m going back."

Thursy nudged Yared. "Go with her."

"Why?"

"Because I want you to. Go."

Yared glanced between her and Scotch and gave an exaggerated sigh. "I don’t think I’m supposed to be encouraging this sort of behavior."

"Go."

He rolled his eyes and started off after Kiria, who was already ten yards down the path.

Alone together, Thursy climbed into Scotch’s lap and kissed him warmly. She might not have listened to his political views, but while he was holding her, she was right there. He ran a hand through her thick auburn hair as she pulled back.

"Hey, Thurs?"

She lifted her eyebrows.

"I never know what you’re thinking," he told her.

"I’m thinking, Wow, it’s really starting to get cold outside. I wonder when it will snow."

"No, I mean…" He wet his lips. Her hands, ever busy, were massaging his shoulders, and her casualness made him uncertain. When she was furious or sad or lonely he knew how to take care of her, but he was never sure what a good mood required of him. "Does it bug you?"

"That you can’t read my mind? No."

"So you don’t think I’m a completely lame, inattentive boyfriend?"

She laughed. "You sound like a human. Just because you don’t know how I’m going to vote doesn’t mean anything. You know everything important."

A cold breeze into the cave. He felt Thursy shiver and her skin rose, bristling. "Want to go hunting?" she asked. Her voice was tightening, already changing.

"In a minute. Look, I had this dream about you last night."

"And?"

"I think something’s going to happen."

Her green eyes darkened. Her bones lightened, becoming fully human again. Her hand tightened on the back on his neck and he knew she was giving him her full attention.

"Something bad?"

He didn’t want to scare her. Thursy was high-strung, she took everything in the universe too seriously. He couldn’t say too much. "It was unsettling. You…you got changed into a vampire."

She chuckled, relieved. "That’s impossible."

"But it happened, in the dream. There was a bird with you, this giant bird that came up from behind and wrapped its wings around you. You were completely hidden under the feathers and when you came out you were a vampire."

"Where were you?"

"In the courtyard. Kiria and Yared were there, but I think they were asleep. And there were other people around us. Another vampire, I didn’t recognize her but she was trying to feed Yared a handful of berries, and a human. I couldn’t see the human because she was behind me, but she I knew she there. After the bird came and changed you, I woke up."

Thursy’s hand was so tight on his neck that it hurt. "Do you think it meant something?" she asked.

He’d let too much emotion soak through his voice; she knew he was scared. "No," he told her. "It was just a stupid dream. It’s not even possible to turn a shapeshifter into a vampire, and a bird certainly couldn’t do it. It just freaked me out a little."

She was staring at the stone ground next to them, at the remains of the stick she and Yared had played with. Her eyes were forest green and still darkening, and Scotch began to wish he’d never said anything.

He touched her chin to make her face him. "I had a dream last night that Hunter Redfern went broke and had to get a job in Vegas as a chorus girl," she told him, and then she smiled. "Compared to that, a giant osprey turning me into a vampire sounds almost normal. Dreams don’t mean anything."

Scotch touched his lips briefly to hers and then hugged her. "I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you," she murmured.

He kissed her ear. "Dido."

They held onto each other for a few minutes, saying nothing. Thursy relaxed slowly, forcing herself not to think about it. Scotch kept her close the whole time. He didn’t want to scare her again. He didn’t want to make a big deal out of what was probably just a stupid brain fart. But he had to wonder.

How did she know the bird in his dream was an osprey?

"Come on," Thursy said eventually. "I want to chase something."

She climbed out of his lap gleefully and tugged him to his feet. Her eyes were clear green again and she took her watch off before ‘shifting with a stretch and a ripple.

Scotch had never taken to wearing a watch because he inevitably forgot to take it off and it would cut off the circulation to his right paw if he left it on. Not to mention that whatever human mountain climber happened to see him would find it mighty peculiar that a beast of the forest had a Timex.

His spine changed first. The bones grew hard and heavy and his shoulders lumbered over his neck. He fell to his knees as his legs drew up into his body, shortening in length by almost half. His tail spiraled out behind him and brushed the ground. His head tightened and he stretched the thick, bulging muscles that controlled his hefty jaw.

He rolled his neck and fur shot out from his hair, over his short neck, across his arms. Slate gray fur covered his back and softened to tan at his belly and face. No more gangly fingers or toes, everything was compact now, everything was tilted so that he leaned into the wind even when standing still. His hearing extended in every direction, his sense of smell was phenomenal.

Most of all, he was strangely content.

Thursy was a few feet away, rolling on her back that way she had earlier with Yared, only now her arms were short and thick and covered in a tawny auburn hair. Her claws flickered in and out, nipping at the air.

His eyes met her. Her muzzle twitched in a smile and she rolled instantly to her feet. They were both smaller now, she was only five feet from her nose to the tip of her tail, and he was brushing five nine, but their strength was coiled and controlled.

They darted down the path.

Bored, Scotch had once read a human book on pumas and came to the startling realization that humans were not entirely stupid. Aside from their measurements of weight and health and litter size, the author had recognized a bit of the puma’s spirit, that playful, curious side that sets them apart from other cats. Afterward, Scotch had felt strangely violated—the humans understood him.

Running through the mountains, it hardly mattered. He was a cat, and cats by nature don’t give a shit.

Thursy was freed of her worry as well. She leapt gracefully over a boulder and darted ahead of him. He lost sight of her around a bend in the path and then stopped short, his ears perked up.

Suddenly the birds all around him were screaming. He couldn’t make out what they said, but their calls were frantic.

A badger dashed across the path just behind him and Scotch spun. The thing had to be mad to have run so close to him—he would eat almost anything.

Mad, or panicked.

Something was wrong.

The slope beneath his feet shifted and he was falling before he even knew what was happening. His head hit a tree trunk and he flipped over, stunned. Stone and brush were rushing downward like a river and he was caught in the current. Paws smacked against wood, his tail got so wrapped up in a branch that it was nearly jerked off.

There was a tremendous crash and a shock ran the length of his body. He opened his eyes and heard himself mew pitifully. Between a mess of dirt and roots he could see the side of Mount Aurora, where the cave he and his friends often played.

It took him several more minutes to realize there had been an avalanche.

Long trip up, short trip down, he thought, as he carefully climbed to his paws and began digging himself out. The wreckage around him looked like a shadow box of a forest that had been harshly shaken.

He was trembling beneath his fur and every few seconds the forest around him would begin to tilt and then snap back into place.

Dazed, he climbed across the mess of broken trees and dirt clods until he was back on solid ground.

Thursy was no where to be seen. He listened with his ears straight as ramrods and flared his nostrils wide, but he couldn’t find a trace of her that wasn’t a week old.

He looked back at Mount Aurora. It had been a rather small avalanche, actually. Just the few feet of path fifteen-yards from the ground had slipped down. It was likely Thursy had been safe and sound by the time the birds began their warning.

It was also possible that she was buried under the rubble, her scent trapped beneath the earth.

Scotch began pawing around the wreckage, sniffing, listening. He had made it about six feet when he heard the voice.

"Help! Help!"

That’s not Thursy, he thought, and for a moment he almost didn’t bother. He was sick to his stomach from motion and worry, and he didn’t care who else might be out there.

Softer, he heard her say, "I should have known this would happen."

He knew the voice was human. There was a roughness to it, a hesitation before words, a cadence that no shapeshifter ever spoke in.

He recalled his dream from the night before. He had been standing in the courtyard, watching Thursy be swallowed up by the wings of the osprey, and behind him he had sensed a human presence, a fragility.

Inexplicably, he turned and began moving toward the sound.

Part Two

Tales From the Scarecrow