Raven swung on the blonde with her fists clenched, letting all her furious disbelief show. “What did you do that for?” she hissed.

Sue-Eye smirked at her.

For the first time in her life, Raven realized that the phrase ‘saw red’ wasn’t always metaphorical. She saw that smirk and then everything else washed out the color of blood. Her heart, soul, and skin caught fire. She swung, and her fist caught Sue-Eye square in her smug little mouth.

Sue-Eye tumbled back into the hood of the car, then came right up with a scream and launched herself at Raven. They went down in a windmill of arms and legs in the kind of no-holds fight that one seldom sees outside of redneck bars and elementary school playgrounds. There was kicking, clawing, hair-pulling, screaming, biting, swearing, and then suddenly Raven’s whole head snapped back in a splintering burst of pain, the red field that had suffused her sight shattering. She was yanked into the air by her hair and suspended, kicking, over the ground.

“Enough!” Kane shouted, and Raven’s struggles stopped at once. “I said, enough!” She was dropped so that Kane could swing, and he slapped the blonde hard enough to send her spinning.

“Bitch!” Raven spat.

Kane glared at her. “You be quiet,” he told her curtly.

She clamped her lips shut and seethed in obedient silence.

Kane thumped Sue-Eye back on her feet. “Behave yourself, both of you,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for this ti inak shit.”

“She started it,” Sue-Eye muttered.

Kane, who had already begun to turn away, now swung back with a look of pure amazement. “What—” he began, and then sighed and relaxed, all over, all at once. He covered his eyes with one hand, shook his head, and then looked calmly down at Sue-Eye.

He slapped her.

Sue-Eye flipped back off her feet and landed in the bushes. Kane covered his eyes again and waited for her to gain her unsteady feet, and then he slapped her again.

This time, he went after her, moving in that light, relaxed stroll that Raven had come to associate with killing. He got a foot under Sue-Eye’s ribs, turned her easily onto her back, and then hunkered down and waited for her to look at him. “I said something like that to my father once,” he said conversationally, once she’d met his eyes. “Although I was easily half your size at the time. It was a stupid thing to say to him and it is a stupid thing for you to say to me.”

Sue-Eye flushed and tried to drop her gaze, but Kane caught her by the hair and twisted her violently around to keep looking at him.

“Now I am going to tell you one more time to behave yourself and this time, you are going to say ‘yes, Kane’, which—” Here he laughed, very quietly and utterly without humor. “—is also the second time I have had to tell you are the only words I want to hear out of you for a while. And you’d better mean it this time, ichuta’a, because the next time I have to repeat myself, I’m going to put a reminder on you in the way of a broken bone. I’m not kidding. This bone, this one right here.” He picked up her left arm with the hand that wasn’t clenched in her hair, and pinched at part of her forearm. “Snap,” he said. “Just like that. And if you think I’m going to put you out somewhere so you can have it fixed, you are badly mistaken. You are with me for a while, ichuta’a, but I don’t need you whole. Now do we have an understanding?”

“Yes, Kane,” Sue-Eye whispered.

He nodded, and then, in a low voice that was almost a sing-song: “Behave yourself, ichuta’a.” He cocked his head expectantly.

“Yes, Kane.”

He released her and stood up, and then turned around and fixed Raven with his baleful eye. He folded his arms and waited, the tips of two fangs showing.

All the burning glee she’d felt as she’d watched Sue-Eye get her chewing-out froze over in an instant. Raven couldn’t meet his steady gaze for long. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I did start it. I hit her first.” She tried to brace herself for the blow she knew she’d earned.

She saw one of his hands curl into a fist, but then it relaxed and gripped his bicep again. “You’re sick,” he grunted. “I forgive you. But you’re scratching me, Raven. Watch yourself.”

He started moving. Raven and Sue-Eye followed, side by side, filling the heavy summer air with silent hate.

*

It was a dead party. So maybe it beat staying at home, but it was still a dead party. Too hot, for one thing, and the boys kept going on about how great it would be to get a bonfire going. A bonfire, for Christ’s sake. Kati could just see that spitting out of control and eating up the whole damn forest, and even if it didn’t, she kept having to point out that they’d have a ranger out here faster than Domino’s could deliver a pizza, and who was planning on paying the fine? All this common sense made the boys pissy, which in turn made Kati pissy, and which was why she was here, sitting on the fallen tree christened the ‘party log’ and guarding the heap of deadfall the boys had gathered while practically everyone else was down at the river having fun.

Fun. Splashing around in that pathetic trickle and tripping all over the cracked, log-strewn bank that used to be the river’s borders. Just like a bunch of kids. Hell, most of them really were kids, still in high school. Buncha babies. Not like Kati, who’d already put one year of community college under her belt and could put another one there easy if she wanted to. Maybe when summer was over. If she didn’t have anything else to do.

The pounding headache that Riffer called music finally, thankfully came to an end, and Kati helped herself to another bottle of beer to celebrate the silence. She was on her third sip when Riffer came up from the water to put on a fresh disc. Joy. Another one of his amateur DJ mix CDs, all alternative shit with heavy drums and sitars and strange-ass shit with lyrics no one could understand. In Riffer’s mind, anything that actually played on the radio was for sell-outs. He didn’t seem to realize that everyone around him hated this crap and was only too polite to say so because he brought, along with his bullshit CDs, many bags of reefer. It was good reefer, too, but the music gave Kati a headache.

Still…

She gave Riffer a wave, hoping to coax him over and keep her company for a while. He was just a kid—not even a college kid, but just out of high school, for fuck’s sake!—but he was a good-looking kid, and Tabby said he was pretty well hung for a guy with no pubes.

No luck. Riffer waved back and then galloped off over the edge to splash down in the dried-up river. Dumb kid. Who needed him?

Dead party.

She couldn’t even say it would get better later, because they were practically all here now, all except for the ones who were off at summer classes or riding around in RVs with their families. There were even a couple people here who didn’t belong. Ray had showed up just a little bit ago with his kid brother Danny and both their girlfriends, leading a second car full of cousins, none of whom had even looked at her because Tabby had chosen that exact moment to strip off her shirt and run down to the river. And she couldn’t really just say ‘fuck you’ and leave, either, because she’d tagged along with Owen and Corky, and they’d gotten their Bake on and gone into the woods hours ago.

Mmm. Bake sounded pretty good, actually. It was the only thing Kati’d ever tried that never ever took you on a bad trip. No, it was all pretty pictures and great fake sex, although god knew, the fuck-buddies Bake could dream up were often exceedingly strange.

Kati got up and went to the goodie-stash in the red cooler, and fished through Slim Jims, Twinkies, Riffer’s reefer (Mr. Smiley stickers wrapping each and every rolled joint), Doritos, and finally found a baggie of Baked Alaska down at the bottom. She helped herself to a gumdrop of mouthwash-colored delight, popped it in her pipe and sat back down on the party log to get groovy.