~Kerata~

I sat on Fiona's back in human form, holding on to the protruding edges of her warm scales as her rhythmic flapping tossed me up and down like I was on a trampoline. I squinted through the wind at my GPS, the dropped pin marking the spot where the body had been found. As we approached, I tapped Fiona's flank, signalling her to go down, so I didn't have to yell over the roar of the air over her wings. She wasn't in her largest form, which she hadn't used since the initial Shifter attack. As she glided to land on a flat-roofed apartment building, I wondered whether even she knew how big it was now.

I swung both legs to one side of her neck, and slid down her shoulder, her slick hide making a good slide. I ended up skidding off the end of her foreleg, tumbling across the concrete surface of the rooftop.

Shaking my head, I looked up and beheld, from upside-down, a green-eyed snout peering down at me, amused.

I rolled over on my stomach, just in time to have Dane plow into me from his own slide. All the wind whooshed out of me as one of his knees hit me in the gut. No sooner had his weight landed on me, than it was lifted off by Fiona, who picked him up like a kitten and set him on his feet, gently.

"Uh... hhhhey," I wheezed up at her, gasping like a dying fish. "Can I get uhhhh.... hand.... *cough* as well?"

She chuckled. "Just change. Any injuries go away when you do."

I rolled my eyes, but the blue-white watery light that was the energy for my transformation flickered up around me anyway, splashing it's way merrily across my vision. I sighed with relief as I felt the tightness in my chest ease. Once it cleared, I was a horse again, though still lying on the ground. Thus, I figured out why horses sleep standing up.

After three fumbling attempts to roll myself to my feet, with the others studiously looking anywhere but my direction, I finally lurched upright, staggering with the inertia of throwing my weight upward. I shook my mane and plodded over to where Raven and Duncan had landed, and Leo had also completed his slide off of Fiona, who was now in the process of shrinking to something slightly smaller than me. It was suddenly disconcerting to be the largest creature in the group, though Leo's shoulder, surprisingly, was only a few inches short of mine.

"Good, we're all here." Fiona shook the last of the light from around her wings, scales sparkling like opals. "Kerata? Would you please lead us?"

We had landed on a roof only a few buildings down from the location specified, so we all just hopped, leaped, glided and climbed down to the alley behind, which, presumably, was the scene of the crime. After trotting a few paces, I reached the back of the bar - Mo's 8 Ball - and watched as Fiona began sniffing around on the ground. The police had clearly been here. Crime scene tape blocked off both sides of the alley, with notices that any disturbed evidence would mean years in prison to the offending idiots. We stepped across anyway. Surprisingly, the alley was fairly clean, although weeds grew through the cracks in the bricked pavement, and a few cans were scattered around a dumpster. There was neither an excessive amount of tagging, nor bags of local trash and discarded shopping carts in the area. I twitched an ear at the muffled sound of voices and music from the bar, but other than that and the ambient city sound, nothing moved.

Abruptly, a snort caused me to whip my head around, all eyes in the group going to Fiona, who was sniffing the rear wall of the building opposite the bar. "Blood. Not Shifter. Human blood." She cocked her head, tail twitching. "I don't think that human died here, either. They escaped.... and they killed the Shifter. Or at least injured it badly enough that it eventually died here."

I blinked, surprised at her tracking skills. The bloodstain blended right into the dark red of the brick wall. It wasn't surprising that we were the first to find it. The dried-up pool of greenish ichor from the Shifter was enough to distract anyone, anyway. Although they must have known it had been injured by somebody.

Leo shook his head. "This doesn't add up. Why would the Shifters suddenly start attacking random people behind in alleys?"

"Maybe it was hungry?" Dane piped up. Leo shot him a withering look. "If they ate humans, wouldn't we have heard about it by now?" His ears twitched, and he switched abruptly to mindspeak, letting all of us hear it, but talking directly to Duncan. Actually, what DO they eat?

"They don't eat - they drink. Blood, to be precise. Changeling blood. The Royale family seems to be especially tasty to them." He replied casually, as if it should have been common knowledge. We all felt Leo's mental wince, an echo of how the rest of us reacted.

"Gross." Raven said, shaking her feathers.

We were all silent for a moment, before Leo spoke up mentally again. Back to the problem. Even if the Shifter were after this human's blood, out of desperation or curiosity or whatever, it still would have just killed them, probably before they knew it was there. Why did it give them a chance to retaliate? Unless..... he trailed off, and we all waited.

"Unless?" I prompted, finally.

Unless it wanted something else. Like information.