Tithed by Megan Hart

interrupted at the last minute, and plenty of not-your-usual shape-shifters.

    Enjoy the following excerpt for Bl ood of the Volcano:
           Maya watched him drink, cup water in his hands and splash it over his face, run wet fingers through the long strands of black hair. L onger than mine…but then he was not born to be a fighter.
           The shame ate at her, that he, a runaway, a condemned criminal, had kept her prisoner this long. It had been only luck and a spider bite that had reversed their positions, nothing to do with her god-given powers or her years of experience running with the maenad pack.
           She watched him, an ordinary man, maybe five years older than she. Prettier than most, with the sweep of glossy hair and the dark eyes she remembered staring, terrified, into hers, but nothing that should have made him able to beat her, nothing that should have allowed him to keep her prisoner for a whole night and day.
            Except he's not ordinary. T he thought held her still with sudden surprise. I' d forgotten that— forgotten why we were chasing him in the first place. There's something wrong with him, some unholy power, demon- not god-begotten.
           She didn't need to know. It was nothing to her. In a short while she'd pack up supplies and leave, and if she ever saw him again it would be because he'd been stupid enough to try returning, and she—or another of her pack—would tear him to pieces. There was no reason to want to understand more about him, how he'd been able to overpower her.
           There was even less reason to want to make him look at her, now that she was no longer helpless, pathetic and bound. No reason to want to make him remember her as in control, sitting here with the knife ready to her hand, on the spot where she'd successfully saved his life.
            And it's stupid. I've already saved him when I should have let him die, am already letting him go when I should march him in chains back to my people. I do not need to talk to him, let him pretend to be a person.
           She said it anyway, as she'd known she was going to, and her warring thoughts came through into her voice, making the words shiver and run together so she sounded uncertain and almost afraid. "What is your power?"
           He turned. She was looking straight at him, so his eyes met hers. Her question must have taken him off guard, because for a moment his eyes held no wariness, nor fear, only an amusement that warmed his face. It reminded her suddenly of the laughter she'd heard in his voice yesterday, when they were fighting and she'd thought he meant to rape her, then he'd said something silly, too outlandish to take seriously, and she'd known that whatever else he might do, she would never need to fear that from him.
           "Did you not wonder before?" he said.
           She shrugged, not liking the feeling that his eyes could see into h er. "No. I was busy b eing marched across the desert."
           He smiled, just a little bit, one side of his mouth curling upwards. "I mean before, in the ravine. Did you not wonder why you could not find me when you first came there?"
           She blinked. She hadn't wondered. She'd forgotten those strange minutes in the ravine, when she— in the full flood of the madness, all her senses enhanced—had neither been able to see nor hear nor smell him.
           He came over towards her, moving slowly, awkwardly— he woul d not be setting out today—then put his hand out, resting it on the rock face near where she sat. "Here. This is how. This is my gift."
           She frowned at him. There was nothing, he was doing nothing. Whatever he was, it was not a
    shifter…
           "No." He smiled again, a little bit more. "Don't look at my face. Look at my hand."
           She did so. The wide span of his fingers was pressed against the rock, leaving a wet handprint, black on