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cold shrimp with Cajun hot sauce and plenty of Saltine crackers, washed down with a light beer. Afterward, she rode the whole length of the island, all the way through the state park at the far end, where the darkness of night and the warm salty air and the empty space all around combined to soothe her troubled soul.
    It was very late-or very early-when she left the island. She’d just come off the bridge on the mainland and was powering across the flat, empty marshland bordering Jones Bay when she saw the pack. Seven or eight large, doglike creatures loped along, parallel to the road-empty except for her-their fur gleaming softly in the moonlight.
    Wolves, she thought, and then immediately sneered at herself. She had wolves on the brain. Obviously it would take a while before the truth about werewolves seeped through to her unconscious mind. That these might be real wolves was just as unlikely, since that species had been hunted to extinction in Texas many decades before she was born. These animals must be something else-coyotes, most likely, or maybe a new coyote-dog hybrid, which would explain why they looked so big.
    She remembered an item on a local news program about the urban coyote. As its traditional habitats were built over, instead of being pushed farther out into increasingly smaller, less hospitable territories, the coyote had adapted to the urban environment. This was not such good news for the small pets that got preyed upon, and because of the plentiful and rich diet offered by people’s trash, not to mention cross-breeding with stray dogs, the new breed of urban coyote was not only bigger and stronger but more dangerous, being less shy of people than their wild ancestors had been.
    Even as she recalled the serious face of the newscaster, warning Houstonians that these animals were a threat, Mel felt no fear. She could easily outrun them on her bike, and in any case, the pack showed no interest in her. Soon enough they vanished into the distance behind her and she was alone again in the moonlit night, with nothing to prove she’d ever seen them at all.
    The road did not stay hers for long. After she passed League City, traffic began to trickle onto the highway, until, by the time she’d entered Houston city limits, there was a light but steady flow of vehicles. Because traffic was so light, most of the people on the road were driving faster than usual. Ordinary cars and trucks zoomed past Mel at speeds much higher than her bike could manage. She couldn’t help but find this annoying-she was used to being the one doing the zooming and zipping through heavy traffic-but since there was nothing she could do about it, she slowed down. There was no hurry for her to get home.
    She’d just left 45 and filtered onto 610 going north when she saw the wolf.
    This time, there was no chance of convincing herself it was a big coyote, rare breed of dog, or anything except a fully grown northern gray wolf. The hairs rose on her arms and the back of her neck as her awed gaze locked onto the creature. She eased off on the gas.
    The wolf was far enough ahead that her bike was no threat to it, especially not at this speed. At the moment that it began to cross the freeway, all four lanes were empty of traffic. It should have been perfectly safe. But then, with shocking suddenness, a car appeared, coming out of nowhere, it seemed, and hurtling past Mel at nearly a hundred miles an hour.
    It was a stupidly big car-one of those overpowered tanks designed for people who thought of themselves as road warriors, in need of protection-going stupidly fast, and the bare, unarmored creature trotting along so smoothly never had a chance.
    The SUV just clipped the wolf as it was crossing the road; a quick, brutal touch that barely impacted on the machine (it kept on going without pause or wobble) but knocked the animal off its feet, lifted it, and flung it across two lanes, smack into the concrete barrier.
    Did the driver even see what he