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Lena ducked past the slide and vaulted over the merry-go-round, heading for the park office. The parking lot was empty. She would never make it to the main road.

Instead, she ran for the landscaped garden in front of the office, where prickly pear surrounded a pair of saguaro cacti. Her feet crunched on decorative gravel as she turned around, her back brushing the spines of the saguaro. She waited for the jaguar to close the distance.

Lena’s lips tightened into a grim smile. As the beast slammed into her body, she allowed herself to fall backward, dragging the cat into the cactus with her.

“It’s been a week and I can’t stop thinking about that fight. If I had been stronger, none of this—”

“Only God is omnipotent.” Father Castelo shook his head sadly. “Powerful as you are, Lena, even you have your limits.”

A car horn blared outside the church. Lena jumped to her feet.

“Try to calm down. You’re safe here.”

Lena relaxed, knowing he was right. Built in an old Spanish mission, Grace Fellowship Community Church was probably the safest place in all of Tucson. Castelo had sheltered her here more than once. The adobe walls appeared old, but the spirits inhabiting them were powerful enough to turn away most threats. For two hundred years they had served the master of the church.

That was how Lena had first met the middle-aged priest, shortly after Janice’s studies brought them to Tucson. Lena and Castelo found themselves working together to defeat the church’s former leader, a man corrupted by power and dark magic who had been using the ghosts to punish those he found unworthy.

If the werejaguars found her here today, they would have worse to worry about than just Lena.

“I’m glad you’ve come. I’ve been worried.” Father Castelo was handsome enough for a priest, with thinning black hair and oversized silver-rimmed glasses. “I’m so sorry, Lena.”

The last thing she wanted was sympathy. “I’ve looked everywhere.” Lena twisted in the pew, running her fingers over the back. Buds sprang from the wood at her touch. “You don’t understand, Father. I should have been stronger.”

“No one can fight the world’s evil alone. What happened isn’t your fault.”

“I never said the fault was mine. I am what I am. Like Popeye,” she added with a wan smile. “Whatever Janice wanted, that’s who I was. In the beginning, she wanted her lover to be a hero. Beautiful, sexy, smart, and strong. She was so young, my little geek princess in her first year at college, dorm room overflowing with comic books and anime. Lately though, her tastes have changed.”

Lena waited until she was certain the remaining two werejaguars had left. Only then did she stagger out, leaving her attacker trapped in the saguaro.

She hated cacti. Somehow they always left her feeling both dry-skinned and bloated. Her hair caught in the spines, and she pulled free as gently as she could, not wanting to damage the plant.

“Damn,” she whispered as she examined herself. Fresh scabs covered the holes in her side where the bullet had ripped through. The wounds cracked and oozed as she moved. At least the cactus had healed her enough to reach her truck without bleeding to death. She was sweating by the time she climbed into the old Chevy pickup.

It was a toss-up which was in worse shape, Lena or her truck. With Janice’s grad school loans and Lena working a part-time job at the university bookstore, they were lucky to cover rent, let alone keep the truck running. The windshield was cracked and the vents blew only hot air, but the engine revved to life on the second try.

She and Janice lived in an apartment complex off Interstate 10, a short distance from the U of A campus. Not the most glamorous place in the world, but it was cheap, and more importantly, it supported a healthy scattering of palm trees around the parking lot in back. Lena liked the city for the most part, but it was like the gods had run out of green before making the place.

Lena felt the pull of her grove