Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes

by Mark Henwick

  She let out a breath. “That is what makes a difference for me. I do not do this because I am forced to, even though my options seem few.”

  “You could run and hide,” I said. “I could say you were gone when I got here.”

  Yelena stirred unhappily.

  “And what of my staff?” She didn’t wait for my response. “I cannot abandon them. Absolutely not. That is unthinkable. Being kin wouldn’t make me do that, would it?”

  “No,” I said. Kin were encouraged to remain within human communities.

  “Then we proceed. I am afraid, naturellement. Who would not be?” Her voice firmed. “But enfin, there are great benefits and it seems we are all on this path because of choices we are all making. We must respect everyone’s decisions.”

  With a glance at me to check first, Yelena rested her hands lightly on Dominé’s shoulders, making her twitch.

  “It will not hurt, will it?” Dominé gave a short nervous laugh. “A strange question from a woman like me.”

  Yelena bent over the back of the sofa and slipped her arms around Dominé, as a friend might have hugged her.

  “It will not hurt. I promise,” she said and kissed her neck.

  Dominé closed her eyes and laid her head back, patting Yelena’s arm.

  Yelena nodded to me. She’d bite Dominé. I’d get Dante. It threw me, but I understood why. Dominé and I already had a connection. Dante was an unknown quantity—it was important for her to feel a strong bond with me. But I’d psyched myself up by thinking of making Dominé part of my House. I liked her. I loved her instinctive refusal to run away and abandon her staff, and her sorrow for Marcus and Valerie.

  Dante?

  Pretty, sassy. Somehow unformed or unfinished.

  Was I going to be able to do this?

  Shit!

  I’d bitten Jen and Alex. I’d bound them, somehow. I’d never gone out and done it intentionally, let alone with someone who was almost a complete stranger.

  “Slow. Calm,” Yelena said. “Trust yourself.”

  More easily said than done.

  I was screwing this up. I was nervous; I was radiating anxiety and Dante was picking it up. I could see her eyes were wide. A shiver rippled down her arms, quickly hidden. Where had all the brassy arrogance gone?

  Dominé removed her arm from Dante’s shoulders, and Dante showed me she was braver than I’d given her credit for: she slid over and looped my arm over her.

  “Your first time, huh?” she whispered.

  Yeah. Not only braver, more observant as well.

  “Yup.”

  “Wow. Mine too.”

  We both laughed, the sound chopped off, a sort of embarrassed bark.

  I pulled her into an Athanate embrace, struggling to make it feel smooth and natural. The theory was that she’d breathe in my Athanate pacific pheromones and would be calm when I bit.

  The trouble was, I needed to be calm for the Athanate glands to start working.

  Pressed up against her neck, thinking about how I was going to bind her, calm was the last thing I was. Instead, the Athanate in me was noticing the pulse in her neck, the fear coming off her like a perfumed mist.

  Bite now. Feed.

  No. I took a deep breath. I was not going to go down the Basilikos path.

  She had a mild lemony scent. Pleasant, but it wasn’t my marque. My jaw throbbed with the need to change it.

  Concentrate on the mechanics of it.

  I licked her neck. It made her twitch and she had to stifle another embarrassed laugh.

  That was fine. Her heartrate was coming down, and meanwhile, the bio-agents would sink into her skin, ready to turn pain into pleasure and make her body quick to repair the damage I was about to do.

  “Rest against me and relax,” I said. “No tension.”

  I felt Yelena’s eukori, like a gentle breeze passing through me and flowing down into Dante.

  “Oh!” she said.

  “Relax,” I murmured again, and my fangs manifested, flooding my jaw with anticipation.

  Mine. Mine.

  I could feel Dominé give a little gasp through the link with Yelena, but I couldn’t spare attention for her.

  My fangs sank into Dante’s throat.

  She tensed up again and I eased off, waiting until the calmness I was trying to project took effect, but then my fangs seemed to find her carotid on their own, and the taryma, the whole network of Athanate channels in my jaw and throat, pulled. I groaned as her blood flowed into me, lighting me up.

  I’m not supposed to be enjoying this!

  I could almost hear Yelena laughing at me.

  And now, through the channel of Yelena’s eukori, the pleasure I was feeling flowed back down into Dante.

  “Oh, gods, yes,” she hissed.

  She gripped my arm tightly, but the rest of her body stayed obediently limp.

  I heard Dominé sigh and I sensed myself flowing through Yelena into her as well.

  All four of us linked through eukori. All four of us pulsing with pleasure.

  Dante’s hand reached and hesitantly stroked the back of my head, pressing lightly, eager for me to pull her Blood again.

  But the Blood was a side issue this time, no more really than a diversion.

  In English, it was binding. In Athanate, the word was a composite; soul-braiding, Yelena had said. The more complex the weave, the deeper and more complete the binding. Alex and Jen and I were utterly woven around each other, however badly the pair of them were acting toward each other. I could see that ever more clearly, as Yelena and I tangled Dominé and Dante into the same web that was House Farrell.

  A sip more Blood. Dante groaned and the last resistance in her body melted away.

  It’s not creating a binding from nothing, Diana had described it to me. It’s finding something well-founded, and making a copy. A template. Let the binding grow. Earn the binding.

  That was the Panethus theory.

  It took only a hint from Yelena through the eukori, and my inexperience seemed to matter less and less as we progressed. My knowledge of eukori had improved while I’d been in therapy with Diana. She’d reached like this and done this.

  And suddenly, I was deeper inside Dante’s mind than I had intended.

  She wasn’t unformed at all. That sassy, rude exterior covered something that had been broken and never repaired.

  And all the bullshit about vampire orgies and the club being what she was looking for—the truth was, she was here to support Dominé. Binding her was as simple as adding me and House Farrell into an existing structure between her and her boss.

  It wasn’t the right time to explore any of that. With a nudge from Yelena, I withdrew. We’d done enough for the moment.

  I licked Dante’s neck some more, the bio-agents sealing the wounds.

  Now my Athanate pheromones were working—the ones that Jen called happy time.

  “Wow,” Dante said. “Just wow.”

  I pulled her around until she was draped over me. I didn’t want her getting the wrong idea; she was katikia and not kin, but the embrace seemed to fit with the slowly fading sensations of biting and binding. Her heart thumped comfortably against my ribs.

  Time to think about what had just happened. Of course, I knew binding was a reciprocal process—I was bound to my kin as much as they were to me. I hadn’t expected to feel something similar with katikia.

  And as I thought about it, I could see, for all my anxiety and hesitation, that I had subconsciously prepared to bind Dominé the moment I had walked into the room. My Athanate needs had seeped into my whole mind, however unsure my human side was.

  Acknowledging that to myself was a strange echo of something Diana had also said during my therapy. She’d said I couldn’t be returned to a state of innocence before anything bad had happened to me without destroying what I had become. In the same way, I couldn’t deny my need to bind without denying everything else that made me Athanate.

  However well I could
visualize it, I couldn’t step back into the river that was me before I was bitten.

  Even if I could go back in time and not have been bitten, what would have happened to me? Something else would have triggered my strongbox to fail, and then I would have had no one capable of helping me.

  The river flowed on.

  This was what I was like now. And I was starting to like it.

  Chapter 16

  “So, am I supposed to feel all different?”

  Dante definitely hadn’t changed on the outside.

  Yelena teased her with trailing fingers down her back. “Don’t you?”

  Dante gave her a sidelong look.

  “You guys do that sort of thing with sex as well, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “See? I knew it. I knew it. Orgies.”

  Dominé smiled at the byplay. She had draped a silk scarf around her neck and sat there looking thoughtful, as if she were probing her own thoughts to see what had changed.

  Binding wasn’t like throwing a switch. We’d started the process, but it needed time to settle. We needed time to earn that binding.

  I suggested Dominé and Dante come to live with us and commute down to the club from there; that seemed to be the LA style anyway. And with Jen’s choice of house, we had plenty of space.

  “I should like that,” Dominé said.

  The tail end of merged eukori shared a sense of pleasure and anticipation from that.

  And Dante could claim not to be feeling different, but I couldn’t.

  Not just the binding, but getting out and doing things again seemed to have cleared my head.

  The club itself, and Dominé’s staff, had become part of my responsibility as House Farrell. And until we got the matter with the Pasadena alpha cleared up, there was danger to my House.

  I called the Altau guards on duty back at the house. I got lucky and connected to Tom Sherman, Bian’s second in command.

  “I need one of you over here for a day on the door,” I said to him.

  “A day on the door at a sex club? I guess someone’s got to do it.”

  “Not a joke, Tom. One of the local packs is threatening my kin. There’s a possibility they’ll show up today. I’ll be getting a message to them, but if that’s too late, I want them to smell Athanate as soon as they get to the door. It should discourage them.”

  “Should discourage them?”

  “The alpha seems to have a short fuse. That kind of attitude filters down. His pack might act without stopping to think.”

  Tom grunted. “I’ll send two. They’ll be there in an hour. And you, House Farrell, need to get back here quickly with the minimum of risk.”

  “Yeah. I hear you, Tom.”

  With that, we ended the call. Dominé was about to leave the office, but I stopped her.

  “Hold on a second.”

  “Yes, Mistress?” Dominé said, looking adoringly up at me, with just a hint of a smile in her eyes to tell me she was laying it on.

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s Amber. This is serious. When was it the Redondo alpha warned you about the Pasadena pack?”

  “This morning. I was about to call Rita to ask what I should do when your call came in.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “We can’t assume that Pasadena hasn’t put a plan into motion already. We’re not walking outside without a few basic checks. Yelena, go out and buy something from the shop across the street, please. See if you can spot anyone looking suspicious.”

  She nodded and left, coming back barely five minutes later, shaking raindrops from her hair.

  “Two possible groups. A half-dozen bikers standing around across the road, and an SUV with three guys inside it parked in the lot out front.”

  “Nine werewolves for one hit?”

  Not good odds.

  Yelena shook her head. “The bikers aren’t Were. I got close enough to check that. Can’t tell you about the guys in the car, though.” She shrugged. “There might be no Were out there at all, but the knife you don’t see is the one that’s in your back.”

  I snorted. That saying was worthy of Ben-Haim, one of my old Ops 4-10 instructors.

  “You realize we can’t kill them,” I said.

  “What the hell?” Dante said. “If they’re these Pasadena guys, they came to kill Dominé.”

  “You’re going to have to start thinking in a different way. First off, you don’t know if the Pasadena alpha really is out to get you—it’s only what some other Were has told you. What if the Redondo alpha has some kind of axe to grind? What if he just wants to scare you off his territory? Secondly, if they are Were out there and they’re Pasadena, are they here to kill Dominé? You don’t know, and you have to find out. Thirdly, it gets way more complicated if I start killing Were. I’m part of a pack as well as the Athanate, and my actions are taken as being on behalf of the pack, whether I intend them to be or not.” Dante and Dominé looked slightly stunned by this, and I hadn’t even gotten into the issue of being syndesmon. “And finally, why the hell am I explaining all this to you?”

  “So what do we do, Boss?” Yelena asked.

  “If they’re Were, they’re here as a threat at the least. We can hurt them. We need to make sure we know which pack they’re from and why, and then send them back with a message that Club Vasana is under Athanate protection.”

  She waited.

  “We have to get them somewhere quiet with no witnesses,” I said. “We’ve got to drive and make them follow.”

  “There’s a building down in Long Beach the realtor tried selling me when I came to LA,” Dominé said. “When I saw it, it was surrounded by empty warehouses. I imagine it would be quiet enough, if we can get in.”

  “Check that it’s still empty,” I said, and she returned to her desk.

  “They’ll get suspicious,” Yelena said.

  She was right. I gave it some more thought while Dominé called the realtor.

  Stop complicating it with Were and Athanate politics. It’s a simple undercover setup, and I need a simple solution.

  “It has to be a sting,” I said. “And I have an idea.”

  A risky one, but I needed to get active again. I needed to be the one protecting myself and my House.

  “It’s still empty,” Dominé said, putting the phone down. “What else do you need?”

  I liked the sound of trust in her voice.

  “Not much. Your car. Bolt cutters to get in the building in Long Beach. Zip ties. Gloves for Yelena and me. Duct tape, of course,” I said, and looked over at Dante with an evil grin. “And a sack.”

  Chapter 17

  The evening had turned dark, cold and wet when we emerged.

  The bikers had gone away when the rain had gotten harder.

  Yelena had brought Dominé’s car to the front and opened the back door.

  As soon as she pulled up, I came out, dragging Dante. We had tied her hands behind her and covered her head with the sack. I shoved her into the car, glancing around as if checking to see if anyone was watching. Dominé was right behind me and got quickly into the front passenger seat. With the dome light shining, there was no mistaking her, even if they hadn’t checked which car was hers.

  Yelena pulled away in a hurry.

  The SUV followed.

  “Hooked,” I said, carefully not looking back.

  They’d been watching the front of the building and they’d seen our charade. The owner of a sex club gets in a car with two enforcers and someone tied up. They’d be expecting us to take her somewhere to conduct our business without witnesses.

  “Can I sit up?” came from inside the sack.

  “No.” But I pulled her around until her head was on my lap and the sack was partly open. My hands rested on her neck. I could feel the bite marks already healing. And her pulse, a soothing rhythm under my fingers.

  Have I done the right thing for her?

  Yes, said my Athanate smugly. No argument there; it was up to the rest of me to make sure it wa
s the right choice for Dante.

  Yelena drove east on the Pacific Coast Highway, and then Dominé directed us to Long Beach. The SUV tucked in two or three cars back and shadowed us through the rain-slicked streets.

  Three of them against two of us. We had surprise on our side—an enormous advantage—but a couple of bystanders to protect.

  They were acceptable odds.

  Dominé was right on two counts; the building they’d tried to sell her wasn’t suitable at all for her club, and it looked like exactly the kind of place where someone would go to conclude some criminal business.

  Yelena used the bolt cutters to break the lock on a sliding door and we were inside.

  Our pursuers were being careful. They hadn’t rounded the corner yet, but when they did, they’d see Dominé’s empty car and know we were inside.

  I scanned the interior. It had been an office, and then used as a warehouse by a firm that had gone bust. We were in an open area in the middle of the building. The place was littered with old office equipment and piles of boxes leaning against each other like drunks outside a bar.

  “Hide,” I said, and ran up the stairs to the second floor, leaving Yelena to shepherd them.

  The ground floor windows were boarded. Upstairs they weren’t, and I flattened myself against the wall to peer out through one, taking the opportunity to check the 9mm Sig Sauer I had in a shoulder holster. The gun was fine, but it felt wrong. I longed for my old HK, lost when I’d been captured at the convent in Taos.

  No time for that.

  The SUV came around the corner and drove slowly until it was behind Dominé’s car and right beneath my window.

  Two guys got out, holding what looked like machine pistols under their jackets: Uzis with suppressors maybe. They trotted to the sliding door we’d left invitingly open and disappeared inside, leaving the driver sitting in the car with the engine running. They wanted to be quickly in and out on this job. Not going to happen.

  I counted to five and then picked up an old metal filing cabinet.

  This is gonna hurt.

  The cabinet and I went out the window in a shower of glass. The cabinet went through the SUV’s windshield and I landed on the roof.