by Maria Lima
Tucker, who by now had entered, came over and squatted on the other side of the chair, his own large hand on Bea’s back, soothing up and down as one would a crying child. “Bea, hon, we’re here for you.”
A shudder ran through my best friend. I put my hand on the back of her head, wracking my brain for some way to calm her down, to make it better. I knew a few calming charms. I sent an inquiring glance to Tucker, who shook his head. He slid his arm around her shoulder and then moved around so he could wrap her in a bear hug. She clung to him, sobbing, words I couldn’t make out muffled in the cloth of his shirt.
Dixxi leaned in, her loose, dark hair brushing my face. “Bea, I’m sorry. What can I do?” She paused and repeated, correcting the pronoun. “What can we do to make this better for you?”
Bea shook her head, smearing tears across the light blue cotton of Tucker’s shirt, fists still clinging like a lost child. “There, there, sweetheart,” he murmured. “It’s okay. I promise you, it’s okay.”
The three of us did the only thing we could—we waited.
Several sodden minutes later, Bea’s sobs slowed and became sniffs. She nodded her head, as if having decided something, and let Tucker’s shirt go. Tucker, after looking down at her, gave her one huge squeeze and then let her sit on her own. She remained bent over, not facing us, as if gathering thoughts—perhaps courage. If I were in her position, would I even want to be in a room with three other people? Probably not. Then again, I truly could not comprehend being in her position—pregnant by a werewolf with a high possibility of a genetic problem. I could sympathize, say words all I wanted, but she knew and I knew, this wasn’t a problem I’d ever have.
I opened my mouth to at least say more words of sympathy but caught Tucker’s head shake. Okay, so I should stay quiet. Dixxi, no doubt smarter than me about these things, just sat on the floor and kept her mouth shut. Another couple of minutes and Bea’s tear-smeared face examined each of us in turn.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
I nodded, still unwilling to say the wrong thing.
“You okay, hon?” Tucker asked.
“As okay as it gets, I guess,” Bea said. She shifted, stood, and walked over to the kitchen bar, stared at the refrigerator for a moment. “You know,” she said, “it’s not that I’m totally against abortion.”
My brow furrowed as I wondered why she’d started with that. Then I saw it—a pink flyer from Planned Parenthood stuck to the fridge with a cheery smiley-face magnet. Was this just a weirdly appropriately timed mailing?
“As soon as I began dating Lev, I sent away for information,” Bea continued, explaining the flyer. “On account of I’ve really not needed anything more permanent than a condom for the last several years.” She turned to me. “Ways to prevent contraception have changed since we were younger, you know.”
I shrugged and tried to appear supportive. Once again, not much of an issue with me. In my twenties, I was mostly dating humans, who couldn’t get me pregnant, and if I’d had sex with Clan, we’d used protection. Condoms worked just fine, spells worked better. The pill—not so much.
Bea walked back over to her chair and sat. “When I figured out I was pregnant, I thought, well, why the hell not. I’m healthy, I’m nearly forty, it could work. Then, you threw me a curve. You told me about Lev being a werewolf. Not as simple, but all right, I could handle this. I like Lev.”
I started to ask about Jacob, but Bea shushed me before I could get a word out.
“Please. Let me finish?” I nodded at her and she kept talking. “I’m healthy, Lev’s healthy. There was no reason that we couldn’t work this out.”
“Do you love him?” I finally asked. “Enough to risk this?”
“No.” She rubbed her eyes, then faced me directly, her gaze as blunt as mine was. “Maybe I just hung around you-all too long,” she finally said. “You Kellys.”
“What’s that’s supposed to mean?”
“The way you handle relationships, children—it’s for the good of the Clan, right? My having this baby would be for the good of their pack.”
“Well, the children part, yes,” Tucker agreed. “All my own children have been fostered to families who wished to raise kids. I’m not that guy. Nor, do I think, is my sister.”
“Definitely not,” I said. “But since I’m with Adam now, that’s not something I need to worry about.”
“You could,” Dixxi piped up, changing the focus of our discussion to me.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You could, if you wanted to, I meant.”
“Get pregnant, have kids? In case you failed to notice, Dix, Adam’s a vampire. For all intents and purposes, he’s dead. Dead men can’t make babies.” I found myself echoing my aunt’s line from last year when she’d found out I was with Adam.
“He’s Unseelie Sidhe.” Her expression was both direct and disconcerting. “They don’t die.”
I stared at her in a daze. I had no words. She was absolutely right. When we discovered Adam’s heritage, it never occurred to me to ask how he became vampire. As far as I knew, a person had to die, and three days later after being bitten and drained and sharing blood with the vampire, the person would wake as the living dead, Nosferatu. Niko had died. He’d told me his story. He’d been dying of the plague when Adam found him, turned him.
“How do you know this? That his semen could be viable?” I demanded.
“I don’t,” she said. “But I’m a geneticist. If Adam never truly died, it’s far more likely that his sperm are only dormant. His vampirism probably masks the Sidhe genes. Has anyone ever tested him?”
“What for? I have no intentions of bearing a child,” I said. “I just got started with my adult life in the Clan. Even if what you’re saying is true, and that something could be done to make little Kelly-Walker progeny, it’s not something I care to even consider for at least several decades.”
Bea made a small sound, almost a whimper.
“Shit, Bea, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “This night is about you, not me.” Could I be more self-centered? Though, this time, Dixxi was the one who changed the subject. Distraction, maybe?
“Bea, I’d like to get a blood sample from you, if you wouldn’t mind,” Dixxi said.
“Why?” Bea seemed worried. “I can’t go to my doctor and ask for genetic testing—you were the one who told me that. The werewolf genes and all.”
“No, you can’t go to your doctor,” Dixxi agreed. “I could call in a few markers, though, at the Health Science Center in San Antonio. I might borrow a lab, get a friend to do me a favor or two.”
“Whatever you need, Dixxi,” I said. “Money, whatever—the Kellys will be glad to help.”
“I appreciate it, Keira, but my friends don’t really operate that way. It’s mostly favors, you know, all us ABD types. We trade.”
I pulled my knees up to my chin and wrapped my arms around my legs. “I feel useless here,” I said. “I’m not a scientist. I can’t help by giving you money. Bea’s my best friend. I want to help and all I can do is sit here—”
“I’ve got an idea,” Tucker said. “Dixxi, can you describe to Keira what kinds of things you’d be looking for in the blood? She could perhaps scan Bea, see if she sees anything that way.”
“Scan how?”
“Magickally,” I said. “Scan her body, her aura, her—”
“Can you get down to genetic level?”
I had no idea. “Probably. It’s worth a shot.” I crossed my mental fingers. I had to try.
“Okay, then let’s plan on that. I’ll have to run by the apartment and get some notes off my laptop. I can bring them by later.” She paused a moment. “Or maybe tomorrow, if you’re busy later on. Lev told me what was going on. That you guys were going to do some detective work up at the church.”
“Sort of,” I said. “I’m sending some folks to check things out after dark tonight. Tucker and I need to go have a chat with someone else right now. Feel free to come by the
ranch, though. We can meet up there. Say six or seven?”
“That’ll work. Deli closes at seven and I usually help Mark clean up, but I’m sure I can get out of it … considering.”
Considering Bea, or the dead wolves? I wondered. No matter, in any case, helping Bea was still a priority.
“Perfect,” I said. “Bea, you should rest, hon. We can come by later if you’re up for it, or even better, in the morning. You can sleep tonight, close the café again tomorrow, or get Noe, Tia, and Tio to run things while you’re out.”
“Did I miss something here?” Bea sounded a little more like her usual self. “You’re going to play Nancy Drew?”
“Long story, but in a nutshell, we’re trying to find out who killed several of the pack’s wolves. We think it’s poachers, guys from the Church of the White Rock.”
Bea shook her head. “I don’t even know. I’m not sure I want to ask for details at this point.”
“I promise I’ll tell you the whole sordid story later,” I said. “Pinky swear, okay?”
She wiped her face and let out a tired sigh. “Later then. If it gets too late, call first, okay? I get tired quicker these days.”
“Deal.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“YOU HEARD BACK from Luka yet?” Tucker asked as we turned into the drive at Hills and Dales Ice House, just a few miles from Rio Seco’s main crossroads. Thankfully, driving there didn’t take long. I didn’t begrudge Bea the time, but I kept feeling a strong urge to get to Joe’s and find out what he knew, what he’d been alluding to earlier.
Next to the ice house sat a tired gray wood shack, hubcaps hung from the storm gutters, all sorts of odds and ends decorating the small yard in front. JOE’S TRASH the sign proclaimed. The old black truck was parked behind the shack, but I could see the tailgate from the road.
“Voice mail,” I said. “I’ve left a couple of messages.” I nodded at the shack. “Looks like he’s here.”
Tucker nodded back. “Good. I wish Luka would call you back, though. That message from him was pretty cryptic.”
I parked the car. “He’s a kid. Wanting to be mysterious or something.”
“No doubt.”
We got out of the car and walked up to the shack. Joe exited the small place, a pipe in one hand and a large mug of something in the other. He walked with deliberation to a black wooden rocker on the right side of the tiny porch, sat, then set his mug down on the porch rail. As he began rocking, he tamped his pipe, pulled a Zippo lighter from his overalls pocket, and puffed. Did he not see us or was he just ignoring us?
After a few minutes of us watching him, him ignoring us, I shrugged and began to turn away, figuring the very least I could do was to go inside the ice house next door and get me a cold one.
“Y’all just gonna stand there?” Joe’s gravelly voice emerged from around the mouthpiece of the pipe.
“May we ask you a few things?” I ventured.
He motioned to a couple of short stools next to him. “Free country.”
Tucker and I approached, each of us pulling up a stool. Great, now I felt as if I were a recalcitrant student preparing to be chastised. My knees nearly reached my chin. Tucker elected to stay standing, one foot on the stool. Stubbornly, I stayed seated. “Joe, when we talked before, we were interrupted.”
“We were,” he said, and rocked some more.
I suppressed an irritated sigh. “Joe, could you help me out here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and not let it degenerate into a pleading whine.
Joe glanced over at Hills and Dales, watching as a couple of local guys loaded down with twelve-packs and ice got into their pickup and drove off. The lot was empty now, no one out there but the yard dog, an old yellow mutt who started to walk over to us, then slunk away once he got a whiff.
Tucker grinned and whispered too low for Joe to hear. “Too much wolf around here for him.”
Joe stopped rocking, his eyes narrowing and the expression on his face changing from old-guy-relaxed to sharp and inquisitive. “Wolves, you say?”
Tucker stood up straight and stared at Joe. “You heard me?”
“I hear lots of things, boy. Just because I’m old don’t mean I’m deaf, too.”
“Not too many people could have heard my brother,” I said, now standing up, too. “Who are you?” Perhaps the right question was more “what” than “who,” but I’d start off slowly.
“Can’t rightly say, miss.” Joe’s face became bland again as he answered. “Was a foundling, they tell me.”
I put out a hand, palm flat up in the air about two feet from Joe’s head. I felt it immediately. Damn it, I should’ve known—those eyes, those damnable old-as-the-hills eyes. “You’re a changeling,” I accused. “Part fey.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, don’t rightly know.”
“What do you know, then?” Tucker demanded.
Joe turned his face from us and stared out into the road. “I know that I found a bag. Out back of the church. They all been up to something, something not good. Lots of money coming in and out of the place, but behind the scenes. They never notice me. Not the old trash man.”
“Drugs?”
He shrugged but still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “That’s what I thought. So I grabbed the trash bag when I saw it. Felt like something soft, heavier than drugs. Didn’t open it till I got here.” He turned slowly, his inhuman eyes nearly glowing. “First thought it were furs, thought I’d hit on some illegal fur sales. Then I saw below.”
In a movement almost too fast for me to see, he grabbed my arm. “See—look at what I seen,” he whispered, the sounds sibilant and compelling.
Flashes of fur and blood and a dainty hand, manicure still intact but covered in blood. The stench of heat-ripened dead flesh assaulted my nostrils, raped my mind. One blue eye rolled toward me in a half-human, half-wolf face, its perfectly waxed eyebrow incongruous next to the ravaged remains of her head. I pulled my arm free and ran, down from the porch, out back to where no one could see as I puked my guts into the hot Texas dirt. Above my retching, I could hear Joe explaining to Tucker.
“I thought the wolves ate the lady, but I was wrong. Once I got my stomach back, I could see … was just her. Part person. Part wolf.”
“What did you do with her?” Tucker’s voice stayed steady and calm.
“Buried her out where no one’ll find her. She deserved a Christian burial,” he said. “Ain’t no marker, but I said the right words and such.” He cocked his head and stared at me a moment before continuing. “Was going to come see you. Was told if I ever was to see anyone else who was like her, that I was to come talk to you.” He paused.
I barely heard his words as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and fumbled in my pocket, hoping I had a breath mint or something. Nothing but my phone. Damn it. Doing the best I could to spit out the taste of my own vomit, I wiped my mouth clean again and rejoined Joe and my brother.
Joe handed me his mug. “Peppermint tea,” he said. “Cold. It’ll settle you.”
I took it, nodding my thanks, and sipped at the refreshing drink. Tucker patted me on the arm. “I’m okay,” I said. “Go on, Joe, please. Who told you to talk to us?”
He explained about the lady who’d stopped in at his place. I knew exactly who it had been.
“My great-grandmother,” I said, leaving out the extra “great” for simplicity’s sake. “She told you that if you ever saw anyone who was like her, to come talk to them?”
“She did,” he said. “I figured she were a harbinger.”
“I hope not of doom,” I tried to joke. “Sorry,” I quickly amended. “Poor taste. Blame it on what I just saw.”
He nodded gravely. “No offense taken, Miz Kelly.”
“You didn’t think of talking to Sheriff Miller?” Tucker asked. “She was at the game. You found the bag in her county.”
“Don’t like her. Even less than her husband … and he’s mean to those boys, cruel even.”
<
br /> “Why don’t you like her?” I asked.
“There is something deeply wrong with that woman,” he said solemnly. “Evil in her being, I know this.”
“Do you often feel how people really are?” I asked. “Inside, I mean.”
He just watched me, those light eyes boring into me. “All the time,” he said. “All the time.”
“How about the pastor, then?”
“Pastor Hagen?” Joe seemed to think a moment. “He’s not a bad sort at heart. Just weak.”
“Weak?”
“He thinks t’other folks know better than him. He’s new to this, you see. Just been pastor a couple of years. Don’t want to rock the boat.”
“What boat might that be?” I urged gently.
“There’s pure hatred here, Miz Kelly. Hate that runs hot and deep. Hotter than these temperatures, even.”
I pulled back away from him, puzzled. “Hatred how?”
“They don’t like outsiders.”
“Pretty normal,” Tucker said. “This is a small and very insular community.”
“They is that,” Joe agreed. “But this is more …” He stopped a moment, his gaze turning away from me. “I don’t rightly know if I can even say how. I don’t know particulars.”
“But there are particulars?”
“There are,” he said. “What I do know is that group of theirs—the Brotherhood—there’s more to them than community service. There’s something wrong. I tried to listen one night, heard some of the boys outside the church. But they saw me and went away.”
“Are you in any danger?”
“No, ma’am,” he snorted. “They just think of me as that ol’ nigger man who picks up trash.”
I flinched at his bluntness. “Joe, I want to be sure you’re safe. If for any reason, you feel uncomfortable, come to the Wild Moon Ranch. You know where it is?”