Family Pride (Blood of the Pride)

by Nantus, Sheryl

  I gave a nervous laugh, caught between the pain and the fear. “Having too much fun.”

  In a flash she was in my face, nose to nose with an angry snarl. “You think I have nothing better to do than take care of you? Your father...” She paused and drew back, the sadness on her face snatching my breath away. “I’ll notify the Board you passed the test.” Jess gave a brisk nod to Ruth before leaving so quickly I had to remind myself she’d been there.

  “Rebecca?” Bran’s voice brought me back to the present. He waved at the waiting cab, his tone verging on frantic. “Let’s go.”

  The cab driver didn’t mind vague instructions as we zipped through narrow side streets, sliding through traffic and construction with ease until we pulled up in front of the corner store. Bran gave him a handsome tip as we got out, earning us a grateful smile.

  Tony’s Convenience was like a hundred other small stores in the city, delivering milk and bread to the desperate at odd hours of the day and night for inflated prices. The postage-stamp-sized shop stood on the corner with neon signs advertising soda and a sandwich board at the entrance announcing the latest lottery jackpot waiting to be won. Various flyers and banners covered the windows to the point of making the glass moot.

  Bran pulled on the single door and waited for me. I suspected it was more out of fear of meeting Jess face-on than chivalry.

  An electronic jingle signaled our entrance.

  The lone man standing behind the small squat counter looked up from his newspaper.

  “Anything I can help you with?” The cheerful squeak was forced, the wail of a man who’d imagined a better future and ended up selling lottery tickets and chewing gum.

  “We’re with Jess,” I said.

  He folded the newspaper into a tight square before tossing it into a corner.

  “I see.” He came out from around the counter, giving me a better look at him.

  Tony Romano was tall enough to reach my shoulder and reminded me more of a snake than a Felis. Long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail gave his thin face a sharp, feral appearance. He looked like the type of guy who needed a safety line in the shower to make sure he didn’t slip down the drain.

  His nostrils flared as I approached. He knew I wasn’t his usual customer looking for a chocolate fix.

  His own scent, thick and oily, assaulted my senses. He was family, all right—the type you didn’t introduce your girlfriends to.

  Tony glanced at the door. “Jess told me she was on her way.” The tone implied he’d be of little help until she arrived.

  I surveyed the shelves, trying to slow my racing pulse. Prices were comparable to my own local hole-in-the-wall, which meant they were twice as much as I’d pay at the grocery store. The stacks of noodle cups and potato chip bags reaching to the ceiling gave me a mild case of claustrophobia.

  The store of last resort for those late-night munchie runs and desperate men looking for baby supplies. If you bought formula and diapers here you had to be past desperate.

  I checked out the formula shelf. The expiration dates weren’t all that far away and a ring of disturbed dust showed where the kidnapper’s can had come from.

  I hoped the kidnapper would at least try to feed him.

  Tony watched me stroll around his store, ignoring Bran.

  I smiled inside. Big mistake.

  Romano’s dark eyes narrowed. “You must be the outcast.” The last word came out like a curse. “Figured you’d be taller.”

  I spread my hands, showing off all of my five foot four inches. “Big things, small packages and so forth.” I smiled. “But I think you know all about that, eh?”

  Romano scowled.

  Bran moved up behind me. I felt his body heat scorching my back and I knew he was sizing the Felis up.

  Romano looked over my shoulder at Bran, sizing him up. “You must be the human.”

  “You must be the genius of your family,” Bran deadpanned.

  The Felis’s upper lip curled back.

  “And she’s no outcast.” I felt the soft growl, the heated air on the back of my neck. It was a kit’s growl but it was enough to set the middle-aged man back on his heels. This wasn’t some dumb human looking to be ripped off by the cunning Felis for some overpriced beef jerky.

  “Got a big mouth there, buddy.” Romano gave me a fast look before focusing on Bran. “Does she also hold your dick when you pee?”

  The challenge flashed between the two men. You didn’t have to be Felis to sense that type of unspoken dare.

  Bran cocked his head to one side. “Does your boyfriend?”

  Romano took a step toward us before freezing in his tracks.

  “Damn, human. Makes me wish I was twenty years younger.” Jess drawled from her position in the doorway. She leaned on the wooden frame, giving her height as exactly five foot eight inches according to the taped yardstick. “There’s something about a man willing to go to the ground for you.” She gave a wistful sigh. “If I were younger I’d make you fight for him.”

  “You couldn’t handle him.” I wasn’t in any mood to dick around with trying to top each other. “Now that we’ve all massaged our egos let’s get down to business and find this baby.”

  Jess tilted her head to one side and her eyebrows rose. For a horrible second I thought she was going to reprimand me and/or bring up my relationship with Bran. Instead she gave me a short nod and turned her attention to Romano.

  Romano shrank perceptibly under her intense stare. It took a second for him to drop his gaze to the tiled floor, scarred by countless shoe heels.

  “You don’t treat family or their friends like that,” Jess warned. “Do it again and you’ll answer to me. Is that clear?”

  Romano nodded, intensely studying his toes.

  “Okay. Over and done with. Now tell us what you saw,” Jess said.

  Romano cleared his throat before speaking, careful to avoid looking at any of us directly. “He come in here carrying a baby under his arm like the daily newspaper. Puts him down here, wrapped up in a blanket. No car seat, no nothing.” He tapped the scratched clear plastic on the counter by the cash register, his anger turned away from us and at the invisible customer. “Baby’s crying, fussing, wriggling all over the place. I had to hold him to make sure he didn’t fall over the fucking edge.” Romano huffed. “Guy runs down the aisle and grabs diapers, canned formula, then lights up a smoke right here, in front of me and the kid.” The greasy-haired man shook his head. “That ain’t right. You want to screw up your lungs, fine. Ain’t right to put that on a kid, not a baby.”

  Jess waved a hand in the air, encouraging him.

  “Guy tosses money at me and grabs the kid and the groceries. Thought for a second he was gonna put the kid in the plastic bag as well. He’s puffing up a storm and burns through the smoke like he was on the way to his execution.” He shuffled his feet. “I didn’t think nothing ’bout it until the alert came in.” He gave Jess a halfhearted smile. “That should count for something, eh?”

  We all ignored it.

  “When?” Jess asked.

  “Within the last hour.” Romano drew a finger along the counter. “Been nobody in since. You should get a good trail if you work at it.”

  I sniffed the air. A mixture of bad cologne, feces, urine and...foul-smelling cigarettes. The scent cloud was here but it was like trying to pick out one specific needle out of a cluster of needles. I could barely identify the cigarettes, much less the smoker.

  “Do you recognize him?” Jess’s gruff tone brought me out of the mental confusion.

  “I can’t.” I shook my head. “There’s too much. Too many.”

  “Filthy habit, cigarette smoking,” Romano scoffed. “I wouldn’t even sell them except they make me good money.” He rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “Raise
the tax, I say.”

  Bran let out a snort. I didn’t even try to figure out what he was thinking.

  Romano pointed at a half-smoked butt on the floor. The smashed tobacco was smeared in all directions like an ugly brown flower. “Bastard didn’t even blink when he dropped it. Think he was afraid of burning the kid; that’s why he dumped it.”

  Jess snatched it up and held it under my nose. “Try again,” she demanded. “Pull it in, breathe it all in.” Her words came through in a whisper, the urgency sending a shiver down my spine. “You can do this.”

  I scrunched my eyes together so tight I felt the pulse against my eyelids.

  The tobacco stung my nose. I caught the faintest whiff of a personal scent before it was swallowed up again by mud and dirt and the garbage he’d walked through before stomping on the cigarette.

  “Still nothing,” I whimpered, the frustration gaining ground.

  Bran’s hand landed on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured.

  I opened my eyes to see Jess shaking her head in disagreement. She reached over and plucked the mashed cigarette from my fingers without comment.

  Her thin slender fingers rolled the butt back and forth, dissembling it in her palm. She lifted her hand up to her nose, close enough to snort the shredded tobacco.

  Jess inhaled, so deep her white blouse tightened to the point of button-popping. Her eyes closed with a look of intense concentration.

  She Changed in a flash, the light brown fur covering her facial features. Her Roman nose shrank down and retreated inward, her eye shifting to pure feline. The ugly scar on the left side of her face became more pronounced, the angry scarlet skin remaining bare.

  She took another whiff and I remembered she’d fought her way onto the Board and into a position of power in the Pride—along with terrorizing generations of kits who viewed her with shock and awe.

  Bran squeezed my shoulder. The warmth burned through my coat and shirt, soothing the nervousness building in my muscles. His fingers kneaded the leather in a reflexive move to calm me.

  Jess didn’t notice, focused on her task.

  She smiled.

  Not a nervous smile, not a smirk, but a true hunter’s smile of satisfaction.

  “Got him.” She tossed the cigarette remains to the surprised store owner and spun on one booted heel. “Let’s go.” She Changed back within seconds, shifting easily back into full human form.

  “Can she track him?” Bran whispered as we fell into step behind her. “Just from that?”

  “Damned right I can, kit.” Jess stopped shy of the door and shot us a sly grin over her shoulder. “I can track a flea in an animal shelter.”

  Romano retreated behind the counter in silence to watch us leave. I resisted the urge to grab something on the way out to push my luck.

  Jess paused for a half second on the store’s threshold before turning right. “He’s within walking distance and working alone,” she said, her long legs keeping her ahead of us.

  “Based on what?” I tried to keep my tone respectful but a trace of disbelief crept in.

  “No place to park here.” She swept her arm outward at the busy street. “He wouldn’t risk parking and taking the chance of getting noticed, or worse, getting towed.”

  I glanced up at the prominent NO PARKING signs standing guard every few feet. It was a risk but a calculated risk.

  “He would have taken a cab after killing Molly. He wouldn’t risk walking through the lobby with a newborn in his arms screaming and crying. Avoid the taxi stand out front and slip out the back, come around to a major street and flag down one of the cabs out of traffic.” I ran the argument to ground. “He didn’t have time to sit and wait for a parking lot attendant or juggle coins into a meter if he could find one.”

  Jess spoke. “He brought the baby into the store because he didn’t want to or couldn’t leave the baby alone. If he had a car and a car seat he’d have left the kid there, less trouble to deal with. He’d already dismissed the cab, otherwise he’d have left the baby with the driver. Same reasoning tells me he’s working alone, he’s got no one watching his back.” She licked her lips. “Good.”

  She stopped, so suddenly Bran grabbed my arm to avoid me smacking into her back. I missed eating her jean jacket by a fraction of an inch, bouncing back on my heels into Bran’s embrace.

  “Should use a warning signal or something,” he muttered. He knew and I knew Jess could hear but she was too involved to snark back.

  She sniffed the air in short, measured pants. Her mouth opened slightly as if she was about to speak but I knew she was gathering even more trace on her prey.

  “This way.” The tall woman spun ninety degrees on her boots and led us down an alley.

  I flinched as we picked our way between Dumpsters overflowing with garbage. A Chinese restaurant, a barbecue place and a sandwich shop spit out enough waste to fill up another whole store.

  I could smell the decay, slimy meat turning worse with each second and rotting vegetables in wet cardboard boxes and in dank metal Dumpsters turning into a chemical sludge turning the strongest stomach. The tall narrow walls compressed the stench into a fat wall of smell we waded through. I flinched at the mental image of Liam being carried through this mess.

  Bran coughed, a deep from-the-bottom-of-your-belly cough closer to a gag than anything else. “I can’t imagine how bad this smells to you.”

  “Rank doesn’t even come close.” I huffed through my mouth, trying to cut out the worst of the smell.

  Jess strode between stacks of rotting boxes and over half-empty wooden cartons of fermenting cabbage without hesitation, brushing aside the stench and stink. “This way.” It was a hunter’s run, a light jog I knew she could keep up for miles.

  Not so much myself and Bran.

  I remembered hearing rumors she’d tracked a wounded stag five miles in the middle of a thunderstorm, breaking its neck when she finally ran it to ground. I hadn’t believed it then.

  I did now.

  We came out onto another side street. Jess turned down another, weaving between the buildings with the two of us in tow. The businesses changed from hole-in-the-wall restaurants to residential. Small apartments wedged into buildings originally intended as single-family dwellings, sliced and diced up in order to make more money renting the rooms and renovated apartments out to anyone who would pay.

  The three of us emerged onto a main street. My senses told me we’d come only a block from the convenience store, the maze-like alleys making it a much further trek.

  Jess put her hands on her hips and looked around, finally nodding at a dingy gray building. “He’s in there.”

  “How do you figure?” Bran was brave enough to ask.

  She viewed him with a mixture of curiosity and caution before speaking. I knew the tone, master hunter to unblooded kit.

  “Look at the buildings.” A hand waved at the skyline. “He’s looking for a place to hide where no one will care or question what he’s doing or what noises he’s giving off.” The index finger pointed at an old house, the single entrance displaying multiple names on the mailboxes. “Too many nosy neighbors. Couldn’t keep a baby there without the neighbors wondering.” It shifted to a large single-family residence with a minivan in the narrow driveway. “Definitely not.” The hand settled on a hotel and the large sign advertising the rates. “Rooms by the day or week, cash on the barrelhead and no questions asked.” She arched an eyebrow at Bran. “Good enough for you?”

  He gave her a sheepish smile. “Thanks.”

  The single word caught Jess unaware. The breath caught in her throat as she looked at Bran then back at me with something almost like approval.

  The iron mask fell, cutting us off.

  “Don’t stand there with your mouths hanging open.” Sh
e cracked her knuckles. “We haven’t gotten Liam back yet.”

  The moment had passed.

  The hotel was a survivor, the stonework marking it as one of the older buildings in the area. The two doors at the top of the steps had been repainted a loud red that shouted discount paint sale. There was no doorman waiting to open the door for us other than a scrawny street cat scampering across the front to disappear into yet another alleyway.

  We blew into the lobby like a troop of avenging angels with Jess leading the way.

  The decorations consisted of a single beaten-down brown couch and mismatched blue lounger, both of which looked like they’d swallow you if you sat down. A stack of week-old newspapers on the chipped coffee table offered little entertainment. A battered old television set in the far corner bleated the local 24-7 news channel at a whisper.

  Jess stopped at the desk.

  A teenager worked on his cell phone, fingers flying over the minute keyboard. He wore a T-shirt with a mutilated yellow happy face, the eyes replaced with X’s and faux blood drops scattered across the front.

  “Youwannaroom?” he grunted, eyes down on the minute screen. “Cashonlynocreditcards.”

  Jess’s right hand slammed down on both of his, smashing the phone and pinning him to the desktop.

  I could hear the tiny bones snap.

  I didn’t care.

  Her one good eye caught the kid’s gaze, locking it in place. “Man. Baby. Came through here not too long ago.” Her lips pulled back, showing bright white teeth. “Room number.”

  His pupils were dilated, showing recent drug use. He studied Jess’s face, noting the scarlet gash on the left cheek with little emotional response.

  “Hey. I could charge you with assault,” he replied in a monotone drone. He didn’t even try to pull free.

  “Hey, I could give a shit.” The pressure increased, her hand muscles tensing.

  The clerk frowned. “Ow.” He looked at Jess’s hand covering his own. “Ow,” he repeated with no anxiety or concern.

  I wasn’t sure if the kid was stoned or dumb but this wasn’t going to end well.