Jaguar (The Madison Wolves Book 12)

by Robin Roseau

  “Not at all,” Carissa said. “We’re all pleased to partake in your customs.”

  “Perfect,” Lara said. “Zoe, I believe you asked to go first.”

  Zoe set the pattern. She rose from her seat and made her way to the front of the room. She came to a stop in front of Lara, and then stepped into her, accepting a hug. Then she stepped over and clasped hands with Michaela, seated on a sofa along the side, the one Lara and I had carried out. Lara sat down beside her mate. There was a little more shuffling around, and Elisabeth joined them as well. Zoe waited for people to settle, and then smiled.

  “I’m overwhelmed today, as you can all imagine.” And then she told a story of how she got to know Ember, talking about time spent on a pack play night, and then something about a gaming night when Portia was gone. “My beginning with the pack was difficult, but thanks to Portia, Ember, and some of the others here, I feel entirely welcome and safe. Ember. Portia. I love you so much. Thank you for helping to make me so happy.”

  “Aww,” we all said, and then Zoe worked her way back to her place. By the time she reached Portia, Ember was there, and they hugged tightly before Zoe sat back with Portia. Ember returned to the other teenagers.

  After that, Lara called on people, and I saw no pattern to her choices. She called on the kids; she called on the adults. Some people told very short stories. Some were much longer.

  Some clearly had volunteered, but not all of them. “Benny,” Lara said.

  “Me?” said a male voice. I turned my head and saw a human I hadn’t seen before. “I didn’t have my hand up.”

  “And yet, we’d like to hear from you. Come on up, Benny.”

  He was seated with a large female wolf. She gave him a little boost, giving him little choice but to stand. And then he made his way to the front.

  I sized him up. He was a compact man, but fit, with strong shoulders and arms, at least for a human. I wondered who he was. He reached the front, and Lara clasped hands with him then turned him to face all of us.

  “Nearly everyone here knows Benny, but I do not believe our guests do. Benny lives here in Bayfield and is an old friend of Michaela’s. The pack met him when Michaela took us kayaking that first time. He and June hit it off, and we’re very pleased to call him a member of our pack.”

  Then she nodded to Carissa. “Benny, with Iris and Lindsey is Carissa, as I am certain you have guessed.”

  The human followed Lara’s gaze, and then he stared at Carissa for a good ten heartbeats. I couldn’t read his expression, and he didn’t ask any of the obvious questions. But then he nodded.

  “This large woman,” Lara said with a gesture towards me, “Is Annabelle Delacroix. She is a jaguar and truly magnificent.”

  Benny nodded to me. “Anna.”

  “Benny,” I said. “Alpha, if I understand what you said, if I were to return next summer, it is Benny who would rent a kayak to me?”

  “Yes,” Lara replied. “If we were not to loan one of ours.”

  “Benny, I’m told I need a wet suit. I don’t know where to get one.”

  “I might have one for you,” he said. He stepped over. “If you could stand.”

  Prudence moved away, and I stood, towering over the human. He looked up and gulped. “I think you’re taller than Lara.”

  “Yes, but perhaps no taller than a large male wolf.”

  “I have a few suits sized for the large males,” he said. He looked me up and down. “The proportions wouldn’t be perfect, but you would fit. But like I tell all the wolves, if you were to come here on a regular basis, I would encourage you to be custom fitted. I have a storage room where I keep personal gear, but you should warn me if you’re coming so I can pull them out.”

  “That is very kind, Benny,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I sat back down, and Prudence cuddled into me again. Benny tried to escape into the back, but Lara stopped him. “Not so fast, Benny,” she said. “You haven’t told your story.”

  He turned around. “I thought perhaps you’d forget.”

  “I might, but do you think Michaela would?”

  He sighed, causing a few snickers, but let Lara lead him back to the front of the room. Then she sat down.

  Benny gulped and looked around, shifting from foot to foot. Then he looked over at Michaela and Lara, and Michaela said gently, “Just speak from your heart, Benny.”

  And then I realized he wasn’t afraid of the wolves. He just didn’t like to speak in public. But he nodded.

  “I was eight years old when I moved to Bayfield. My parents were having troubles, and they shipped me to my grandparents’ for the summer. And then they did divorce, and Dad took off halfway across the country. I didn’t see him again until I was 17, and I didn’t really want much to do with him by then.”

  Then he looked over to Michaela again, but she only nodded encouragement to him.

  “That doesn’t seem like a good story, I suppose,” he said. “But you have to know that to know the rest. I didn’t really want to be here. I missed my parents, and I missed my friends. We’d been living in Minneapolis, so this seemed like the complete boonies to me, and I didn’t like it. It didn’t help that I was deathly afraid of the lake.”

  He paused. “I was pretty sullen that first year. I was pissed that I had to go to school here. And I’ve always been small, so the other kids picked on me besides.” He looked around. “I don’t know if any of you can understand that.”

  “I can,” Michaela said gently.

  “I suppose,” Benny replied. “That first year was pretty bad. But the next summer, a friend of my grandfather’s stayed with us for a few days. I was sullen about that, too, because I had to sleep on the couch. That first night, I heard them talking. I couldn’t hear everything they said, but I knew they talked about me, and I didn’t think my grandparents were any happier to have me here than I was to be here.”

  But then he smiled. “My grandfather’s friend’s name was Francis. Grandpa called him Frank, but Grandma called him Francis. I called him Mr. Wills, but he asked me to call him Francis, too, so I did. It was the next day over breakfast that Francis asked me where my favorite fishing spot was. Well, I’d never been fishing, and when I told him that, he was shocked, or at least pretended to be. ‘Never been fishing?’ he asked. ‘And you live here, beside the most beautiful lake in the entire world, but you’ve never been fishing?’ And then there was nothing to be done, but I was to go fishing with him that day. He took me with him to get fresh bait, and he told me all about fishing, just talking, you know. And then we went out in this tiny, tiny boat, out onto that great, massive lake. I clutched the edges and prayed we didn’t tip over.”

  Benny paused again, and then he began to grin. “I caught my first fish, a trout. Francis had to help me bring it in. It was a monster, or so I thought. That night, we had it for dinner, grilled with butter and a few simple herbs. But from then on I was hooked, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  He paused and looked at his feet for a minute. Then he looked up again. “My grandparents wouldn’t let me go out on the lake by myself, of course. I was far too young. And they didn’t fish, either. So my only option was to fish from shore near town, and the fishing there isn’t very good at all. But Francis came back the next summer, and the summer after that, and the summer after that. I’d be excited for weeks ahead of time.”

  He laughed. “I was twelve when it was too windy for us to go out fishing. Instead we stared out at the water, neither of us very happy, and watched the sailboats. But then Francis said, ‘If it’s too windy to fish, it’s not too windy to go sailing.’ But I said, ‘We don’t have a sailboat.’ And he said, ‘No, but they do. Let’s go see if we can find someone willing to take us aboard.’ And then we walked down to the docks and talked to the sailors, and it was the third boat we talked to that said, ‘Sure. Come on aboard.’”

  Benny paused again.

  “Francis couldn’t come the summer I was fifteen. He was ill. That’s a sad par
t, and I’m going to skip that. But I was old enough to go out alone, and had been for a year or so. But that was the summer I first climbed into a kayak. And it wasn’t Francis that taught me to kayak, but it was Francis that taught me to be brave enough to go out onto those amazing waters.”

  He looked at his feet once more, and then he didn’t look up for a while. “I never saw Francis again. He died, and it was too far to go to his funeral. And that part is sad, too.” He was still for a moment and then, still looking at his feet, said, “Francis gave me a gift. He took a troubled, sullen boy, and he put him on a path, one that shaped me into the man I’ve become.” Then he looked up, but he looked to the ceiling. “Francis, thank you. I don’t know what my life would have become without your influence.”

  He stood there, and then Michaela slipped from Lara and moved into Benny, one petite woman hugging the man, making him look bigger than he did while standing beside Lara. Then Michaela moved Benny back, handing him off to his wolf, June.

  “Thank you, Benny,” Lara said. “Benny’s story reminds all of us of our responsibilities and the impact we each can have on the lives of others. Thomas, do you think you’d like to tell a story?”

  Two people later, Lara said, “Carissa, I imagine you have stories.”

  Carissa laughed lightly. “One or two.” She rose from her seat but offered a caress to the wolves before moving to the front. She clasped hands with Lara briefly then turned to face us.

  I’d seen Carissa in front of an audience before. She was an amazing speaker. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. Not all vampires were, of course. Some thought they were, but they overplayed it. But Carissa smiled, and the room lit up with her smile whether people knew what she was or not.

  And so she smiled as she looked around the room. “Everyone here knows what I am. Everyone can guess that I have lived a very, very long time. I am not the oldest vampire I know, not by far, and there are fae that are exceedingly ancient as well.”

  She moved about in front of us, looking here, looking there, meeting gazes when allowed. Then she said, “Lara gave me enough time to consider what story I might want to tell. And I think I’m going to tell a story that won’t make sense to you until the end. We are to tell a story of thanks, and this story by itself is not of thanks at all. But I think it’s important.”

  She turned around in a full circle, her hands raised. “This is a beautiful home,” she said. And somehow when she finished her turn, she was nearest Angel and Scarlett. “The people who designed and built it should be proud of what they have accomplished.” She smiled again. “As you can imagine, I have been to many beautiful places, and I have a deep appreciation for beauty. This place is unlike my current homes.”

  Then she turned around again, walking back to the center. “I will not tell you how old I am. The language of my birth no longer exists, not really.” And then she began speaking another language, a paragraph or so, and I didn’t recognize a single word. She laughed. “I haven’t spoken that language in three hundred years, and I haven’t heard it spoken from another in much longer.” She smiled. “This doesn’t happen when I speak English, because I learned English only relatively recently, as I measure things. But if I speak French or German, I sometimes use words or pronunciations no one has heard since before Columbus.”

  She let that settle, but I had absolutely no idea where she was going.

  “Rats,” she said. “We thought it was the rats. Everyone thought it was the rats. In modern English, it is called the black death, or sometimes the bubonic plague, but that was only one form of the plague. The 14th century wasn’t the first time the plague had come to Europe, but the pandemic that ravaged Europe in the 1340s was probably the worst.”

  She moved around again. “No one understood, of course. We thought it was the rats. And in a way, it was. But we made the worst choices. We burned out the rats, trying to drive them from our villages. Do you know what happens then? Michaela, don’t answer. Anyone else?”

  She looked around. Finally Cassie raised her hand. “The rats die?”

  “Some do,” Carissa answered. “What do the rest do?”

  “Run.”

  “Yes. They run. They run from our village to the village down the road. And do you know what they carry with them?”

  “Plague?”

  “Indirectly. It wasn’t the rats. We know that now. But we didn’t then. The rats didn’t carry the plague. Do you know what carried the plague?”

  “Fleas,” said Ember. “The fleas liked the rats, but they liked humans, too. The rats were just taxis.”

  “Yes,” Carissa said. “Fleas.” She paused. “You know. We bathed. Oh, we didn’t have showers, and very few people bathed in a tub like we have now. But we washed daily, and some towns had hot springs. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Roman baths. It wasn’t until after the plague that some idiot decided bathing was how we could get sick. But before than, people bathed regularly. But there were still fleas. And lice. And other things.”

  She paced a moment. “People worked hard. Women died in childbirth. Children definitely died in childbirth. Those knights of Arthur’s? Myths, of course. Most knights were complete, utter assholes. I lost track of how many rabid dogs I put down when they’d come to my village, thinking it was ripe for raping and sacking.”

  She looked around. “Do you know what I am thankful for? Showers. City sanitary services. Garbage trucks. Vacuum cleaners. Insecticide. Electricity.” She paused. “Science,” she added. “And not directly for myself, but modern medicine.”

  And with that, she headed back to her chair, but Michaela stopped her. “Carissa.” The vampire turned around. “Will you tell us the good parts, at least one or two?”

  Carissa nodded. “Most people were good,” she said. “They helped each other. And it seemed crowded at the time, but it wasn’t. Wide, open spaces and vast forests. And as a vampire, it was easy. I had to move every forty years or so, but I didn’t have to move all that far. Fifty miles was practically the other side of the world.”

  She nodded to Michaela and moved to her couch, but Monique stood up. “Carissa. What do you do now? You said before you’ve lived in New Orleans for a long time. How long?”

  “Well, that was a surprise for me,” Carissa said. “I arrived when New Orleans was returned to French control in 1802. Surprise, surprise, as Napoleon sold Louisiana to the Americans in 1803, and so I became an American citizen. I’ve been there since.”

  “But how do you hide? People must recognize you.”

  “I don’t hide,” she said. “Not really. Oh, I tend to avoid situations where that can happen. But you see? They know who I am.”

  “What?” Monique asked.

  “Oh, not the general population, but the people who matter. The top politicians, the head of the police.” She smiled. “In Louisiana, if you want to go into politics, there are things you must do. Do you know what that might be?”

  Monique looked at the vampire for a minute then shook her head.

  “Well, you must ask permission.”

  “From you?”

  “Not just me, but from the other powers: the voodoo queens, me, the heads of the most powerful houses. To the voodoo queens, they bring a gift. To me, they bring a promise.” She laughed for a moment.

  “What’s funny?” Monique asked.

  “I avoid politics,” Carissa said. “And if someone comes to me politely, I always give permission. Most think they are asking a young but powerful woman. They don’t know what I am. But some do, and sometimes they think they need to bribe me.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have laughed. It’s not really funny, not really.”

  “They bring a person, don’t they?”

  “Some. The ones who know what I am, but don’t know how insulted I am likely to be. They may offer themselves, or a spouse, or a child. I have been offered infants. Do you know how disgusting that is?”

  “That’s-“ Monique broke off. Carissa waited patiently, letting the y
oung wolf come to her own conclusions. “That’s terrible. Isn’t it? I mean.”

  “Yes, Monique,” Carissa said. “What kind of person would offer an infant as a meal?” She let that question settle.

  “What do you do?”

  “It depends. If they offer themselves, or a spouse, then I take the time to see what kind of person they are. I’ve even accepted. If it’s a child, then it depends on the age of the child. Sometimes they are your age, and while I never take from anyone who is not an adult, it’s not necessarily disgusting that they offer.”

  “And when it’s a baby?”

  “Oh, I take, but not the baby.” She turned towards the alphas. “We have strayed from our theme.”

  “Perhaps,” said Lara. “But you should finish.”

  Carissa nodded and turned back to Monique. But then I saw her fangs grow. She turned around, letting everyone see. There were a few gasps, not many. “I take,” Carissa said. Then she shook her head. “People like that tend to taste off, and I don’t care for it. But I take, and then I absolutely forbid them their requests. I let them know what kind of person I think they are. And then I compel them to mend their wicked ways.” She moved closer, stalking Monique, moving closer and closer.

  The werewolf was either very brave or very stupid, as she stood her ground, looking down at the vampire queen. “You are a good girl, Monique,” Carissa said. “But you should be frightened of me right now.”

  Monique shook her hair a little but didn’t drop her gaze. “You won’t hurt me.”

  Carissa stepped closer. “How sure are you?”

  “Positive.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Michaela and Lara trust you.”

  Carissa froze an instant and then smiled briefly. “So by extension, you trust me as well.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’re right. I won’t hurt you. But you’re still curious, aren’t you?”

  “You said you compel them.”

  “I do.”