by Faith Hunter
Minutes passed. He was still standing there. He was hundreds of years old; time was different for old vamps; he could stand like that for hours, waiting, and not get tired. Heart not beating, not breathing, unmoving as a stone angel in a graveyard. I blew out a breath. “What?”
“You are healed.” There was just a hint of irritation in his voice. A hint of steel.
After a moment I said, “Thank you?”
“I did not drink from you. You are not my Enforcer. And . . . we did not make love.” His words were carefully precise. Relief washed through me so hot I broke out into a sweat. “According to your provincial American standards,” he added.
And with a little pop of displaced air, he was gone. According to your provincial American standards? What did that mean? I remembered his hands all over me. His tongue . . . I pulled the covers over my head and burrowed into the pillows. Oh crap. I was so going to hell.
And Beast was still absent. No snarky comment. No pad of paws across my mind, or prick of claw on my conscience or sly, sated happiness. Just a welling emptiness. But there had been the dream. I remembered the dream of the cave. Beast? She didn’t answer.
After I checked in with Molly about the whereabouts of Evangelina—still unknown—and about the health of her injured sisters—improving quickly—and with Derek about the security status of everything else, I stayed in bed the rest of the day, regaining strength, ordering room service, the TV on in the corner—mindless game shows, mindless talk shows, trying to stay mindless, so I didn’t have to remember that Beast was gone, or buried so deeply I couldn’t feel her. So I didn’t have to remember Grégoire and his talented mouth. Difficult to do, as his scent was in my sheets and my body was hypersensitive, every nerve twanging like a violin string. If Beast had been with me, she would have been purring. But she wasn’t. The need for Beast and the memory of desire flickered through me with every heartbeat, every nerve ending sparking, so sensitive it was like riding a blade edge between pain and pleasure. To keep from calling Grégoire, I ordered room service—every meat and seafood dish on the menu and several they prepared just for me, and four pots of tea. Each delivery was brought up by a happy Hispanic guy whom I tipped really well. He was making a week’s tips today as I regained my strength. Nearly dying when I couldn’t shift to heal was debilitating.
At seven p.m., the sun setting late in the early fall, my cell rang. It was Rick. Guilt zinged through me like lightning. I opened the cell, “Rick.”
“Help,” a voice panted, groaning. Rick. In pain.
I swung my legs to the floor. “What’s happened?” I heard a voice in the background and the sound of the cell hitting something. I started to call his name, but over the open airwaves I heard Kemnebi’s voice, smug and satisfied. “The moon is full. It calls to your beast-nature.”
Tonight? No wonder I’d been so . . . whatever I’d been with Grégoire. The full moon and sex went together for Beast like— Beast . . . ? She didn’t answer.
“You will continue trying to shift but will not succeed. You will not survive. Not without my assistance.” Rick screamed. The phone went dead.
Beast had been right, that Kemnebi would not honor his submission, that he was a human in cat skin. Kem-cat wanted Rick dead. He’d be in the woods somewhere. Lotta help that was.
I threw on clothes, taking care with hiking shoes, backpack, weapons. Someone had retrieved and cleaned my gear—had polished the blood out of and off of my guns and silvered blades. I dialed as I dressed. Bruiser answered, warmth in his voice. “Jane! How are—”
“Fine,” I interrupted. “Three things. One, there won’t be a parley tonight. Shaddock is on the run with the witch who spelled him, so Grégoire can take the night off. Again. Two, I need GPS positioning on the number I’m sending you, assuming it’s in Big Creek National Park above the Pigeon River. Three, I need Leo to order Grégoire to send me there in the helicopter.”
“One moment.” I heard keys tapping and he said, “Yes, the call originated from that mountain. Sending you a topo map of the area. You’ll be there in half an hour. Meet the helo at the hotel’s pad. Parley is canceled, and all participants notified.”
I clicked the cell shut and burst through the door into the common area just as Brandon answered his cell. “She wants to go where?” he said. Pushing the B-Twins to speed, talking as we raced to the helo pad, I dialed Derek and put him in charge of security for the night.
Brandon powered up Grégoire’s helo. Over the engine’s high-pitched whine, I was informed that Brian and he were both qualified pilots, and their master, Grégoire, loved to fly. A vamp with a death wish. Go figure. Even the undead had to be crazy to fly in a flimsy glass, air (and maybe a half pound of steel) contraption with no wings and no glide power. If it broke, it would fall like a rock. Beast had refused to ride in the helo. My heart clenched. She wasn’t fighting me.
According to the B-Twins, chattering while they powered up and completed a checklist, the helo was a refurbished Vietnam Era Bell Huey. It had four permanent seats and gear for more, with heavy armament and black-out windows suitable for vampire travel. Like I cared. All I was interested in was its jet engine, functional weaponry slung under the carriage, and infrared tracker and laser-detection signalers. In case I had to track Kem and shoot him with a missile. The engine whine grew and I gritted my teeth, nodding where appropriate and finishing my texts.
At the last moment, a shrouded form leaped into the helicopter and slid the side door shut. The helo’s whine went up in volume as I stared at the dark shape, my phone forgotten, one hand on a weapon. I sniffed. Vamp-scent. Grégoire. Dressed in vamp traveling clothes—layers of robes, tightly woven, gloves and boots and a full-face toboggan with black glass sewn into the eyeholes. I nodded to him. He nodded back regally, or as regally as a vamp can in that getup. He set a wicker picnic basket on the floor. I let go my vamp-killer and went back to work, texting requests to everyone on my list. I sent Derek a terse note that Grégoire was with me.
My meat-lovers buffet rose in my throat as we lurched into the sunset. The rain had stopped, the clouds were breaking up, glowing golden in the western sky, but the unseasonable cold had come back, and the air was frigid. I was shivering in the thin, damp air, but at least my boots were on the correct feet and I had plenty of ammo, more than half silvershot, just in case Kemnebi tried to kill Rick and I had to kill Kem.
The helo angled into the sky. Beast, who hated the flying machines, said nothing.
We got to the campground in less than half an hour and set down onto a brand-new helo pad used to evacuate hikers, campers, and idiot paddlers who tried to take the Upper Big Creek in especially dangerous weather. Without waiting for permission, I leaped from the helo, ducked under the whirring blades, and raced down the mountain. Water fell in big, slow drops from the leaves of tall trees and landed with a heavy, icy punch that slammed through my clothes. From somewhere down the mountain and behind me, a dog howled, the frenzied sound fading as I ran. The helo powered up and lifted off, taking a path right over me, the thrum of blades like the fast heartbeat of a giant bird. Off to do another favor for me—to hopefully bring me the help I’d need to keep Rick alive.
My GPS led me down and down, off the path into thick brush and dusky light. I could see nothing, and was forced to slow my mad rush. If Kem was planning to kill me and making it look like an accident, this was the perfect way. I could plummet over a sheer drop-off and smash at the bottom. But ahead, a campfire glowed through the trees. I raced for it, bursting from a laurel thicket into an open space, to find Rick lying in front of the flames on a silver foil, heat-retention, rescue blanket, naked and sweating. I skidded to a stop. His back was arched in agony, every muscle in stark definition, sweat puddling beneath him. His face was pulled with fierce pain, human teeth bared, white in the shifting light.
Kemnebi lounged in a camp chair, a beer dangling from his fingers. Empties had been tossed behind him and scattered across the ground,
an open cooler at his knee. He was staring at Rick with a fixed smile. It never wavered as he drained the beer and tossed the bottle over his shoulder. It landed with a clink. “We are gathered here, on this auspicious night, to watch my enemy die,” he said.
I wasn’t aware I had moved until the drunken were-leader tumbled out of his chair. He landed with a pained whoof and I kicked him, his body muzzy in the red haze of my fury. “Rick LaFleur will not die tonight, because if he does, I’ll kill you myself.” I was suddenly holding one of the pretty red-gripped .380s and I fired point-blank into Kem’s knee. He screamed. “That’s just a taste of what I’ll do to you if he dies.”
“It is silver! You shot me with silver!” he screamed.
“Yeah.” I threw down my backpack, dropped down to my knees, and slid a silver-plated handcuff around Kem’s wrist. With a snap, I snaked out a length of line and secured it to the nearest tree. “Silver will keep you from changing shape to heal, even with the moonlight pushing at you when it rises. But if you help Rick, I’ll think about cutting the round out of your knee joint so you can shift. Up to you.”
He screamed at me, cuss words in his native tongue, I was sure. I holstered the weapon and went to Rick, kneeling beside him, moving to the side a pile of clothes I hadn’t noticed before. I kept my body at an angle, knowing Kem would kill me in a heartbeat now, if he could, so I wasn’t turning my back on him. “I’m here, Rick. I won’t leave you. And he won’t be killing you when you shift.”
He groaned, but he gripped my hand. The motion exposed the tattoos on his shoulder, the scarred and ridged tats of cats and mountains, mauled by werewolves. The golden eyes of the bobcat and mountain lion gleamed on his olive skin, glowing in the firelight. They looked hot, burning; I touched one and jerked my hand back. Scalding. The spell built into his skin was smooth as a stone, the glowing orbs glossy, like pieces of gold, the maimed cats watching me.
Once again I was hit with the feeling of destiny, as if someone up there had planned for us to be together but something had gone horribly wrong. Rick screamed again, his hand twisting mine, the grip so hard my bones ground. I held on, ignoring the demands and eventual pleading of Kemnebi, but kept my body angled so I could see him.
There was no water, but Rick needed something to replace the slick, greasy sweat that runneled his skin. He was dehydrating. When his cramps eased, I brought him three of Kem’s beers and opened one, holding it to his lips. I had no idea what alcohol would do to a were trying to shift, but it was all I had. He drank it gratefully. Another cramp hit him. He screamed and arched his back. It was like watching lightning thrust through him. The golden eyes of his cats glowed, even when he thrashed to his side, into shadow. Magic. The magic that held him in this form.
Each time the spasms eased, I fed him more beer. Once I scavenged for deadwood for the fire. Time passed. What felt like a long time. Hours. The moon rose in the sky, brilliant white overhead, almost perfectly round, marred only by scudding clouds. Kem had begun to gasp in pain as well. He was getting a taste of Rick’s torture, unable to shift with the silver in his knee and clamped to his wrist. He cursed at me long and hard in English and French as well as the liquid syllables of his mother tongue.
I looked up when Brandon and Brian walked through the thicket, carrying an assortment of cases. I knew they could see the naked hope on my face. But Grégoire stepped alone from the laurel behind them, the ancient vampire no longer shrouded in traveling clothes. He wore ironed jeans, thousand dollar hiking boots, and a silk shirt under a heavy cotton work shirt. His blond hair was tied back in a little tail. He looked like a male model on set for an L.L. Bean catalogue shoot, a metrosexual playing at being an outdoor guy. And he wasn’t who I needed tonight. The vamp knelt beside Rick, studying him like a doctor might, while my breathing went ragged and tears filled my eyes. He refused to come.
Long heartbeats later, Big Evan stepped from the laurel thicket.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Butchery Disguised as Surgery
Hope shot through me like buckshot, burning and hot. Big Evan looked at me, frowning. I had saved Molly’s life, maybe the lives of the whole family and coven, but it wasn’t enough to make him like me, not after losing the blood-diamond to Evil Evie. He was here because, otherwise, Molly would come. Evan would never again let his wife go into danger with me, which is why I’d sent my request to him, not his wife.
Rick screamed again, the sound ululating, his limbs twisting and stomach muscles rippling. He panted through it, repeating, “Please, please, please, please,” begging for help, for surcease from pain. Big Evan’s face softened and his lips tightened, as if he were fighting with himself, unwilling compassion against anger and flint-hard judgment. The witch pursed his lips and said something under his breath. But he went to work.
He took two cases from the twins and shouldered the men out of the way. He knelt at Rick’s side and opened them on the ground, revealing wind instruments, which he studied carefully. Big Evan lifted a wooden flute out of one case, sat on the ground near Rick, and started to play. He was an air witch, his power traveling through air as sound. The mellow notes filled the clearing, magic in the melody. Instantly, Rick’s spasms eased. He curled into a fetal position, gasping. Moments later, Rick relaxed into a limp mass.
One twin opened out a fleece blanket and covered Rick. Another twin placed more deadwood on the fire, which crackled and sent sparks high into the air. Evan played on.
At the melody, even Kemnebi relaxed, the were-cat staring at me, hatred on his face. I grinned at him, tapping my gun with a forefinger as a reminder.
The twins opened chairs for themselves and their master, and produced a picnic and several bottles of wine, as if they had come for a show. Not that I could complain. They had gotten me here, and then picked up Big Evan. Maybe even convinced him to come.
Grégoire passed me a glass of wine. Confused, I took it and followed his pointing finger to Rick. Ah. Not for me. I held the delicate, crystal wineglass to his lips. Rick drank, sighed again, and closed his eyes. The night passed slowly after that. I left Rick’s side only to relieve myself deep in the woods and—because I was feeling guilty—to cut the round out of Kemnebi’s knee. I had aimed just above the joint, and was able to palpate the flattened round easily. It had formed a pustule on the inner side of his thigh, which made the butchery disguised as surgery easy. I used steel instead of a silvered blade to cut him—I was feeling magnanimous. Kem screamed long and loud, drawing out the note, the sound half cat, half human, and if the sign of his pain gave me pleasure, I kept it off my face. For the first time in my life, I felt entirely inhuman. And yet Beast was gone. I was totally alone.
I tucked the bloody silver round in my pocket and removed the silver cuff. Under the force of the full moon, Kem shifted instantly, gray energies playing over his form as he sprouted black fur. His bones snapped like dry sticks and reformed as his body shifted, able to heal the silver poisoning now that the round was gone. I clicked the cuff around his back leg the moment he was fully cat and before he could gather himself to bound away. The were-cat was not getting out of my sight. He wasn’t hunting either. He’d go hungry. I leaped away.
Golden-green eyes stared at me across the dark. Kem-cat growled, showing his teeth, promising my death. “Get in line,” I said, turning away from him. I took Rick’s hand again, his flesh
Evan’s large fingers were strangely delicate on the flute, moving with a syncopated, almost disorganized beat, but one that was organic and melting, with his lips relaxed on the mouthpiece. The music continued with only short breaks for Evan to drink and rest, the tones low and melting, limpid and crystalline and somber. After long hours, when dawn was near, I felt the magic of the notes change, smelled them shift into something tart and spicy. No longer a calming sound, the mournful melody altered and sped, and I realized that Big Evan was attempting something beyond simply stopping Rick’s pain. His eyes were on the mound beneath the blanket, and Rick rolled over,
focusing on Evan. The two men held gazes as if they were newly met combatants assessing one another’s strengths and weaknesses.
Rick sat up, the blanket falling away to bunch in his lap. His chest and arm muscles were harshly defined in the shadows; his black hair had dried in the passing hours, standing stiff; his beard had grown out, rough and scruffy. And he was still the most beautiful man I had ever met. He pulled his hand from mine and my palm felt the chill, deprived of his heat.
The music stopped. Evan set the flute in his lap and said, “I think I’ve got a handle on the spell woven into your skin. I may have figured out how to craft a counter-spell melody for it. It won’t stop the pain or the moon-call, but it might keep both to manageable levels. If it works, I can make a CD and you can load it in a player and keep it with you. You’ll have to play it all night during full moons.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” Rick asked, his voice raspy from screaming.
“You might go insane tomorrow night.”
Rick chuckled, the sound conveying anger and self-loathing and resignation. “Well, what’s not to like in that scenario? Go for it,” he said. I lifted a hand to stop him, but Big Evan put the flute to his lips and began to play. The notes were haunting and trilling, rising and falling through the scales, part gypsy, part western Indian—Hopi maybe—part tribal African, part Middle Eastern. Rick’s eyes started to glow, a pale amber light. The notes warbled. Rick growled. A bi
Chill bumps rose along my legs and arms. Rick looked at me and pulled his lips back, exposing human teeth, but the gesture was pure cat. His eyes glowed golden, the gold orbs on his shoulder grew bright. The music dropped low, and the growl tapered off, disappearing entirely. Rick’s eyes returned to his Frenchy-black.
The magic of the song danced along my skin like the fingers of a lover, the touch featherlight, delicate as falling rose petals, but electric and full of power. Somewhere deep inside me, I felt movement, the faint click of claws on stone. An uneasy sound. I eased away from Rick. The song played on, but I didn’t feel Beast again.