“Can’t you keep quiet about anything?” one asked Pitch in heavily accented English. “You’re supposed to be the keeper.”
“I’ve never seen her before,” Pitch protested, “and a were is entitled to some off time.”
Ula took a sniff. She didn’t know what Pitch was, but he was less dominant than she was, and she stared at him. His black eyes caught hers and he shuddered.
He leaped over the table and over his companions and went for the door.
There was the running.
But before Ula could go after him, the weres who had been at Pitch’s table finished off her prediction by moving to block her.
There was the threatening.
Chapter 4
What joy fills the mouse, when the cat is out of the house.
– Proverb
~
Then
The tunnels were empty and silent. Once Killian got inside and away from the exit, it was like a tomb, desolate and deserted by the living. He didn’t care for the analogy. Shoving the comparison out of his head, he stopped and used his nose, inhaling deeply.
Ula’s scent was no less intoxicating than it had been before. It reached inside him and twisted his heart in his chest. Killian wanted to knock his head against a wall and take back everything he’d ever said about mated couples. He couldn’t even count the times he’d teased Donovan Lawton, a werejaguar in his clan, about his mating. Killian hadn’t dared tease Isabella, but Donovan was fair game, and Killian had taken advantage of it.
“Feck,” Killian muttered. He stopped again for a moment and took in her scent. Jaysus, she smells so good. And she’s so angry. And if I don’t move, we’ll both die here.
His eyesight was good in the darkness, but there were emergency lights placed every twenty feet for the humans. This was a newer system, positioned for the humans who ran the program and who couldn’t see in the darkness. Without breaking his stride, he caught a glimpse of the device attached just below one of the lights. The Council’s team had been chillingly systematic. They had warned the weres. If anyone was left inside, it was on his own head.
Like me. Like her. Killian would have groaned, but the understanding was there, as well. He didn’t have a brother, but he would have been as dogmatic as Ula if he thought there was a chance he could find his missing sibling. He would have done it for the majority of his security team in the clan.
It took Killian a long moment to mentally grasp the strongest scent trail. It was a rope of appealing aroma which tugged inexorably at him. Ula had headed for the area where the humans had kept their records. As he began to move through the shadows, he counted the devices he saw. He stopped counting at twenty.
Killian realized that Ula was specifically going for Whitfield Dyson’s office. Did she not comprehend that the Council would have cleared it completely? Or was she hoping that something had been leftover? He couldn’t really fault her. Once she’d ascertained that her sister, what was her name?, was not in the facility, she’d gone after the records. He would have done the same.
But in an ideal world, the facility wouldn’t be littered with explosives that were about to go off. In an ideal world, she would have never been kidnapped by a group of immoral humans. In an ideal world, their paths would have never crossed.
The thought made Killian want to stop and hit his head against the wall again. It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting the stubborn were out of the facility before it went boom. He went faster until he was running.
* * *
Ula found Whitfield Dyson’s office and growled at her discovery. The computer had been taken. There was no laptop, no notebook, and no cell phone to obtain information from. The Council’s team had removed everything that would aid them. They would use the information they had found to deliver a death knell upon the humans who had run this facility. Furthermore, they would trace back the financial supporters and make them sorry they existed.
Ula couldn’t decry that, but somewhere there was evidence that Claire had existed. Somewhere there was something that said what had happened to her little sister. How can I go back to my pack and explain that I don’t know? How can I tell my parents that I let her down?
Looking around, there were only broken pencils on the floor and bits of a printer that had been smashed.
Abruptly, she took the huge desk by her hands and overturned it with an echoing scream of pure frustration. The exotic wood that Dyson had favored splintered against the wall. Kicking pieces aside, she distractedly gazed at the fragments. There was a bookshelf askew against one wall with awards and photographs that had been shuffled through willy-nilly. She touched one and moved it so that she could see it. It was a family portrait of Dyson. He had a wife. He had children.
Ula would have happily used that against him, but it wouldn’t do any good since the Council had him. Considering what he had done and what he was responsible for, the Council wouldn’t let him go. Not now. Not ever.
Using all the anger she had stored up, she shredded the book shelf and made sure that no one would look at the photographs and awards again.
The voice from the door said, “We need to leave.”
It was him.
Ula didn’t need to look to see it was the were from the Cat Clan. He was the Alpha’s Second or Third. He was one of Emma’s friends. He was the one who had cut Ula loose. But he was probably the one who had told his clan buddies to go and fetch her to begin with. She snarled at him and stomped on a letter of recognition for Whitfield Dyson.
She picked up Dyson’s leather chair and threw it at a wall next to the door. The other were didn’t even flinch, although it smashed a mere foot from his body.
“I know weres in the Council’s organization,” he said. “If Dyson knows where your sister is, we can get it out of him.”
“The Council doesn’t work that way,” she growled and kicked an empty file cabinet. It hit the wall next to the chair and dissolved into useless scrap. “Stop blowing hot air up my skirt.”
“You haven’t a skirt on, love,” he said, and his lips quirked.
Ula blinked. Is he…flirting with me? Sucker.
One hand reached out toward her. “The place is going to blow the feck up,” he said, “whether we’re in it or not.”
“Not now,” she hissed.
“Yes, now.”
Ula cast a frantic look around her. There had to be something here. There had to be a clue. There was something here that would tell her what had happened to Claire. She couldn’t leave her sister behind. She dropped to her knees and began to rifle through the remnants of the desk. The urgency to do something, to find something, coursed through her veins like the worst kind of fire. It burned and demanded and screamed at her to act. Leaving wouldn’t do anything, and she couldn’t let herself leave without finding something.
“I’m sorry,” the were said from behind her.
“About what?” she barked out. “It wasn’t you! It was that damned Martinez who helped trap us weres,! I’ll rip his testicles out and use them as earrings if I catch him.”
“Jeanie Mac! You and every other were who was here,” the were muttered. His accent was heavy and the inane thought bounced through Ula’s head, Irish. He’s an Irish were. How about that?
The strong arm that wrapped around Ula’s neck was implacable. She didn’t waste time shrieking her rage but fought with everything she could. He grunted with the sudden press of her weight.
“Sorry about this, love,” he muttered, and the arm tightened.
Ula couldn’t say anything because a world of black dots danced in the corners of her eyes. Her fingers clawed at his arm, digging deep into his flesh, even while he said something in a language she didn’t understand.
Her eyes lit upon something that had come from the wreckage of the desk. It was a little flash drive with duct tape on it. It had been attached with tape to something inside the desk, and her action had broken it loose.
She tried to talk, but the wer
e wouldn’t loosen his grip. One of her hands reached for the flash drive. Her fingers curled around it just as she lost the battle.
~
Now
Ula said, “I don’t want trouble,” although she wasn’t adverse to trouble. In fact, she was in the kind of mood where she wanted to have trouble. Some of the nearby tables looked solid enough to do some serious damage with.
“Then you shouldn’t have come prancing in here asking about Pitch,” one of the weres said with a heavy French accent.
Ula grinned evilly. “Let me rephrase that. You should just let me pass. All I want is information. If you hold me up, then I’m going to want blood.”
One of the weres was some kind of cat. He looked nervously at a second one. “The rules are clear,” he said, clearly speaking to the other weres. The second one was another cat, and the third one some kind of primate. Ula didn’t know exactly what. She wasn’t an expert at identifying weres, but he looked like the human version of an orangutan; shaggy orange hair and a sloping forehead.
“No fighting in La Bête!” Anatoly boomed from behind Ula.
The orangutan-looking one said, “Let’s take it outside then, right, ma biche.” The ma biche was directed at Ula, and she tossed the phrase around in her head, trying to remember what it meant.
“Don’t let your balls rule your head,” Ula warned. “I might be a small woman, but I won’t be the one screaming.”
“Pierre,” one werecat said, “Pitch is well away by now. Maybe we should let it go. The Council will take care of her.”
“What?” Ula said and spreading her hands out wide. “No humans around. No one to witness anything except us, am I right?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “What’s the big secret? All I want is for Pitch to answer a little question and then there’s no harm.” The harm would come later when she got her hands on Whitfield Dyson and convinced the human to tell her what had happened to her sister. She could dangle a little bait in front of him while she was at it.
Pierre grunted. Ula expected him to start swinging his arms back and forth in irritation. “She’s not worth the effort,” he said finally and went back to the table and a mug of beer. He took a slug and eyed Ula over the top of the mug.
Ula slapped some Euros down on the bar without looking away from Pierre.
“Uh,” Anatoly said from behind her. Ula said, “What?” again.
“La Bête is protected,” Anatoly said. “Once you step outside onto the boulevard, then it isn’t. The Council doesn’t like…attention.”
Ula strode to the door and weres split apart like bowling pins, trying to avoid her path. “Got it. I don’t like attention either.”
Pausing by the door, Ula inhaled deeply to get a good whiff of Pitch. She was going to have to track him and then she was going to have to persuade him to give up what he knew. Then she was going to have to figure out how to use the information to find Whitfield Dyson. If she had to go through the Council, then she would do so.
“By the way, Pierre,” she called. “I’m not a doe. I’m something with a lot more teeth and a taste for monkey meat.”
Pierre didn’t respond but merely growled warningly.
Stepping outside the dive, Ula paused for a moment. She could have gone up the stairs and moved down the alley, but she liked the position by the door. No one would be expecting her to still be standing there, waiting. She stepped to the side, just so she was concealed by the deep shadows of the stairwell. One hand twirled the cane expectantly.
The door burst open, and Pierre barreled out. Clearly he had been supposing the loud-mouthed were to be halfway up the stairs and vulnerable to a rear attack. Perhaps he would have a nice little chase down the alley way while the poor little wolfie tried to limp away.
Hahaha. Not! Ula dropped her shoulder and swung the cane. The silver wolf head caught Pierre in the gut and relieved him of oxygen. She reversed the end and caught his jaw with the rounded top of the wolf’s cranium just as he bent over with the shock of the first impact. I like this cane.
Pierre’s jaw slammed shut with an audible clack. He fell over forwards and hit his head on the first step. His feet prevented the door from shutting completely.
Ula let the silver pointed tip of the cane rest on the side of his neck. The silver sizzled as it connected with his flesh. Pierre groaned. Her eyes flickered up and saw his two friends at the door. They immediately stepped back. She looked back down at Pierre. He feebly tried to crawl away from the silver that was burning him.
“You’re not going to follow me, are you?” she asked impatiently. “What the hell are you anyway?”
Pierre’s response was somewhat garbled. Ula thought she might have shattered his jaw. If a were left a broken bone to heal incorrectly, it was very hard to fix. She ought to know that, it had happened to her.
“Monkey, right? Gorilla? No? Pygmy marmoset? Circus animal? I don’t really care.” She poked him once in the neck and started to step away, but his hand shot out to grasp her ankle. His powerful fingers bit into her flesh. It was his last shot of maintaining his image as the big he-were.
Ula wasn’t really surprised. The cane snapped out again, and she shoved viciously. The end burst through the flesh of Pierre’s errant hand, pinning it into place, and he shrieked in pain. A bone cracked as the end of the cane went all the way through and then hit the concrete step underneath him.
“Bet you thought that all Canadians do is say ‘eh?’” She twisted the cane for emphasis and then pulled it out with a distinct pop.
With an echoing moan, Pierre was properly deterred and lay very still on the bottom flight as she climbed the stairs. She paused, waiting for the moment when the injured were stopped to take a breath, and called, “I know. You’re a howler monkey, am I right?”
Ula didn’t give the were another thought as she began to track the illusive Pitch. She only stopped for a moment to adjust the picks in her hair, which were keeping the black locks from spilling out and making a total mess.
Thirty minutes later, and Ula was on the metro heading across the river.
* * *
Killian looked the door over and then looked at the sign. “L’Antre de la Bête” it said. School boy French didn’t come back to him readily. “Haha,” he said after a long moment. “Lair of the beast. Very funny. Jaysus, why don’t they put a big neon sign down here, too. Weres right here, for certain.”
And of course, this was where Ula had gone.
Why?
Well, I’ll be finding out, to be sure.
Killian opened the door and every were in the place turned to look at him. It was as if their necks were on casters and very properly oiled. He nearly groaned aloud. He could feel the crush of freshly riled were testosterone. They were worked up, and every one of them looked agitated or nervous or both. Gradually they resumed the business of drinking and socializing without exactly looking away from the newest arrival.
Slowly his gaze made a circuit of the room. Several of the weres were particularly cross, but none of them was Ula.
Why is that? Because she’s come and gone and jabbed every last one of them in the chest with her wee finger, too. And I’m having a bit of trouble tracking her scent in this city. Too many other weres. Too many humans. Too much smell that interferes. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the Holy Martyrs!
“Too many strangers,” someone said in French. It took Killian a moment to translate the words in his mind.
“Who’s the other one? The other stranger?” Killian asked, and the room went silent again. He sardonically added in Gaelic, “Is binn béal ina thost,” which basically meant a silent mouth is sweet. But not too sweet at the moment.
Killian let the door shut behind him and shook his head, like a cat shaking moisture off its fur. “I’m looking for someone,” he announced.
“It’s that kind of night,” the were behind the bar called and several others chuckled.
A great orange beast of a were stood up and glared at Killian. “T
his isn’t the kind of place where we look for someone,” he snarled. His French accent was so thick that he nearly drooled the words out of his mouth. Killian realized that something was wrong with the were’s jaw. He also had a swiftly healing bruise on his head and a silver scorch mark on his neck. Finally, he was cradling his right hand. The hand had an ice pack attached to it with duct tape.
Killian brushed off his jacket, seemingly nonchalant. The Paris evening was moist and condensation had formed on the leather. “You’re referring to the other were who was in here, I’m taking it. Perhaps you can tell me where she went, and I’ll just be getting out of your hair.”
“Jane Smith,” said a were at the bar. Killian looked at him. He looked like a rat. He even smelled like a rat. The chances were strong that he might very well be a rat. The larger cities had significant colonies of wererats. “She went after Pitch.”
“I’m looking for her, and she’s looking for Pitch,” Killian said. “Jane Smith. I suppose it could have been worse, like I.P. Freely or Ophelia Teats. Who is Pitch?”
“Pitch is the bloody gatekeeper. The Council will have a team down on all our heads,” said the bartender, “so get out.”
“Not before I know what you know,” Killian warned. He smelled the violence in the air. He might as well be poking a wild animal with a hot poker. “And I’ll be knowing whether or not you laid a hand on Jane Smith.” His eyes came to rest on the orange-haired were with the fresh war wounds. And there is the Number One Candidate for said stupid activity.
“No one touched her in here,” the bartender said, his accent was Russian or Slavic. “She went after Pitch. She was looking for him and he slipped out. Probably headed for the Left Bank.”
“Feck,” Killian said and sighed. “Why is she looking for this were, Pitch? What gate does he keep?”
The orange-haired were laughed suddenly. “Imbecile! You come to the center of the world, and you know nothing. You and that putain—”
Crescent Moon Page 4