Taste Me

by Tamara Hogan

  “So nice of you to roll out of bed and join us.” Krispin Woolf looked Lukas’s holograph up and down with distaste.

  “Mr. Woolf. Let’s get back to the agenda, please,” Willem said firmly. “Mr. Sebastiani, we were discussing a candidate to replace Dr. Sagan.”

  Krispin Woolf pounded his fist on the table. “Let the Humanity chair stay empty! It was a mistake to invite a human to join the Council in the first place, and it’s a blessing he died. For a millennia, each of the species has had Council representation. Species,” he repeated, looking directly at Lukas and Jack. “Not humanity, not Security and Technology. Species.”

  “Mr. Woolf…” Willem tried again.

  “Until Sagan and Kirkland joined the Council, humans had no idea we existed,” Woolf said. “We should never have confirmed our existence to even one human, much less two. And this morning we authorized a third.”

  Lukas could almost feel the other members of the board mentally push back from the table as Krispin Woolf derailed the meeting. He did the same, clicking the meeting’s “Step Out” option, flicking Krispin Woolf a virtual middle finger. With outgoing video deactivated, his holographic doppelganger sitting flash-frozen with eyes firmly rolled—oops—he could move freely about his office. He looked at the Hot Sheet again, still mocking him with its Code Green status. Nothing yet. When would something break?

  He sighed as he examined what remained of the Council’s agenda. Another petition from the Genetic Purity League urging them to require registration of bond relationships. A sentencing decision to be made for an incubus tailgater who’d huffed emotions off gang members robbing a gas station. Lorin had a status update on the Isabella dig, and would talk about actions under way to prepare for her mother’s upcoming sabbatical. Lorin hadn’t been interested in assuming temporary leadership of Sebastiani Labs’ Physical Sciences division during her mother’s absence—she practically lived up at the northern Minnesota archaeological dig which each season exposed more about their ancestors—but she wasn’t at all happy about reporting to her peer, by-the-book geologist and metallurgist Gabe Lupinsky.

  *ping*

  [JKirkland]: Woolf’s on a roll today. Earlier he asked Willem to cite the exact bylaw allowing a human to lodge a Council vote.

  From his vantage point, Lukas could see Jack surreptitiously typing on the mini-comp resting on his thigh. No one attending the meeting in person would know Jack’s entire attention wasn’t on Krispin Woolf’s bombastic performance.

  [LSebastiani]: . I have zero patience for Woolf’s shit today.

  Lukas drew himself up to his full height, leaned in to his webcam, and toggled himself back into the meeting. Watched his virtual self loom over the boardroom table, as if he was about to reach across the table and…

  A second box opened with a soft *ping.*

  [ESebastiani]: STOP.

  Lukas speared Woolf with his eyes, and then sat back in his chair.

  [LSebastiani]: Dad, this guy’s a waste of oxygen.

  Elliott Sebastiani sighed from his seat at the head of the boardroom table. “Krispin, we can’t keep revisiting this. We established the Humanity chair to pave the way for our eventual discovery, and the Security and Technology chair to manage the risk to our people in the meantime.” His voice got louder and firmer. “These decisions were made years ago and will not be revisited today. As for Dr. Brown, we need someone with her skills to secure our archives. Yes, her background is… unusual. But she’s the best person for the job. And she’s paid her debt to society.”

  Woolf shot up from his seat and pointed at Jack. “She’s his friend! How objective can their risk assessment be?”

  Elliott Sebastiani stood slowly. “Krispin. The vote to open our archives to Dr. Brown was taken and passed half an hour ago. The decision has been made. Please take your seat. Your opposition has been noted for the record.” Elliott looked to Willem, who nodded. “Let’s move on.” He sat down.

  Willem opened a new window in the meeting software, displaying a resume. “Back to our discussion about the candidate, theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku. The floor is open for comments.”

  [JKirkland]: you OK?

  Lukas paused.

  [LSebastiani]: rough night

  [JKirkland]: ??

  [LSebastiani]: Waiting it out. What was the final vote for Bailey?

  [JKirkland:] 5/1, Weres against. Easy pass.

  Easy pass, my ass. It had taken a lot of legwork. But the vote had gone as he’d expected. He wouldn’t have brought this issue to the Council in the first place if he hadn’t secured the votes first.

  A luscious smell wafted from his doorway. Coffee. Dr. Bailey Brown, Sebastiani Security’s newest hire, computing wunderkind, convicted felon, and the catalyst of a multi-species dust-up she was at this moment blissfully unaware of, lounged against the doorjamb, sipping coffee from a gigantic insulated mug. The spicy roasted red pepper flavor Lukas had come to associate with Bailey—always thinking, always curious—hit his tongue. His stomach rolled as her essence mixed with the ash that wouldn’t go away, but he swallowed it down. Lukas hit the conference software’s PRIVACY key to block the meeting. “Hi, Bailey. You’re up late.”

  “Or early, as the case may be.” Bailey nodded in approval at his actions to secure his desktop—even from her. “You look…” She paused, then shrugged. “Well, anyway, good evening, good morning, whatever.” She took a noisy slug off the mug.

  Damn it. Right now, he would sacrifice his left nut for even one sip of that coffee.

  Lukas was glad the Council had authorized them to share their people’s history with Bailey, because after three months on the job, she was getting twitchy, looking for the next challenge. Jack had warned him that when Bailey got bored, she got curious. And so Lukas had put his fledgling political capital on the line with the Council, recommending that a human hacker work hip to hip with Valerian to digitize and secure their people’s most precious documents.

  If humanity had to learn that they shared their planet with other species, the Council was going to damn well control the timeline.

  Bailey walked up to his desk and extended the mug to him, and revealed her own, which she’d been hiding behind her back. Lukas raised the mug to his lips and sipped as if from a holy chalice. It was all he could do not to whimper as the viciously strong blend finally washed away the ashy residue of some sick fuck’s depraved midnight adventure.

  [ESebastiani:] Anything break yet?

  Lukas sighed. He should have known his father had felt something too.

  “I’ll let you get back to work.” Bailey turned away. “Catch you later.”

  “Thank you,” he called to her back. Lukas flipped audio and holo back on, and watched his body shimmer into his chair once again. Several of the Council members were typing, getting other work done, while Krispin Woolf busily worked Willem Lund’s last nerve.

  [LSebastiani:] Nothing yet

  [ESebastiani:] Tailgater?

  It hadn’t felt vicarious to Lukas. Whoever had force-fed him that noxious midnight snack had been wallowing in a swirl of pain and pleasure.

  [LSebastiani:] Don’t think so.

  “Mr. Sebastiani?” Willem said. “Lukas?”

  Oops. Busted multitasking. And Woolf’s cheekbones were rippling with anger. “I’m sorry, Willem. Could you repeat the question?”

  “Mr. Woolf has asked about the timeline on the archiving project.”

  “The archives will be opened to Dr. Brown today,” Lukas responded. “The timeline is hers to establish. We’ll report status at next quarter’s meeting. Willem, my apologies once again for pulling us off the agenda.”

  Lukas watched as Willem tapped at his keyboard and lodged an action for Sebastiani Security. Jack made a notation on his mini-comp, thank gawd. He did not have the patience to close action items—

  Saliva spurted, and the taste of wet ashes flooded Lukas’s mouth. At the meeting, his father’s eyes narrowed slightly.


  Lukas hunched over the wastebasket and vomited.

  Krispin Woolf spoke from the boardroom. “Well, at least there’s no messy cleanup on this end.”

  A red-rimmed dialog box exploded onto Lukas’s monitor as the Hot Sheet registered a Code Red. His mini-comp vibrated furiously. Finally. Lukas took a swig of coffee, swirled it around his mouth, and spit into the wastebasket. He clicked “Step Out” once again, and quickly read. Homicide. Werewolf club called Subterranean, two responders on scene. He saw Jack excuse himself and exit the boardroom.

  An icon pinged as Jack came online, and they both watched the split-screen live feed streaming from the headsets being worn by the Commander In Charge and his partner.

  “Don’t you dare yack at my crime scene,” Commander Gideon Lupinsky snapped to his trainee, who was identified at the bottom left of the video stream as “J. Williams.” Lukas blocked the rookie’s audio as his stomach lurched in sympathy. He opened up an audio channel to Lupinsky instead. “I’m here, Gideon.”

  Lupinsky stopped just outside the entrance to a public bathroom, creating an establishing shot for the record. “Call came in about fifteen minutes ago,” Gideon said, looking around the room slowly. “Cleaning staff found her after closing.”

  Lukas mentally sniffed. Ammonia. Incense, potpourri. Ozone? Something… electric. And yes, the slightest hint of ashes on the air. “Go ahead,” he said to Lupinsky.

  Williams, pale and clammy, re-entered the room, looking anywhere but at the body sprawled in the handicapped stall. He reactivated her audio.

  While Williams collected shards of broken light bulbs and placed them in evidence bags, Lukas watched Gideon snap on some gloves and approach the body. Unmistakably female. Brunette, looked to be about his sister Sasha’s age. Lukas quickly pushed the thought aside and focused on the details: jeans, a pair of those high-heeled boots he was amazed women could actually walk in, much less wear dancing. Her shirt was pushed down, exposing her breasts. It felt like a violation to film her condition for the record, but he told himself she was long past caring. Her face, neck, and shoulders were covered by waves of dark brown hair.

  Gideon looked around. “I don’t see a purse,” he said. He knelt next to her, sniffed. “Were.” He carefully swept her hair away from her face. And recoiled. “Holy shit.”

  Her identity kicked Lukas in the gut. Andine Woolf. Andi, Krispin Woolf’s daughter. He looked at the other open window on his desktop. Krispin Woolf’s day—hell, his life—was about to take a nasty 180.

  “What the…” he heard Gideon say. Lukas looked back to the crime scene.

  Andi Woolf’s ankle had twitched.

  “Jenny, call the EMTs,” Gideon rapped out to his partner. “She’s not dead. Move it!”

  Lukas absorbed the Commander’s shock and adrenaline as he moved with speed, preserving the scene now forgotten as Andi, sprawled in the handicapped stall, seized uncontrollably.

  Gideon leaned over her, examining her face, her crushed throat, the flecks of blood on her lips. Lukas could see the damage as well as Gideon could. Andi tried to drag breath through her ruined airway. No go.

  “Lick her,” Lukas said softly.

  Gideon’s head whipped up. “What? Jesus.”

  Lukas closed his eyes against the vertigo Gideon’s sudden motion had caused. “You’ll have to help her shift. She has a better chance of surviving in werewolf form.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know if she has the energy reserves to…”

  “She’ll die if you don’t,” Lukas snapped. “Just do it.” A sweet clover essence swirled onto his tongue. This girl wasn’t ready to die yet.

  Andi seized again, her head rhythmically bumping into the cold tile wall. Lukas saw Gideon reach to her, hesitate, then lay his hands on her torso, avoiding her exposed breasts, her damaged throat. And as Lukas had hoped, Andi instinctively responded to the scent of Pack pumping off the werewolf male kneeling next to her.

  Gideon pulled her out of the stall by her stiletto-booted feet, her head bumping over the rough floor tiles, her arms dragging overhead. As he dropped onto the floor and ranged his upper body over her bare torso, Lukas got a better look at Andi’s crushed throat, using the bathroom’s unforgiving fluorescent light to note the placement of the blooming bruises. Gideon finally lowered his head, dragged his tongue along her jaw line, over her open lips, over her cheekbones, eyelids, eyebrows. Gideon’s physical reaction pulsed through the room as he used his scent, his sexuality, to catalyze Andi’s shift.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Gideon breathed as Andi’s nostrils twitched, her eyelids fluttered. “Good girl, good. Keep going.” He snuffled his nose into her ear, and a moan escaped along with her precious air.

  The bathroom door opened as the EMTs arrived. “Stay back,” Gideon ordered from his position atop her body. “Lupine, shifting. Get ready to intubate, her airway’s gone.”

  The EMTs goggled at the sight of the straight-laced Commander stretched prone over their patient.

  Time dragged as Gideon worked. He finally backed off as nostril became snout, as sleek brown fur sprouted over Andi’s ruined neck. Her torso pulsed. Whiskers sprouted. Her hands turned to paws, her fingernails to claws. And all the time she instinctively lurched toward Gideon. To Pack. It was wrenching to watch, and seemed endless, her bones shifting, popping, with yelps of pain coming from her mouth.

  “Shit, she’s losing it.” Gideon quickly shrugged off his jacket, unbuttoned his cotton oxford shirt, and pressed their torsos together, skin to skin. He grasped her head, brought their faces together, and locked his lips to hers.

  His desperation flooded the room.

  Several minutes passed. Finally, through Gideon’s vid feed, Lukas saw the color of Andi’s eyes as they fluttered open, then closed—a mossy green, like her father’s.

  “Gideon, let the EMTs at her now,” Lukas said softly.

  Through Jenny’s eyes, Lukas watched Gideon shakily lever himself off her body and lean wearily against the bathroom wall. “Okay,” he growled to the EMTs through a bloody, half-lupine mouth.

  The EMTs scooped Andi up, quickly found a vein, and inserted an IV. At the board meeting, Krispin Woolf listened while the siren, Claudette Fontaine, spoke, unaware that his daughter was fighting for her life.

  “Jack and I were attending a meeting with her father when you called,” Lukas said. “We can notify him and meet you at the hospital.”

  “Okay. Give us a few minutes here,” Gideon said as the gurney rolled briskly out of the bathroom, wheels clattering against the uneven tile.

  Through Williams’ video feed, Lukas watched Gideon raise his hand to his mouth, pause, put it back down again. Gideon looked to his trainee. “Can you bring the kit over here, Jenny? We’re going to have to process me for evidence.”

  Williams gulped audibly as she brought her commander the kit. Through her vid, Lukas watched Gideon extract a tarp and spread it on the floor, then step onto it. He removed a large evidence bag from the kit, set it on the tarp, and opened it. Snap. His gloves dropped into the bag. His shirt quickly followed. “Get a swab,” he said grimly. “I tasted semen.”

  Lukas’s stomach dropped.

  *ping*

  [JKirkland:] I’ll bring Krispin to the hospital.

  [LSebastiani:] k

  While Lukas opened a chat with his father and gave him a quick update, he saw Jack approach Krispin Woolf, put a hand on the man’s shoulder, talk quietly. The other man’s flint-tinged fear, his father’s horror, spilled onto Lukas’s tongue.

  Lukas sat for a moment, his bleary eyes staring sightlessly at the glowing monitors. Rancid tastes and toxic smells converged: the rookie’s diesel-tasting horror, Gideon’s soil-scented helplessness. Andi Woolf’s sweet, grassy musk. Cooling coffee. Krispin’s mothballs. His own vomit.

  As he took a healthy swig of antacid from the bottle on the desk, Lukas watched Claudette Fontaine rise and put her arms around Krispin Woolf.

  From this angle, Claudette looked more
like Scarlett’s sister than her mother.

  Shit, where had that come from? Lukas wearily speared his hands through his still-damp hair. He’d managed to put the Scarlett’s Web show out of his mind, for a while, anyway. Thankfully, Scarlett Fontaine was Jack’s client, not his. Jack’s problem, not his. And if Lukas knew that her tour bus had already pulled into Underbelly’s underground parking ramp, right on schedule?

  It was only because it was his name on the door, not Jack’s.

  Chapter 2

  Scarlett Fontaine tried not to wince as laughter exploded around the table like shrapnel. The band’s traditional “welcome home” celebration was just getting warmed up, and she could barely keep her eyes open. She rolled her shoulders and tried to get comfortable in the padded chair. Her apartment—her bed—was ten floors overhead, so close, yet so far away.

  Just hold it together a little bit longer. What’s a half hour more after a year on the road? She sighed and took a sip of the excellent Chianti that Flynn, Underbelly’s night manager, had just poured. “Mmm, just what I needed,” she said to Flynn, burrowing into his hug.