Jamil stared at me for a long, slow count, then said, “When Richard replaces you as lupa, I won’t have to take shit from you.”
“Fine, but until then, hop to it. Besides, this isn’t giving you shit, Jamil. When I give you shit, you’ll know it.”
He gave a low chuckle. He slipped his jacket back on and picked up the trunk. It should have taken two strong men to lift it. He carried it like it weighed nothing. He walked off without a backward glance, leaving me to get the last suitcase. Zane and Cherry picked the coffin back up and walked after him. Jason shuffled after them.
“What about me?” Nathaniel said.
“Put your shirt back on and stay with the coffin. Wouldn’t do to have someone make off with Damian.”
“I know women who would pay me to take the shirt off,” he said.
“Too bad I’m not one of them,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “too bad.” He picked his shirt up off the ground. I left him sitting on the coffin in the middle of the Tarmac, shirt wadded in his hands. He looked sort of forlorn in a strange, macabre way. I felt very sorry for Nathaniel. He’d had a rough life. But it wasn’t my fault. I was paying for his apartment so he didn’t have to turn tricks to make ends meet, though I knew other strippers at Guilty Pleasures who managed to make ends meet on their salary. Maybe Nathaniel wasn’t good with money. Big surprise there.
The van was large, black, and looked sinister. The sort of thing serial killers drive in made-for-TV movies. Serial killers did drive vans in real life, but they tended to be pale colors with rust spots.
Jamil drove. Cherry and I rode up front with him. The luggage and everyone else went in the back. I expected Cherry to ask me to sit in the middle because I was at least five inches shorter than she was, but she didn’t. She just crawled into the van, in the middle, with those long legs tucked up in front of the dashboard.
The road was well paved, almost no potholes, and if you held your breath, two cars could pass each other without scraping paint. Trees hugged the road on either side. But on one side, you caught glimpses of an amazing drop-off, and on the other side, there was just rocky dirt. I preferred the dirt. The trees were thick enough that the illusion of safety was there, but the trees fell away like a great, green curtain, and you could suddenly see for miles. The illusion was gone, and you realized just how high up we were. Okay, it wasn’t like Rocky Mountain high, but it would do the job if the van went over the edge. Falling from high places is one of my least favorite things to do. I don’t clutch the upholstery like in the airplane, but I’m a flatlander at heart and would be glad to be in the lower valley.
“Do you want me to drop you at the police station or take you to the cabins first?” Jamil asked.
“Police. Did you say cabins?”
He nodded. “Cabins.”
“Rustic living?” I asked.
“No, thank God,” he said. “Indoor plumbing, beds, electricity, the works, if you aren’t too particular about the decor.”
“Not a fashion plate?”
“Not hardly,” he said.
Cherry sat very still between us, hands folded in her lap. I realized she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. My mother would be alive today if she’d been wearing hers, so I’m picky about it. “You’re not wearing your seat belt,” I said.
Cherry looked at me. “I’m squashed enough without the seat belt,” she said.
“I know you could survive a trip through the windshield,” I said, “but having you heal that much damage would sort of blow your cover.”
“Am I supposed to be playing human?” she asked.
It was a good question. “For the townsfolk, yeah.”
She fastened her seat belt without any more arguing. The wereleopards had taken me to heart as their Nimir-ra. They were so glad to have someone act as protector, even if it was just a human, that they didn’t bitch much. “You should have told me we were trying to blend in. I’d have dressed differently.”
“You’re right; I should have said something.” Truthfully, it hadn’t occurred to me until just that moment.
The road spilled down into what passed for flatland here. The trees were so thick that it was almost claustrophobic. There was still a gentle swell to the land, letting you know you were driving over the toes of mountains.
“Do you want us to wait for you outside the station?” Jamil asked.
“No, you guys sort of stand out.”
“How are you going to get to the cabins?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Taxi?”
He looked at me, the look was eloquent. “In Myerton, I don’t think so.”
“Damn,” I said. “Drive us to the cabins then. I’ll take the van back into town.”
“With Jason?” Jamil said.
I nodded. “With Jason.” I looked at him. “Why is everyone so solicitous of me? I mean, I know there may be problems, but you guys are being awful cautious.” I sat up straighter in the seat and stared at the side of Jamil’s face. He was watching the road like his life depended on it.
“What aren’t you guys telling me?”
He hit his turn signal and waited for a pickup truck to go past, then turned left between yet more trees. “It’ll take longer to get to the cabins.”
“Jamil, what is going on?”
Cherry tried her best to sink into the seat, but when you’re model tall and in the middle, it’s hard to play invisible. That one body movement told me she knew, too. That they both knew something I didn’t.
I looked at her. “Cherry, tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed and sat up a little straighter. “If anything happens to you, Jean-Claude’s going to kill us.”
I frowned at her. “I don’t understand.”
“Jean-Claude couldn’t come here himself,” Jamil said. “It would be seen as an act of war. But he’s worried about you. He told us all that if we let you get killed, and he survives your death, he’ll kill us, all of us.” He watched the road as he talked, turning onto a gravel road that was so narrow that trees brushed the sides of the van.
“Define all,” I said.
“All of us,” Jamil said. “We’re your bodyguards.”
“I thought you were Richard’s bodyguard?” I said.
“And you’re his lupa, his mate.”
“If you’re a real bodyguard, you can’t guard two people. You can only guard one at a time.”
“Why?” Cherry asked.
I looked at Jamil. He didn’t answer, so I did.
“Because you can’t take a bullet for more than one person, and that’s what a bodyguard does.”
Jamil nodded. “Yeah, that’s what a bodyguard does.”
“You really think anyone’s going to be shooting at Anita?”
“The bullet’s a metaphor,” Jamil said. “But it doesn’t matter. Bullet, knife, claws, whatever it is, I take it.” He pulled into a wide gravel turnaround and a huge clearing. There were small, white, boxy cabins scattered around the clearing like a Motel 6 that had been cut into pieces. There was a neon sign, pale in the sunlight, that said Blue Moon Cabins.
“Anita is our Nimir-ra. She’s supposed to protect us, not the other way around.”
I agreed with her. I’d picked Zane and Cherry not for their bodyguarding ability but because they didn’t mind sharing blood with the vampires. Even among the wereleopards, most of them didn’t like donating. They seemed to think being a blood cocktail for the vamps was worse than sex for money. I wasn’t sure I agreed with them, but I wasn’t about to force them to do it if they didn’t want to. I didn’t donate blood, and I was sleeping with one of the undead.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t agree to this. I can take care of myself, thank you very much.” I opened the door, and Jamil reached across and grabbed my arm. His hand looked very dark against the paleness of my arm. I turned very slowly and looked at him. It was not a friendly look. “Let go of me.”
“Anita, please, you are one of the
toughest humans I’ve ever met. You are the most dangerous human female I’ve ever seen.” His hand squeezed just enough for me to feel the immense strength in it. He could probably deadlift an elephant if it didn’t wiggle too much. He could certainly crush my arm.
“But you are human, and the things you’re up against aren’t.”
I stared at him. Cherry sat very still between us, half-pinned by Jamil’s body. “Let go of me, Jamil.”
His hand tightened. It was going to be a hell of a bruise. “Just this once, Anita, stay in the background, or you’re going to get us all killed.”
Jamil’s body was extended across the seat, across Cherry. I was on the edge of the seat, butt half in the air. Neither he nor I were balanced very well. His grip was on the middle of my forearm, not a good place to hold on.
“What you fuzzballs keep forgetting is that strength isn’t enough. Leverage, there’s the ticket.”
He frowned at me, obviously puzzled. His hand tightened just this side of serious injury. “You can’t fight this, Anita.”
“What do you want me to say? Uncle?”
Jamil smiled. “Uncle, okay, yeah, say uncle. Admit that just this once you can’t take care of yourself.”
I pushed myself out of the van, tucking my legs so he was suddenly trying to hold my entire body weight with a one-handed grip on my forearm. My arm slipped through his fingers. I let myself fall to the ground, going for the long blade down my back, not worrying about trying to stand. My right hand went for the Browning, but I knew I wouldn’t make it in time. I was trusting that Jamil wasn’t going to kill me. We were grandstanding. If I was wrong on that, I was about to die.
Jamil spilled over the seat, arms reaching for me, trusting in his own way that I wouldn’t blow his head off. He knew I had the gun. He was treating me like a shapeshifter who knew the rules. You didn’t kill over small stuff. You bled each other, but you didn’t kill.
I sliced his arm open from a nearly prone position. There was a moment of utter surprise on his face. He hadn’t known about the third blade or its length, and getting sliced open is always a shock. He jerked backwards out of sight like someone had pulled him, but I knew better. He was just that fast.
I had time to get to one knee before he bounded onto the hood of the van, crouched like the predator he was. I had the Browning pointed at him. I got to my feet, gun nice and steady on the middle of his body. Standing didn’t help things. I didn’t shoot better standing. But somehow I wanted to be on my feet.
Jamil watched me but made no move to stop me. Maybe he was afraid to try. Not of the gun but of himself. I had hurt him. Blood was splashing all over those pretty white clothes. His entire body vibrated with the desire to close the distance between us. He was pissed, and it was four nights until full moon. He probably wouldn’t kill me, but I wasn’t going to test the theory. He could break my neck with one blow. Hell, he could explode my skull like an egg. No more chances.
I pointed the Browning at him one-handed, knife still in my left. “Don’t do it, Jamil. I’d hate to lose you over something this stupid.”
A low growl trickled from his lips. The sound alone raised the hair at the back of my neck.
The others were out of the back of the van. I had a sense of movement. “Everyone stay back,” I said.
“Anita,” Jason said, voice very calm, no teasing, no jokes. “Anita, what’s going on?”
“Ask Mr. Macho there.”
Cherry spoke from her seat inside the van. She hadn’t moved. “Jamil was trying to explain to Anita how she couldn’t handle herself against shapeshifters and vampires.” She slid very slowly towards the edge of the seat. I kept my gaze on Jamil, but my peripheral vision was good enough to catch the spots of blood all over the white skin.
“Stay in the van, Cherry. Don’t press me.”
She stopped scooting along the seat and just sat there. “Jamil wanted her to take a backseat when the action starts.”
“She is still human,” Jamil growled. “She is still weak.”
Cherry’s deep, caressing voice said, “She could have sliced your throat open instead of your arm. She could have shot you in the head when you reached for her.”
“I still can,” I said, “if you don’t tone it down.”
Jamil lay nearly flat on the hood, fingers splayed. His entire body trembled with tension. Something lurked behind that human body, swimming up through his eyes. His beast pushed against his flesh like a leviathan swimming just below the water, so you caught a dark glimpse of something huge and overwhelmingly alien.
I’d turned my body in silhouette, my left hand with the knife behind my back, the back of my hand resting lightly on the top of my butt. I’d fallen into the stance I used at the shooting range when I was shooting targets. The gun was pointed at his head now, because he’d lowered his body mass until it was the biggest target. I’d saved Jamil’s life once. He was a good man to have at Richard’s back, even if he didn’t always like me. I didn’t always like him, so we were even. But I respected him, and until now, I thought he respected me. His little show in the van said he still thought of me as a girl.
Once upon a time, it had bothered me more to kill people. Maybe it was years of killing vampires. They looked human. But somewhere along the way, it just didn’t bother me to pull the trigger. I stared at Jamil’s face, looked him right in the eyes, and felt that stillness fill me. It was like standing in the middle of a buzzing field of white noise. I could still hear and see, but it all fell away so there was nothing but the gun and Jamil and the emptiness. My body felt light and ready. In my saner moments, I worried that I was becoming a sociopath. But right now, there was nothing but a very calm knowledge that I’d do it. I’d pull the trigger and watch him die at my feet. And feel nothing.
Jamil watched my face, and I saw the tension begin to leak out of him. He stayed very still until that vibrating energy died down and that awful looming presence of his beast slid below the surface once more. Then he very, very slowly sat back on his knees, still watching my face.
I kept the gun pointed on him. I knew how fast they could move, fast as a wolf, maybe faster. Like nothing this side of hell.
“You really would do it,” he said. “You’d kill me.”
“You bet.”
He took a deep breath, and it shuddered down his body, reminding me strangely of a bird settling its feathers. “It’s over,” he said. “You’re lupa. You outrank me.”
I lowered the gun carefully, still looking at him, still trying to keep a feel for where everyone else was standing. “Please tell me that this wasn’t some sort of dominance crap?”
Jamil gave a smile that was almost embarrassed. “I thought I was trying to make a point, but I wasn’t. I’ve spent the last month down here having to explain to the local pack how we ended up with a human lupa. How I’m outranked by a human woman.”
I shook my head and pointed the gun at the ground. “You stupid son of a bitch. Your pride is wounded that I’m higher in the pack than you are.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“You guys just drive me crazy,” I said. I was almost yelling. “We do not have time for macho bullshit.”
Zane leaned against the van near Cherry. He was very careful to keep his hands down and move slowly, no sudden moves. “You couldn’t have taken Jamil without the knife and the gun. You won’t always have them with you.”
“Is that a threat?” I asked.
He raised his hands upward. “Just an observation.”
“Hey, folks.” A man stepped out of one of the cabins. He was tall, thin, with shoulder-length grey hair and a darker mustache. The hair and the lines in his face said he was over fifty. The body that showed from the T-shirt and jeans looked lean and younger.
He’d frozen in the doorway, hands on the wooden edges of the doorjamb. “Easy there, little lady.”
I pointed the gun at him, because under that calm exterior there was enough power to raise goose bumps on my skin, and
he wasn’t even trying.
“This is Verne,” Jamil said. “He owns the cabins.”
I lowered the gun to the ground. “He the local Ulfric, or do they have something scarier hiding in the woods?”
Verne laughed and started walking towards us. He moved in an almost clumsy roll like his arms and legs were too long for his body, but it was deceptive. He was playing human for me. I wasn’t fooled.
“You spotted me pretty damn quick there, little lady.”
I put the Browning up because to keep it out would be rude. I was here as his guest in more than one way. Besides, I had to trust someone enough to put the gun up. I couldn’t keep it naked in my hand the entire trip. I still had the naked blade, complete with blood. It needed to be cleaned before I could sheathe it. I’d gummed up a couple of smaller sheaths from not cleaning them well enough.
“Nice to meet you, Verne, but don’t call me little lady.” I started to wipe the blood on the edge of the black jacket. Black’s good for that.
“Don’t you ever give an inch?” Jamil asked.
I glanced at him. There was blood all over his nice white clothes. “No,” I said. I motioned him over to me.
He frowned. “What?”
“I want to use your shirt to wipe the blood off the blade.”
He just stared at me.
“Come on, Jamil. The shirt is already ruined.”
Jamil pulled the shirt over his head in one smooth motion. He threw the shirt at me, and I caught it one-handed. I started cleaning the blade with the unstained part of the shirt.
Verne laughed. He had one of those deep, rolling chuckles that matched his gravelly voice. “No wonder Richard’s been having such a hard time finding a replacement for you. You are a solid, cast-iron, ball-busting bitch.”
I looked at his smiling face. I think it was a compliment. Besides, truth was truth. I wasn’t down here to win Miss Congeniality. I was down here to rescue Richard and to stay alive. Bitch was just about the right speed for that.
5
THE OUTSIDE OF the cabins were white and looked sort of cheap. The interiors weren’t honeymoon cabins, but they were amazingly roomy. There was a queen-size bed in the one I was given. There was a desk against one wall with a reading lamp. There was an extra chair in front of a picture window. The chair was blue plush and comfortable. It sat on a small throw rug that looked homemade and was woven in shades of blue. The woods were hardwood and polished to a honeyed gleam. The bed’s comforter was royal blue. There was a bedside table, complete with a lamp and a phone. The walls were pale blue. There was even a painting over the bed. It was a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Frankly, any of Van Gogh’s work done after he started going seriously nuts creeps me out. But it was a good choice for a blue room. For all I knew, the other cabins had matadors done on velvet, but this was okay.
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