by Faith Hunter
We were sodding lucky it hadn’t gone off while we rolled around on the floor. It was stupid to wrestle while holding a gun, even while facing down a vampire and his security. Not that I could see a better way. If she hadn’t done what she had, I’d have killed her and asked questions later. That was my job.
“You don’t smell human,” Leo said, his voice dropping into the smooth, honeyed, seductive tones he used when he spotted something or someone he wanted.
Irrationally, foolishly, I wanted to tell him to back off. The woman was mine. Which was stupid in every way I might care to think. I squelched the moment of possessiveness that had taken me.
“What are you?” Leo asked. And only then did I realize that I had no idea what the woman was, only that she wasn’t human. No. Not human at all.
“Stop that,” she said. “It doesn’t work on me.”
“She growled, boss,” I said. “When she took me down.”
“I heard her. What are you?”
“None of your business,” she said.
“Whose blood do I smell?” Leo asked.
“Katie . . .” The woman stopped, as if not knowing what to say. The silence stretched, and Leo’s humor improved—something I could feel through the blood-servant bond.
“I was forced to reprimand a member of my staff.” Katie stood in the hallway, wearing a dressing gown that shimmered like silk. She was clearly naked beneath it, the thin fabric blood-free and molding to her thighs. I’d seen Katie in that robe. I’d helped her out of it numerous times before a feeding and what she called blood pleasure. “May I ask that your blood-servant assist with the transfusion?” Katie asked. “It is not my intent to lose him.”
Leo glanced at me and I looked reluctantly from him to the stranger before I nodded to Katie that I was willing. But I stabbed the rogue-vampire hunter with a look, making it clear that I didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone with my boss, promising to kill her slowly if she injured Leo. I rolled my head on my shoulders, and heard two cracks as my spine realigned itself, and I went down the hallway, my booted feet silent on the wood and carpets. Predator silent.
Blood, Fangs, and Going Furry
He didn’t remember much about that first full moon except the pain, the burning, scalding, skin-crawling pain when his pelt wanted to thrust through his skin, when his bones begged—demanded—to shift. When his eyes went green gold, and the night came alive in rich blues and greens and silvers, and the detail of the world was so intense that it was like nothing he had ever seen before. When the scents on the air became acute, almost brutal in their concentration.
The sensory overload was like being tossed off a high bridge to land at the bottom of a rock-strewn crevasse and find himself broken, bloodied, but miraculously alive. Only to have a Mack truck run him down and crush out whatever life had been left. At the same time it was like having a live current rushing though his body, icy and burning, his brain on fire, his skin roasting, and no evidence of it except the funky green gold of his eyes.
He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t make it go away, couldn’t shift into his cat to ease his pain. Kemnebi, the only other black were-leopard on the continent and arguably the highest alpha black were-leopard on the planet, had refused him aid, standing back and laughing at his torment. Even when Leo Pellissier, the Master of the City, had threatened to kill Kem if he didn’t help, he had refused, saying that Rick had brought it on himself. Which he had. Totally.
He’d FUBARed it all the way, losing his humanity, the girl he had flipped over—Jane Yellowrock—and probably his job too.
Gee DiMercy, Leo Pellissier’s Mercy Blade, had told him Jane could help. Which made no sense. Jane worked for the vamps as a security expert and rogue-vamp killer. Jane wasn’t a were. But something in Gee’s voice had been convincing, and Rick had found himself on his bike, blasting down the roads and across the Mississippi, into the Big Easy, believing Jane could—and maybe would, even after he’d betrayed her—help him.
Pain raging in him like a rabid cat clawing the inside of his skin, Rick had bent over the bike and roared away from the MOC’s Clan Home. Later, when he was on the edge of dreams, still-shot moments of that ride came to him: taking the bridge east, flying in at nearly a hundred miles per hour, threading the needle between two eighteen-wheelers, hearing his own voice screaming with rage. Taking a curve, one boot on the pavement, the sole actually smoking. Dodging a car as it ran a red light, his reflexes like lightning on meth.
One thing stayed in the forefront of his mind—he had to get to Jane. She would know how to help. Help him to shift or help him to resist or maybe put a bullet through his brain if nothing better presented itself. He knew, because they’d had something once and because there had been no closure yet, and because Jane Yellowrock had saved his life.
He ended up on her street. She was half a block down, standing beside her bike in the middle of the street, her helmet off, her hair streaming back in the heated breeze, as if she had heard him coming and was waiting for him. He downshifted the red Kow-bike—the Kawasaki—and puttered to a stop. Put his feet down, bracing himself. His head and face were hidden by his helmet and face shield, and for a long moment, feeling anonymous yet knowing he wasn’t, knowing that she had to know who he was, he watched her.
As the breeze that carried his scent reached her, her eyes did a feral shift and glowed golden. A lot like his tonight, except her eyes were always amber and his had been Frenchy black until this full moon. His first full moon with the taint of were-cat blood rushing through his veins, making him half-crazy with the pain.
Jane stalked toward him, her booted steps muffled beneath the sound of his bike, her body moving slowly, a liquid, feline heat in her walk. He keyed off the bike and slung his leg over it. Threw back the face mask and pulled off the helmet. Dropped it, knowing he’d scarred it, not caring. He took a breath.
The night was alive with smells, so rich and intense that it was like being hit with a bat at full swing and being stroked along his entire body all at once. His eyes closed in something akin to holy rapture. He smelled fish and coffee and hot grease and tar from the streets and water everywhere. The slow-moving bayous that wend through New Orleans, smelling of grasses and heated mud and rain-washed animal offal, nutria and deer and old blood. Lake Pontchartrain with the reek of old pollution and oil and the warmth of the sun on its waters. And the Mississippi River. He had never thought that water might smell of power, but it did, a heady mixture of mountain and snow and rain and animal, of the scents of tugboats and fish and water treatment plants. Of every source of its water all along its course through the nation. And riding over it all he smelled the Gulf of Mexico, fresh and salty and . . . amazing. The odors twined with the pain racing under his skin, becoming one with it. And he could smell his pain, like old meat and rancid butter. He never knew that pain had a smell.
Jane’s boots drew closer, the leather soles abrading on the asphalt. The wind shifted, capricious, and he smelled her before she reached him, and he knew instantly that she wasn’t human. How could he have missed that scent before? She was redolent of big-cat but not leopard, not Kenyan jungle nights and African tribal drums. She smelled of wild rushing streams and craggy passes clogged by snow; her scent sang of wildfire, of the cold taint of iron in the water trickling from cracks in the stone faces of mountains. Heat and blood pooled deep in his groin with an ache that wanted release. “I can’t ssshift. It hurtsss,” he said, his voice a growling hiss.
“I know,” she whispered.
His eyes still closed, he felt her hand lift. The warmth and texture of her energy were like spiky vines, thorny and sharp, as her palm came close to his face. Her skin was like silk as it slid across his cheek. Tears burned beneath his lids, hot as acid. He had betrayed her.
“I can’t ssshift. Kemnebi ssshays . . .” The words growled to a stop. He couldn’t shift into his were-cat, but his vocal cords wer
en’t working right either. With the rise of the full moon, his body had leaped toward the change and slammed to a halt, like a motorcycle hitting a rock cliff wall at a hundred twenty. His sense of smell was acute, his eyes were funky, and his voice was gone. His teeth felt weird against his tongue. Pain rode him like he was a bitch in a prison cell—no way out. None.
Her hand was hot, smelling of cat and clean sheets and the remembered smell of sex. He leaned his face into her palm, breathing deeply. She stroked his cheek, and her skin smelled better than anything he had ever smelled, better than Safia. And far, far better than the werewolves who had tortured him.
“Kem says what?” she whispered.
“Kem shasss shometing isss w’ong wi’ me.”
“And he let you go free? Into the night?”
Her question was weird. He knew that from the part of his brain that was still human. “Not Kem. Jzeee.”
“Gee? Girrard DiMercy?” Jane’s words came softly, gentle on the night air.
He rubbed his head against her palm, feeling her fingers thread into his hair. Massaging. Some of the pain in his scalp eased, and he heard his own sigh of pleasure. He wanted her to touch him everywhere like that, to relieve his need, release his pain, set him free from this agony. He raised his hands and curled them around hers, his fingers trailing up her wrists as far as her leathers allowed. Her skin was like silk, if silk could be electrified, if silk moved over muscle like rich oil over the bayou water, but sweet as honey.
“Leo’s Mercy Blade?” she asked again. “He let you go?”
“Yesh.”
“And Leo? Did he—”
Rick laughed, remembering only then the flashing image, the single snapshot vision of Leo Pellissier, Blood-Master of the City, his mouth open in shock. The sound of his voice roaring. The barbed, spiked texture of his power as he drew something electric and molten-smelling out of the air. And the stink of vamp blood, like pepper and green leaves. “I hit him. I sthink I . . . hurt him.”
“Oh, Ricky Bo.” Her sigh was like the first breath of spring on the air. “I’m so sorry.”
The punch was faster, harder, deeper than he expected. Air exploded out of him like a balloon run over by an earthmover. She’d hit him before but never like this. Who knew Jane Yellowrock had been holding back all this time?
• • •
He woke in a cage. Raving and furious. He threw himself at the bars even though he knew—with that tiny human part of him—that he was hurting only himself and that there was no way out.
Someone turned a hose on him, hitting him with icy spray, the water like needles. He rammed the bars again, and the cage shook with the strike. And again and again. With each blow his body came away more bruised. He heard/felt/smelled the bone in his right arm break, and the added pain sent him to the corner of his cage to whimper and lick his wounds.
He smelled vamp and age and bricks weeping with the Mississippi. Mold and sickness and blood rode the other scents like the top note of a really expensive but foul perfume. It was the smell of blood that brought him back. Beef blood. Steak so rare it would grunt if you kicked it was piled on a plate, steaming hot, thin blood pooling on white china.
He caught himself. Found himself. Remembered who he was and what he was. And he saw the red fletching on the dart sticking out of his butt. They had drugged him, tranqed him. With an old-fashioned tranquilizer dart. Like a wild animal.
Forcing his fingers to bend in ways that paws would not have, he reached back and gripped the dart. Slid it from his flesh. Tossed it out of the cage. The drug was running through his veins like good bourbon, pushing back the pain, pushing back reality. He blinked, shook the wet hair out of his eyes, and focused on the room.
He was underground with no way out. The windows were small, arched on the top, set high and barred; the door was barred; the cage they had put him in was eight feet by eight feet, with bars for walls and a barred ceiling. And all those steel bars were set into stone. The stone smelled of old water and mold and had been in place for centuries. At the far end of the room, watching him, was Jane.
She was sitting on a tall, backless stool, her leather-clad legs loose and relaxed, one booted foot on a rung, the other on the floor. Her arms were back, elbows resting on a tall table pushed against the wall behind her, and her leather jacket hung open, revealing a thin, skintight knit Lycra T, the lines of the black bra under it barely visible. She smelled like sex and craving, and his body responded, growing hard and ready.
She tilted her head, her long, straight black hair falling in a slide that shushed as it slithered to the side as if alive. “Do you know where you are?” she asked, sounding lazy.
He thought about that for a moment. Or an hour. Time was doing crazy shit, and he wasn’t sure. He finally forced the words out. “Warehouse? In the Warehoush Dishtrick? The Nunnery?”
She nodded once, a single dip and lift of her chin. “In a temporary holding cell for young rogues. They’ll let me keep you here for the three nights of the full moon. I couldn’t take the chance that you might lose control and infect someone. I’m sorry.”
He touched his jaw. “You hit like a guy.”
She chuckled. “Thanks.”
The three nights of the full moon. Yeah, right. He was less than a third of the way through this torture. But with the drugs circulating through him, holding the pain at bay, he at least remembered that he had once been human. He worked his jaw, and it felt normal. This time when he spoke, the words came out properly. “They let you keep me here?”
“Leo.”
“Mmm.” He thought about that for a while as water dripped and ran across the stone. He’d hurt Leo. Raising his hand, he curled his fingers into a fist. Already he was healing, his bruises fading. And the arm bone he had broken on the cell attack was little more than a bump that ached when he touched it. His skin felt hot, and the water was drying on his body more quickly than normal. Part of the benefits of the furry life: quick healing and a higher-than-human body temp. If not for the moon-change pain that fought the drugs in his system, he might have laughed. “What’d you have to promise Leo to get him to let you use this cage?”
“Nothing. Oddly. He called me on my cell just after I took you down, and offered. He’s upstairs, and he’s not his usual unruffled public self. His shirt is bloody.” Her lips tilted up on one side. “Your work?”
“Probably.”
“You took down a vamp,” she deadpanned.
“I got the drop on him. Even vamps can be sucker punched.” He shrugged. “And you took me down.” He was suddenly conscious of being naked and aroused, sitting on a cool stone floor. And he was thirsty and more hungry than he’d ever been. He nodded to the food. “That mine?”
Jane uncoiled from her perch and sauntered to the plate. With the toe of her boot, she pushed it through a small space between the lower bar and the floor. She hooked a finger around a tall, narrow thermos with a built-in straw, like a kid’s sippy cup, and passed it through too.
“No utensils?”
“Not until after the moon.” She walked back to her perch and sat, her back to him this time, giving him privacy. He dug into the beef, stuffing it into his mouth, and the taste exploded through him like a bomb going off. When he had licked the plate clean, he drank the water. Tap water—chlorine and dankness and something slightly salty. He licked the half-cooked, watery blood from his fingers.
Jane seemed to know he was done and swiveled around on the stool seat, the leathers squeaking slightly. He pushed the plate and cup back through the bars, waiting, reading her body language better than he ever had before, and he knew that she had a lot to tell him. But first she took a satchel and threw it at the bars. It hit with a quiet thud and slid to the floor. “Clothes,” she said. “Get dressed. You’ll have visitors at eleven thirty.”
He pulled the satchel through the bars and zipped it open. I
nside were jeans, a T-shirt, and a package of new boxers, his size. They were made of some filmy material that seemed kind of girly, but he didn’t complain. The T-shirt hid his scars and the mangled tattoos that were all he had left of the art on his shoulder and arm. As he pulled the shirt on, he caught a flash of gold from the eyes of the mountain lion tattooed there, but when he pulled up the sleeve to inspect it, the glow was gone.
“Visitors?” he asked as he stepped into the jeans.
“Local witches. Leo called them, and they said they might have a way to spell you through the shift, force you into your cat.”
He stilled. Fear crawled up his spine like a snake up a tree. He’d been in the power of witches before. It hadn’t been pretty or easy. He zipped up the jeans, feeling her interest, her gaze on him. Without looking at her, he asked, “You’ll be here?”
“If you want me to.”
“Yeah. I do. And if they try something hinky, you stop whatever it is they’re doing.”
“I’m supposed to know what’s hinky with witches?”
He looked at her from under the too-long black hair that curled into his eyes. “I trust you to make an educated guess.” She nodded again, that little chin-drop thing. He used to love that. Still did. But the wary look in her eyes held him off from saying anything about them, about their relationship or current lack of one. They had unresolved business, but it had to take a backseat. He understood that. Jane was always all about business and let nothing stand in the way of that, except sometimes dancing. He had a memory of her dancing once as he played the sax, her body writhing like a cobra on ecstasy, like sex on a stick, hot and sweaty. He went hard again just thinking about it. Jane laughed low, and he could smell his own arousal.
The heavy wooden door opened, and Leonard Pellissier, the Master of the City, walked in, followed by three others, but Rick kept his gaze on the MOC. The stink of vamp, peppery and minty, and blood, thick and slightly chilled, filled the room. Rick’s arousal faded quickly, and he stepped back against the far bars, feeling the damp of the iron through his T.