Midnight Wolf

by Jennifer Ashley

  Tamsin leaned back in the seat and rested her feet on the dash. “So, where exactly are we going?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “New Orleans.” Angus’s words came out a grunt.

  “Oh, that sounds nice,” Tamsin said, pretending her fears weren’t rising. “I can go shopping. And grab some great food. Food’s the best part of Nawlins, isn’t it? While I love walking in Jackson Square and doing the music scene, it’s the food that brings me back.”

  Angus glanced at her. “You go there often?”

  “If you call twice in my life often, then yes. Last time was with my sister . . .”

  The words died as Tamsin’s throat closed. She couldn’t keep up her false chirpiness when she thought about her sister.

  Angus glanced at her again. Goddess, he wasn’t going to ask about Glynis, was he?

  “What happened to your sister?”

  He was. “She died,” Tamsin said in clipped tones. “Shifter hunter. We were trying to avoid being rounded up. Happy now?”

  “Why the hell would I be happy hearing that your sister was killed by a fucking Shifter hunter?” he asked with a Lupine snarl. “We all had shit like that happen. No one was spared a tragedy when Shifters were outed.”

  “Which is why we need to fight them,” Tamsin said, sitting up straight. “Get ourselves the hell away from Shiftertowns, Collars, rules, Shifter Bureau. You know it.”

  Angus sent her a glare. “If you start the freedom-fighting Shifter shit in this car, I’m throwing you out. While it’s still moving.”

  “So you don’t want Shifters to be free?” Tamsin asked, eyes wide.

  “I didn’t say that. This is where Gavan and I disagreed. His stupid rhetoric and raging only got Shifters killed. Including cubs. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Tamsin had to admit. “But . . .”

  Angus swerved toward the side of the road, gunning the car as he did so. “I mean it. I’ll tell Haider you fell out trying to escape. Nothing I could do. Got it?”

  Tamsin took one look at the fury in his eyes and realized she’d touched a nerve. A terrible, raw nerve that brought up a lot of pain. She glanced at the side of the road rushing past her and made her decision. She shut up.

  * * *

  • • •

  New Orleans, even in the morning, was a busy place, with tourists flocking to Bourbon Street and Jackson Square, hoping to get a glimpse of the stereotype of life in the Big Easy. Were there really voodoo priestesses and scantily clad ladies, Dixieland jazz bands going full blast?

  For the tourists there were. Tamsin remembered coming here with Glynis, walking arm in arm through the hot nights, eating fabulous shrimp and crawdad concoctions in every restaurant they entered, dancing to the bands set up in the middle of the street.

  That had been a long, long time ago, before Shifters were outed. Tamsin and Glynis had pretended to be human tourists, no shifting, no teeth and claws.

  “Except this one time.” Tamsin had started telling Angus the tale as soon as they hit the main streets of the city, as though the stories had taken over her tongue. “A guy and his friends tried to pick us up. Four of them, and two of us. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. So we let them chase us into a dark alley—seriously dark, no lights back there at all. Glynis changed to her bobcat form and just stood there, snarling. One guy had a flashlight, and he shone it over this tough-looking wildcat with yellow eyes and bared teeth. While he and his friends stood there gibbering, I ran behind them and started biting their asses. They were screaming bloody murder. We’d never seen anyone run so fast . . .”

  Tamsin trailed off, laughing, but tears gathered in her eyes and threatened to spill out.

  After a period of silence, Angus cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

  Tamsin wiped her eyes. “Hey, it wasn’t your fault. It was Shifter Bureau who gave the authorization for un-Collared Shifters to be hunted down.”

  “They killed my brother too,” Angus said quietly.

  Tamsin knew that. Gavan Murray had been caught, arrested, interrogated, and executed. His secrets were supposed to have died with him.

  She flipped her hand. “There you go.”

  Angus growled. “Sweetheart, I’d love it if the whole pack of Bureau agents disappeared, Shiftertowns vanished, and these stupid Collars were off our necks. But we have to be careful. Not long ago, a group of Shifters got so desperate to be free they made a deal with the Fae. You hear me? The Fae. They went from one slavery to another. I tried to help bring these Shifters back home, but most of them didn’t want to come. They wanted to stay in Faerie and be the Fae’s Battle Beasts. How fucked-up is that?”

  Tamsin frowned. “Your brother never had anything to do with the Fae.”

  “I know.” Angus’s voice rose to a shout. “It’s an example. It’s what can happen.”

  “Sure, what can happen if you’re stupid and gullible.”

  “Exactly,” Angus snapped. “And who is being taken to Shifter Bureau now instead of puttering at home in her Shiftertown?”

  “Under a curfew, wearing a Collar,” Tamsin pointed out.

  “Taking care of her family!” Angus said, voice hard. “That’s what we do. We take care of the people we love so when shit happens, if another Shifter-Fae war comes, if Shifter Bureau moves against us, we can be there to defend them.”

  Tamsin thought of her mother and flinched. She could be with her now, if she’d meekly taken the Collar and moved with her to her Shiftertown. But then, some clans and families had been split up. There was nothing to say she’d have been housed with her own mother.

  “I couldn’t have prevented Glynis’s death,” Tamsin said, “if that’s what you’re accusing me of. Glynis made a run for it when Shifters were being rounded up by Shifter Bureau, interviewed, and ‘processed.’ I wasn’t with her. I couldn’t do a thing.”

  “Did I say that?” Another glare. “Quit putting words in my mouth. I meant in general. We stick together. We help each other.”

  Tamsin flushed. “You know what? You’re a shit. I’m sorry I kissed you.”

  “I’m not.”

  Tamsin opened her mouth for more hot words, but they died on her lips. “What?”

  “I’m not sorry you kissed me.” Angus stretched, pushing his hands against the steering wheel. “It was a good kiss.”

  Tamsin tried to think of a snide retort—she had one for every occasion—but nothing came to her. She could only say faintly, “It was?”

  Damn it, she sounded like a Shifter girl just past her Transition, thrilled a hot guy had noticed her.

  “Yes.” Angus’s frown returned. “It was.”

  Tamsin cleared her throat. “You rate your kisses? It was awesome, pretty good, or meh?” There, that was more like her.

  “No.” He resumed his harsh tone. “Take the compliment. Don’t ruin it.”

  He had a point. Tamsin clamped her lips shut and looked out the window.

  Streets went by, bringing back memories. This town had seen a lot of damage since she’d been here with Glynis, but its spirit hadn’t been broken. They drove slowly through an area where wrought-iron balconies on stucco buildings hung over brick sidewalks.

  Clouds had gathered, and it started to rain, a gentle autumn rain. Farther along, they passed parks and gardens open to walkers, the pavement damp and the greens lined with brilliant flowers.

  Angus thought Tamsin was a good kisser, did he? A warm shiver went through her.

  What is wrong with me? He’s taking me to this Haider guy, who I’m going to kick in the balls and run away from, after Angus’s cub is safe. I’ll never see Angus again. Safer for him if I don’t.

  The regret that thought brought unnerved her. With the life Tamsin had chosen, any connections she made could only be temporary ones. She knew that. She should
be used to it by now.

  But she wasn’t. She was lonely and disheartened, tired of the people she met who shared her outrage turning out to be completely crazy. Tamsin wanted Shifters free but safe, able to live life on their own terms. She didn’t want to overthrow human governments or join up with Fae or slaughter every man in Shifter Bureau. Rough them up a little maybe, because they’d done some horrible things, but that was all.

  Mostly she wanted Shifters to have true freedom—to live where they liked, with whom they liked, go where they liked and when.

  Many Collared Shifters she’d met had thought her a dreamer. Look, they said, we’re not starving anymore, women don’t die bringing in cubs, those cubs have a better chance of growing up, and we’ll live longer than the humans around us anyway. One day, we’ll have what you want.

  Maybe, but she hated seeing cubs given their Collars when they hit their teens, hated that Shiftertown rules kept her mother from seeing her own daughter. Tamsin was convinced that waiting would only give the Bureau time to come up with some new way of keeping Shifters under their thumbs forever.

  She pushed the thoughts out of her head. Now was the time to come up with a plan of escape. She’d save idealism for later.

  “Where are we meeting the dirtbag Haider?” she asked.

  “He wants me to go to the cemetery in the Garden District.” Angus kept his eyes on traffic and turned the giant car through small streets. Tourists were everywhere in spite of the rain, rambling on foot, riding in horse-drawn carriages, even sitting at sidewalk cafés.

  “Sounds ominous,” Tamsin said.

  “I’m not meeting him there. He told me to go there and call in.”

  “Still sounds ominous.”

  “I know that,” Angus said sharply.

  Tamsin fell silent as Angus navigated the streets. The walkers through the old district stared at their incongruous car as much as they did the lovely, well-preserved houses around them.

  How Angus would find a place to park, Tamsin didn’t know, but somehow he managed to squeeze between the front and rear of two cars against the curb.

  Beside them was the wall that separated the road from the historic cemetery. Across the tree-lined street were houses, stately and large, with trimmed lawns and gardens.

  “Have to wonder how spooky it is to live across from a cemetery,” Tamsin said as Angus turned off the engine. The lack of the engine’s roar didn’t mean silence—plenty of cars rushed past, and people walked up and down the street, while cyclists pedaled by serenely. “Must be creepy at night.”

  Angus didn’t answer. He climbed from the car when the traffic was clear and came around to help Tamsin out.

  She could run now. She could make a dash for it before Angus took her into the cemetery, blend in with the people strolling through the neighborhood, leap onto a bus, and lose herself in the throng of downtown New Orleans.

  From there she could figure out a way to get the hell out of town, out of the state, out of the country if necessary. She could go to Mexico and regroup—Mexico had enough problems with drug cartels and border violence that they didn’t have time to pay attention to stray Shifters. She’d have to dodge the drug runners and human traffickers, true, but one thing at a time.

  But if she made a run for it, Shifter Bureau might keep Angus’s cub to coerce him into going after her, or maybe they’d hurt the little guy to punish Angus. Tamsin had seen the terrible fear in Angus’s eyes—he hadn’t been lying about Shifter Bureau holding Ciaran hostage. Why was Haider torturing Angus like this? Retribution for the trouble his brother had caused?

  Tamsin made her decision. She’d let Angus take her into the cemetery and call Haider so he could have his cub back. She’d at least wait for that. Once the cub and Angus were gone, then she’d get away and hope the backup Angus promised appeared. Maybe he’d talked Zander into helping her—the thought made her spirits rise.

  As they walked through a gate that stood half open, the noise of the street traffic died behind them.

  The main path was lined with small stone buildings, their facades decorated with pediments, some curved, some triangular. Plaques adorned the walls with faded names and dates, or words about death and finality. Some of the tombs were in disrepair, some deliberately damaged. She shuddered. Who would be weird enough to vandalize a tomb?

  Tamsin shared the Shifter wariness of burying the dead, and sensed the ghosts that lingered here, the chill of souls left too close to their bones.

  “Give me a Guardian anytime,” she said in a low voice to Angus, and he nodded.

  Tourists moved in a clump down one of the walks as though huddling together for comfort. Cemeteries could be spooky, or they could be peaceful. This one was a little of both.

  Angus led Tamsin down an empty lane, tombs closing in on them. Some of the monuments were simple flat graves with markers, which looked even more exposed and lonely than the enclosed tombs. At least people had left flowers to brighten up some of the graves, even though the dates listed on them were nearly two hundred years in the past.

  Angus looked as uncomfortable as Tamsin felt. “I hear you,” he said.

  “They have to bury people aboveground in New Orleans,” Tamsin said, chattering to break the humid silence. “The water table’s too high for them to dig graves. So they brick up their families in these buildings instead.” She shivered.

  “I know.” Angus’s answer was subdued. “I’ve lived in southern Louisiana for twenty years. I know all about the water table.”

  “Can’t wait to get back north,” Tamsin rattled on. “I bet you’d be happier in dry woods too. All this humidity must play hell with your fur.”

  Angus’s dark hair was damp with perspiration and misty rain. “You get used to it. If you like northern woods so much, what were you doing running around the bayous?”

  Tamsin shrugged, but her heart beat faster. “If I don’t tell you, they won’t be able to beat it out of you later.”

  “Mmph.” Angus grunted. “Whatever.”

  Tamsin had no intention of confiding the real reason she’d been in Shreveport with Dion—she wasn’t wrong that it would be dangerous knowledge, dangerous to Angus and his cub. Besides which, Angus was Gavan’s brother. Angus struck her as an entirely different person from Gavan, who’d been a total asshole, but maybe that side of Angus’s personality just hadn’t manifested yet.

  Dion had claimed he’d known about Gavan’s plans, and she’d been trying to prevent him from finding out if he was right, not assist him. And then he’d gone insane and attacked the Bureau agents who must have been following him, instead of simply evading them and disappearing. She’d had to run before checking out whether the information she had was still good. And now she’d have no chance, with Shifter Bureau all over her ass.

  The quiet grew more intense. Angus halted under a tree, which rained droplets upon them. The tomb next to the tree held seven people, Tamsin read, a whole family buried there from 1878 to 1934. Their names were fading, forgotten. Sad.

  “Like I said, I want the Guardian’s sword when it’s my time to go,” Tamsin whispered.

  Angus opened his flip phone. The beeping as he pressed the numbers sounded irreverent in this place.

  “I’m here,” Angus said into the phone, his tones clipped. “Where’s my cub?”

  His eyes narrowed as he listened. Tamsin couldn’t hear the person on the other end, which was strange. Was there such a thing as a Shifter hearing baffling app?

  “Fine.” Angus’s word was sharp. “Just hurry up. I’m getting wet.”

  He closed the flip phone without a good-bye and bent a gaze on Tamsin.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “He wants us to stand here. He’s coming.”

  “He’s bringing your cub here?” Tamsin folded her arms, pretending she wasn’t shaking. “That’s kind of mean.”
/>   “I don’t care. As long as he brings him.”

  Angus closed his mouth and looked away.

  Another opportunity to run. She could shift into a fox and stream around these tombs and over the wall into the city before Angus could turn around and see her go. Humans weren’t quite as amazed when they saw a fox, even one larger than most wild ones, as they were when they caught sight of a wolf or a leopard or a lumbering grizzly bear. How many grizzlies ran through the swamps of Louisiana?

  Foxes were far more common in the wild. The downside was that, instead of fearing foxes, people tried to shoot them. Foxes ate chickens and generally made nuisances of themselves. It was a popular sport in England to dress up in fancy riding clothes, gather about fifty hounds, and ride twenty horses over the countryside in pursuit of one itty-bitty fox. Obviously that fox was a terrible monster that must be subdued at all costs.

  Tamsin had always wondered if the Fae had created a few fox Shifters as a big joke. They’d think it funny to let loose fox Shifters in front of an English hunt.

  Her mind was babbling these things to keep herself from thinking about what was to come. Her instincts were coming alert, looking for her chance to get away. She’d wait until Angus’s cub was safe, and then—gone.

  But who knew what Haider would do? Would he try to tranq her right away or wrap her in spelled cuffs so she couldn’t shift? Were his guys carrying Collars? Or would they not bother with a Collar and take her straight to a firing squad?

  Four men materialized out of the trees, one in a suit, three in black fatigues. A suit? Really? In this weather?

  But yes, the lead man wore a suit with a coat and tie, and shoes that looked like they’d cost a wage worker a month’s salary. His own stupid fault if they were ruined by rain and mud. The man in the suit had dark hair and blue eyes, and a pistol in a holster just under his coat.

  The three guys in fatigues had tranq pistols in hip holsters, and probably more weaponry hidden on them somewhere. They all carried radios that for the moment were silent.