She shoved her chair back abruptly, breaking the moment, and stood—shakily, he noted with satisfaction. She hurried from the table, and for now, he let her go. There was work to do; she would be in the spotlight soon in her official capacity. He understood that he had unbalanced her profoundly, and that she needed to regain her composure to do her work. Important work.
He noticed Fiona watching her go. Then she turned her eyes on him, and the look she gave him was appraising—and carried a cool and direct reminder of her words in the kitchen. If you hurt her, you’ll answer to me.
Ryder met Fiona’s eyes calmly and didn’t look away. She nodded thoughtfully and turned back to her meal.
Ryder leaned back in his chair, marveling at how civilized the gathering seemed, how ordered. They were seated in a room full of supernatural entities that could easily run rampant through the human population of this city or any other, taking whatever vicious pleasure they wanted from whoever or whatever crossed their tracks. But what he saw was a citizenry that may have had its differences, but now was making efforts on many fronts to get along, to forge a general community, an alliance, despite something far stronger than racial or cultural differences: differences of species, of beingness.
He had come to understand that the sisters’ parents had had much to do with the forging of this community spirit, and at great cost. But it was dawning on him now that the three sisters, these three young Keepers, might have done even more than their parents, and at a far younger age, to ensure the civilized functioning of the underworld.
Surprisingly, he felt drawn toward the idea, the warmth, of a community where everyone worked together for the common good. Where he might stop and stay, make a home and a life, instead of this incessant and angry wandering.
More surprising still, he was curious, even hungry, to know what it would be like to share a life’s work with a lover and partner the way Caitlin’s parents so clearly had, willing to risk their very lives for love of community, for a higher purpose, for love itself.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden sound of silver ringing on crystal. Armand St. Pierre had started the ancient summons to order by tapping a knife against a goblet, a perfect icy clarion call that silenced dinner chatter as effectively as a shot from a gun.
Armand acknowledged the effect with a small smile and stood theatrically, raising his glass.
“Brother and Sister Others. I welcome you to my table—and to the Council. The Keepers of the City of New Orleans and vampire liaison Jagger DeFarge have requested a special joint session of Council to discuss an imminent attack on our city.”
Ryder frowned, looking toward the doors for Cait. Very strange, that St. Pierre would have started the meeting without her.
At his seat, St. Pierre continued. “I pray you listen with your hearts and minds, that we may keep the peace between us and the peace of the city.”
St. Pierre took a long moment to look around the room before speaking again. “I give you Jagger DeFarge.”
The vampire rose from his table and walked up to the podium that had materialized just to the left of the head table.
“My Brother and Sister Others,” Jagger began formally, the same address that St. Pierre had used. “We are facing a great danger to our city. I hope that, as in previous times of attack, of threats to our balance, our way of life, we will put our differences aside and band together to repel this enemy.”
Ryder had to admit that DeFarge cut a striking figure—and managed a stirring speech.
Perhaps there’s something to this Council, after all, he mused. A community of Others. Who’d have thought?
Outside the banquet hall, Caitlin found refuge in the bathroom—a sumptuous affair that continued the Victorian theme. There were roses everywhere, in the wallpaper, carved into the light fixtures, tastefully arranged in crystal vases on the sinks and makeup table, in the paintings on the walls. The whole powder room radiated the fragrance of rose oil. It combined with her already overstimulated state to create…an even more overstimulated state.
Get a grip, she chided herself, staring into the golden rose-rimmed mirror. The modern words clashed absurdly with the period elegance of her dress and hair.
You have work to do. You can’t go off the deep end about a man who will be gone with the wind—literally—tomorrow.
When she had pulled herself together enough to think about venturing back to the meeting, she breathed in and pulled the bathroom door open.
In the dark hall in front of her, a pale face moved abruptly forward, and she gasped, drawing back….
Armand St. Pierre stepped forward from the shadows.
“My dear, I’m so sorry to have frightened you,”
Caitlin relaxed, recognizing the shapeshifter. Then she immediately thought she must have missed something crucial, if the Council Chair was coming to get her. She began to apologize.
“I’m so sorry, I was just headed back—”
The elegant shapeshifter lifted a hand. “Not at all. The…” He paused, and there was something both delicate and loaded in the way he spoke the next words. “The bounty hunter will soon be speaking, and I was hoping to have the opportunity to talk with you alone first.”
“Of course,” she answered automatically, but with a sinking feeling. Does he know Ryder? Is something wrong? Is everything about to crumble?
“I am most appreciative,” St. Pierre said graciously, and extended an arm, touching her back to lead her down the hall away from the dining room.
He unlocked a carved walnut door at the end of the corridor and ushered Caitlin into what could only have been his personal business office. There was a combination of elegance and authority about it—fine furnishings and antique office paraphernalia that belonged in a museum, but which were clearly not for show, seeing daily use in the running of the restaurant and business.
As soon as he closed the door behind them, Caitlin turned to him, too anxious to hold back the question.
“Do you know Ryder, then?”
St. Pierre laughed softly and extended a gracious hand toward the sitting area. “My dear, you and your sisters never cease to amaze me. The city has been in the most competent and lovely of hands ever since your ascension.”
Caitlin had always been uncomfortable with the formality of St. Pierre’s language, but she knew it was not an affectation; the shapeshifter was several centuries old.
Then something suddenly changed in his manner, and the flowery words were gone, as if he’d read her mind. “We won’t mince words, however. You are correct. I do know the bounty hunter—from long ago—and I have grave doubts as to the veracity of the story he’s bringing us.”
Caitlin’s heart sank…but in a way she had known, had always known. Ryder. I knew I couldn’t trust him. It’s all been a lie.
St. Pierre’s eyes were keen on her face, absorbing her reaction. She knew he was reading what she was feeling.
“My dear, the last thing I would ever want is to see you or one of your sisters hurt. We had enough of a scare—just months ago, wasn’t it? A near-lethal threat to both your sister and you?” He shook his head. “And I was every bit as shocked as you were that one of our own was the cemetery killer. I’m afraid that the more devious of my—our—kind can do untold damage. And I’m even more afraid that’s precisely the case here.”
Caitlin felt the pressure of growing horror and dismay. It was all her fault. She had so wanted to believe in Ryder…and in her fog of distraction, she had brought an insidious evil into the community.
“What…what do you know?” she asked, shakily.
“I know we must be rid of the bounty hunter tonight.”
Her heart cried out that it could not be true. Trust your heart, Ryder’s voice whispered to her. And in that moment Caitlin quieted her screaming thoughts, her roiling doubts, and listened, really listened, to the shapeshifter leaning toward her earnestly.
“He is a threat not only to our communities but, I am afraid, esp
ecially to you, and to your sisters….”
He spoke with utmost sincerity. But through his words Caitlin caught a sibilance that was familiar—and deadly. She kept her face still, with a fixed look of concern, as she looked behind St. Pierre, letting her eyes go unfocused so she could read the auric circumference around him.
And she caught a glimpse of a darkness so malevolent she had to keep herself from gasping out loud.
Commanding every muscle, every nerve, to be still, she said softly, “I’ve thought so all along. What can we do?”
“He’ll have to die,” St. Pierre said nonchalantly. “And now so will you, my dear.”
His tone never changed, and it took a fraction of a second for Caitlin to register what he had just said.
Before her eyes, St. Pierre shifted from elegant host to something inconceivable…with fur, fangs, the malevolent eyes of a cat/predator…but there was something not at all catlike there, as well. There was no grace or symmetry; the creature that morphed before her was alien, ragged, demonic, repellent, a bestial horror. The body of a serpent and the paws of a cat, the talons of a falcon, the glittering eyes of a snake and the jaws of a lion…
And the voice that emanated from its mouth was grating, and horrifically familiar—the voice of the walk-in that had spoken through Danny the night before.
“Die, Keeper…”
The thing coiled itself like some lethal cobra, settling on taloned haunches…and sprang….
Chapter 18
In the banquet hall, vampire Mateas Grenard had the floor, and was speaking skeptically and somewhat pompously. “So far these ‘walk-ins’ have only possessed tourists, though, have they not? Humans? So what affair is it of ours? We don’t interfere with human concerns.”
Jagger kept his voice gracious—Ryder noted Jagger’s Council manners were a bearing totally unlike his cop persona. “The fact that the entities are killing tourists is a threat to our Communities because tourist deaths in New Orleans mean big media attention. Do the Communities want to risk having the national media camping out in the Quarter?”
“And it’s not just humans who have been killed. A were died yesterday morning, with the same symptoms as the human victims,” the alpha were Danyon Stone said.
Grenard turned to Jagger with raised eyebrows. “You didn’t mention that.”
“That death is still under investigation.”
Ryder watched from the head table as the werewolves’ tempers flared. Already there were signs of imminent transmutation; he could see it in the features of the weres in front of him, thickening, coarsening, darkening with fur under the surface of the skin, fingernails sharpening.
This is going to get ugly, he realized. But it wasn’t his Council, nor was it necessarily his problem. In fact, the heightened emotions playing out in front of him might reveal something useful, might draw something out. He could feel Fiona tensing beside him, and Shauna was already on her feet, moving toward the fray.
Ryder heard someone mutter, “A shapeshifter did it,” and now he tensed. Not because he was afraid for himself, but because he knew full well how quickly different species of Others could turn on each other, and they had no time for infighting.
“Yes, what about the shapeshifter?” the female alpha were, Kara Matiste, growled. “That one—” she turned and pointed to Ryder “—shows up, and a were ends up dead, not to mention humans are drop ping left and right. The timing is too obvious to be coincidental.”
Ryder rose to speak, but Jagger shot him a warning look and held up his hands to calm the crowd. “Mallory is a bounty hunter, following the horde of entities. He arrived after the first tourist deaths.”
“How do you know that?” Kara demanded. “How do you know he wasn’t here and just in hiding? Can he prove it?”
“And why should we trust a vampire, anyway?” someone else muttered, but loudly enough to be heard.
The twitchy bayou boy, Marks, hissed disapproval at the insult, and now the vampires were standing, rallying.
Ryder suddenly felt a surge of adrenaline totally unrelated to the fight going on before him, a rush of sympathetic…terror was the only word. And not his own.
Caitlin’s.
He stood, knocking back his chair, and surveyed the crowd in the banquet hall. No sign of her, and she had been gone a long time. Too long. He took in a quick panorama of startled faces, concerned ones, angry ones, accompanied by a rise of muttered questions and epithets at his sudden disruption of the already disrupted proceedings. Fiona, Shauna and Jagger had all turned to him with questioning eyes….
He ignored everyone and broke into a run toward the doors.
Inside Armand’s office, Caitlin’s frozen muscles unlocked and she bolted—not backward, but darting straight past the creature, the only way she could get to the door.
Already in midspring, the beast before her was too clumsy to recalibrate and landed heavily on gargoyle paws, colliding with the couch. Caitlin heard crashing, splintering, a roar of rage, as she scrabbled for the doorknob—and had a heart-stopping moment of finding it locked.
She could feel, rather than see, the creature behind her whipping its body around, serpentlike. And in a flash she remembered Ryder’s charmed skeleton key, the one she’d been keeping in her gris-gris bag since he gave it to her that night off Bourbon Street.
She pulled the charm bag from her bodice and touched it to the knob, which clicked open instantly in her hand.
Caitlin ducked out of the door, feeling the claws of the creature ripping at her back as she fled.
In the dark corridor, she ran at full tilt toward the banquet hall, her breath coming in shaky gasps, her mind racing a mile a minute. I can’t lead it into the banquet hall. It could kill everyone. She had felt the power emanating from the beast, not just the considerable power of the elder shapeshifter, but the raw demonic energy of the walk-in. It was a terrifying combination.
But those thoughts were eradicated by her primal need. Ryder. I need Ryder.
In the banquet hall, Shauna had gotten some control over the werewolves. She stood in the center of a shifting circle of weres, all of them much taller than she was at the moment, as their heightened emotions set off the transmutation.
“This killer is not someone from any of our communities,” she reassured the weres loudly. “That’s why we’re here tonight.”
Caitlin burst into the hall just as Ryder reached the door, grasping her arms before she came to a halt.
“Are you all right?” he demanded. “What happened?”
“Armand,” she gasped. “Possessed. The walk-in…”
“He attacked you?” Ryder’s voice was a low growl.
He took in her appearance in shock. Her dress was hanging from her shoulders, and he could feel the wetness of blood under his hand, see smears of red on her neck. He turned her slightly away, and his adrenaline spiked to see the ugly scratches on her pale skin, the bloodstains on the back of her gown. Luckily the scratches were just that…shallow, only oozing blood. Even so, his own blood boiled.
“It…” she said. “It was horrible, and…it’s here….”
They were surrounded now by Others, Fiona, Shauna, Jagger DeFarge.
Ryder turned to Jagger. “Bolt the doors to the outside. Don’t let anyone out.”
Jagger nodded and turned on his heel. Fiona and Shauna followed him, breaking into a run out of the room.
Keeping a protective arm around Caitlin, Ryder turned to the massing and muttering crowd. “Armand St. Pierre has been possessed by a walk-in. He’s loose in the building.”
“What does it look like?” August Gaudin demanded. “Armand or—”
“It was a creature. Huge. A cat-demon…” Caitlin struggled for words to describe it. “Part snake and bird—”
“It doesn’t matter what it looked like,” Ryder interrupted her gruffly.
Caitlin and the others turned to him, frowning—and Gaudin inhaled sharply, tense, understanding.
Ryder n
odded toward them. “It’s in the body of a shifter. It can look like anything now.”
The assembled crowd fell silent, each looking at the others. The wave of suspicion was palpable.
Surrounded now by familiar faces, with Ryder’s protective arm around her, Caitlin managed to calm her own wild thoughts.
Beyond the immediate danger, she saw a second one: the fragile trust between the communities had only recently been restored. This new development could crumble every bridge they’d worked so hard to build.
We can’t let that happen, her mind cried out. And then she felt Ryder catching her, holding her up, as her legs gave out. He lowered her to a chair.
Adrenaline crash, she realized. Ryder was on one knee in front of her, stroking her hair, and all she want ed to do was lean forward into his arms. But every one was watching, everyone, and she forced herself to sit up straight, and say, “I’m fine.”
“Cait, we need to know,” Ryder said. He kept his voice so low that no one around them could hear. “Were there any signs St. Pierre was inhabited? Anything we can look for—anything that could be a tip-off?”
His voice was gentle, but Caitlin could feel the urgency under it, and she realized why. The entity was loose in the building, and it could look like anyone it wanted to.
She mentally kicked herself for not having noticed earlier that something was terribly, horribly wrong. What kind of Keeper are you, that you never pick up on danger?
“Stop it,” Ryder said roughly, and Caitlin realized he had read—or understood—her thought. “None of us picked up on it. He threw this whole party, conducted this meeting, and nobody noticed a thing. It wasn’t just you.”
Caitlin realized with a shock that he was right. And for a moment she felt relief…and then cold fear. How will we know?
“Don’t let on,” he said softly, and stood, looking out over the crowd. His height and sense of purpose instantly caught the attention of the crowd.
“No one leaves. We split up in groups of our own kind and search the building,” he announced loudly. “The Keeper will tell us what we’re looking for.”
The Shifters Page 14