by Nancy Gideon
Seventeen
SHE DREAMED OF pearls falling like bloodstained tears, raining down into stagnant water as a crushing sense of horror built and built and built within her chest until she couldn’t breathe. Until her heart didn’t have room to beat. Until the only sound that could escape that awful press of shock and disbelief was a despairing whimper.
Grief, simple and raw.
Cornered, terrified, panting wildly as something huge began to swell inside. Stark and vicious beyond understanding, uncontrollable rage ready to explode.
Her eyes flashed open to meet Max’s. In that instant, as they lay nose-to-nose, surfacing from that same black dream, she saw through him to all the violence and pain that still banged frantically inside him.
His bad dreams. His memories of the child he’d been when his mother had died.
She took an anguished breath, pulling away from the remnants of a lost boy’s fright and tears, jerking free of the lethal power snapping along her body like a downed electrical wire. And she knew this was what seethed at the center of Max Savoie.
She also realized at that heart-stopping moment that whatever he now saw through those wide glittering eyes, as they swirled red and gold, wasn’t her.
A menacing growl rumbled low in his throat. His lip curled back from teeth sharp as daggers. As the bones in his face began to elongate, she felt a sudden alarm. He could kill her. Kill her in a second without even knowing what he’d done.
“Max. Max, wake up. It’s Charlotte. Baby, it’s Charlotte. Max, look at me. Look at me.”
When she put her palm to his sweaty cheek he lunged back, shoving her away hard enough to knock her onto the floor between the two beds while he scrambled off the other side. Her temple and cheekbone hit the night table, and she heard him cry, “Don’t open the door. Don’t open it!”
Max hit the thin rug hard on knees, elbows, and forehead, crouching there, rocking back and forth. Sickness swelled inside him, not just from the shared dream, but from the invasion of his consciousness and the abrupt separation that left him confused.
He didn’t know where he was, when he was, trapped in a writhing limbo of shadows between the past and present. Instinct leapt up to scramble over rational thought. Threat crowded from all sides. He could smell the swamp, thick and rank; could taste its foulness and the coppery flavor of blood in his mouth. And then a sweet, sweet smell, cloying and deadly.
Fear, hunger, and pain punched through him. Emotions, feelings that were his own, but were someone else’s, too.
No, please. Please don’t. A young woman’s voice.
Run! Hide! Find safety. His mother’s screams.
Disoriented, breathing in quick hard thrusts, he lurched forward on all fours toward the door. He dimly registered a red-haired female of unfamiliar scent, unfamiliar look struggling to her feet, reaching for him, mouthing his name. He couldn’t hear her over the roaring in his head.
Hesitation. A brief tugging whisper that he go to her for comfort, for shelter, was quickly overruled by deeper, ingrained caution.
Humans harm what they fear. Run. Protect yourself. Survive at any cost.
So he ran, chased by ghosts from a past he couldn’t escape.
“WHAT THE HELL happened to you?”
Cee Cee looked up from the edge of the bed, a washcloth filled with ice pressed to her throbbing cheek as she fought down the dizziness that delayed her pursuit of Max. By the time she’d gotten to the open doorway he’d disappeared, and she had to find him, to make sure he was all right.
“Did that son of a bitch hit you?” Babineau sat beside her, lifting the cloth to inspect the damage, his features thunderous. “He’s dead. He’s fucking dead.”
She growled, “No, he didn’t hit me. I slipped and hit the nightstand.”
“Is that why you’re wound so tight? Why you toss all night and call out his name? How long has this been going on? I’m going to kill him, I swear to God.”
She clutched his elbows as he started to surge to his feet. “It’s not Max. It’s not.”
“You expect me to believe that after listening to your nightmares, after hearing you scream in your sleep?” His voice thickened and broke. “Listening and not being able to do anything while you plead with him to stop hurting you?”
“It’s not Max who’s hurting me. It’s Max who saved me,” she said quietly.
“From what?”
“From becoming just another statistic on Dovion’s table.”
And she finally told him. She and Mary Kate Malone kidnapped at seventeen while on their way home from a high school basketball game, held captive for four days to pressure her father not to testify. Abused and repeatedly raped during those endless, awful days and nights, scarred physically and mentally beyond repair. Until rescue arrived from a most unexpected source.
“Max saved us. I don’t think we would have survived another day. Maybe not another hour. We wouldn’t have wanted to survive. He saved us from those monsters Legere had hired to hold us, and he never told me. It wasn’t until recently that I . . . I was able to recognize him.”
Babineau understood. Max Savoie’s rescue had come while in his beast form. “So these nightmares . . .”
She looked away from him; her eyes shimmered with tears. “Are memories.”
“Did he kill them?”
“Yes. Horribly.”
“Good.” And Alain understood something else at that moment. “So this was why you and I never . . . Who else knows?”
“Just Max, Dev, and the chief.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t think you could trust me with something that important?”
“That personal,” she clarified. “I thought—I thought it would get in the way. Because I never wanted you to look at me the way you are right now.”
“You think I pity you, is that it? That I think you’re weak or flawed? Christ, Ceece, don’t you know me at all?”
She had no reply, just that challenging look of pride underscored with fragility.
He put his arms around her and drew her close, holding her tight.
She sagged limply against him, her tremendous strength at an ebb. After a long minute passed, he chuckled to himself.
“What?”
“Just thinking how different things might have been if you’d told me before that ‘affair’ we supposedly had. I recall too many drinks after a long case, fumbling around on your sofa like teenagers until your right hook kept me from sliding into home plate. Not exactly the torrid romance Savoie imagines when he dreams up ways of killing me.”
“Sorry.”
“About the right hook or misleading Savoie?”
“Both.”
“I deserved the right hook. We’re too good as partners to let sex with the wrong person screw things up. Then and now,” he added sadly.
She leaned away, and now she was the one with pity in her eyes. “You’re right about us, Alain. But dead wrong about Max and Tina. We’re with the ones we were meant to have.”
His voice filled with torment. “They’re not like us, Ceece. They don’t fit into our lives, into our world. They’re alien.” He paused, then he just said quietly, “They’re fucking monsters.”
She gripped his face between her hands, angry and anxious. “They’re the people we love.”
“They’re not people. They’re not human, Charlotte.” His expression crumpled and his eyes filled with anguish. “What am I going to do? She and that little boy were my life. They were everything I dreamed of. Now that dream’s a nightmare and I can’t seem to wake up from it.”
“Because you love them.” It was that simple. And that complex.
A rapid tap on the door brought their words to an end. While Cee Cee went to answer it, Babineau wiped away his vulnerability and had his gun at the ready. Stan Schoenbaum leaned in, shadowed by MacCreedy.
“Hey, neighbors. What the hell hit you?”
“Reality, with a hard right cross. What are you doing here, Stan
?”
“Picked up a strange call I thought you might be interested in. Two DBs a couple of blocks from here. One missing his heart.”
Max.
“Babs, let’s take a walk.”
“We can’t get involved,” he warned.
“But we can take a look.”
__________
THE NIGHT WAS thick and damp, making him labor for every breath. He moved unsteadily down the crowded street, fingertips to the walls for balance, senses spinning, emotions pinballing out of control.
Home. Get home. Safe there. Jimmy will keep me safe.
But Jimmy was gone.
He reeled into one of the narrow, stinking alleys, leaning against sweaty stone, closing his eyes to shut out the light and chaos. For some reason, he wasn’t wearing shoes. He remembered. He’d been in bed with Charlotte. Charlotte. He tried to breach the confusion with a shake of his head.
The dream.
He took a gulping breath and pressed palms to the wall as panic swelled in a threatening tide, pulling at him, drowning him in half-remembered horror. Images swirled through cold, anxious nightmares from a past he couldn’t bear to relive. He couldn’t go back there. Didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to know.
Run. Protect yourself. Survive at any cost.
Dread and sickness swept him as he saw those bloodied pearls falling . . .
“You okay, podna? You get chockay with too much drinking?”
The voice shocked him back to his senses. Max didn’t open his eyes as he rasped, “Fine. I’m fine. Go away.”
“Naw, we can’t just go off and leaf you here like dis. Dat wouldn’t be right. Give you a hand, take a reward.”
Laughter, low and coarse.
“I don’t need any help.”
“Then maybe we just help ourselves.”
His eyes slitted open. There were three of them, dark-skinned, hard-eyed, and determined. He shook his head at the ridiculousness of their planning to rob him.
“This is a mistake you don’t want to be making.”
The flash of blades appeared in the hands of the two flanking him, but the third held a squat revolver. A knife was a respectable weapon, up close and personal. Max didn’t like guns, didn’t like the savage way they allowed even a weakling to snatch away another’s life. There was no fairness in a gun. No honor.
“How ’boutchu make nice and pass over your wallet.”
“I’ve got nothing you want. Walk away while you can,” he warned a second time, his voice deepening.
The speaker sneered at him. “Case you didn’t notice, there be three of us and one of you.”
A dark, cool fire kindled as Max shifted his balance from his heels to his toes. His mind was clear now, clear and sharp as those blades and twice as deadly, as what he was inside whispered for release. He exhaled deeply, almost like a satisfied sigh. And he smiled. “You should have brought more friends.”
“That right? What makes you think so?” The gun poked at him with a belligerent bravado as the street tough assumed an intimidating posture. “Who the hell you think you are?”
“The last thing you’ll ever see.”
The gun leveled. As the finger on the trigger tightened, Max had the man’s wrist, twisting quick and hard. The revolver discharged beneath its owner’s chin, the bullet tearing through his neck as his gaze widened in surprise at the sight of his blood splashing Max’s face.
As their leader fell, the two others hesitated. Then one ran; the other lunged.
The blade scissored along Max’s side, then slashed across his forearm and jaw in decisive motions, missing anything vital as Max feinted aside. Max barely registered the pain as an energizing flush of power poured into his veins. His response was immediate and brutal. A snarl distorting his bloody features, he tore through the other’s tee shirt and rib cage to rip free a grisly trophy he devoured like the animal he was. As he closed his eyes in near rapture, the lifeless body collapsed at his feet.
After wiping his sleeve across his mouth, Max drew in the scent of the one who’d thought he’d gotten away.
GASPING FRANTICALLY, THE small-time hood dodged down a dark alley. His lungs about to burst, he ducked into a dark doorway to catch his breath so he could think of what to do, about what he’d seen and still couldn’t believe. But before a single idea came to him, he turned and shrieked at the sight of the gruesome figure confronting him, covered in the fate of his friends.
“Please. Please,” he babbled in terror. “I got me a wife, two bebes, another on de way. I lost me my job. I only threw in with dem for some quickie cash. Dey said nobody would get hurt. I just needed the money. It weren’t for me. Please.”
The ghoulish figure reached out and he flinched, but the man only took his wallet. He trembled, watching strange eyes flicker from unnatural gold to cool green as the man studied the pictures he carried and the name on his driver’s license. Then he drew out four bills from his own pocket, tucking the fifties into the empty bifold before returning it.
“Feed your family. Go to Legere Enterprises in the morning. Ask for Giles St. Clair. He’ll give you work.”
He started away.
“Hey . . . hey, who you are?”
A flash of strong white teeth in the gory face. “You’ll know soon enough.”
“I KNOW WHAT I saw. He was right there—right next to the other one.”
“Maybe he just got up and walked away.”
“With a hole the size of a saucer in his chest? I don’t think so.”
Cee Cee, Babineau, Schoenbaum, and the transplanted Vice detective, MacCreedy, edged into the crowd at the mouth of the alley. Careful not to catch the eye of the officer trying to calm a furious tourist whose clipped East Coast tones were growing louder and more insistent, they checked out the scene. One body remained sprawled on the ground, victim to the pistol still clenched in his hand. There was enough blood on-site to validate the woman’s claim of another victim, but no evidence that another killing had been done. Of course, that would change when two blood types were found. Or three.
Cee Cee’s gut clenched. A robbery gone wrong, most likely. But where was the intended victim?
MacCreedy moved in closer, crouching down near the blood-soaked stones, intense in his study. Cee Cee gripped her partner’s arm and towed him out of the circle of voyeurs.
“Time for us to go see if those home fires are still burning.”
MAX STOOD IN the shower fully dressed, letting the hot water wash the blood down the drain. Giles hadn’t said a word about his appearance when he’d picked him up and driven him back to River Road, while a group of Jimmy’s trusted cleaners slipped in to dispose of the corpse with its all-too-telling cause of death. They hadn’t had time to retrieve the other body and completely sanitize the scene.
All that remained of his own wounds were the stains on his clothes. All that remained of what he’d done was the taste in his mouth and the jittery hum of adrenaline.
A high like no other: that’s how his father had described killing. Max had denied it then, but he couldn’t now. Not while it trembled through his system. The excitement, the danger of confrontation, the thrill of domination. There was nothing like it.
He leaned into the spray, letting the water fill his mouth so he could rinse and spit. But the taste lingered. The taste of death. He understood now that this was in his genetic makeup, what he was bred to be. But that made it no less appalling—or the fact that he liked it, savored the strength flooding through him.
He cranked the faucet to cold. With palms braced against the tiles, he let the chill beat the quiver of savagery from him until all that was left was weariness and remorse.
How could Charlotte love him? How could he ever hope she’d accept all that he was when he couldn’t manage that himself?
Dressed in slouchy sweats, he peered in at Oscar, emotions crowding up. His brother. His father’s other son. Oscar had progressed so quickly during their lessons, already able to conceal the essenc
e of what he was, able to unerringly find Max even from amazing distances during their games of hide-and-seek. Simple tricks compared to what they’d be facing.
He knew next to nothing about the nature of what they were. How could he fulfill his promise to protect the boy when he didn’t understand his enemy? They were going to die, horribly, and he didn’t know how to prevent it.
The Shifter king. His features contorted briefly with irony. The blind following the blinder. Jacques was right to mock him; he didn’t know what he was doing. The only thing he could do well was protect himself. Even now, looking down upon the innocent sleeping boy, he could hear that instinctive whisper.
Run. Save yourself. Survive. Don’t look back. You don’t owe them anything. You don’t owe them your life.
But what would his life be without them? His clan, Jimmy’s people, this boy. Charlotte.
Restless, moody, lonely, he went out onto the front porch to settle into the old glider, wishing he was still small enough to tuck under it until rescue came. But there was no rescue for him now. He rocked, letting the movement soothe his troubled mind, his heavy heart.
Then he became aware of someone nearby. “Don’t you ever sleep, Giles?”
Giles St. Clair came out onto the porch, standing at the top of the steps to stare out into the night. “I’ll sleep when you sleep. When I’m sure you won’t be getting yourself into any more trouble.”
Max smiled at the faint censure. “If you think loyalty will encourage me to pay you more when you’re too tired to do your job, you’re mistaken.”
“Don’t worry about me, boss man. I’ll keep up.”
“A fella by the name of Peekon Williams should be coming to you about work tomorrow. See that he gets a job. If he doesn’t show up, let me know.”
“Some more of that same trouble?”
“I hope not.” He closed his eyes, moving the glider back and forth. He could feel Giles’s pensive study.
“It’s nice having the boy here.”
He waited for the other shoe to drop.
“But I think you’ve got the wrong woman upstairs.”