Moon Fever

by Susan Sizemore, Maggie Shayne, Lori Handeland

  “Oh!” She looked up at Eliza with horror. Her friend looked both concerned and embarrassed. “I’m not—”

  “I’ll wait out here.” Eliza stepped back and closed the bathroom door.

  Desi was vaguely outraged at Helene interfering in her life like this. The suggestion was appalling, ridiculous. She didn’t want to think about it. But her boss had been patient and very kind about her frequently being too sick to work recently, so Desi supposed she at least owed Helene this much. She opened the box, unwrapped the packaging, and followed the instructions.

  A few minutes later, Desi opened the bathroom door to find Eliza and Helene waiting in the narrow hallway outside for her. Eliza looked worried. Madame Helene had her arms crossed and a stern look on her face. Desi took a big gulp of air and silently passed the plastic stick to Helene.

  “It’s pink,” Helene said, barely looking at the test results. She didn’t sound a bit surprised.

  Eliza looked at the pink indicator line, then at Desi. “You’re pregnant?”

  “No,” Desi answered. “It’s a mistake. It’s not possible.” Another wave of nausea hit her, cutting off further protest. After she heaved into the toilet bowl again, Eliza helped her to one of the tables in the tea room, and Helene thrust a steaming cup of herbal tea into her hands. The warmth of the cup felt wonderful, since Desi was cold with dread.

  “It’s chamomile,” Helene said. “Good for what ails you.”

  Desi looked up wretchedly. “I can’t be pregnant,” she told the grim woman before her. The last thing she wanted for Christmas was to find out she was pregnant—which she couldn’t be. Immaculate conceptions didn’t happen in New Orleans, of all places! “Really, I haven’t had sex with anyone for—a long time.”

  “When was your last period?”

  Desi had to think about that, as she’d never been regular. “Four months, maybe three.”

  “Well, then. That explains why you’re having morning sickness.”

  “I’m not! The closest thing I’ve had to sex in ages was that erotic dream after the Coyote concert.” It was funny how she couldn’t get that dream out of her mind. Her skin and blood and bones couldn’t seem to forget the dream, either. “I have not had sex with a man,” she insisted.

  Helene stepped back, still looking stern, but Desi knew the anger was for her, not at her. “No, you haven’t had sex with a man. You’ve had sex with—” Helene thought better of what she’d been going to say and said instead, “A coyote.”

  “That was a dream!”

  “That’s what he wanted you to think.” Helene shook her head. “There’s some folk it’s better our kind stayed away from, but there’s also some things their kind have to take responsibility for. There’s no way his aunt’s going to let him get away with knocking up a mortal girl in her territory.”

  Our kind? Mortal girl? Dread ran like ice through Desi’s blood. She put down the tea and stood, which made her dizzy again. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  “You’ll find out, girl,” Helene answered. “Now, sit down and drink that tea. I have to make a phone call.”

  Chapter 6

  “W hat’s the matter with you?” Rico asked Jon, who was slumped in a chair across the dressing room.

  The other three members of the band hadn’t arrived yet. Rico and Jon had showed up at the club they owned early to work on some songs. They used the club as a rehearsal space, for charity shows, and for trying out new material on live audiences.

  So far, Rico had played a bit, but Jon hadn’t even taken his acoustic guitar out of its case. He’d been staring at the floor while Rico became increasingly concerned.

  Jon Coyote was usually the happiest man in the world. He was at his most up at times like this, just before the annual holiday show for BBD, the charity the band had founded to help get runaways off the streets. Or, like the night before, when they’d pulled a successful raid on a sweatshop that was using kids as slave labor. Those kids were safe now, with their memories psychically altered to minimize the trauma. And the ones who’d kept the children in such horrific circumstances had made excellent snack food for a few hours, before being turned over to some helpful authorities hypnotized into not remembering Coyote’s involvement.

  Jon loved the chase, the rescue, the capture, the helping the needy. He loved being a rock star as much as he loved being a vampire Prime. He was always confident, always cheerful. He didn’t mope. He didn’t sulk. He exuded charm and superstar charisma.

  But right now, he looked as lively as an overcooked noodle.

  “So, what’s up?” Rico asked.

  Jon finally looked at him. “Holiday blues,” he answered. “Christmas sucks.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Being alone on Christmas sucks,” Jon added.

  Ricardo Shagal considered this the Victorians’ fault. Christmas was some sort of mass hallucination, caused by mortal and supernatural folk alike ingesting the words of Charles Dickens in huge gulps back in the day. Dickens had done for Christmas what J. K. Rowling had done for Quidditch: invented it. Well, Rowling had made up the sport out of whole cloth, while Dickens had an existing traditional holiday to work with. But the result was a similar shift in the cultural zeitgeist, and even vampires weren’t immune to it. Christmas cards and mistletoe, trees and presents, family and loved ones, and lots of partying. Vampires always liked to party.

  “You haven’t been partying enough lately,” Rico told his friend. “That’s your problem. ‘Tis is the season to party.” And since when was Jon Coyote ever alone?

  “I’ve been playing superhero a lot. Too much.”

  “That’s fun, too.”

  “Normally, yeah.” Jon Coyote sighed.

  He sounded so pitiful Rico half expected him to go howl at the moon. Except it was the middle of an overcast December day, and they were vampires, not werewolves. They had were-jackals among their crew; maybe he should send Jon out partying with that bunch of wild men.

  Rico finally registered his kinsman’s remark about having played hero too much. This was not the way a Clan Prime normally felt. The whole point of a Prime’s existence was to protect mortals—and get laid a lot. Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall Jon hanging with many women lately. Any, actually.

  “When’s the last time you had sex?” he asked.

  This was normally the sort of question more likely to start a Prime fight than to get an answer. It was a measure of how down Jon was that he said, “There was a girl when we were in New Orleans.” Then he sighed.

  Rico said incredulously, “That was three months ago!”

  “Ninety-two days, to be precise.”

  Rico put down his guitar in shock. “Ninety-two days without sex? Are you crazy?”

  “I’m in love.”

  “Damn. That’s worse.”

  “I know.”

  “Love love, or bond love?”

  It was perfectly possible for a Prime to fall in love many times in his long life. Having richly satisfying affairs with both vampire and mortal women was one of the perks of being a vampire. But bonding—bonding was serious business. It could happen with a vampire female or with a human woman, and it meant the end of casual sex with multiple partners forever. While this was the ideal relationship all Primes were supposed to hope for, an actual bond played hell with the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Rico knew: he’d met his bondmate, the lovely Gemma Corax of Clan Corvus, ten years before. Of course, this made him the happiest vampire in the world and all, but…

  Jon ran his hands through his heavy blond hair and gave a sad shake of his head. “Bond,” he said softly as the door opened and their bandmates walked in.

  “James Bond,” Bartholomew Corbett said.

  “I should have kept my mouth shut,” Jon muttered.

  Joffrey Reynard jerked a thumb at Jon and asked Rico, “Has he been telling you about his little Desilu?”

  “Desiree,” Jon corrected, and gave Jof an angry look. “How do
you know about her?”

  “She’s all you talked about on the plane when we left New Orleans.”

  “Yeah,” Rico recalled. “We could barely get through planning an op, with you going on about the girl from the night before.”

  “I don’t remember discussing her.”

  Jof shook his head. “You’re pitiful. Did you buy her the diamond bracelet?”

  “No.”

  Rico asked, “If she’s your bondmate, why haven’t you claimed her?”

  “When we first met after Katrina, she was just this kid I looked after. She was way too young, and I never laid a fang on her.”

  “But you wanted to,” Jof said.

  “In the worst way,” Jon conceded. “But that would have made me as bad as the mortals we hunt. When I found her again the last time we were in New Orleans, I discovered that she’s a fan. She’s not in love with me—she’s got it bad for the Jon Coyote rock star image. It wouldn’t be fair to her—”

  “Oh, please!” Corky Cage broke in with his usual sneer. “You’re just using that as an excuse not to settle down. Suck it up, and be a Prime.”

  Corky’s real name was Cordwainer, which Rico figured was reason enough to make anybody bad-tempered. He took out a lot of aggression by playing drums, and kicking bad-guy ass with righteous enthusiasm.

  While the rest of the band were all Primes of the vampire Clans, Corky was Prime of one of the vampire Families. The Families were more pragmatic in their attitudes toward mortals than the idealistic Clans, but Corky was a convert to the Clan Code, with all the zealotry of a convert. Sir Galahad had nothing on this guy.

  “You don’t abandon a bondmate,” Corky reminded Jon.

  “She’s not a bondmate,” Jon answered. “Besides, she’s still too young.”

  “She’s always going to be younger than you,” Rico pointed out. “Get her teenage image out of your head, and remember the woman you bedded.”

  Jon rose angrily to his feet, reacting with typical Prime jealousy. “She’s—” Jon’s cell phone rang before he could finish. He fished it out of a tight jeans pocket. “Hello?” After a few moments of shouting issued from the phone, he asked, “Aunt Martine?”

  The other Primes strained to listen, and Jon winced as the shouting continued.

  “Desi?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Why? What?” he shouted, and sat down heavily, his eyes wide with shock. At jagged intervals, he managed to shout back, “That’s not possible! Me? Mine? No, you can’t do that! I can’t. You wouldn’t? All right, all right. I’ll be there.”

  When he got off the phone and looked at his staring comrades, the terminally insouciant Jonathan Coyote appeared as if he’d been hit in the head with a hammer. Repeatedly.

  “I’m—uh—I have to go to New Orleans,” he managed to get out. “I—she—”

  “We know,” Rico answered. “We heard.”

  “How do you—”

  “We’re vampires,” Jof reminded him. “We have superpowers.”

  “And Aunt Martine was shouting loud enough to wake the dead,” Rico added. “The whole building probably heard her.”

  “You knocked her up!” Corky cackled. He came over and slapped Jon on the back. “Congratulations, man!” Then he narrowed his eyes and added, “You’re going to take care of her, right?”

  Jon glared at him for a moment, his bright blue eyes taking on a feral glow. “Right now, we’re going to give a show,” he said, voice crackling with authority—the true alpha Prime of this pack. His gaze swept over them, bringing them to attention. “The best damn show we’ve ever done.”

  One by one, they nodded.

  “Then I’m going to New Orleans,” Jon finished.

  “We’re going to New Orleans,” Rico added after a moment of defiant silence.

  Jon glared, but the others nodded confirmation.

  “Aunt Martine throws a hell of a Christmas party,” Rico said.

  “And we wouldn’t miss this shotgun wedding for the world,” Corky finished.

  Chapter 7

  M artine Shagal, head of House Martine of Clan Shagal, stood on her front porch with her hands on her hips and looked down her fine, arched nose at Jon. “Did you bring a ring?”

  Jonathan Coyote, Prime of House Natalya of Clan Shagal, stood at the bottom of the stairs and said, “Where is she?”

  Clan women were used to being answered, respected, and obeyed. Theirs was, after all, a matriarchal culture. But Jon wasn’t feeling particularly deferential at the moment. He’d come at Martine’s demand, and that was going to have to be enough for her. Whatever happened next was his business.

  He’d lived too much of his life in public, in the glare of the media, under the eyes of his fans. He existed in the fishbowl of stages, hotels, and tour buses. A lot of cameras had been turned on him in the last twenty years. A lot of people thought they had a piece of him. It was the life he’d chosen, enjoyed, and lived to the fullest, but it wasn’t his real life. It wasn’t all his life.

  He lived in the darkness, as well. He followed ancient custom. He’d made the vow not all Primes were willing to make in this postmodern age. He hunted out evil, he fought for justice, he took care of mortals, and he’d cleverly managed to keep the secrets of his kind, despite everything else.

  He wore the jackal head tattoo of an active Prime of Clan Shagal on the inside of his right wrist. He held his arm up to show Martine the mark now.

  It was all he needed to do to remind her that he was not to be treated as a child. She gave a sharp nod and stepped aside. “Welcome to my home, son of my sister. The woman waits for you inside. Under my protection,” she added. It was a warning to obey the rules of hospitality.

  It annoyed him that he wasn’t going to be allowed simply to grab Desi and leave. Martine may have acknowledged that he was Prime, but she’d placed limitations on his rights over the mortal woman in her house.

  Fair enough, he supposed. The most important thing right now was to see Desiree. The hardest thing he’d ever done was to walk away from her at her apartment, after walking away from her ten years before.

  It was almost as hard to walk into his aunt’s Garden District home. There was a party going on, of course. There were a lot of musicians in the family, so the music was live and lively. The sound of it, and laughter, filled every room. There was no Christmas tree, but lights were strung everywhere—around windows, along walls, across mantels, over doorways. Mistletoe hung from every glittering crystal chandelier, as thick as Spanish moss in the bayous. And the Primes and their ladies were putting the mistletoe to good use. The very air in the crowded rooms sizzled with joyful anticipation and impending passion. Every now and then, in the darker corners, he noted a hint of fang grazing willing flesh and the scent of arousal and blood.

  He ignored it all, even the hot-eyed come-hither looks and suggestive touches from some truly beautiful vampire women. It was a mortal he wanted, needed.

  Jon made his way through the crowd of kissing, cuddling couples to the base of a sweeping staircase at the center of the mansion. He’d known where Desiree was the moment he’d entered the house. He’d been wrestling with the psychic connection between them for months, trying not to think about her, trying not to go to her. And it had done him no good at all to fight his fate. He’d paid for tempting fate with three months of loneliness and anxiety. She was meant to be his, whether she was ready for the bonding or not. Now he was about to find out what she had paid for his leaving her, and he was going to have try to make it up to her.

  He ran up the stairs, dodging party guests on the stairway. He was aware of the looks turned on him—curiosity, interest from some of the females, and assessment from other males, since Primes were always ready for challenges over claims to the women. No vampire party would be complete without a few fights over mating rights. While no Matri or Householder would let the challenges get out of hand in her home, it would also be impolite not to show the female guests how much their beauty and allure wer
e appreciated. The delicate balance of etiquette didn’t matter to Jon right now.

  He followed his awareness of Desiree down the hallway at the top of the stairs. An ornate banister flanked one side of the hall, tall doorways the other. He moved swiftly, the polished wood beneath his feet making no sound. All he could think of as he reached the door and turned the crystal knob was how vulnerable Desi was, how fragile.

  His concern was so deep that he barely had time to dodge the heavy bronze statue that was hurled at his head as he entered the room.

  “You bastard!”

  Desiree didn’t look pregnant yet, but he could sense the life force within her. It was to this that he responded. Jon held his hands up before him. “Desi, honey, I can explain.”

  She threw another statue at him.

  The woman had good reflexes and pretty good aim, but he was a vampire and moved like one to avoid being hit. The statue left a hefty dent in the door he’d been standing in front of a moment before.

  He grasped her wrists before she could destroy any more of Aunt Martine’s property. Or put any more holes in the old mansion. Or him.

  The moment they touched, he felt the child, and the connection between all of them. He closed his eyes, almost overcome by the bliss.

  “Let go of me!” Desi shouted.

  She obviously didn’t feel it or was too angry to acknowledge it. He felt a sharp pain in his shin as she kicked him.

  Fragile? Vulnerable? What had made him think that about this little hellcat? Hadn’t he learned that a decade ago, tracking her through the flood waters of a lawless town? But she was his hellcat. He’d found her again, and he had to protect her.

  Jon drew Desiree into an embrace, holding her gently but firmly. “Hush,” he said. “Think of the baby.”

  She craned her head up to glare at him. “Think about the—!”

  “I know, I know. If it wasn’t for me…” He sighed. Her warmth, the scent of her skin, and the psychic energy that crackled like lightning around her were all very distracting. The solid weight of her in his arms was wonderful. “I missed you. I’ve always missed you. I’m here now.”