Assassin's Kiss

by Paris Brandon

  There were too many glasses and too much silverware, all of it elegant and reflecting the room’s shell-like delicacy. Fontaine would catch her eye occasionally and demonstrate which piece to use but the seared tiny bird carcass, smothered in orange sauce, defied her experience.

  She followed Fontaine’s lead when he picked up his knife and fork and separated one tiny leg at the joint, then the other. The breast was trickier but she managed, terrified the whole mess was going to end up in her lap. She should be used to being on display. She hated that Fontaine was helping her. Or rather, that she was willing to accept his help instead of being embarrassed in front of Alvarez. Neither was her friend and they both already had too many advantages.

  “I do hope the gown is to your liking.” Fontaine smiled appreciatively. “Dax took the measurements while you were…sleeping.”

  “Apparently he didn’t measure my feet,” she said, digging her bare toes into the plush white carpet beneath the table.

  “Not being in touch with the earth will render you impotent,” Alvarez said, sourly.

  “Kind of a strange thing to say for a—” Kira closed her mouth, cursing the fact that she’d let her guard down.

  “A drug dealer?” He arched one blond brow and his smile was as cold as his eyes. “You think I deal in street drugs?” He laughed but it sounded forced. “I have a legitimate pharmaceutical company. I supply a perfectly legal escape for those who can’t deal with the fact that they have no control over their lives.”

  “Drugs render humans pliable,” Fontaine explained, glancing over his wineglass. “Most can’t stomach day-to-day living without…help.”

  She glanced between her dinner companions. “You can only take so much away from a person before they either fight or give up.”

  Alvarez shrugged. “The trick is knowing how much to take so they’ll react the way you want them to.”

  Fontaine nodded. “Every organization uses the same method. They make you afraid and then they make you believe they’re the only ones who can save you from the demon they’ve instilled in your mind.”

  “And you know the trick?”

  Fontaine’s warm smile chilled her. “I’m intimately acquainted with the trick. It has to do with timing and the timing couldn’t be more perfect.”

  “Timing for what?” she asked, knowing whatever was coming wasn’t good.

  “For you to help fulfill the prophecy,” Fontaine answered, and the world shifted away from whatever center she could have imagined.

  “What prophecy?” She tried to breathe, remain calm, thankful for whatever drug they were giving her that kept her from shaking. She kept remembering the halfling sacrifice pictograph. Her chest ripped open, her bleeding heart held up like a trophy.

  Fontaine placed his napkin beside his plate and was no longer smiling. “The Second Age of Jaguar prophecy. The one the Council has hidden for centuries. A halfling will be born who will lead the Jaguar People back to their former glory.”

  Kira’s blood turned to ice, literally, and she could feel the goose bumps rise. They knew she was a halfling. Bluff. “And I ask again. What does that have to do with me?”

  Fontaine frowned. “Rina was beautiful and deadly. You defeated her. That makes you the perfect choice to be the mother of a prophet, a savior. It will take someone with your strength to help keep the child safe from the Assassins the Council will send.”

  Breathe. Think. “You want me to conceive a child that the Council will send Assassins to kill the moment they know about it?”

  Alvarez nodded. “This is why you need to gain Sebastian’s loyalty. Who better to guard against an Assassin but another Assassin? Presumably, their best.”

  Sebastian. “You want Bastian to guard the child I conceive?” She could barely get the words out.

  Alvarez reached over and patted her hand. “The halfling child that we conceive.”

  It felt as though all the air in the room had been sucked out and she could feel the pull of oblivion, screams dying in her throat. “He will never agree.” And I will kill you if you touch me.

  Alvarez’s eyes sparkled and his lips twitched into the “gotcha” smile she was growing to hate. “The longer he stays in Jaguar Warrior form the harder it will be for him to return to any of his other natures. If you can’t guarantee his loyalty, he will remain drugged. Imagine him in his true Warrior form forever—caged, sold to the highest bidder. Perhaps for sport. He could end up with his head and hide displayed in some wealthy man’s hidden treasure trove.” He leaned forward. “Then again, maybe some government’s military would want to use him. Reynaldo tells me that cloning is becoming very feasible. He might be worth more as a weapon of terror.”

  He must have practiced his little speech in front of a mirror. His entire performance this evening seemed staged. It had also been very effective. But this was no time to give in to terror. She was going to have to rescue them both.

  She folded her hands in her lap so that no one could see them shaking. “How do you propose that I go about gaining his loyalty if you keep him drugged? If he isn’t capable of being reasoned with?”

  Alvarez smirked. “I suggest that you work very fast.”

  Fontaine cleared his throat and his lips thinned. “There is a video feed in your room and Bastian’s new habitat will have one also.”

  “You’re moving him to a ‘habitat’?”

  “He’s already in his new quarters,” Alvarez quipped. “Would you like to see it?”

  It. She’d been surprised by Fontaine’s use of the habitat reference but then she realized that she and Bastian would become important symbols in the coming war. Too important to be treated badly.

  Dinner couldn’t be over fast enough.

  * * * * *

  More goddamn steps. Thirteen steps to the elevator that went down and opened into a tunnel. Alvarez on her right and Fontaine on her left, she counted another hundred twenty-two. Dax followed a few paces behind while she silently counted thirty more. She was starting to get claustrophobic when she smelled the sea.

  The opening to another corridor was barricaded by iron bars that lifted as they walked toward it and onto a stone path. Bars were also set into a rock wall that separated them from the Jaguar Warrior crouched in a tree. Bastian, his muscular torso lightly covered with spotted fur was intent upon the tapir drinking at the pool beneath him.

  Bastian hadn’t hunted in a long time. He’d almost lost his balance twice and he questioned whether he could move fast enough to catch his dinner before the tapir could escape him.

  It didn’t help that he could smell Kira, hear her heartbeat thrumming in her chest. Fontaine was with her and he could smell Alvarez’s excitement. Sick bastard.

  He focused on Kira. Her fate had been sealed the moment she’d been captured. He couldn’t kill enough people now to keep her secret. But the memory of their mating would not leave him. If he concentrated really hard he could almost hear the tiny mewling cries she made when she came. He shuddered and the leaves in the tree trembled slightly. The tapir stopped drinking and lifted his long snout to the wind. It was now or never.

  Bastian leaped, missed the animal’s back and grabbed for the hind leg, dragging it beneath him. He heaved himself over the roughly eighty pounds of muscular, squirming tapir, sunk his teeth into the back of his skull and waited for it to stop struggling.

  Drawing himself up, he sat back on his haunches and grabbed the limp animal by all fours and faced the bars where they stood watching him.

  She hadn’t screamed or run away. She locked gazes with him and pushed Alvarez’s hand off her arm. Bastian opened his jaws and sank his teeth into his prey, tearing at it, just as he would have done in the wild. Kira smiled and said something to Fontaine and Sebastian almost panicked because he could hear the sound of her voice but he couldn’t make out the words.

  He stood, unsteady at first, but Kira followed his slow ascent as if they were the only two beings who mattered. It took all his strength bu
t he ripped the tapir apart. She didn’t look away.

  Kira held Bastian’s gaze. She didn’t flinch, not even when Alvarez slid his hand along her neck, slipping beneath the folds of silk to slide over the top of her breast.

  “He’s magnificent,” he whispered against her ear. “Isn’t he? There are those who would pay a fortune just to watch him kill. Imagine all that power restrained, forced to do your bidding.” Alvarez shuddered with obvious pleasure. Fontaine’s lips thinned.

  It was time to bargain. “If I agree to be part of this prophecy, I want you to stop drugging him.”

  “Not until we’re positive that the conception has been successful,” Alvarez said, his “gotcha” smile in place.

  “How long will that take?” she asked, as if she were considering their offer instead of trying to find out how much time they had before all hell broke loose. That would be the minute they figured out she was the halfling they needed.

  “The ceremony cannot take place before the next full moon,” Fontaine intoned.

  Kira jerked her gaze away from Bastian, who was still feeding. “What ceremony?”

  Alvarez cupped her bare breast with cold fingers, grazing her nipples, but his words were what almost made her shudder. “I understand that the mating ceremony is quite beautiful. The conception is witnessed so there will be no question of the child’s parentage. I’m anticipating what you’ll be like already.” It was all she could do not to flinch, and in the end, she failed.

  “This is a Jaguar ceremony, Alvarez. Do not even think to denigrate it,” Fontaine warned, his voice edgy and sharp.

  “You require my money and my protection, Fontaine. At least until you take your rightful place. After that, the child will be my assurance that I continue to profit from our arrangement.”

  Kira had trouble following Alvarez’s logic but then she’d already figured out that he was the crazier of the two. Fontaine actually believed the insanity that he was spouting. If she threw the Brotherhood into this mix she could really scare herself into a quivering, blubbering mass of hysteria.

  She returned her gaze to Bastian, tearing at his food, and knew she had to get them out of here before the next full moon. Before she was exposed and Bastian was sold to the highest bidder. He ate as if he were starving and she wondered how long it had been since they’d let him feed.

  If we don’t face who we are, we’ll just keep making the same mistakes until one of them kills us.

  She’d already faced what Bastian was. She was still figuring out what she was. The walk back to the elevator felt surreal, as if the air currents were shifting and whispering around her. They lifted her gown to swirl around her bare legs and hips. She could sense a remembered presence, feel Bastian’s lips against her own and knew that wasn’t possible. Unless there was something else in the drugs they were giving her.

  * * * * *

  Fontaine was waiting for her the next morning, sitting on the swing in the small patio area in the back courtyard. He stood, his movements fluid and graceful in the loose white cotton tunic and pants that was practically a uniform here. She’d been expecting him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She laughed at her own analogy and he smiled in response.

  “You’re looking well this morning. Have you given our proposition any more thought?”

  “Did you imagine that I’d be thinking of anything else?” She smoothed her hands over the skirt of her gauzy, bright yellow sundress. “Cut back on the drugs you’re giving him and I’ll consider it.”

  “Then where would your incentive be?”

  “All deals are give and take, Fontaine. As long as everyone walks away with something they want, I don’t see the problem. You’ll be the spiritual savior of the Jaguar People. Alvarez is writing himself into the prophecy. I’ll have an elevated place in the society that you’ve envisioned. All I want is the chance to give you what you say that you want—Bastian’s compliance.”

  Fontaine smiled and for the first time it didn’t set her teeth on edge. He didn’t leer but he gave her the once over, taking in the loose dress that flowed over her narrow hips and floated around her ankles. He looked as if he almost admired her.

  “I’d like to know who taught you to bargain. What clan are you?”

  “Ah…bloodlines. I’m actually surprised that you haven’t asked before.” She paused, her stomach churning. “I honestly don’t know. I was adopted. I don’t think I turned out to be exactly what they wanted but it wasn’t like they could give me back. I ran away at fourteen and never looked back.” It was close enough to the truth to be plausible. She’d learned that trick on the streets, from Velda, a leggy prostitute with a vicious pimp.

  He frowned. “You were with a Jaguar family?”

  She shrugged, pretending every word was the truth until she believed it. Another Velda trick. “I never saw anyone change. No one ever talked about it.” True enough.

  “I’ve never heard of one of our own being abandoned,” he murmured. “But that could work to my advantage. I could give you any pedigree I wish. Are there records of you? Schools, jobs…anything?”

  “I was privately tutored.” And the caretaker who secretly taught her to read had her throat cut for her effort. “No job record or any other record as far as I know.”

  “The adoption records could be tracked down,” he mused.”

  “I overheard an argument once. I think my adoption involved a lot of untraceable money changing hands.” A plausible reason she couldn’t be given back. She’d tried to think of everything he might ask, where his questions would lead. Thank you, Velda.

  “Even better.” He stopped musing and looked at her hard, calculating. “How did you find out what you were?”

  “Are you asking me when I had my first full-moon shudder and pop?” She scoffed, relishing his almost imperceptible wince.

  “Your first change is important, Kira. There is family…ceremony.”

  “You mean it should have been a religious experience instead of just scaring the hell out of me?” She didn’t have to fake bitterness. It was always just beneath the surface.

  “I mean you should have been watched over, guided, and yes, there are certain rites that are performed even down to the food you are offered.” His concern bordered on agitation and she knew she’d hit a nerve. Something she could use?

  “I thought I was getting sick. I couldn’t eat for three days and I think I had a fever.” Of course that could have been a side effect of being tied naked to a bed in a dark, cold cellar.

  “Did you seek help?”

  “Where? If I’d gone to a clinic they might have turned me over to the cops as a runaway. I was more afraid of that than being sick and alone.”

  “So you have no reason to love humans?”

  “I don’t have any reason to love anyone, human or otherwise.” She was so scared she could hear her own heartbeat. Fontaine could probably hear it too. The way his eyes glittered, she knew the hard sell couldn’t be far behind.

  “If you agree to conceive a child with Alvarez, you could take your rightful place in Jaguar history. You’d have a home and the family you’ve been denied for most of your life.”

  Not long ago that had been all that she longed for. “What about Sebastian? He already has a place in your society, a family. Why would he choose to betray the very laws he’s upheld all of his life?”

  Fontaine’s lips twitched. “Because, he was the perfect lockstep soldier until you stumbled into the moon ceremony. I knew he’d come for me and everything I know about him tells me that he should have followed me into the jungle the night you killed Rina. Instead, he chose to save you. Sebastian has never neglected his duty before. Never.”

  She pretended to be considering his revelation, all the while her heart was doing little flips. The bitch of it was, she didn’t have to pretend.

  “So you want me to turn him into your perfect little lock-step soldier instead of the Council’s?”

  He smiled a subtle come-to-me smil
e and she knew part of why his followers were with him. “It’s the only way you can save him. Trust me when I tell you that Alvarez will kill him in front of you if you refuse to do everything in your power to bind Sebastian to you and eventually to your child.”

  “You mean he wouldn’t really sell him to the highest bidder?”

  His smile disappeared and he seemed to be weighing his words. “Alvarez prefers causing pain over accepting pleasure. He lives for it. Don’t push him,” he warned softly.

  “So you’re the good guy here?”

  His gaze was that of a loving patriarch. Or a pimp who was trying to convince her that selling herself was the only way she was going to survive. “Aren’t you tired of living in fear of what will happen if your true nature is discovered?”

  Every day. “Do you honestly think, when the humans find out about us, they’re going to welcome us with open arms?”

  He shrugged. “Of course not, they’ll be afraid.”

  “Only until they figure out there are probably more of them than there are of us.”

  “Don’t limit your scope, Kira. I’m talking about the fear that makes them question their whole belief system. Many will be angry.”

  She shook her head. “The true believers will make excuses for the powerful. They’ll still see us as evil.”

  “You have so much to learn,” he said, adding a laugh to the patriarchal gaze. “The one thing true believers have in common is desperation. They need to believe in something. All I have to do is build a better mousetrap.”

  “Even I know that it’s the bait, not the trap,” she scoffed.

  His smile crooked the corner of his lips and his dark eyes sparkled. “So do I.”

  A cold shiver raised every hair on her body until she quivered in the slight breeze coming off the sea. Right now, Fontaine was scarier than Alvarez.

  “As soon as the halfling is here, he’ll show us the way.”