I muttered a word that had been ancient—and obscene—when Augustus was but a child. “No. Not you. You eat human food.”
His chest swelled. He’d found a pair of jeans somewhere, thank the gods, but the fabric strained as he bulked, the change running through him like liquid.
“No,” I said, sharply, just the tone I would take with a new, inexperienced fledgling.
The growl halted. He dropped his shoulders, expressing submission with a single graceful movement.
What was I to do now? We studied each other, lykanthe and Preserver, and I felt the weight of responsibility settle on me. And the hateful machine inside my head decided he could be useful.
“You can track.” I slid my legs off the bed. The boots were sorely the worse for wear, and my dress was merely rags. “You can track them.”
He nodded. His pupils settled, cat-slit now. Which was a very good sign. Lykanthe are pack animals, and they need to know their place in the hierarchy.
What would happen when he remembered what he was?
I decided I would answer that question when it arose. For now, he was watching me carefully. And I might well need his help, since they had some infernal invention that could hurl a stake through my chest. I was grateful it had not been hawthorn: the allergic reaction might well have sent me to join my charges before vengeance was complete.
“Very well.” I straightened. “I need clothes. You need food. And you need a name.”
He thought this over, his pupils holding steady. Then, slowly, he lifted one hand, pointed to his chest. “Wolf.”
I nodded. “Of course.” Pointed at myself. “Eleni.”
It was a start.
* * *
The marks of my claws were fresh and glaring on the freeway’s surface. We waited for traffic to clear, crouched in the shadow of the overpass. He had no feminine clothing in the efficiency, but I’d found a pair of jeans to cut down and a belt that served with a few extra holes delicately claw-punched. A none-too-fresh white tank top—laundry had evidently never been his specialty, if this was indeed his apartment—and a too-large brown leather jacket completed my oddest sartorial statement ever.
He watched with no sign of impatience or disgust as I hunted, and when my victim—a drug dealer in one of downtown’s less savory quarters—was dispatched and I rifled the pockets, Wolf stayed wide-eyed and calm. No fur had rippled out through his skin.
The roll of cash was sticky with God alone knew what, but it was serviceable. Twenty minutes later, at a street vendor’s stall, Wolf swallowed several slices of pizza; at another, he ate at least five gyros and washed everything down with a large soda. Empty calories, certainly, but better than nothing. He stared longingly at a soft-pretzel vendor, but I drew him away and he followed without demur.
Traffic roared past, a cavalcade of glaring white eyes. I heard a dead spot coming and rose. The lykanthe crouched easily. “Do you have the scent?” I asked again.
He nodded, lifting his shaggy head and sniffing. Fur crawled up his cheeks, spilled down his broad chest. Now I knew why lykanthe rarely wear shirts—tearing them in the change must be annoying. “Run,” he said, his mouth moving wetly over the word as his jaw structure changed, crackling. “Run them down.”
“Good boy.” I could not help myself. But he shivered as if the approval was pleasant, and launched himself into a leap. I followed, and a double sound—the cloth-tearing sound of the Kin using inhuman speed and the howl that burst from him—echoed under the orange-lit city sky.
* * *
The mansion was several miles from the city limits, a graceless mushroom-white thing with a colonnaded porch, the grounds extensive but overgrown. Wolf skidded to a stop and crouched, snarling; I curled my fingers in the thick ruff at the back of his neck. It was an instinctive move, because I sensed the thread-thin wire strung between once-ornamental and now shaggy trees, metal humming with ill intent.
“Easy,” I whispered, under the deep edge of his snarl. “Easy, young one.”
Chill night air touched my cheeks. Wolf’s growl stopped between exhale and inhale. He remained thrumming-tense, muscles bunched and ready.
I kept whispering, though there was little need. “They are on their guard now. Hopefully they are stupid enough to think their stake-gun disposed of me, but we cannot depend on that. We must go carefully, and quietly. Come back to your other form.”
Shudders ran through him in waves, but I waited. The moon, half full, was a bleached bone in the sky, above the orange stain of the city. The night was young.
“Come back,” I insisted. Fur melted, and soon I clasped the nape of a crouching young man in a loose corduroy jacket and torn jeans.
“Hear them,” he whispered. “Five, six. Maybe more.” The sibilants faded into mush, but I was better at deciphering his words now. The muzzle had damaged something, and he would be a long time healing.
“Good.” My fingers moved, soothingly. It was a cross between petting a restive animal and soothing a child. He finally relaxed. “Now. You will wait here. Do not disobey.”
He shivered. “Go. With.”
“Wait here. Should I need you, I will call. I promise.”
“Go with,” he insisted, tilting his shaggy head back as if to trap my fingers. “Need. Go with.”
My claws pricked. “You will wait here, lykanthe. Until I call.”
He subsided. Became a statue. I petted him absently as I considered the tripwires. When I could see them clearly in my mind’s eye, I took my hand away. The lykanthe made a faint whining sound, but he stayed put.
I backed up three paces. Four. Plenty of room.
“Eleni,” Wolf whispered, haltingly.
I leapt. Caught the tree branch I was aiming for, rough bark against my palms, a squeaking sound as force transferred.
Yes, Zhen had told me I was gymnastic, and it was his training I drew on now. Body flying, legs flung wide then pulled in, twisting and turning with inhuman speed and precision as I tumbled through the gaps in the tripwires. They had covered the likely angles of approach—if the threat was human. A Preserver trained by one of her charges in the use of inhuman flesh and bone? It was almost child’s play. I could almost see Zhen’s narrowed eyes, hear his shouted encouragements. Pull your knee up … think up, up! It is the center all movement flows from, Eleni! Arms straight, they are the fulcrum!
Twisting, spinning, my smoke-tainted hair flying, a fierce joy filled me. For a moment I could pretend they were all still alive.
I landed, rolling, on the gravel drive. Leapt again, soundless, and caught the edge of the porch roof. Pulled, a silent gasp of effort turning my face into a rictus, and spinning weightless … before landing soft as a cat’s whispering paw on the main roof, kneeling, arms held out to my sides in an approximation of one of Zhen’s movements. It is not enough to begin well and do well, he would say. You must also finish properly.
“I will,” I answered softly, and rose. Listened, head cocked.
Five pulses. No, six. Each human heartbeat is unique, echoing through muscle and bone, the differences like clarion calls to a Kin’s ear. They were familiar, distinctive. I had heard them galloping along inside the van as it tried to shake me free. One was directly below me. Young, and suddenly speeding up.
The Sensitive. Sensitive to me, perhaps. Or to any denizen of the twilight. Was that how they had found my charges?
I leapt for the edge of the roof, turning in midair and catching the gutter. It ripped free, but not before it provided me with another angle, and my filthy boots smashed the window. The rest of me followed, straight and slim as a spear, and the youth was stumbling for the door, screaming in a girl’s high terrified voice. I was on him in a moment, smelling the agony of fear as he lost control of bladder and bowels, right before my hand splintered ribs and I pulled the still-beating heart free. My hand closed convulsively, and the tough muscle splattered. Tiny droplets of flung blood dewed my face.
The body dropped. I cocked my head.
/>
Two of the other five pulses scattered through the house quickened. A faint electronic buzz touched the edges of my hearing. Their security system, of course.
Good.
This was a monk’s bedroom, with only a narrow cot and a cross on the wall, lit only by moonlight streaming through the broken window. I pushed the door open with my toe, stepping over the still-twitching body, and smiled.
I do enjoy hunting.
* * *
Their method of driving a stake through the heart was a modified crossbow. The disadvantage of a crossbow is that it takes a certain time to reload, and it flings a heavy object like a wooden stake far too slowly for a forewarned Kin. By the time the second stake had bisected the air where I was standing a moment ago, I was on the first shooter. Cupping his face like a lover, smelling his terror and the stink of petrol, giving the quick sharp yank that broke the neck like a dry stick. My foot flashed out, catching the one next to him in the ribs and flinging him across the room before he could bring his guns around to catch me.
Then it was a leap aside, another bolt singing through space I’d just vacated, and I collided with another shooter. He was screaming as I hit him, and blood flew from his mouth as kinetic force transferred. He hit the wall hard, slid down in a boneless lump.
I turned on my heel. Two left. One stank of petrol—the last of the Burners. The other held the crossbow, staring at me slack-mouthed, and he smelled of dominance under a bald edge of roaring fear. The lieutenant.
Both were stocky, short-haired, and well trained. But they were only human. I bared my teeth as the lieutenant raised the crossbow again, and their fear was sweet tonic to me. It was not enough—my charges had suffered more.
Which one should I keep to tell me where their captain was?
I took a single step forward, still smiling, my fangs aching with delight and my jaw crackling as the Thirst sang in my veins. I would need to hunt again before this night was out, the use of speed and strength taking their toll even on one so old.
The Burner dropped his guns and bolted. I leapt for him, and the world exploded with a roar.
The lykanthe leapt on the lieutenant, his teeth sinking into flesh as the man let out a high rabbitscream. It was too late to pull back, I collided with the Burner, my nose full of the reek of death, pain, and fuel. Bones snapped. He was dead before he hit the floor.
I spun. Wolf growled again, hunched over the body hanging in his jaws.
“Drop him!” I commanded, sharply.
He shook the limp form, fur standing up, alive and vital. He had lost his jacket, and his fluid form rippled with muscle. Bits of drywall and slivers of wood clung to his pelt. He looked a hairbreadth away from tearing flesh free of the body and swallowing it, and if he did that …
I know enough of lykanthe to know the taboo. Thou shalt not eat human flesh. I did not know quite what would happen, but I was certain I did not wish to find out here.
“Drop him,” I said again, softly but with great force. “Wolf. Drop him. Now.”
His eyes were mad silver coins. He stared at me, chest vibrating with the growl, and if he attacked me I would have to kill him. It is no large thing to kill mortals, but another of the twilight? A blood-crazed lykanthe?
That is altogether different.
His jaws separated. The body thumped down, and his growl faded.
I put my wet, bloodslick hands on my hips. “If he is dead, I will not catch their captain as easily. Did I not tell you to stay?”
He merely watched me. Narrow graceful head, the snout lifted a little, blood marking his scarred muzzle. His clawed front paws tensed and relaxed, as a cat will knead a pillow or its owner’s thigh.
There was no pulse echoing from his victim’s body.
I sighed, though the tension did not leave me. And I waited. The air still reverberated with their screaming, blood and death and terror.
The fur receded gradually until he stood there bare-chested, his jeans painted with spatters of blood, and shook drywall dust out of his shaggy hair. He hunched his shoulders, as if he expected a reprimand.
It would do no good. To chastise the uncomprehending is cruelty.
It took effort to speak softly. “Come. We shall search this place, and then we shall burn it.”
His head dipped in an approximation of a nod. “S-s-sorry.” He could not even force his mouth to shape the simple word correctly.
A great pointless rage flashed through me and away. “It is of little account, young one. Come. Help me.”
* * *
There was a bank of computers, the monitors glowing. Crates of ammunition, stacks of those odd canisters of petrol. The additive was in gelatin form, a large box full of premeasured packets of the stuff set carefully away from the tanks of fuel. There was a filing cabinet as well, and I opened both drawers, reading swiftly and collating information as Wolf touched the glowing screens with his blood-wet fingertips, fascinated.
More of them? I memorized dates and locations, a sick suspicion growing under my heart. Humans have hunted us before, piecemeal and never very successfully. They usually focus on Prometheans.
But this group hunted Preservers. Or their helpless charges. Not utterly helpless, but there is no reason for a ward to learn combat or hunting. It is the Preserver’s function to learn those things, so the ward may focus on his or her art, whatever that art is.
Somehow, incredibly, these humans found Preserver houses in cities. Was it the Sensitives? I would have sensed human surveillance; I have moved my charges many times, when notice or war seems likely. Still, what could—
I opened another file, this one red and marked CLASSIFIED. Gasped, shock blurring through me.
Pictures. Of my house. Of Amelie in the garden, her heart-shaped face turned up as she studied the oleander tree. A blurred shot of Zhen through the windows of his dance studio, arms out and face set in a habitual half-smile. Virginia at the piano, her head down and her long dark braids tied carelessly back. Peter, standing on the front step with his mouth half open, caught in the act of laughing, probably at one of Amelie’s artless sallies. No picture of me—of course, I was more careful, out of habit. But there was something else.
A heavy cream-colored card, with the address of our house written in rusty ink, a fountain pen’s scratching at the surface of the paper. Ancient, spiky calligraphy, but still readable enough. It reeked of him, the perfume of a Kin.
Dear gods.
I closed the file. Brought it to my chest and hugged hard, the heavy paper crinkling.
Wolf whined low in his throat.
In a few moments, I had the other information I needed. Three locations, one of which was certain to hold this captain of theirs.
There was enough of the night left to accomplish that part of my revenge before I found the traitor who had given pictures of my family to these monsters. And I would make him pay, no matter how old, powerful … or Promethean.
I stared at the petrol canisters for a long moment before shelving my rage once more. There was work to be done.
When the house was aflame, we left.
* * *
The first location—an anonymous ranch house in the suburbs—was empty, but I found evidence of their presence. It was the second, a slumping tenement in the worst sink of the city, that held the prize. The entire place smelled of despair, urine, fried food, and the burning metal of poverty and danger.
I had rescued my Amelie from a place such as this. My hands made fists, loosened, made fists again.
I slid down the hall, crushing the cheap stained carpet under my fouled boots. My hair reeked of smoke again, and my fingers stung with splashed petrol. Wolf padded behind me, his head down. He would need more food before dawn, and a safe place to sleep.
Soon. Very soon.
We rounded the corner, and I saw the door, number 613. It was open a crack, spilling a sword of golden light into the dimness. I halted, and Wolf almost walked into me. He stopped, and tension sprang up betwee
n us.
A soft growl, far back in his throat. “Vrykolakas.”
Even through the slurring, I had no trouble deciphering the word. I did not know whether to be saddened or relieved. My own answer was a whisper. “As I am.”
For I sensed him too.
I pushed the door open with tented fingers. Stepped inside. Had he wanted to kill me, I would never have scented him. I would never have heard his strong, ageless pulse.
The apartment began as a tiny hall, a filthy kitchen to the right, a foul bathroom to the left. At the end of the hall, a single room with only a bed and a chair crouching on the colorless carpet.
The narrow bed held the captain’s body, facedown. The dried, shriveled things hanging outside the slits between his ribs were his lungs. It is an old torture—the suffocation is drawn-out and excruciating. His wrists and ankles were lashed to the bed with cords, probably from the cheap blinds covering the window. Or brought to this place, because a careful killer is a successful killer.
Perched in the other chair, his back straight and his sallow face expressionless, was Tarquin.
Wolf snarled and lunged forward. I caught him by his hair, and he folded down to the floor, his knees hitting with a thump that shook the entire room. “No.” I yanked his head back, exposing his throat. “No, Wolf. He will kill you.”
He might very well kill us both. I met Quinn’s flat dark gaze, his jaw set and a muscle ticking in his cheek. His hair was cut military-short, as ever, and he wore boots to match mine. No spot of blood fouled his leathers. The room could have been a charnel house and still he would have been pristine. Only once had I seen him covered in blood, and screaming.
I shuddered to remember.
“I am not here to kill you.” Flat, as usual, each word with the same monotone weight.
Wolf surged forward. I tightened my grasp in his shaggy hair and pulled him back. Quinn watched this, and a shadow of amusement fluttered in his dark eyes.
“Then what?” The enormity of the treachery threatened to choke me. “He did this. Your precious White King. He gave over his own kind to mortals!”
Chicks Kick Butt - Rachel Caine, Kerrie Hughes (ed) Page 10