by Karen Ranney
“Really? Can you put aside your egos to just answer the damn question? What’s going on here? Who’s them? Why aren’t you surprised to find out that your brother can bark? If somebody doesn’t say something in the next minute, I’m walking out.”
I wasn’t really - I hadn’t yet addressed the real reason I was here. He had to lift his ban on Sandy being with Duncan. I’m not sure my sister had made the best choice about the man, but I did know that I’d do everything in my power to help her. That’s what family did. They didn’t face down each other like stubborn goats.
“It’s the OTHER,” Craig said without moving his gaze from Joey.
“What’s the other?”
“The OTHER. The Organization of True Humans for Equal Rights,” Craig said. “They’re all for making sure that humans have as many powers as paranormals have. I think they’re out to eradicate paranormals of any kind, especially Weres.”
“They’re not like that,” Joey said.
“They’re exactly like that. What did they promise you? That you wouldn’t have to be a Were anymore?”
Joey looked at the far wall rather than return his brother’s look.
I was feeling a little weird at this point. No one knew that I’d entered the lottery. Yet here was Joey, trying to change his nature just like I was.
“Why would you let them experiment on you?” Craig asked. “You’re a Palmer.”
I’d heard a version of that sentence all my life. You’re a Boyd and there are certain expectations of you. You’re a Boyd and you can’t behave in that manner. You’re a Boyd and you have a certain reputation to maintain.
I was never just Torrance. I was always and forever Torrance Boyd.
My sympathy went out to Joey.
“They promised me I’d get stronger,” he said. “So I could challenge you.”
I hadn’t expected that. Nor had I anticipated that Joey would stand and face Craig now.
“You might have been able to challenge our father, but when it comes time for us, the outlook won’t be so certain.”
“Get out,” Craig said in a strangely pleasant voice. “I told you I’d banish you if you ever went near them again. I wasn’t kidding then and I’m not kidding now. Get your things and leave. You’re no longer welcome in the Palmer clan.”
Joey didn’t flinch. He didn’t back down. He turned, glanced at me, then headed for the door.
I’d gotten caught in the middle of a turf war. The least Joey could have done was warn me about it.
Even my mother hadn’t told me that Craig had challenged his father and won.
Sam Palmer was a thin man with narrow shoulders, a long neck, and an Adam’s apple that had fascinated me as a child. I’d thought it was a ball in his throat and every time he swallowed it bounced up and down.
Over the years, Sam had gotten thinner and grayer. It was as if he were becoming invisible. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Craig had challenged him for dominance, but I was. Although any son could challenge the head of a family, it wasn’t often done unless there were major problems in the family. Either the father was a drunk or an abuser or he couldn’t support the family.
Sam had always been a sweet and gentle man, conscientious and kind.
Why had Craig thought it important to challenge him?
“You think Joey was allowing the OTHER to experiment on him?” I asked, pushing the issue of dominance to the back of my mind.
His eyes were flat, but his temper was boiling. I knew him well and the distance of eight years seemed to have added a magnifying glass to my knowledge.
“Yes.”
I doubted I was going to get more than that as an answer.
I’d always thought Joey was like his father, quietly effective. He would simply concentrate on a problem, work it out and pursue it until it was done. He wouldn’t make waves. He wouldn’t cause a scene.
Evidently, I was wrong. He’d been willing to plan on challenging Craig.
“Tell me about the OTHER. Who are they?”
“Ask your father,” he said. “He knows more about them than anyone.”
I didn’t say anything, digesting that information.
There were groups of humans who actively lobbied to contain vampires, to list them, and regulate their presence in society. They didn’t want vampires to be able to own property, for example. Or to vote. And they wanted the Vampire Council to be subservient to local law enforcement.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Vampires weren’t exactly a poor group. Where there was money, there was also power. Whenever a certain policy change looked as if it might become a bill, forces friendly to vampires swooped in and made sure that it never made it through legislation.
It was a classic case of follow the money.
If it ever came to that for Weres, we would simply do the same thing. We’d use the power we’d accumulated as well as the fortunes we’d amassed to protect ourselves. It didn’t hurt that we’d already put a well-known publicist on retainer. According to my father, we were prepared for any contingency.
I didn’t know, however, if we were prepared for the OTHER and for members of our clans to go from being Weres to puppy dogs.
My father and I were going to have to have a heart to heart talk.
“Did you really banish Joey?”
I half expected him to pick up the phone and inform someone to stop Joey from leaving the lot. Brothers don’t do what he’d done.
“I warned him once. That was enough.”
“When did you become such a hard ass?”
“When I became head of the family.”
Once a member of a clan was banished, they almost never return. There’s a ceremony the banished member has to go through that, for lack of a better explanation, was the opposite of a challenge. The reintegrating process was a long, drawn out ritual to prove that you’re worthy to come back.
If it ever came to that, would Craig allow Joey to return?
I got that flat look again. He might have gotten older and more of a hard ass, but I’d been almost his concubine for two years. A woman learns a man in that time.
He was super pissed right now, hardly the propitious moment for me to ask about Duncan. Yet I was conscious of the passing of the hours. I wanted to get the hell away from the lodge before the moon rose.
The memory of Sandy’s tears kept me rooted in the chair. I pushed back my reluctance, summoned up my most charming smile, and leaned forward. The better to display my cleavage, of which I’m somewhat proud. However, the blouse I was wearing was designed for work, not boom chica boom boom.
“Let’s talk about why you won’t let Duncan see Sandy.”
He didn’t say a word.
If I’d been wearing a sexier blouse, I would have unfastened one more button. I could always remind him of the torrid sex we’d had. I could summon up a memory or twenty of times we’d been so exhausted we slept for hours afterward. Sex with Craig had been a marathon, not a sprint.
I decided not to bring up sex. My libido was panting and its tongue was hanging out.
“Sandy is very upset,” I said tiptoeing through the words. “She’s my little sister, so of course I want to do anything to help her.”
Again, he didn’t say anything. If the circumstances had been different, I would’ve summoned up his fraternal feelings for his brother, but what I’d seen in the last twenty minutes made that seem unlikely.
“I know our families have been very close for a great many years,” I continued.
Silence.
“Why have you forbidden them to see each other?”
He sat there like a Pasha in his tufted leather swivel throne, smiling faintly at me.
Oh, for a tomato I could aim in his direction.
“Why? Because of what happened between us? We can’t change the past, Craig.”
“You’re right, we can’t,” he said.
“It was eight years ago.”
“Again, you’re right.
” He smiled.
“So you’re going to punish Sandy for something I did?”
“Hunt with me tonight. If you do, I’ll change my mind.”
I came this close to standing up and marching out of his office, and tossing my hair over my shoulder in a universal gesture of female contempt. I came this close, but no closer.
I could hear Sandy’s voice in the back of my mind. But even more troubling was the fact my libido stopped panting, picked up its little ears, and started jumping up and down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, do it! Do it!
My mouth was all set to say, “Hell no.” My lips were forming the words. To my horror I heard myself say, “All right.”
Chapter Eight
I was a slut for Fig Newtons
What the hell was I thinking?
Had I lost my mind?
Evidently I had because when Craig stood and handed me a keycard to room 370, I didn’t question him. I didn’t say something rational, like: were you waiting for me? How did you know I’d be here today? Or do you just keep a spare key around for whenever? How did you know I’d agree?
Too many questions and not enough answers.
I turned and left his office, heading for the bank of elevators. I should call home and let them know I was here. Just in case something went wrong — and I have no idea why my mind went there. My father wasn’t home so my mother would be running with my weeping sister.
I was on my own.
I was hoping against hope that the keycard wasn’t for where Craig lived. When we were together he had a small apartment in San Antonio. And then there was always the Palmer house, about five miles — and a world — away from my childhood home.
Room 370 wasn’t, I was relieved to see, Craig’s apartment, but a beautifully furnished hotel room in shades of teal and beige. I have this thing against hotel rooms and it’s probably because I’ve watched too many investigative exposes on television. I could imagine all those invisible splotches showing up under a black light. Weres were very fastidious, but humans checked into the Luna Lodge as well.
I told myself to get over it, went into the dressing area and stared at myself in the mirror. I look tired, but that was to be expected since I only had about three hours sleep the night before, plus I’d been up at four to get to the clinic early for Cleo’s spaying.
I pulled out my phone and called the clinic to check on her. According to Betty, everything was fine so I released her to go home.
I’ve always liked animals. Cats hissed at me and treated me with a great deal of caution, but they treated humans like that, too. I got along with dogs just fine. Rabbits had a tendency to twitch around me. Not that I could blame them.
The ability to communicate with an animal was a beautiful thing. To share ourselves with another, even if that another was a four-legged creature, was almost a transformative experience. We need to be selfless from time to time. All of us — whatever we are — need to love.
At the very least I should’ve gotten a dog in the last three years. Maybe if I had I wouldn’t be so desperate for companionship now that I was sprawled out in the middle of a spider’s web trying to tell myself that the spider was really a good guy.
I moved from the dressing area into the living section, complete with chairs, table, and a comfy looking sofa. I didn’t sit, too restless at the moment. I peered through the floor to ceiling drapes, to a view of the forest and beyond, to the hills. In only a few hours the moon would be up and so would all the residents of Luna Lodge. We’d have a convention in the woods.
Even taking Waxinine, I’d felt the calling on full moon nights. It was like a very distant bell ringing in the house next door. I could hear it, but I didn’t feel compelled to answer it. I could even stand at the window and stare at the moon and the shadowed landscape and not feel the desperation to run.
I didn’t miss the Hunt, but I missed how I felt afterward. As if I had been renewed, as if every cell in my body had been made over, created just on that morning. I didn’t cherish the experience of being Were as much as I did the perfection of being alive.
And the lust. Oh, but it was more than that. It was a surge of need and desire, want and possession that boiled up from inside me, stretching outward in a violent explosion of emotion.
I didn’t want to be a Were. I didn’t want to live in the hierarchy I’d been born into. I didn’t want to follow the rules that were dictated to me.
But I missed that one thing, that volcano of sensation.
Three years had passed since I changed. It was like smiling. You could go for a very long time without smiling, but you don’t forget how. It isn’t a skill, like riding a bicycle. It’s part of you.
A basket of goodies was sitting on the table. I hadn’t noticed it before, but I reached for it now, pawing through the assortment of chocolate bars, fresh fruit, dried fruit, cashews, macadamia nuts, and Fig Newtons.
I was a slut for Fig Newtons and always had been, ever since I was a kid. I don’t know what it was about them, but give me a glass of milk — or coffee — and two Fig Newtons and I’m yours.
Craig knew that. He’d evidently planned for me being here tonight.
I wasn’t feeling all warm and fuzzy about him right now. I didn’t like walking into a trap and I didn’t like being emotionally blackmailed.
Part of it was my problem. I was feeling guilty for having ignored my family for so long, for staying away when I should have just come back to San Antonio and taken my rightful place in the family, whatever the hell that might be.
I should have cultivated a better relationship with Sandy. Mom made the trip to Austin once a month. We sat and had coffee, laughed over lunch, went to an art show or two and sometimes even went shopping, one of my least favorite occupations. Sandy could have done the same, more often than she did. I only saw her about twice a year.
I was the first to volunteer to take the Christmas break, to work through Thanksgiving, to handle the boarding kennel, to be on call. Anything but have to go home for the holidays.
No wonder I was filled with guilt, which was partly why I was here. The Joey the dog thing? That was curiosity combined with a warning bell chiming softly in the back of my mind.
Sitting down on one of the comfortable chairs near the table, I thought about opening the bottle of wine in the basket before I nixed that idea. Alcohol was an aphrodisiac to me. The last thing I needed was to feel frisky before the Hunt.
I sat there thinking about what I should do. Leaving was the best idea. Yet Craig’s word had always been reliable. If I accompanied him on the Hunt he would change his mind about Duncan and Sandy. Was that the real reason I was thinking of going through with it? My libido was smugly silent.
I blew out a breath, annoyed. To distract myself, I pulled the phone out of my pocket and called my father.
Nobody else in the family would've had the guts, the nerve, or the stupidity to call my father when he was with one of his other families. Like I said, we always pretended not to know about them. When he was gone, he was just gone.
I don't know if my siblings pretended he was on a business trip or what. Maybe that's why my father only told me where he was going. It was very matter-of-fact. He always just said: Torrance I’ll be in Houston. Torrance, I’ll be in Dallas. It was no big deal.
He even called me in Austin to let me know where he was going. I guess he wanted to make sure that if anything happened to him in the other two Texas cities that I would at least know where he was.
"What is it, Torrance?" he asked when he answered.
To my utter horror, he was breathing fast. Dear God, please don't let me have caught him in the act. When a Were male comes close to a full moon, it doesn't take much to set them off.
I was so damn embarrassed I wanted to hang up immediately, but that would've just made the situation worse. So, I just blurted out the question.
“What do you know about the OTHER?"
“What?”
“The OTHER. The organization for fai
r treatment for humans or some such," I said. I couldn't remember the name of the group.
“How do you know about them?”
His voice had changed. Now it was coated in caution like icing on a Bundt cake.
I leaned forward and grabbed a package of cashews. I hadn't been hungry earlier, but all of a sudden I was.
“Evidently they’re experimenting on Weres,” I said, biting off one corner of the cellophane.
"The somebody who was changed into a dog." One thing about my father. He was a smart cookie. “Who is it, Torrance?”
I knew he was going to ask me. I also knew I was going to have to stand firm.
“I can’t tell you,” I said, pouring the nuts into my palm.
If I did, my father would launch an investigation and that would challenge Craig’s leadership of his clan which would lead to hurt feelings and lots and lots of testosterone flying around everywhere. Duncan would never be allowed to see Sandy and heaven only knows what would happen to Joey.
“Torrance.” There was that tone I’d learned to avoid in my youth. I’d had quite a few years to shake off its effect, however, so it no longer terrified me.
“Father,” I said.
“Tell me.”
“No. Are you going to tell me what you know?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay, then, good talk.”
Before I could say another word, he hung up. Some rabbit outside Houston better look out tonight. My father was going to go into the Hunt with a mad on.
He hadn’t even asked me about Sandy, which was a shame. I could have volunteered that I was sacrificing myself for my sister. Knowing my father, that would have amused the hell out of him.
I finished my cashews, wishing something brilliant came to mind. I followed up the nuts with a few Fig Newtons, looking with disdain at the oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips. As far as I was concerned, only raisins had earned their place in oatmeal cookies.
I stood and began to pace. I’m not normally a pacer, but I was getting tired and the couch looked too comfy. The bed did, too, but it also reminded me of Craig, so I avoided looking at it.