For a moment, a whiff of sandalwood incense overcame the stench of death and suffering. The draped altar hanging from the wall told him these snakes had been devout Hindus.
The humans had even desecrated the altar. The little statues of Ganesha, Vishnu, and Shesha, the king of the nagas, rolled on the saffron-colored fabric. Vishnu’s boar head lay on the floor. Disgust tightened Radu’s nose.
Frowning, he looked back at the police. Past the barriers, the pushy humans muttered and threatened violence. When the occasional PNC walked by, shoving matches broke out.
More and more police officers arrived, breaking up the fights and calming people. The ambulance workers strapped the convulsing men to gurneys and drove away. One voice cut the babble with an unfortunate piercing tone.
“Yep, see, these two were twenty-nine. I told you, it’s Dracula’s curse. All the giant animals die before they are thirty.”
What the … ? What kind of idiot came up with that idea? Dracula’s curse, his left nut.
Dosing a PNC with a human drug was a crime, but it was never enforced. Too many mortal policemen, too few PNCs able to fight for justice.
The perpetrators of this crime deserved full punishment.
He stepped toward the disappearing ambulance. That could not be allowed to stand. Justice demanded retribution. His teeth grew long at the thought of appropriate chastisement. Every fiber of his being called to the chase. He could wreak vengeance on the men who would do such things and finish before daylight. His hand wrapped around the keys to the car like they were the hilt of a sword. Killing those murderous parasites would be so easy.
Can you fulfill justice without death? The quiet voice of Vlad, his not-a-brother, infiltrated his mind. Could he betray his new determination to change his life?
The non-humans of Istanbul were his to protect. Something had happened today to set off this chain of violence against his people.
Radu touched the HK45 in the holster sitting at the small of his back.
He would find out what sparked this atrocity.
And stop it.
CHAPTER 13
“In the United States, police and the military are attempting to keep a lid on outbreaks of human against PNC violence. Here, the Great Wolf, Luc Breton, along with leaders from the other continents, is seen boarding an airplane along with the other founder of the Treaty of Prague, retired Bishop Glenath Tempesta.”
Glenath Tempesta’s eyes, usually cheerful and irreverent, were cold and hard as she faced a sea of microphones.
A woman with the body of the snake sat in front of a dented desk. The camera’s lenses were dusty and the studio lights wobbled. But the underground paranormal citizens’ television station was the only place to get all the news that pertained to PNC interests.
Lance wiped his hands on his thighs as he expanded his consciousness over the city. The rescue efforts in the Pearl District continued, but he had no call to leave the roof of what had been his shelter.
Two slender forelimbs hooked over the edge of the roof. The rest of the giant spider popped onto the roof. Her multiple eyes dripped tears.
If she were a normal spider, her visage would inspire panic. But she was a rare being: a shape-shifting giant animal. Most of her fellow giant shifters had mysteriously died out in the early years after the Second World War.
The influence of her human side turned her into something sleeker, cuter. Her legs were sleek, like a daddy longlegs. Her carapace was elegant. Instead of alien-looking mandibles, her mouth was smaller, more refined looking with tidy fangs.
The spider morphed into a human woman. The tears did not stop.
The same magic that allowed beings of different masses to be the same person allowed her to keep her police uniform. Her black hair was severely tied back. Pointy nose. Rosy cheeks, chapped hands. Her lips were naturally red, although right now there were pinched and tired. Smaller and curvier than Valerie.
Angelic powers were constantly shifting, responding to the situation. She was not lost in the physical sense, but lost in her heart. Divine wisdom told him what she needed tonight was to face her destiny. His connection with the Boss also told him that her name was Rachel, today was her birthday, and she had four years left to live.
Giant spiders always died before thirty.
Invisible, he wrapped his wings around her small body, placed his hand on the top of her head, and opened her mind to her true path. There were things in her past she had left undone. Once she finished them, the secrets of why her kin had all died off would be answered.
CHAPTER 14
“In international news, former CCC spokesman Umar Mernissi was finally rescued from the wreckage of the Baxter Building in Portland, Oregon. Forty-eight hours after the building exploded in what is now being called the worst of PNC on human violence in the twenty-first century.”
Radu’s well-honed radar for disaster pinged. He sat up in bed. “Darling, start the shower. I’ll meet you there.”
The were-rabbit bounded out of bed, and with a wiggle of her firm white bottom, she disappeared into the bathroom.
“The security tapes of the Baxter Building have not been recovered, but recordings from neighboring lobbies show evidence of paranormal activity.
“Also, an eyewitness tells of a PNC on human altercation that may bode poorly for the continuation of the Treaty of Prague.”
The image changed to a young man in his early twenties, his developing face a mess of dirt and tears. Behind him, the recently collapsed building smoked.
“Look, I have to be with my dad …” he started.
“Just a few questions, Mr. Trask. Would you tell us about your experience last night?”
Chad Trask. Radu raised his eyebrows. His fear had been so exciting last year when he had cornered the boy on his father’s yacht. But the once-weak chin and slumped shoulders had been replaced with a determined jut and square posture.
“Last night, a group of friends and I were accosted by two vampires. They had white stripes in their hair and did not speak English. There was an altercation, which, unfortunately, my friends instigated. Currently, they remain missing. I’m gone.”
Chad walked off screen. Radu tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling of his room. He had to return to the scene of his greatest humiliation and stop a war.
Better shower first.
Fortunately, the dead traveled fast.
Portland was lovely in summer. Radu replaced the lid on his steamer trunk and studied the skyline. The twilight of the late-setting sun allowed him to view the mountains that punctuated the Cascade Range. Regal Mount Hood to the southeast, Mount St. Helen’s with her scooped out side to the northeast. His undead eyes gave him a view of Mount Rainier far to the north.
He stretched, keenly aware of the aches and stiffness of an aging vampire. With a flick of the wrist, he flattened the map of Portland on top of the trunk. His children would want a place in the city, close enough to keep an eye on their quarry. He straightened his jacket. And a place where people regularly disappeared.
There. That would be where his vampires would retreat. Large, about as old as things got on this side of the oceans, and not nearly as subtle as they liked to think.
Yes, those were his kids.
Valerie watched the window of the Depot. There was very little cover. The area smelled of diesel fuel, dust, blood, and pesto.
Pesto?
A ripple of black appeared on her left side. Before she could react, she was thrown to the roof as though she were hit by a tree.
She grabbed the hair of her opponent and took him to the roof with her.
Biff boom pop.
The two wrestled across the tar and gravel roof, fast and dirty. The other was fast, strong, and fought as dirty as she did. He smelled of Italian food and death. Even her changed body could only fight him to a draw. He went for her eyes. She latched on to his throat.
She dug her hands into his collarbone. Ancient blood raced into her mouth.
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“Radu?” she gargled.
“Lucifer’s left nut,” a familiar voice cursed. “What the fuck are you doing here, Vlad?”
“I’m cleaning up your mess, again, you bastard,” she subvocalized in his ear. “Your kids did this. We’re about to be exterminated.”
Radu pushed her off his body. “Which is why I came. No one hunts my children but me.”
CHAPTER 15
“You have nothing I want,” Su said stiffly. “I thought I made that clear.”
“I have your father’s diaries.” Brigit held out a box of high-quality leather-bound notebooks.
Su held out her arms and leaned over to inspect the books. Su had always loved shopping for these journals. The smell of the leather acted like a balm on her bile-riddled stomach. The acid-free paper remained as white and crisp as the day her father bought them.
“I do hope you enjoy.” With that enigmatic comment, her mother walked away, her limp pronounced and halting her steps.
Once home, Su put on some P-Funk, wiggled her toes into her fuzzy slippers, and opened the first journal. It was dated the day she had turned three.
It is so hard to pretend to love Brigit. Her contacts through her father and grandfather have been invaluable, but I grow exhausted from her emotional excesses. For example, I found her swinging young Katsumi around by her arms, making her scream. I reminded her that I dislike such noise.
The night rolled into the early morning.
Katsumi has too much of her mother in her. Even though I have set Brigit aside, Katsumi persists in acting like an American girl. She defies me by listening to that outrageous, undisciplined music and by dating a greasy Latino boy. He wants to go into the Marines. Katsumi worries for his safety. I can only hope he dies far away. And soon. My plans for her are too important for something as stupid as a teenaged crush.
Instead of the benevolent gentleman she remembered, Kevin Tanaka had manipulated, lied, and exploited. Su’s mother was locked in Hell as surely as if the Great Liar himself had chained her to his hairy feet.
Su ran her hands over the solid heft of her first bass guitar. Since she was a teenager, she had thought the sleek black-painted instrument had been a gift from her father. One opposed by her mother.
What other explanation could there have been for her mother’s stiff, pale face the morning Kevin had presented it to Su?
“I found this for you, Su-su,” Kevin Tanaka had said, shooting a triumphant look at Brigit.
Su had smothered her father with kisses and hugs, all the while pointedly ignoring her mother.
But there it was, bold as daylight, in her father’s writing.
I gave Su Brigit’s gift today. That will teach her not to go behind my back.
Su’s nose ran, even as tears refused to flow. She wiped her sleeve across her face.
She couldn’t have known. Why was shame curling her shoulders inward until they nearly met over her heart? She was just a teenager, too young to understand her parents’ motives and subtexts.
A melancholy walking bass line resonated through her ribs.
But she had been old enough to blindly accept her father’s explanation that her grandfather’s sadness had been disappointment in his un-feminine daughter.
She had been old enough to think to ask her mother’s side of the story.
Déjà vu brought fear to Glenath’s stomach. Once again, she faced Europe’s PNC leader alone and unarmed. Again, Luc Breton, the Great Wolf, had arrived with his bodyguards. Again, they met in a deserted building.
One thing was different this time, though. Glenath no longer had the youthful luxury of ignorance. She knew just how much damage a werewolf could do to her mortal body. The damage he had dealt to her forty years ago still decorated her chest, arms, and neck.
“You came alone?” Luc frowned. “Really?”
“I have always been braver than you, Luc,” she snapped, impatient with his false bravado. “We do not have the time for you to growl and threaten me. Either we work together or the Peace we slaved over will be gone.”
“My people would win,” Luc warned.
“Only the Angel of Death wins in a war,” she replied tartly. “This will not be a clean fight between soldiers. The humans will attack your young, just as they used to. And your code will not let you retaliate in kind.” Glenath gentled her tone. “We must stop this.”
“I will not surrender,” Luc snapped, his teeth elongating.
She couldn’t help it. She cast her eyes heavenward and signed.
“You don’t have to surrender, you fool. Take the betrayers who started this. Punish them before the world. Show the world that you will not tolerate any who defy your rule.”
CHAPTER 16
The interior of Su’s house was dark and cool after the street’s harsh streetlights and stifling heat. His eyes took a moment to adjust.
Umar liked to think of himself as a sophisticated man. One who had traveled the world, seen the impossible, experienced the extremes of human and paranormal knowledge.
Despite Su’s uninhibited lovemaking under the desk, he thought of her as repressed. Shy. Her relationship to her mother spoke of someone unable to express herself to the fullest extent.
He was so wrong.
His diminutive lover stood before him, her slim body encased in a leather corset. “O” rings dangled from her exaggerated waist. Her small breasts had been pushed up to create extreme cleavage.
He raised his black eyebrows, and something—amusement? pleasure?—swam across his face. “I don’t think you can stop me if I wanted to move,” he challenged.
As eagerly as the Ottomans exploited the hidden doorway in the walls around Constantinople, he slid his hand through the hole in her pants to cup the back of her leg. Her flesh was warm and giving under the wrapping of her dust-thickened trousers.
Her skin was softer than a fluffy chick’s. Her muscles were rock hard underneath her tender skin. He dug his short nails in, testing her resiliency.
Most women would have gasped or jerked away. Su did neither. Instead, she grasped his wrist. Her strong fingers dug into previously unknown nerve clusters. The slight pain did not surprise him as much as the involuntary retraction of his own fingers from her body.
“What do you want, Mr. Mernissi?” Her gaze held him captive. Her direct question startled him into a true answer.
“I want to kiss you, Katsumi Ameratsu Tanaka.” Omar leaned over her. Tall as he was, he loomed over her, his dark-eyed gaze fixed on her mouth.
Su refused to lean into him. Umar Mernissi hid himself under a façade of stereotypes. She would not fall prey to a man who had become what he pretended to be. She took a deep breath and suppressed a wince at the dust slamming into her dry throat.
“One kiss. That’s all,” he enticed her.
Su knew as sure as Bootsy Collins was the greatest bassist ever that he lied.
He wouldn’t stop at one kiss.
Of course, she did not want him to stop at one kiss, but why was he acting like he had to fool her?
On the other hand, she could die without the knowledge of how his cock fit her. And that was a very sad thing.
“Get on over here,” she challenged. “Unless you are too chicken.”
She swallowed her amusement at his startled glance. He’d gotten too used to people leaping to serve him.
He recovered his sangfroid. “Alas, our space is too crowded for my height.”
Before he could make a reference to her lack of height, she interjected, “You just have to be very, very careful.”
He didn’t rise to her bait. Umar smiled, his teeth very straight and dangerous in the twilight gloom of their cage. “You are much more nimble than I, surely.”
Then she exhaled, a nearly silent gasp, and her heartbeat accelerated. The pulse under his fingers picked up the pace until her heartbeat ran like a hummingbird’s.
“Are you my good submissive?” he breathed in her ear. A move calculated to ease her
to her knees.
“No,” she breathed back. Cold steel wrapped around his neck. “You are mine.”
Power, sweet and calming. There was nothing like it.
Sweat ran down Umar’s back, heightening his sensual awareness. She took him to the bedroom. The king-sized mattress was covered with a pristine white sheet. The dim lights cast her face and body into high mystery. Tonight, Katsumi was the goddess, the source of his creation and his destruction.
As he knelt by her bare toes, he felt the careful anger he had built around his soul wither. What right did he have to capture his wife, hold her hostage, and then act like she was in the wrong when she left?
Any man who would rage at and diminish a woman deserved the name coward.
Umar did not want to be a coward any longer. After a thousand years, he could learn to respect a woman’s power.
“Kiss my foot,” she ordered.
His heart lightened at her command. He bent to obey.
The old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock was the only illumination. Umar craned his neck to check the time. 1:30 A.M. He dropped to the pillow and studied his surroundings. The playroom shimmered with Umar’s sweat and Su’s ejaculate.
“Wow.” Su grinned, her body glistening with their juices. “You look good like that.”
Umar grinned back and arched his back.
“Show off,” she muttered, eyeing the way the muscles of his arms and abdomen rolled under his shiny skin.
“Who, me?” He twisted his wrists in the confines of the thick black cuffs. The locks holding him to the bedpost rattled. She licked her lips. He loved that his body put that dazed look on her face. He loved that she wanted to control him. He loved driving her crazy.
He just plain loved her.
Before he could say so, she pinched his nipple. The quick pain shot excitement through Umar’s chest.
“Tease,” he challenged when she pulled her hand away.
“You know you like it.”
His leg hair ruffled in warning. “I’m going to shift soon. Can we go outside?”
She winked and reached into the drawer in her bedside table and pulled out a battered Captain America keychain. “Meet me on the patio when you are done.”
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