Wilding Nights

by Lee Killough

  Close to four, Allison shut off her computer. Zane followed suit after a trip to the printer for his reports and rough drafts of witness statements for McKay and the waitresses and pianist from Ice And Ivory to go over when they came in tomorrow. They walked down to the parking lot together.

  “How about a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  How many times in the past would he have loved that invitation. But at this hour? “Thanks, but I think I’ll take your advice about catching z’s.”

  As he headed for his Wrangler, he saw her walk around the far side of her car and kick at it.

  “Trouble?”

  She trotted his direction, grimacing. “A flat tire. I don’t feel like screwing with it tonight. Will you give me a lift home?”

  “Climb in. Where to?” Where did Elves live on the Gulf Coast of Middle Earth.

  “Twelve hundred North Parkview Drive.”

  He almost stripped the gears.

  He had assumed she lived in an apartment, or maybe a small house. Most of that neighborhood consisted of huge old Victorians or luxury custom homes, except the even-numbered addresses along North Parkview, overlooking the park, were walled estates.

  Answering his unspoken question, Allison said, “It’s my grandmother’s house. She likes having family close to her.”

  Just not the public. When Zane turned off the street into short driveway, he found that, like the property on both sides of it, 1200 sat behind a wall and closed gate, which for all its decorative ironwork would have done credit to a prison. The view through the gate looked less grim but a far cry from the elegant Victorians...a one-story pueblo style structure facing the gate across a stone courtyard. Outside his window a post held gate access controls...a speaker, swipe slot, and the tiny lens of a CCD camera. But no call button, he noticed.

  “As long as you’re here, you might as well come in,” Allison said.

  A second invitation. Was she coming on to him after all? “If you don’t think we’ll wake people up.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Well hel-lo,” a sultry voice said from the speaker. “What can I do for you, handsome?”

  “It’s me,” Allison called across him. “If a card isn’t swiped within thirty seconds of pulling up to the gate, a signal activates in the house.”

  So someone at least was awake.

  The gate slid open. Zane drove in. He found two rows of garages facing each other, stretching from house to wall. Either someone collected cars or a crowd lived here. Someone collected, too, though. In adjoining bays next to the house he could make out the front ends of a vintage Alfa Romeo, and real life versions of his Cord 810 and Duesenberg models. Another bay held a Harley.

  The front door opened and a young female trotted into the courtyard. “Who’s the hunk who brought you home? A lover you haven’t told us about?” It was the voice from the speaker.

  Zane stared at her. Tolkien’s Elves never looked like this...sheathed in tight bike leathers, sporting multiple rings in her ear lobes and up the rims of her ears, hair pulled into a ponytail on top of her head and woven with metallic cord so it fell around her ears and face in a fountain of smoky silver, gold, and red. He bet she rode the Harley.

  Allison frowned. “He’s just my partner.”

  “Cool.” The Punk Elf strolled to his door and draped herself against it, eyeing him with frank sexual interest. “I’m Rikki. Let me be the first to give you a warm welcome.”

  The perfume she wore must be a family favorite. He had caught hints of it on Allison this week. Rikki, however, seemed to have bathed in it. The scent flooded from her to surround him. Impossible to characterize, neither sweet nor musky, yet both, it set his hormones reeling.

  “To come in, he has to be able to exit his vehicle,” Allison said.

  Grinning, Rikki stepped back and let Allison lead the way inside. “Just don’t keep him all to yourself.”

  The pueblo look continued inside the house, with vigas supporting the roof overhead and a stone-flagged entry hall under his feet. What looked like an original Stephen Austin map of Texas hung framed on one wall.

  The wide hallway ran back to French doors, but before Zane could tell what lay beyond them, Allison tapped his arm. “May I present my grandmother, Honora Goodnight.”

  Even before he turned Zane felt goosebumps. Honora Goodnight had to be the most dazzling middle-aged woman he ever met. Tall and slim as her granddaughters, radiant with electric vigor, exuding authority from every regal pore, she could give any super model a hard run for the money. Even in her paint-stained t-shirt and jeans. Folk tales about mortals shielding their eyes to keep from being consumed by the glory of a god must originate with such a woman. One cross look from her would, like that from Medusa, surely turn him to stone.

  Almost-silver eyes smiled into his. “I’ve looked forward to meeting you, Zane. Please come and have a glass of wine. I’m sure you need it after such a long day.”

  She led the way out the French doors onto a verandah, then down a step onto a patio drenched in light by the moon hanging beyond the far estate wall. More than a dozen people sat around small tables, their pale hair almost luminous in the moonlight, and as they broke off conversation and laughter to swivel toward him, eyes here and there looked brighter silver yet, reflecting light coming from the house through French doors. An Elvish court, one ethereally elegant Goodnight after another. Zane felt like a Great Dane among greyhounds.

  Among the introductions, one stuck out...Lennox. Councilwoman Lennox Goodnight? Pieces dropped together in his head and he realized with a shock that Allison’s family was part of the infamous Parkview Gang, the voting block that controlled the City and County of Arenosa as firmly, if with a lighter touch, as Tammany Hall had ruled New York and Tom Pendergast, Kansas City in the Thirties.

  Honora handed him a glass of wine. “I have a hopefully pleasant surprise for you...if you’ll let me show you around?”

  She moved inside. Her magnetism pulled him after her. He might have been a victim of the Borg. Resistance is futile.

  The house had not seemed large coming in, nor did any one part of it. The series of halls and rooms they moved through continued to feel part of a pueblo, with vigas supporting the roof. But the building rambling on and on in a sprawling maze.

  And paintings dominated walls everywhere...paintings that electrified him, portraying raw power...storms on land and at sea, wild landscapes, primitive men hunting wild animals, animals hunting or battling for survival, military battles, Wild West scenes...all in impressionistic slashes of color. Along the way he suddenly realized not just size but the style matched his painting. He started checking the signature. All had the same one: Honora.

  “This is your work?” He felt stunned. “Do you have unsigned work?”

  She smiled. “Yes, your painting is one of mine. Allison described it. Gifts to lovers aren’t signed, only personalized. I’m glad Benedict’s painting has found someone else who appreciates it as much as he did. It’s one reason I wanted to meet you.”

  They ended up in her studio...very different from the rest of the house. Though vigas also supported its roof, they soared like a barn’s, twenty-five feet above the quarry tile floor, dwarfing the massive blank canvas set up in the center of the room. Wide doors in one wall had been slid open, letting in the night air and spilling light into the grass outside. Replace the vigas with hand hewn beams and this would make a good Great Hall at Tolkien’s Elf home Rivendell.

  “Rivendell?” Honora said.

  To his chagrin, Zane realized he had spoken his thought aloud. Ears burning, he explained, and waited for her to laugh at him.

  Instead, she looked pleased. “Interesting. I never thought of the family as Elvish before.” She picked up a sketchbook lying on the step of a ladder. “Would you mind if I sketch you?”

  Mind? He felt flattered...and relieved to change the subject.

  She sat him on one chair at a café table while she
sat on the other with the sketch pad. Like Allison, she was left-handed, he noticed. “You don’t have to pose. Just relax. Tell me about yourself.”

  Would the sketch be impressionistic or realistic, he wondered. On the wall behind her a large photographic-quality portrait of a woman in antebellum clothing hung side by side with a much smaller, old-time photograph from which it had obviously been copied. “Was she an ancestor?” She resembled both Honora and Allison, but had hard eyes.

  Honora glanced over her shoulder. After a hesitation she said, “Thérèse founded this household.” Giving the name a French pronunciation, and an undertone of sadness.

  “Did something tragic happen to her?”

  Honora eyed him a moment. “A great deal, starting with being orphaned at age seven, but she was also an astute businesswoman, running one of the most successful bordellos in New Orleans.” She said it with fierce pride, and smiled at his start. “I honor the past. It makes us what we are. After her death, her daughter Ophelia used the money from selling the bordello to establish the family on this land. This is the house that whoring built.” She smiled again. “Now, tell me something yourself. What do you do for fun other than create fantasy police cars?”

  Allison told her family about his models? He felt his ears heat up. A scream jerked Zane on alert, but he relaxed when laughter followed it. Then more screaming and laughter carried into the studio from the patio.

  Honora’s eyes glinted silver. “Don’t be alarmed. We play a little rough sometimes but it’s all in good fun.”

  They sounded as if they were having fun.

  “From your expression, I gather your family is different.”

  Zane had never understood people who confided their life stories to strangers, despite the times he had listened to, and often enjoyed, the sagas. But he found himself baring his soul to Honora...his childhood, his parents, the resented and fascinating au pairs, the law school disaster, the bigger marriage disaster. “I expected Susan and me to be like Susan and David Martinez, a Colorado deputy sheriff and his wife I spent time with the summer I was ten. They had a mob of kids...eight fosters--many with special needs--and the rest of us temporarily placed with them by Social Services. The kids gave no quarter and took no prisoners but after a week of being stunned, I decided it was great and wanted a horde just like them when I grew up. But even though my Susan came from a big family, too, they were like swimming with sharks.”

  Honora lifted a brow at him. “How did you happen to be in the hands of Social Services?”

  Zane swore at himself for mentioning the Martinez incident. Now he had to admit to stupid behavior. “Because I was hitchhiking and Martinez picked me up.”

  Both brows went up. “And you were hitchhiking at age ten because...?”

  He felt his ears heat up. “I wanted to spend the summer with Grandpa and Grandma Kerr. The summer before when my parents said we were too busy to visit them, I bought myself a bus ticket and went on my own. It was great. They kept me the whole summer. So when my parents packed me off to this gulag in New Mexico, a boys’ ranch, without any money, the only way to Seattle was to hitchhike.”

  Honora rolled her eyes. “You just took off without considering how worried everyone would be?”

  “I didn’t think they cared.” Stupidly, the old resentment rose in him. “For all purposes I was missing three weeks and my mother never bothered telling my father, who was in Switzerland at an internal fixation course, and when they identified me, she sent the au pair after me, and wasn’t even at the airport to meet the plane.”

  Honora bent over her sketch pad. “Maybe it was her way of avoiding strangling you. Why did it take three weeks to identify you?”

  He grimaced. “I kept making up stories about who I was, at first thinking I’d be able to slip away and go on to Seattle--but they watched me too closely--and then because I decided I wanted to live with the Martinez’s forever. I also gave up the idea of hitchhiking because Martinez took me to Denver and showed me street kids, and morgue photos of how most of them ended up.”

  “Did he introduce you to adventuring by book, too?”

  “That was Maureen, the au pair the next year.” Zane grinned, thinking of her. “Maureen from Lincolnshire...built like a Wagnerian soprano, a tongue sharp enough to cut diamonds. She gave no quarter either. When she’d had enough of me she’d sling me in a chair by the scruff of my neck, drop one of her books in my lap, and say, ‘Go away here for a while.’ So I ended up hooked on mysteries and SF...but also eventually read my way through my father’s library. He loves books, too. It’s one thing we can talk about. He still has everything from when he was a kid and--shit!” The glance at his watch jolted him. Five-thirty! He jumped off his chair. “I’m sorry. You should have thrown me out so you can go to bed.”

  Honora checked her own watch and waved away his apology. “I’d still be up anyway. Would you like to see your portrait?” She turned the sketch pad toward him.

  How did so few lines convey so much? They turned him into a gladiator, clutching a short sword and shield and resolutely facing some unseen threat.

  She stood. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  He expected her to offer him the drawing, but she laid the sketch pad on the table and said nothing more about it as they walked back through the house. In the entry hall, sounds on the terrace told him others in the family had not gone to bed either. The insomnia must be genetic.

  Honora opened the door and led the way outside. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Zane. Thank you for appreciating my art.”

  “Zane. Zane. Come back, Zane.”

  He looked around back through the open door to see Rikki at the far end of the hallway, lounging against the French doors. She grinned. “I can’t stand the kid in that movie but the line was too good to pass up. But I mean it. I’d like to see more of you...and I’d love to see you...” She wiggled her eyebrows. “...longer.”

  16.

  Allison watched the gate slide closed behind the Wrangler before stepping in from the verandah. “Why don’t you put a hold on your sex drive until the Gathering!”

  Rikki reached high in a languid stretch. “I don’t see the harm in warming up.”

  Juveniles! Did they think with anything but their hormones? “Warming up with him can toast us! Be smart and keep your distance.”

  Rikki’s brows arched. “Like Baba?” She sauntered out to the patio.

  Honora came back inside and bolted the front door behind her. “Come into the library.”

  Following, Allison raised her wine glass in a toast. “I’d say you have a new devotee. He all but threw himself on his back at your feet in submission.”

  Honora smiled over her shoulder. “Yes. I suspected he would be one of those humans sensitive to the power flows around us. Perhaps other aspects, too. It was an interesting session.” Reaching the library, she settled back in a wing chair. “Tell me about tonight and Travis.”

  Sitting on an ottoman facing her, Allison did so. “I hate to admit this, but I’m beginning to worry about finding this rogue. We might have to go to a volke on every corner. What would you think of putting off the Gathering until next month so we can use everyone in the hunt?”

  “No.” Honora sat up in the chair. “In fact, I’ll shortly e-mail an update to every household and encourage the alphas to send as many family members as possible to the ranch tomorrow. Certainly the children. Everyone in this house but thee and me will be on their way by noon.”

  Cold ran out through Allison from her spine. “You’re thinking we might have to relocate?”

  Honora gave her a thin smile. “Let’s call it a precaution. I don’t want all of us trapped here if the city catches fire. When calling me today, don’t forget I’ll be at the Broekert Gallery helping with final details before my show opens tonight, and since they’re making this a black-tie, invitation-only opening, I am obligated to spend the evening.”

  If the city caught fire. Allison hunched her shou
lders against the cold in her. “Could Kerr light the match? If he’s sensitive to us...”

  Honora shook her head. “That isn’t necessarily dangerous. You’ve worked with a sensitive before.”

  Allison grimaced. “But he didn’t have any idea what it was about me he felt, and I don’t think he ever would have understood. He just knew he was uncomfortable around me.”

  “Kerr could figure it out, you think.” Honora pursed her lips. “He could. From recognizing Otherness, which he has, it isn’t much of a step to realizing we are a breed apart, and then wondering what we are, if not human.”

  Shit. “He could be wondering already since he’s asking about heat signatures.”

  Honora smiled. “Fortunately, for the moment he’s fixed on the wrong mythology.”

  “What?” Allison listened in astonishment as Honora described the conversation with Kerr. “But...do you think he really believes in Elves?”

  “You think he’s capable of believing in werewolves, don’t you?”

  Allison frowned at her. “Am I wrong?”

  “Not at all.” Honora reached out and squeezed her knee. “Except he isn’t just a young cop obsessed with his job. After a childhood spent running away to police stations, he’s made the department his family. Which means that solving the case is a matter of family honor and, since Travis’s injury, family safety. He won’t let go. He’s very much someone to be concerned about. However, finding the rogue comes first, even at the price of giving something away to him, as your very correct orders to the helicopter pilot did.” She stood and started for the door. “If he learns too much, or interferes with catching the rogue...well, as the spy joke goes, we’ll tell you, but then we’ll have to kill you.”

  Allison did not realize she choked until Honora stopped and turned.

  She came back and put her arms around Allison. “I’m sorry. It’s no joking matter. We’re very efficient predators, but killing another person isn’t an easy thing without the heat of battle or a chase. Especially someone you know. Of course it’s a last resort. ”