by Lee Killough
Allison clenched her fists to keep from shaking Rikki. “What you want--”
“What I want,” Honora said coldly, “is to know when, since we just passed your lover down the street, you acquired the scent of rabbit I smell on you.”
Allison sniffed. In her anger she had missed detecting that before. She stared at Rikki in disbelief. “I don’t believe this. You went hunting and left him alone here?”
Protest rose in Rikki’s face. “He was asleep! The moonlight looked so wonderful and--I was only gone for a few minutes!”
Honora wheeled away from her. “Let’s check the house.”
Scent made it easy to track him. Honora found the trail leading off from the entry hall into the common rooms. It took them to the library, and the cabinet where they kept photo albums.
“I left this locked,” Honora said.
His scent covered the folios and albums inside.
Rikki went ashen. “He was asleep, I swear! I didn’t think--”
“You certainly didn’t!” Allison could not remember ever being this angry before.
“I’m sorry.” Rikki burst into tears. “I’m sorry! What do we do now? What can I do?”
“I think you’ve done enough!”
Honora laid a hand on Allison’s arm. “All right. Anger won’t help us here.” She flipped open one of the folios. Allison saw it had opened to the page showing Georgiana with her camera. Honora traced a finger down one side of Georgiana’s face, as though caressing the cheek. After a long minute she gently closed the folio and returned it to the shelf. “Rikki...what you can do is spend time reflecting on the virtues of discretion and self discipline...and considering the consequences of actions before you act. For that I can’t think of a more suitable place, quiet and with no distractions, than here this weekend.”
Rikki’s jaw dropped. “You mean...miss the Gathering?”
“Exactly.” Honora bit off the syllables. “Then while you reflect, Allison will assess the danger you’ve put us in so I can decide how to deal with this human.” Her voice sharpened still more as protest rose in Rikki’s face. “Do you have a complaint, missy?”
Rikki licked her lips. “Don’t kill him. Please, Baba. He’s a nice guy. I like him.”
As though that had any relevance.
Honora sniffed. “You like him in bed. You don’t know anything else about him.”
“Maybe he hasn’t guessed what we are,” Rikki said.
Honora glanced toward the shelf of albums. “Of course he has. If the legends were true and biting him would make him one of us, we’d have no problem. But of course it doesn’t happen that way, so...” She sighed. “...we have to do whatever necessary to protect ourselves. You know that.”
Allison’s stomach knotted.
Tears spilled down Rikki’s face. “But I don’t want to be responsible for--”
“You already are. You’re responsible for bringing him here and leaving him alone. That makes whatever steps we take to deal with him absolutely and totally your fault.”
However much Rikki needed this lesson, did Honora have to lay it on with such a heavy hand?
“Actions have consequences,” Honora said. “You need to remember that.”
“Baba, please...” Rikki wailed.
Honora frowned. “There’s no more time for this. Go to your room.”
Rikki slunk away.
Allison stared after her. “You’re really going to leave her here alone this weekend?”
“Not quite.” Honora smiled. “You’ll be around. You can have quality time with your daughter.”
“Right now I don’t feel at all maternal.” Allison grimaced. “I know every child is precious but...do you ever regret they take so long to grow up?”
Honora laughed. “Often...especially with your mother. Georgiana was as wild as I pretended to be, and more perverse. Rikki reminds me a lot of her.”
Photographs and the folios were all Allison knew of her mother, since Georgiana disappeared when Allison was three. “Was she really working for the CIA in Hungary?”
Honora shrugged. “Who knows? She said she was going because the revolution looked fun. But as I did, she always loved taking a camera into battle, and anyone with a camera was probably considered a spy by the Russians.”
Allison’s cell phone warbled.
“This is Rick Bliss. I think my cousin Matthew met the hunter tonight.”
Ice washed through Allison. Shit! How had Deirdre slipped by them! She passed on everything to Honora.
Honora’s eyes darkened. “Do they have her?”
“Sorry,” Rick said. “Matt didn’t know about her. He just got in about twenty-two hundred hours. I was on duty and everyone else but his sister Samantha has left for the Gathering. There wasn’t anyone at the house to tell him, and he said he didn’t see any of the clan on the A when he went to kill time at the bars until Sam gets off work so they can drive up together.”
Saw none of the clan? How the hell had that happened? Allison swore silently.
“When he got home a few minutes ago and told me about this weird chick he met there I knew it had to be the hunter. They ended up in the park before she ran off, so Sam and I are going back down with Matt to track her.”
“Wait for me. I’ll come, too.”
“No,” Honora said, “Rikki and I will go. You find Kerr. Take all appropriate action necessary.” She paused, staring into Allison’s eyes. “You can do it, can’t you? For the clan.”
Allison stomach lurched. But her great-grandmother’s clan also screamed in her head. She nodded. As soon as she called Gary and Kyle to alert them to watch for Deirdre coming home, she would track him down.
Friday, April 6
1.
For the first time in Zane’s life, a police station gave him no sense of security. He sat at not his own desk but Carl Ng’s, where he faced the door. Some of the body heat burning him up earlier would be welcome about now. The vending machine coffee scalded his tongue but never touched the chill in his bones nor the taste of blood from Rikki’s mouth. He thought about putting on his suit coat, now draped over the back of his own desk chair, but doubted that would help either, just as the negative response to his inquiries downstairs about another possible wilding death failed to give him any sense of relief. The body might only be undiscovered.
Here alone in the office, he had his quiet place to think, but what he had seen continued to defy logic. People did not live two hundred years and look fiftyish. Werewolves were only myth. Never mind the mocking echo in his head of his own words to Allison about the size and strangeness of the universe; physical laws imposed some limits. Shape changing was impossible. He still believed in the presence of other intelligent life in the universe...but they lived on other planets. Not side by side with humans on Earth. Serving in the Arenosa Police Department. As his partner.
Yet...the physical evidence of Others stared at him from the case book...anomalous bite marks on two victims, like those--what had Pedicaris called them?--carnassial teeth would leave. An “anomaly” he bet examination would find common to all Allison’s family. Rikki’s excuse for needing no protection during sex capped it. There’s no zoonosis here, she said. His electronic dictionary sat open on the desk, the screen displaying the definition of “zoonosis.” A disease of animals communicable to man. Casually, with the matter-of-fact flatness of an established given, Rikki had pronounced the two of them different species.
He punched off the dictionary and snapped the case closed. Forget explanations for the time being. It was enough knowing that he had stumbled on something dangerous. Now what did he do about it? Would anyone believe him when he could not explain what he saw even to himself? Still, he needed to try. Somehow Rikki must answer for the murders.
And then? What about the rest of the family? Where did they come from? How many were there? Did any others pose a danger to humanity...and Arenosa?
As the questions spun in his head, he heard footsteps...an
d looked up to see Allison standing in the opening, staring at him with gunmetal eyes. “When I didn’t find you at home, I wondered if you might be here.”
The solitude he had wanted for thinking suddenly felt like a trap. The two of them were alone and she blocked the only escape route. She pushed the door closed behind her, the first time Zane remembered seeing it shut. The snap of the latch sounded loud as a gunshot.
He found himself on his feet. The weight the gun on his belt gave him little comfort. Bullets might have no effect on her kind. Standing at least made sure the chair would not interfere with drawing the weapon.
Her eyes hardened and Zane realized that his actions, and probably his expression, betrayed he had found them out. He struggled to pull air into a chest that felt paralyzed. The gunmetal eyes stared holes in him while his skin crawled with the current crackling around her and across the space between them.
She glided toward him, sighing. “Damn it, why did you have to pry and break into the photo cabinet?”
How did she know about that!
“Why couldn’t you be content with letting us be Elves?”
The back of his thighs hit an edge. He saw a computer one direction and a filing cabinet shingled with sticky notes the other. Belatedly, Zane realized that as she advanced, he had been backing away. Now he stood trapped against the hutch of her desk. The air felt like glue in his lungs and throat as he tried to talk. “Because you were letting one of your family slaughter innocent people! I had to find out what you are.” He fought to breath. “I can’t let her get away with this butchery. I can’t let you get away with protecting her.”
“I can’t let you tell anyone.” Heat waves bloomed around her. Once again terror flooded Zane again. Only now he understood the source. It had a name. Now he knew how Demry, Surrette, and Cromer must have felt before they died.
The thought broke his immobility. Zane clawed his gun out.
Allison halted but eyed the weapon without concern. “That’s a waste of time. You might kill me, but not fast enough to save yourself.”
He supported his gun hand with the other and despite the fear threatening to drain strength and will from him, steadied his aim at Allison’s chest. “If you tear me apart here, how are you going to explain it?”
Part of his attention included her hands, but he realized too late he automatically focused on the right one, forgetting she was left handed. She moved so fast he had no time to pull the trigger. The pistol ripped out of his hands and sailed across the room. Heat blasted him and a great silver wolf lunged from it to grab the front of his shirt and begin hauling him across the room.
“I don’t need to pull you apart.” Eerily, her voice sounded no different, and despite the bared fangs, dispassionate. “Throwing you out a window will be sufficient.”
How she managed to grip him with her paws mattered nothing when he saw the direction she was dragging him. Desperately Zane grabbed for her peninsula, then Viapiana’s, but his fingers skidded off. “Someone’s seen you come in. They’ll suspect you.”
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me, as long as they don’t learn about the clan.”
The window loomed just feet away. Zane managed to bring his feet under him and plant them long enough to fold at the waist and pull. The wolf’s momentum forward peeled his shirt off over his head.
The sudden release sent Zane over backward. As soon as he felt himself falling, he twisted. Hitting the floor on knees and forearms, he scrambled away, searching the floor. The gun. Where had the gun landed? Even if bullets failed to stop Allison, wounding her might slow her down...buy him time. The shots would at least bring help. To his despair, the gun lay nowhere in sight.
A shadow arched over him and the wolf landed in his path.
Forget the gun, then. The doorway of Carillo’s office lay off to his side. While she could smash her way in, any delay might let him use the phone.
Zane sprang to his feet and for the door.
The wolf leaped sideways, grabbing at him.
He dropped, twisting, diving under the reaching paw. Adrenaline pumped fire through him. As he dived, he tucked in his head...curled, somersaulted, and used his momentum to carry him back onto his feet, sprinting for the door.
For a second, he thought he had the race won, that he had caught her by surprise. The door lay just feet away. Then a shadow blotted out the overhead light again. The wolf came down on his back with a force that slammed him to the floor and knocked the breath out of him. He tried to roll over, thinking to dislodge her, or at least put himself in a position to go for her eyes.
No. She kept him pinned and wrenched his arms backward. Metal rattled, then pain lanced through his wrists. With a shock he realized she had handcuffed him.
A grip on his hair dragged him to his feet, whirled him. A shove on his back propelled him toward the windows again. When he planted his feet, she grabbed his belt, took a tighter hold on his hair, and rising on her hind legs, hoisted him over her head. Heat and current seared him. Thrashing and kicking down at her in an effort to throw her off balance had no effect. She carried him as if he weighed nothing.
The window loomed just feet ahead. Desperately, he said, “Killing me may protect Rikki a little longer, but--”
“Rikki!” She stopped short. “Why would you think Rikki is the hunter?”
Her flabbergasted tone pulled his attention from the window. “Because...the way she jumped that rear gate, she could make it to the window in the candy factory. As a stunt driver she has the training to ride Surrette’s car into the water and escape. And when she came back from running she had blood on her mouth.”
Just short of the window she halted. “Rikki isn’t Blondie. If she were, she would have been off the street the day we found Demry! I wouldn’t let even my daughter terrorize and butcher humans.”
“But she’s someone you know well if Golden can identify her and Makepeace is willing to lie for--”
“He didn’t lie for her. He also didn’t think what he was doing. That happens in the young.” Her voice went wry. “After all, you’re telling me you believed Rikki was a killer but you still had sex with her.”
Zane’s ears burned. “Resistance was--” He broke off. What the hell was he doing? He hung hoisted above her, inches from death, wrapped in her heat and current...carrying on a conversation?
Below him, a cell phone warbled. For the second time he hit the floor with bone-jarring force. Caught under him as he landed, the cuffs bit into his wrists. But the heat vanished and above him a human-shaped Allison fairly snatched out her cell phone. “Allison... Damn!” She grimaced. “You couldn’t find where she came out of the water?”
For the first time in what seemed an eternity, he sucked in a decent breath of air. Welcoming the chill of the floor and pain in his wrists from the handcuffs...proof he was still alive.
“I’m at the office...Yes, I did...here.” Her glance flicked over him. “No, not yet.”
The floor felt suddenly colder, the air turgid in his lungs again. Zane could just imagine the other end of the conversation.
“Please do,” she said. “Something she did or said to him may be helpful. What’s the plan now?...Me, Baba?...But...I understand...Yes. Have a good flight.” The cell phone went back in her pocket and she picked up the nearest desk phone. “This is Detective Goodnight. When Matthew Bliss arrives there, please send him right up.”
Hanging up, Allison stared down at Zane. Her glance went from the window back to him.
He braced to kick at her, bite...whatever necessary to fight her.
Then he realized that the electrical charge around her had faded and her expression, gone thoughtful. “It’s interesting you’re not screaming for help.”
No. Why was that? He stared straight at her. “Touch me and I will.” Somehow, no matter how overwhelming his terror if she changed again.
She leaned over him. “How much do you want Blondie? Enough to keep quiet about what I am and cooperate to catch
her?”
He gaped at her, heart hammering, not believing what he heard. “You’re willing to let me live?”
Allison shrugged. “I’d rather be chasing Blondie than disposing of you...as long as you’re being helpful.”
He certainly wanted Blondie‑‑and to live. “I’ll cooperate.” Could he trust her word? If not, he had time to prepare to defend himself.
She pulled keys from her pocket and after helping him to his feet, unlocked the cuffs. “Do you see where I threw your shirt?”
“Will you tell me who Blondie is?”
She peered at desks and under them. “Deirdre Hilst. Ah...there we are.” She picked his shirt off the floor under Herrera’s desk.
Hilst? Zane stared at her “You mean Charlie was--”
“No, and neither are his family, but she is.” After turning the shirt right side out, she tossed it to him. “Better keep your coat on today. You have grass stains on the back.”
His ears heated again. “I don’t suppose you’d trust me to go home and change clothes.”
A knife-blade smile answered him. Then to his surprise, she said, “You can clean up here.”
That would be nice. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I don’t have a razor handy.”
“No major case survival kit?” She pulled out the drawer where she had had the thesaurus and fished a toilet kit from the rear of it. “I think I have a toothbrush that’s still in its wrapper.” She dug a cordless electric razor from a drawer in Hugh Bass’s desk. “We’ll clean up together. I want you where I can see you.”
Did she mean what he thought?
She did. Allison followed him into the men’s room and set toothpaste and deodorant on the shelf over the basins. Well, if she had no problem being here... He switched on Bass’s razor.