Blood of the Pride

by Sheryl Nantus

  “What’s the link?” He stared at the three photographs, pulling them free of the paper clips then spreading them out side by side. “They don’t look alike.”

  I bit down on my lower lip, hunting for a good lie. I couldn’t find one. The silence hung between us like the old Berlin Wall.

  Bran looked up at me. “Right. So when are you going to let me in on the big secret?”

  I took a long, refreshing drink of the caffeine-laced soda. My eyes widened. “This is not diet.”

  “Nope.” He grinned unapologetically. “Figured you’d need the sugar rush.” Bran looked down at his watch before walking to one of the cupboards. “Shouldn’t be too much longer for the food. I assume you know how to use chopsticks. Or should I get forks?” He pulled down a pair of plates that looked and screamed good china.

  “I’ll use my hands if I have to.” I reattached the photographs to the proper files. A double-check confirmed that none of these Felis had been my attacker. You didn’t change that much when you Changed.

  My eyes widened when I flipped the last page. At the back of the file, taped to the folder, was a small sample of fur securely sealed in a plastic see-through bag. Wow. The bastards did keep records, and obviously fine ones at that. Probably did have our DNA on file somewhere, in a deep dark bunker.

  Bran still faced the counter, busy placing a set of knives and forks on the plates. I glanced at him. He hadn’t seen the fur. I closed the files quickly and shoved them into a stack. As if on cue the phone rang, diverting his attention even further.

  “Right. Come on up.” He smiled at me as he hung up. “Chinese food has arrived!” His gaze moved toward the folders. “How about we call a truce until after we eat? Then we can get a-brawling on a full stomach?”

  I nodded. “Just don’t get in the way of my chicken. I’ll kill for that.”

  Bran walked toward the front door. “Okay, but don’t even think of looking at my curried shrimp.”

  We attacked the food as if we hadn’t eaten for days, scooping mouthfuls of hot soup down our throats at a speed that would have guaranteed indigestion in most mortals. Bran signaled his enjoyment of the meal with a huge burp between forkfuls of rice and shrimp. “Excuse me. It’s good food.”

  “That it is,” I mumbled with a mouthful of rice. “What were you telling them in Chinese?”

  “Extra meat in the dishes.” He pointed at the chicken with one fork, then to the shrimp and finally to a beef and broccoli dish. “They give me a bit better service and larger portions because I give good tips.”

  “On who’s going to be the target of your next exposé?”

  “No, usually ten to twenty bucks.” He rapped his fork on the edge of the plate. “I like to think of it as boosting the local economy.” Bran patted his stomach, pushing it out to exaggerate the bloating. “Wow. Haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

  “It is good food.” I speared another piece of chicken. “I’m a bit tired of donut holes, to be honest. Good, but hardly nutritious.”

  “You think?” Bran laughed as he stood up and went to put his plate in the sink. “Coffee or another drink?”

  “Coffee, please.” I pushed the near-empty plate away from me, ignoring the last spoonful of white rice. “At least I can claim I left something behind. Makes me feel less of a pig.”

  “Bah.” He scraped the handful of grains into a trash bag under the sink. “I like my women with a bit of meat on their bones.”

  I didn’t react to the sly wink, choosing instead to rest my elbows on the table while stifling a yawn in my hands. My eyes went to the folders, now discreetly tucked under a stack of napkins.

  “Just so you know—I don’t do dishes.” Bran reseated himself on the stool, facing me. “I toss them out and buy new ones.”

  “You do not.”

  “Maybe.” He reached out and snagged the folders, pulling them back into plain sight. “So, are you going to tell me what’s going on here or do I have to keep playing the idiot?”

  My fingers returned to my temples, rubbing lightly while I closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure if the penalties would be as high for him as they would be for me, but with a killer out there it wasn’t like it was going to get any less dangerous.

  “Do you still have that handful of fur from my house?” I asked.

  “Sure do.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the bagful of black and brown colored fur, still neatly rolled into a ball. “What, you going to get DNA analysis done?”

  “Not enough time.” I took the bag from him and set it on the table. “Not to mention I’m not sure if I can charge my client for the lab costs.” I took each folder and opened it to display the small tuft of hair neatly attached to the file. “What I can do is see if they match.”

  “How?” His eyes were focused on the three samples as I spread the folders out, ripping each small bag free. “I was kind of curious as to why you were getting hair samples in those files.”

  I paused and considered my options. I had to find Janey’s killer and this would be the fastest method. It could have deadly consequences depending on how Bran handled the information.

  Janey Winters was dead. Brandon Hanover wasn’t. I could save him.

  I closed my eyes and tried to put myself into a neutral state, allowing my natural abilities to come forward. It was one of the first tricks they taught us as kits, essential to maintain that inner control keeping us from Changing every time we got pissed off. Without learning inner control you ended up on an emotional rollercoaster, rocking and rolling with every flash of feeling. Mike had called on that control when he had started to Change involuntarily.

  As Felis we learned how to push out a lot of the smells and scents around us—it was a case of prioritizing what you needed and what you didn’t. Right now I had to close off everything and call up that individual scent from the alley and from the attacker, then compare it to the samples.

  I could sense Bran’s confusion and fear, a heady mix calling to me. It took an effort to push his scent to one side and focus on the task at hand.

  I reached for the bag from my house and opened it close to my nose. A deep inhalation brought the rogue’s scent home, reminding me of the initial attack. My heartbeat jumped into the danger zone.

  “Okay, now I have a control to work with.” I exhaled the words in a whisper. The bag went back on the table, closed up to preserve the purity of the scent.

  I picked up the first small sample and sniffed it, then the second and the third. It was like a kaleidoscope of colors rotating—all the same basic colors but I knew which patterns belonged to whom. There was something wrong though, something missing.

  “None of them match.” I frowned and shook my head. “But there’s a sort of trace with this one.” I looked at the source of the fur sample.

  The file belonged to the Felis from North Bay, Frank Langley.

  “But it’s not him, not directly.” I cleared my mind and my lungs of the odors with a harsh cough, replacing the spinning circles of color with the comforting familiar scents of the present. “Maybe a relative or a child. It’s something, at least. I’ve got to call Jess and see what’s up. There’s more to this than what they have in the file.” I reached for my cell phone and sent a short text message to Jess. It was too much to hope to be able to get a direct connection at this time of the night and there was more of a chance she’d pick up a text.

  Bran stared at me, then at the hair samples, then back at me. “How did you…what did you do?” He hopped off the stool, wide-eyed. “What did you do?”

  Bran picked up each small bag and stared at them, studying the colored strands as intently as I had. “You just sniffed them. Just smelled them.” His voice was a low whisper as if he had to convince himself of what he had just seen.

  My heart began to race. I was totally busted.

  Part of me wondered why I hadn’t thrown him out of the room, faked being sick, anything to keep him from seeing that part of me. Another part, a soft
whisper, asked if I’d done it on purpose to get to this turning point in our relationship. The third part threw up her hands and wanted more pie.

  His eyes locked with mine. “What the hell is going on?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell you.”

  “You can’t tell me?” He replied with a smile. “What, will you have to kill me then?”

  My face said it all. He moved closer, way into my personal space.

  “Really?” Bran repeated, sliding so close I could swear we shared the same breath. “You’re going to have to kill me?”

  “Not me,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

  “Well, that’s good, ’cause I’d hate to have to get into a fight with you.” The heated air caressed my cheek. “Unless it’s in bed and then I don’t mind losing.”

  I opened my eyes to stare at him, feeling the blush on my skin. “You don’t get how dangerous this is, do you?”

  Bran nodded. “I get it. What you don’t get is that I think finding her killer is important enough to risk it.” The left edge of his mouth twitched up. “It’s what I should be doing for a living, Reb. So tell me what’s going on and let me in.”

  “I am a member of a family of people, different from what you’re used to. Homo sapiens, I mean. I guess it’d be sort of Felidae sapiens. I think.” I was rambling. “We’re not that different. Well, I’m not, but I’m different from them. The family, I mean. The Pride. The killer, the guy who attacked me, he’s one of us. Well, them technically.” I covered my face with my hands, afraid to breathe. “I’m shutting up now. I’m shutting up.” A ball of nausea started forming in my stomach, threatening to rid me of all that good food.

  Chapter 11

  I opened my eyes to see Bran leaping around the apartment like a kid on Christmas Day who just got the keys to the toy store. He beamed at me as he continued his frantic dancing. “I knew there was something strange about that place, about you. About Ruth…” He stopped, his hands in mid-wave. “The pie, that is apple, right? Not cat chow or something like that?” His fingers clutched his belly. “I’m not going to cough up a hairball, am I?”

  The laugh rolled up from my stomach, replacing the nausea. “Oh, it’s apple all right. And you should taste her pumpkin pie. Or her tourtiere.” I swallowed, pushing back the last of the panic. “What do you mean, you knew. About me?”

  He advanced on me, wagging his finger in the air. “You were too…” He waved his hands in the air, making shapes. “There was something about you, something feline. It was like you were hunting something, the way you grabbed on to every clue. I’ve seen investigators work before and you were nothing like them. One tough chick.”

  “A what?” My face went redder as I slid off the stool and placed my hands on my hips. “Did you just call me a ‘chick’?”

  Bran stopped, a worried look on his face. “Well, I guess it’d be more of a ‘kitten,’ then. Or ‘lion cub.’ Or…” He frowned. “What do you call yourself, anyway?”

  “The proper name is Felis, for your information. And I haven’t been a kit for a long, long time.” I walked over to the sitting area and plopped myself down on the leather sofa. “And if you want to talk more about this you had better start calming down. I didn’t expect this sort of reaction.”

  “What do you expect me to do?” Bran bounced over to where I sat. “You’ve just revealed a whole new line of man. A whole new group of people living in society, but not really—with their own rules and regulations.” He paused, frowning. “You’re not married or something like that, right? It’s not some sort of harem thing where you and ten other women belong to some alpha male?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please. As if.” The nervousness in my stomach was beginning to turn into annoyance.

  “Okay, wait.” He sat down opposite me and leaned forward with his hands outstretched. “Can you change? Can you go all furry? Like Janey Winters?”

  “I cannot.” I felt a bit of uneasiness at the way the conversation was going. “The fellow who attacked me last night, for example, was fully Changed. That’s how he got up the side of the house and in the window.”

  “But you beat him down.” Bran’s forehead furrowed. “And you said you can’t change.”

  “I can’t.” I rubbed my eyes with the palms of both hands, trying to figure out how to explain things. “When I was ten my parents died in a car accident. I was raised on the farm, home-schooled by Ruth. I wasn’t lonely. There’re lots of kids around on the farm. It’s sort of a nursery and vacation spot for Felis who want to get away from the city and relax.” I couldn’t stop myself from shivering. “Then my life got turned upside-down.”

  An image flashed up from my memory.

  Stumbling alone down the dirt road toward the highway with nothing more than the clothes on my back. The bloody bandages sticking to my skin from a “farm accident.”

  The pain began in my chest, threatening to cut off my words. “I… Something went wrong with me. I stopped being able to Change when I was about twelve. The Board gave me a few more years to see what was wrong, whether it was just a case of hormones screwing things up. But it didn’t come back.” I flexed my fingers, feeling the phantom pain of the claws return. “So they had a meeting, a Gathering. It happens every year when the kits are declared full members of the Pride, nothing more than ceremony.”

  A deep breath pushed back the anxiety attack. “It’s usually a party. But for me, it was a test. If I couldn’t Change under stress, under attack by another member, then I’d be outcast.” I looked down at my fingers. “I failed.”

  “The scars on your back,” Bran whispered.

  Tears began to well in my eyes, threatening to blind me. “So I left and got shunted into foster care and I went to college, got a job and then qualified for my PI license.”

  He shook his head, his forehead furrowed. “That’s horrible.” His hands balled up into angry fists, the knuckles white. “That’s just…inhuman.”

  I laughed, choking back the tears. “We’re not human, silly.” Wiping my face with the back of my hands I continued, “It’s no big deal. I wasn’t going to fit in anyway. Better off out here, says I.”

  Bran pressed his lips together. “Doesn’t make it right.”

  “Well, I’m not going to disagree with you there.” I sniffled, taking deep breaths to force myself to calm down. Right now an emotional drive down memory lane wasn’t one I could handle.

  “And Janey Winters was one of the…Felis, you said?” Bran kicked over into reporter mode, his tone changing. I could imagine him reaching for a pen and pencil in a minute.

  “Affirmative.” I smiled. “And who you gonna call when one of your family has been killed?”

  “Another cat woman. One who knows the system but isn’t hooked into the cops and doesn’t have any moral problems about hunting down the killer outside of the law.” He slumped back in the chair and let out a huff of air. “My head is spinning here.”

  “Glad I could help.” I chuckled. “And now we’re tracking down a killer who seems to have targeted Janey for no other reason than the fact that she’s a member of the Pride.”

  “Family. Pride. Felis.” Bran put the palm of his hand to his forehead. “I’m going to go nuts trying to remember all this.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t, to be honest.” I bit my bottom lip. “As you can guess, it’s not usually permitted for us to tell humans about our existence.”

  “Well, you have to admit that it’s one hell of a story.” His eyes went bright as he spoke. “Story of the century, actually.”

  “If you could get anyone to believe you.” The brightness dimmed just a fraction.

  “Which is why you got involved.” He nodded as he popped one finger in his mouth and began chewing on the nail.

  I resisted the urge to slap his hand away.

  “Better to keep it in the family, so to speak.”

  “So to speak.”

  His eyebrows rose. “And I’m willing to bet that I’m not the
first one to find this out, right?”

  “Ah.” I blinked wildly, trying to gather my thoughts and buy myself some time to phrase it properly.

  “Ah.” Bran pointed at his chest. “So I’m now about to get whacked by the head Lion or Cat or whatever?”

  “You were a target before I told you.” I felt my face grow warmer. “Jess wanted to whack you today at the farm.”

  “What?” He jumped to his feet and began to stride back and forth across the hardwood floor. “Kill me? Does she know who I am? Who I know?” He stopped and glanced over at me. “That’s why, isn’t it? Because I’m a reporter?”

  “Well, duh.” I tilted my head to one side. “We usually don’t like to make headlines.” A shiver ran down my spine at the memory of the Winters image. “It’s pretty easy to discredit the odd photo here and there, make it out to be some sort of faked shot or some silly kid in a Halloween costume.”

  “Except I’m the one who started all this.” He collapsed into his seat, the dismay evident on his face. “I’m the one who published that photograph.”

  “Which was sent to you by the killer.” I omitted the part where he had been a viable suspect. “Who wanted you to publish it to show that we’re not invulnerable. And to try and bring attention to our kind. ‘What is she?’ was your cue to find out who we are and expose us to the world.” I walked back to the marble island and picked up one of the folders. “And these were the three men who, in their Felis form, had a white streak down one side of their nose.”

  “Which explains why they look nothing like each other in those photos,” Bran murmured. “Not likely you’d keep that on file, eh?”

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “All I know is that the family has files on everyone but doesn’t give it out to anyone who’s not either on the Board or who’s got a darned good reason. All I had coming out of the farm was three names. Ruth was the one who broke the rules and gave us the rest.”

  “They’re that tough?” Bran shook his head. “And here I thought getting info out of the government was bad.”