by Nalini Singh
Jim straightened, splattered by gore, and winked at me.
I smiled at him and looked into the store. Three dead zombies lay on the floor, two bludgeoned and one beheaded.
Jim rapped his knuckles on the door.
Two heads popped out from behind the shelves, one blond—Brune’s—and the other dark haired, probably Christian Leander’s. I made a funny face and posed against the carnage next to Jim.
The two guys left their hiding spot. Leander was carrying a replica sword that looked like it belonged to some barbarian and Brune was brandishing a crowbar.
They stepped over the dead bodies and Brune carefully opened the door.
“Hi,” I said, with a bright smile.
“Hi,” the dark-haired guy said.
“Are you Christian?”
He nodded.
“Are you afraid of zombies?”
He nodded again.
Right.
“Have you seen your neighbor today?” Jim asked. “Steven Graham?”
“No,” they said at the same time.
“What about Cole?” I asked.
“Cole and Amanda left,” Brune said.
“They went down to Augusta,” Christian said. “Until whatever this is blows over.”
“How sure are you?” Jim asked.
“I saw them board the leyline last night,” Brune said. “Amanda wouldn’t get into the car after what happened yesterday, so I gave them a ride in my cart to the leypoint.”
Jim glanced at me, a question in his eyes.
“No,” I said. “Augusta is too far for the curse to work.”
Cole wasn’t our guy.
“Thank you,” I said and shut the door. “Steven.”
Jim’s face snapped into a harsh mask. “Let’s pay him a visit.”
WE got Steven’s address from his bodyguard at the courier shop. At first he didn’t want to tell us, and then Jim asked him if he was left- or right-handed. The bodyguard asked why and Jim told him that he would break the other arm first, because he wasn’t a complete bastard. The bodyguard folded.
Now I was driving through an upscale neighborhood to Steven’s building. All of the houses on both sides of the road had really tall fences topped with barbed wire and at least three acres of land. Life in post-Shift Atlanta required fences and plenty of space between them and the house, so you could shoot whatever was coming at you.
“What’s the deal with you?” Jim asked.
I’d been thinking about the zombie fight. “Nothing.”
“I have three sisters,” Jim reminded me. “I know what nothing means.”
“What does it mean, Mr. Female Expert?”
“It means you’re upset about something, it’s been bothering you, but you don’t want to bring it up because you’re not sure you’re up for the conversation that might follow. Sometimes it also means I am supposed to magically guess why you are upset.”
I harrumphed. It seemed like a good answer.
“You know I’ll never figure it out on my own,” Jim said. “Don’t be a chicken. Just tell me.”
Come on, tiger girl. You can do this.
“I just want to be clear. This isn’t a needy commitment thing.”
“Okay,” he said, stretching the word.
“Where is this relationship going, Jim?”
“This is the kind of question that can explode in my face,” Jim said. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I mean what happens from here?”
“We discover if Steven is responsible, beat his ass, go to your place or my place, and celebrate.”
“Are you being deliberately obtuse?”
“No, I’m being very precise in my answers.”
Grr. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that we continue this relationship.”
“I thought that was a given,” he said.
I waved my hand. “Let me keep going with this, or I’ll never get to the point. Where do you see us a year from now, if everything goes well and we stay together?”
“Are you asking about marriage?” he asked.
“I’m asking about mating.” Mating in the shapeshifter world was a firm declaration of being in a relationship. Some couples married, some didn’t, but mating cemented the relationship.
“I never liked that word,” Jim said, “But yes. Mating. Marriage. This wasn’t the way I wanted to approach this.”
I made a conscious effort of will not to freak out because the word marriage came out of his mouth. This had to be said. “That would make me the alpha of the Cats.”
“Yes.”
Words came out of me, tumbling one over the other. “What happens when we’re challenged, Jim? My purifying powers don’t work against shapeshifters. The magic won’t always be up. I can’t always use my cursing and even if I could, they wouldn’t respect me for using magic. You and I both know that they understand and respect physical prowess. They would see me as a freak. Not only that, but I would be a liability. If you stand there and protect me so I have time to write my curses, that makes our battle strategy predictable. It would anchor you to one place. I’m not a fighter, but even I understand this. We sacrifice mobility and the element of surprise. I will get you killed, Jim. I’m not an alpha. I’m a half-blind, vegetarian tiger.”
There it was. It lay between us now, out in the open.
Jim opened his mouth.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be badass,” I said. “I do. I would like nothing more than to grow giant claws and do the kick and spin and disembowel everything around me thing, but I can’t.”
Jim nodded and opened his mouth again.
“And it’s not even the blood, because I can bite. It’s just that I’m not good at fighting. I’m not vicious. I’m scared of getting hurt. I am afraid of pain. I don’t want you to die because of me.”
Jim looked at me.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” I asked.
“Are you done?”
“Yes.”
“Dali, you are a tiger. You’re the largest cat on the planet and you weigh over seven hundred pounds in your beast form.”
I took a deep breath. If he were about to chew me out because I was a tiger and I couldn’t fight . . .
“Wait,” Jim said. “Let me finish.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay. Continue.”
“You have accelerated healing even by our standards.”
“That’s true.”
“You don’t have to be a good fighter for us to make a good team. If you just sit on our attacker for a second, that’s enough for me to kill them.”
I opened my mouth and closed it with a click.
“You’re concentrating on weakness. It’s good to be aware of your weaknesses, but you need to think in terms of assets. What strengths do you have?”
I glanced at him.
“You have bulk,” he said. “You have healing. You have paws the size of my head. You are majestic.”
“Majestic?”
“Your fur is so white, it almost glows. You’re this huge majestic creature. When I look at you in your animal form, you look otherworldly. There is almost a touch of divinity about it. The psychological effect of it is staggering. You look and think, ‘How the hell do I even fight this?’ I guarantee you, any attacker will hesitate. Even if they think you are weak, they will still hesitate. That hesitation is all we need. If they are unsure, if they question their judgment, psychologically we won the fight, because let me tell you, fighting me requires complete commitment. I don’t play.”
I tried to process what he was saying.
“You’re the smartest woman I know,” he said. “Think strategically and use that agile brain. Also you just drove past the house.”
I brought Pooki to an abrupt halt, reversed, and parked by a large, two-story mansion. The house stood quiet.
We got out and walked to the wrought iron gate in the six-foot fence. Jim kicked the lock. The gate swung open.
“Yes,” he said. “You asked me at Eyang Ida’s house why I am with you. I’m with you because you’re smart and beautiful, and you are not like anyone I know. No matter how hard things are, you throw yourself into them. During Midnight Games you walked into a cage with trained killers not knowing if your curses would work, because you knew other people were counting on you. That’s what you do. You step up.”
He stopped, stepping too close to me. His voice was quiet. “I watch everyone around me, waiting for a knife in my back. I can’t help it. The paranoia is so deeply ingrained now, it’s a part of who I am. It isn’t about what they would do, it’s about what they could do. I have friends, but I never forget that friendship is conditional.”
“Curran wouldn’t stab you in the back.”
“He would if the circumstances were right.”
“Jim, do you really live always expecting people to turn on you?”
He nodded. “It’s like going through life holding my breath.”
“That’s terrible.” I reached over and stroked his cheek with my fingertips. “People are not like that. Some people are like that, but most people are honest and kind. Our friends. Curran, Derek, Kate, Doolittle, they are loyal to us.”
He caught my hand and kissed it. “I love this about you.”
My heart was beating too fast. “Jim . . .”
“I watch everyone, but when I watch you, all I feel is . . . that I want to be with you. You will never lie to me. And if I need help, you will be there. With you, I breathe.”
I put my arms around him. I just wanted to make it better for him, to somehow shield him from that. His arms closed around me, his hard body pressing next to mine.
“Everyone has that someone who is most important to them,” he said, his voice so low only a shapeshifter could’ve heard it. “That one person who trumps the rules. You are that to me. I would do anything for you.”
The world stopped. I just stood there, shell-shocked. He did just say all that to me, right? I didn’t imagine it?
“You never answered,” he said quietly.
“Never answered what?”
“If you would be the cat alpha with me.”
He was asking me . . . “I didn’t know it was a question.”
He pulled away and met my gaze. “It is.”
“Yes,” I said in a small voice.
Jim smiled.
We walked up to the door. Jim tried the handle. It turned in his hand. He swung the door open. We sniffed the air in unison. Steven was home. No other human smells troubled the house. What in the world did he do with his daughter? Maybe she didn’t live with him?
Jim walked through the door. I followed him on soft feet, tracking the scent. The inside of the house was almost completely empty. No knickknacks. No furniture for the knickknacks to rest on. No pictures on the walls. The house was stripped bare. Only the curtains remained, blocking out the bright light of summer.
I smelled blood and alcohol. Never a good combination.
We turned left into a vast room and stopped.
Steven Graham, completely nude, sat cross-legged in a circle of salt in the corner of the room. His right foot stuck out. It looked wrong, deformed, and it took me a moment to figure out that it was missing all of its toes except for the big one. A small plate sat in front of him, next to a box of matches. On the plate, soaked in some sort of clear liquid, lay a bloody nub of flesh.
I squinted. A severed hairy toe. Ew.
He’d been cutting pieces off himself for his sacrifice. Ew. Ew. Ew.
The salt was probably a ward, a defensive spell. I tried to reach for it with my magic. Yes, a ward and a strong one.
“John Abbot?” I asked.
“I used to be John Abbot Junior,” Steven said. “I changed my name to Steven Graham a long time ago.”
Oh. Now this made sense. John Abbot was his father.
“What’s the deal with the strip club?” Jim said.
“My old man was a lawyer,” Steven said. “I worked for his firm. Most people would’ve made me a partner, but no, my old man made me into a junior associate. When Chad Toole got indicted, he was low on money, so he turned the strip club over to my dad. In its heyday owning that place was like printing money. Magic wiped out the Internet. All online porn was gone. Video was gone. Live girls were the only option. I wanted that club. I’ve always wanted one. I like women. Owning a strip club like Dirty Martini is like a fucking paradise. All that pussy and it’s all yours. No strings, no guilt, just go for it and indulge.”
Okay, there was something more disgusting than chopped-off toes.
“The old bastard wouldn’t give it to me. Said he wasn’t in the titty-bar business. I fucking hated my father. All my life he’s been screwing me over. He treated me like slave labor. I worked for him and that damn law firm for almost nothing, then he’d complain I was billing too many hours.
“Then, money went missing from an escrow account. Turns out my father, the famous John Abbot, had been stealing money from his clients. Suddenly he needed someone to take the rap for him. Suddenly it was all ‘son’ and ‘my boy’ and ‘will you go to prison for me.’ I told him I’d take the blame for his stealing, but he had to sign the club over to me. I got it in writing. I confessed to taking the money, got disbarred, and served two years in prison.”
Steven leaned forward. “I was soft. Weak. You have no idea what that place did to me. What it was like. It was hell. I sat in that damn cage for two years, beaten, raped, abused, and I kept thinking: When I get out, I’ll have my club. It kept me going. I’d live like a king once I was out. All the booze, women, and money I wanted waiting for me.”
Steven gave a harsh laugh. “I come out of prison and find out my father remodeled the place and sold it off one chunk at a time. See, there was a loophole in the paperwork he signed. He couldn’t sell the place completely, because I owned a chunk of it, but he could divide it into parts and sell those as long as I got one. One office. The fucker. I gave him two years of my life. I ruined my career for him and he screwed me over again.”
His eyes glinted in the light. He looked deranged. He must’ve sat for two years behind bars and thought every day about that stupid club. It was supposed to be his big reward when he got out, and his father betrayed him. All of his hatred for his father had somehow tied into that club. Now I understood. Steven had to have it. He would do anything to own Dirty Martini. He would hurt anyone, kill anyone, just so he could walk through its doors.
“I couldn’t wait for my father to die,” Steven said. “I would’ve killed him years ago, except he had a provision in the will that if he died a violent death, I’d get nothing. So I had to go on and put my life together. I changed my name. I got this dinky little business. All the while, he was still breathing. It was torture, that’s what that was. I killed him every day in my head.”
Okay, he was insane. Clinically insane.
Steven pointed at the walls with a sweep of his hand. “He finally died, the bastard. I’ve got his ‘palace.’ I’ve sold everything he owned. There is not a trace of him left.”
“I get all that,” Jim said. “I don’t get why you’re chopping off your toes.”
“They’ve got a new policy now,” Steven ground out. “Use it or lose it. As of this year, only active establishments that pass inspection will get a liquor license. For years I’ve been giving them money and they had no issue with it and suddenly now they want to inspect the club. I had to get the people out or I’d miss my window. The permits and license never lapsed, the ownership of the building was never interrupted, since I still own a part of it, and I’ve got enough seed money to open doors in a couple of months. When it came time to renew, I’d be golden. Except those fuckers wouldn’t sell to me. I offered them a fortune for their crummy little spaces and they said no.”
“You’re killing people to start a strip club,” I
said. “Doesn’t that seem extreme to you?”
He looked at me. Like looking into the eyes of a chicken. There was no intelligent life there. He’d become so focused on that club, it consumed him.
“You know what your problem is?” he asked. “You don’t know what your mouth is for. After I’m done with your boyfriend here, I’ll fix that.”
Great. “Is that how you talk to your daughter, too?”
“I would, if I had one,” he said.
So he lied about that, too.
Steven struck a match and sat the toe on the plate on fire. “Let’s see what the two of you are afraid of. The way this works, the one with the strongest fear wins. Good luck, lovebirds.”
A darkness spun in a tight knot against the opposite wall, a twisted chaotic mess, shot through with streaks of violent red, and spat out a shapeshifter in a warrior form. He stood eight feet tall. Monstrous muscle bulged all over his frame, some of it sheathed in gold fur with black rosettes and the rest covered with dark human skin. He looked like he could rip a person in half with his hands. His shoulders were huge. His legs were like tree trunks. Claws thrust from his oversize hands. His jaws, studded with razor-sharp teeth longer than my fingers, didn’t quite fit together. Long streaks of drool stretched from the gaps between his teeth, dripping to the floor.
A hot, furious scent sliced across my senses like a knife, familiar, but revolting. It was like stuffing your mouth full of copper pennies. It was the scent of rape, murder, and terror, the horrible stench of human and animal gone catastrophically wrong. My nose said, “Jim,” and then it screamed, “Run!” This is what madness smelled like.
The beast opened his mouth, staring at us with glowing green eyes, and snapped his nightmarish teeth.
“Oh, this is just wonderful,” Steven said. “You cost me five toes. I’ll enjoy this and after it’s over, I’ll go get my strip club. I bet they’ll sell now.”
“Jim,” I said. “I’m afraid of rejection. What exactly are you afraid of?”
Jim’s face was grim. “Of going loup.”
That’s why this abomination smelled familiar. It was Jim. Except he was bigger, faster, and stronger than my Jim. Loups were more powerful than shapeshifters, shockingly so. Jim would have to fight the better version of himself and he had only me for backup. The loup Jim was a shapeshifter. None of my curses would work against him.