Rampant, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  “Oh, she can stay in our room,” Terry chimed with a wink for her prospective daughter-in-law. “Hopefully she’ll be staying somewhere else very soon!”

  Annette giggled and pulled some bags from the back of the car that she dropped at my feet, and Teague sauntered out of his cabin just in time to watch me bend over to pick them up.

  “I’ll get them, Lady,” he offered, eyeing the newcomers with intense distaste. “Who the fuck is that?”

  “Nicky’s parents,” I said, waving to Tanya as she came out of the caretaker’s cabin and dangled a key at me.

  “Who’s with ’em?” He easily hefted the bags over his shoulders, and Tanya came up and took the other two at my feet. I held out my hand for a bag and they both looked at me in horror, so I took the key and walked toward the one cabin not on the end and not occupied by my people.

  “That would be Annette,” I said sourly, opening the door so they could dump the bags. “She’s a hopeful for Nicky’s new wife.”

  Teague was so surprised that he dropped the suitcase off his shoulder. It hit the floor and burst open, dumping shirts and underwear in its wake.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  I gave my most neutral shrug. “I shit you not,” I said, turning on the air-conditioning—it was ninety in the room, and it could use the head start.

  “Wouldn’t he, like, die?” Teague asked, wrapping his head around that.

  I sighed, because I knew what they had in mind. “Yeah, but Mario told me once that Avians in a bad bonding can start new families and then have ‘visits’ with their bonded mate. Sort of the requirement of an Avian divorce, right?” The idea that they’d convince Nicky to do that with someone he loved was horrible.

  “Gross.” And it was apparently horrible to Teague too.

  “Why’d they tell you?” Tanya asked, disgusted.

  “They think I’m the help,” I said, unable to gauge my own expression. Teague and Tanya both gaped at me, and together we walked out of the room, leaving Mr. Kestrel’s underwear strewn over the carpet.

  When we got out to the car, there were more bags waiting for us, and Terry and Annette were panting in the shade. “Oh, honey, you’re such a sweetheart to help with the bags. John, honey, could you make sure this nice girl gets a tip? I only wish my son could have settled down with someone nice like you!” She smiled happily. “Jonathan went in that cabin to register.” Terry fluttered her hand.

  Tanya swore, “Shit!” and trotted off to go take care of business, but not before glaring at Annette’s wide-eyed goggling at her pierced nipples, lip, nose, and eyebrow.

  Annette looked to me as though to share the joke, but maybe she caught sight of my own double row of six-plus piercings along my ears. They were fine gold hoops with little charms, now, but at one point in time, they’d been skulls, daggers, and Blue Öyster Cult crosses. Either way, she flushed and then smiled winningly at Teague.

  “Oh, my—looks like you got yourself a man too!” she trilled. Teague and I looked at each other blankly.

  “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “He’s a friend.”

  Annette’s smile turned condescending. “Oh honey, well, don’t worry—you’re still young. A little hair, a little makeup, and no one will even look at your figure. You’ll have a man in no time.” Apparently my ring didn’t register with her—maybe because it wasn’t a plain gold band.

  Beside me I heard Teague suck in his breath in anger and let out an honest-to-Goddess werewolf growl. I hissed at him, alarmed, but Annette continued on in happy oblivion. “Anyways, everyone knows that it’s the personality that counts. As long as you let a man know he’s the king of the roost, you can make a good man happy!”

  Teague’s growl turned to a guffaw, and I let out my breath with a little relief. “What’s wrong with you?” I hissed, scowling, but Teague’s look was fixed on Annette in fierce werewolf hatred.

  “Did you hear what she—”

  “Every. Word,” I gritted through a smile. If I could deal with this, then he had better be able to. Goddess knew what would happen if Teague lost his temper. Any of us, for that matter—there were just too many personalities here in this little place for us to come unglued!

  “C’mon, brother,” I said in a regular tone. “Let’s get these to the cabin.”

  “Lady, forgive me,” Teague growled, “but you don’t carry anybody’s bags.”

  “Damned straight,” said Max quietly behind me. He had just followed Renny out of their cabin. Well, good—at least I didn’t have to wake everybody up!

  Max was human, but Renny was cat, and as the guys took the bags she came up underneath my hand and rubbed her head there while I fondled her ears. I think it comforted us both.

  Terry frowned, the expression doing nothing to make her one bit less attractive, and looked at me with more dripping pity. “Oh, darlin’, I’m so sorry—is Lady your name? And is there something wrong with you?” A sudden gasp. “Oh, no. You’re not pregnant, are you, darlin’? What, with no husband and all?”

  Katy had padded up to me, obviously ready to go swimming human style this time, and she sucked in her breath much as Teague and Max had done. “No!” we both answered loudly, and I heard the werewolf in her voice too.

  I put a hand on her shoulder—the hand with the intricately wrought ring that matched Bracken’s, Nicky’s, and Green’s—and answered evenly, “No to both. No, I’m not pregnant, and no, Lady isn’t my name.”

  Annette looked puzzled, her blue eyes big and wide. “Well, then why did they call you that?”

  I swallowed and heard another door open. Oh, goody—Mario and LaMark were up. Was everybody in the entire fucking entourage going to witness this little bit of humiliation besides Nicky? I swallowed again and fought the urge to screech Nicky’s name over everyone’s head.

  “It’s more like a title,” I said, literally petting Katy’s arm in an effort to smooth her hackles.

  “Oh, oh!” trilled Terry. “You’re like the head manager. You know, the ‘Lady of the Cabins,’ right?” Teague and Max were back, and Jack took his place behind Katy—and holy shit and pass the salt, Jacky snarled first. I had to put an end to this crap.

  “Look,” I said in my down-to-business voice, “Mrs. Kestrel, do you know whose place you’re staying in?”

  Terry blinked. “Well, yes. It belongs to my son’s… employer.” I saw the blush and sharpened my gaze.

  “He’s not your son’s employer, and I know you know that,” I said, my voice getting hard. Terry cleared her throat and looked sideways at Annette, apology in her voice.

  “Well, yes, my son did fall in with some bad people, but we’re here to take him home now….” She faltered, because not even Mrs. Kestrel could miss the mass growl behind me. I should shut them down, I thought—I should. But I didn’t want to.

  “Your son did fall into a bad crowd,” Mario said behind me, his voice shaking, “but Green saved him from that. Don’t you dare blame Green for Nicky’s mistakes.”

  Terry nodded and pasted on a condescending smile, for all the world as though her son hadn’t been introduced to Green as the fucker who’d mind-raped me and left me for dead. “Well, be that as it may, it’s time for your nasty Mr. Green to yank his clutches out of my son and let him come home to me. I know he still has… obligations….” (another blush) “…but that wife of his is messing around like some… some rank whoring bitch, you know, and it’s time for Nicky to give her up and come… come….”

  I swallowed and turned around to face my people. To a one, they had already initiated the shape-shifters’ change. Ordinarily, this is something quick, painless, like changing clothes—but my guys, they wanted to kill someone, and their human halves were keeping them from doing it. There were half-grown snouts, ears in mutant positions midway up the heads, slitted eyes, and claws twisting on the end of human arms. This had gone far enough.

  “You,” I said deliberately. “All. Need. To. Chill.” I took a deep breath and motio
ned everybody to follow suit, and I was relieved when they met my eyes and did just that. Another breath, and they released some of their anger. Another breath, and most of their changes had reversed. They were left glowering at the two women over my shoulder, and I needed to put an end to this conversation once and for all.

  “Mrs. Kestrel,” I said, turning back around, “how much does this one know about your world?”

  Terry blinked. “I’m sure I don’t know….”

  Oh, Goddess. She was going to make me do this, wasn’t she? “Stop dicking around, Terry. Does she know the Kestrel family secret or not? I need to know how much of her brain we’re going to have to wipe, or if we should just send her home now.”

  Annette gasped and held her hand up to her throat, and Terry patted her arm reassuringly. “Now sweetie, don’t you worry. We’ve told you everything, haven’t we?”

  Annette brightened like a child. “Oh, yes. I know all about the bird thing….”

  Wonderful. What idiot told her that? “Well, does she know he’s not the only bird in the sky?”

  Terry blinked, and Annette blinked, and I filled in the silence with fantasies of smacking them both until their noses bled.

  “You do realize,” I said slowly, my voice getting harder as I went, “that we have a very eclectic population here, don’t you?”

  Annette smiled the clueless smile that I was starting to loathe and then opened her mouth one more time. “Oh, that’s okay,” she said brightly, looking specifically at certain members of our party. “We have blacks and Mexicans in Montana too—I can live with that!”

  “Like we’d let you, puta!” Katy snarled. Jack and Teague both grabbed her arms and pulled her behind me before she could attack—and I was just about to ask both women if they could find another way to be offensive so we could just out-and-out kill them, when suddenly the lightbulb went on. Annette looked to Renny with a wreath of smiles. “Oh my God! Is this a magic animal, like Nicky?” She bent down to scratch a fuzzy brown tabby head, and Renny actually cat-spit at her, backing up with her feet splayed and her hair standing out all over her body.

  I jumped between them. “Bitch, you touch my friend and she’ll take your fingertip off at your armpit! Now listen, both of you, because I’m not saying this again!”

  They both gasped, and it was as though they suddenly saw the lot of us—and they realized that we were all more than we looked.

  “You are on Green’s land, by Green’s invitation. You insult the master of these lands again, and I will make my apologies to your son and make sure you are banned in every preternatural community outside of Montana for the rest of your lives. That’s almost every state in the Union and all of Europe, Mrs. Kestrel—I’d think long and hard about that. Do we understand each other?”

  I nodded deliberately, hoping they would nod back. When they did, I buried my hands into Renny’s ruff and took another deep breath.

  “Now, look. I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot. You haven’t let me introduce myself, I’m—”

  And because I was apparently running a bona fide Circus of the Fucking Damned, two things happened right then. The first was Nicky’s father running up and panting in the heat, apparently fresh from a little chat with Tanya, who had probably ripped his nipples off with outrage. The second was Bracken, my knight protector, barreling out of our cabin on unsteady legs to plant himself between me and the horrible monsters from the depths of his worst nightmares about Cory-eating humans who needed to be smushed like bugs.

  “Beloved,” Bracken chastised, casting a venomous glance over his shoulder, “you should have woken us up!”

  “I probably would have,” I told him truthfully, “but, well, things sort of got out of hand really quickly.”

  Bracken looked over his shoulder again and growled. “How are they treating you?”

  I swallowed and smiled grimly. “We’re having a misunderstanding right now, but we’re about to clear that u—”

  “We’re so” (pant pant) “very sorry” (pant pant) “Lady Cory,” said Jonathan Kestrel, trying hard to do a proper bow in the heat. “We had no idea who you were.”

  Then Mario and LaMark’s door opened, and Lambent, ignoring the meeting of the worlds, came blurring by. Literally—all the human eye could see was a flame-colored-whoosh, like a special effect. Screaming like any kid jumping in the lake on a day like this, he zoomed down the hill, across the pier, and up the side of the small floating bait shop on the end, his momentum taking him nearly twenty feet into the air and well clear of the end of the dock. With a gleeful whoop, he hovered in the air for a moment and then plunged into the center of the lake.

  I watched him deliberately. We all did, welcome for the distraction, because the process of recognition working its way across Terry Kestrel’s face was truly painful.

  “My goodness,” she said to no one in particular, “was that one of your people too? Have we met everybody? Because that sure is a lot!”

  I forced myself to look at her and gave a brief, unfriendly smile, moving Bracken to the side so I could face her as I did so. “You won’t meet the vampires until dark,” I told them, feeling for Bracken’s hand. It was there, hard and sure, and my heartbeat slowed just a little more. This was not mortal peril—I should remember that.

  Terry nodded, and Annette, incapable of staying silent to save her life, said, “I don’t understand. He called you Lady Cory—does that mean you’re….” She trailed off, looking horrified, and I stepped forward and bowed, unwilling to extend my hand.

  “That would make me Cory Green,” I introduced myself, begrudging them even that much of my name, “but you would know me as the ‘rank whoring bitch’ who is married to Nicky.”

  To make things perfect, Nicky came rushing out of our room just in time to hear that last line, and the debacle was complete.

  Bracken: Knight’s Unyielding Position

  “JESUS, MOM,” Nicky said, reading the situation accurately at a glance, “you’ve been here, what? Ten minutes? You couldn’t be here ten minutes without pissing off my entire family?”

  “Oh, honey,” Terry said, turning around to her son with a conciliatory air, “you’re exaggerating.”

  “Sure he is,” Max said under his breath. “Lambent seems happy, and the vampires aren’t up yet!”

  The humor rippling through the were-folk was a relief—their tension had been hotter than the horrendous air—and I felt Cory relax next to me. Thank the Goddess. It wasn’t that I wanted these people to live any longer than necessary, but I didn’t want Cory to be responsible for killing them either. That was no way to run a family.

  Knowing this, it seemed, she turned around and flashed a grateful smile to the mass of hypermetabolic bodies behind us. “Guys, if you, uhm, want to go swimming with Lambent, Brack and I will be there in a few minutes, okay?”

  She did that thing with her head where she nodded, trying to get people to agree with her. A lot of times it worked, and it seemed to this time—until, as a unified whole, the men all dropped their swim trunks and deliberately stepped out of them. Katy’s eyes widened, and then she sighed. She wasn’t nearly as free with her body as Renny, but Teague—who didn’t like showing his scars any more than Cory did—was as bare as everybody else, tattoo bright and shiny on his back. Even the Avians were naked though they didn’t have to be and, well, it was a show of solidarity.

  With a little moan that only I could hear, Katy’s pretty blue bikini hit the dust, and all of the were-folk turned deliberately to the Kestrels and their unwelcome guest.

  And then they changed.

  The big-titted human woman next to Nicky’s mother let out a breathless half shriek, and the werecreatures flowed around our knees. Jack and Katy trotted to the far side of the car while Max and Renny took the side near us, and four tires steamed under a solid yellow stream of urine. They all did that “fuck you in the cat litter” thing with their back paws and trotted away with pleased expressions on their various animal fa
ces, until Jack and Katy turned back toward Teague.

  Teague was pissing on the big-titted woman’s feet as she squealed and tried to sit on top of the heated car, and Cory and I could do nothing but step back and—in Cory’s case—cover her shocked laughter with her hand.

  Teague kicked his feet at her and then joined his mates. Just as Nicky’s mom gave a sigh of relief, there was a terrific thundering splat on the car’s hood and then another on the roof as Mario and LaMark did their part to make their displeasure known. Both women shrieked and moaned as they were spattered with the worst bird bomb of all time, and Cory and I simply took another step back and looked at them, at a complete loss for anything to say.

  Cory tried. “They’re very protective.”

  Terry looked woefully at her car and her companion’s sodden, stinking sandals. “I can see that,” she replied. Then, with a glimmer of self-awareness, she looked Cory in the eye. “You do not know how much I would give to be able to go back and do that last ten minutes over again and start fresh.”

  Cory let out what might have been a laugh. “I’m sure you would,” she said quietly. “And we will get a chance to talk later.”

  Her eyes wandered down to the water. Everybody else was in—most of them human, having changed in the water itself, except for Mario and LaMark. They were hovering about fifteen feet above the glossy surface. Then, almost in tandem, they changed into humans, and their whoops of excitement could be heard up where we were as they plunged into the cold lake.

  Cory’s lips twitched, and she looked up at Nicky’s parents, just a hint of apology in her voice this time. “Right now, I think I’d better go keep them company—they were very self-controlled.” She pulled at my hand, saying, “We should bring their clothes down, you think?” I shook my head.

  “Tanya will get them.” She seemed to be happy with that.

  Together we gathered around Nicky, who stood miserable and upset. She took his hands in hers, then leaned over and gave him a sweet, lingering kiss on the corner of his mouth. “How about you join us in a few minutes, sweetie,” she ordered, her eyes troubled. He met her gaze with a truly unhappy look and nodded.