Rampant, Volume 1

by Amy Lane

  Jacky, LaMark, and I stared at the smoking, folded vehicles in absolute horror.

  “Are you shitting me?” I asked no one in particular. Then I started to struggle as the two men each grabbed an arm and started hauling me off down the block.

  “Guys… guys… what if someone was hurt?” It was my first reaction. It was who I was for my people—we took care of our own, didn’t we? Except the panicked guy behind the wheel of the car didn’t count. Did he?

  “And what if someone notices that the car should have taken Jacky out but didn’t?” LaMark hissed in my ear, fighting me away from the scene.

  “Or a cop wants us to give a statement!” Jacky posed from my other side. “Who the hell are we, Lady, and what are we doing here?”

  “We have drivers’ licenses!” I snapped, hauling out of their hard grips and turning around to go back and take care of business.

  The two drivers—our guy of the Caravan and the young kid driving the Chrysler—had both wobbled out and were tottering around their totaled vehicles in a stunned way as an ambulance passed in front of us, quicker on the scene than I would have thought.

  It was well in hand, and this time when the guys seized my arms and hustled me into the car, I didn’t resist at all. LaMark copped the wheel and drove straight out, and we sat with shell-shocked faces and a complete inability to come up with one single coherent thing to say for the forty-five-minute drive to the turnoff to the lake.

  Of course, this meant that LaMark was driving when we hit the winding portion of the road on the way to the cabins. I broke the stunned silence with the inevitable.

  “Oh Christ, LaMark, pull over. I’ve gotta hurl.”

  Ugh. That doesn’t get any better, you know? It certainly doesn’t get any better when it’s a hundred-gazillion degrees Flamingheit and your skin sticks to your skin and your sweat’s running down your pits and in the crease of your body as you bend over to spew. Between that and the merciless, bloodless, bitter motherfucker of a sun, my head was starting to throb in time with the heat distortion coming off the road. The guys were sweet about it, but as we pulled up in front of the cabins, I felt the way Bracken had looked yesterday.

  Bracken took one look at my face as he opened the door and swore. “Why didn’t you drive?”

  I shook my head and took another swig from the water bottle Jack had given me. “Do you want the long version, or can you live with ‘It didn’t come up when we were loading the car’?”

  “The long version can wait. Come inside, shower, get out of the fucking sun….”

  I started to giggle, having gone completely round the bend. “If the sun was fucking, it would be a hell of a lot cooler!”

  “Why’s that, genius?” Bracken asked, swinging me into his arms because he liked to do that when he was feeling all big and manly.

  “Because then all we’d see is his moon!”

  Behind me I heard Jacky and LaMark grumble “Oh Jesus!” and “Now I’ve gotta hurl!” Then Bracken had me inside the cabin and into the blessed, blessed coolth, and the shower was running and they ceased to matter much at all.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was lying on our bed in a pair of gym shorts and one of Bracken’s T-shirts, watching Katy paint Renny’s claws some bizarre shade of purple.

  Renny was obviously fighting the urge to sneeze. Her whiskers were drawn back from her long teeth, and her pink cat’s tongue kept coming out and licking her nostrils, trying to get the sharp odors of acrylic polish and acetate out of them.

  I watched them, because the logic of painting a werecat’s toes when the odds were good the polish would go away when she changed to human was a lot easier to fathom than pretty much anything else that had gone on that day.

  “Why are you doing this, again?” I asked, hoping this time it would make sense.

  “Because,” Katy said, shaking her hands and looking at Renny to do the same with her paw, “when we go from peoples to animals, the polish isn’t wide enough. It’s just like a little dot, you know? Somewhere on the back of the claw? It gets caught on something, that’s it, adios, good-bye, no more manicures, all gone. But this way, we go from creatures to peoples—”

  “And it’s going to be all over your hand. You’ll look like you dipped your fingertips in a vat of it,” I postulated grimly. Katy rolled her eyes.

  “Look who’s being all pessimistic and shit. You jump into the face of danger with a ‘We can do it!’ and you get all shitty about a little nail polish?”

  I had to laugh. “Okay, okay. You finish Big-Game Mani-Pedi, and I won’t ask Renny what happened across the lake again.”

  Renny’s contented purring turned into a growl. I gathered it had been bad. Teague had gone off on a run as wolf to work off his puzzlement and bad feelings, and Mario was flying with him just for safety. Max had been in for a moment, checking on Renny the way my guys checked on me, and when he saw she was happy—weird, but happy—he nodded grimly and walked away with a “We’ll talk later.” Oh, yay! More good news! Because whatever had happened on their run did not look comfortable enough to talk about. But we didn’t have to talk now. Now we got a few minutes’ peace, and I was enjoying the girl stuff—or rather, watching the girls do girl stuff. I was mostly enjoying lying down out of the sun and allowing my skin to cool, even though Bracken was hovering near me protectively and Nicky kept giving concerned glances from the other side of the bed.

  Ah, peace.

  And then there was a knock on the door, followed by a quick open—you know, the kind that you expect from friends.

  It was Annette and Terry. As Terry poked her head in our room with a “Hello, everyone decent?” Renny let out an honest-to-Goddess mountain-lion scream that had both women jumping back into the dust.

  Terry made a quick recovery. “I’ll take that as a ‘Yes’!” she burbled. I shot a quick stare at Renny, who looked back innocently.

  “You shouldn’t,” I said mildly. “Our were-folk are pretty comfortable in their own skin.”

  Renny snorted, and Katy suppressed a giggle. Then Katy sat back on her haunches. “There you go, mami. Let it dry, okay?”

  Renny aimed her slitted golden eyes at the five crescent daggers of death now painted a gorgeous, glittery purple, placed both paws delicately in front of her, and then rocked back on her ass and shot her back leg up so she could give her privates a thorough—and thoroughly feline—washing.

  Annette gasped. “Why’s she doing that?”

  Renny looked up at me with half-closed eyes and her pink tongue partially protruding from her mouth, then resumed business.

  I snorted. “Same reason dogs do it—’cause they can. Can I help you ladies?”

  “We were just wondering if you and Nicky wanted to go boating with us later this afternoon,” Terry blurted quickly, probably because it looked like Annette was going to open her mouth again any minute.

  “No,” Bracken said implacably next to me. His hand moved gently to the small of my back, and even if we hadn’t had business to deal with this afternoon, I wouldn’t have had the heart to countermand him.

  “Not today, Mom,” Nicky said, standing and moving toward the door. “We’ve got some stuff to do today. Will tomorrow be okay?”

  “Business?” Annette sounded stunned. “What business do you people do?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, not wanting to bring up the vampires. The guys had awakened the night before as we’d been eating, and as they’d moved into a darkened corner of tree and shadow with their own dinners, Annette had exclaimed loudly enough to carry over the lake, “Oh my God, what are those two guys doing over there!”

  She’d managed to make Marcus so uncomfortable that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to feed from Mario until much later, after the dumbshit civilians had gone to bed. Conversing with these people about anything of substance was like tap-dancing on a bed of knives.

  “Oh.” Terry was clearly disappointed, and I felt bad. But since I also still felt like crap, that wa
sn’t enough to make me go out in the sun again until twilight softened the glare, if not the heat. “Well, would you all be up to sitting with us to eat tonight?”

  Renny looked up from her kitty crotch and hissed, and there was a suspicious warbling growl coming from Katy’s throat as she carefully stashed her nail polish in a special little box she’d brought with her. Apparently cats and dogs really can agree, especially when they have a common enemy.

  I looked ruefully at Nicky’s mom and sighed. “Probably not a good idea just yet,” I apologized, “but Nicky, Brack, and I can come over and keep you company after we’ve eaten.”

  “You’re just going to let them…,” Annette flailed messily for a word, “control who you eat dinner with?”

  It was a patent attempt at manipulation, and I couldn’t help but regard her distastefully. I had been immune to that bullshit in high school, and I hadn’t changed in that regard at all.

  “They trust me to take care of them,” I said levelly. “I won’t break bread with someone they don’t trust.” My headache thundered back, and I looked tiredly at Nicky’s mother. “Can I help you with anything else, Mrs. Kestrel?” I asked with a pointed smile, and Terry sent an annoyed glance at her traveling companion.

  “No, hon, we’re good. Unless….” Her eyes shifted helplessly to the flats of bottled water we’d bought in town, and I could finish the sentence for her.

  “Nicky, do you want to carry one of those flats to your mom’s cabin for her?”

  Terry let out a sigh of relief. Apparently they had gone shopping the night before without tasting the tap water. “Thank you, hon. I can have Mr. Kestrel give you some money….”

  “No worries, Mrs. Kestrel,” I told her, swallowing the offense. “We may be choosy about breaking bread, but the fey are big on gifts.”

  “Is that ‘fey’ like fairies?” Annette asked. I was just going to ignore her, but Bracken had enough.

  Looking at Terry Kestrel quizzically, he said, “She was a better alternative for your son? Really?”

  Terry gave a weak smile and backed out of the door with a “Thank you all, see you later tonight!” I guess there wasn’t anything else to say.

  As soon as the door shut, Bracken put his hand firmly on my shoulder and led me to the bed, a cool washcloth in hand. Then he turned off the lights—which didn’t stop the manicure session, since everyone’s vision was spectacularly better than mine, especially in the dark—and forced me to lie down in the relative quiet of the room, where I stayed until my head stopped thundering at me and I fell asleep.

  TWO HOURS later, as we powwowed in my room, I rather wished I had stayed that way.

  “Okay,” I said, rubbing my temples, “let me get this straight.”

  It had been such a simple plan. Max and Renny would take the ferry across the lake and take the guided tour of the caves like the tourist couple they’d always wanted to be. Teague would trot along in the foliage beneath them and guide them to the bodies so they could stray from the trail and “accidentally” stumble upon them. Renny had been looking forward to letting out an ear-curdling scream and, her words, girling-all-out for the benefit of the trail guides.

  The plan had worked, too—except they’d been stopped by the guide as they’d gone off the trail, and Renny, who usually walked in her girl self with the grace of the cat form in which she spent most of her time, had one of those dumbshit cat-falling-off-the-television moments and literally tumbled down the hill.

  And Teague—Teague, who was levelheaded, never panicked, and hated being naked in public?

  Teague changed form to catch her and keep her from falling into the nasty decomposed bodies.

  And Max. Max, who was used to the entire fucking world seeing his wife naked, but who, until just this exact moment, truly hadn’t given a ripe shit—because Renny was Renny, and if she chose a mate, it was for life—had lost his temper and screamed, “Don’t touch her, you horny bastard!” Drawing the entire tour group’s attention to the naked man in the brush.

  Teague had given Max an anguished look, turned back into a werewolf, and gone hauling ass into the forest, Renny had remembered what in the fuck they were there to do in the first place, kicked some leaves, and started squealing, and Max had been so embarrassed that he’d hidden behind a tree, stripped, and turned into a cat to go find a wolf and apologize.

  Leaving Renny alone to explain to a very puzzled guide why he should call the cops but not mention the naked man and the missing husband.

  By the time Jack, LaMark, and I had returned, Max had managed to make peace with Teague, but Teague had been so unsettled that he figured being a wolf would keep him out of trouble. Max had been in his cabin, sulking with beer and wondering if three or four more apologies to Renny would make up for the fact that he’d left her alone to deal with the authorities when that had been the whole reason I’d picked him to go.

  I listened to the story with the same horrified fascination you would use while watching—wait for it—a car crash. Immediately after the car almost hit you.

  “Merciful Goddess, indifferent God, what an unholy goatfuck.”

  LaMark snorted. “Makes our trip almost normal,” he said, and Jack nodded, having to agree.

  I groaned in frustration and looked around for something to kick. “There is nothing normal about this,” I snapped.

  Bracken spoke up in agreement. “It feels… wonky,” he said, his eyebrows scrunched together. “It feels… us. It feels preternatural and… not exactly planned, but… prompted, somehow.”

  “Could it be the moon?” Nicky asked. Since Avians weren’t driven by the tides, he looked around at the people who would know.

  “No,” Teague said shortly. Jack kicked his foot and prompted him to continue. “No, because the moon was full five days ago. It’s still pretty bright in the sky, but it’s waning—it doesn’t… thunder in our blood.”

  I turned to Katy. “Katy, what were you thinking yesterday when you yelled at Renny?”

  Katy shrugged. “I was thinking she’s always naked! But that doesn’t usually bother me none. It was like, my top ten things to say about the thing? I picked number fifteen.”

  Max nodded excitedly. “Me too! Dammit, I had a thousand things to worry about. Teague catching Renny? Last goddamned thing on my mind—and there it was, the first thing out of my mouth.” He looked unhappily at Teague. “Can I say one more time that I am soooooo fucking sorry?”

  Teague shrugged. The two had always gotten along, and right now I held my breath that this moment wouldn’t hurt them. “No worries,” he said simply, and I let out my breath on a sigh. If Teague said it, it must be truth.

  I stood up to pace, barely noticing when everybody on the floor backed up and gave me a path.

  “So something’s dicking with us. Not in a normal way, just… just dicking with us. The shit we say, accidental bullshit—I’m fully prepared to blame 75 percent of what went down yesterday with Nicky’s parents to this whatever-the-fuck-it-is….”

  “You’re being generous,” Nicky grumbled. “My mother gets 50 percent of the blame, at least.”

  I shook my head. “No… it was the timing of everything, Nick. It was….” I whirled around and looked at LaMark. “It was sitcom perfect. That thing with Teague and Max—it was like a sitcom.”

  “Yeah, but that car coming at us wasn’t so goddamned funny!” Jacky said seriously, and Teague—who had just come back from his run—looked at Jacky in sudden panic.

  “Car?” he asked, and I shrugged it off.

  “It barely clipped my shield. If I hadn’t been so… off-kilter from meeting the boys….”

  Bracken—who hadn’t heard the whole story either—broke in. “Boys? As in Gavin and Graeme? They were there today?”

  I sighed and flopped down on the bed, staring moodily at the ceiling fan. Jesus, did I wish I could take a fucking Motrin for my goddamned head. “Did I mention sitcom timing, Bracken Brine? Yeah. First we ran into the civilian in the end cabi
n, then we ran into the boys, and then a big fucking Grand Caravan driven by a really freaked-out suburban dad almost tanked into us and took out a Chrysler four-door instead.”

  Lambent, who had spent the last two days frolicking in the lake like a fish of fire, let out a low whistle. “Sounds like a party—and you people say I’m the source of chaos in this outfit.”

  I turned my head on the quilt to glare at him. “Well, lucky us it hasn’t hit you yet, or we’d all be crispy-fried vulture vomit by now, wouldn’t we?”

  Lambent had the nerve to grin. “Now, luv, I wouldn’t crispy fry you—I like my birds parboiled.”

  I had to laugh. “Well, this partridge would prefer to keep her feathers on, thank you.” I propped myself up on my elbows and wished desperately for Green. I’d been trying so hard not to get his attention unless it was by phone—the heat was hurting him just like it hurt Bracken, and I didn’t want to tap his strength from this distance. It was hard for him to spread his presence, but when I scented mustard flowers and tall grass in a cool spring, I raised my face to it and smiled. My headache even faded. Just that much, I thought clearly, so he could hear me if he was still here, just that much gave me strength.

  “I think you’re right on the money, beloved. I don’t know what it is, but I think you’re right.”

  “Whatever it is,” I said, trying not to yearn after that lovely moment, “its trademark is chaos. I’ll have to ask Marcus if he’s brought his laptop with him—we both have some stuff in our files, and we can do some research from here. There’s got to be something we can find out. And until then….” I sat up completely and looked around the room, making sure I had everybody’s eyes.

  “Until then, I think the key is to not take offense. Goddess knows when this weird talking thing is going to take over and bite us in the ass. We all have to be totally willing to forgive and forget. If the last thing on our minds is the thing that comes shooting out of our mouths, there’s a reason it was the last thing on our minds. So be careful about what you say, but be very ready to blow it off if the person you’re talking to has a lapse, right?”