by Dunbar, Natalie; Glass, Seressia; Jeffries, J. M. ; Banks, L. A.
“Jarred, is something wrong?” she asked.
“I’m good.” He just needed to calm himself down and focus on the job. Damn, his career was on the line, and he was reacting like a bull moose fighting to the death over a female. This case and this woman were driving him insane. You need to get a handle on yourself, or you’ll blow everything and get yourself killed, or worse yet, get her killed.
Kenny and Solange chatted for a little while longer and, finally, Solange stood up to leave. “Look, I have business back at the casino.” She handed a card to Kenny. “This is my private number. Tomorrow, I’ll bring the current blueprints, a map to the old vault, and the combination. I look forward to doing business with you.”
She headed for the door, Jarred trailing after her, trying to keep his emotions under control. Kenny gave Solange a kiss, not quite brotherly, but not quite lover-like and again Jarred had to control his impulse to knock the other man on his ass.
“You were broadcasting in there,” Solange walked down the rickety steps to the parking lot. A plane, landing at McCarron Airport, roared overhead. She shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun.
“Broadcasting?” For a while he’d forgotten how sensitive she was to his emotions.
“You don’t like Kenny, and you let it show. I doubt he’d do anything because he needs you, but you need to be more careful. You may see him as a bartender, but he’s a lot more dangerous than you think.”
“I know how dangerous he is,” Jarred growled as he stalked across the parking lot to his car.
She gripped the door handle. “No, you don’t,” she said, and a troubled expression settled on her face as she slid inside the car.
“What’s wrong?” he asked after they’d put on their seatbelts, and he’d started the motor.
“Nothing.”
“You need to tell me.”
“I will, just not until I check something. I need to get back to the casino. How fast can you make this car go?”
“Fast.” He turned out of the parking lot and headed back uptown as quickly as traffic would allow.
Solange furiously paced back and forth across Esther’s office as she talked on her cell phone. Esther looked mildly surprised at her agitation, but Solange could barely think, much less sit still.
Esther hung up the phone. “What’s going on? Your meeting with Kenny didn’t go well, did it?”
“I know how he’s been getting away with murder and robbery and any number of other crimes we don’t have a clue about.” She paused a moment, and then blurted out, “He has a demon box.”
Esther’s face went still and frightened before she schooled it back to her normal composure. “That’s not good. Any idea what kind of demon?”
“Not a clue. He just has the standard copper demon box with embossed runes on the sides. When I tried to read the runes, the compulsion to look away was so strong I couldn’t fight it.”
Esther picked up her office phone and punched in several numbers. “Laurel, I need you.”
A few moments later, Laurel arrived. “What’s up?”
“Brooks has a demon,” Esther said quietly, her agitation showing only in her eyes.
Laurel pinched the bridge of her nose. “Now we know how he’s managed to pull off his robberies so easily for so many years.” She turned to Solange. “What kind of demon?”
“I don’t know.” How had Kenny Brooks enslaved a demon? Demons were notoriously difficult to control, and their wild magic didn’t conform to the rules of the game set down by the wizards in centuries past.
Laurel nodded briefly. “You probably noticed more than you think. Take a moment to relax, and then try to draw the runes you could make out. I know a demonologist at UNLV. Maybe he can identify what Brooks has.”
Solange found herself clasping her hands tight to still the tremors rippling through her. What had she allowed herself to be drawn into? But then again, Jarred didn’t know either.
“Did you tell Special Agent Maitland?” Laurel asked.
“No. Humans have a hard enough time assimilating the notion of vampires and the weres, what would he do if he knew demons, and more, walk the earth? He’s been pretty broad-minded so far, but there are limits.” She thought about the way he made her body sing with passion and knew taking a werewolf to bed had probably been a lot harder than he let on. But getting over his worry about what she might do in the throes of a climax was a testament to the type of person he was. He’d probably handle the idea of demons without too much trouble. Or not.
“You underestimate Mr. Maitland,” Esther leaned back in her chair. “You have to tell him.”
“I know. I just wanted to have more to tell him,” Solange said, and her voice quivered with the cold fear running through her. She’d met a demon once, a pretty girl who looked almost normal until she’d noticed her yellow eyes, pointed teeth and slightly sallow green skin. Fortunately, the demon had been carefully controlled by the wizard who’d conjured her out of her world and into this one. Solange started to shiver, and once started, she couldn’t stop. Of all the creatures to import into the human world, a demon was probably one of the most dangerous.
Solange sat down on the sofa and tried to still her trembling. “At least now we know why Brooks has targeted us. He thinks with a demon he is unstoppable.”
“Depending on the type of demon he has, he could be,” Esther said.
Solange forced herself to relax and get herself under control. Until they knew what they faced, she needed to be prepared. She stood, and despite a faint tremor in her hands, she managed to make it to the door without collapsing.
Solange spent the rest of the day and half the night trying to recreate the runes she’d seen on the copper box. After she had wracked her brains and found she’d actually managed to put together a fair facsimile of the box, she was so tired she could hardly stand.
She picked up the phone and called Esther. “I’m going for a run in the desert after I fax the picture to Laurel’s friend.”
“Be careful,” Esther replied.
“I will, but I need to clear my head. I need to think.” She faxed the drawing and then headed out the door.
The desert was cool and dry. The moon pulled at Solange even though it was a couple days past the full moon. Silvery shadows gave the desert an eerie feel. She probably should have gone more toward Henderson where she could run in the canyons and ravines, but she hadn’t wanted to travel so far. She needed to run now.
After she parked her car at the end of a dirt road, she opened the door to let the night air in. She stood and stretched. The discovery of the demon box had set her nerves on edge. No wonder Kenny has been so successful at not only robbing the casinos he’d robbed, but also getting away with it. She wondered what kind of demon he had. She needed a good refreshing run to clear her mind, then she would head back to her office.
Sand crunched under her feet as she pulled her clothes off and tossed them on the driver’s seat. The night air cooled her heated skin. With the sleepy cries of a nearby bird and the deep, melancholy howl of a coyote as her only company, she stood naked beneath the moon.
She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and let the change come over her. Her limbs twisted and reshaped themselves. A mist clouded her vision as the beast within came out and took over. When she opened her eyes, she saw as clearly as though it was daylight with so much more detail than she saw with human eyes.
The night breeze ruffled her fur, and the desert sand was rough beneath the pads of her paws. The breeze brought the scent of the coyote she’d heard earlier. On four feet, she loped across the desert sand. The scent of small animals in the underbrush came to her. She sorted out the scents of a mouse looking for insects, a night owl floating on the wind, a small deer jumping over a shallow gully. A desert tortoise slept in its summer burrow. A snake rustled its way through the dry desert grass. She didn’t feel the need to hunt; she just needed to run, to feel clean again.
She stretched out into a mile-eatin
g lope, searching for the peace running always gave her. She felt exhilarated as she leaped across a tiny depression in the sand. Her problems melted away and she was free of the worries, the confusion over Jarred.
How could she let a human get under her skin the way he did. She felt so vulnerable around him. Her life was in chaos, and Jarred added to it. She’d allowed a human male to get close to her, and he really didn’t know what he was getting into being involved with her.
A pack of coyotes topped a small hill. Solange skidded to a stop, sand flying out. She was downwind of them, and she wanted to conquer them. The leader, a large, scrawny male with scarring on his narrow head, whirled, growling as Solange approached.
She lifted her head and started to howl. The coyotes looked at her, and then joined her in the howl. She felt their freedom, their uncomplicated lives. If she weren’t who she was, her life would be so much less complicated. As a wolf, all she had to worry about was surviving in the wild with no one around to help her, to protect her. As a woman, she had obstacles to hurdle and a life to balance. Maybe she should stay a wolf.
The coyote pack stopped howling and bolted over the crest of the hill and out of sight into a shallow gully. Solange wanted to follow them, to be a part of their lives, but resisted the urge as she always resisted. She never allowed the beast in her to totally take over, no matter how much she yearned for the freedom of the desert.
Reluctantly, she turned back the way she’d come and galloped back toward her car, tired but ready to face what was to come. What had to come? Not only did she have to face Jarred, but the demon. She felt the only thing standing between the demon and her pack— was her.
As she loped across the clearing, she frowned. Another car was parked next to it. She trotted up to the car, but it was empty. As she shifted back to her human form, light suddenly blinded her. She gasped at the brightness, at the heat. Someone was in her car, but the shifting wind and the bright light kept her from identifying whom.
She finished shifting, pulled herself to her feet and started toward her car. When she opened the car door, Jarred’s scent rushed toward her.
The moon was silver on her skin. Her face was a series of gaunt hollows made secretive by the darkness. The desert behind her looked almost peaceful compared to the turmoil inside him. He’d never seen a werewolf shift, and it had looked painful and had been the most frightening thing he’d ever seen in his life. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think for a second. But what surprised him most was that he wasn’t afraid.
“You followed me.” She reached for her clothes.
“Yeah.” He didn’t want her to get dressed. He wanted to study her body to figure out how she could shift from human to wolf. He’d seen something he doubted any other human in the world had seen. “Are you going to kill me?” He sounded calmer than he felt.
“Did you take a picture?” She hastily dressed, pulling her pants on first, and then her T-shirt.
He gulped, nervously. “Didn’t think to bring a camera.” He’d read about reporters who’d followed weres for days trying to get photos of them shifting, but weres were a lot more slippery than people thought. Their secrecy made people afraid. He was nervous, too, but he was a special agent and had been trained for every eventuality. Though he couldn’t remember a class on what to do when his lady changed from human to wolf inside of a NASCAR second. “I’m still in shock, but trying to maintain my coolness.” He was trying to maintain his dinner. “Is it painful to change?”
“Not anymore. But when I first changed, it was pretty awful.” She’d left her bra on the driver’s seat and pulled her T-shirt on without it. Her nipples poked out from the smooth fabric, and his palms started to sweat even more. Okay, he was sleeping with a werewolf, and she hadn’t eaten him, hadn’t tried to hurt him. He didn’t feel the need to leap out of the car shrieking into the dark Nevada night. He was pretty proud of his composure.
When all else failed and a person was scared shitless—talk sports. “So what do you think of UNLV’s chances of making the Final Four this year?”
“I don’t care for football.”
“Basketball.” He paused for a long moment.
“Don’t care.”
He took a deep breath. “So where do we go from here?”
She tapped the steering wheel. “I don’t know.”
He wanted to touch her, but the look on her face told him she wasn’t touchable at this moment. He wanted to repeat the magic of their previous night. “I know vampires can be made. How are werewolves made?”
She stared out over the desert. “First let me say, I was born in 1853.”
He already knew her birth year, but hearing her say her age startled him. “Most women never tell their age, especially when you start hitting the hundred year mark, and you don’t look a day over twenty-seven.”
She smiled, almost sadly. “How sweet, but I’ve been around the block a time or two.”
“When we were talking about the amber room, you started to say something, and then changed to something else. You saw that room, too, just like my grandmother.”
“It was pretty impressive, and like your grandmother, I started collecting amber because of the beauty of the amber room.”
“I know what the census figures say, but in actuality, how many wolf packs are there in the world?” The government tried to count them, but the figures never added up. The vamps and weres were secretive beyond belief, and at times he wondered what other secrets they kept to themselves.
“Globally, about hundred and eighty packs with around two thousand weres in them and a couple thousand more not associated with a pack, and there are the rogue wolves which don’t allow themselves to be counted even by us. We’re probably less than six thousand total. I don’t have exact figures. We only take a census every hundred years.”
Should he be thankful werewolves weren’t about to overthrow the world, or should he be worried. Like most humans, their very existence worried him. Did this mean other creatures of mythology also existed? Did he dare ask?
The question slipped out. “What about mummies, ghouls, and zombies?” Other things that went bump in the night. He tried not to shiver. He had the feeling he was going to learn more than he ever wanted to know.
She shrugged. “I don’t know about ghouls, zombies and mummies. The Preternatural Authorities keep all the records.” “The Preternatural Authorities don’t play with the rest of us either.”
She turned to look at him, her face grave. “We barely let them ride herd on us, but they do a decent job of keeping the peace between us and otherworldlies.”
The thought didn’t bear thinking, but his blood ran cold. He’d been thinking they all agreed to obey human law, and now he knew they hadn’t. “How did you come to be a werewolf?” He hadn’t really meant to ask, but she was being so uncommonly candid with him, he had to ask.
“In 1857, the Temples ran away from their slave master, and they took all the orphan children on the plantation.” “Running away was dangerous in those days. I’m surprised you all escaped.”
“We had no choice. The master of the plantation was going to sell Esther and all the orphan children. Julius wasn’t going to let that happen. We found a tribe of Indians, and they sheltered us and eventually gave us the secret of the wolf.”
And how good a thing was that? He wondered. What else didn’t he know? What else was she keeping from him? “I know you’re long lived. But how long exactly.”
“I’m going to live another two hundred years.”
He hadn’t expected her to tell him. Most weres kept their ages a secret. No human wanted to know how long he or she would live, how he or she would influence the future. “That must be exciting to see the world change before your eyes.”
She half-smiled. “Humans talk about World War II, the march on Washington and the Russian Revolution, but my family witnessed it. I witnessed it. Julius helped win the Civil War by fighting for the north. Oliver liberated a concentration camp i
n Germany. Malcolm enlisted and fought in Korea. We all were there for the march on Washington. Yes, we have a gift, but with our gift comes certain responsibilities.”
“I thought the other shoe was about to drop. How is this going to affect my case? Break it down for me.”
“In more ways than we anticipated. We can’t let Kenny walk out of the casino with one dollar of our money.”
“I’m going to be right there to catch him and see him in jail.”
She was quiet for a second. “I doubt Kenny will go to jail.”
“Why? Because werewolf justice doesn’t involve a court of law?”
“Because we protect what belongs to us.”
Now he knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. Maybe he should have run away screaming when he had the chance. “You’re not above the law.”
“We walk in the world, but we’re not a part of it. A weak pack is an invitation for a coup.” She seemed about to add something, but didn’t. After a few more moments, she started talking again. “Most of the packs follow the rules because we have taken our place in the human world. Others… They see, they want, they take, damning the consequences or anyone who gets in the way.” She stopped, licked her lips and closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “Do you remember twenty years ago in Rio, that bank heist where a hundred people were butchered.”
“Yes, the scenario is still being used in hostage negotiation as an example on what not to do. Was that werewolves?”
“In broad daylight in the middle of the most populous city in South America, and two packs went to war. Eighty-five percent of the people who died weren’t werewolves, but human. Half the squabbles in Africa in the last thirty years have been packs going to war over stupid things: personal insults, five inches of land. We’ve managed to keep our battles under the radar, but this is Las Vegas, and everything is on twenty-four hours a day, and if you don’t think the French Quarter casino wouldn’t be the big, fat jewel in someone’s crown, then you are sadly mistaken. The Temples have been fighting off rival packs, mobsters, international business who have more money than God, for more years than you’ve been alive. And one lone, psychopathic, narcissistic thief isn’t going to get away with his drama. We have to squash him like the little ant he is.”