by Mark Henwick
I burned that into my brain and hoped my instincts wouldn’t override it at a critical moment.
When my arms began to shake and I was getting worried looks from the other gym users, I went to cool off in the showers.
The women’s changing room was empty.
I leaned on the basins and stared at my reflection.
“What was it Top used to say? Just when you think you have nothing left, you have yourself.”
Tara stirred behind my eyes.
And that’s not nothing, she said. Besides, remember the movie? “Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.”
Tullah waited with me in the lobby.
She had one more go at me.
“You’re thinking with your gut,” she said.
She was right. But was it my human-trained instincts, or my Athanate instincts? And if they were Athanate instincts, then they had to be the best indicator I had of what another Athanate might do in my place.
In the end, I silenced her by taking off the necklace and handing it to her.
It would be up to her to try and find how it worked if something happened to me. And it would be up to her to communicate with Naryn and Felix and my House. She knew I’d loaded it all on her. It was a testament to our friendship—and her courage—that she accepted it.
I gave her a hug.
“So. How do I look?” I asked.
“Tough hombre.” She tried to smile.
I was in white T, jeans and cowboy boots. Under that, well, I’d found Jen’s sense of humor included packing me only racy black underwear. Still, it wasn’t as if anyone else was supposed to see it, and I felt her sense of humor like a light in a dark tunnel.
Over the T, I wore my shoulder holster, battered stockman’s coat, and the Stetson.
In my mind, tumbleweed blew across the scene and I could almost hear the Spanish guitar music in the background. All I needed was to switch my shoulder holster to the hip. Oh, and a little black cheroot to chew on.
But that wasn’t guitar music. It was the cabby leaning on his horn.
I doused the smile. It was time for the game face.
My gut tightened like a spring.
Chapter 28
The cabby dropped me on 8th Street, at the entrance to the Calle del Bosque. He said something about not being able to take me all the way there because it was too narrow to turn around. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and as soon as the fare hit his hand, he was pulling away.
Great vote for the area.
This was Barelas, the oldest part of Albuquerque, whatever the tourist literature said about Old Town. It lay right up against Highway 314, the traffic a constant hum in the background. Somewhere behind me was the distant clatter and squeal of slow-rolling stock cars going into the main railroad yards.
I was looking down into what might be the poorest, most derelict street in town. Lighting didn’t seem to be a big priority.
There was a shed on the left; peyote graffiti crawled up the walls like psychedelic snakes.
Loud music came from one of the houses down the Calle. One block away, someone was slamming a door over and over again. A black cat slunk around the corner, turning bright eyes to look at me, as if to ask what the hell I thought I was doing here. A slight breeze in my face brought me the smell of damp earth from the Rio Grande. And Were. Lots of them. Their Call seethed in the night; a song whose words I couldn’t quite make out.
Dead End, said the sign in front of me.
No shit.
I didn’t know which house it was down here, but ‘if you can’t find it, you aren’t supposed to’.
They were all about cojones, these Albuquerque Were. If you can’t handle it, don’t come.
I started walking slowly, not trying to hide the sound of my footsteps.
The cabby was right about the width of the street. It was narrow—an easy place to get trapped in a vehicle. The first houses I passed were all dark. No streetlights. Not a single porch light showing. I walked in the center of the street, scanning for threats with all my senses. The wind had thrown streamers of sand and dust across the tarmac, and it crunched under my heels.
Every door and window on the Calle was barred. On the houses near the entrance, the bars had been white and ornate, almost delicate, as if lace had been drawn across every opening to the buildings. The next houses didn’t bother to disguise the function of the bars—thick square grilles or prison-cell poles. They claimed their yards with heavy chain-link fences, protecting decaying trailers which looked as if they were slowly sinking into piles of litter; sheds made of fiberboard and plastic sheeting; dusty, broken furniture; rusty trucks.
There was space for turning a car about halfway down; a small area of churned earth on my left. But a group of men stood in the middle of it, smoking and watching me, not looking as if they’d have moved out the way.
Were.
Murmurs of their conversation reached me, mostly unintelligible, full of street slang and quicksilver Spanish.
“Hey, Marimacha,” one called out. “Wrong ’hood.”
That part I got. Been there, heard that before.
“Wrong town,” one of the others snickered. “So fucking lost.”
“So fucking dead.”
I didn’t ignore them, but they weren’t moving and I didn’t think they could insult me to death, so I rated them as low threat for now. Not worth giving individual target designations to. Team Yak would do for the whole bunch.
There would be worse ahead.
The houses here were ugly cinder block, squat and square. Walls had been painted; it was difficult to tell, but pink or yellow seemed popular. It had been a long time ago; dirt stains crept upward from the ground, reaching the bottoms of the windows in some cases. Roofs had growths of small vents and satellite dishes sticking out of them. One house had abandoned toys scattered in the yard and an empty bird cage leaning against the fence.
Behind me, Team Yak was standing in the road now, blocking my retreat. They’d shut up, so it wasn’t all bad.
They were a problem I’d need to deal with when I came out.
When.
I got to the dead end; a stop sign and a chain link fence. Beyond that, there was a dusty path and scrub. I could smell the Rio Grande in the darkness.
A way out if things went bad?
The last house on the right was different.
It was much bigger than any of the others, though still squat and ugly, and it was surrounded by walls rather than a wire fence. There were trees in the yard and slatted shutters on the windows. The only way in was through a huge double gate of ornate metalwork. This was the house where the music was coming from.
And the Were scent. A lot of Were scent.
It pressed on me. It wasn’t my pack’s scent. I wasn’t welcome here.
I shook that feeling off. True, but not useful.
The gate was unguarded. It was the same message as the rest of the Calle: Come on in, if you’re man enough.
That raised the smallest of smiles.
The gates opened to my tentative pull. I’d half-expected a screech of juddering hinges, like in a horror movie, but the mechanism was oiled and smooth. I walked into the yard and pulled the gate closed behind me. There was a snap of bolts, making me jump.
The gate was locked.
My decision to come. The alpha’s decision if I got to leave.
The yard was too dark for human eyes. I could make out the bulky shapes of SUVs and a score of motorcycles parked randomly, some of the engines still warm. The sounds of the world outside were muted. Nothing moved in the yard except me.
One of the trucks had an air scoop that looked horribly familiar.
I walked across to check it.
My night had just gotten even better. Lance Evans, the ringleader of the Boneheads that had harassed Olivia, had made it as far as Albuquerque.
Shit. What was he here for?
Felix had said he would head south, but to the border packs: Gold Hill or Ute Mountain. Had
he gone straight past them and come here? Was he in trouble, and if he was, did I owe him anything?
No. Felix exiled him. If Evans was in trouble, that was his lookout. Not on my list of objectives.
The front door was open and I walked in.
The house layout was odd. I’d walked into a room which ran the width of the building. It was like a hell-raising bikers’ club house. Badly lit. Music blaring. Battered sofas around the edges, takeout boxes and six-packs of beer stacked on the floor. Pool table pushed against the far wall. Shotguns close to hand. There was a swamp-odor of motor oil, pizza, dope and pent-up aggression.
And like a river in the night, under it all, the smell of blood.
The reception committee were all Were. All hulking brutes. We were supposed to have developed past the caveman stage, but I was looking at a dozen guys and gals who’d missed that bus. They stood watching me. No one said anything.
They had to be Team Troll.
I had no doubts they could collectively tear me apart. Most of them looked as if they wanted to. But if they’d intended to kill me, a single shot from the shadows outside would have done it.
The Albuquerque pack wanted me to come in.
I’d see about getting out when the time came.
But all this couldn’t be just for me. Team Yak were out there as an early warning system. Maybe a visible deterrent for casual passers-by. Team Troll were here as guards.
No, not all of that for me. So, what the hell had I landed in now?
A man and a woman came in through one of the internal doors and walked over to me, shouldering their way through the Trolls.
She was my size, five-ten. He was over six feet. Both had long blue-black hair held back from hawk-proud faces with scarlet bandanas. Eyes hidden in shadow. They could have been brother and sister. He was dressed in work boots, heavy jeans and a tan T with a flaming skull image. She was all in black leather: boots, low-rise pants that fit like a paint job and a vest with the same skull icon.
I stood still and waited. They circled around me.
“Smells like snake, Bode,” said the woman. Her voice was surprisingly light, but smoky.
“Sure slithered a long way from home,” he grunted back.
She stopped in front of me, her weight shifting like a boxer’s. “Snakes fuck wolves in Denver?”
One way of looking at it.
But tonight wasn’t about how physically tough I could be.
All I wanted was to get past them and find Savannah, but as Dominé had warned me, I knew that how I got past was important too.
I let my mouth twist and looked right through her, as if I was bored with it all.
“Stupid for Larimer’s half-breed fuck-bitch to come to Albuquerque,” Bode said. He’d gotten close enough behind me to hiss it right into my ear. “Even more stupid to come here, to the Calle.”
The woman leaned closer, snuffling. Maybe she was trying to figure out how no one had been able to smell me in Albuquerque, or maybe she was just memorizing my marque. Whichever, she was more nervous this close to me than she was letting on.
I had to show I was predator, not prey. Standing silent might look too much like prey to them.
Time to bite back.
I flared my nose and sniffed back at her.
“That smells tasty,” I growled quietly, and drew back my lips as if my fangs were going to manifest.
She flinched. She tried to hide it, but she couldn’t. Ooh. Fang-phobic.
Bode knew I’d seen it and he didn’t like it at all. He was about to spout some more crap when I stopped him.
“Look, this is fun and all that,” I said, as if I couldn’t care less, “but I’m here to see the alpha, not the guard dogs.”
Bode edged the woman out of the way and got in my face.
“What you want, half-breed?” he said.
“You’ve got some friends of mine. I want them back.”
However well I’d kept it down so far, the adrenaline storm was starting. The Athanate equivalent—the elethesine hormone—was right there with it, and I could feel everything start to go super-focused and timeless. My eyes would be going starless, sucking in the dim light. Fangs weren’t far behind.
Right on cue, I felt the scratching inside. My wolf wanted some of this.
Shit. Shit. Close it down.
Savannah’s life might depend on me.
I didn’t know what the alpha wanted with me, or what he thought I might offer in return for Savannah and her brother.
I was sure he knew exactly how I was being provoked. He couldn’t just want me to lash out and get killed—there wouldn’t be any point.
So I couldn’t. I had to stop myself.
The ability to not hit someone is the true art. This anger must come out, but this is not the way, the time or the place. Strive only for peace and control.
My Shi Fu, Tullah’s father, Master Leung. That advice was never intended for this situation, but it’d do.
The ability to not hit someone is the true art.
Keep focusing on that.
I shuddered and let my breath trickle back out.
As my heart rate dropped, my eukori snuck out and tried for a flank attack, but Bode’s aura was hard as a tortoise’s shell. I finally let everything relax.
Bode backed up and held out a hand, palm up.
“Some kind of secret handshake, Bode?” Barely a wobble in my voice.
“Give me your weapons,” he said.
“What kind of alpha is worried about a handgun?” my demon snarked before I could stop it.
Crap.
“Haz?” Bode said, and the woman nodded warily.
Maybe this had been discussed before—let the half-breed in with her weapons if she wants, see if she dares try something.
Haz, if that was her name, had gotten herself under control again, and her voice was steady as she told me to walk, pushing me toward the door they’d come in.
Bode stepped up on the other side.
With my senses stretched to their ultimate by the effects of the elethesine, I could sense and smell the room I was about to enter.
Humans. A sense of fear like razors cutting into flesh.
Different marques. Were. Athanate.
The alpha, whose half-shielded dominance made the room pulse like a beating heart.
Lots of blood.
And death.
Chapter 29
Through the door was a smaller, bleaker room. It was empty of furniture.
A couple more Trolls stood by the far wall, one of them with bloodstains splattered across his chest. Beside him was Rita from the bar this afternoon, neatly dressed, arms crossed and stony faced. On my right, there was a group of Were, including Evans. Savannah was trembling in a corner behind them, her arms around a young guy I assumed was Claude. I’d thought he’d be about eighteen, but he looked sixteen and terrified. Savannah’s face lightened with a sliver of hope as she saw me.
Too early for that.
There were two male bodies on the floor: Were—not from Albuquerque—blood congealing in pools around them. One alive, one not.
A woman slumped against the left wall, wrists fastened behind her, clothes torn and blood-soaked. She’d obviously been tortured. She was alive, but only just.
Oh, God, no.
She was Athanate. Athanate from House Romero.
Finally, in the middle of the room, commanding the space, the man who could only be the alpha, Zane. He turned and glared at me. His eyes were different colors: brown and green. Any shielding he’d had up to then dropped away, and dominance flowed off him like a sandstorm in the desert—stinging and crackling with energy.
It made my skin crawl and set my pulse racing.
I’d expected him to be a huge version of Bode, and he wasn’t that. He was big enough, but more contained—wiry strength rather than rolling muscle. His face read like a map of the secret history of New Mexico: dark, proud and fierce; red and brown, black and white, all roll
ed together. His pants and button-down shirt were loose and casual, hiding his strength rather than advertising it. His hair was tightly coiled rings, dark as wet otter and springing up from his head.
“The last of our uninvited guests.”
His voice was rich and full after the hoarseness of Bode and Haz. It was the sound of a leading man in an old Hollywood film, but more careful, as if it was something learned later in life. And completely at odds with the staring eyes.
Don’t be prey.
“I’m in New Mexico on Athanate business. I needed no invitation from you for that.”
His pack stirred and their anger seethed through the room.
My wolf wanted to react. I wanted to snarl back.
Push that thought down.
“And as for being here, in the Calle, I did receive an invitation.” My eyes went to the injured woman and my mouth ground on. I couldn’t stop it. “I didn’t realize it was to witness torture.”
“Torture? You’re too late for that,” he said.
He looked at the woman and back at me.
“Do you have a problem with that?” He shrugged and opened his arms, indicating the woman on his right and the group with Evans on his left. “Are you with her? Or with them?”
My heartbeat thudded in my head. Did he just mean Athanate or Were? It couldn’t be that simple. This was one of those questions there was no right answer to.
Ignoring the threatening rumble of his pack, I stepped closer to the alpha.
“Neither. I’m a hybrid. I don’t fit into your groups.”
I looked at the woman and swallowed dryly. What outcome rested on this? “I don’t believe there are affiliations between my House and Romero any longer.”
My Athanate hardwiring agreed with that.
I looked at the other group. I recognized Iversen and pointed. “I’m certainly not with him or the Confederation.” I pointed at Evans. “Or him.”
Being pointed out challenged Iversen. He found his balls and stepped forward.
“I know it’s not formally an invitation, but I’m an accredited representative of the Confederation—”
“Your accreditation is something you can wave in front of packs that acknowledge the Confederation,” the alpha snarled at him. Iversen put his hands up and stepped back. Reluctantly. He didn’t want to be grouped with Evans and the other Were either.