A London Werewolf in America

by A London Werewolf in America (lit)

  “As glass.” His objective achieved, Roderick got up smoothly. He tucked his shirt back in and meticulously straightened his jacket. “I won’t lay so much as a finger on you. Only don’t expect me to restrain myself if you make the first move again.”

  Peri guffawed. Darinda gritted her teeth. “I need to get my bag.”

  “Good. I hope you have your car. One of the guards dropped me off.”

  Peri scooted out of the way when Darinda charged into the office. She had a chokehold on Springsteen, who struggled for air in her grip. Darinda grabbed her shoulder bag and crammed some emergency herbs and powders into it. “So, how did it go?” Peri said innocently.

  “I don’t want to hear one word out of you. Not. One. Word.”

  Peri stifled a giggle. “Want me to save you some ice cream?”

  Darinda glowered. She snatched up a soft pretzel and ripped off a bite like she was tearing out somebody’s throat. “No ice cream for you,” Peri said.

  Roderick declined her offer of soft pretzel, so Darinda finished off the hapless snack in the car. “So what happens with Coraline now?”

  “I really don’t care. That’s done. I never wanted to marry her anyway. Far too high-strung. Not to mention smelly.”

  “That was fast. I only just talked to Letty less than an hour ago.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You breaking the engagement. How did you even get hold of her? I figured she’d be in police custody by now.”

  “Not today. Last night. I assumed that’s why she attacked you. I phoned Lupin Hill last night, while you were setting up your magics to bar me from your room.” His lip curled minutely. “Coraline wasn’t in, so I talked to her father. Let him know the match was unacceptable. Then, of course, I had to call home before he could.” His mouth tightened in a chilly smile. “Mother was rather put out.”

  “Last night?” Darinda’s memory hit rewind. All that snarling and howling over the phone. It explained the murderous expression in his eyes when he’d come charging out of the kitchen. So that’s why he asked how she’d feel about him if he were free of his promise.

  Sweet Hecate. He’d done it. Refused the match, defied his alpha, risked expulsion from his pack. She swallowed painfully down a throat suddenly restricted to a microscopic slit. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Of course I told you. Several times. I told you the engagement was off. You weren’t in any mood to listen.”

  Darinda replayed the disastrous morning. Somewhere in there she vaguely recalled Roderick mentioning he was done with Coraline. The true meaning hadn’t sunk in. Or, more likely, she’d been so caught up in her own self-righteousness, her determination to preserve her independence, that she hadn’t let his revelation register. “All this was last night?”

  “I believe I just said that—watch out for that truck!”

  She’d been looking at him and not the road. The truck blared its horn. Darinda swerved. They missed each other by about six inches, a wide margin by city standards. Roderick swore colorfully in were. “Sorry,” Darinda said.

  “Are you sure you’re not trying to kill me?”

  “Sorry,” she repeated. He could have no idea how sorry she was about so many things. “Are you going to be all right? With your mother and your pack, I mean.”

  “What else was I to do? You made it plain you wouldn’t have me unless I were free and clear. I certainly had no desire to bind myself to Coraline. Anxious smelly bitch.” He shuddered all over, like a dog shaking water from its coat. “Mother picked that out for me? She can go hang.”

  “Then Letty didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what? That Coraline attacked you? Yes, I got that part.”

  “I mean the rest of it.”

  He looked at her blankly. Darinda exited onto the Schuylkill Expressway and merged with the rest of the traffic. It would be easier to drive around the city to Fairmount Park than through it. “I guess it doesn’t matter now, since the wedding’s off, but it might have a bearing on all these attacks. It’s about Coraline and the coyotes.”

  * * * *

  He didn’t take it well. He howled. He raged. Darinda thought he’d rip through his seat belt, so badly did he want to tear into something. Passing drivers glanced their way, then gave Darinda’s car as wide a berth as traffic patterns would allow.

  Roderick demanded Darinda drive him at once to Lupin Hill. Ellis Duquesne merited an immediate thrashing for his duplicity. “Where in Lycaon’s name do you think you’re going?” he roared when Darinda made the turn for Meadowlands instead.

  “I’m taking you home,” she said calmly. “Stop and think a minute. Ellis knows he tried to pull a fast one on your family. By now he’s probably had to withstand a verbal assault from your mother. His brother’s still on the critical list and his daughter’s just been arrested. He won’t be in the best of moods. You go charging in there all self-righteous and he’s liable to hand you your tail. Not to mention Alfie’s still out there. As far as we know, you’re still on the hit list. I’m just doing my job here. Exactly what you hired me for.”

  “You’re too bloody efficient, that’s what you are,” Roderick growled.

  “I touched Albert,” Darinda said. “I got only truth from him. Of course he’d know all about Coraline. Why didn’t this come out? Because her being half coyote didn’t pose a threat to the family,” she answered her own question. “They’d pawned her off on you. Problem solved. His uppermost concern was keeping Ellis safe. That’s all he thought about.”

  “He should have thought of himself more. Maybe then he wouldn’t have gotten shot.”

  Darinda frowned. Albert’s shooting threw a spanner into every one of her theories. “I don’t think the danger’s over yet,” she said slowly. “There’s more going on than we know.”

  She pulled the car up to the house. No wolves tracked their arrival, or answered Roderick’s questioning bark. He motioned for Darinda to stay in the car while he sniffed the air. “That’s odd. Looks like we’ve been abandoned.”

  Darinda clutched her shoulder bag. “You think something happened to them?”

  “Or they happened to someone.” Roderick cupped his hands around his mouth and howled. Almost immediately, off to the north, they picked up a distant response. “Ah,” Roderick said. “Coyote assault. The boys are showing them what for.”

  Darinda climbed warily out of the car. Something didn’t feel right here. The vibes were off. Alarms jangled along her nerves like a bad itch. She laid her hand on Roderick’s forearm. “Let me go in first.”

  One touch to the doorknob alerted her. She jerked her hand back as if bitten. “Somebody’s inside,” she said. “Someone who doesn’t belong.”

  “Then he’d better get out.” Roderick shouldered past her and charged into the house. Darinda tried to stop him with a grab at his jacket, but missed. Damn territorial wolf. She bolted within.

  Roderick had stopped in the parlor. He stood, sniffed, snarled, and headed for the stairs. This time Darinda snagged his arm. “Together,” she said.

  He smiled down at her. “Absolutely.”

  They ascended a step at a time, both alert for danger. As it turned out, they had no need for caution. The intruder wasn’t going anywhere.

  He’d tried to enter Roderick’s bedroom. Whatever charms he might have on him clearly hadn’t worked. He hung suspended in the net of the wards like a bug in a spider’s web. His face was slack, his gold eyes glazed. When Roderick and Darinda topped the stairs, he couldn’t even muster a growl.

  Darinda peered at him from a safe distance. He had blondish brown hair and a sharp nose atop a naked body scrawny as a stick. His features looked vaguely familiar to her, but she was sure she didn’t recognize him.

  Roderick’s nose did. He strode to the doorway and closed his hand around their captive’s neck. The smile on his face and the snarl in his voice both sent chills down her back. “Alfie, old boy. How wonderful to see you again.”

  Ch
apter 16

  Darinda and Roderick stood by the door and studied the coyote on the bed. The coyote glared back. “Diversion,” Darinda said. “Your friends lure Big Alex’s guards away while you break into the house. I’ll bet you got in through the doggy door. I knew I should have put a ward on that.”

  Alfie didn’t say anything. His thin gold eyes marked the door and every one of the windows. No need to bind him, since with the wards in place he couldn’t get out of the room. Darinda had provided him with a towel, which he’d wrapped around his middle on her orders. She might have to question him, perhaps even spell him, but she didn’t have to look at him naked.

  She wondered if binding might work better on Roderick, whose non-stop growl announced he was only seconds from ripping their captive to pieces. All right, she thought, work with that. “You’d better talk,” she told Alfie. “Otherwise he’ll kill you.”

  “And what’ll that get you?” Alfie sneered. “I die, you learn scat, and the hunt goes on regardless. Face it, chickie. You need me alive.”

  “But not necessarily whole.” Roderick started forward.

  Darinda held out her arm, stopping him. “You’ll talk,” she told the coyote. “One way or another.” She reached for him.

  He was too cool, too self-assured. He didn’t move or try to bite when she touched her hand to his forehead. The touch barely lasted a second. She snatched her hand back with a startled yell. Her fingers felt as if she’d dipped them in acid. A bit of smoke curled from their tips.

  Roderick lunged at the smirking coyote. A powerful blow sent Alfie sprawling atop the coverlet. “What did I just tell you?”

  “Don’t. He didn’t bite me.” Darinda blew on her fingers. They stung, but the pain was fading. “He’s got a hex on him. Some kind of mystic shield. It won’t let me touch him.”

  “Can you read him without touching him?”

  She shook her head. “Not deep enough to get anything useful.”

  “Well, then. Since obviously I can touch him, we’ll just have to do this my way.” He seized the groggy Alfie by the scruff of the neck. “Which bits would you like to lose first?”

  “Wait. We can still do this my way. We just need to take stronger measures.” She rooted around in her bag. Alfie watched with growing apprehension. “Last chance,” she said to him. “Who are you working for? Who ordered Roderick killed?”

  “Bite me, chickie. And your little dog, too.”

  “At least tell me which magician you’re working with. I have my own scores to settle.”

  “Sure, why not? You magic monkeys want to waste each other, what’s that to us?” He shook himself out of Roderick’s grip and rubbed the back of his neck. “We been going to witches all over Philly. Over in Jersey, even. A spell here, a spell there. No pattern, no trail. Never the same witch twice.”

  She’d guessed as much. “No dark magic?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Too expensive. And they want too much in exchange, like your fingers or your soul or whatever. Like the witches are any better. Won’t even sell you a knife. ‘What’s it for? What do you want the charm to do? You swear you won’t hurt anybody?’ Chaos bite my tail, you gotta jump through hoops. They got this stupid oath thing. ‘Do no harm.’ Even when you offer ‘em money. Who the scat stands by their word in this day and age?”

  Roderick slanted a wry look at Darinda. “You’d be amazed.”

  “Same with the monkey muscle. We pay ‘em, we use ‘em, we send ‘em on their way. Don’t bother looking for ‘em ‘cause you won’t find any. Sorry if I can’t be more of a help.”

  “All dead ends, then,” Roderick said. “Except for you.”

  “And you ain’t getting scat out of me.”

  “We’ll see,” Darinda said.

  She set her shoulder bag on the dresser and began to pull vials and drawstring packets out of it. The smug seeped out of Alfie’s face. “Hey. That better not be poison. I got rights.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m brewing a truth potion. One good sniff and you’ll tell me everything and be happy to do it.” She smiled. “I would have gotten far less with the touch, but you had to insist on the hard way.”

  “Hey. Hey, wait a minute—”

  “Too late.” Darinda took a small clay bowl from her bag and poured the contents of a vial into it. Green liquid pooled in the bowl. Into this she sprinkled ground herbs from a pouch. A soft, smoky mist arose from the bowl, thick with the smell of mint. “You’d better wait in the hall,” she told Roderick. “This can have a powerful effect on people with sensitive noses.” She beamed evilly at Alfie. “Just imagine what it can do to a were.”

  His imagination was working just fine. She could tell from his worried posture and the way he flinched from the bowl. She swirled the liquid in the bowl, and its steamy billow increased. Anyone other than the spell caster who caught a whiff of it would be compelled to speak the truth. She extended the bowl toward Alfie and watched his eyes glaze over.

  And only then became aware of Roderick hovering far too closely over her shoulder. “I said wait in the hall. This stuff’s dangerous.”

  “And leave you alone in the room with that?” He thrust his chin at Alfie. His voice slurred over the consonants, and his eyes didn’t seem to be focusing. “He’d kill you the second I turned my back. Fine mate I’d be if I allowed that to happen.”

  “Whoa. She’s your mate?” Alfie said in the same fuzzy voice. “Dog, your pack’s standards have fallen.”

  “Roderick,” Darinda said, “please wait in the hall. I’ll be all right. He can’t—”

  Roderick shouldered her aside to confront Alfie. “You will not speak in that tone to my mate.”

  “Holy scat, dog. She’s not even shifter. Don’t you teabags have rules against messing with the lower orders or something?”

  “Bugger the rules. Bugger the pack. I never even wanted control of the pack to begin with. Bloody treacherous low-rankers fawning all over you, right before they go for your throat. Rip out your guts soon as look at you. Forget the upper ranks.” He snarled. “Lift your leg too high and it’s taken for threat. You can’t relax for a second. And this is your family. Think what outsiders are like.”

  “Dog, that’s rough.”

  “This trip is the first chance I’ve had to breathe in years. You are so fortunate,” he said to Darinda. “Free to be whatever you want, mate with whomever you please. I love this country.”

  “I’m touched.” She tried to steer him toward the door and away from the misty cloud hovering over the bed. “Roderick, please—”

  “I always wanted to be a cowboy,” he said dreamily. “Out in the wide open spaces with no damned pack trailing after you. Like that Eastwood fellow. He’s one of us, you know. A wolf. If he isn’t, he bloody well should be.”

  “No way,” Alfie said. “He’s a coyote. Gotta be. He’s got a sense of humor. No wolf on the planet has a sense of humor. That’s why you mutts are doomed.”

  “This is all fascinating,” Darinda said, tugging at Roderick’s arm. “However—”

  “It would never work,” Roderick said. “The cowboy thing. Horses don’t like me. The predator-prey dynamic.” His wistful smile disappeared, and he seized Darinda’s shoulders. “You like me, don’t you?”

  “Um—”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me. You’ve put your life on hold and yourself at risk to protect me, and I’ve been such a perfect brute. I’m a—what’s the Yank word?”

  “Putz?” Alfie suggested.

  “I was going to say ‘ass,’ but I suppose yours works. Darinda, you’re a lovely, brave, patient woman who’s been kinder to me than I deserve. I’ve never met a wolf I wanted to stand at my side more than you.”

  “Roderick you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “The hell I don’t. I’m in love with you.”

  “Whoa, dog,” Alfie said.

  Darinda got as far as “Rod—” before his mouth closed over hers and smothered all objec
tions. She couldn’t stop her own response. She’d been attuned to him from the beginning, and the emotions that flooded her now through the contact washed away any objections. The female in her surrendered to instinct and rose up to match the male. The cards never lied. This arrogant, overbearing, meat-eating wolf was her perfect mate.

  But not here, not now, not under these circumstances. Reluctantly she broke the kiss. “We’ll talk about this later,” she promised him.

  “I get her when you’re done,” Alfie said. Roderick snarled, and Alfie recoiled. “Hey. Just asking.”

  Darinda turned Roderick’s head to face her. “Do you really love me?”

  “Of course I love you. You’re the only she I want.”

  “Would you do something for me?”

  “Anything, darling.”

  “Open that window, stick your head out and take deep breaths.”

  He looked puzzled but did as she asked. Maybe, she hoped, the fresh air would clear his head. While Roderick cleaned the truth mist out of his nose, Darinda turned to Alfie. “Now. Down to business. Who hired you to kill Roderick?”

  Alfie opened his mouth. Shut it. Ground his teeth. His whole body writhed, as if he sat on an electrical grid and not Aunt Letty’s down coverlet. Darinda frowned. The truth spell shouldn’t work this way. Either the influx of fresh air or the hex he carried must offer him a measure of resistance.

  “Who hired you to kill Roderick?” she persisted.

  He shrugged apologetically. “Can’t do it, chickie. It’s family.”

  “Which family? The Duquesnes?”

  He started to nod but caught himself. “We already know about their coyote blood,” Darinda said. “Technically you’re not betraying anyone.”

  “You don’t know this dog. He’s bloodthirsty. Him and the other one. The both of ‘em could kill me and not give a scat. I’d rather take my chances with you. You’re tough, but you’re no killer.”

  “But I am.” Roderick turned from the window. His eyes had cleared. He avoided aiming them at Darinda. “Who’s the other one? A human?”

  “Wolf. Pure blood. The two of ‘em been working together. They—” He clamped his mouth shut again.