"But they don't know you're Lupine," she protested, not sure if she believed herself.
"They do now.”
Impatience and irritation clear in her voice, Carly took a deep breath and shifted right in front of Abby's eyes. Abby's and the entire crowd's. One minute Carly was a short, moderately attractive blonde, and the next the air around her seemed to pulse arid shiver and in her place stood a huge, rangy wolf with sandy-blond fur and challenging hazel eyes.
Beside her, Abby heard Samantha swear. "Oh, shit! Run!”
If Abby hadn't known better, she would almost have thought Carly grinned at that a split second before all three of them took off down the street at a dead sprint with cries of "Werewolf!" echoing close behind them.
CHAPTER FIVE
For the second time in ten minutes, Abby felt like she had made a significant impact on asphalt. Or rather, that asphalt had made a significant impact on her. Only this time, she didn't have to fall down to do it. The hard, unyielding surface came to her. Vertically.
The mob's angry reaction to Carly's transformation was still echoing in Abby's eardrums, and her feet had barely gotten the message that her brain wanted them to get moving when she turned and took one step straight into a warm, muscular surface that felt a lot like a city sidewalk but smelled significantly better. Like wood smoke and August sunshine and dark, rich myrrh.
To her left, an angry growl accompanied the shifting of tawny fur as Carly took a threatening step toward the man in front of them. Was that a bad sign?
Raising her head enough to get a glimpse at a man's face, she found herself raising it even farther to manage one of the man-shaped mountain in front of her. She had a vague image of a firm jaw, sharp blades of nose and cheekbones, and fathomless, glittering black eyes before the world turned upside down and Abby found herself staring at a patch of pavement she was already way too familiar with. Then the pavement started to move, and she heard the growl behind her turn into a snarl.
Blinking in reaction, Abby felt the press of a broad shoulder digging into her stomach as she bounced across it on the enormous man's way down the street. Now two wolves followed along behind her, teeth bared and muscles bunching as they prepared to launch an attack on the back beneath her.
"I am taking her to Vircolac," a voice boomed from somewhere near her left hip, "and it will be a lot quicker if you wait to try and tear my throat out until we get there.”
Quicker, maybe, said a voice in the back of Abby's head, but a hell of a lot less safe.
Abby couldn't disagree with the sentiment, but what she really wanted to know was where had the voice come from? And who did it belong to, because she was fairly certain she wasn't the one who had thought it.
Abby felt her stomach clench against her kidnapper-cum-rescuer's shoulder. What was going on?
When I said "less safe," the voice continued, that was your cue to start kicking and screaming and hauling ass in another direction. I'll help, but you gotta get things started.
"What?!”
Unless you plan to stop fighting me about who's in charge here, you gotta make the first move, sweet cheeks. It ain't hard. Just put one foot in front of the other. Directly into the jerk's kidneys.
A dull buzzing began to fill Abby's head, but it didn't drown out the fact that she was hearing voices. Hearing voices!
"Wh-who are you?" she forced out.
"We can deal with pleasantries later," the man beneath her answered without the slightest hitch in his stride. "Right now, it is far more important to get you out of harm's way.”
"I wasn't talking to you! Unless you were just talking to me?”
God, please let him say yes. Please let him say yes....
"I never said a word. In case you hadn't noticed, I am busy at the moment.”
Sorry, toots. That was me, not the caped crusader. Now about this escape plan of ours—
"There is no escape plan!" Abby squawked, pressing her hands against her captor's back and raising her head to look around. Maybe she wasn't really losing her mind. Maybe someone was running along beside them and not rattling around inside her head and making her believe her marbles had suddenly gone missing.
Of course, if there was someone rattling around inside her head, then she really had lost her mind. Because that kind of thing just didn't happen.
"Good. I would advise against trying." The arm clamped around Abby's thighs tightened a warning. "Not only would an attempt meet with failure, but I hazard a guess you would find little to recommend the company of our pursuers.”
The behemoth still thought she was talking to him.
Figures he would. Sun demons like him are all a bunch of arrogant blighters.
"Demon? Did you say demon?”
"Keep your voice down, little one. Unless you would like to add to our already considerable entourage.”
"What entourage?" Abby focused on the rapidly receding group of humans chasing them. She tried not to notice the speed with which the buildings on either side of them blurred past. She'd never been a great passenger, and she didn't think anyone would appreciate it if she lost her lunch down her captor's back. "We've nearly lost them.”
Don't talk to him. You'll only encourage him.
"Does that mean if I stop talking to you, you'll shut up, too?”
Nah. I don't require encouragement.
"Clearly.”
But I do need your cooperation if we’re going to escape. Now listen—
Abby shook her head. "I'm not in the mood to listen. And on top of that, I took abnormal psych in college. I know what happens to people who start doing what the little voices in their heads tell them, and it's never good.”
Who are you calling little?
"Argh!" Abby clenched her hands into fists and smacked them against the closest available surface, which happened to be the back of the man carrying her. "Would you just shut up and get out of my head?!”
The behemoth didn't even grunt. "I am not in your head, little one, but you can rest assured that as soon as we reach safety, you will be required to explain what you meant by that remark.”
Oh, goodie, Abby thought.
Now aren't you sorry you didn't cooperate on the escape thing? the voice asked.
Arrooooooooo! Carly howled.
Abby looked over at Samantha, waiting for the last member of their group to give her opinion, but the Lupine just looked back at her with golden brown eyes and gave a terribly canine shrug.
"Some help you are," Abby muttered, and let herself collapse back against the shoulder beneath her. "When I get out of this, I'm going to find a pile of liver and teach you a helpful little command called 'sic 'im.' “
This time, Carly's howl sounded suspiciously like laughter.
CHAPTER SIX
The fact that Abby ended up in the front hall of a private club in one of the old-money neighborhoods of the Upper East Side felt weird enough. Add to it the facts that the club happened to be owned, operated, and patronized completely by Others, and that she'd arrived in a fireman's carry over the shoulder of a man whose name she didn't know, and that they'd been trailed by two shaggy werewolves, and that Abby kept hearing the voice of someone who was definitely not her inside her head, and the sum total pushed things firmly into the realm of freaktacular.
Of course, how not to view the entirety of her current situation as freakish was beyond Abby's poor powers of self-delusion. She might have her doubts over the possibility of her being anything other than the human she'd been for all of the twenty-eight years of her life so far, but she couldn't deny that something very weird was going on.
It was like she'd become a character in a comic book when she wasn't looking. If she'd gotten caught up in some sort of radiation leak, she might have understood, but nothing remarkable had happened. One minute she'd been hiding, and the next she'd been on the pavement with super strength and speed and God knew what else, trying to figure out what in the name of all things holy was happening.
&nbs
p; A gnawing ache settled in just below her breastbone, but considering Abby still hung over a certain someone's shoulder, she couldn't even rub at it. All she could do was wait for the ax to fall. Or maybe the Others would use something different, like a…a…a magic butter knife or something.
Well, she supposed she could put up some kind of struggle, but it seemed pointless. As the mountain beneath her had pointed out earlier, someone would end up catching her, and that someone's mood would likely deteriorate as a result of the trouble of chasing Abby.
Besides which, there was that whole "paralyzed by fear" thing. Or "paralyzed by shock," at least. Either way, moving still seemed a wee bit beyond her.
When Samantha had suggested taking Abby to visit some of her "friends," Abby had envisioned a small apartment with an early hunting lodge decorating scheme, not the newly infamous and wholly mysterious Vircolac club.
In the short time since the Others had revealed themselves to the rest of the world, the club had become well-known. It served as the headquarters of the Council of Others, the group that apparently governed the city's Other population, and was owned by a Lupine named Graham Winters.
Winters had been in the news a lot, as both a representative of the Others who had negotiated the treaties and the head of Manhattan's local werewolf pack. Abby remembered seeing him on TV and thinking it was no wonder he was Lupine. No man that good-looking could possibly have been human.
There had been protesters outside the club, but that hadn't stopped her kidnapper and his canine accomplices. They had hustled her around the corner and down a small alley to a service entrance at the back of the grand old building. Samantha had shifted and entered a code on a keypad beside the heavy steel door. Seconds later, she'd ushered all of them inside before Abby could so much as open her mouth. Leading the way into a dark wood-paneled and marble-floored hall, Samantha had instructed the others to stay put and disappeared behind one of the several doors that lined the hall.
Abby watched from her head-down position over the man's shoulder by the simple method of shifting • her upper body to the side and using a grip on her captor's waist to hold her in place. By looking around the man's torso she could get a fairly decent view of the hallway, even if everything was still upside down.
After a few minutes, the door had opened and Samantha had reappeared, dressed in a loose-fitting sweat suit and balancing another bundle of clothes under her arms. She was following a petite blond woman with bouncing curls and big blue eyes.
Those eyes should have looked ingenuous and guileless, Abby thought, to complete the picture of angelic innocence the woman projected, but instead they were shrewd and thorough as they inspected Abby from head to toe. Or at least, all the visible parts of her.
Conscious of the grubby state of her clothes and what had to be the rat's nest of her hair and the way she and the remnants of her dignity hung over the shoulder of a giant, Abby fought not to squirm under the careful appraisal.
"I'm Tess De Santos," the blonde said as her gaze settled back on Abby's. Tess held out a slim hand decorated with brightly polished nails the color of fuchsia flowers. "Rule, you can put her down now. It's not like she's got much chance of getting away if she makes a break for it.”
Abby felt herself swinging through the air and took a moment once her feet touched the floor to let the blood that had pooled in her head settle back where it belonged. And try to get her bearings.
Like that's gonna happen.
She shook the other woman's hand cautiously. "Uh, Abby. Baker.”
The blond woman's hand felt different from Samantha's, cooler and softer, less vibrating with contained strength. Abby felt the hand tighten around hers, and her eyes widened. Her glance flicked back up to meet one of bright blue. Tess was staring at her as if she could see straight through her eyes and into her subconscious, something Abby wasn't sure she'd be comfortable having anyone do, let alone a stranger in a club populated by the kinds of beings who used to keep her from sleeping at night.
The blonde's mouth curved into a wry smile. "Don't worry, Abby. I promise, none of us is going to bite. Especially not me. I don't even have fangs.”
Oh, my God. Could this woman read her mind?
Someone inside Abby's head snorted.
Tess laughed. "No, I'm not reading your mind, Abby. Just your face. And let me say, I hope like hell you don't play poker, hon.”
Releasing Abby's hand, the woman turned to the man who had carried Abby in, the one she'd called Rule, and nodded. "There's something going on in there, all right, but I can't tell what it is without doing some sort of spell. It's not a surprise, though, given those eyes of hers.”
Always self-conscious about the mismatched colors of her eyes, Abby squirmed. "What do you mean?”
"You have heterochromia—one blue eye, one brown eye.”
"Um, I had noticed that.”
Tess smiled. "It's not a criticism. Personally, I think you have beautiful eyes. But there are some superstitions out there that say having eyes like that makes a human either a witch, a psychic, or an open doorway for passing spirits in need of a body.”
And let me tell you, sweet cheeks, I've never been happier to see a human with your condition in my life. And that's sayin' something.
Abby tried really, really hard to ignore that voice. The one inside her head. That didn't belong to her.
"What is going on is obvious," the man called Rule broke in. Abby looked up—way up—into his face and saw his fallen-angel features tighten into a frown. "She has had contact with a fiend. Enough contact that I strongly suspect it is still with her. The reason I brought her here is so that we can attempt to determine exactly what demon it is.”
Abby blinked, because she really couldn't think of any other way to react. How did things keep getting weirder? "You people think I'm possessed!”
What? You thought this was a ventriloquist act?
"Well, I don't think you're psychic," Tess shrugged, "or you wouldn't look so shell-shocked at being here right now. And I know you're not a witch, because I am. Like they say, it takes one to know one. So that leaves us with the possibility that you really have been possessed by something that slipped in through your blue eye and set up shop in your unconscious.”
"Because I have a blue eye?" Abby couldn't help herself. She knew she sounded so incredulous as to border on shrill, but who could blame her? "You have two blue eyes; does that mean you're doubly possessed?”
"Nope. Having two blue eyes is like having two brown eyes. Or two green eyes. Or two red eyes with yellow polka dots. Having two of anything is fine. And having mismatched eyes when you're Other isn't a big deal, because Others are already attuned to the supernatural. They are supernatural. But when a human is supposed to have two brown eyes and one of them turns out to be blue instead, it means something in that human is open to our world in a way that it isn't open in other humans.”
Beside her, Rule shifted impatiently. "It is very kind of you to try and explain things to the girl and try to help her understand her situation, Tess, but can we perhaps hold the lessons later? After we have determined what exactly is inside of her?”
"Okay, once again, I was having a conversation with someone who is not you, so chill for a sec, wouldja?" Abby slapped a hand over her own mouth and felt her eyes widening until they threatened to bug out of her head. "Ahnininteenat.”
Rule turned to look at her with that inscrutable expression. "I beg your pardon?”
She parted her fingers just enough to make the repetition intelligible, but she didn't lower them. Maybe by keeping them in front of her mouth she could stop anything else horrifying from escaping her lips. "I said that I didn't mean that.”
"Then why did you say it?”
She shook her head so fast she felt a little dizzy. "I didn't. I swear. I mean, well, I did, but I—it wasn't... I mean, it wasn't really me. Saying it. I don't think.”
Rule frowned.
"I think what Abby is trying to say,
" Tess broke in, sounding drily amused, "is that I had a very valid point about the fact that she might be possessed by something. In this case, something with a bit of a smart mouth, it seems.”
Abby peered at her over the tips of her fingers. "You realize that sounds vaguely insane, right?”
Tess arched an eyebrow. "Six weeks ago, didn't werewolves?”
The woman had a point, but that didn't mean Abby intended to give her credit for it. Not when she was having to struggle so hard not to schedule a fitting for her own little white coat with the buckles in the back. "And you can just tell this from looking at me?”
"Like I said, I'm a witch." Tess turned to Samantha and Carly. "So why don't you tell me everything that happened before you got here?”
Carly finished pulling on her own sweats and shrugged. "You want it unabridged or the Reader's Digest version?”
Was Abby the only one here who had been even slightly disconcerted by the fact that when both women had shifted back to their human forms they had been stark raving naked? Or who found it unusual to get dressed in the middle of a hallway with the same nonchalance as in a women's locker room?
Judging by the looks on everyone else's faces, Abby guessed she was.
Hey, don't go makin' waves. I gotta say, I been enjoying the scenery.
Swallowing against the urge to start babbling incoherently—and maybe drooling—Abby stepped in front of the werewolves and crossed her arms over her chest. "Look, I'm not entirely convinced that this whole thing isn't a nightmare I'm having after a bad batch of moo shu pork, but since I don't seem to be about to wake up, I'm at least going to dream myself into a starring role here. If you want to know what happened to me, why don't you try asking me?”
Tess shrugged. "No skin off my nose. I just thought you might still be a little shaken up by the whole thing. But by all means, be my guest and start spilling your guts.”
Abby could have started off by telling Tess she wasn't feeling "a little" anything. She'd stopped feeling little a while ago. She was now thoroughly…whatever she was…and not seeing her way back anytime soon. But at least that voice in her head seemed to have quieted down for the time being.
The Others 03: The Demon You Know Page 4