On the Prowl

by Christine Warren

  Saskia entered first, padding into the foyer on all fours to two admiring feminine gasps.

  “Sass, you’re positively gorgeous!” Missy Winters cried as she waddled her very pregnant form forward. “Oh, I’ve never seen a coat like that. It’s amazing.”

  Saskia the tigress preened and lifted a paw to groom her face.

  “She needs clothes,” Nicolas said. “I hate to impose, but is there any way—”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” the Luna dismissed easily. “We’ll fix her right up. I always keep extra clothes on hand in different sizes for emergencies. We’ll find something. Come on.”

  Nic watched uneasily as his mate followed the Lupine’s female up the stairs and out of his sight. The other woman stayed behind and offered him a smile.

  “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine. Missy’s been mothering people since way before she got pregnant. She’ll take good care of your mate.” She held out a pale, slender hand. “I recognized you from the papers, Mr. Preda. I’m Regina Vidâme.”

  Nic grasped her fingers, feeling the coolness of her skin, and noticed her lack of scent. She was a vampire, and her introduction named her as Dmitri’s wife. She was a little thing, especially in comparison to her husband, with lush curves and deeply auburn hair worn long and waving down her back. Her expression appeared sweetly open, and she spoke of the Alpha’s mate with genuine affection.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Nic murmured, but he couldn’t keep his gaze from straying back to the stairs.

  Regina laughed. “Ah, to be newly mated again.”

  Dmitri wrapped a strong arm around her waist and tugged her firmly against his side. He grinned down at her wickedly. “Do you fear the spark is gone from our love, dushka? Perhaps I must spend more time demonstrating my passion for you.”

  He bent to her lips, but she slapped her hand against his chest to hold him away playfully. “Thanks, but I like being able to walk, sweetheart. You’re doing just fine as it is.”

  Graham Winters stepped around them and rolled his eyes. “Ignore them. They’re always like that. It’s diabetes on the hoof. Let’s all sit down so we can hammer this thing out.”

  The werewolf led the way into a comfortable living room with a huge fireplace and plenty of seating. Logs already crackled in the hearth, but he took up a poker and jabbed at them before settling his shoulder against the mantel and waving everyone into seats. Nic sank into one of two oversize armchairs facing the fire. Rafe eased himself into the other while Dmitri settled himself on the end of a sofa perpendicular to the chairs and tucked his wife firmly against his side. Another sofa sat directly opposite, completing a u shape, and Mac took the end closest to the fire.

  Nic found himself glancing back toward the stairs.

  Graham noticed. “I give you my word your mate will come to no harm under my roof,” he said stiffly. “My Luna will care for her as if she were a member of our pack.”

  Nic recognized the gesture. Lupine law decreed that an Alpha was responsible for the welfare of every member of his pack. By making his statement, Winters had taken a vow to keep Saskia safe. But that didn’t mean Nic had to like him.

  Nic inclined his head stiffly. “Thank you.”

  Mac snorted. “And here I thought the cold war was over.” Wolf and tiger both turned narrowed eyes on him. He threw up his hands and laughed. “Sorry. Sheesh.”

  This time Graham glanced toward the stairs and frowned when no women appeared on them. He looked back at his guests and seemed to remember himself. “Ah, can I offer anyone a drink while we wait? Bratok? A glass of wine?”

  “I would not say no.” Dmitri nodded.

  Regina smiled. “I’ll just have a sip of his.”

  “Nothing for me,” Mac said.

  “Whiskey.” Rafe shifted in his chair and winced. “Neat. Please.”

  Nic nodded. “I’ll have the same.” It would give him something to do with his hands, and frankly, he deserved the treat just now.

  By the time the Lupine had poured and distributed, the soft sound of footsteps whispered on the stairs. Nic turned to see his mate and the Luna wolf descending to join them. Heavily pregnant and apparently human, Missy Winters made the bulk of the noise, his mate gliding along barefoot wearing a pair of black athletic pants with white stripes on the outsides of the legs and a long-sleeved red T-shirt that proclaimed: “Namaste, mofo.”

  Saskia tugged at it self-consciously as she halted beside his chair. “Missy said the people who donate the extra clothes tend to do it with a sense of humor.”

  His mouth tipped upward. “I can see that.”

  She took the hand he extended and let him tug her down and settle her in his lap. There was plenty of room in the chair, and his mate didn’t take up much space. In fact, she fit perfectly tucked under his chin against his heart.

  Graham had hurried to his wife and guided her to the sofa where Dmitri and Regina sat, lowering her carefully to the opposite corner and positioning a pillow behind her for comfort. “Okay?” he asked in a low murmur, and Nic saw Missy smile up at the gruff werewolf with obvious love.

  “Perfect.”

  The Alpha pressed a tender kiss to her forehead before straightening and retrieving a glass of cold milk from the small refrigerator under the bar. He handed it to her, then turned to face the rest of the room. “Okay, now we can get started.”

  Nic heard Saskia muffle a giggle and sighed. Damn it, he’d gotten very comfortable with hating the Lupine. Why did the man have to go and ruin his image as a complete asshole by taking such tender care of his mate?

  “I think Dmitri was going to tell us about his grand plan,” Rafe prompted.

  “‘Grand’ might be a slight exaggeration. ‘Workable’ is perhaps more accurate.”

  “Then give us something to work with.”

  The vampire nodded. “Very well. I believe Graham earlier characterized our villain as a diabolical genius. In my experience, men of that sort always have the same weakness: arrogance. They believe they are significantly more intelligent than their opposition. Not only that, but they tend to hold the rest of the world in such low regard that hubris leads them to commit their worst mistakes. I believe that we can use this villain’s ego to draw him into a trap.”

  “What kind of trap?”

  “It will require the cooperation of several key parties. First, we’ll need several members of the Council, preferably of the Inner Circle. Ones we can trust, obviously.”

  Rafe tilted his head back to think. “We can use Adele Berry, most likely. She’s a tough old bird and she believes herself to be superior to, well, everyone, but she dislikes prejudice against minority shifters. She might agree to help out of sympathy for the Tiguri.”

  Dmitri nodded. “Who else?”

  The Felix suggested two more names and Graham added another. Together they came up with another shifter, a brownie, and a half giant. Mac joked that the last two balanced each other out.

  “So what do we need them to do?” Rafe asked.

  “Before I get to that, we’ll need more assistance.” The vampire turned his gaze to Nic. “I’m afraid that for this to work, you will be asked to make some difficult decisions, Nicolas Preda. The question is, how badly do you want to know the truth? And what will you do when you find it?”

  * * *

  Saskia followed her subdued mate into their apartment shortly after eight that night, a little more than eleven hours after they had left. It felt more like eleven years.

  The short drive from the Winters house had been accomplished in silence. When Dmitri Vidâme had first proposed his plan that afternoon, Nic had had plenty to say, much of it at volume, but since they had left the house nothing. Saskia felt desperate to know what he was thinking but couldn’t decide how to push without shoving too hard against what she knew had to be open wounds. She still hadn’t figured it out, but she knew she couldn’t wait any longer. He had to talk before he wore himself out inside.

  “You asked Dmitri to give y
ou until morning to think things through,” she said softly, trailing him into their bedroom and perching on the foot of the bed while he calmly emptied his pockets at his dresser. “Do you want me to help you sort it out?”

  He shook his head but didn’t look at her. “What is there to sort? The plan makes sense and appears to have every chance of working. We should do it. But … the bastard behind all this is Tiguri. Every Tiguri in the city is a member of my family, one way or another. No matter what I decide, I will have to watch one of my own people suffer.”

  “You’ll be suffering with them,” she said. “You already are.”

  He said nothing.

  “Nicolas.” She rose and crossed to him, wrapping him up in her arms. “You have to remember that you are not responsible for this. You did not make this happen. The Tiguri who is responsible brought this on himself. Or herself. You have done nothing wrong.”

  He stood stiffly, not looking at her. “I didn’t prevent it.”

  Saskia tilted her head back to look into his face. “Are you serious? You’re worried that you didn’t prevent it? What could you have prevented? You can’t prevent insanity, or a thirst for power. You can just deal with it when you find it.”

  She felt him shudder, and his arms came around her. He crushed her to his chest, burying his face in her hair.

  “I can’t stand it,” he growled, shaking. “I can’t stand the thought that my own father might have done something like this, been willing to sacrifice lives just to bring down the thing he hates. Willing to sacrifice me, his own son. To make me some kind of sick martyr. And the idea that it might be your father is even worse. How can I let him hurt you that way?”

  Saskia understood his fears, and she shared his pain. She didn’t want to think her father could be responsible, either. She didn’t want to think she could have lived her whole life loving a man who could think any cause would justify the chaos recent events had caused. Because of the actions of one Tiguri, the Council of Others could fall and the population of New York divide into two camps: the tiger shifters and the Others who hated them.

  And that was when it hit her. She nearly staggered as the room seemed to tilt beneath her.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed, then choked on the next inhalation. “Oh, my God!”

  Nicolas gripped her arms and looked down at her in alarm. “Sass! What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Her knees buckled and her mate had to lift her into his arms to keep her from falling.

  “Sassy, tell me what’s wrong, baby. What hurts? What’s happening?” He swept her to the bed and set her down, crouching beside her to place his face level with hers. His gaze drilled into her, looking for the source of her distress.

  Saskia could only shake her head and struggle to breathe. She pressed her fingers between her breasts to massage the tightness in her chest, but it refused to budge.

  “It’s not that,” she gasped. “I’m fine. I’m fine. But I finally realized what this is all about—why someone would want to bring down the Council and start a war between the Others and the Tiguri. God, it’s just … crazy.”

  Nicolas gripped her hands in his and squeezed gently. “Tell me,” he ordered, his voice slightly calmer and infinitely more commanding than it had been when she’d first scared him with her outburst. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “It is the Tiguri. I mean, it is all about the Tiguri.” She met his gaze, sure hers was stormy with the turbulent mix of emotions roiling inside her. She felt anger and shock and grief and incredulity and a sick sort of understanding. And overlaying it all was the knowledge that she was about to break her mate’s heart, just as her own had broken when she had realized the truth.

  “Explain it to me,” he urged. “Tell me what you know, little tigress.”

  “Nic, do you remember the conversation I had with my father yesterday? The one that upset me so badly?”

  He nodded impatiently. “Of course, but what does that have to do wit—”

  “Think,” she urged. “My father was so anxious to know if I was pregnant because he and Stefan needed to unite our streaks behind a leader all of the old families could follow. Our parents believe that unless our mating is proven successful and you step forward as leader of the old families, the new guard is going to rebel and go their own way with disastrous results for our people. What better way to unite the old families, to unite all the Tiguri, than to start a war that pits us against the world of Others? Rafe was right when he said every tiger shifter on the planet would unite to fight a war they believed was about the future of our species.”

  She saw her mate go pale and hated every word she knew had to come out of her mouth now. Hated them on his behalf and on hers.

  “Nicolas, it’s not your father, and it’s not my father. It’s both of our fathers working together, with every one of the other old families probably helping them out.”

  Saskia knew her mate had to feel like a knife had just been plunged into his chest, because she felt the same. She ached with the pain of betrayal, but she knew that only the two of them had a chance of stopping this mad plan.

  Nicolas was shaking his head. “Sassy, that’s just … I mean … that’s—”

  “It’s crazy, I know, but it makes sense. It makes so much sense. The plan was too elaborate to just be about the Council, especially when our people have never cared about the Council of Others. This is about what the Tiguri consider important, and that’s tradition. The traditions of the old families.”

  “But my father knows I have no desire to unite the Tiguri. I don’t want to lead an entire people. I have enough trouble leading my streak and my mate.”

  She hugged him. “I think he knows that, but he doesn’t want to believe it. I think he was hoping that being placed under a cloud of suspicion by the Council and having to deal with all the questions and insinuations would make you angry enough that when his plan reached the point of Rafe’s murder and the Council declaring war on the Tiguri you would give in and take charge out of a sense of righteous fury. And if you didn’t…”

  Saskia couldn’t bring herself to say it, but she didn’t have to. He said it for her.

  “If I didn’t, then he had a backup plan. Watch me die, and then use my memory like a bloody banner of the Holy Cross to lead our people to victory.”

  His bitterness carved little slices in her heart. She didn’t know what to say. She could tell him she understood, but the words felt hollow. She could say that her own father was part of the plan and that she felt dirtied and tainted by the association, but this moment wasn’t about her. She could validate his feelings by telling him his pain, and anger, and sense of betrayal were completely justified and completely natural, but that wouldn’t change anything.

  Instead, she just drew him to her and cradled his head to her chest. All she knew to do was hold him, so that was what she did.

  He leaned into her for a few minutes, his breathing ragged. No tears dripped from his eyes, but she could feel the way he fought for control, fought to make sense of a world that had fundamentally shifted. It seemed to take hours for the trembling to ease.

  When it did, he stood, drawing Saskia up with him and keeping her cradled against him. He reached for the phone on the bedside table and punched in a number.

  “Hello?” she heard on the other end of the line.

  “It’s Nic,” he said. “Let’s get this thing rolling.”

  Eleven

  Saskia had never expected to set foot in the chambers of the Council of Others. Why would she? No Tiguri sat on the Council, and none of her people had ever accepted the authority of the European Council, let alone their American counterparts. Of course, she also had never expected that she would end up mated and living in New York, or that her father would participate in a malevolent plot for power.

  It just went to show that life had a way of taking a person along for the ride.

  The chambers themselves turned out to be a revelation. They appeared to have b
een designed and decorated by whoever had built the stage sets for the 1931 version of Dracula, the one with Bela Lugosi and the “children of the night.” The walls looked like the interior of a medieval castle, specifically the dungeon, all rough-hewn stone with not a window to be found. Since the Council met in the basement of the Vircolac club, that wasn’t surprising, but the fact that the rooms and passages were lit with torches rather than electric lights was. A fire roared in a huge hearth, driving away the damp chill that seemed to seep through the stones and further illuminating the faces of the figures gathered for Dmitri’s plan.

  The vampire had decreed that they would use the Inner Circle’s meeting chamber for that ring of verisimilitude. The large room with its heavy carved door and high vaulted ceiling opened just a few doors down from the main Council chamber but occupied less than half of the space.

  About twenty feet by thirty feet square, the room contained little in the way of furniture. At one end of the room, a huge antique sideboard squatted against the wall, its surface elaborately carved with hunting scenes that Saskia’s undergraduate studies dated to the sixteenth century. Only instead of the usual hounds and men on horseback chasing a stag or a wolf, in these scenes the wolves chased the riders and brought them to a bloody end on the face of the right-hand cabinet door. As decorative elements went, that one made a statement.

  In the center of the room, two enormous rectangular tables had been pushed together to create a roughly square seating area surrounded by thirteen wooden carvers. Each of the huge chairs showcased a tall back topped with fancy finials and skilled carvings along the mahogany frames. The seats and backs had been covered with velvet upholstery the color of fresh blood. The decorator had been either a gothic madman or an Other with a wicked sense of humor.

  Someone had pulled in a hard wooden bench from somewhere and shoved it into the shadows to the left of the hearth, but even that appeared to have been made well before the industrial revolution and kept lovingly polished until the wood nearly glowed in the firelight. Her mate had instructed her to sit on it until the show began, but she found herself wishing for a sketch pad so she could capture its rough lines and angular beauty. Not that she would have the time.