Blood Heat

by Maria Lima

  “I don’t know genetics, Bea. I’m sure they can explain better.” I gently pulled her hands away from her eyes and gave her a hug. “I’m here, chica. Whatever you do or don’t do, you know I’m here for you.”

  Bea’s eyes glittered with the unshed tears. She was doing everything to hold it together. “What the hell am I going to do?”

  “Do you want it?”

  “I don’t know. I thought, well, maybe. I’m almost forty, no kids of my own. This was kind of my last hurrah, you know.”

  “I know.” Did I really? I said the words, but no, I had no freakin’ clue. I had decades, hell, centuries of upcoming possible pregnancy years ahead of me. Bea, if her mother was typical for the family, had about eight. “Bea, you don’t have to make any decisions for a little while,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you had all the facts before you made them. I’m sorry … for whatever that’s worth.”

  She let out a sound halfway between a snort and a sob. “You couldn’t have just told me there is such a thing as werewolves?” She began to laugh, the sobs hitching her laughter into something resembling more hysteria than enjoyment, the tears that had threatened now flowing down her face.

  I handed her some tissues. “Yeah, well, I could have, but you know, in my defense, I had no idea these guys were around here.”

  “No, I suppose not,” she said, wiping her face. “C’mon, we’d better get back before someone comes.”

  “You going to be okay?” I peered into her face, trying to look past the tears.

  “You’re sticking around, right?”

  “I’m back for good, Bea. I promise.”

  “Then yeah, I’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ve got you on my side, don’t I?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WE REJOINED THE others, one of us subdued, the other—me—still chewing this new data in my head. What the fuck was I going to do about this? Bea was family of the heart and I owed it to her to help, but damn it, what could I do? She was the pregnant one. She was the one who was going to have to make a very tough decision. And what would the wolves think about her pregnancy? If they were at all like my own clan, babies tended to belong to the tribe, not the individual. My aunts had been after me for years to give them a child to raise, have a baby for the Kellys. Except their rationale at the time was so that I could possibly produce the next heir. Well, I had, just not in the way they’d imagined. That pressure was off me, but Bea’s clock was ticking in a whole different way now.

  Maybe I’d ask Tucker to give Bea and me tomorrow night for an impromptu girls’ gathering. He could come with me to my former house and hang out outside, and I could totally set this up like one of our once-common nights in. Bad movie, great wine, fabulous munchies, and just hanging with my homegirl. My brother had many more years of experience and was our honorary girl anyway. I’m sure he’d have some advice.

  I chose to sit with Bea and Dixxi, instead of next to Adam and Marcus. Adam gave me a questioning look, but I shook my head indicating I’d talk to him later. He acquiesced, but his unspoken words were clear. He’d seen Bea’s face, and I knew he could feel my anxiety. He’d just have to wait.

  As I navigated past Bea to sit on her right, between her and Dixxi, I noticed a man leaning against the wall at the bottom of the steps. Unlike ninety-nine percent of the crowd, his skin tone was dark as night, his hair cut short, the pure white of old age. He watched me, face nearly as impassive as the vampires when they go all over dead man.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Dixxi, scootching closer to her so Bea could sit. “That man down there.”

  She shrugged. “Old Joe. Least that’s what they call him around here. He runs a trash collecting truck, goes around to local businesses. Has a roadside junk stand a few miles away. Been over to Rio Seco a couple of times to pick up trash from us. He’s probably got the contract to clean up here after the game’s over.”

  “Why’s he staring?”

  “How the hell would I know? Maybe he’s wondering why Bea’s got swollen red eyes and tear marks on her face.” Dixxi fixed me with a knowing glare.

  Fuck.

  “I can’t tell you here,” I whispered. “Plus, it’s not really my story to tell.”

  “Fair enough.” Dixxi settled back to watch the game. I could tell she was still checking Bea out from time to time. This woman was no fool.

  A half hour later, when Bea excused herself to use the loo for real this time, I realized how much not a fool Dixxi was.

  “Our family really is Armenian, you know.” She spoke in a low voice, still pretending to watch the game. “Some of us were Ashkenazi Jews who married into the family during the Diaspora. We’ve got family history of Tay-Sachs and Familial Mediterranean Fever. Problem is, we can’t screen in your usual medical facilities because we are also wolf.”

  I bit my lip and kept my mouth shut. She’d obviously twigged about Bea’s condition, but I wanted to hear where she was headed with this.

  “One of the reasons I went into genetics is to set up a clinic where our kind could get screened.” Dixxi leaned in closer. “It’s Lev’s, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Is she planning to keep it?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. She’s completely freaked out and she doesn’t even know about—”

  “Why don’t we go for a quick walk,” she said. “I don’t want my brother to overhear. You’re right, this is Bea’s issue for now.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “C’mon, let’s take a stroll down around the parking lot. Fewer people.” I knew she meant her brothers.

  “I’ll come along,” Adam said, throwing me a knowing glance. Good, he’d been listening in. Save some explanations later when I’d allow myself to rant and rave about Bea’s stupidity. Not that I really thought she was stupid, but to allow this to happen at her age? Even without the complication of werewolf genes and now all Dixxi was implying. I’d need a good rant and Adam was a great listener.

  The three of us excused ourselves. Tucker started to get up, but I shook my head for him and Niko to stay.

  Once we passed through the gates, Dixxi continued to explain about the genes that cause the diseases and how the intermingling of the two communities affected the wolf population, her explanation evolving into concepts that made my head spin. I glanced at Adam, who had his listening face on—attentive, silent, and interested.

  “Sorry, I’m not an expert in genetics,” I said. Nor was I at all familiar with human genomes and the diseases humans face, other than through reading news items and some basic biology and physiology in school. “Doesn’t your other nature somehow negate these bad recessives?” I asked, straining to remember the terms from eighth-grade science and the fruit flies.

  “They should,” Dixxi said with a snort, “if we weren’t part human. Wer are unlike your kind, Keira. You have no human biology. You can’t even produce viable human hybrid fetuses. It’s like trying to mate a cat with a giraffe. You’re another species.”

  “But wer …”

  “Wer have always been hybrids. Our origins are lost in the mists of long-ago times. Who knows, maybe there’s some truth to the Romulus and Remus stories.” She shrugged. “In nearly all the nearby villages in our homeland, there were at least one or two wolf children, according to my great-grandmother’s tales. Back then, we were known, we bonded, and the children were fostered out to the pack. We learned to tolerate both worlds. That’s how the Tay-Sachs started, actually. A group of Ashkenazi helped save our family groups, slipping us on boats and taking us across the Mediterranean, first to Lebanon, then to Damascus. Eventually we worked our way to Crete and finally took service with some American companies in Greece. By the late fifties, most of our pack was here in the U.S.”

  “Why Texas? It’s not exactly the most multicultural state … especially here in White Rock.”

  “Luck of the draw? My grandfather met an oilman from Dallas in the early 1970s, before the bust. Guy was impressed w
ith Grandpop’s cooking and organizing skills. He hired him to come work in his new resort he was building out near the Falls. We’ve been here since.”

  Dixxi took a sip of her soft drink. “Gramps started a restaurant after his mentor died and left him a little money. Dad, his son, expanded the business into the river rafting and camping trade. We all grew up working there.”

  “Thus the deli.”

  Dixxi grinned. “Yeah, the boys are hella good cooks,” she said. “They make mean milkshakes, too.” She sobered. “We’ve had to completely shut down the restaurant, store, and the river rafting up at the lake. Even the camping is too slow. Last of the campers left a couple of days ago.”

  “The heat?” Adam contributed quietly.

  “Yeah, and the drought. River’s down to nothing but sludge and rocks in places. If it doesn’t rain soon, the deli’s gonna be our only source of income.”

  “How come you’re not working at the Health Science Center or one of the med labs around San Antonio or Austin?” I asked. “I mean, you said you were ABD, right? All but dissertation? Don’t most folks in your field have research assistant jobs at this point in their career?”

  She sounded bitter. “I had to give up my job in town,” she said. “I wasn’t making enough to warrant the commute and the lack of help at the new deli.”

  “But what’s that going to do to your doctorate—your dissertation?”

  A grim chuckle escaped her. “I guess I’ll be ABD for a while longer,” she said. “I try not to mind. We’ve got to make sure we have enough money so the pack can survive.”

  “Aren’t there more adults than you guys who can contribute?”

  “A handful. They do what they can. But they all work in White Rock, long hours and such. Someone’s got to be there for the kids, especially during summer. We’ve got summer session home school for most of the ones still needing it. They may not like it, but we’ve got a ninety-nine percent college degree achievement out of our kids. Most of them go on to advanced degrees.”

  “And then they leave.”

  “And then they leave,” she agreed. “It’s necessary. We need to continuously refresh the gene pool.”

  “What, you farm out kids to other packs?”

  “Pretty much,” she said. “We have exchange agreements with other packs throughout the U.S. When they graduate from high school, the kids get first crack at college choices. Often, we’ll do a one-year postgrad exchange program just after high school to get a feel for someplace else. Most kids end up going to college at the place they exchanged.”

  “Might I ask a question?” Adam asked. “Your area of study, genetics. What is your goal, your primary field?”

  “Treatments for Tay-Sachs was what started me on this but, as I said, I’d like to be able to do better gene mapping; get some sort of modern gene clinic set up so that all our folks can be screened. I’m not endorsing any weird gene-matching programs for breeding, but there are many things that we can catch early and treat before they become a problem.”

  “But,” Adam pressed, “what if you could screen in utero, screen potential mates. You could perhaps eradicate those recessives. Clean out the gene pool without having to worry.”

  Dixxi studied Adam, as did I. Where the hell was he going with this? He was no more a scientist or geneticist than I was.

  “I have people who can help,” he said simply. “Researchers. They’re not local, but they could be. They came up with a blood extract and nutritional substitute for us.”

  “Which tastes like poop,” I said, “and doesn’t actually give you all your nutrients. Remember what happened a few months ago. Coma?”

  “If I recall correctly—and I do—the coma was caused by your cousin, my love. Not my lack of pure blood intake.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t deny that before you started feeding from me, and participating in the hunts, you were much weaker. Denying our natures usually comes with a price, Adam.” I addressed Dixxi. “This all sounds quite noble and good, but I can think of several consequences right off the bat, and I’m not even close to understanding all this.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m still ABD. Need at least a year or two worth of research to bolster my theories. Problem is, besides the regular research and report writing, I’ve got to somehow hide the fact that I’m experimenting on werewolves.”

  “Can’t you just spin it as a fairly inbred family group with an idiopathic blood disorder?” I was quoting a line Gigi once pulled on a school doctor who’d been insistent on drawing my blood and testing it for leukemia. He’d thought I was much too pale to be healthy. It had taken all Gigi’s clout and some finagling with a Clan member doctor to come up with the diagnosis, which pretty much translated: hey, her blood is different, okay? After that, I had some sort of legal paper in my permanent record that stated that I couldn’t be treated by the school nurse and/or local doctors due to religious reasons. I’d nearly laughed myself sick when I found out about that.

  “It’s a thought,” Dixxi said. “I’m just not sure how to pull it off. I’ve not got any real authority.”

  “Well, that’s at least something we can help with,” Adam said. “Let’s discuss this soon, yes?”

  “I’m sure this isn’t why Marcus asked us to come tonight, is it?”

  She shook her head. “I doubt it. He’s not all that interested in my work. I’m his little sister, you see. Will always be. And I’m damned sure he doesn’t know about Bea.”

  “How about Lev?” I asked. “He’s the Loki, the one supposed to be handling the overall day-to-day stuff and keeping Mark in the loop.”

  “He’s even thicker than Mark,” Dixxi snorted. “I love my brothers dearly, but they are male wolves. It’s all about eat, drink, shit, and shag for the most part. For as much as they are square pegs around here, they’re nearly as inculturated as anyone. Die-hard Cowboys fans who think the perfect Sunday evening should be spent grilling steaks, chugging beers, and yelling at the TV screen.”

  Adam raised a brow. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch that last reference.”

  I motioned around us. “Football—the national sport of Texas. Thank goodness none of our boys were all that interested,” I said. “We never watched sports in my house. Mostly, we’d go out and make our own fun. Swimming, hiking, learning to do spells.”

  Dixxi pulled out her hair tie and retied the ponytail. “I bet that beats the hell out of a Cowboys/Steelers game any day.”

  “Pretty much,” I agreed.

  “Shall we go on back? Mark looks about ready to pop. He hates it when he’s left out.”

  “You, my new friend, are so much like me, it’s scary.”

  “Ha!” she exclaimed. “I was just about to say the same thing about you.”

  Adam, wiser than the two of us, just rolled his eyes and remained silent.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WE TOOK OUR TIME walking back, hitting the concession stand for another ice-cold drink. Dixxi and I both ordered Dr Peppers, Adam, a bottled water.

  “You can drink that?” Dixxi asked in surprise.

  He gave her one of his trademark combination eyebrow-raise/cat-who-ate-the-canary smiles. “I can drink many things,” he said.

  Dixxi practically spit out her mouthful of ice and soda. “Do not do that,” she spluttered. “Warn a girl next time.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, he’s like that,” I said and poked Adam in the side. “It’s not nice to tease the wildlife, love.”

  He turned to me with a grin. “We both have teeth, don’t we?”

  “That we do.” I grinned back. Adam took my hand and grinned at Dixxi, who chuckled.

  “I like you, too, Adam,” she said. “I’m glad you-all aren’t what I expected.”

  “Gigi?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Mark was full of stories when he met her a few years ago. Scared the piss out of me.”

  “I promise I won’t do that,” I said. “At least, as long as y’all don’t do anything to w
arrant it.”

  “Fair enough.” She walked in tandem with us, a slow stroll back to where we’d been sitting. Bea was back, seeming less worn and more refreshed.

  “Hey,” I said and plopped down next to her. Adam returned to his seat next to Marcus, and Dixxi sat on Bea’s other side.

  In front of us, a group of kids wearing T-shirts with FFA logos printed on the back teased and laughed with one another.

  “Gods, Future Farmers of America,” I said. “I remember them. I guess it’s too damned hot for the jackets. When I was in high school, the minute it got cool enough, those damned blue cotton jackets would come out. Then the basketball teams would get out their letter jackets.”

  “Y’all had a team?” Dixxi asked.

  “Yeah, a boys and a girls team. They didn’t do too badly, but to be fair, they were playing teams from schools as small as we were—less than three hundred students in the whole junior high and high school.” I took a big gulp of my drink. “White Rock was, and still is, enormous in comparison. They’ve got about nearly six hundred kids in high school now, right?”

  Dixxi nodded. “Yeah, enough for several sports, along with cheerleaders, pep squads, pool parties, and subsequent teen pregnancies.”

  “Sounds like nothing much has changed,” I said. “There were always high school girls getting knocked up around here, but we never had many in Rio Seco. As far as I know, there’s only been two or three in the last couple of decades.”

  “White Rock is a hotbed of teen fertility,” Dixxi said. “Four cheerleaders pregnant this year. Half that squad out there are alternates. I think, total, White Rock had at least thirty-five pregnancies this past school year, mostly due to ignorance. Their freaking parents don’t talk to them about sex and don’t let the school teach it.”

  “Just brilliant.” My sarcasm knew no bounds when it came to this sort of ridiculousness. “What century is this again?”