“Every single one of them,” he said. “Especially if you’re naked, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can you tell if any of them are panther shifters?”
He shook his head. “Not from here. There are too many smells in this place. If she was in your lap I could tell, but she wouldn’t tell us what we wanted to know.”
I nodded to our waitress, the girl whose g-string had eaten up too much of our cash to count. “What is she?”
“Vampire,” he said, his accent making the word sound even more sinister. A shiver went down my back, and Lord Balam chuckled. “You like ‘em undead, huh?”
“Gross.”
“I should introduce you to my friend the tiger shifter,” he said. “They’re undead.”
I whirled around, my heart slamming in my chest. Pictures flashed in my mind. Tadeu’s hatred burning into me. The tiger’s jaws clamping down on his throat. In the first moments, wondering if it was an animal or a shifter.
I hadn’t stopped to wonder how Father got a tiger. How convenient that it showed up with the Jaguar Court.
“What?” I asked, fury pounding in my head.
“All shifters are different,” Balam said. “For instance, only jaguars wear a cloak. Tiger shifters are undead.”
“Did you…” I asked, backing away. I had let this man inside me, had let him taste and touch me, come inside me. I had surrendered to him, let him spread my legs and make me scream in helpless ecstasy. And I knew nothing about him, not even if he’d helped kill the man who held my heart.
“Itzel…” he said warily, holding out a hand. Shaking my head, I took another step back.
“Watch it,” a voice snarled behind me. It was too late, though. I stumbled against a willowy fae, and her tray tipped, colorful drinks cascading to the floor. Glasses shattered, ice and sticky liquid splashing on the surrounding patrons.
“Itzel,” Lord Balam cried, leaping forward to grab my arms and steady me. I wrenched against his grip, but he held me with his inhuman strength.
“Let me go,” I yelled, yanking harder.
“You need to focus and think about what you’re doing right now,” he said, his eyes burning into mine. I knew what that meant. That meant just what Father had meant when he told me not to cause a scene after killing the only person in the world who truly understood me, knew me, and loved me anyway.
“Don’t tell me what I need,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Then tell me why you’re ruining our chances.”
“Did you bring him to court?”
Confusion flickered over his face. “Who?”
“Your tiger friend,” I said. “Is he the one who killed Tadeu? You know, my friend? You probably don’t remember, since he’s just a human and therefore expendable, but he’s the guy that tiger ate.”
Recognition dawned, and sympathy filled Lord Balam’s eyes. His grip loosened. “No,” he said quietly. “Itzel, we had nothing to do with that.”
I nodded, and though I knew I should feel like an ass for making a scene, I just felt drained and empty. Leaving a heavily guarded Camila in a hotel had made things less stressful, but looking for the panthers had still made for a tense, exhausting week.
Lord Balam’s tattooed arm circled my waist, and I let myself sag against him. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He pulled out the rest of his cash and handed it to the waitress with an apology and the excuse that I was the jealous type after all, and then we were outside.
The wind nearly wrenched the door off its hinges, hurling it back and ripping at our clothes and hair.
“Fucking Florida,” Lord Balam muttered, wrestling the door closed. The wind had us staggering to keep our feet as we made our way toward the car.
“Is this a hurricane?” I asked.
“Just a storm,” Balam said, tightening his arm around my waist.
“I’m sorry,” I said as we reached the corner of the building and stepped out of the direct wind. “I fucked that up royally.”
“You have every reason to be angry,” Balam said. “You suffered a great loss and witnessed an act of senseless violence. You’re not just processing the injustice, but also your personal trauma.”
I stopped walking, pulling him to an abrupt halt with me. “Did you just go all wise man on me?”
He cracked a small smile and held a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Don’t tell anyone.”
When we reached the far side of the building, we were sheltered from the wind. Instead of heading to the car, Balam sat on the curb and patted the concrete beside him. After a second, I sank down beside him.
“Need to tell me about him?” he asked, resting his elbows on his knees.
“The man I’m fucking is asking me to talk about the man I love,” I said.
“The woman I’m fucking is in love with another man.”
An empty dogfood bag went skittering across the pavement and wrapped itself around the trunk of a pine tree.
I sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t need to talk about him. I just thought it would always be… I don’t know. Immediate. It’s only been a week and a half, and I’m already accepting the fact that I’ll never see him again. I don’t want to accept it. I told myself I never would. But here I am.”
“You’re afraid it’ll be true if you accept it?”
“Can I trust you?” I asked, searching his dark eyes, the swirling black tattoos covering his wide, square face.
“Of course,” he said, his voice low and serious. “Whatever you say, it’s between us, Itzel.”
“I’m afraid I won’t care about getting my father out of there,” I said, resting my elbows on my knees and staring across the lot. “For years, I’ve waited for Camila to take the throne. I knew that when it happened, I could finally be with the man I loved. But now, that won’t happen. So, I had to focus on wanting revenge. But what if it’s not enough? What if I start to think it doesn’t matter without Tadeu, that nothing matters?”
“You don’t have to want revenge to think your father is…” Lord Balam stopped speaking, as if searching for a delicate way to put it.
“A monster?” I asked.
“I was going to say unsuitable,” he said. “But that’s not exactly true. He’s abused his power, though.”
I snorted. “What, your country doesn’t treat executions as a spectator sport?”
A gust of wind made its way around the building, pelting us with sand. I turned my face away, but Balam sat up straight, his nostrils flaring.
“What?” I asked.
A second later, a tiny black woman appeared from around the corner of the club. She wore bright red lipstick, orange flip flops, and a beige trench coat, which she held closed against the wind.
“You missed my set,” she said, giving us a cheeky grin that revealed a pair of deadly fangs. “Bum a smoke?”
“We don’t have any,” Balam said.
“Worth a shot,” she said, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. She tapped one out and put it between her lips before holding out the pack to us.
“Weren’t you just asking us for one?” I asked.
“Might as well bum one so I don’t have to use mine,” she said, fishing a lighter from her pocket.
“I’ll take one,” Balam said.
“Since when do you smoke?” I asked.
He shot me a look. “Since my girlfriend went ballistic on me for looking at a naked woman after insisting that she was totally cool with strip clubs.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Thanks, but I’ll keep my lungs intact.”
“Vampires don’t get lung cancer,” the vampire said, dragging on her cigarette.
“Question from a human,” I said. “How come you don’t have any shifter strippers?”
“We do,” she said. “Though if you ask me, they’re pretty boring. Look basically human.”
“Do you have a special shifter night?” I asked.
She grinned, nodding as she gestured with her cigarette. “You’re
one of those girls, huh?”
I ducked my head, and Lord Balam slipped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “She’s my little kitty chaser.”
“I bet she is,” she girl said. “Well, most of them work here on Thursday nights. Like I said, they’re boring. But a few work here on busier nights.”
I lifted my head. “And what if we wanted to find some…you know. Men?”
The vampire crossed an arm over her middle, propping her elbow in her palm and flicking her cigarette while squinting into the distance. “There’s a panther camp down on Sawmill Road,” she said. “But it’s pretty much a swamp, so you probably don’t want to go down there. They never really go anywhere, either.”
“Guess we’ll have to come back here on Thursday,” Balam said. “And you’ll have to settle for chasing some real kitty.”
“You wish,” I said.
“Actually, the best thing would be to wait this storm out,” the vampire said, pointing the ember of her cigarette skyward. “When it rains, the swamp floods, and they come scurrying out like cockroaches. I think they mostly hang out at Gideon’s until the flood recedes.”
“Who’s Gideon?” I asked, trying not to sound as excited as I felt. Could that be the Keeper?
“Gideon’s is a bar down the road,” she said, eyeing me with a little more interest of her own. She looked almost…hungry.
Shit. My heart was hammering with excitement. Had she heard that? Smelled it?
“Oh, we saw that on the way in,” Lord Balam said. “Remember?”
I shook my head.
“It’s the opposite of this place,” the vampire said, still eyeing my neck.
“All humans?” I asked.
She snorted. “Supernaturals only. No staring.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was totally staring, wasn’t I?”
She grinned and tapped an ash from her cigarette. “If I didn’t want to be looked at, I wouldn’t dance on a stage.”
“I’ve heard that panthers are a little shy,” Balam said. “Probably don’t like to be looked at.”
“Good luck finding your shy boy,” the vampire said, dropping her cigarette and crushing it with her flip-flop. “I’m going back in to shine like the star I am.”
When she was gone, I looked at Lord Balam, a smile spreading across my face. “You’re a genius.”
“That was totally worth sucking on this disgusting thing,” he said, smashing out the cigarette. “Nothing like bumming a smoke to get someone talking.”
I threw my arms around him and squeezed. “It looks like we have our first real lead.”
Twenty-One
“Good place to dump a body,” I said as Lord Balam eased the car onto Sawmill Road. The gravel stretched from the paved road through a watery, mucky marshland of grasses and submerged trees that had fallen during storms and drowned as the waters rose and claimed the low-lying areas of the state. Branches jutted from the scummy weeds, and vultures perched along the length of each exposed limb. Under the roiling black clouds, they made for an ominous picture.
After striking out at Gideon’s bar, which had a strict supernaturals-only policy that excluded me, we had decided to come check out the road the vampire had mentioned the next day. If we could find the camp, we could negotiate with the Keeper alone, which would be better than cornering him in a crowded bar, anyway.
“Thank you for doing this,” I said, resting a hand on the dash as I leaned forward to see into the swamp.
“You’re not the only one who wants to see change in the Ocelot Nation.”
“Yeah, well, I appreciate it,” I said. “We’ve basically taken over this search, and you didn’t even have to come.”
He flashed me a gloating smile. “I like to come.”
I rolled my eyes as I sat back. “I’ve noticed.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it,” he said. “Just last night you were begging me to water that sweet little pussy with my cum.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” I said, giving him a shy smile as I reached over to slip my hand behind his neck, toying with the curls at the back of his hair. A week ago, I might have been shocked by his words, but I had almost gotten used to his dirty talk.
“Keep doing that, and I might have to pull over and fuck you on the side of the road.” His hand landed on my thigh, heat spreading over my skin from the touch of his rough, warm hand and the promise in his words.
“Is that why you’re really here?” I asked. “Just because I’ll fuck you whenever you want?” I was surprised how tight my throat got at the words. I didn’t want it to be true, no matter how it had started. We’d been using each other then. Now… I wasn’t sure.
Lord Balam grinned, the tattoos on his cheeks moving as he smiled. “You think I have to crawl around in a swamp risking my life for a piece of ass?”
“Of course not,” I said, covering his hand with mine to stop it from moving higher. He was really, really good at deflecting questions by turning everything sexual. But no matter how much I wanted to spread my legs and let his skillful fingers sneak under my shorts and fuck me senseless, I wanted an answer more. “Is it really just about my father’s rule?”
Balam glanced at me, wetting his thick lips before answering. “No.”
“Tell me,” I said, my heart suddenly hammering. “Why’d you really come?”
Balam slammed on the brakes as the road seemed to disappear before our eyes. “Hold on,” he yelled, grabbing the wheel with both hands.
“Holy shit,” I screamed, bracing against the dash as the car skidded toward the drop.
Lord Balam twisted the wheel, but the old card just spun on the gravel. For a second, we were turned back the way we’d come, and I thought we’d just drive back out. Then the world dropped out from under us, and we were falling backwards.
A second later, the back end hit something that felt soft, and we slowly began to tilt back toward an upright position. Heart pounding, I released the dash and looked at Lord Balam. “What the hell?”
“Sinkhole?” he guessed, looking as shaken as I felt.
“We better get out of here before we become part of this swamp,” I said, remembering my earlier comment about burying bodies here.
As the car righted itself, water began to trickle in through gaps and cracks in the floorboards and around the bottom of the door.
We rolled down our windows and scurried out onto the roof.
“Now what?” I asked, peering down into the murky water around us.
“Now I think we swim,” Lord Balam said, grimacing.
“Do you think there are alligators?”
“Among other things.”
I didn’t even want to know what that meant, so I turned, preparing to dive in. And there, crouching on a fallen tree not twenty feet from us, was a man. At least, I thought he was a man. He crouched with his knees wide, his hands hanging between them, a position more like an animal than a human. Long black hair hung loose past his bare, red-brown shoulders, and his jade green eyes fixed on us with predatory intensity.
A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky overhead, and the air felt suddenly charged.
“Balam,” I whispered, reaching back to grab his hand. “Should we call for help?”
“That’s him,” Balam said, his voice sure and quick.
“Help us,” I cried, since the man obviously knew we were stuck. He didn’t move, though, only watched with an alert, ready expression, like he was waiting to pounce. The car beneath us was sinking into the ooze, and suddenly, I wasn’t so sure this had been a sinkhole. It was awfully shallow.
“We need you,” I said, although I was already wondering if it would be better to drown in his trap before he fished us out to eat us.
“I’m going to shift,” Lord Balam said, pulling his cloak closed around him.
With a feline grace that did not belong to any human, the stranger turned and leapt across the marshes to another fallen tree, then bounded to another, disappearing within seco
nds.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
“Come on,” Lord Balam said. “We need to get to dry land.”
As if in mockery, the sky opened, fat drops pelting down on us.
We eased off the gurgling car and into the water, which came up to my waist. The rain had brought a chill on the wind, but the water around us was disconcertingly warm. Like a really scummy, green bath.
“Is this going to ruin your cape?” I asked, trying to keep my hands above the water for balance as I dragged my feet through sucking mud and slimy grasses.
Lord Balam chuckled. “No.”
“I know I wouldn’t go swimming in a fur coat.”
He shook his head, staring down into the water as he slogged through.
“You think this is home to little critters that swim up your urethra and lay eggs in your bladder?” I asked.
“Don’t piss, and you’ll be okay.”
“And to think I was just considering it.”
I reached for the edge of the road, which was a few inches above my head, but Balam grabbed my wrist. “Wait.”
“For what?” I asked, feeling my feet sinking further into the mud with every second. “An anaconda to swallow us?”
“There’s one of them up there.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” I said. “Anacondas or cannibals?”
“I’ll lift you up,” Balam said. “Stay alive until I climb up.”
With that, he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me. The mud released me with a loud, squelching sound, and then I was airborne. I tumbled onto the road, bracing my hands to catch my fall and scraping the shit out of them in the process. Scrambling to my feet, I pressed my palms against my shorts, hoping the smell of blood wouldn’t attract the… Panther.
Holy fucking shit, you’re about to get disemboweled, Itz.
A real fucking panther. It stood on the road, its black coat sleek as oil in the rain, darker spots like a jaguar’s hidden in the already black fur. Its tail swished slowly back and forth. I stared, unable to look away as it lowered its head, its eyes locking on mine. Jade green eyes.
It’s still human in there somewhere, I told myself. At least I hoped to all the gods it was. Not that it had helped my mother.
Broken Princess: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Feline Royals Book 1) Page 14
