Taste Me

by Tamara Hogan

  And sometimes screams fill the stadium.

  The place was bedlam. He was in the way everywhere he stood, and he’d seen way too much of the lower torso of a valkyrie straining to bring new life into the world, but he wasn’t going to leave until he talked to Gideon Lupinsky. Jack was in the cafeteria, getting them an umpteenth cup of awful coffee, and Krispin Woolf waited, tight-lipped, in a family room just down the hall. He’d declined Jack’s offer of coffee with icy politeness. “All I’d like is privacy, please.” Despite the closed door between them, Krispin’s misery leached into the lobby.

  Lukas’s mini-comp pinged. He edged into the doorway of an empty family room directly across from the nurse’s station, his stomach sinking as he skimmed the preliminary findings that the lab had routed to both him and Gideon.

  The skin they’d scraped from underneath Andi’s fingernails was incubus. Lukas sighed. Like they didn’t already have enough of a problem with bigots thinking incubi were uncontrollable sex fiends.

  Lukas stepped into the family room and sat on the institutional couch. Though the thing looked like a torture rack from The Inquisition, he was so damn tired that any horizontal surface looked pretty attractive right now.

  He’d been the first to arrive, beating even Andi’s ambulance, because Sebastiani Security headquarters was located a mere two blocks away from the hospital. Gideon and his rookie had been delayed at the scene, and Jack and Krispin had hit the morning rush hour exactly wrong, turning the drive from the Chanhassen boardroom from forty minutes into an hour and a half.

  And thank the aurora that Krispin had been delayed, because no father, no matter how much of an asshole, deserved to witness what Lukas had seen as the gurney carrying Andi had emerged from the ambulance. She’d looked positively feral, spontaneously shifting between human and werewolf and back again, growls and moans and groans mixing and pushing from her damaged throat like gritty asphalt. She’d clutched at her neck repeatedly, as if she’d tear it open herself if she could. The sour aftertaste of her terror still lingered on the back of his tongue.

  If someone did this to a member of his family, there’d be nothing left of the guy except a gut pile by the side of the road.

  The doctor who’d run alongside Andi’s gurney hours ago emerged from behind a closed door. Lukas watched as he rested his weight against the nurse’s station, swung a monitor his way, and started to type. When he finished, the nurse behind the desk pointed to Lukas, who stood as the doctor joined him.

  The doctor covered a jaw-cracking yawn with his hand and blearily eyed the couch before shaking Lukas’s hand. One of the laminated cards clipped to his coat pocket identified him as Dr. Adnan Penn, MultiSpecies Trauma. The picture on the card was as bad as anything the Department of Motor Vehicles had ever slapped on a driver’s license.

  “How is she?” Lukas asked.

  Dr. Penn dragged a hand through his short, coal-black hair. “We repaired the damage to her throat. She’s critical, in Intensive Care, but… holding. Werewolves are so damn strong,” he said with a shake of his head. “There’s a chance that the trach might be permanent, but…”

  The rest of his thought didn’t have to be said: better that than dead.

  “When can Mr. Woolf see his daughter?”

  “I’m off to see him next,” Dr. Penn said. “Commander Lupinsky is with Ms. Woolf, but he said he’d only be a few more minutes. Mr. Woolf will be able to visit his daughter after the Commander finishes.”

  Exhaustion pulsed off of Penn in waves, and Lukas had to stiffen his knees to stay standing as the other man spoke. “Mr. Woolf has authorized us to update you and the Commander if there are any changes in her status.”

  If Andi Woolf died.

  Penn reached for his waist as his PDA beeped. “Here comes the next one.” He eyed Lukas grimly. “Good hunting, Sir.”

  Across the hall, Gideon Lupinsky emerged from Andi’s room, an evidence bag in his hand and a phone clapped to his ear. He was still wearing the thin, half-translucent jumpsuit he’d put on in Subterranean’s women’s restroom after placing his own clothing into evidence. More waterproofing than anything else, cops usually pulled the jumpsuit on to protect their clothing at messy crime scenes. Gideon’s bright red boxer shorts were clearly visible, but from the rigid expression on his face, people being able to see his underwear was the least of his concerns.

  Down the hall, Dr. Penn escorted Krispin Woolf into his daughter’s treatment room. Suddenly the voices in the waiting room quieted to a hush, then excitement buzzed like a hive of bees.

  His father had arrived.

  He, Jack, and Krispin Woolf hadn’t been recognized by too many people in the waiting room, and those who had recognized them had clearly seen that they were occupied. But Council President Elliott Sebastiani, accompanied by Siren Leader Claudette Fontaine? It was too juicy to ignore, even in the land of Minnesota Nice.

  Where the fuck was his father’s bodyguard? Lukas stepped in front of their bodies with his own, quickly herding them to the family room he’d just come from.

  Lukas closed the door behind them and moved them away from the window. “Damn it, Dad…”

  Elliott sighed and hugged him. “He cleared the elevator, watched the doors close.”

  “If he’s not next to you, he’s not guarding your body.”

  “If you’re here, why should I bother him?”

  Lukas opened his mouth, then shut it. Now was not the time, and his father was right—he was here. He hugged his father back, then leaned down and kissed Claudette on both cheeks. He sensed his father’s concern—for Andi, and for Lukas himself—but a much more complex set of emotions swirled around Claudette: a woman’s fear that he recognized intellectually but couldn’t fully appreciate, a helpless, gut-burning anger, and… maternal concern.

  He tensed.

  Claudette had passed her aristocratic bone structure and coloring down to her younger daughter Scarlett in spades. What was it about the Fontaine gene pool that pulled at the Sebastiani men so strongly? Did his father feel yanked around by his gonads too?

  If he did, he seemed pretty damn happy about it. Elliott’s wife, Lukas’s mother Dasha, had been dead a long time, and Claudette, this woman who’d stepped in out of friendship and practically raised him and his siblings alongside her own little girls, had twined herself around their hearts. After years of guilt and denial, his father had finally reached out and taken what he wanted.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t do the same.

  “How is Andi?” Claudette asked, her siren’s voice soft, empathetic. Lukas felt it comfort him, as she had no doubt intended. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Scarlett’s skill came down through the blood.

  “She’s critical but stable. They’ve repaired her throat, established an airway, and they’re keeping her sedated for the time being.” He stretched the stiffness from his shoulders. “She’s fighting.”

  Elliott took Claudette’s hand. “And Krispin?”

  Lukas shrugged. “He’s angry. Upset. Not talking too much.” Not talking aloud, anyway. But vengeance pulsed off the man as Lukas had easily interpreted the request Krispin couldn’t let himself speak: “Find who did this to my baby.”

  “His anger is understandable.” Claudette pulled Elliott to sit beside her on the couch.

  “Yeah.” Lukas plopped down in an adjacent chair, and they simply sat for several minutes, the bubbling of the saltwater aquarium on the table punctuating the silence. People walked by the closed door, some undoubtedly curious about what event had brought members of the Underworld Council to the hospital. They’d find out soon enough.

  Lukas relayed the information about the skin found under Andi’s nails. “Lupinsky is running like crimes, but nothing’s popped yet.”

  “Did you find anything at the scene?” his father asked.

  Lukas hesitated, his hand unconsciously rubbing his stomach. How to describe it? “Pleasure. Pain. Violence. All swirled together,” he said slowly. “And…
ashes.” He shrugged. “But maybe someone was sneaking a smoke in the bathroom.”

  “Or not.” Elliott looked at Claudette, then back at Lukas.

  Claudette’s concern fluttered into the room like a hummingbird, tripping his internal security perimeter. Lukas sat up straight on the couch. Shit. This was about Scarlett. He opened his mouth to speak, but Claudette beat him to it.

  “Aah, Lukas. You read me too well.” She pushed her silver and red hair behind her ear, and it swept right back onto her cheekbone again. “With what happened to Andi tonight, I’m nervous about the girls. Annika is pretty good at taking care of herself, always has been, but Scarlett…” Claudette ticked off reasons on her slender fingers. “She’s a wide-open target when she’s performing. She’s not street-smart. And just coming off the road? She’s absolutely exhausted.”

  Lukas snorted. “Yeah, a life filled with sex, drugs, and rock and roll might do that to you.”

  Claudette nailed him with a stare he usually didn’t see outside the boardroom.

  “Sorry.” Tipping his head back, he tried to work the kinks out of his stiffened shoulders, neck, and upper back. “It’s been a long day. I’m not usually so subtlety-impaired.”

  “Yes, you are,” she replied. “And you’re not being fair to Scarlett. But that’s an issue for another day.” Lukas sensed her finger hovering over the spring of a trap, and took a careful breath. She took Elliott’s hand again. “If there’s the slightest possibility someone is attacking the Council through their family members, Scarlett might just as well have a bull’s-eye painted on her back tonight.”

  To Lukas, a political motive for the attack on Andi Woolf seemed tenuous at best, but until he and Gideon could hit the street, he couldn’t rule it out, either. Couldn’t reassure her with empty platitudes.

  “We can’t rule out a political motive, but we haven’t found anything to support one either,” he responded. “Gideon and I have been at the hospital all night. Give us a chance to investigate, Claudette, to rule it out. As for the show tonight, you know that Underbelly is the safest place Scarlett could possibly perform. I’ve reviewed Jack’s security plan. It’s rock-solid. Jack will be there, right at her side.”

  “And you, Lukas? Where will you be?”

  Damn it. Lukas slouched back against the back of the couch and swiped his hands through his hair. He should have been better prepared for this. He knew the trap was about to snap shut; he felt the tension in the fucking hinges.

  “Lukas,” she pressed. “I want you there.”

  “No.” The instinctive response slipped out before he could stop it. He did not have time to babysit a spoiled rock star, especially this one—and not with Andi Woolf lying in a hospital bed, fighting for her life. “Claudette, I—”

  “I know you’re busy, and that you and Scarlett rub each other the wrong way. Nothing against Jack, but”—steel entered her voice—“I want you to keep watch over my daughter personally.”

  It was all Lukas could do to clamp down on manic laughter. If Claudette knew just how wrong he and Scarlett had rubbed each other, with which body parts, and how bloody long ago, he’d be strung up. There was no parental statute of limitations for what he’d done. He reached for his only argument. “Scarlett won’t agree.”

  “If you and Jack have problems with Scarlett, we can set Claudette on her,” Elliott advised. “She can be very persuasive.”

  Lukas remembered how Scarlett’s barely legal hands had felt on his younger body. Your daughter is no slouch in the persuasion department, either.

  Ah, shit. He stood and paced the small room, considering the ramifications of Claudette’s demand. Physical pain he could manage. Did, nearly every day. But standing in such close proximity to a siren who interpreted and amplified emotions with her voice? This particular siren, who he wanted with every cell of his body, but couldn’t let himself have again? She’d lead him around by the dick all night long.

  Clenching his jaw, he fought his mind back to Andi Woolf lying in her hospital bed. Was it a random attack, or politically motivated? Andi’s injuries went well beyond some guy—some incubus, Lukas made himself acknowledge—losing control, or not being able to handle his liquor. The taste of ashes gave them somewhere to start, but Claudette’s request would keep him off the street for nearly twenty-four hours.

  He couldn’t refuse.

  Like you wouldn’t have ended up at the show anyway, his mind whispered.

  He took a deep breath. He could damn well control himself around her. It would be tough, but he could do it. Even if it killed him. “Okay,” he replied curtly.

  Claudette stood and hugged him. Her relief smelled like fresh dandelions. “Thank you so much, Lukas.”

  His father joined them, wrapping his arms around them both. “Thank you,” Elliott whispered.

  His father had a pretty good idea what the request would cost him.

  “Well, then,” Elliott said. “We all have work to do, Lukas more than we do, I think. We should get going.” He turned to Lukas. “Will you be heading to Underbelly soon?”

  “A couple of hours more, I think. I have to touch base with Gideon first, then we’re going back to the scene. I’ll catch a shower and a change of clothes somewhere along the way.” Lukas looked at his watch and mentally rearranged his day. Any hope he had of catching a catnap had just been shot to hell. Where was Jack with the coffee?

  He dialed his father’s bodyguard, telling him the president was ready to leave and that he and Madame Fontaine required an escort to the car.

  “Is that really necessary?” Elliott groused. “So annoying.”

  “Good.” Lukas stepped out of the room before his father and Claudette, assessing it for threats before they walked down the hall. “Would you rather have a female bodyguard? Have her pose as your girlfriend?”

  “There’s no need to get nasty.” Elliott grasped Claudette’s hand. As they rode the elevator down to the parking garage, Elliott turned to him. “Thank you,” he said again. “For everything.”

  “No problem. Just get in the car.” Lukas watched closely while his father’s stony-faced bodyguard ushered Elliott and Claudette into the backseat of the armored Town Car, and closed the door behind them. As the car pulled away from the curb, Lukas mentally penciled in a serious career chat with the guard. Elliott was increasingly in the public eye due to his “day job” as CEO of Sebastiani Inc., the technology research conglomerate whose activities and subsidiaries uncomfortably straddled the Underworld/humanity boundary. Despite the guard’s formidable qualifications, he wasn’t going to last long if he couldn’t push back against his father.

  Thankfully, Lukas could drop himself into the concert’s physical protection plan with barely a ripple; all he had to do was change clothes and plant himself backstage. The fact that Underbelly was a Sebastiani property meant that its physical layout was secure, but Sasha’s demand that Underbelly be buttoned up tight, but not visibly enough to impact the atmosphere of barely controlled hedonism that made it one of Minneapolis’s hottest clubs, had given Jack fits. Just last week Jack had supervised the installation of additional metal detectors, doorjamb prototypes supplied by Sebastiani Labs. Sasha and her team had ticket technology under control; no one would be able to counterfeit the tickets for this event.

  Lukas wondered yet again whether he and Jack should have worked harder to convince at least some of the Council members to watch the show remotely, from the boardroom. If anyone or anything got past them tonight, they could take out most of the leadership of the non-human citizens of the planet in one fell swoop.

  Why did his father have to choose now to get a love life? Lukas made a mental note to assess the security at his father’s penthouse apartment again, and to assign him—them—a larger protection detail. If Underworld Council leadership continuity wasn’t a big enough stick for Lukas to swing at his father, he would use Claudette’s safety. Ruthlessly.

  Extremely dirty pool, given how his wife—Lukas’s mothe
r—had died.

  He walked back to the emptying waiting room, and saw Jack making his way down the hall. Bright yellow bananas peeked out of each of his suit pockets, and he juggled two gigantic cups of coffee. A good portion of a third appeared to be splashed down the leg of his Hugo Boss suit.

  “Hold on a sec,” Jack said into his headset as he approached. He handed Lukas one of the huge cups. “I had to fight a gurney for this. You owe me, big-time.”

  “I’m going to owe you even more before the day is through,” Lukas said with a sigh. “Slight change of plans for Scarlett’s show tonight.” He explained Claudette’s request.

  “I would have brought it up myself if she hadn’t,” Jack said. “I’m talking with Bailey now. I’ll ask her to meet us at Underbelly instead of the office this afternoon.”

  Lukas stared at him.

  “The meeting about the archiving project?”

  He’d forgotten all about it. The Council meeting and its contentious vote seemed like it had happened weeks ago. Lukas dragged his free hand through his hair, and took a slug of the coffee. It tasted like crankcase sludge, but it was caffeinated, and that was all that mattered right now. Jack was right; this meeting with Bailey couldn’t be postponed. Luckily one of them still had functioning brain cells.

  “Sure. Tell her to bring some party clothes.” They might as well drop her in feet first tonight and see how well she coped.

  Hell, what was he worried about? Bailey would cope better than he would.