Only Human (world of the lupi)

by Eileen Wilks

  "Little wolf." He exhaled. "Get a lot of tickets, do you?"

  "No." She hadn't seen him tense this time, but out of the corner of her eye she did catch him relaxing again. She grinned. "I'm a good driver, actually. Good reflexes. Not as fast as yours, I suppose. I guess it might be nerve-wracking to have someone whose reflexes are half the speed of yours in the driver's seat."

  "Only if they think they're invulnerable," he said dryly.

  "You're the one who ought to feel invulnerable. It takes a lot to hurt a lupus, doesn't it?"

  "Because we heal so quickly, we can take a lot of damage. But we have the same nerve endings humans do. We hurt every bit as much."

  He thought of himself as a lupus. Not as a human. For the next few blocks she couldn't think of anything more to say.

  Chapter 4

  LILY HATED THE morgue. It was an unprofessional reaction, one she'd tried to overcome, but she had yet to set foot inside the cold, white walls without feeling repelled.

  It wasn't the bodies that got to her. Nor the smell. It was what happened to those bodies here that made her skin feel two sizes too small. Autopsies were necessary. They were also the final, most complete invasion of privacy possible.

  The attendant was new—at least, Lily hadn't run across her before. She was young, African American, her hair cropped very short to show off an elegant head and neck. And she was staring at Rule Turner.

  Did the man have that effect on every woman whose path he crossed? "Detective Yu," she said, holding out her shield in the soft leather case her brother had given her for her birthday last year. "I understand you've got Carlos Fuentes chilled down. We need to have a look."

  She blinked, then stood. "Sure. This way, Detective."

  Lily's shoulders and spine were tight as she and Turner followed the attendant down a short hall.

  "You don't like this place, either," he said abruptly.

  She looked at him. There was strain around his eyes, and

  his lips were thinned. "I guess it smells pretty bad here to you."

  "It's not the smell that bothers me."

  The attendant spoke cheerily as she pulled on one of the handles and slid the long drawer out. "Here you go."

  What blood was left in the body had settled, of course. The back and buttocks would be livid, but the undamaged part of his face, his shoulders, and his upper chest were waxy and pale. He looked cold beneath the thin sheet. And very dead.

  Lily's lips tightened. She glanced at Rule. "The sheet—?"

  "I'll need it off."

  The attendant looked surprised, then upset as she removed the sheet. That puzzled Lily. Why would a morgue attendant be upset at being asked to remove a sheet from a body? The obvious assumption was that Rule was here to identify the victim and, given the condition of the dead man's face, looking at the body made sense.

  Oh. Lily's lips twitched. The young woman didn't like the idea that Rule might be intimately familiar with another man's body. Well, no one enjoyed having their dreams snuffed out. Even the brief, silly ones.

  Rule bent close to the ravaged throat and sniffed.

  "Hey!" The attendant grabbed his shoulder and tried to pull him back. She might have been tugging on a Buick, for all the effect she had. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

  "Exactly what he's been asked to do." Lily took the woman's arm and firmly urged her back. "By Chief Delgado."

  "He was asked to sniff a corpse?" she exclaimed, outraged.

  Lily lifted both eyebrows as if the question were absurd, rather than the action. "Yes."

  The attendant looked as if she would have bolted from the room if regulations hadn't called for her to remain. Lily didn't much want to watch him, either, but perversity or pride kept her from looking away.

  He made a thorough job of it, smelling all up and down the body, paying close attention to the wounds and the cold, flaccid hands. He was intent, focused, and somehow still impossibly elegant. Not like a beast at all—more like a wine connoisseur about to deliver a verdict on the bouquets of various vintages.

  And that thought was both absurd and macabre. Lily bit her lip to keep from giggling like an idiot

  At last he straightened, met her eyes, and shook his head slightly.

  "You couldn't tell."

  "He was killed by a lupus," he said flatly. "Beyond that..." He shrugged. "Very little scent remains."

  "We already knew the killer was a lupus."

  "Perhaps you did. I didn't until now. There are some who might want to fake the slaying of men by lupi."

  Lily remembered their audience, a wide-eyed attendant who might talk to the wrong person, like a reporter. She jerked her head, indicating she wanted him to follow, and headed for the door.

  He thanked the attendant politely. She should have done that, she thought, upset and not knowing why. Had she counted so much on his sense of smell to give her a lead? That was foolish.

  He caught up with her at the door and took her elbow. “I want coffee. Something to get the taste of this place out of my mouth."

  Before she stopped to think, she'd agreed. Together they left that cold, bright room with its neatly filed bodies.

  INSTINCT TOOK HER to Bennie's Bar & Grill. Bennie's was large, dark, and noisy, known for its cheeseburgers. As soon as she stepped inside, Lily sighed. Usually her instincts weren't this lousy.

  Bennie's was a cop hangout.

  It wasn't crowded at this hour. She only spotted two faces she knew as they headed for the back, but everyone seemed to recognize the man with her. The looks she and Rule drew varied from startled to snarly. Cops were good with faces, and his was memorable.

  By the time they sat in a booth near the rest rooms, she was feeling self-conscious and prickly. "I wonder if this is how a white woman felt inSelmain 1960 if she went into a restaurant with a black man."

  He shook his head slowly. "Our fellow customers aren't going to take either of us out in the alley and beat us up for having dared to be seen in public together. The waitress won't even refuse to serve me."

  She grimaced. "I'm overreacting, you mean."

  “There are parallels. If people hadn't started refusing to sit at the back of the bus back then, measures like the Species Citizenship Bill wouldn't be possible now. Have you given any thought to going out with me?"

  She blinked. "For a supposedly sophisticated man, you have lousy timing. I just watched you sniffing a corpse."

  "It's a subject that will keep coming up, good timing or not."

  A waitress drifted up—young, blond, and pierced. There was a ring in her eyebrow, three studs on one ear, and another ring in the belly button her midriff-hugging top exposed. She set Lily's water in front of her without glancing in her direction. Her eyes were wholly on Turner, huge with fascination ... and fear.

  And he knew. Awareness of the girl's fear was there in the flicker of his eyes, the softness of his voice as he ordered coffee.

  "I'll have a cup, too," Lily said, peeling the paper from her straw. "Make it blond."

  The waitress nodded and left.

  Lily crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. "Is it because you're a lupus? Or do you get all this attention because you're a celebrity?"

  He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "I'm probably the only lupus she'll ever meet—knowingly, at least."

  Lily nodded as a piece fell into place. “That's the reason for all the black, isn't it? I've never seen a photograph of you where you're wearing colors. Just black. You want people to recognize you. You want them to know they're meeting a lupus."

  Amazingly, a touch of color sharpened those hard cheekbones. "Black is good theater."

  "And your face is unforgettable. When people see you, they remember. You do the mystery bit well—a hint of glamour, the allure of the forbidden or the dangerous. That's the image you want people to associate with lupi. You're sort of a poster boy for your people."

  "Thank you."

  He was insulted. She grinned. "
You don't like being called a boy or cocky, which is for puppies. I think you've started to believe your image."

  All at once he grinned back. "Maybe I have."

  The grin transformed his face, turning it from dark and disturbing to someone outrageously appealing—but someone who wore ragged jeans on weekends, played baseball with the guys, and changed the oil in his car. Lily didn't even think about trying to reply. She was too caught up in that grin, what it did to his eyes and the way it lifted her heart

  "Here you go." The waitress deposited their coffee, dumping a couple of containers of creamer beside Lily's cup.

  Lily hadn't so much as glimpsed her approach. Shaken, she tore one of the creamers open and dumped half the contents into her coffee.

  Had he used some kind of magic on her? Or did it just spill out from him naturally, without his willing it? If it wasn't magic ... she didn't want to think about what it would mean if she could react like that to him without any magic involved "Does magic have a smell?"

  His eyebrows lifted. "It can. Why?"

  "You knew the attacker was lupus. Our lab did, too—at least, they could tell it was someone of the-Blood, because magic leaves traces. I wondered if you were smelling the same kind of traces they found."

  "I don't think so. Magic does have a distinctive scent, but only when it's active. When a spell is being performed, for example. What I identified was the smell of lupus, not magic itself."

  "Is there anything else you can tell me about the killer?"

  He frowned and sipped his coffee. She was not surprised to see that he drank it black. "He wasn't a juvenile."

  "You can tell that from the scent?"

  "No. The body wasn't eaten."

  Coffee sloshed in her cup. She set it down carefully. "Explain."

  "It's pure superstition that an adult lupus will be overcome by bloodlust and attack whatever moves. Young lupi lose themselves in the beast, but we learn control. If we didn't, we really would be the ravening beasts depicted in movies like Witch Hunt.”

  "So a child or adolescent wouldn't have acquired control yet."

  "Not a child. The Change arrives with puberty."

  She thought of a particularly improbable photograph she'd seen while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store recently. A woman had been sitting up in a hospital bed with several blanket-wrapped bundles tucked into her arms. Bundles with puppy faces. “The National Tattler would be disappointed to hear that."

  "I doubt the Tattler allows facts to interfere with its editorial focus."

  "I guess not. Talk about raging hormones." Lily gave herself a moment to think by sipping her coffee. This was completely new information. She hadn't heard it, read it, anywhere. Why would he trust her with this knowledge? Was it true? "You’re saying that a young lupus kills. And eats what he kills."

  "If he is allowed to, yes. But we are careful with our children. None go through the Change unsupervised."

  Her lips twitched. Embarrassed, she took a quick sip of coffee.

  "Something amuses you?"

  "I have an odd sense of humor," she said apologetically. "I thought of those ads—you know, the public service ones?— where parents of teenagers are told to nag them about where they're going, who they'll be with, all that. And I pictured one aimed for the parents of teenage lupi: 'Where are you going? Who else will be there? Have you eaten? I expect you back before the moon rises, young man!' "

  He burst into laughter. "You're not that far off."

  A bubble of happiness lodged beneath her breastbone. She liked the sound of his laughter, the way his head went back to open his throat to it, the smooth line of his throat... uh-oh, she thought, the bubble popping. What's happening here?

  She poured more creamer into her coffee so she could stir it around. A light touch on her cheek made her look up, startled.

  "Hey. The light suddenly turned off in your face. What happened?"

  She could have told him again to keep his hands to himself, but it would have been dishonest. Somehow, between one grin and a moment of shared laughter, they'd stepped outside their proper roles and entered undefined territory.

  But the very lack of definition made complete honesty im-

  possible. She couldn't refer to a relationship that hovered over them only in potential, a heavy cloud that might hold storm and lightning—or might pass on without shedding a single drop. She certainly couldn't tell him that his promiscuity repelled her.

  Lily chose her words carefully. "You have two sons yourself, I understand."

  "It seems you do read the Tattler."

  "Like I said earlier, after the first killing I did some research."

  "On me?" His mouth twisted. "What exactly is it you suspect me of?"

  She shrugged, uncomfortable but unwilling to apologize for doing her job. "You're very well known. You live in the enclave—"

  "Clanhome. We don't call it an enclave."

  "All right, then, you live at Clanhome, but you have a condo here in the city and you travel all over the place, partying with the Hollywood crowd, meeting with policy makers in Sacramento and Washington. You've made yourself into a public figure, and I have to think that's intentional—you're trying to replace the old stereotypes with an image you've consciously created. Of course I found out what I could about you."

  One corner of his mouth tipped up, more in irony than humor. "You're perceptive. Has it occurred to you that if I've been creating an image, whatever information is available about me would be part of that image?"

  "And not necessarily true, you mean? But the image tells me things, too. Like what you want people to believe about lupi. Why does your father so seldom appear in public?"

  He studied her for a moment, his mouth drawn into a thin line, as grimly expressive as those remarkable eyebrows. "You should ask him that. He prefers not to come into the city, however. You'll have to go to Clanhome."

  "I tried that. They wouldn't let me inside the gates. I've called. A very polite young woman told me she'd pass on my message. You can get me in, though."

  "I could get you in, yes, but just getting inside the gates won't do you any good. No one would answer your questions.

  You need the backing of the Lupois. Give me a few days to arrange things."

  Or to hide whatever needed to be hidden. "What needs arranging?"

  "My father is away right now. Wait until he returns."

  The muscles along her cheeks and jaws tightened. He was concealing something, and doing a clumsy job of it. "Why can't you arrange for me to speak with people at Clanhome yourself? Aren't you in charge with your father gone?"

  "It doesn't work that way." His fingers stroked up and down the mug absently.

  "How does it work, then?"

  "I'm not like a vice-president, able to step in if the real leader is unavailable. I'm the prince and the heir, and..." His smile flickered. "A poster boy for my people. I have no authority of my own. I simply uphold the Lupois's authority."

  "Okay." He seemed to think he was telling her something significant, but nothing he'd said so far was startling. "How do you get to be prince, anyway? Is it strictly hereditary?"

  "To be named prince, I had to prove three things. That I was of royal blood, yes, though we do not follow primogeniture. My father has two other sons, both older than I am."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Very few do. My brothers, unfortunately, did not succeed at the second test. Since a king must be able to pass on his power, the prince must be able to sire children. As you know, I have two sons."

  Had he gotten those sons on their mothers in order to become prince? The possibility left a foul taste in her mouth. "And the third thing?"

  "That I could tear out the throat of any who issued a formal challenge."

  That left her with nothing whatsoever to say.

  His mouth crooked up on one side, but there was no smile in his eyes. "Think about it. The Lupois rules for life. If anyone disagrees with his decisions, t
hey have two alternatives. They can try to change his mind. Or they can kill him."

  Slowly the ramifications sank in. "When you say you support his authority, does that mean you're a sort of bodyguard? Or are you more like his muscle?"

  "Both, perhaps, in the sense that the army is the 'muscle'

  of the president. We are not a passive people, but we have great respect for honor and custom. Any member of the clan may challenge the Lupois."

  "What does this challenge consist of?"

  "Battle. In wolf form."

  A sick certainty grew in the pit of her stomach. "A trial by combat, you mean. Your father is over sixty. He couldn't defend himself against a young opponent. You do that for him. You answer any formal challenges to his authority."

  He didn't answer, just looked at her gravely the way an adult might watch a child struggling to understand some complicated matter.

  She did not like being patronized. She didn't much care for the implications, either. "How is the winner determined in one of these battles?"

  "It varies, depending on the nature of the challenge and the will of the Lupois. In a serious challenge to the Lupois's authority, the winner is the one still alive at the end. Don't look so shocked, Detective. It's only illegal to kill one of us when we're on two feet, after all."

  Chapter 5

  THE SUN HAD set, but the sky still flew crimson and purple flags in the west. A boy who should have been inside at this hour whizzed by on his skateboard. Lily's breath heaved in her chest as she neared the outdoor stairs to her apartment. Sweat trickled down her temples and stung her eyes. Worf s claws clicked dully on the concrete beside her. His big head drooped, but he was panting happily.

  Lily's dog was undoubtedly a good deal more satisfied with their run than she was.

  It had been four days since the last killing. She knew little more now than she had when she had looked down at the ripped throat of the first victim, a young man whose only crime seemed to be that he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  There was nothing to link the two victims other than the manner of their deaths. She'd found no hard evidence, and only two possible witnesses. An old man and a teenage girl both spoke of seeing a tall, well-dressed man—an Anglo— near the park where Fuentes was killed. The timing fit, and the man's clothes, bearing, and race had made him stand out in an area mostly Hispanic. Neither witness had gotten a clear look at his face, but they thought he was smooth-shaven, neither especially old nor very young.