"I don't like to be pushed."
"Noted," Jasmine purred. "But don't think you'll survive much more of that sort of behavior."
"Noted," he replied.
As if they were old friends, Jasmine turned and began to wander around him in a kind of circle. "You really think I don't know what's going on in that head of yours, Guillaume? Don't be coy with me, and I'll afford you the same respect. You're still hoping everyone's going to come out of this alive. But I promise you, that's not going to happen."
She had made it nearly all the way around him when she stopped and looked up, all trace of amusement gone from her features. "You thought you would alarm your human pet, the woman from the bar, and she would alert her brother. You counted on Jack and Molly to come down, guns blazing like in some old western, creating enough of a disturbance that you might free yourself and kill me. Then you could find Olivia. And, credit where credit is due, the Dwyer boy has proven hard to kill time and again. But not anymore."
At her words, Bill felt his chest tighten and a glacial cold spread through him. "What have you done?"
The smile returned, and he was certain her teeth had lengthened, sharpened. Even without knowing it, she was letting the beast out. Jasmine strutted as though she were in complete control, but she could not even cage her own wild soul.
"Not what I've done, Guillaume, though I'd like to claim responsibility. It's what they did. Stuck their noses in where they didn't belong. Upstate, they tried to prey on some friends of mine, but got their own legs stuck in the trap. We've got them."
Then they're alive, Bill thought.
Jasmine must have seen his reaction in his face, for she frowned. "I'm on my way up there now. They killed Tanzer. I plan to tear out their throats myself. He would have done no less for me."
Thoughts raced through his mind as he tried desperately to put together some response, either in word or action, that would save the lives of these young people who had become his family. Nothing he thought of would end without their deaths, or Olivia's, and he simply could not make that choice.
Satisfied by his inaction, Jasmine turned her back on him and began walking across the club toward the doors. His guards closed in again on either side of him, not bothering with human masques now. Mister Blond was bleeding from his snout and some of it streaked his teeth; they gleamed pink. The injured Prowler seethed with menace, but Bill ignored him. His mind was on his friends, and on Courtney. If Jack and Molly had also disappeared on her, he could hardly imagine how panicked she must have been.
Jasmine paused at one of the support columns and turned to him again. "I'll be back late this afternoon. By then, of course, your lover may also be dead, in which case I'll be more than happy to release you and Olivia." Her orange eyes went wide in feigned surprise. "Oh, that's right. I neglected to tell you that she's here. The Dwyer woman, I mean. Right here in the city. Looks like when she couldn't reach baby brother she decided to come after you herself. Adorable, isn't it?"
Bill stood stiffly, frozen inside now, and simply stared at her. All the rage he felt growing up inside him, the beast that scented others of its kind and wanted to run wild, showed only in the flare of his nostrils and the clench of his jaw.
Then the doors of the Voodoo Lounge flew open and Jasmine's mate, Alec, strode in. His face was etched with panic and when he saw Jasmine he looked for a moment as though he might bolt. What's this? Bill thought, but already he knew it was something he was going to like. Alec hesitated a moment and then crossed to Jasmine. He kept his head bowed as he whispered to her. Jasmine snarled a curse, but there was more. As if confessing to cleanse his soul, Alec leaned in further, whispered something else.
Jasmine spun away from him, furious, and advanced on Bill. After a second, he realized her focus was not on him, but on Mister Blond and Mister Red.
"We're going to keep him here now. Put him in the back, find a room without windows. There's a storeroom or something there. Make sure he doesn't get out."
"Change of plans?" Bill asked lightly, certain to keep his face without expression.
Her lips curled back but she said nothing. After a moment she turned to Alec again. "Put out the word. I want them all dead, and their heads as proof."
Bill felt practically giddy. Jasmine wasn't going anywhere. That meant that Jack and Molly were no longer prisoners, if they had ever been.
"What about Tanzer?" he reminded her. "Aren't you supposed to do it yourself? In his memory?"
All the attention in the room had been on Jasmine's tirade, but now with his question it shifted. The gathered Prowlers wanted an answer to that question as well. Jack Dwyer seemed almost like a demon to them now, unkillable, waiting for them in the shadows, when they were the ones who were supposed to be lurking there. Was Jasmine now afraid of him?
She stiffened, obviously aware of the impact of the question, and glared at Bill. "I'll be hunting them myself. But I grow impatient enough that I'm not so picky any more." Then she glanced at Alec again. "Spread the word. Kill them, or draw them here. I want all of them dead."
"But Jasmine," Alec began, tentatively. "What about Winter? You can't really mean for us to —"
"Stop," she said, her voice soft but carrying all through the cavernous room thanks to its acoustics. Jasmine looked suddenly tired, and she shook her head. "Don't tell me what I mean, Alec. There's a dream in the balance here. I want the wild back, don't you?" She looked around at the others gathered there. "Don't all of you? I don't want a chain or a collar or a yoke. I want to be wild."
There was a collective grunt of assent and some attendant growling. Mister Blond and Mister Red both seemed to have forgotten Bill for the moment, captivated by the leader of their pack. Her command over them was frightening.
"If Winter has thrown in with the Dwyer woman, he stands against the dream. We have no choice but to kill him."
With that Jasmine at last left the floor of the club, back through the door to the right of the stage. Bill stared after her, taking it all in. Jack and Molly were free and on their way from the sound of things. Courtney was already here in the city. And Winter was with her. Winter had chosen sides.
The creature that had once been called Guillaume Navarre smiled. Jasmine had asked him to act as bait, never imagining that she might become the prey. Now if he could only discover where Olivia was being held, Bill thought things might work out after all. Not without bloodshed, of course, but that was all right. He kept the beast within him in check, but that did not mean he did not feel its savagery. After what Jasmine had done, she could not be allowed to survive.
In the end, he would have her blood.
When gray dawn filtered down into the canyons of Manhattan, Courtney rose from bed and limped to the windows without her cane. The curtains in the tiny Fitzgerald Hotel were just as dingy as the rest of the place, but she needed to see the morning and so she parted them, then wiped her hands on her nightshirt.
Though the clock on the night table did not work, she gauged that she had slept only a few hours the previous night, and fitful hours at that. Roger Martelle had been an animal, a Prowler, and a traitorous beast at that. He had conspired with Jasmine and with Lao and might well have sent Bill to his death. For all of that, the memory of the night before sickened her. Not merely Winter's murder of the other monster, but the satisfaction she had felt when she struck Martelle with her cane. The sight of his blood had pleased her, and she had spent the night nauseous and feverish over that pleasure. It was one thing to kill the animals to stay alive or to keep them from killing others, but what Winter had done was murder.
If she could allow her fear for Bill and her hatred of these things to take her so firmly in its grasp, to overwhelm her so completely, then what separated her from the Prowlers? It was a question that had haunted her throughout the night, along with her fear for Bill. Now, as she stared out at the city, already alive with delivery trucks, taxis, shops and restaurants opening up, and a scattering of people on their way in
to start work early, those questions dogged her again.
How do you define a monster?
Aren't humans also animals?
"Jesus," she whispered to herself, a hint of her mother's Irish brogue in her voice. "Stop thinkin' of yourself, Courtney."
Her gaze ticked to the night table, where her cell phone lay on its side, long charge cord plugged into the wall. Its face was lit and it had to be fully charged now, but it had not rung. Not all night. No matter how much she had hoped it would, had stared at it in frustration.
Now Courtney turned her back on the dawn, went to the edge of the bed and picked up the phone. It was too early for Tim or Wendy to be at the pub, assistant managers or not, so she dialed the number of her own apartment. When the machine picked up, she pressed the number nine twice.
"You have two messages," an electronic voice told her. "Message one . . ." There was a beep, and then another voice broke in, a girl's voice. "Courtney, hi, it's Eden Hirsch. When you get this message call me back. It's . . . it's hard to explain on a machine, but it's important."
Courtney was troubled by the urgency in the girl's voice, but had no plans to call Eden back right away. Whatever was happening at home, finding Bill took precedence. That, and figuring out why Jack and Molly had never checked in. She held her breath as the machine told her it was about to play her second message.
Beep.
"Hey, it's me."
Courtney let out her breath. Jack. Her relief was almost painful, and only now did she realize how worried for him and Molly she had been.
"Listen . . . we had some trouble up here. We're okay, now. Headed down to Manhattan. I tried calling your cell phone but I can't remember the number. It was preprogrammed, but our cells are trashed. Gone. I'll explain later. And I had it written down on a piece of paper in the Jeep but . . . ook, I'll tell you all this when I talk to you, but I'm gonna have to call you back. The important thing is this. If Bill checks in, tell him we've got Olivia. She's with us. We're going down to the city first thing in the morning to try to find him and maybe settle things with Jasmine once and for all."
There was a long pause as her brother tried to figure out if he had anything more to say. It was the way he ended every phone message he had ever left her.
"I'll . . . I guess I'll talk to you later. Soon as I know where you can reach us. Watch yourself up there, all right?"
There came another beep and the machine announced that there were no more messages.
Watch yourself up there.
Something had happened to Jack and Molly in upstate New York. From the sound of his voice, and what he didn't say, Courtney figured it had been pretty bad. But they were all right. Safe, for the moment. More than that, they had found Olivia somehow, which meant that if she and Winter could find Bill, that was the end of it.
The end of it, she thought, and smiled to herself.
But the smile was fleeting. It wouldn't really be the end as long as Jasmine was still alive. Her stomach churned at the flash of images from the night before that returned to her mind, then. Winter was an animal, little better than Jasmine, for all his airs. But how much different was she, truly, when despite her horror at Winter's murder of Martelle, she was prepared to do the same to Jasmine with her own hands if she had to?
Courtney considered calling back and leaving a message for Jack with her cell number, but since he had no idea she had left Boston, it would never occur to him to actually listen to the messages. She only wished she knew how to change the main message, the one callers heard, from here. But she did not. Courtney had no choice but to keep checking in until he left her a contact number.
Meanwhile, though, she would talk to Winter. After leaving Martelle's townhouse the previous night Winter had told her that this morning they would begin to reach out to members of the Prowler underground who were likely to know where Jasmine's lair was. Courtney thought that might be walking right into trouble, but she had little choice other than to follow Winter's lead. Whatever the beast had once been, no matter how much diplomacy he had engaged in once upon a time, she believed now that he would do anything necessary to keep Bill alive.
They had that much in common. Courtney hoped that was the only thing they shared.
It was already past noon when Jack followed Olivia and Molly along a narrow Greenwich Village street. He had lost all track of where, exactly, they were, instead merely following Olivia's lead. It had been a long and terrible night, and the morning had already seemed to go on forever. A sort of relief had washed over him when he had glanced at his watch and realized the morning was over. Hollingsworth, and all that had happened there, was behind them. Jack tried not to think about what lay ahead.
The night before, the State troopers had dropped them at their hotel and then actually brought in a first aid kit. None of his or Molly's injuries from the car accident were severe, though Jack found now that he had a pain in his lower back that he could not get rid of. But if some antiseptic and gauze were all they needed to deal with everything else, he figured they ought to be grateful for small miracles. There had been a small debate about whether or not he needed stitches for the long scratch Olivia had given him on his left cheek, but once it had been cleaned it didn't seem quite as deep. He would have a scar, no question, but probably not a bad one.
All in all, they had been lucky. Too lucky, in fact. Jack had a feeling they had used up all their luck for the year. Maybe for life. On the other hand, it wasn't all luck. Artie had not appeared since Jack had seen him in the parking lot the night before, but he hoped the ghost would soon return so Jack could properly thank him and find out exactly what happened. They had not spoken since he had asked Artie for help in locating the spirits of local Prowler victims, but clearly his friend's ghost had been up to more than that.
Before going to sleep — he and Molly had offered to let Olivia take his place in the bed, but the Prowler girl had demurred, insisting that she was used to the floor — Jack had called the apartment. Though it was the middle of the night, Courtney had not answered the phone. He could only think that she was exhausted and had not heard it ring, so he had left a long message, promising to call back as soon as they figured out where they could be reached.
This morning he had tried her once more, again with no luck. He assumed she was at the market, and left no message because they had yet to stop anywhere long enough for her to call him back. Now, as the day began to slide into afternoon, he felt more than ever a need to touch base with his sister, to reassure her that he was all right, and satisfy himself that she was.
Of course, if he told her he was all right, he would be lying.
The State troopers had driven them over to a car rental agency just after eight o'clock that morning. Olivia had apparently slept quite soundly, but she was the only one. Jack and Molly had shifted anxiously all night, consumed by their own apprehension and sensitive to each other's. The drive down to Manhattan had been peppered with small talk, stories from each other's lives, and they had gotten to know Olivia a little better. Such trivialities passed the time and helped them avoid discussing the matters at hand. Upon arriving in the city Olivia had helped navigate them to an outdoor parking lot in Greenwich Village, and they had left both the car and their bags there.
As Jack followed the girls, he glanced around nervously. It was lunch time in Manhattan and people milled around all over. Up ahead he saw the massive marble arch of Washington Square Park, pigeons spying on the crowd below, waiting for bits of sandwich to be dropped by people enjoying the perfect October day.
And it was a perfect day. The sun shone with an autumn glow, the sky was blue and clear, and a cool breeze rustled fallen leaves in the park. Jack figured it was in the mid-fifties, but with the sun so bright, he felt warm in the hooded sweatshirt he wore.
They crossed the street and into the busy park. A couple of kids sat on a bench with their skateboards across their laps and sullen expressions on their faces. Now that the lunch crowd had hit, the
re wasn't room in the park for them to board. Not far away, a dreadlocked thirtyish woman strummed an acoustic guitar and accompanied herself with a harmonica set into a funky neck brace.
Olivia stood at the edge of the park and gazed out over this sea of New York culture. On the far side of the park there was more going on. A juggler in clown makeup rode a six-foot unicycle. There was more music coming from over there as well. A saxophone played Dave Brubeck's "Take Five."
The Prowler girl turned toward them, focusing on Jack and Molly for what felt like the first time since they had parked the car. She wore a pair of Molly's pants and a light green cotton top with spaghetti straps; too cold for that outfit, Jack thought, but then, she probably doesn't feel it the way we do.
"This way," she said, and then Olivia was off through the crowd.
As Jack tried to follow, he stared around at the crowd, picking out individual faces, frowning at anyone who seemed to be looking at him. He passed under the arch and when he emerged on the other side he watched the trees on the other side of the park, just to be sure no one was in them.
"Hey." Molly poked him in the side as she fell into step beside him.
Jack started. Then smiled. He reached down to take her hand in his and they walked like that, as if this were a date instead of . . . whatever it was.
"What's going on with you?" she asked, her voice just loud enough for him to hear. "You look like a mouse in cat territory."
Something twisted in his stomach. "Kinda what we are, isn't it?" he asked, and finally met her gaze full on. "Sorry. I just feel like, without our cell phones, without any weapons, we're walking into the lion's den here. Or Jasmine's den, at least. Makes me nervous. I don't know what I'm expecting to see, maybe snipers on every rooftop."
Molly's expression was grave as she reached up to slide her hand across the back of his neck. She pulled him to her and kissed him softly on the mouth.
Prowlers: Wild Things Page 18
