He would have realized that she must have escaped his former employer, but he obviously hadn’t suspected that Gunther was also in San Francisco. He would have seen an unprecedented opportunity in her fortuitous appearance.
But had he told Cortland Renier the full truth?
Smiling coldly, Gunther walked back to his hotel. Perhaps it would not be necessary to use violence after all.
YURI WAS GONE.
Aria pushed away from the window and circled the room, counting her steps for the hundredth time. It seemed years since the Russian had told her about her real family, and ever since then she had been able to think of nothing but talking to Cort.
But he hadn’t given her the chance. He’d come home briefly to speak with Yuri—a conversation she hadn’t quite been able to make out—then had left again immediately, as if he wanted to avoid her. She could guess his reason for running away. He didn’t want to explain why he’d kept something so important a secret.
Yuri had claimed they’d just found out who she was, but that didn’t make any sense. Didn’t she and Cort have the same surname? Why, she’d asked, hadn’t he known her identity right away?
Because, Yuri had explained, she and Cort were related in only the broadest sense of the word. The first Reniers had come from Europe centuries ago, but the various clans spread across the United States shared little more than the name itself.
She had wanted to ask more about those clans, but Yuri had shaken his head and changed the subject. He’d told her that she’d been “taken away” from her cousins in New Orleans many years ago, and that they had been looking for her for a very long time. With a terrible hope, she had begged to know if her parents were still alive.
He had told her what Franz had always claimed: that her parents were dead. After that he’d refused to answer any more of her questions.
Aria hugged herself as if she might burst into pieces if she so much as breathed too deeply. She had a surname now, a real identity. She was finally beginning to find out who she was. Who she truly was.
She stopped in the middle of the room and tried to quiet her soaring thoughts. There was still so much she didn’t understand. Franz had told her she had come to him when she was a baby. In her earliest recollections she had been too small to reach the pretty carvings Franz always kept on the highest shelf of the big glass case in the cottage parlor. She could see herself reaching and reaching, tears running down her cheeks when the exquisite figurines remained beyond the grasp of her chubby hands.
So clearly someone had taken her away from her family—her cousins—when she was only an infant, sometime after her parents had died. When she and Franz had left for America, Franz had said she would meet the men who had first brought her to him. He had said they wanted to keep her safe. But New Orleans was very far from Carantia, and Franz had told her that there were many in Carantia who would want to hurt her.
So why would anyone have taken her from her family in America and sent her all the way across the ocean?
And why would Franz have kept her past a secret? Why had he kept her isolated in the mountains? Why had he waited so long to tell her about her own kind and bring her to America? Why had she and Franz headed for San Francisco instead of the city called New Orleans, where her family had been looking for her?
None of it made any sense, but there must be some explanation. Franz must have had very good reasons for doing what he had. He was no longer here to explain, but soon she would know. Soon she would know everything.
Torn between sadness and exultation, Aria tried not to let her wild suppositions overwhelm her. But when night fell, tugging at her senses like the sweet smell of fat deer grazing on the thick summer grass, she could no longer bear it. She had to speak to Cort.
You must wait, she told herself. It was what Cort wanted. It was the safe thing to do.
But she didn’t want to be safe anymore. She wasn’t stupid enough to let another stranger on the street fool her with promises, and fill her with poison that made her blind and deaf and dumb. Even in this ugly city with its stench of rot and machines and thousands of conflicting odors, she could track a familiar scent.
Twisting her hair into a knot on top of her head, Aria secured it with one of the pretty, fragile ribbons Cort had brought and planted her cap on her head. She found the stuff Cort used to polish his boots and shoes, and smeared it over her face so it looked like smudges of dirt.
With only a twinge of guilt, she slipped into the hallway, paused to listen and then crept out the front door.
No one was paying any attention to the house, or to her. People came and went on their own business, heads down, dragging their scents behind them. She was just another boy to them, and that was the way she wanted it.
There were no lights on this street like the ones she’d seen in other parts of San Francisco, but she didn’t need them. There was still a trace of Cort’s scent, very faint, lingering just outside, as if it had been trapped in a bubble that burst only as she walked through it.
Concentrating with all her might, Aria followed the scent as she would follow a days-old deer track in the mountains. It wove in and out of a thousand other distracting smells, most unpleasant, but she grasped it tightly and moved deeper into the noxious maze of the Barbary Coast.
She was so focused on Cort that she only smelled the men when they were almost upon her. Metal caught the light from an open doorway, flashing down in an arc near Aria’s shoulder. Rough hands snatched at her shirt, and a rope slapped against her face. She broke free and ran into a small street squeezed between two ugly brick buildings. All she needed was a minute to get out of her clothes.
But her attackers didn’t want to give her any time at all. While one of the men swung the rope, the other came at her again, too fast and strong to be human.
CHAPTER SIX
ARIA DODGED OUT of his way, furious at her own stupidity. Cort had been worried about her going out alone. She had assumed he was concerned about the men who had taken her the first time.
But these weren’t the same men at all. She might not have Cort’s ability to recognize wehrwölfe just by looking at them, but she couldn’t mistake the way this man moved, or how easily he countered her attempt to escape.
It was almost funny that the second werewolf she’d met wanted to hurt her. But he did, and there was no point in trying to warn him off, or ask him and the other man what they wanted.
And no one was going to help her. She’d learned in her first week on the Coast that the people here knew better than to get in the way of bad men.
Backing deeper into the alley, Aria swept off her cap, dropped it on the ground and ripped open the front of her shirt. The man with the rope waited while the other werewolf began to remove his own clothing. Aria tore her trousers open with one hand and threw them aside. Cold, damp air wrapped around her arms and legs as she flung her underthings away.
The strange werewolf finished undressing a moment later. He was big all over and very hairy, and when he Changed his shoulder stood as high as Aria’s head. She closed her eyes and let her own wolf take her. Her enemy went straight for her front legs and knocked them out from under her.
But Aria was fast, and strong. She had spent years running and riding up and down mountain slopes, and along treacherous trails that wound through dense forest and beside sheer cliffs. Her muscles reacted instantly, propelling her to her feet again. She snapped at the stranger’s nearest foreleg, her teeth sinking through fur, and into flesh and bone.
Her enemy yelped and snarled, swinging his big head around to seize the ruff on Aria’s neck.
“Don’t hurt her!” the other man cried. “He wants her alive and well!”
But the wolf didn’t seem to hear. He bore down on Aria, smothering her with his far greater weight. She realized that he could crush her without even trying. She struggled beneath him, gasping for breath, her tongue lolling and her ears flat against her skull as she scrabbled at the mud with her nails and tri
ed to get a grip on the stranger’s belly.
“Baldwin!” the man yelled. “Stop! If you—”
His voice cracked on a cry of pain. Aria made a feeble attempt to lift her head.
Cort, she thought. And suddenly she was free, the massive body on top of her tumbling sideways with a grunt of surprise. Aria leaped up, her whole body protesting the sudden movement, and sprang toward her attacker. A warm, thickly furred shoulder brushed hers. Together she and Cort fell on the stranger, who snapped and snarled but proved no match for the two of them working together. He rolled on his back in a grotesque posture of submission, and the stink of urine mingled with the foul carrion odor of his breath.
Cort stood over him, bristling and growling. Aria couldn’t laugh, not in this shape, but she grinned and danced with joy. She had never felt anything like this before, not even when she brought down the fleetest and noblest of stags after a long and exhausting hunt. She and Cort had won. Together.
But Cort didn’t seem interested in their victory. He Changed and stood over their enemy, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Get out of here,” he said, something cruel and rough replacing the usual smoothness of his voice. “Tell your master he won’t have her, even if he sends every loup-garou in California.”
He aimed a kick toward the other werewolf’s belly, but the beast dodged away and fled. The man who hadn’t Changed was already gone.
Cort turned to her. “Stay as you are,” he said harshly. He went to the mouth of the alley, glanced left and right, and gathered up the clothing he had dropped there. He had torn his clothing off when he’d Changed, and the garments were badly mangled. He examined them with obvious disgust.
“Ruined,” he said. He pulled on the trousers, which were ripped lengthwise from knee to hem, and fastened the two remaining buttons. He drew the equally torn shirt over his head, ignored his once-shiny vest and finished with his stained and dirty coat. His feet were bare and covered with mud. He looked so unlike his usual self that Aria wanted to laugh again.
That would not be a very good idea, even if she could have managed it in wolf form. He glared at her, promising reprisals for her disobedience, and picked up the rope the men had left behind.
“There is no point in collecting what remains of your clothes,” he said, “and it wouldn’t be advisable for a young woman to be seen walking the streets in a state of complete undress. You will pose as a dog until we get home. As for me—” He examined himself and made a sound of disgust. “I will doubtless be considered just another inebriate emerging from a fight in some den of iniquity.” He made a loop out of the rope. “Come here.”
The freedom she had claimed for so short a time, the warm rush of victory, could not be taken from her so easily. She laid her ears flat and bristled.
Cort sighed. “If you knew how much trouble you have caused…” He dropped the rope. “Stay close to me. If you stray more than an inch—”
He left the rest of the threat unspoken, but Aria heard the real anger in his voice, in the flat cadence of his words and the slight but noticeable change in his accent. She realized that she had seen him annoyed, even short-tempered, but never angry. Never so furious. Not with her.
Lowering her head, she crept toward him. He spun around and strode out of the alley, pausing once to study the ground.
“Someone seems to have availed themselves of my best pair of shoes,” he said.
With a grimace, he took a handful of Aria’s thick ruff in his fist and began walking. The feel of his hand in her fur was not in the least uncomfortable. In fact, it felt warm and strong and wonderful.
She realized he hadn’t been angry with her just because she had disobeyed him and taken a stupid risk. He was upset because he had been afraid for her. He had always claimed to care what happened to her, but now she was certain he had really meant it. He must have had a reason not to tell her who she was.
They were back at the house in five minutes. Cort let her go when they were safely in the hallway, and opened the door to their rooms. She darted inside, shook out her fur and Changed.
Something in Cort’s expression made her rush to find the hated dress. She put it on in the bedroom and came out again.
Cort was hunched in one of the chairs by the table, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the carpet.
“You could have been hurt,” he said, not looking at her. “You do understand that?”
She climbed onto the couch and drew up her knees. “I was looking for you,” she mumbled.
“Where is Yuri?”
“He went out. I don’t know where.”
Cort cursed in fluid French. “Now perhaps you understand why you must do as I say.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Damn Yuri. If I’d only told him—” He cursed again. “We can’t stay here tonight. They must have been watching the house.”
Aria was almost glad. She had come to hate this place, this prison, even though she’d only been here a few days. The only thing that had made it bearable was Cort himself.
“They weren’t the same men who took me before,” she said. “What did they want?”
He was quiet for a long time. “There is someone else who may be after you,” he said. “A man came to me this afternoon. He claimed he knew you.”
Aria sat up straight. “Who was he?” she asked. “What did he say?”
“Hugo Brecht,” he said slowly. “Do you know him?”
She shook her head, disappointed and relieved at the same time. “I have never heard his name before. Not that I can remember,” she added, recalling her supposed amnesia. “Why would he want me?”
Leaning back in the chair, Cort blew out his breath and closed his eyes. “Do you remember anything about the place those men took you after they gave you the drugs?”
“There were lots of voices. And smoke,” she said, trying to sort out the sensations that had made so little sense at the time. “I couldn’t see much at all.”
“Do you know anything about gambling?”
“I know it has something to do with playing cards. That was what you and those men were doing, wasn’t it?”
“For money, yes. And prizes. You were one of the prizes. And I…” He laced his fingers behind his neck. “I was trying to win you so the other men couldn’t have you.”
Bad men, he meant. Men who would use her. Not gentlemen, like him.
“And you did win,” she said, feeling her nose clog up with tears she didn’t want him to see.
“Yes.” He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “But the men who lost were very angry. Some of them still wanted you, for…” He coughed. “Do you know you are very beautiful, Aria?”
She knew what the word meant, of course, and she sometimes thought the face she saw in the reflection of a lake or pond was pleasant. But no one had ever called her beautiful before.
“Men appreciate beautiful things,” Cort said. “Some will go to any lengths to get something they consider rare and special. That was why those men wanted you.”
His words made her feel warm inside, even though she didn’t know why she should be “rare and special.” But she began to understand what Cort was talking about.
“This man Brecht…” she began.
“I am reasonably certain that he is the one who sent those blackguards after you.”
“But one of those men was a werewolf.”
“So is Brecht. He would have even more reason for wanting you, since you are loup-garou, too.”
She blinked. “But you don’t know him?”
“I have never seen him before. There are loups-garous in the city, lone wolves, who are not affiliated with any family here.”
He had said something like that before. Aria had a sudden disturbing thought. “Brecht” could be a Carantian name. What if he were one of the exiles she’d been seeking? One of the men who’d brought her to Franz?
“Were other werewolves gambling for me, too?” she asked.
“Not openly. S
till, it is quite possible that one or more were doing so through human agents.”
Had Brecht been one of them? Even if he had been, she couldn’t see how he could be Carantian—or not one of the good Carantians, anyway—when he had sent bad men to take her. And how would he even know that she was Carantian? If the men had only seen her when she was a baby…
And that brought her back to the most disturbing thought of all: Why had they taken her from America in the first place?
“We can’t wait any longer to move you to a safer place,” Cort said, completely unaware of her gnawing questions.
“I’m not afraid of them,” Aria said. “They couldn’t win when you and I were fighting together.”
“For God’s sake, Aria, your naiveté—”
“That werewolf was bigger than you, but you didn’t have any trouble defeating him.”
“I fought only to stop him,” Cort said, “not because it gives me any pleasure.”
Suddenly the conversation had turned again, and so had Aria’s thoughts. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I never Change unless I have no choice.”
“But why?”
“It’s barbaric and primitive, not fit for civilized people.”
Aria flinched as if he’d slapped her. She had seen him in wolf shape twice, and both times it had seemed natural for him, like exchanging one familiar set of clothes for another. Just as easy and natural as it was for her, as necessary to her existence as breathing.
Wouldn’t it be that way with every werewolf?
She squatted where she was, not caring if the seams of her dress ripped all over again. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How can you believe that?”
“Wolves are animals, bound by no law or principle. They act on instinct, not rational intelligence. Their emotions and behavior are savage.”
As his had been in the alley? But he hadn’t truly hurt the men who had tried to capture her. He had always been in control.
That didn’t seem to matter to him. She understood what he really meant, and the knowledge made her sick to her stomach.
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