“I think she’s asking you to dinner.” Someone had to save the male from his own lack of social insight. For whose benefit I lowered my voice, I couldn’t say. It wouldn’t impact her ability to hear, that was for sure. “Say yes. There’re supes in the city. They might know something about the Ravens.”
“I know, but there’s no way an unfamiliar pack is going to feel comfortable having a hood in their midst.”
“But I’m not a hood, remember? Is there anything we could do to convince her I’m not a threat?”
He chuckled beneath his breath. “Yeah, but you won’t like it.”
“Something painful?”
He hedged his answer, looking off to the side. “Depends on how you define pain.”
Even though I was a huey, I knew my tolerance was high, and passing up an opportunity like this would be foolish. Not to mention, our rushed words in low tones had Ayşe growing suspicious. We must have looked like a bickering couple, like I was some domineering wife refusing to let my husband go out for his bowling night.
“Do it.”
His eyebrow arched. “You sure? Your boyfriend’s not going to like it.”
My back became a board, my shoulders squared. “If it helps lead us to the Ravens, he’ll understand.”
“Okay, I hope you’re convincing.”
The second Tobias’s mouth lowered to my ear, instinct I’d thought dead sprang to life. Kill him. Subdue him. Kiss him. His hot breath on my neck heated not just the skin beneath my ear, but all along my chest. I longed to turn around, and put those lips on another part of my body. When his teeth grazed my skin, I had to suck on my upper lip to keep my breath from rushing out.
The words were forced, but his tone was clear. At least to a stranger who didn’t understand the type of relationship we had.
“I am going to accept this invitation, Geri,” he growled out. “You have no say in this decision.”
“I wh—”
His hands threaded through my hair and pulled my head to the side, his elbow resting on my shoulder, and before I spoiled the ruse, I finally got with it. Eyes to the floor, I let my head fall to the side and my tongue go silent.
Tobias yanked back, examining me. Had I the will, I would have loved to see his face. I didn’t doubt he was eating this up with a silver spoon.
Well, a tin spoon, anyhow.
The shewolf took two steps toward us, her hand up cautiously before her. On one of the shop’s business cards, she jotted down an address. “Tonight, at eleven.”
FIFTEEN
“Igor, will you talk some sense into Geri’s head?”
The invoked vampire lowered a pink-tinted newspaper and looked at the slayer across the room. “I’m not sure I could stuff more in there. It’s already pretty full.”
Caleb threw up both his hands. “Oh, come on!” Pivoting, he began to join decades of former residents in wearing down the carpet beneath his feet. “We can’t let a relinquished hood go traipsing about alone with a foreign pack of werewolves. Have you ever read a single fairy tale? These things don’t end well.”
Seeing that silence was not to be found through simplicity, Igor folded his paper and set it on the kitchen table. “Actually, if I recall Little Red Riding Hood, she survives just fine.”
“And she’s not going in alone.” Tobias emerged from the stout refrigerator, an empty glass bottle in one hand and a milk mustache over his lip. “I can guarantee you, no way in hell I’m letting her be eaten.”
Oddly enough, my boyfriend’s nerves failed to be soothed. “Well, great. Now that I know that, go on ahead.”
“They think I’m Tobias’s looney.” Dots of tangy pepper paste clung to my fingertips, a mess caused by haste. I sucked each off in turn. “And, can I remind you, I’m still a highly trained warrior. If things turn ugly, I know how to do ugly.”
Igor blinked thrice. “They think you’re insane?”
“No, not a looney. A looney, a werewolf groupie.” I stood to take my plate to the sink. “Some packs and hood clans are loose on the no-humans-knowing thing. I’m not sure if it’s a reference to the moon or to being crazy, but that’s the term. Anyway, Tobias is smart. He put on a little dominance display that convinced the shewolf in the Grand Bazaar I was one.”
Accusation burned in the crimson hue of Caleb’s cheek as he turned to Tobias. “You dominated Geri?”
The werewolf shrugged. “Figured at least one of us should.”
The solarium, the mere size of a pebble, whizzed by Tobias’s head and singed a spot on the wall. Tobias might have pounced back, and Caleb dove forward, if I hadn’t created a barrier between them the moment the words were out.
“Okay, boys, enough. Can we focus on our luck? There’s a werewolf pack in Istanbul! Think about that: supes in the city who aren’t vamps. It would be stupid of us not to try to see if they know anything more than what Ayşe already told us.”
“Did she really tell you anything, though? You said her English wasn’t that good. Baby...” Caleb cuffed my arms as he drew me in. “I know you can kick lupine ass, but a whole pack versus you and one other wolf? You have to see what a bad idea this is.”
Rolling up on my tiptoes, I pressed a kiss to his lips. “We’ll be home by dawn.”
AMY HAD OFTEN BOASTED New York was the city that never slept. Istanbul was the city that never blinked.
“It’s crowded and lacking wide open spaces, but I can see how this works for the nocturnal.” Tobias surveyed the crowds milling through the long street, a stack of cafes, shops, and bars, past street performers forced to occasionally pull their acts aside and allow passage of a restored streetcar. “This is like Chicago in the middle of the day. Everything’s open. Have you ever seen so many hueys running around on a Tuesday night?”
“It certainly is beaming with life. I don’t like it. Too many people. It’s making me nauseous.”
The wolf side-eyed me. “Sure it’s the crowd?”
“What else would it be?”
“Seems you and Caleb can’t stop having rows.”
“Relationships don’t come prepackaged. They take work, and working out.”
“They also take compatibility. And at some point, intimacy.”
The pig squeal of a laugh leapt out of my throat. “One, that’s none of your business. And two, we are intimate, even if that hasn’t reached its...” I searched the air for the right word.
“Climax?” Tobias suggested, wearing a smirk. “I agree, it’s not any of my business. And, god knows, I’ll kill you if you give me details, but I can’t help but recall a very unfortunate, very public spat you had with my alpha not too long ago. Can’t help but thinking he might have had a point. Maybe you are hung up on past loves.”
“What would you say if I said that to you? That you need to just get over Kara, that you’re too young to spend the rest of your life pining over her?”
“I’d probably rip off your arms.”
“How much do you like your arms, Tobias?” A rickety chug-chug-chug pushed the crowds to the side of the street, all of us compressing as the tram passed. “Speaking of which, how is this going to go over? I’m supposed to be a looney, but I’m guessing they know you’re a widower.”
“You heard Ayşe offer her condolences in the Bazaar, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “I’ve been asking myself since earlier today what my motivation for keeping a looney around would be. I’m guessing it comes down to sex.”
“I’m not sleeping with you just to strike up a conversation with a few werewolves. I don’t care if it lets us find out where Vlad buys toothpaste. Besides, I thought it was impossible for a mated wolf to be adulterous.”
He grimaced. “Emotionally, it is. Physically, I hear it can be done. I’ve been told by a few wolves who’ve lost their mates that it’s possible, just to scratch the physical itch. Takes years, though. I could suggest that because Kara and I only had a few months, and we were never officially mated under a full moon, our bond wasn’
t as strong.”
“Sounds good, if you’re comfortable with that.” I sidestepped a man handing out flyers. “I don’t get that. What would be the appeal of sex without the emotions?”
“Only a virgin would ask that.”
“I hate you sometimes.”
“Only sometimes? I must be doing something wrong.”
AYŞE HOOKED US WITH gray eyes staring out from behind a black veil. In the market, she’d been dressed in slacks and a loose cotton shirt. Now she looked like someone freshy arrived from Tehran. Fear rimmed her irises, wide and glossy. It was enough to make us pick up our pace once we’d spotted her at the back of a crowd gathered around a man performing a puppet act.
“Is something wrong?” Tobias put a hand on her arm with a tenderness that made me question how itchy he was becoming.
“No wrong. Just...” Her eyes went to where buildings met sky, a luminous patch of stars dimly nodding in the background. “Tonight there is...”
“A hood.” Tobias’s eyes flashed to the sky. “She’s nearby. I can sense her now, too.”
I couldn’t help my own impulses. I turned, surveying the visible, looking for the impossible. A black hood? I’d never actually met one, but I’d heard tell of their particular preferences in silverwielding. Scimitars, it was said, and daggers the size of a man’s fist. But that wasn’t what really thrilled me. The black hoods were famous among our kind for another reason.
They hunted with falcons.
“Is there something the pack has done to get their attention?”
Ayşe shook her head. “Only, I should not be on the street.”
With my eyes still fixed against a barren blue-black sky, confusion closed in on me when Tobias wheeled me around, saying “You’re fine. I’ll protect you.”
Protect me? Protect me from what? Only then did the moment return to me. I was supposed to be a looney. Ayşe recognized me as a hood in the Bazaar, though how, I still didn’t understand. But as a hood-turned-looney, I was the worst form of apostate.
Never had my Betrayer namesake clung so tightly to my skin.
I feigned confusion and relief, nodding vigorously as Tobias’s hands cuffed both my arms. “Thank you.”
“Hurry.” Ayşe pivoted and waved us along. “We must go before she is angry.”
“Angry?” Tobias said. “About you being out on the street? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“My pack is not like other packs. Soon, you will understand.”
SIXTEEN
Alleyways branched out from the main street, narrower by the turn, until at last, in a place without light and where my eyes struggled to distinguish motes from minarets, Ayşe stopped. The metallic clacking of keys was followed by the tenor groan of rebellious hinges yielding.
“You see, Geri?”
The same moment she asked the question, Tobias’s hand pawed mine, lacing our fingers together. “I will be her eyes.”
My pulse raced, from surprise, I told myself, and I wondered if he’d done it on purpose to help sell our ruse.
Three steps into the passageway, Tobias pulled me to a stop. “There’s stairs, and the corridor is too narrow to go down side by side. You want to be behind me or in front of me?”
“Front, please.”
With his hands on my hips, holding me out at arm’s length, we descended.
“You can put hands on my shoulders,” Ayşe offered in front of me. “The stairs are old. Not safe.”
Pride warred with practicality. I looked over my shoulder to Tobias behind me, despite the fact that I couldn’t actually see anything.
“Have I mentioned lately how much I hate being a huey?”
“Not in the last hour.”
Twenty-six steps, then a downward-sloped passage with an irregular floor, and another flight of stairs, making a total of sixty steps.
“Ayşe, do the basements go down this far?”
She shook her head. “Basement? I do not know this word.”
“Where are we going?” Tobias clarified.
“Home.”
“Home?” I found the idea ridiculous. “You mean you live underground?”
Suddenly, light exploded around us, swallowing darkness. Pain pierced my retinas. A thousand lanterns burned on the periphery of my vision, birthed by one celestial orb in the middle. Even Tobias threw an arm over his eyes from the shock of it, though as a damned supe, he adjusted quickly.
There could be no doubt the man before us was a wolf. Tall and wide and replete with muscle, his frame radiated power and poise. Golden eyes took stock of us from a face fortressed by facial hair—black, with outshoots of gray whiskers. He held an electric lantern aloft and, wrapped in a tattered, floor-length black trench coat, presented a dominating appearance. Tobias slumped his shoulders, bowed his head, and lingered. All signs that could point to a single truth: this man was an alpha.
He must have been advised that we spoke no Turkish, as accented English tumbled from his mouth. “I am Serhan of Pack Pera. Who are you, and do you represent your pack?”
“No, alpha.” I’d never heard Tobias so soft-spoken before, not even when addressing Cody. “My name is Tobias Somfield, of the Paradise Pack. Alpha’s prerogative brought me here.”
Serhan’s eyebrow arched. “How is that?”
Without raising his eyes, Tobias jerked his head in my direction. “I protect this woman on his orders.”
“She is not your consort then?” Suspicion filled his gaze. Ayşe had apparently told a different story.
Consort: I much preferred that word to looney.
“No, but she was an unmated consort to my alpha. She is a friend of wolves. Ayşe invited me at the Bazaar to dine with you tonight. It would be rude for me to refuse a share of your hunt, and because of the duty I hold to my alpha, I could not leave her behind. The shewolf likely told you of my display earlier today. I was not attempting to deceive, only to expedite. I ask welcome for me and my ward at your haunches, and bring no rival.”
Who was this formal wolf and where had my Tobias, who earlier in the day had yelled at me to “get out of the pisser,” gone?
Serhan’s mouth cycled, as though chewing on Tobias’s explanation. “She is a hood.”
“Relinquished.”
The alpha sneered. “What difference does that make? Istanbul is home to a hundred spiders weaving ten thousand webs. My pack wishes to be caught in none of them.”
I grew tired of being spoken of in the third person. I knelt, holding out my arms for display and rolling my head to the side. “My name is Gerwalta Kline, daughter of Brünhild Kline, Red Matron of the Americas. I seek only peace and conversation at your fire.”
The alpha blinked his surprise. “You have a talent for lupine etiquette.”
“I was the consort of an alpha,” I said, weaving the loose ends of my truth with the slack weave of Tobias’s lie. “I know many things.”
Tension built palaces in the space of a few moments. In the midst of our conversation, the shadows had grown shapes, sulking out of the darkness, a dozen eyes burning me in effigy.
At last, the alpha abated. He raised his left hand, turning it once as though screwing in a light bulb. In that motion, his pack eased. Where animosity had festered, hospitality emerged. Tobias took my hand again, pulling me along as wolves, young and old, female and male, fell in behind us, urging us along. When the ceiling above us rose and the walls tapered out, both Tobias and I were struck dumb.
Neither cave nor chamber, the space in which we found ourselves merited confusion. As high as a cathedral, and yet, with earthen walls like one of the old day shelters of the Black Forest, the wolves dwelled in an archaeological wonder. In the midst of it, a fire burned. Not too large; so deep beneath the ground, I suspected that the temperature remained largely unchanged through the years. No, the fire was merely for light and, perhaps, comfort. The smoke rose, filtering through a ceiling from which pipes dropped and plants grew down.
“A place for dead.”
Ayşe had managed to sidle up to me without my realizing. She’d ridded herself of the traditional cover in the interim, adding to my suspicions of why she felt the need to wear it on the huey streets above. “How do you say... a tom?”
“A tomb,” I corrected, then looked instinctively for crevices where coffins rested. None could I find, but perhaps the pack had removed them? “Ayşe, is this where you live?”
She nodded. “Some of the time.”
“But why? Why are you here in the middle of the city, and not out in the mountains or the woods?”
“Because here are jobs,” she said. “Our place in the Bazaar? It feeds us all.”
“The leather shop,” Tobias said. “The labors of your hunt?”
Serhan laughed, inviting us to sit by the fire. Several younger wolves, no more than nine or ten years old, vacated the space. “Have you seen a single cow or sheep in this city since you arrived?”
A woman appeared, wearing a brown skirt from under which her bare, besmirched feet shuffled, her hair tied back in a white scarf like an extra from Fiddler on the Roof. She deposited bowls of a thick stew into our hands, then dropped a quarter loaf of the same type of crusty bread Amy and I had gorged ourselves on a few days ago atop it. Given that there was no utensil, I suspected the bread was meant to serve as both side dish and spoon.
“Only this, and on the plates of the cafes in the street above.” Tobias played the conversation like a string section called on to answer a bellow of horns. As one trained all my life for diplomatic pursuit—though, my mother had sneered, diplomacy was art beyond the grasp of most wolves—I had to admire the ease with which he took to the calling. “Another pack provides the product then?”
Serhan acknowledged it. “All with permission of the onyx hoods. Permission purchased by a steep percentage of the proceeds.”
The anger that shot through me wasn’t because I took any offense on behalf of the hoods, but because I couldn’t believe the unfairness of it.
Serhan seated himself across from me, examining me. “Something troubles you, Miss Kline?”
Ravening Hood Page 11
