by Mark Henwick
“But Jack’s still under pressure,” he went on, “and I think he’s got Matlal putting even more pressure on him. I know the fake doorman. He’s Tucker’s fixer for dirty problems, and when I saw him, I knew this went way beyond what I was willing to be involved in. Hearing that the cab blew up later just confirmed that.
“I’ve got nothing you could go to the police with, but I wanted to warn you and Kingslund and tell you that I’m out of it. What I did on Friday night was the least I could do to make up.”
I nodded. “Bitter Hooks?”
“Silver Hills is just a marketing name. It was called Bitter Hooks. That’s derived from the old Arapaho name—Spirit Wolf.” He smiled. “It’s a special place for us and we like that name.”
“So do I,” I said. “Well, anyway, thank you, on behalf of me and Jen.”
What had I said? Alex’s body language had suddenly gone cold again.
“You seem okay with me knowing you’re a werewolf,” I said.
He looked surprised. “I thought all you vamps were told about us. You act as if it was a secret.”
“Ahh. Okay. I’m Athanate, but I was solo. I only made a connection with House Altau in the last week or so.”
His eyes widened. “A solo vamp? Jesus! How does that happen?”
“It happens sometimes. It’s a long story. For a long fall evening in front of the fire maybe. With a bottle of wine.”
Alex rocked back on his stool. Was that a bit forward of me? Bad girl. But then he grinned again.
“What about you?” I said. “How did you become a Were?”
He ducked his head a little. I’m not subtle, but I’m not insensitive. He didn’t want to talk about it. “Oh, it involved researching the Arapaho wolf clan and not understanding the risks.” He refilled our cups. “Details will only be divulged if you hold my feet to the fire. Or hide the wine.”
“Deal. But we were interrupted at the ball. I’m even more interested now to hear why you gave up being a doctor. Was that a wolf thing too?”
He nodded. “I’m okay in everyday medical situations, but I was in emergency care. There’s two problems with that for a werewolf; the sheer amount of blood is unsettling, and obviously, I was concerned with the possibility of accidentally infecting someone.”
“So you became a werewolf and joined the local pack?”
He nodded again. “That’s about it. It’s not so well ordered as you vamps, but at least I knew what was happening. I was able to change successfully on my own and, like vamps, we can sense other Weres, so I found the pack.” He sipped his coffee. “I’m trying to find a way to help those who can’t change and make the process a little smoother.”
“Some werewolves can’t change?”
“Yes,” he said, and something passed behind his eyes. “And it’s eventually fatal, a bit like vamps not drinking blood.”
“You said there was a chance of infection if you worked as a doctor. So you can pass it on if you just nicked your finger and you were working on someone?”
He grimaced. “Yeah, it’s possible. It would be unlikely in any one case, or a hundred cases, but working in emergency care, it would happen sooner or later. The infection passes in blood, or any other fluids,” he said casually. Typical doctor, making it all sound icky. “Not that you should be concerned of course, as a vamp.”
He registered that my mouth was open.
“You didn’t know?” I just shook my head dumbly. Suddenly, maybe, I wasn’t playing just for a bit of a thrill. If he couldn’t infect me…
“Weres and vamps can’t infect each other,” he said. “Look, I’ve made some assumptions and maybe it would be better to go back to the beginning and start again.” He paused. “You’re a new Athanate and you’re part of Altau, but you haven’t gone through their Aspirant process?”
“Not so new,” I said. “The process has taken a long time with me, otherwise yes.”
“But at the ball, you knew about me?”
I shook my head. “I asked House Altau for a contact in the local pack.” I pulled the stuff out of my pocket and with the papers came the photo of my great-grandparents that I still had there from last weekend. I sorted out the two notes. “They gave me this one last night and Lisa gave me this one. You can imagine, I was kinda surprised when I looked at them side by side a few minutes ago.”
Alex barely looked at the notes. He picked up the photo.
“Who are they?” His brow creased.
It didn’t say Farrell on the photo. “My great-grandparents,” I replied.
“Can I scan this, please?” he asked. “I’m interested in local history. And of course the Arapaho Wolf Clan reference is intriguing.”
“Sure.” There was more than that, I was sure, but I’d find out in due course.
He flipped open the laptop and slid the photo into his combo printer-scanner. “Okay. And what did you want to talk to me about?” He smiled. “Me as in your local furry contact.”
“Jen’s resort. I’m working for her. Stopping the disruption.” Jen had asked me to keep things confidential, but I had to tell him that much.
“Just working for her? As in security and asking local werewolves to keep off her property?”
He’d flipped again. I started to get angry. “What are you saying, Alex? We were getting along well at the ball, and today, every other thing I say, you seem to be taking some hidden meaning. What is it?”
“I take it back,” he said. “I guess you really don’t know.”
“What, for God’s sake?”
“Well, when you showed up on my doorstep, I made an assumption that you…ahh…belong to Kingslund.” He reached over and touched the arm of the jacket Jen had loaned me.
“What the hell do you mean? The jacket? What about it?”
“If I just say, you won’t believe me.” He called up the image search engine on his laptop, typed in Jennifer Kingslund, and thumbnail photos started to fill the screen. He swiveled it towards me. A cold, painful anger settled in my chest. About every fifth picture of her showed Jen out somewhere with a friend, male or female, wearing the same jacket as I had. All of them were attractive and clearly with Jen. ‘With’ as in holding hands or arms. Or kissing.
“She gives one to all her, um, companions,” he said carefully.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
The guards must have called Jen when I returned to her house. I had finished clearing my stuff from the guest suite when she arrived. The office I would have to leave for Tullah to clear. I was outside, throwing the last of my clothes into the trunk.
Jen’s face was pinched and anxious. She hurried towards me, not looking at all the confident businesswoman that I knew. She looked afraid. Under the anger I felt sorrow, and stamped on it.
I thrust the leather jacket at her. At least she didn’t deny it.
“Amber, please, I’m so sorry.”
“How could you do that to me?” I yelled.
“It was stupid. It was just to cover the fact you were a PI. Everyone would just assume…”
“Everyone would just assume I’m your whore.”
Tears began to run down her cheeks. “No. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t think—”
“No. You got that right. You didn’t think.” I got in and slammed the door. “Tullah will clear the office and I’ll put in a final statement covering everything. Including use of that jacket.”
“Amber, please—”
I drove away. I hated the way I sounded, what I’d said, how I felt. I’d known somehow when she’d loaned me that jacket and offered me a place to stay that there was something there, and I’d taken them anyway.
Why did I have to be in control of everything? How had I felt when Kath drove away refusing to listen to what I tried to say?
My last, blurry, view of Jen was in the mirror, holding the damn jacket like it was a comforter.
Chapter 51
I pulled up outside David’s house, just behind his car. I closed my eyes
and rested my head on the wheel for a minute. It had been one hell of a day and I was so tired. I wanted to curl up somewhere and cry myself to sleep. I didn’t feel up to checking if David was okay, but his appearance on Friday night had been worrying. I had to.
Eventually I dragged myself up his front walk and knocked on his door.
The house was dark and silent. I made sure that it was his car in front. It was too late for a walk. I stood there, undecided. He could be asleep. Or maybe he’d been picked up and taken to Haven for something.
Anyhow, I had his key. I let myself in quietly and stood next to the door, testing out the air with my nose. The place reeked of Athanate, and of blood and sex. I felt a prickle of concern in my chest. I tiptoed through the living room and the rest of the house, but there was nothing there. I ended up outside the bedroom door.
He’d told me it was usual for Aspirants to get the hots for their Mentors, and that Pia was biting him a lot. I guessed that meant a lot of blood and sex. What if I went in and they were in bed together? Exactly how would we explain what I was doing here to Pia?
Only one way to find out. I opened the door quietly. He was naked and alone in the bed. If I thought the rest of the place smelled of blood and sex, it was nothing to the bedroom. The bed was a wreck, pillows and sheets tossed aside and the mattress skewed on its base. I grinned; great sex, clearly.
But the stillness of his body, the darkness around his neck, the discarded bedclothes and the cold in the room suddenly didn’t add up. I hit the light switch in a hurry.
David lay sprawled on his back, his neck a mess of dried blood. His mouth was open with his fangs down and dried blood on his face, but I couldn’t see or hear breathing. I touched his face and tried to find a pulse in his throat. His body was freezing and limp, his pulse barely there and far too fast. I grabbed his hand and squeezed the end of a finger. The finger was already pale, and remained pale after I let go.
I was all too familiar with blood loss injuries from my time with 4-10, and this was as bad as I’d seen anyone. I tore his cupboards open and found blankets, which I heaped on him. I found an electric booster heater and turned it on full. In the kitchen I turned his kettle on, found some soup and put that on to heat as well.
Warmth and fluids would help, but he needed blood as well. The hospital was out of the question with the state he was in. The quickest Bian, or anyone else from Haven, could get here would be forty minutes. David didn’t have that kind of time.
I trickled warm soup down his throat and washed his face and neck with hot water. The wounds gaped but barely bled. His heart was racing—he had a few more minutes like that and it would give out. As an Athanate, his ability to heal himself was incredible, but he’d been bled too much.
He’d given me his key. If something goes wrong. If you need to do something. You’ve got my back, Amber.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” I knew what I had to do. I knew what the risk was. Intentionally or not, his bite would release his prions into my bloodstream. That might tip the balance and finally make me Athanate. But if the choice was between David dying and me holding onto being human a bit longer, David won. And at least it wasn’t as if I had such great ties to being human any more.
Trust and jump.
I pulled off my shirt and joined him under the blankets, trying to force my warmth into him. It was like lying on an ice pack. I pulled his mouth open and shifted till I could feel his fangs touch the side of my neck, sharp as needles.
“This had better work, David,” I whispered and closed my eyes. I worked my hand beneath his head and pulled him up hard against me. I could feel his fangs break my skin and sink into me. I gasped and blood started to drip down into his mouth.
My eyes felt gritty when I opened them. At the edge of my sight, the pale green numbers on his alarm clock seemed not to change. I could hear the frantic patter of his heart, the sigh of air in his lungs. Somewhere there was the whir of the heater and the occasional murmur of cars passing by outside. All so far away.
Was he warmer now? Was his heart slowing down? Should I have called Bian as well?
“Feed and heal,” I muttered.
I was so tired. My eyes closed again.
“There’s nothing left for you out there anymore. Come home to us, where you belong, Amber. You’ve been too long on the path.” Skylur.
I had screwed everything up, and not just today. I’d failed. I couldn’t hold down a real job and I’d made a mess of being an investigator. My whole life was one damned train crash. My heart ached for my dad, for Jen and Alex and Keith and Kath and Top, and soon it would ache for David too. Then I’d go to Haven and maybe my heart would stop aching forever.
“I tried, Top. I really did.”
“You’re not here to try,” he shouts in my ear. “You’re here to succeed.”
My eyes flew open. My head jerked and David’s fangs cut cruelly. I grabbed his head. “David,” I shouted, anger boiling up in me. “Feed, damn you. Feed and heal.”
He twitched and his mouth closed convulsively on my throat. I could feel the first hint of a gentle pull. Blood flowed into his fangs. Then he pulled harder and I could feel his body, all of it, stir beneath me.
“Feed!” I could feel his hunger now. His Athanate pheromones started to kick in. I felt dizzy as I fought them off and held his mouth against my neck. One minute I wanted to tear my clothes off and ride him raw, the next I was whimpering with fear. But I didn’t let go.
He started to struggle feebly, not to push me away, but to pull me closer and, at last, the mad seesaw of pheromones began to cancel each other out.
I finally let my head drop again, but this time in elation. I had dragged him back from the brink. And the price was acceptable, just something I’d been holding off for no good reason.
His body had started to warm up at last. I forced his jaws open and pulled him away from my neck. He thrashed, trying to hold me back. I slipped out of the blankets, wrapping him up in them, and managed to trickle some more warm soup down his throat. The horrible pallor had gone from his skin.
It seemed that we stayed like that for ages. I was lightheaded from the exhilaration of saving him and from all the stuff he’d pumped into me while he was fastened to my neck, so I wasn’t tracking the time too well. Eventually, I started to see the awareness seeping back into his eyes and his struggles calmed down.
“You back, David?”
He nodded slightly, and I propped him up and made him drink water. His eyes were looking at my neck. I had stopped leaking and it was healing already, but it had to look a sight.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“You got drained. You lost too much blood.”
“But your neck?”
“I couldn’t call the hospital, David. You were lying there with your fangs out and God knows what questions they’d have been asking. Don’t think Skylur would have been happy. And I didn’t think Bian could get here in time. I didn’t have anywhere else to turn.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry.” Even in his state, he knew what his bite could do to me.
“It’s done.” I patted him clumsily and changed the subject. “What the hell does Pia think she’s doing?”
“We fought.” He frowned as he tried to reconstruct what had happened. “Remember I said that you’d given me something in the kiss?”
I nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about what you were saying about prions. They must be like Athanate DNA.” He sighed and I gave him some more water to sip. “But they also take over the immune system. That’s what makes us so healthy. And the immune system fights to reject anything foreign, even other Athanate prions.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can see that. What’s it got to do with Pia?”
“She says I smell wrong.” He gave a breathy chuckle. “Seems your prions are stronger than Altau prions, and you’re not even full Athanate. I smell too much like you and not enough like Altau. You know, the marque. She said she had to get me back i
nto line. She wanted to know where it came from. I wouldn’t say.”
He did smell different. Pressed up against him, breathing his scent in, I could tell. The copper and spice smell like Altau was there, but with something else, something sharp and fragrant. Damn! This was my vamp scent. This was the marque of House Farrell. For the first time, I really registered what Skylur and Diana had said. I was starting an Athanate House. A shiver of fear and pride went through me.
But there were some steps to get through first. “We’re going to have to ’fess up, bro.”
He nodded weakly. “I suppose so. But not a good time now,” he said.
“No.” I could imagine the disruption that hosting the Athanate Assembly was going to have on House Altau. They could do without this distraction. Maybe we could just drop out of sight, a hidden House Farrell.
I rubbed a hand across my mouth and then took a sip of David’s soup. I’d lost a lot of blood to him, but I felt okay, just tired and aching. In fact, I was feeling good.
“We’ll work it out. S’okay,” he mumbled. “Work it out with Pia.”
No, we wouldn’t. She would come back and bite him again. My jaw began to ache in earnest and my eyesight flickered. I wouldn’t let her. He was mine, he was House Farrell. He needed to understand that. He needed to understand he was mine.
“Amber?” He felt my body tensing.
I leaped off the bed and stood beside it, quivering. My skin felt too small for me, as if something inside was struggling to get out. My tongue felt a strange pressure and there was a shiver of terror and delight as I felt the sharpness emerge in my mouth. I needed to bite. David needed to understand.
No. Stop.
“David,” I said. It felt as if my voice came from a long way away. He jerked up in bed, his face slack with surprise.
Shit, but I had pulled a compulsion on him. All it needed was for me to push his head back and feed. He wanted me to feed. He wanted to be House Farrell. I could feel the potential building in me like a head of water behind a dam. I was sucking power out of the night. I could make this so.
