by Naomi Clark
She burst out the front door, wild-eyed and red-faced. The police officer straightened, barking at her. Three more officers followed her out of the building, one wielding a pair of handcuffs.
“Oh shit,” Shannon muttered in my ear.
Shit was right. I didn’t know what to do. My wolf’s instinct was to get between Pack and the threat. My human instinct was not to interfere until I knew what was going on. With Shannon holding my hand in a death-grip, I followed my human instinct.
As we watched, the three officers surrounded Clémence. For a second, I thought she might shift; there was a ripple in the air around her like the wolf was about to emerge, but before she could, one of the officers tackled her, pinning her face-first to the pavement. I winced in sympathy as he twisted her arms behind her back—he had to be a wolf to manhandle her so easily—and slapped the cuffs on her.
By now, the crowd had edged closer and as the officer hauled Clémence to her feet, one of them tossed something at her. The can thunked off the side of her head and she spun with a howl of fury, trying to rush into the crowd. A few giddy screams went up, like riders on a roller-coaster, scared but safe. The officers wrenched Clémence back towards the cars. It took all three of them to get her inside one of the vehicles. As the cars peeled away, sirens whirring, so did the crowd and within a few minutes, it was like nothing had happened.
“Shit,” Shannon said again. “What the hell was that?”
We dashed into the building, heading for Sun’s flat. Her door was open and the sound of wretched sobbing filled the hallway. At first I thought it was Sun, but when I peered into the room, I saw Thérèse face-down on the sofa, hugging a cushion, her whole body shaking. Sun knelt on the floor next to her, stroking her hair and muttering quietly.
“Sun?” Shannon whispered. “What’s going on?”
Sun looked up, relief spreading across her face. “Oh my God, thank God you’re back! I don’t know what to do! The cops just marched in and started shouting and then Clémence started shouting and then she showed up.” She nodded at Thérèse and threw her hands up with an explosive sigh. “I can’t deal with this stress, you know? It’s so bad for the cub!”
“Okay, sit down,” Shannon ordered, taking Sun by the shoulders and guiding her to the kitchen table. “What happened?”
Sun placed her palms down on the table and sucked in a deep breath. “Ask Thérèse. She started it.”
I took Sun’s place on the floor next to the sofa, gently touching Thérèse’s arm to get her attention. “Thérèse? What’s going on? Why did they arrest Clémence?”
She lifted her head, dark eyes distraught, cheeks smeared with tears, and began babbling in French. I held up my hands, making a pleading face and she cut herself short. She wiped her eyes and started over in English. “Patric is dead.”
“I... What? When? How?” My mind raced. Surely Clémence hadn’t...She’d disappeared for age yesterday, after all, but... No, no, of course not. She’d been in no state to go off murdering anyone. I’d have known, anyway. I’d have smelled it on her.
“His friend found him late last night,” Thérèse explained, her accent thickened by tears so the words sounded broken. “Like all the others, Le Monstre.” She broke off again, another flood of sobs overwhelming her. “His throat is torn out and they say it is a wolf and they ask me who would hurt Patric and they know about the fire and so...”
I took her hands, stopping her. We didn’t need to hear any more. I glanced over my shoulder at Shannon. She was frowning. “Surely there’s no evidence,” she said. “They’ll have to release her.”
“It’s all my fault,” Thérèse wept. “Je suis si désolée, tout est de ma faute.”
“It’s not your fault at all!” Sun said hotly. “Is it your fault there’s a madman running around Paris, ripping people apart?” She clutched at her bump as if in pain, then waved Shannon away when she reached for her in alarm. “Well, it’s not her fault is it?”
“Je me sens si ridicule. I am supposed to be a counselor, I am supposed to make things better, and now everything is worse! Clémence, ma petite louve, je suis tellement désolée.” Thérèse looked up at me, despair stamped all over her pretty face. “What will happen to Clémence?”
I suddenly had an unexpected understanding of what being a teacher to a class of hormonal teenagers was like. Between Sun and Thérèse, the atmosphere in the room crackled with a hot mix of werewolf energy, anger and misery. I felt like I was about to be hit by lightning and my wolf coiled and tensed inside me, waiting for the strike. I imagined Sun going into premature labor, pushed over the edge by both Thérèse’s turbulent emotions and her own. Then I pictured Thérèse shapeshifting and going on a guilt-fuelled rampage. I pressed my hand to my forehead with a groan. It wasn’t that far-fetched; high emotion was often a trigger for shifting, especially in younger wolves.
“Clémence will be fine,” I said, forcing a note of false cheer into my voice. “Like Shannon says, they can’t charge her with anything because she hasn’t done anything.”
Thérèse shook her head. “You don’t know Clémence. Her temper ... she may do something stupid.”
I could picture that all too easily as well. “I’m sure she’ll be back here in an hour or so, just fine,” I said. “In the mean time, she wouldn’t want you sitting here crying, would she?” I wasn’t sure if that was entirely true. I guiltily thought Clémence might love the idea of Thérèse weeping over her.
“She always told me Patric was bad, that I should leave him.” Thérèse sat up, staring down at her hands. “And I knew she was right, he was bad, he was very cruel, but I still loved him, vous savez? With me, he was different, until the end. And I love Clémence too, I don’t want her to be taken from me too...mon beau loup, ma belle fille...” She trailed off into incoherent French, burying her head in her hands.
Shannon and I swapped tired looks; so much for a peaceful afternoon. So much for the whole bloody holiday, in fact. It was probably time I gave up hoping we’d have a nice, romantic day together this week. For the first time since we’d fallen out over Pack politics weeks ago, I was actually ready to throw up my hands and say, ‘You’re right. This is insane and I don’t want to be part of it.’
I didn’t though. Instead I sat next to Thérèse, rubbing her back in slow, soothing circles and chattering at her until she calmed down and stopped crying. “I don’t know what to do,” she announced, wiping the last smudges of tears from her cheeks. “I should go to the police and tell them they are wrong.”
“The best thing you can do is stay put,” Shannon advised. “I’m sure Clémence will call you as soon as she can.”
Thérèse looked doubtful. “Oui and what am I do to until then? I cannot go home. I cannot face my parents, not now.”
“Stay here with me,” Sun said, smiling at her; a sad, sympathetic sort of smile. “You and Clémence have both been so kind to me, and I know exactly how you’re feeling right now.”
Thérèse nodded and I felt a tiny bit relieved that she wouldn’t be camping out with us. I was pretty sure that made me a terrible person, under the circumstances, but I just wanted a few hours alone with Shannon, away from the chaos and the angst, away from arrests and death and vampires. I liked Sun. I liked Thérèse and Clémence, I really did. But once again I felt like we were being dragged down into a mess that was nothing to do with us, just like we had been with Sly and the Silver Kiss problem. We were trying so hard to have a normal life together and at every turn something happened that fucked it up. I was sick of it.
Shannon must have felt the same, because she stood up with a big fake smile. “Well, we’ll leave you two in peace then. We’ll be right next door if you need us.”
We left them to it, shutting ourselves in the sanctuary of our own flat. Except it didn’t feel like much of a sanctuary, I realized, looking around the cool, elegant living room with a sudden pang of homesickness. There was nothing of ours here and I wanted our stuff with a kind of chil
dlike longing. Our books arranged alphabetically by Shannon on the shelves, her grandmother’s china shepherdess on the windowsill, my collection of hand-painted mugs. I sat down on the sofa with a sigh and a fresh craving for a plate of Vince’s lamb casserole.
Shannon slumped against the door, running her hands through her hair. “My God. What next?” There was a faint touch of hysteria in her voice.
“A bath and a nap?” I suggested. She looked frail to me, like she could also do with a hearty helping of casserole.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to be here, Ayla. In here, I mean,” she clarified, gesturing around the flat. “Let’s go and do something. We can just go and sit in a pub all day, I just don’t want to be cooped up in here.”
Being cooped up in a pub didn’t sound much better. “How about a picnic?” I offered. “We could grab some food and find somewhere nice to hang out—maybe down by the river or...” I grabbed our guidebook from the coffee table, flicking through it for inspiration. “Oh! We could visit La Marais! It’s Paris’ gay district, apparently.”
Shannon perked up at that. “Really?”
“Yeah and the Picasso Museum is there.” I wasn’t big on modern art, but Shannon could happily wander around staring at abstract pictures of pigs playing pianos for hours. I was prepared to do the same if it took that haunted, exhausted look off her face.
“Well, I’d say that settles it,” she decided. “Let me just shower and change and we’ll get moving.”
While she did that, I ran down the street to one of the little delicatessens on the hill and bought enough food to supply an entire Pack of picnicking werewolves: meat, bread, chocolate Florentines, pâtés and cheese. I hesitated before putting a massive wedge of garlic-infused brie in my basket, then decided I was the only one who’d know how paranoid I was being and added it. Outside the sun was shining, the sky was a beautiful pale blue and people walked the streets in t-shirts and sandals, sunglasses reflecting the glow of the sunlight on the white-washed buildings. Paris looked peaceful, relaxed. But I was already thinking about sunset, about darkness blanketing the city and bringing out Le Monstre, about the creature’s bittersweet rotten scent and inhuman speed. About poisonous saliva and the icy fear the creature instilled in me and my wolf.
One wedge of garlic cheese probably wouldn’t be enough.
***
A couple of hours later, we were sat on a bench in one of La Marais’s public squares, happily eating our way through the mountain of food I’d brought. A neat green lawn spread out in front of us, a fountain bubbling tranquilly in the centre while kids ran around throwing coins and pebbles into the water. A redbrick stately home rose beyond a tall row of box hedges and Shannon’s camera was working overtime.
“How about a night club later?” she suggested, finally setting the camera down and snagging a Florentine. “I can’t remember the last time we went out dancing together.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” I asked, meaning are you sure we should risk it?
“Ayla,” she said, mock-serious, “I don’t think we can come to Paris’s gay district and not visit a night club. Glory would never forgive us.”
That was true. I decided we’d be safe in a club full of people—Le Monstre wasn’t stupid; all the attacks had been on quiet, empty streets. Like any good predator, Le Monstre hunted smart.
Except, I realized as I bit into a chunk of garlic brie, that wasn’t really true. The creature had been hitting the same areas repeatedly—Mike, me and Shannon, all in Montmartre. It had also been attacking regularly—how many deaths had there been since we arrived in Paris? Two or three, at least and those were only the stories that the papers got hold of. Le Monstre wasn’t hiding it’s kills either. How smart was that, really? If it wanted to avoid capture, it should be hunting more widely and hiding the bodies. No, I decided, the creature wasn’t smart. This kind of hunting... Well, in the animal kingdom I’d say it was greedy or desperate. Maybe that was normal for vampires? Maybe, like I’d suggested earlier, they hibernated most of the year and then went on killing sprees to feed themselves up.
“Penny for ‘em.” Shannon nudged me, then popped a piece of chocolate in my mouth.
“Thinking about—” I stopped, the words muffled by nuts and melting chocolate.
“The vampire,” she finished for me. “Don’t. It won’t help anything.”
I swallowed my chocolate. “I can’t help it. I can’t know something like that exists and not think about it. It makes me wonder what else is out there we don’t know about.”
“Demons? Witches? All the beasts and ghouls Katrina Pagan takes on?” she suggested. “Vampires could just be the tip of the iceberg.”
I regarded her, surprised. “You sound almost excited about it. Don’t tell me you want a world where gargoyles and snakemen and whatever else are running around everywhere.”
“Well,” she replied thoughtfully. “I’m not crazy about the idea of vampires. But snakemen? Is that so different from werewolves?”
I shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “This is silly,” I muttered. “This creature is probably just a one-off freak. Like a...I don’t know, like a radioactive mutant or something.”
She cracked up at that. “Now that is silly!” She shook her head, starting to clean up the remains of our picnic. “How about a walk round the shops?”
I agreed, happy to leave the conversation behind. The idea that werewolves weren’t the only ‘other’ race out there unsettled me and I wasn’t really sure why. It was a relief to leave the thought behind and focus on shopping. Le Marais was full of boutiques and quirky little shops full of fake tattoos and biker fashion. All way beyond our budget, but it was fun to pretend. We also found a bunch of antique stores and spent an hour or so poking around them, admiring massive, gold-framed mirrors and gaudy jewelry. It was easy to forget all about vampires, Thérèse, Clémence, mob violence and American runaways. To have the holiday we were supposed to be having: just me and Shannon. Just the two of us holding hands and teasing each other as Paris revolved around us; bright, romantic and colorful. By the time the afternoon had started fading away, I was definitely up for a night club. There didn’t seem any other way to spend the night in La Marais.
Fifteen
We ate in a restaurant with a live cabaret act; lots of feathers and sparkle that renewed our eagerness to visit the Moulin Rouge before we headed back home. On the recommendation of one of the singers, we headed to Mixer after that, a small gay bar nearby. Neither us were dressed for clubbing—me in my torn jeans and a Placebo tour t-shirt faded almost beyond recognition, Shannon in much nicer jeans and a plain rose-pink shirt—but we agreed that we couldn’t be bothered to go home and change.
It didn’t seem to matter once we were inside though, lost in a crowd of flamboyantly-garbed men and women and surrounded by pulsing trance music. With a few beers inside me, all I cared about was pulling Shannon close and jumping around to the beat. It helped to work out some of the tension and frustration my wolf still felt. I’d have to shift tomorrow, regardless of whether my burns were healed enough, but the dancing helped take the edge off the need to change.
In the swirl of green and blue lights, with countless scents of shampoo, cologne, sweat, and alcohol, the sound of the music, voices shouting over it and the clink of bottles and glasses, everything that had happened this week seemed a million miles away. I slid my hands over Shannon’s hips and up under her shirt, plucking at her bra and laughing when she squealed and pushed me away playfully.
After a good long stretch on the dance floor, jostling and flailing like idiots, we retreated to a seat in the corner, wriggling on the leather sofas to make room between a pair of pretty, punky boys and a woman dressed from head to foot in fishnet and latex. The corner was dark and hot, intimate, and our playful flirting turned intense. I bit gently at Shannon’s throat, loving the chocolatey smell of her perfume on her skin. She ran her fingers along my legs, scratching lightly through the holes in
my jeans.
Every touch and kiss strung me tighter and tighter, until I knew we had to get out of the club and back to the flat or somewhere quiet and private. That would do. I pulled Shannon to her feet, whispering wicked suggestions into her ear. She smiled sweetly, letting me lead her from the club and out onto the bustling street. People were still queuing to get into Mixer and the bright lights and pounding music from other clubs made for a dizzying mix on top of all the beer I’d drunk. There were men and women dressed in everything from hot pants and feather boas to 20s-style flapper outfits with sequins and sky-high heels and shrieks of laughter echoed down the streets. Once again, it all seemed so far away from our little corner of Montmartre, with the fading scent of blood on the cobbles and the endless flood of tears from Sun, Thérèse and Clémence.
