by Liz Braswell
Anastasia Leon. That was her mother’s name. And there she was. A photo similar to the one that Chloe had held in her hand just a couple of weeks ago, of a woman with waist-length black hair and a wide, untamed smile, furrowed brow and determined eyes.
She gestured for the sound to be turned back down.
The Mai looked stunned; some were weeping, some growling. Chloe felt a mix of pity and bewilderment that none of them had seen this coming.
“See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Secrecy and survival has forced you to follow a man who murdered your Pride Leader. This causeless violence between us and the Tenth Blade ends now. All it does is breed more violence and plays for power among ourselves—look what Sergei did to my sister, and look what Brian’s people did to him.
“I am your new Chosen One, and I will lead you to safety and prosperity—but only through peace.”
There was a pause. Were they going to clap? Drum her out? What happened next? Chloe desperately tried to feel the strange empathy she had experienced before, but it had faded to a dull heartbeat.
Suddenly Alyec leapt to his feet and roared. The only time Chloe had ever heard anything like it was when she’d lost her cool with Keira—and scared the bejesus out of the other girl. It was a deep, frightening sound that seemed much too loud and deep for his human frame to produce. His eyes were slit and scary; his claws were out.
Valerie stood up next and joined him.
Soon everyone was standing and howling and roaring, a deafening clamor that should have frightened Chloe but didn’t. For just a moment the link was back and she could feel their energy and power and love—the support of the Pride.
Kim didn’t roar, choosing to give her a strangely human thumbs-up.
When Chloe retired to give her mom a quick call, letting her know how it went, she was exhausted. Still not a public speaker, she realized. Just able to do it when called for. Igor waited patiently close by for her to get off the phone.
“Honored One …?” he asked politely.
“Yes, Igor?” Chloe asked as she set down the phone. Soon she would get back on the bandwagon of making them call her Chloe. It seemed too much to do right now, though.
“I wanted to say … I think you are right.” It didn’t look like he was forcing himself to say this; he seemed full of the stillness and peace that she herself had experienced that afternoon. “Maybe it’s because I deal—dealt—with humans more than Sergei, but we should follow their laws. Especially if we stay. And even if we don’t stay—nomads can’t make asses of themselves everywhere they go. Otherwise we won’t be welcomed back.” There was the faintest smile on his lips.
“Thanks, Igor. That really means a lot to me.” And that was it—it was over. All of the tension between them for the last few days, all of his irritation at her. But the sadness was still there, and Chloe knew that he would be thinking a lot about Sergei in the upcoming weeks, remembering the good things while sifting through them, looking for signs of the ruthless killer beneath. “I never knew my biological father,” she added softly. “And my adopted dad skipped out when I was little. Sergei was the third father I lost—and in some ways, the one I was closest to.”
Igor nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Hey,” Chloe said, changing the subject and remembering the absence she had felt at the beginning of the speech. “Where’s Dmitry, by the way?”
He was the bodyguard Sergei had assigned to her when she was feeling rebellious living with the Mai, the one who came to protect her when they went out to see Star Wars. Along with Ellen, another member of the kizekh—and, she was pretty sure, his lover.
She was expecting a quick answer, like, Oh, he patrols and guards the upstairs while the Pride meets to keep them safe.
But Igor’s face, blank and confused, told another story.
This is one of those loose ends, Chloe realized tiredly. One of those unexplained things that’s gonna come back and bite me in the ass later. She was getting so much wiser so quickly … and it didn’t make her happier.
Sixteen
Eventually Chloe was able to quietly extract herself from the crowd and slip away to the hospital room. Brian was actually reading, beneath a single light floating alone in the darkness.
“Hey,” she said, smiling.
“Hey.” He put down his book and looked up at her eagerly. There was one thin bandage around his head now, mostly white and unstained. His hair was a little fluffier, like it had been cleaned, and his eyes were brighter, though they were still surrounded by bruises and cuts. But there was definitely something more alive about him, pink and healthy, and Chloe felt a little rush of pride that maybe, just maybe, she’d been the one to lift the age-old human-Mai curse.
The book, Chloe noticed as she came closer, was Blood Meridian. It looked like a Western.
“Not a lot of reading choices down here,” he said, shrugging. “But this is pretty good.”
“Are they treating you okay?” she asked, pulling up a metal stool.
“Are you kidding?” Brian snorted. “Whatever they think of me, they keep it to themselves. It’s all ’Honored One’ this and ’Chosen One’ that and ’as she desires….’ Although the doctor, I think, really is good. And kind of funny, for a Mai.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chloe demanded, taking his hand.
“As someone who has been forced to study them most of his life, I gotta tell you: most of your compatriots don’t really have much of a sense of humor.”
Chloe opened her mouth to disagree, then thought about it. He was right.
She shrugged. “We had a big powwow upstairs.”
“I heard. Well, I didn’t actually hear, but everyone was talking about it. Everything okay?”
Chloe sighed and told him about Sergei and the Rogue and her reporting it to the police and the subsequent follow-up investigations and how he appeared to have killed her entire biological family except for her dad, who no one knew or seemed to really care about. She had to stop once to call her mom, which Brian later teased her about, but he sat quietly, eyes twinkling, while she called.
“Well.” She stretched, yawning. “That’s about it.”
“What now?”
“Now?” She extended her claws without thinking and scratched at a particularly itchy spot on her head. She hoped it wasn’t dandruff. Or whatever cats got. “Now I think I find my old bedroom, crawl into bed, and sleep until hell freezes over—or I have to call my mom again, in about three hours.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” Brian suggested quietly.
Chloe looked at him. He wasn’t kidding. In fact, she had never seen him look at her more seriously. He reached out a hand and touched her lips—a hand that was connected to a really toned arm, peach-colored and muscled. He moved his fingers along her cheek and jaw to run his hand through her hair.
Then she eased off the stool and lowered the metal side of his hospital bed.
“It will be just like a sleepover,” he said, grinning.
“No pillow fights for you,” she murmured, pulling back the sheet and kissing his neck.
In the morning, Chloe woke up cramped and sleepy.
She had only missed one phone call to her mom—the 4 a.m. one—and Anna King had called her at exactly five minutes past. While it wasn’t exactly convenient to answer, the consequences would have been far worse, so Chloe had forced herself to.
Brian made little murmuring noises as she carefully disengaged herself and slid off the side of the bed.
“C’m back soon,” he mumbled, trying to open his eyes and failing. “Miss you.”
Chloe leaned over and kissed him. Brian smiled but was soon snoring again.
How do I feel? Chloe asked herself, picking her jeans up off the floor and putting them on. They fit softly and nicely, like third-day jeans always did.
Do I feel different?
She made her way through the benches of hospitaly stuff, surprising Dr. Lovsky, who was carr
ying a breakfast tray for Brian.
“Oh, uh, morning, Honored One,” the older woman said, a little shocked when she realized the two of them had been together all night. But whether it was because he was a human or that hanky-panky in general had gone on in her little sterile kingdom, Chloe couldn’t tell.
“Morning,” she said cheerfully before resuming her thoughts and her progression upstairs. Maybe there was a whole ceremonial day-after-New-Pride-Leader-speech breakfast fete in her honor. That would be terribly embarrassing, but there might be fruit salad.
Sniffing the air and using her Mai hearing, Chloe was sort of disappointed she didn’t hear any of the sounds that might be associated with fete preparations, so she went to the kitchenette instead, where at least she smelled coffee.
Kim was in there already, getting her morning green tea.
“Honored One,” she said, dipping her tea bag and her head at the same time.
“Chloe,” Chloe corrected grumpily, getting a cup. Since she had been away, they had installed a cool new coffee machine where you could choose a packet of ten different kinds of coffee, or tea, or even hot chocolate—and press some buttons and the machine would make you almost anything. Of course, the packets were made out of nonbiodegradable Mylar, so as soon as things calmed down around here, Chloe would have to start pushing to get rid of it.
Surely a Chosen One could do that.
Her aim was still a little off: as she poured the milk, the coffee overflowed her cup—at least it wasn’t plastic foam—and spilled on the counter.
“Damn,” Chloe grumbled, carefully lifting the cup to her mouth to sip the excess off. She almost felt hung over.
“Did you sleep well?” Kim asked.
Chloe frowned, looking her friend in the eye, but there were no double entendres. It was an innocent question.
“Not … exactly.”
Kim nodded wisely. “Did you and Brian have sex together?”
Chloe choked on her coffee and spat it out, spilling some more from the cup as she did. “What the hell?” she demanded.
The cat-earred girl barely hid her smile. “I was just curious.”
Chloe had opened her mouth to say something about the private lives of Chosen Ones when Igor came into the room.
“Honored One.” He gave her a quick nod. “You should come quick. Dmitry is back—he’s killed someone.”
There goes the happy ending that was just beginning. Why wasn’t anything easy?
She followed Igor out and into Sergei’s office. Kim came padding quietly behind. For some reason, Chloe didn’t mind her constant presence, even when it wasn’t exactly invited. She was never distracting, opinionated, or full of herself.
Chloe expected to find him standing tall, impassive, scary, threatening—like he normally was. The kizekh were the soldier class, after all—and from what she had seen at the fight on the Presidio, they were quite effective and disciplined in their own scary, catlike way.
Instead he was sitting on a chair, bent over and weeping. Olga was standing next to him, a hand on his shoulder.
“Honored One!” Dmitry whirled around—of course he would have heard them talking. His senses were probably almost as sharp as Kim’s. The big guard threw himself to his knees at her feet and touched her ankles. “I did not know! That he was a murderer of our people—that he—that he—killed our Chosen One!” Chloe was confused for a moment before she realized he meant her biological mother. He was old enough to remember her, she realized, and had maybe even met her before he came over.
“What happened?” Chloe asked as gently as she could, considering there was a crazy murdering adult below her wailing and prostrating himself.
“When I learned the news of our Pri—of Sergei’s death, I grew incensed and swore vengeance!”
Chloe turned to glare at Igor.
“He wasn’t around when I passed along your novengeance thing,” he protested. “And even if he was, well, tensions were running a little high. …”
“I went to a place where I knew there would be one of the filthy human Order patrolling,” Dmitry said, a hard glint in his eye as he recalled. “And killed the coward with my bare claws.” Then he began to weep again. “I thought I was avenging our leader, our great protector…. I knew you were the One, but he was as a father to us in the days between you and the One before. …”
“Do you remember which one you mur—uh, killed?” Chloe asked.
Dmitry shook his head. “They are all alike—brown hair, terrible smell—he was one from the skirmish the other night.”
He sounds more Klingon than Mai, Chloe noted.
“You’ve heard my new rule? No more bloodshed, except in self-defense?” Chloe asked.
“Yes, Honored One. Of course. Our duty is to protect the Pride, not declare war.” He looked up at her, his crazy face streaked with tears but set with new resolve.
Chloe wasn’t sure if he was asking forgiveness; she wasn’t sure that she could have given it. There were more important things to deal with immediately. What was it they said on TV? Damage control?
She tried to block out the image of the man before her ripping out the throat of some nameless human, tried to forget that there was a murderer at her feet. Murder. Someone’s life snuffed out because he was in the path of an angry, vengeful cat person. Not that anyone in the Tenth Blade was exactly innocent, but what if it was someone like Brian? Forced to join, not exactly in complete agreement with the tenets …
Chloe went around to Sergei’s desk and did the only thing that made any sense—she called Whitney. Directly.
“Hello?” From the obnoxious tone in that one word, she could tell he already knew who was calling.
“Whitney, we need to meet now. This is the second death in a week from our stupid little war—we need to end it.”
“What second death?”
Chloe looked at Igor and Olga and Kim. They all shrugged—whoever Dmitry had killed, apparently his body hadn’t been found yet.
“One of my people killed one of your people in revenge for Sergei’s death, against my orders. I don’t know who it is, but you might want to issue a roll call.”
“Son of a—”
“See? I’m calling you to tell you about it. I’m being open and honest in an attempt to end this… craziness.” Amy had a much better word, but somehow Chloe suspected Mr. Whitney H. Rezza didn’t know Yiddish.
“If you think I’m going to thank you for being the first to let me know about the death of one of my Order or break down weeping and beg for a truce, Miss King, especially from you…”
Chloe wondered if it would have been any different if she had been male. Or older. He only called her “Miss” when he was really upset and looking to insult her.
“Listen. Remember how I asked you about your son?”
“What does—?”
“We have him. Alive. Barely.”
There was finally silence on the other end. This was a gamble; he seemed more than willing to give Brian up to other members of the Order of the Tenth Blade who thought he had betrayed them by helping Chloe. But Brian was his son, after all, and she bet that whatever fate he wanted, it probably didn’t involve him ending up at the mercy of the Mai.
“If you want to see him again, alive, you will come to”—somewhere public, somewhere safe—“Pier 39, at seven o’clock, with all your little cronies or whatever. This whole thing is ending today, one way or another, Mr. Rezza.”
She hung up on him again.
It was kind of nice.
She looked up—Olga, Kim, Igor, and Dmitry were all staring at her.
“What?” she demanded.
“You don’t, uh”—Igor cleared his throat—“sound like the intern we hired a couple of weeks ago, Honored One.”
Chloe just smiled, saving her energy for things greater than laughing.
Seventeen
“I have never seen these up close,” Kim said, intrigued by the sea lions. She leaned dangerously over the
rail, a black baseball cap and her willowy wispiness making her easily mistaken for an overeager young boy.
“You’ve lived in the Bay Area your whole life and you’ve never seen the sea lions before?” Chloe asked, amazed. Brian tried to stay alert in a wheelchair nearby; Dmitry and Ellen stood guard over him. With his good looks and their weird presence Brian was occasionally mistaken for a celebrity; tourists took candid shots of him, thinking he was somebody. Besides this being amusing, Chloe liked having the extra witnesses.
Brian hadn’t been completely on board when she told him her plan; he thought it was dangerous for her—and any other Mai involved. But when Chloe asked him what else she could possibly do, he didn’t have a better idea.
Amy, Paul, and her mom were with him, too; Chloe wanted everyone who was involved to witness whatever occurred. Alyec pretended to pitch Amy headfirst into the water a couple of times, and Paul even offered to help once. I’m sure sublimated anger has nothing to do with it, Chloe thought. Olga was eating a soft-serve ice cream cone, though from her figure it looked like the concept should have been alien. I wonder if she’s also a dairy cat.
About a half hour after the sun set—it was hard to tell, it being one of those cold gray San Francisco fall days—Whitney strode up with a sleek umbrella he swung like a swagger stick, his expensive raincoat unfurling behind him. There were other people with him, mostly middle-aged, some younger.
“Where is my son?” Whitney demanded immediately.
“I’m right here, Dad.” Brian waved weakly.
His father’s face went white when he saw the extent of his son’s injuries.
“What have you done to him …?” Whitney demanded, coming forward, his face now going purple with rage.
Igor stepped easily between him and Brian, arms poised. Ellen and Dmitry loomed forward.
“We didn’t do anything.” Chloe resisted the urge to add, old man. “I found him, practically dying, in an alley. Your people did this to him.”
The old man didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t deny or confirm it.
“It was Dickless, Dad,” Brian said, his thin voice almost lost in the evening breeze and wails of the sea lions. “He and his little bitches took me by surprise. They left me for dead.”
