by Michele Hauf
“Blyss, you’re in trouble. This involves me. Don’t ever think otherwise.”
She nodded.
Stryke bent to kiss her. “You going to be all right alone?”
“Of course.”
“You’ve got my cell number. I’ll call and check in with you on the hour.”
“Why?” Her eyes frantically searched his. “Do you think I’m in danger?”
“Thrash has been here once.”
Kir lifted his head at that statement.
“He’s kidnapped me and threatened you, Blyss. Yeah, I think I need to keep a close eye on you now. Let me do this. Let me protect you.”
She kissed him and whispered so Kir couldn’t hear. “Thank you.”
* * *
Kir and Stryke stopped quickly at his apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, where he changed into fresh jeans, a T-shirt and leather jacket. Blyss’s brother didn’t ask for clarification on the food debacle. He wasn’t stupid. And Stryke appreciated the man’s discretion, even though he was bursting with questions.
Such questions being: What were the packs like in Europe? Were they big, small, located in the cities or country? Was pack structure the same as in the US with the principal leading the pack followed by his scion as second-in-command? Did they have as big a tiff with the vampires as the wolves back in the States? Granted, the werewolves and vampires were supposed to be peaceable, but that was more PR than actually put into practice.
And were the pack females as prized here in Europe as in the United States? So much so that only a rare few male wolves actually married their own breed because of the shortage of females.
And while he’d picked up that Kir was none too pleased with his sister’s lifestyle choice, he wanted to ask why Kir hadn’t tried to keep her in the pack, maybe to teach her more about the life. Had anyone taught her how to actually be a wolf? Because while it was mostly instinctual, there was a lot to deal with if the wolf had grown up in human society and had to learn to hide their true nature. Which apparently Blyss had not been taught.
Hadn’t her mother talked to her about coming into her shift? It was a basic fact-of-life talk. They must not be close. He’d not forgotten the gibe the siblings had made about their mother not caring. Stryke was thankful his family was so close. And even though his mother was faery, the mixed blood that ran within his siblings’ veins had only fortified their understanding and acceptance of other breeds. There weren’t a hell of a lot of breeds the Saint-Pierres didn’t associate with.
Except demons. That breed was nasty.
Kir drove a small but sturdy black SUV toward the 9th arrondissement, where the nightclub was located. It was eleven in the evening and he’d warned that the club would be crowded and loud. A good time to sneak around.
“I care about your sister,” Stryke felt the urge to say over the low background noise of the talk radio. “We came together in a weird way, but trust me, I only want what’s best for her. And I want to do what I can to keep her safe and protect her.”
“I get that about you,” Kir said, one wrist resting on the steering wheel as he navigated the Parisian traffic. “Do you love her?”
“I’ve only known her a short time. Love is...big.”
Kir nodded knowingly. “That it is. Blyss is a tough person to understand. She’s made an odd life choice, but I love her no matter what. She’s my blood.”
“Do you think she would have chosen differently if, I don’t know, she hadn’t such a traumatic first shifting experience?”
“I remember that incident. It did scar her. I wish I had been in school at the time, but I’m ten years older than her and at the time was already out working with the Enforcers. And our mother has never been a hands-on compassionate sort of woman. That incident definitely shaped Blyss into what she is today. I can’t say I understand her choice, though. It offends me that she doesn’t want anything to do with our breed. And yet, today I stop by her place and discover her latest lover is a wolf. So she can surprise me.”
Thinking about how she had surrendered to their spur-of-the-moment food fight, Stryke had to agree. The woman was indeed surprising.
“I don’t want Thrash to hurt her,” he said. “We need to find the black diamond. And after that, well...”
Kir cast him a glance. “Well?”
“Just well. I intend to head back to Minnesota once I know Blyss is safe. I’ve been tasked to start my own pack by my father. So...I’m in the market for a wife. But if I had a reason to stay in Paris awhile longer? Well then.”
“I get the wife search. I’d love to marry a werewolf, but the only way that will happen around here is usually arranged.”
“My grandfather is in an arranged marriage. They are still madly in love.”
“Good to hear. I’ll remember that should I ever be faced with the situation. I like you, Saint-Pierre. If you have a chance, I’d like to introduce you to my pack. You’d get along with my best friend Jacques.”
“That would be cool. I’d like to learn more about the Enforcers. I graduated from the police academy back home, but when it came time to get a job I realized I couldn’t do it. Entry level was desk work. I couldn’t bring myself to work with humans, even though they surely need the help as much as we do. I want to work with my own kind, protecting them. We need it.”
“You could start an enforcement agency back home.”
“It’s an idea. Might be the thing to help build a new pack, as well. The place is right up there.” Stryke pointed out the club with the black metal door.
“Yep. Been inside that club too many times to admit to. But only for a case, never because the skeevy vampire chicks turn me on.” He winked and got out of the parked car. The streets were crowded with young human partyers, but Stryke sensed paranormals mingled among the mix.
“The club usually only allows in paranormals,” Kir said as they strode toward the doors. “But they admit pretty human women for the vamps to feed on. The humans aren’t aware, but then again, some are and return for the bite. Fang junkies.”
“When Blyss and I were here the other day it was dead. We didn’t find anything, but the scent trail from Hawkes Associates was unmistakable right until I reached the main room inside.”
“Then we need to go deeper,” Kir said.
The bouncer was different than the one who had let Stryke in previously. The bruiser sporting deadly studs—on his forearms, not his leather vest—looked Kir and Stryke up and down, then nodded and opened the door. Demons could scent out any breed, including humans.
“So the devil Himself owns this place?” Stryke asked as they strode down the dark hallway.
“Don’t say that name again,” Kir cautioned as they paused before the main dance floor. “Say it three times and you’ve invited that bastard for lunch.”
“Got it. I think the back rooms are beyond the stage over there.” Stryke sniffed. “I can pick out the familiar scent. I don’t think they’re here. It’s lingered that long. Definitely leads back that way.”
“Then let’s follow your nose. Take the lead, man.”
They pushed through the crush of dancers and to the darkened depths that led through the doorway and turned into a maze of dark hallways. When Stryke sensed someone walking toward them, he slipped behind a black velvet curtain and Kir followed. They waited until what smelled faery to Stryke passed and then sneaked out.
Stryke followed the demonic scent he’d originally picked up at the wedding and at Hawkes Associates. It was barely there, but cloying enough that he didn’t feel he was wrong. It wasn’t difficult to hold the scent either, despite the thump of drums in his heart, and the rush of adrenaline passing through the dance floor had ignited in his system.
When they landed upon a dead-end wall painted with glow-in-the-dark graffiti, Stryke stepped onto a metal plate and jumped, testing the floor. “A door,” he decided. “Going down.”
Knowing the devil Himself owned the place and finding a door going down didn’t sit w
ell with him. Stryke reminded himself he wasn’t here to play scared. In fact, he had wanted to find danger here in Paris. And here it was. “Shall we?”
“After you,” Kir said with a glance the way they had come.
A steel staircase descended straight down within a tunnel, so Stryke could stand upright, stepping down and balancing himself with his hands against the curved steel wall before him. It was claustrophobic, but he felt cooler air rising from below. After descending about thirty feet, he sensed he was close to landing.
Both men arrived on a solid dirt floor and stood underground in the dark, surrounded by steel walls and an icy chill. The thumping beat from the overhead club was now but a murmur inside Stryke’s veins.
“It’s been built up,” Kir noted. “Most tunnels under the city are carved out of the limestone. Interesting.”
They sniffed to take in the surroundings.
“This way,” Stryke said, veering left. Kir followed. “Just ahead. The scent grows stronger.”
A dim light marked a room that was closed off by iron bars. The bars were spaced so wide that Stryke and Kir were able to slip through them and look about. Everything was dark and either steel or blackened metal. The walls were impressed with markings, as was the ceiling. Looked tribal, or at the least, some definite design. Stryke noticed that the floor featured a geometric design, fitted in the dirt floor with black metal ribbons, that traced to the center of the room—where the silver scepter had been placed in a keyhole that looked as though it had been made specifically for it.
“Why does this remind me of every horror or creature flick I’ve ever seen?” Stryke commented.
“If that doesn’t give you the creeps, check that out.”
Kir gestured to the wall behind them. In the dimness beyond closer-spaced iron bars were living beings. In cages. Glowing red eyes peered out at them. Four pairs.
“This can’t be good,” Stryke said. “They’ve begun to collect the demons for the sacrifice.”
Chapter 15
The apartment felt vast and empty now that the men had gone. It was almost as if each had lifted up his own air and carried it out with him. And the air that surrounded Stryke Saint-Pierre was fresh and new and yet it occupied so much space, Blyss could feel his absence painfully.
As she finished cleaning up the food from the floors, walls and counters, she lamented such strange emotions. What was that about?
She didn’t miss men. She used men.
Since her early twenties, when she had decided to live as a human among humans—and knew it would require a certain income as werewolf daughters were rarely taught marketable job skills; yes, the medieval ways still ruled in most packs—she had trained herself to carefully select a man as her lover, someone who possessed esteem, money and who got bored quickly. Blyss didn’t want to become the girlfriend. She enjoyed being the lover. Besides, it was dangerous when men started to develop feelings toward her. She preferred to take the jewels, thank them with a sexy weekend and then stride out of their lives.
Until Stryke had pushed her up against the wall and changed her mind.
Everything about the man was nothing she had ever been interested in. And yet it didn’t matter to her at all that he wasn’t rich. She preferred his down-home sensibility and everyman qualities. It didn’t matter that he’d never bring her a five-hundred-euro bottle of champagne. He liked to lick the cheap stuff off her skin. And that was a thousand times more satisfying.
It might not even matter that he was werewolf.
Maybe?
Blyss sat back against the kitchen counter. She’d scrubbed the floor clean. She tossed the sponge in the bucket of dirty water. She couldn’t remember when she’d last done manual labor. It should appall her. Yet she could only feel a sense of satisfaction as she looked over the gleaming marble floor.
Leaning forward, she studied her reflection in a beam of moonlight that mirrored the marble surface. What she saw was a woman who tried to wear her mask with perfection so others would never see the ugly creature lurking beneath.
“But he’s not ugly,” she whispered.
In fact, she was curious about Stryke’s wolf. She wanted to see him shifted, both as a four-legged wolf and as the powerful werewolf that walked as a man on two legs. She wanted to smell his carnal desire for her. To feel his power and know his strength. She wanted to be owned by Stryke Saint-Pierre in every way possible.
And she realized what hidden part of her actually felt those desires. Her wolf. It had to be. Because the socialite Blyss Sauveterre, masquerading as a human woman, would never consider a werewolf anything but a foul and disgusting creature.
She glanced around the counter and up the side of the stainless-steel fridge where the iPad hung on a rack; it served as her digital calendar. Less than three days before the full moon. It hadn’t been a year since she’d last shifted to werewolf. She didn’t need to make the shift this month. But she would be forced to if Le Diabolique was not found and she could not hand it over to Ed.
Maybe she didn’t need the crutch of the pills anymore? Could she...accept her werewolf?
She shook her head, catching a spill of hair against her palm. “What am I thinking? Just because a handsome wolf has snuck into my heart doesn’t mean I need to start thinking crazy.”
Because without the pills she would revert to werewolf and would need to shift. Every month.
She pressed a palm over her heart. Indeed, Stryke had found a way inside, beneath the mask and into her soul. She felt him there. Wanted to keep him there.
Which complicated things.
Why was she listening to her heart instead of the exacting, rational, and yes, even conniving, socialite who knew what had to be done to survive?
If she was honest with herself, it felt good to allow her heart the lead. She hadn’t done so—well, ever. And she missed Stryke. She needed him here, holding her, kissing her, calling her glamour girl.
So what did that mean?
“I think I’m in love,” she whispered.
And the realization hurt something far more fragile than her heart. It wounded her very soul.
* * *
They decided to leave the caged demons as they were. They appeared drugged because none tried to fight and speak to them. There was no sign of the diamond. Kir walked around the scepter placed in the center of the floor. They couldn’t touch it without something to protect them from the silver.
Stryke pulled off his shirt and wrapped it about the scepter, but try as he might, it would not budge. “It’s as if it’s been riveted into the floor.”
“Leave it,” Kir said.
They left the underground demon lair with the intention of tracking, but the scents stopped outside the club.
“We’ll check back when we learn more,” Stryke said.
“I’ll check the database and get back to you.”
Instead of having Kir drop him at his place, Stryke said he wanted to check in with Blyss and help her clean because he was pretty sure she might be baffled by the whole cleaning process.
Kir chuckled knowingly and said he’d be in touch. He would check his sources regarding local demon nests and call if he found a lead.
Meanwhile, Rhys called. Stryke answered his phone while standing inside the main door that led to the courtyard before Blyss’s building. “Rhys, what’s up?”
“Tor has more items that need a pickup. Listen, I know this isn’t the glamorous security detail I had offered you, but the work does come up occasionally.”
“It’s cool, Rhys. I’m glad to help out. Is it something I need to dash off to right now?”
“No, actually Tor wants to catalog the items first. I told him to give you a call when it’s ready. Probably tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. More demon stuff?”
“No, this is related to the sidhe. Not sure what it is exactly. Are you still tracking the scepter?”
“I found it, but wasn’t able to retrieve it. Just got back from followi
ng a lead that took us below Club l’Enfer. It was like wandering through the bowels of hell down there.”
“Be careful, Stryke. You’re treading Himself’s territory.”
“Yeah, but tell me why the dark bad guy would have an interest in releasing an all-powerful demon from some big diamond? I mean, wouldn’t that be competition?”
“Does sound odd. You suspect it was demons who stole both the scepter and the diamond?”
“Ninety-nine percent sure. I tracked their scent both from your office and the wedding. Definitely demon.”
“They could be working on their own. Independent of...you know who.” As Kir had stated, it was never wise to mention Himself’s name more than once. “The only demon I know right now that has any control over the local denizens is Edamite Thrash.”
“Yeah, he’s oddly involved in all this, but I don’t think he stole either of the items.”
“He surely sent lackeys.”
“Maybe.” Then why even press Blyss to bring him the diamond if Thrash had others steal it for him? Didn’t make sense. “I’ve hooked up with Blyss’s brother, Kir Sauveterre.”
“Ah yes, from the Valoir pack. Good bunch of wolves. They enforce in the city, yes?”
“Yes, they do. Sounds like a cool job. We need to organize something like that in the States. Anyway, I’ll wait for Tor’s call. Thanks, Rhys. Let me know if you get any ideas about this situation. The clock is ticking. I have a sense it’s all going down on the night of the full moon.”
“Doesn’t give you much time. I should mention, I’ve a cabin about an hour out of the city you can use on the night of the full moon if you’re still in Paris then. Leagues and leagues of forest surrounding it. All private land. You interested?”
“Hell yes. Thanks, Rhys. You’ve been so generous, I’m not sure how I’ll ever repay you.”
“You already are, Stryke. Talk to you soon.”
He knocked on Blyss’s door and opened it, calling out to her. A gorgeous vision in white came running down the hallway. Stryke immediately sensed danger and grabbed her, hugging her against his chest, as he scanned the hallway behind her. Instincts lifted his head, sniffing for danger.
