Money, Iris thought when she looked at him. Born to it, bred to it, or married to it. Of course, that was an image completely at odds with his presence and his behavior. Men like him did not wander into the private domain of itinerant circus folk—even a circus parked on some dusty abandoned lot behind a glittering hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. They did not save women from snipers.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Iris said to him. He folded his arms over his chest, expression darkening.
“Funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Iris frowned. “My camp, my territory.”
“Doesn’t mean this place is safe. You were shot at, and what? You decide to stay out in the open where you’ll make another target? Bad idea.”
“Of course it’s a bad idea,” Iris snapped, irritated that a stranger was giving her this lecture. “That’s not the point. I can’t move the cats while they’re passed out, and I refuse to leave them while they’re vulnerable. Especially if someone is running around with a gun in hand.”
“So instead you gamble with your life.”
“Cut the melodrama. I can take care of myself. Besides, I’m betting whoever shot at me missed on purpose. Probably a friend of those assholes who went after the cats. Those types like to scare, but they’re too chicken for murder.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes,” Iris lied. “Anyway, what does it matter to you? You’re not my protector.”
He said nothing. Iris moved closer to the fence. His eyes were lost in shadow, but she imagined they looked the same: rich and brown and full of something … warm.
“Why didn’t you want to talk to the police?” Iris asked him, proud her voice did not shake, that she sounded so strong and calm and easy.
His jaw tightened. “I wanted to see if I could find the shooter. I thought that would be more useful than standing around trying to explain the happy coincidence of how I happened to be there just when a gun went off.”
“Right. I could use that explanation.”
“You could use a bulletproof vest or a roof over your head.”
“Or some straight answers. Give me your name.”
He hesitated. “My friends call me Blue.”
“And your enemies?”
“They don’t worry about names.”
“I don’t find that particularly comforting.”
His mouth crooked into a smile. “What’s your name?”
“Iris,” she said slowly, not quite certain why she was being so forthcoming, why she was unable to help herself. She did not like strangers—not usually, anyway—but there was something about this man that was utterly compelling. It frightened her, just how compelling.
He stepped closer, reaching out to lace his fingers through the chain link. “Iris, maybe you should think about spending the night somewhere else. I’ll walk you home. Or not, if it makes you uncomfortable. But this isn’t safe.”
Iris clutched her blanket closer. Behind, Lila yawned, teeth flashing long and white beneath the sparse campground lights. The air felt very still, though she could hear the wind-up music and distant chime of the Strip. No escaping the concrete jungle; no peace, anywhere.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him, studying his eyes, drinking in his clean scent. “Why are you here?”
“Why not?” he replied, voice rumbling low and soft. “Why wouldn’t I help you?”
“Because people don’t. Not like this.”
His fingers tightened around the chain link. A big man, broad and tall, he made Iris feel small, almost delicate. She did not lean away, but stepped closer, inhaling him, drinking in his gaze. Dangerous—this was so dangerous; her mother would be ashamed—but she could not help herself. Even the leopard called to him; she could feel her other half rolling through her chest, stirring to life.
“You need to meet better people,” he said, glancing at her mouth. Her pulse quickened, heart jumping with a tiny ache that made her remember older days, older pain; why this was bad, dangerous. Iris forced herself to lean away, but as she did, she caught a new scent in the air and stopped moving, tilting her head and glancing left into the dark shadows. The man—Blue—followed her gaze.
“What is it?” he asked.
Iris could not answer him. No way to explain how she knew someone was coming.
Careful now. You have to be careful. Though of what, she could not say. Good hearing in itself was not enough, in this day and age, to declare a person inhuman. Even if that was the case.
She heard her mother’s voice, chiding her, that old faint whisper of: Better to be safe than sorry, Iris. Be ever vigilant, because the moment you are not, an accident will occur. You will be caught off guard. Your true nature will emerge, and you cannot let that happen. You cannot. The world is too dangerous for those like us, and we are alone. We are alone, and all we have is each other….
And now all Iris had was herself. She glanced at the man—Blue—and found him studying her. The attention, the intensity, made her nervous.
“What do you want?” she asked him, ignoring for a moment the scent on the wind, the steady approach of footsteps. None of that mattered compared to what was going on inside this man’s head.
Blue’s gaze faltered. He touched the wire separating them and opened his mouth. Iris leaned forward.
Before he could speak, though, a wavering light cut through the darkness on their left. She turned. It was Danny, walking with a flashlight. Blue moved—she half expected him to run—but when she glanced at him she found that he had only shifted position, standing so that it would be easy for Danny to see him.
And Danny saw, and stopped walking. Stumbled, actually, though he caught himself so easily Iris almost missed it. She was used to his grace, though, his abilities as a dancer, and the misstep was glaring. His scent changed, too. It became acrid, bitter, his unease incomprehensible. Blue, too, smelled nervous.
“Iris,” he said in a low voice. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said slowly, looking between the two men. “This is the person who saved me from being shot. His name is Blue.”
Danny said nothing. He studied Blue, shining the flashlight directly into Blue’s face. It must have been uncomfortable, but Blue did not protest. Just stood there, letting Danny get his fill. Neither of them spoke or moved. Iris found it all rather creepy. And confusing.
“Do you know each other?” she asked.
“No,” said both men, in unison. Iris rubbed her forehead.
“Right. Okay, then. Danny, get that flashlight off his face. You’re blinding him.”
“Good.” His voice was unfriendly, eyes hard as flint behind his glasses. “I want to know why he’s here.”
“Just passing through,” Blue told him, and if Iris thought his gaze was intense before, it was nothing compared to what passed through his face when he looked at Danny. The intimacy of it made her uncomfortable, but only because Danny’s eyes shared the same raw focus. Iris thought of lions, males meeting on pride land, ready to fight for the right to hunt, to mate.
“Hey,” she said, and then again, louder. Both men looked at her, cheeks flushed, scents so prickly she wanted to shake them both and then run like hell. Danny’s throat worked; the flashlight wavered from Blue’s face.
“Iris,” he said. “I went by your trailer to make sure you were okay. You weren’t there. I got worried.”
“I’m fine.” She glanced at Blue. “Really.”
“It’s not safe for you here.”
“So everyone keeps reminding me. The frost in her voice was nothing but a mask for a sudden case of bone-deep weariness. She might not be alone, but she wanted to be—alone except for the company of her cats. Humans, be gone. Her heart ached.
“I’m not leaving this holding pen,” she told the men, and it was a surreal sensation, feeling like she had to defend herself for doing the right thing. “Not until Con and Boudicca are awake and I know they’re calm. So both of you can go aw
ay now. Go beat each other up. Work out whatever it is that has you both so riled.”
Iris turned her back and lay down between Con and Petro. Lila threw herself on the grass at her feet and began licking Iris’s calves. Her tongue felt like sandpaper.
The men did not move for a very long time. Iris felt ridiculous ignoring them, but the alternative was involvement and she did not have the energy. She was confused enough, and exhausted. She simply lay on her side, curled into a ball, listening to the men size each other up. Their scents continued to bother her. Not because they were entirely unpleasant, but because it was suddenly difficult to tell them apart. Danny’s scent did not carry the same electricity as Blue’s—his was more rain than thunder—but there was an underlying quality that was undeniably similar.
Almost like they’re family, she thought, chewing on that possibility for only a moment before discarding it. Too unlikely. Besides, both men had said they did not know each other, and she chose to take that as the truth.
Iris closed her eyes. She heard cloth rustle and joints pop. A very quiet grunt of pain. She thought it was Blue and wanted to roll over, but she made herself lie still, and every sound and scent felt clear and new and sharp. She listened to him lie down in the grass outside the holding pen and could not fathom why this man, a stranger, would go to so much trouble for her. She wanted to feel suspicious, wanted to chalk up his astonishing behavior to ulterior motives, but his scent was beginning to clear and calm, and she could not argue with that. Nor did she want to.
“You can’t stay here,” Danny murmured.
“Then call the cops,” Blue said.
Silence. A moment later Iris heard more movement, another body settling on the ground.
“Don’t try anything,” Danny said.
“Okay,” Blue replied, and that was the last thing Iris heard him say for the rest of the night.
She went to sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Against his better judgment—because, in his experience, being unconscious was usually better than the alternative—Blue woke the next morning with a crick in his neck and a boot in his crotch. He was not sure which was worse, although he thought the very large half-naked man staring down at him with a cleaver in his hand might trump them both.
“Hello,” Blue said.
“Guten Morgen,” said the man, with a smile that was almost as violently cheerful as the giant yellow happy face tattooed on his massive chest. “I think you are very wunderschön, but if you hurt my friends, I will cut you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Blue said, hoping to God that was the right answer.
Apparently it was. The man turned and walked to the holding pen, which Blue was almost as surprised to see as daylight or that cleaver. He had not meant to sleep. Not with his brother hunkered close in the darkness, no doubt waiting for an opportunity to smother him. Although, given that Blue was still alive—sans wounds—he figured common sense had won out. Maybe even common decency. Though he doubted it. Daniel, quite obviously, knew who he was. And that was just great.
He sat up. His body ached, and when he leaned forward he noticed the dusty stamp of a great big boot on the crotch of his black pants. Just what he needed; Blue wondered if it was a portent of things to come.
He glanced at the holding pen and met the collective golden gazes of four very large cats, all of whom studied him with the kind of intense concentration that Blue usually reserved for shooting people. Iris, however, was not with them. Her absence bothered him—a lot—and he tried to stand. His right leg gave out at the last moment, sending him back down to the ground. Hard. He swore, rubbing his knee.
“Trouble?” asked the tattooed German. Blue found him crouched over an extremely large side of beef. He began hacking at it with the cleaver. The cats ignored him, still staring at Blue.
“Recent injury,” Blue told him, more than a little disturbed that he was more interesting than a slab of raw meat. “I don’t think sleeping on the ground helped much.”
“You should have asked for a bed,” came the reply, as though strangers requesting a place to sleep was a common practice, the easiest thing in the world. He took one long step and held out his hand. “My name is Samuel. You need room? Come to me.”
Blue grabbed his hand and the man yanked him off the ground with enough force to almost send him back down again, this time flat on his face. He teetered. Samuel steadied him.
“Thanks,” Blue said. “I appreciate it.”
The German smiled and went back to cutting meat, attacking it with a ferocity that made the intense unerring scrutiny of the cats even more eerie. Blue moved a safe distance away. “I don’t suppose you know where Iris is, do you? Or Daniel?”
The man grunted. “Today is a show day. Everyone is practicing. Or should be.”
“Can you tell me where?”
“Not far. Just on the other side of the camp. We practice, and then go to the Miracle for our performance.”
“Ah.” Blue hesitated. “And what do you do?”
The man’s smile widened. “I am a clown.”
Right. Blue hobbled away. Quickly.
Las Vegas in the daytime was ugly as sin. At least, the part he was in. Forty minutes out was another matter entirely, but unfortunately, the Valley of Fire and all of Nevada’s other natural wonders were not on his list of things to do or see. Here, in the ass-end of a resort and hotel, the world was made of concrete and scrub grass, large trucks and RVs. Everything bordering the back lot and the camp looked cheap and old, worn down like a yellow tooth.
And the city—the city! Even with his eyes closed, it was nothing but a scream inside his mind. It perched on the edge of forever, like he stood in the center of a glass bubble, and all around him water, the deepest ocean where monsters swam. Blue had been to Las Vegas only twice before, and never for long. The city consumed a colossal amount of electricity, and though Blue had been in other urban areas where the power use was similar, Las Vegas was unique in that all major use concentrated over a relatively small area. He could feel it in his teeth, on the tingling skin of his hands. Power rose like a heat mirage over his body.
The sun was bright. Not a cloud in the hazy sky; it was going to be a hot day. Blue’s stomach growled. His clothes were wrinkled and dusty. He wanted a shower and thought—very briefly—about trying to find a room at the Miracle, about maybe buying himself breakfast and a quick change of clothes. Forty minutes tops, and no one the wiser.
But then, through a maze of RVs, Blue glimpsed a very familiar head of red hair, and the idea of leaving the camp suddenly did not seem all that attractive.
Iris McGillis. Shape-shifter.
Golden eyes. Fire in her gaze, a subtle glow. A trick of light to anyone else, but to Blue a call of magic. Mystery and science, myths walking tall in golden light. Crows, tigers, cheetahs, dolphins, dragons—and God only knew what else.
And now Iris. Iris, whom Blue had known was not human even before he had gotten close, before—she’s under me, I’m crushing her, but oh, God, those eyes, those beautiful, lovely, eyes—she pressed against him nose-to-nose, sharing his breath.
He had seen her in the darkness of the camp. Less than an hour in the city, with Dean on the cell phone giving him instructions, descriptions, leading him to another world—a sprawling camp sheltered and removed in the middle of Las Vegas—and there … there … a slender body had raced past him with lions at her feet, wild and impossibly graceful. Like some myth—a huntress, a goddess thrown down from heaven. And even now Blue wanted to wax lyrical thinking about her. Even now his heart wanted to jump out of his chest and race alongside her. She was nothing less than incredible.
Plus, she had a mean right hook, a sharp tongue, and a stare to kill for. None of which, unfortunately, was any defense at all against someone with a gun.
Someone with a gun who knew what they were doing.
Very unsettling. In the moments before the actual shot, Blue had felt the electrical signature of a battery-operate
d power scope, the trail of a subvocal walkie-talkie, and those two things alone implied a more elaborate setup than just ecoterrorists out for a night of vandalism. Not to mention Iris was right: The shooter had missed on purpose. Blue was certain of it.
Enough. You came here to do a job. To find your brother, which you did. And now …
Now, nothing. Blue had no idea what to do. Roland had suggested he find out what the hell Daniel had that made him so important to their father, but seeing his brother in the flesh, hearing him speak, resting close for an entire night listening to Daniel listen to him?
God Almighty.
Despite Samuel’s claim that the morning was supposed to be spent in practice, Blue saw a lot of people sitting around their RVs, eating breakfast, talking, and laughing. He recognized quite a few languages, but didn’t understand much of what was being said. Although he knew well enough what it meant when his presence created waves of silence. He endured the quiet, the hard stares, and kept moving. He did not want any trouble, although the irony suited him. For the first time in a long while, Blue felt like a complete and utter trespasser—but for different reasons than usual, reasons that had nothing to do with his abilities as an electrokinetic, and everything to do with simply being unknown.
He found Iris standing outside a beat-up brown RV that held a closer resemblance to a battering ram than a so-called recreational vehicle. A relic from the early nineties, maybe, tottering on its wheels like an elephant on roller-skates.
Iris seemed very much at home. She had a barbecue going, the grill covered in sausages and bacon. The side gas burner held a large skillet filled with half-cooked eggs that she stirred with a spatula. Her hair was down, her skin fair and rosy, and she wore a thin lavender robe that did nothing to disguise her figure. A figure that was, and forever would be, emblazoned upon Blue’s memory in all its soft, lithe glory.
Iris blinked when she saw him, but he was gratified to see a smile touch her mouth. “Mornin’, stranger.”
“Good morning,” he said, more pleased than he would care to admit that she was actually talking to him. And with a sense of humor, no less.
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