by Beth Dranoff
“So their intel is inaccurate at best,” Sam pointed out, crossing his arms over that amazing chest as he leaned a muscled shoulder against the door frame.
“Kaynahorah,” I muttered.
“Right,” Anshell said. “But that doesn’t necessarily change things. Not only did they know of Dana’s connection to us, but her abductors were quite curious as to how she’d survived that gathering you two interrupted the other night. They referred to it as ‘The Feed.’”
“Also, Goth Boy may be the leak,” I said. “Have you talked to him yet?”
Anshell and Sam exchanged a look.
“What?”
Sam shrugged. Anshell cleared his throat, running long fingers over his closely cropped hair as he stared out the window into the glare of his own reflection.
“He isn’t here,” Anshell said, without turning around.
“Okay,” I said. “So, where is he?”
“We don’t know,” said Sam.
“Wait. You mean you lost him?” Poker voice was not my forte. “How is that even possible? The guy was unconscious, almost completely drained of blood. It’s not like he could get up and walk out on his own.”
“Morgenlark’s a supe,” Sam pointed out. “He heals faster than humans. The guy was gone by the time we came down to check on him.”
“Gone?” I couldn’t believe it. “How do you lose a patient? Don’t you guys have guards or something?”
“He was not a prisoner,” Anshell pointed out. “Patients are free to come and go as long as they can do it without substantial assistance. Which, it appears, Joseph Morgenlark was capable of doing.” He gripped the counter so hard I thought it was going to crack. “We do have cameras in certain rooms for monitoring purposes, and we pulled the footage from that night.”
“Morgenlark woke up after about three hours of sleep and transfusions,” Sam said, glancing at Anshell for the okay to continue. “He yanked out his tubes, made some kind of sign that we couldn’t see and then, boom, he was up and out the window.”
I shook my head. This made no sense. Supe or no supe, nobody recovers that fast.
“What about Demon Blue? Do you still have him?” Both Sam and Anshell nodded. “If this Feed is the coincidence-not-a-coincidence here, maybe he knows even more than you’ve managed to yank out of him so far.”
“Worth an ask,” Anshell said, launching himself off the edge of the counter and heading down the basement stairs before that last consonant tongue-touched the roof of his mouth. Sam followed close behind, scooping up a faded grey T-shirt off the back of a chair and pulling it over his head. Damn those guys moved fast. I trailed along behind them, slowing my pace to almost-normal human speed.
“What the fuck do you guys want now?” Blue sat in the corner, his lower lip trailing on the floor before he scooped it up with a single taloned claw and tucked it back into his mouth. Diamonds still twinkled in his flesh, but their light was noticeably dimmer than before. His right arm hung at an awkward angle, even as I watched the flesh and muscle and bone trying to knit itself back together.
“Glad to see you’ve regained your composure,” drawled Sam. “Tell us about Joseph Morgenlark, Gus.”
“Never heard of the asshole.” Gus picked a loose diamond from up his left nostril and flicked it at the far wall, where it landed with a sharp clink and stuck. Talk about otherworldly snot glue.
“Oh, sure you have,” I said, stepping forward out of the shadows. Couldn’t let others fight my fights forever. “He’s the guy who pulled himself out the supe hospital window only hours after he got there. You know, the shifter who should have died. The one your mistress was particularly interested in, and the reason she put out that hit on me—after I saved his sorry ass.”
Lazzuri chortled. “Nice security system you dickwads have here,” he said, running his forked tongue along his very blue lips. “Please, by all means give me a room with that kind of view next time, will ya?”
Anshell had the door unlocked in a flash. He threw Lazzuri across the room so hard his back scales embedded themselves in the wall before he fell to the concrete floor with a heavy thud crackle thud thud as the demon bounced and rolled.
“Enough,” Anshell growled, reaching back to pull the cell door shut behind him before plucking Gus Lazzuri off the floor and holding him by his second throat several feet up against that same indented wall. Anshell was breathing hard, nostrils flaring. “Enough! Who. Is. Morgenlark?”
“I,” coughed Gus, “ain’t,” cough, “got nothing,” cough cough, “to say to you assholes,” he finally managed to spit out with a gulp of breath. Sam cleared his throat to get Anshell’s attention. Must have worked because Anshell shook himself off and dropped Lazzuri to the floor, taking a step away from his prisoner. I saw ebony fur flowing up over Anshell’s shoulders and out the sleeves of his T-shirt, down his biceps; then receding, hair inhaled into flesh again, leaving smooth milk chocolate skin in its wake. Talk about self-control.
What the hell was he?
No time to get a response; suddenly it was Anshell’s face pressed up against the bars. I could see the whites of his eyes as they darted around, looking for an out that didn’t exist.
Shit.
I had to do something.
“Hey, shithead,” I called out. “Drop the guy or you’re going to die.”
Lazzuri laughed and whacked Anshell against the bars a second time. To the credit of whoever had installed the security down here, the bars didn’t budge.
“Girlie,” he said, “I’m dead anyways. And this guy and me, we have some unfinished business. So why don’t you go upstairs, maybe have your nails done, take a coffee break. By the time you come back, we’ll be all done down here. Maybe there’ll be some blood to clean up. Asshole shifter blood. But who cares about that anyway, right? Not like being a supe means anything to you.”
I didn’t have to see Anshell’s look of warning to know how to play this one.
“Yeah,” I said, schooling my eyes to stay on my target, no sideways glances. I could feel Sam behind me, shadowing; my guess was he was looking for an opening while I provided distraction. “Whatever. But you see,” I continued, leaning back and pulling out a kitchen knife I’d grabbed on my way downstairs, “I really hate self-important pricks fucking with my friends, especially in their own homes.”
Lazzuri laughed in my face, spraying green spit in a wide arc that only just missed me. My knife, however, which was out and winging its way towards him, did not miss. As Demon Blue tried to reach the blade sticking out of his skull and pinning him to the wall, Sam had the cell door unlocked and open in a flash. Together, he and Anshell yanked the still-quivering weapon out of DB’s skull, sliding the blade across the floor to me before slamming the demon against the wall and banging his head a few times to make their point. Not sure what, exactly, that point was, but I suspected it was something along the lines of “don’t mess with us or we’ll bang your skull on a hard surface repeatedly.” Just a guess.
I cleared my throat to get their attention. I was hoping that supersonic hearing would trump the high levels of testosterone in the basement right about now. “Um, guys?” No response, just more grunting and banging. “If you scramble his brains, he won’t be able to tell us anything—even if he’s smart enough to change his mind and try.” All reason, that’s me.
I counted five full seconds of silence before, with a last grunt and bang, Anshell and Sam stepped back and let Lazzuri drop to the floor yet again, oozing green from his head. Funny—Lazzuri didn’t seem remotely more cooperative than he had been ten minutes earlier. If he knew anything, he wasn’t telling us. Frick. I had no idea what else could motivate him to spill, but obviously violence wasn’t it.
Maybe a different approach. I squatted down to a crouch, between all the manly men legs, and caught Gus’s eyes as he glared
at me.
“Okay, we get it,” I said. Attempting temporary amnesia over last week’s attempt to kill me. “You don’t give a shit about us or what we’re trying to do, and you’re only out to save your own scaly-ass hide.”
Gus narrowed his eyes at me, blue cheek trailing green slime on the concrete floor.
“You believe that these guys—” I indicated to Anshell and Sam with my chin “—plan to ultimately end your sorry existence no matter what you say. Right? So why should you bother helping any of us out, because at least this way you won’t go down as a chicken-ass snitch. How am I doing so far?”
Lazzuri slowly nodded, watching me without saying a word, although he did take that moment to let out a globby ball of spit possibly containing a tooth into the corner of the cell. I noticed he was careful to avoid hitting me and the guys this time. Smart.
“I think,” I continued, catching the attention of one of his eyes and holding it, “that you know more about this guy Morgenlark than you’re choosing to share. Which is, of course, your prerogative. But I also think maybe you’re not quite down with the overall plan here. You’re out your money for the contract hit on me, and you’re stuck in this concrete cell—you can’t do anything when this all goes down. No alternate dimensions for you to escape what’s coming, and you know that what’s coming is probably a lot worse than anything we could do to you. That golden parachute you’d planned to buy with a portion of your cut? Gone.” I leaned forward. “How am I doing?”
Lazzuri nodded once more, not bothering to look away now.
“So here’s what I can offer you,” I said. “Tell us what you know. Help us out even, if we can all find a way to trust each other. If we can stop whatever ball is rolling down that hill—preferably together—then I think the boys here might be inclined to let you go on your merry way. Assuming we all survive.”
Lazzuri managed to convey skepticism without opening his mouth. Which might have had something to do with the large boot wedged between his teeth. Somehow he still pulled off a nod, though.
“Guys?” Sam and Anshell exchanged a long look, some kind of communication to which us word-reliant ones were not immediately privy. “Can I get your commitment on this?” It took a moment before they nodded, the air around them shimmering with meaning. Okay then.
“Gus Lazzuri? Will you step up and save your ass while saving ours as well? Swear on whatever it is you hold dear, even if it is your own hide?”
There was a long pause; I think we all held our breaths for his answer. Finally Lazzuri spoke, although his reluctance was clear.
“Fine,” he said. “Assholes. Tell me what you need.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Four hours later I stood alone, bathing in the moonlight. Trying to feel the energy of the howling and yowling beasts around me, just past the circle of the fire, flames shooting up from the safe confines of the stone circle. I was the outsider. The norm, welcomed but only just, into the inner workings of the pack for the night. Courtesy for the traveler, or something like that—I admit I wasn’t paying super close attention when Anshell went through the ceremonial drama of it all.
Maybe I should have been.
What I did know is that if I full-on shifted, I was in. Open arms, or paws, or something like that. No pressure. Automatic privileges available from the moment I said “I do” supported by a sworn pack member witnessing of “I did.”
Sam had tried to describe the sensation of the complete change to me, but I was still confused—how do you show cerulean blue to a person blind from birth? There was something about an itch and a pull and a push, but after my third wiseass sexual innuendo, he’d given up.
“You’ll figure it out,” Sam had huffed, equal parts cryptic and annoyed. I guess I deserved that.
Either way, I was now naked from the waist up, and working on the rest, but it was so damned cold I was having trouble convincing my body to obey. All those old horror movies with the pants ripping as the shift hits. I’d rather not be walking naked in the middle of winter back to the rest of my clothes with a bunch of were-people I’d only just met. Removing the clothes seemed like a good idea when I started. Now, maybe not so much; my breath was hanging on the air, an illusion of warmth surrounded by a mist of pure cutting ouch.
I’d thought I’d feel the energy of it all, the spirit and rush of being something larger than myself. Instead, standing at the edge of a snowy field next to a barren copse, I felt like an idiot losing sensation in her extremities.
What the hell was I thinking? Stupid Dana getting caught up in the lunacy of a life I thought I’d left behind. There was a reason I’d quit Ezra’s team. Same reason I’d dropped out of grad school, dropped out of my old life, lost touch with my friends from back then and taken up the rewarding career path of bartending. I didn’t want to deal with this existence bordering on reality. I didn’t want the violence. Maybe I wasn’t looking for that white picket fence in the suburbs—in fact, I was pretty sure I wasn’t—but at least I could have bits and pieces of the kind of life other people had. That one where you can get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and not worry about getting jumped by creatures with names so alien you can’t pronounce the vowels with your human tongue. Where shopping meant buying shoes or jeans or maybe a new jacket because you liked the fabric or the fit—and not having to think of how you might access a knife or shuriken or crossbow while wearing them.
You know. Normal.
I didn’t know how much time had passed since the pack had taken off, but I could have sworn the moon had nudged position in the sky by at least a foot. Or an inch. Maybe it was a cosmic mile. Either way, I hadn’t shifted yet and could no longer feel my fingers. The beasts slinking around my periphery only highlighted my own failings; Anshell wasn’t sure I could defend myself, so he’d left proxies with claws behind.
Stupid Dana. Expecting life to tie itself up so neatly with a bow on top.
Nothing was ever that simple.
Except for the clear fact that it was cold out here, so very cold, and I was not wearing fur of my own making. If I didn’t either shift or get dressed, I was going to lose something to frostbite.
Screw it.
I bent down to retrieve my red flannel plaid shirt and white tee. Layering up, I pulled on my hat and gloves before digging around for the heavy down jacket Sam had so considerately loaned me—just in case. I wrapped myself in a blanket too, heading for the clump of trucks and cars and SUVs by the road. My keys were out and ready for plan B.
I heard sounds, off to my far right but getting closer. Unlike the rustlings of my shadow guards, who I could no longer sense. A snuffling and snorting. Something shuffling and growling in a distinctly un-feline-like manner. I stilled my breathing, carefully wrapping my scarf up and over my nose and mouth to keep from puffing steam out into the air and advertising my position.
Quietly I slid the rest of my keychain into my sheepskin gloves, leaving out just the one key I really needed. The snow crunched beneath my feet as I edged closer to my truck. Cursing under my breath. Then praying I would make it to the truck without dying.
No, I don’t believe in God. And even if he/she/it exists, I’m sure they don’t care what I believe as long as I’m as good a person as I can be. But that doesn’t stop me from saying please right now. Please please please. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to meet the same fate as so many of the people I used to know. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease...
And then my skin itched. That now-familiar feeling just underneath the surface, racing energy, sparks up and down my nerves. My gloves split at the fingertips, claws poking though. The partial shift. Oh shit no, not now notnownotnownotnow...
I forced myself to pause, to breathe. Think. The plan tonight was to shift. Bond with the pack and figure out how to live in this new body by testing its strengths and assessing its weaknes
ses. To win you had to know how to lose. I didn’t know how to do either yet, not once I shifted. I didn’t know if I could survive in a fight as a cat. Even a big cat. I didn’t know enough about what was tracking me and how to defend myself as a non-human if it cornered me and I had to fight.
My body knew how to fight as a human. Arms, legs, fingers; boots, weapons and non-bestial muscle memory. The shift might make me stronger, but the me who had trained every day to live to that next day knew how to survive. It’s why I was still here when so many weren’t anymore. This new me might not be so lucky.
I had to make a call.
With an effort so hard my teeth broke through my lower lip, blood dripping down onto my chin, I forced the claws back into my skin, forcing the shift to go no further. The snuffling was closer, louder, and had taken to humming “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. Shit. This thing was sentient, and was heading my way fully aware of itself and me.
So very not good.
Its next words were a confirmation.
“Oh, Dana? Where are you, my pretty? I can smell you. Drops of your blood are leading me to you. Sweat and steam and lust and sex and fur. All the best things in life.” It chuckled, voice deeply masculine, but I couldn’t be sure. Didn’t want to get close enough to find out. Certainty in life was overrated. And I was babbling in my own head. I bit down on my poor abused lip, harder now, trying to keep my teeth from chattering in cold and fear.
Because I recognized that voice.
It was the voice of the thing, the creature, the it that had severed Ezra’s head from his body and left him lying in a pool of his own blood.
That thing knew my name, who I was, probably what I was. Maybe it knew me better than I knew myself. But I wasn’t going to give it that kind of power. No. There had to be a way out. Had to be.
“Oh, Dana? Tell me, how does kitty stew sound? I hear that once you skin a cat and use its fur for boots, the meat itself is quite succulent.” It chuckled, all warmth and seeping ooze that curdled my blood and chilled me in places I’d rather not visit. Shouldn’t visit. From before, from then. “You know I can do it. You’ve seen the results of my wrath. Shall we do it together? Do you want to be responsible for the deaths of all of your new friends?”
