Undead on Arrival

by L. A. Banks

  “I have to go.”

  “He’s not himself, is he?”

  Again she stopped and couldn’t move.

  “Why would you ask me something like that?” she said in a near whisper, panic making her heart slam against rib bones.

  “It’s in your eyes,” Shogun said in a soft rumble, blocking her retreat with a quick sidestep.

  Sasha looked away and moved around his body, careful not to brush against him as she did so. “I need to catch up with my team. Hunter is fine.”

  Shogun’s grasp melted into her bicep. “You’re staying at a B and B across the street,” he said with a quick nod in the direction of the establishment. “For a week now leading up to a full moon, while it’s waxing, you’ve eaten alone every morning. You walk the streets looking in shop windows by yourself. And this close to a full moon, with a woman like you, the man should be howling the paint off the walls. Your room has been dead silent. That’s unnatural. Something is wrong.”

  She snatched herself away from Shogun’s grasp.

  “And,” he said in a low, gravelly murmur, “I can’t smell him on you, and I should . . . A month together, Sasha, is too soon for it to be like this. Maybe if you and I became one, it wouldn’t spell war, but would be a first—a strong she-Shadow alpha and a strong Werewolf alpha. Perhaps we could make the new alliance permanent like humans did in times of old . . . sealing it with a strategic relationship that both participants could also thoroughly enjoy? Consider it. The offer stands.”

  She lurched away from him, parting bodies in the sea of humans and supernaturals around her as though she were being chased. Almost stumbling into a clearing by the back of the tavern, she saw her squad seated in a small private room to the left of the main hall, eating crawfish and mastering shots.

  Face flushed, blinking back hot moisture in her eyes, she prayed that the handsome Werewolf who’d hunted her had gone. Woods and Fisher saw her first and raised shot glasses in an unsteady wave.

  “Yo, Trudeau, what’s cooking!” Fisher said, his movements reminding her of a huge, gangly Labrador.

  Woods threw back his shot, shuddered, and then slammed his glass on the table before giving her a wobbly salute. His brunette hair was a disheveled mess on top of his head. Her guys were pickled.

  “I keep tellin’ ’em, Captain, it’s lime, tequila, then salt,” Woods argued good-naturedly.

  Good God, her familiars were drunk as skunks.

  “No, dude,” Winters slurred, his relatively thin, computer-tech arm and small fist going up against Woods’s military-conditioned bulk. “It’s salt, tequila, lime,” he continued with a quick succession of actions and then shuddered hard. “Ooooohhhh, that’s Coyote Ugly!”

  “I don’t understand the purpose of this ritual,” Bradley said, studying the dark amber liquid in his rocks glass. “Not when a perfectly fine Irish whiskey is available.”

  “They’re totaled,” Clarissa said with an unsteady wobble while raising a glass of white wine. “This team needs balance. I told them if anyone knew the order of things, it would be Trudeau.” Then suddenly Clarissa’s gaze seemed to sober. She lowered her glass slowly, her smile now frozen in place. “I’ve gotta pee, and I could use an escort. C’mon, Trudeau. March.”

  Sasha never had a chance to enter the small private dining room but waited for Clarissa to join her in the doorway. It was the smoothest recovery she’d ever witnessed, and the guys at the table were completely oblivious.

  “See, McGill,” Winters said, laughing, “what I don’t understand is why women have to pee in pairs. That’s because you can’t hold your liquor—who does white wine on their last night of leave? It’s un-American.”

  “We’ll argue politics when I get back, Winters,” Clarissa said, mussing his thicket of dark brown hair as she passed him.

  “Hey, be careful,” he complained with a wide grin. “I might get lucky tonight if you don’t mess up my mojo. This is New Orleans, the Big Easy.”

  “In your dreams, kid,” Bradley said. “The Runes say don’t count on it.”

  Sasha turned away from the revelry, ignoring the drunken conversation as Clarissa looped her arm through Sasha’s elbow.

  “Hold me up so I don’t trip and make a fool of myself, okay?”

  Sasha simply nodded, walking like a Zombie as she navigated Clarissa through the throng.

  “Single stall,” Sasha said, opening the bathroom door to shove Clarissa through.

  “Good. Then we can talk,” Clarissa said, yanking her through the door and then locking it behind them.

  Before Sasha could respond, Clarissa spun on her.

  “What’s the matter?” Clarissa whispered, her eyes frantic. She kept wiggling as she spoke, and the fumes off her breath were enough to make Sasha’s eyes water.

  “If you’ve gotta pee, then—”

  “Yeah, I do, but don’t leave.” Clarissa hustled over to the toilet while Sasha quickly turned her back.

  “Aw, man, this is really TMI . . .”

  “Oh, relax and talk to me.”

  “How am I supposed to do that over the echo?” Sasha said, suddenly laughing. It was so absurd.

  Clarissa fell quiet for a moment as she finished and then burst out laughing. “Okay, it takes some getting used to—but I could tell something was wrong the second you walked up. This is the only private place. I know something’s up, though, so spill it.”

  “That’s because you’re the team’s resident psychic and always think something’s wrong.” Sasha rested her forehead on the door as the toilet behind her flushed and the sink water went on.

  “I’m done. Satisfied? Now can you cut the diplomatic crap and tell me where the big guy is?”

  “I don’t know,” Sasha whispered.

  “Whaddya mean, you don’t know?” Clarissa said too loudly.

  Sasha spun, and the expression on her face made Clarissa step closer.

  “Oh, shit . . . what’s happened?”

  “I need a favor,” Sasha said in a low murmur. “He’s taking too many meds. Should have been weaned from them by now and his Shadow Wolf system should have normalized. He should have fought the infection he got from bites and scratches when we were at war with Dexter, and then built up immunity.”

  “He’s still fluxing?” Clarissa whispered, looking horrified.

  “Yeah,” Sasha said and then glanced away. This was the first time she’d admitted as much out loud, and it terrified her. “You’ve got his blood samples in the lab at Tulane from Doc’s anti-toxin development efforts, mine from the transfusion I gave and had at the ready for his grandfather . . . you’ve got his grandfather’s, even have pure Shadow blood from a pack brother closer to his age, Crow Shadow—from the injuries everybody sustained during the battles leading up to the UCE Conference, right?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got that in the lab. But Doc needs—”

  “I don’t want to go to Doc with this yet,” Sasha said, cutting her off. “If . . . if it’s too late, it’ll break his heart, and I’ll tell him after I do what I have to do. But right now I need you to look at Hunter’s blood. See if there’s anything in his DNA spiral that’s different from the others like him, maybe even look at Doc’s, because they are both male, have the same ethnicity foundation—see if you can isolate what’s different from his human markers and the Shadow Wolf markers . . .” Sasha raked her fingers through her hair. “I’m grasping at straws to try to understand what’s making Hunter not build up the immunity again like he did before.” Her furtive gaze sought Clarissa’s. “What’s wrong with him, Rissa? I’ve gotta know what it is before I have to put a bullet in his skull.”

  Clarissa grabbed Sasha by her upper arms. “Okay, listen to me carefully. We’re not giving up on Hunter, all right? People inherit one set of genes from their mother, one from their father, but some of those genes are switched off at birth. Take the gene that fights cancer. In some people, both parents’ cancer-fighting genes are switched on. In some people, only one is, a
nd if that lone gene gets disabled, there’s no redundancy. There’s no backup. That person is more susceptible to cancer than someone with a dual operating set of cancer fighters. Understand?”

  “But we don’t have time for lengthy genetic research,” Sasha shot back through her teeth.

  “The lengthy research is already under way. Doc has been at it for years, as have others,” Clarissa said, employing her tone and her tender expression to try to calm Sasha. “The Duke University study that was laid out in Genome Research is all about silenced genes, and they’re looking at how stress, food, pollution, all kinds of environmental factors could cause that phenomenon. Hunter had a foreign agent hit his system. He’s been stressed to the nines. So I’m gonna try my best, as quickly as I can, to find out if or why a set of imprinted genes is knocking out his backup set—the set that’s supposed to fight off demon-Werewolf infection.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Sasha said, shrugging away from Clarissa so she could pace within the tight space. “He was born from two Shadow Wolves, should have had a dual set of anti-viral genes coded to take out whatever hit his system—even if he did sustain a toxic Werewolf infection as an infant. If one gene set failed, the other should have stepped up.”

  “Under normal circumstances,” Clarissa said carefully. “But genetic imprinting knocks out that backup. Molecular signals tell or imprint the backup copy to be silent.” She dropped her voice to a near whisper again. “When we looked at Werewolf blood in the lab back at NORAD before, they have the imprinted gene weakness—and I haven’t seen that in the dual Shadow Wolf gene sets. That seems to be one of the fine differences between the cousin species. Normal Werewolves who haven’t been infected don’t have the redundancy that Shadow Wolf genetics provide.”

  “You looked at Rod’s blood before he went full-blown,” Sasha said quietly, horrified, as she turned away. Her old mentor and friend had been used as a lab rat, and then once the disease the military had given him erupted, she’d had to blow him away at point-blank range. The memory and images were enough to make her hurl. Rather than do that, Sasha simply closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

  “I’m sorry,” Clarissa said, coming to her. “But what we learned from Rod might well save Hunter’s life. The problem is, nobody can get to the NORAD stash except Doc—not since a five-star general had his face ripped off in his own house from a supernatural. I need pure Werewolf strain, not the demon-infected variety anyway, to compare what’s in that DNA spiral versus what seems to be mutating in Hunter’s.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  Clarissa rounded on her. “Not at the risk of you getting your face ripped off.”

  “I said I’ll get it,” Sasha repeated firmly as she stared at Clarissa.

  “How?” Clarissa folded her meaty arms over her breasts in protest.

  “In the spirit of détente, I’ve got a contact,” Sasha said quietly on a hard exhale, and then exited the bathroom.

  CHAPTER 3

  Hunter lowered his nose and briefly closed his eyes, allowing the tantalizing scent of meat and blood to wash over him. He could literally taste the air, the flavors hanging on it before covering his tongue, building saliva in his mouth. Heat wafted up to meet his face . . . There was simply nothing like a good steak.

  “Is everything to your liking, sir?” the waiter asked, coming up behind him.

  Hunter spun in his chair so quickly and growled so severely that the poor man backed up and lost his tray. Several supernatural patrons glared at the waiter in reproach, while human guests of The Fair Lady looked on in confusion and Fae wait staff came over to help clean up the mess. Clearly disgusted, the proprietor waved off the human server and pointed toward the kitchen.

  “My apologies,” Ethan said quickly, his ruddy Elf cheeks thoroughly flushed. He leaned in toward Hunter from a vantage point where Hunter could see him head-on, and kept his voice low. “Humans . . . I shouldn’t have hired a young college student, as they aren’t familiar with certain protocols—like never coming up behind our wolf clientele unannounced while they’re dining. Normally, I have Phoenixes in to supplement our Fae servers, but my Phoenixes were all burning this evening, sir.”

  “No problem,” Hunter said, but his angry stare and the tone of his voice said otherwise. The kid had startled him and bristled the hair on his neck. He should have felt him coming, and didn’t—that was the bitch of it.

  “Let us courtesy your meal, sir, for the affront,” Ethan said nervously.

  “Not necessary,” Hunter muttered, and then concentrated hard to retract the canines that had ripped his gums. Ethan was good people, a fixture in the supernatural community down here. No sense in upsetting an ally.

  “You’ll let me know, personally, then . . . if you need anything?” Ethan said, still seeming unsure. “Because we value your patronage—yours and Captain Trudeau’s, sir, to the utmost.”

  “Thank you, I’m fine,” Hunter said, the mention of Sasha grating his nerves. He cut into the twenty-eight-ounce steak before him and watched it bleed onto the plate. Stabbing at the huge hunk he’d cut off, he brought it into his mouth with an angry shove as Ethan slipped away from his table.

  This time nothing would catch him off guard. Hunter kept his gaze level with the bodies in the establishment while he ate. He saw the female flash him a little canine before she stood and sauntered over to his table. True, he was mated, but he wasn’t blind, either.

  Until recently, she-Shadows had shunned him based on his clan legacy. Werewolf females had always done the same, given the long-running feud between the Federations. But this Were-female looked anything but put off by his presence. Hunter glanced up as she stood in front of his table in a provocative pose.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Now, what was a man supposed to say to that?

  Hunter looked over her tall, voluptuous frame and the way the black lace from her bra peeked over the edge of her red blouse, exposing a fantastic rack. The little black leather skirt she wore was killer against her long legs, too. Creole women would be the death of him.

  “Or will your woman object?”

  He’d obviously taken a beat longer than she’d expected him to answer her. She tossed thick auburn hair over her shoulder and waited, seeming almost indignant. Her hazel eyes had begun to glow amber. Pure testosterone made his boot connect with the chair leg in front of him and shove it away from the table toward her in a surly invitation. What the hell was he doing?

  She yanked the chair back with a satisfied smile and sat sideways, seductively crossing her shapely legs. “Thank you.” She eyed his steak and licked her bottom lip.

  Reflex made him cut a piece of it off for her. Without consulting his brain, he handed her the knife that he’d stabbed the steak with. A smooth female hand caressed his knuckles as she accepted the knife from him and then slowly bit into the steak. He watched a drip of hot steak juice land on her left breast and run down her cleavage. She dabbed it with a finger. Her eyes met his as she put the forefinger in her mouth then slowly extracted it. This time he was the one to lick his bottom lip.

  “So . . . you want to?”

  What kind of question was that? Hell yeah he wanted to, but there were considerations. On the other hand . . . Sasha had been acting really pissy for the last week and was treating him like he was some sort of invalid—just wanted to cuddle, wanted to talk. Okay, he needed to cut the crap and stop rationalizing the irrational.

  “Well?” the gorgeous female before him said, leaning forward as she took another bite of steak. “Do Shadows always make you ask them twice?” Her smile was warm and engaging, no malice in her tone.

  She had a really nice voice . . .

  “No . . . you don’t have to ask me twice,” Hunter said with a low chuckle. “Not a woman as beautiful as you. I’m just trying to decide if dying under a gibbous moon is what I’d want on my tombstone.”

  She laughed and leaned closer, allowing him a full view of her spectacular cleavage. �
�I heard your mate is a true warrior.”

  “She is,” Hunter said, sitting back and collecting his knife to cut another piece of steak.

  “But then, so are you,” she murmured, dipping her finger into the steak juices on his plate and tasting them again. “And I don’t see her here tonight.”

  The offer definitely had merit, and there was certainly no denying the erection this new female had given him. Torn, he opted to shove another thick piece of steak in his mouth. “You want a drink?”

  “Dewar’s . . . neat,” she said, her canines cresting as she breathed out the request.

  The timbre of her voice almost made him set down his knife and fork. Instead he hailed the new waiter. “Give this lady anything she wants,” he rumbled deeper than intended.

  “Right now, that’d be a Dewar’s neat,” she told the waiter, and then turned to slide her legs under the table to caress Hunter’s. “Wow,” she said as her knee gently slid against his inner thigh. “Anything the lady wants?”

  He cut her another piece of steak and gave her his fork without a word. She didn’t accept it, but rather bit the offering off the fork as she kept her eyes on him.

  “That’s not the piece of meat I wanted.”

  This new woman was making him figure things out with limited blood supply going to his brain. Sasha would slaughter him . . . then again, maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she didn’t even fucking care. Maybe they’d already broken up—it sure seemed that way when she left their room. Or maybe he was about to do something really stupid.

  “Tell me how it works in the Shadow world,” the woman at his table murmured. “Do I have to alpha-challenge her, or are you a free agent?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Because, darling, the way I’m feeling right now, I don’t think she could take me.”

  A pair of glowing amber eyes locked his gaze in place as a vise-like grip of supple female thighs tensed around his leg, rhythmically squeezing his hard-on in the process. Hunter swallowed past the lump in his throat.