Undead on Arrival

by L. A. Banks

  “Then how would sleeping with me to get my blood have kept that from happening in the first instance? This is so contrived, Sasha.” Shogun took another sip of tea, but this time she could see the slight tremble in his hands as he did so.

  “I don’t know,” she muttered and sent her gaze back out the window, feeling foolish when he swallowed a badly concealed smile. She’d never been a femme fatale, had never learned any tricks from the school of Mata Hari, and they sure didn’t teach that at NORAD.

  “I’ve never bargained like this before,” she added with a disgusted grumble. “So I guess I botched the effort—my bad. I just didn’t know that you’d go along with this for . . . oh, forget it.”

  “No,” Shogun said, leveling his gaze at her. “I don’t want to forget it—I want to clearly understand. You were hoping we’d have a conversation that would possibly lead to a discreet exchange that would never be mentioned again.”

  “Yeah, I guess, something like that.” She focused on a bright pink clump of azaleas outside.

  “Therefore, you should have been afraid, very afraid—because I would have done everything in my power to blur the lines, to ensure you’d remain conflicted and that you could never find that boundary between us and the so-called right thing again. Your wolf instincts were correct, Sasha. I would have been discreet and never told a soul. You know me that well, and I am honored that you do. However, I don’t think a onetime event would ever sate the hunger between us. That, I know, is a real beast . . . since it frightens us both. And once escaped, then you’d be correct. At some point, there’d be war between men. But I would never place an ally under such duress for a simple vial of blood. I have nothing to hide.”

  She slowly dragged her gaze from the window. For a moment the smoldering, unspoken question in Shogun’s eyes stopped her breath.

  “Then, for such a huge favor, what do you want? I’m not trying to offend you. I just want to know.” She waited, watching him slowly inhale and exhale as though finding it hard to pull in air.

  “I want a permanent alliance, friendship . . . respect,” he murmured, his gaze becoming heavy-lidded as he sat forward and took up one of her hands. “For you to come to me without an agenda and of your own volition one day or night for more than something casual, once you have closure with this other tragic situation. For you to allow what has been budding for a long time to be handpicked and satisfying, and rare, and gently steeped, never rushed.”

  The heat from his hand and the gentle brush from the pad of his thumb grazing her knuckles radiated warmth up her arm and throughout her belly. But it was the look in Shogun’s eyes that both frightened and drew her.

  “I don’t know how this is all going to play out. There are things I can’t promise, because the future is dicey. But you have my respect, an alliance that is unshakable, friendship, and a promise that if I ever come to you like this again, it will be without an agenda.”

  His unblinking gaze captured hers. He swallowed hard, and she couldn’t help stare at his Adam’s apple and allow her gaze to trail down his throat. Sudden heat had spread from her belly to create moist longing between her legs. Horrified, she tried to pull her hand away from his, only to meet vise-like resistance.

  “Don’t stop the dance now,” he murmured, his voice raw with passion. “I’ve never experienced this.”

  Almost afraid of what she might see, Sasha glimpsed the rice paper screen as Shogun closed his eyes, tightened his grip on her hand, and then clutched the edge of the table. Her shadow had betrayed her. Repressed emotions, tension, fatigue, grief, the need for comfort had all blurred the lines and started something she was unprepared to finish.

  “The inner wolf never lies. You had to want this as much as I did,” he gasped, dropping his head back, beginning to pant as bristles of blue-black hair began to sprout from his clean-shaven scalp.

  “Our wolves can’t do this,” she said in a tense whisper, watching an onyx wash of silky black hair flow down over his shoulders to hang down his back. “We have to stop.”

  “I cannot completely shift until the full moon allows, but I can’t stop my wolf from feeling yours, just like you cannot lie to yours about not wanting to feel mine,” he said in a pained murmur between extended canines. “Oh . . . Sasha, what is this? You want my blood then open an artery. You asked me what I wanted—it was this—you wanting me like this, too.”

  Frozen, she watched her human female shadow on the thin privacy screen entwined with his across the room, though she’d never moved. His shadow held hers as her legs encircled his waist and she straddled his lap, his hands sliding up her back to find her hair while her face nuzzled his neck. Her shadow double on the screen grasped his shoulders, beginning to move to a slow rhythm that left no doubt in her mind that a line had been crossed, blurred, and several bridges burned.

  “We can’t do this!” she practically shrieked, and then dropped her voice. “I can’t shadow-dance with you, it’s not—”

  “Oh, God, I’m not doing it,” he said in a deep, agonized rumble, lifting his body now to each of her phantom shadow thrusts. “You are. Weres don’t own this capacity, only Shadows do.”

  Panic made her clothes stick to her body. Unwanted desire created a confusing tangle of guilt, excitement, and horror that was impossible to sort out as Shogun’s male wolf scent consumed her reason. As she glanced like a madwoman from him to the screen, the erotic display of both wrecked her.

  “You have to let go of my hand,” she said after the few seconds she needed to gather her wits, now realizing that his touch had triggered the outrageous chain of events. Everything else she’d been coping with had probably set off the madness, too, bringing her deepest subconscious desires to the surface while pulling his human-image shadow into an unwitting dance with hers.

  He shook his head, his eyes pleading for her to understand, begging her to let him finish. As she glimpsed the screen, she did understand—the problem was, it was indecent. Yet he’d also asked for his dignity to be preserved early on in the conversation.

  If he’d just let go of her hand long enough to break the shadow-to-shadow connection of his desire fueling hers and back again, her inner wolf could calm down enough to stop the shadow dance . . . her shadow would have the wherewithal to stop the inevitable embarrassment he’d endure with a wet spot in his khakis. However, he would be a tortured man. There’d be no getting around that, but at least he’d leave the tea salon and save face.

  Leaning forward, halfway across the table, and now balancing on her pillow on her knees, she tried to corner whatever rational part of Shogun’s mind was left. But as soon as he felt her lever in his direction, his grip tightened on the hand he’d been fiercely holding, his free hand was in her hair, his mouth on hers, creating a hot seal of dueling tongues before he broke their kiss, threw his head back, and moaned.

  A hard shudder immediately claimed her. Shogun’s stifled howl masked by a low moan sent a pulse of need through her that she didn’t want to own. She couldn’t look at the screen, no longer had to; she could feel her shadow’s renegade spirit running roughshod over her will, her conscience, everything she knew was right or wrong. Shogun’s touch melted her with searing caresses through their shadows, his skin burning against hers despite the actual distance separating their bodies.

  Please don’t make me do this, she begged her inner wolf—but there was no negotiating with the primal force once it had been unleashed. The stone-cut contours of his chest grazed her nipples with every undulating tide of her shadow against his. Gasping as the awareness strengthened until she could almost feel him inside her, she moved in torrid shadow waves while his hands palmed her ass, opening her wider on every upthrust until tears stung her eyes. Their bodies never touched, didn’t have to—their shadows crossed boundaries for them.

  She knew he could feel the realness of it all, even in shadow context; the agony in his startled expression told her he did as he struggled with sensations slamming him on two planes of exis
tence at once.

  Mouth open, tears streaming down his handsome, bronze face as he tried to remain as quiet as possible in a public tea salon—she knew. Her wolf was wild, feral, merciless, savaging his with passion in a shadow dance that he didn’t have to tell her he’d never experienced before. His virginity to the shadows was evident in his sweat, in the way he gasped air like a man drowning, in his pulse. The dance had gone well past the point of no return, as had he, and she wouldn’t have been cruel enough to let go of his hand to break the connection now. But it had to end.

  “Give me your other hand,” she murmured, trying to steady her breaths and regain some semblance of self-control.

  He lunged for her, clasping her outstretched hand as though she were his lifeline at the edge of a cliff.

  “Look at the shadows on the screen, not at me,” she said quietly. “They tell the story.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” he said in a low, rumbling burst between pants. “This is driving me crazy—I need to hold you, even though . . .”

  In a slow, sliding fall forward, she pushed him backward, each knee deftly navigating between lukewarm tea and expensive china, careful not to ring the jade bell. On his back, having tumbled over his pillow, he allowed her body to fuse against his with a groan.

  “Look at the shadows,” she begged him, kissing his face. “It can’t go beyond this and can’t happen again.”

  He nodded swiftly, finally understanding that she was trying to release his pain, was trying to be his friend, his ally without an agenda. The moment he looked, she felt his entire body seize, and her only recourse was to cover his mouth with a crushing kiss and swallow his howl. As soon as he stopped convulsing, she tore her mouth from his, shuddering hard, so they both could breathe.

  After a while he stared up at her with sad eyes. “We’d heard about this . . . stories and lies that young males tell each other, always about what they cannot have . . . The forbidden mystique of Shadow females.” He tried to force a smile to make it seem like what they’d just experienced was casual and no big deal, but his smile died quietly in the depths of his forlorn expression. “I never knew, never understood the divinity of it.”

  She moved a long, damp strand of blue-black hair from his face and tenderly cradled his cheek. He nodded and cradled hers.

  “I know. Not now . . . not yet,” he said sadly.

  “Not now, not yet—with the possibility that, if there’s been a mistake . . .”

  “Then this never happened,” he murmured, resigned, and then kissed her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Clarissa stared at the lab results, disbelieving. As resident psychic it had been easy to commit the treasonable offense of getting password codes to Doc’s research. NORAD had thirty years’ worth of pure gold, and time wasn’t on her side. This was an emergency, she’d reasoned. Getting into Doc’s local laptop system in Tulane was a breeze. There was no need to get Winters involved in breaching databases and going past security codes into files where he wasn’t authorized. If anyone was going to do time, then it might as well be her.

  Doc’s time away from the lab with Sasha had provided the window of opportunity . . . it was just that now that she had the data, she didn’t know what to do with it. God help her when Sasha brought in a sample of uninfected Werewolf blood. What was she gonna tell the captain—her best friend?

  In New Orleans, if a breeze blew, it was thick, humid air that didn’t cool. Sasha sat as still as a garden stone waiting for Shogun to come back from the men’s room. Sure, it had been easy enough to slip from their screened booth to go to the gift shop to score him a pair of sweats . . . easy enough to hand him the blood-drawing kit that had been stashed in her military jacket pocket as he went to freshen up and change out of the khakis with the very revealing wet spot in them. Yeah. That was the easy part. But when he came back, she hadn’t a clue where to begin.

  This was never supposed to happen.

  Something insane had unleashed itself from her subconscious. Maybe she could claim a psychological breakdown. A slow blink was all she allowed in the form of outward distress while pure hysteria was clawing at her guts.

  She heard Shogun open the screen but didn’t immediately turn to look at him. He came to her side of the table, slid into a squatting spoon fit behind her, and nuzzled her hair, then slipped a vial of blood into her palm. The transaction made her feel like a working geisha—albeit that had everything to do with her state of mind and not his treatment of her.

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” he said quietly.

  She nodded, her voice muted by despair. “Thank you, Shogun. So do I.”

  A sense of betrayal put tears in his eyes as he walked with purpose. Hard-soled loafers hit the polished floors of Tulane Hospital, his own footsteps almost foreign to his ears. He was there, but not—as though trapped in an out-of-body experience. A surge of hurt masked as rage made him hasten his steps. That someone he trusted so dearly could have done something like this was beyond his ability to fathom.

  Doc leaned on the elevator button. The chopper could take him to the outskirts of where he had to go. From there he could go by jeep and would have to only hope that he wasn’t being tailed. The late General Donald Wilkerson trusted no one, had everyone on the PCU team and Project Dog Star under surveillance. Maybe this new general was a little different; their styles were. Part of him still hated his dead boss. Then again, another part of him truly understood the man’s philosophy of utter paranoia better now.

  Bradley sat in the parlor on a burgundy velvet settee, his gaze sweeping the door, the drapery at the windows, the shelves and mantels loaded with exotic bric-a-brac. Unidentified herbs hung in dried bundles by the windows while crystal wind chimes reflected light through partially opened beveled, leaded glass. The heavy, pungent scents of incense and sage smudge clung to the ancient fabrics in the small, dusty room. Brick dust lined the doorsills. Tiny piles of salt waited silently in the four corners of the room. Pennies littered the floor, a hazard to any vacuuming—which, for reasons of the esoteric, had obviously never occurred.

  “Sir, the Madame can see you now.”

  Bradley stared at the gaunt man with a sallow complexion, wondering if he’d once been a Zombie. The only thing that banished the image was his perfect, genteel diction.

  With a simple gracious nod, Bradley followed the man past a set of floor-to-ceiling burgundy-hued velvet drapes that led into a narrow dining room. An elderly woman sat in quiet repose at a small oval table before a crystal ball.

  He studied the lines in her burnt-cinnamon face, and the bluish gray tint in hazel eyes that matched her bluish gray hair, searching for honesty. She offered a yellow-toothed smile and bade him to sit. Despite his dark arts expertise, being in Madame LaMonde’s séance room was still a surreal experience. If she’d had on a church hat, she would’ve looked like a thousand other senior citizens he’d seen taking a stroll home on a Sunday morn.

  But Madame LaMonde was renowned as a seer and conjure woman. Word on the streets in the Big Easy held that her place was a way station, of sorts, where spirits came and vented their concerns. Yet her frail composure, they said, was not to be taken lightly. Madame LaMonde had hoodoo not even the Vampires messed with.

  Still, he couldn’t make his mind sync up with the petite visage before him. There was no Gypsy scarf or door-knocker-size hoop earrings to give her stereotypical character, only an elegant pair of small pearl studs placed just so in her sagging earlobe skin. She wore a plain pink cashmere sweater with pearl buttons over her shoulders that was slightly too large for her frame. Her blouse was a neat white shell that housed her small, sagging breasts; beyond her earrings, she wore no other jewelry. That was all he could notice without seeming rude, and her genuine smile made him not want to appear that way. Were it not for the crystal ball on the table and a deck of Tarot cards, the meeting might have been with an elderly aunt for a cup of late-afternoon tea.

  “Many, many questions . . . so
many that the cards are restless,” she said, motioning for him to sit down.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Madame LaMonde,” Bradley said in his most polite voice.

  She gave him a casual shrug. “If the spirits would have denied you, then we wouldn’t be meeting. They decide, not me.”

  He had no answer for her.

  She shoved the deck of well-worn cards across the table toward him with arthritic hands. “Shuffle them and cut them,” she commanded. “Let your energy seep in, then we’ll see what we have here.”

  He gave the cards his best casino shuffle and returned them to her.

  She chuckled and clucked her tongue. “You work with the arts, have seen that which you cannot explain, but still have doubts. Too much education.”

  Again, he didn’t respond to her accurate charge, though he felt badly that anything in his expression might have conveyed disbelief. But as if she’d read his mind, she gave him a kindly wave of her hand to let him know there’d been no offense.

  “You know they ate that boy. He wasn’t mauled,” she said casually, laying the cards out on a Celtic cross spread. “There’s a difference between being eaten and being attacked.”

  “Yes, there is,” Bradley said in a noncommittal tone.

  She glanced up and gave him a sharp look. “You know what kind of creature eats flesh. It weren’t no dog. So why are you here?”

  Bradley held her unfaltering gaze and leaned forward. “We need to know which one did it,” he said quietly. “So there’s no tragic mistaken identity.”