Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Eventually the nervous tension was going to get to me, and I would need action to work it out. I was ready to go through the door or fight—something, anything, to stop the rising tension and the nearly burning energy of his beast against my skin.

  “And cool your beast, or you’re going to change right here on the porch,” I said, voice low.

  “I am not even close to losing control of my lion, and you know that—just as you are not,” he said, and sniffed the air like he was trying to get a stronger whiff of some delicious scent. “But I can smell your lioness.” He caressed his fingertips down his own arm like he was touching something else. “I can feel your power on my skin, as you can feel mine.”

  If he’d been one of my fiancés, it might have been nice foreplay talk, but since it was him, it wasn’t that kind of exciting. My pulse sped faster, my heartbeat starting to thud, but not because of sexual attraction, unless you thought fear was sexy. Oh, wait. He did.

  The door opened beside me, and I was concentrating so hard on Olaf that it surprised me. I even made that little eep sound that only women seem to make. My pulse thudded in the side of my throat like a trapped thing. I couldn’t swallow past it to say anything to Edward in the doorway.

  His voice was Ted’s drawl. “Y’all going to join us in here, pardners?” The expression on his face went from Ted’s warm smile to Edward’s cold one in seconds, so his affect didn’t match his words at all.

  Olaf spoke in a low, growling whisper. “You ran to him the way a woman runs to a man she thinks will protect her. Only prey runs to others for protection.”

  And just like that, I saw the danger. If I’d changed lists in his head from fellow predator to prey, then we were in deep trouble—the kind that meant that at least one of the three of us would not leave this town alive, and if things went really badly, it would be two out of three.

  40

  I LOOKED AT Olaf and all I could think was This is it. We will have to kill him. My lioness crouched inside me as if readying herself for a real leap, as if she could help me fight him. My hand touched my gun, but Edward came up with a better idea. He called back to the others in the office and said, “Give us a minute, pardners,” and closed the door so we had some privacy.

  “Anita trusted you to keep her safe in Florida when that car almost ran into us,” Edward said, the Ted slipping out of his voice the way it had slipped from his face.

  Olaf actually startled, his whole body reacting to it. My pulse slowed down, the fear of the moment replaced with the memory of older fear. We’d piled too many of us in a car on a hunt in Florida. Long story short, I’d ended up sitting in Olaf’s lap because I didn’t fit anywhere else. It sounded stupid and careless now, but it had made sense at the time. A car had nearly crashed into us and only the driver’s car-handling skills had kept us from either being T-boned or flipping over. The fact that I had broken my solid rule about seat belts in that moment . . . I thought I was going to die, but Olaf had folded his arms around me. He’d kept me safe with the strength of his hands, his arms, his body wrapped around mine. His legs and body braced to keep us both in place. In that moment I had curled myself against him, burying my face against his neck, and held on to him, and weirdest of all, I had known that he would keep me safe even if it meant putting his body in harm’s way. In that moment all the strength that I normally feared had been my shield.

  “I did,” I said, my voice a little breathy.

  My lioness relaxed against the path inside me; she rolled herself on that dark ground, remembering the surety of Olaf’s strength. She’d made no secret of the facts that she liked his lion and that she wanted a mate. I’d told her she couldn’t have Olaf, but I hadn’t found anyone else to put in his place. Of all my unmatched beasts, she was the “loudest” about missing her other half.

  “You didn’t see Anita as prey after you saved her in the car.” Edward made his words a statement.

  “No,” Olaf said, like he wasn’t sure he was happy with the answer, but it was still the truth.

  “Being able to protect someone you care for doesn’t make them weaker, Olaf. It makes you stronger,” Edward said.

  Olaf frowned, and even though he had sunglasses on, you could see him fight to understand the concept. “That Anita trusted me to keep her safe did feel . . . good.”

  “That’s what it feels like to protect a woman that you care about.”

  Olaf stared at him, frowning so hard that his handsome face gained lines I’d never noticed before, like a preview of what he might look like in a few decades. “She did help me torture the waitress in the restaurant later, after that.” His voice was hesitant, almost thinking out loud. He’d now lost me on his logic train, but apparently Edward was still on board, because he explained Olaf’s thinking.

  “Would you have played your part in threatening the suspect if you hadn’t had that moment of trust with Olaf in the car?”

  I thought about the question, like, really thought about it. I hadn’t enjoyed scaring the waitress, but she’d helped kidnap other women, knowing that they were going to die horrible deaths. If we hadn’t gotten her to tell us what she knew right then and there, more innocent women would have died. It had been necessary, and it had been frightening to me how easily Olaf and I worked together to gain her information. She was a lycanthrope, so nothing we cut off wouldn’t grow back, and we’d saved the women who were still missing, so I counted it as a win, but it wasn’t one of my proudest moments. Truthfully, I tried very hard not to think about it.

  “No, I don’t think I would have, but it wasn’t just that. I saw him with your kids. I didn’t realize he was Uncle Otto the way I was Aunt Anita to them until the wedding trip.” I looked up at the big man. “I don’t know how much was pretend on your part, but Becca and Peter trust and love you. They helped me be willing to stand on the other side of the woman in Florida and do what we did.” There, that was the absolute truth.

  Olaf nodded. “You stood beside me in the firefight and never faltered. I never thought to find a woman that would have such courage.”

  “Thank you.” Now was not the time to lecture him on the fact that women could be just as brave as men. Edward and I were winning this discussion; never argue when you’re winning. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down in the fight either.”

  “You trusted me,” Olaf said.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  The frown lines were smoothing out, but you could almost hear the gears working in his head again. Sometimes new thoughts can be almost painful, especially if they’re fighting with older thoughts or, worse, older certainties that are no longer certain.

  “I have had women trust me in the past, but they did not know the truth of me.”

  “You were hiding your truth from them,” I said.

  “I was.”

  “The lion has to hide in the long grass so the gazelle doesn’t see it,” I said.

  Olaf nodded. “Yes.”

  Edward said, “But the lions don’t hide from one another.”

  Olaf and I glanced at him. In my head I thought, Well, sometimes they ambush other prides in the wild. But again, we were winning, so there was no need to talk real-lion biology when we were ahead.

  “No, they do not,” Olaf said.

  “The lions trust one another on the hunt,” I said.

  “Will you help me hunt the gazelles, Adler?”

  “It depends on the gazelle, Moriarty.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I tried to think how to explain it to him without insulting him. “I can help you on legal hunts when hurting or killing people saves other lives.”

  “She won’t help either of us hunt victims that she sees as innocent,” Edward said.

  Olaf made a derisive noise. “No one is innocent.”

  “How about children?” I asked before I could think if doing so was a go
od idea or not.

  “I do not hunt children.”

  “Good to know because that would be a hard line for me, too.”

  “Child vampires are an exception,” Edward said.

  “They aren’t children,” Olaf and I said together. It made me smile, and after a moment of missing his social cue, so did he.

  “Vampires will still kill their own kind for bringing over children. It’s forbidden for so many reasons,” I said.

  The thoughts that went with that knowledge wiped the smile off my face. Kid vamps were always crazy as fuck and usually sadistic or broken in some other major way. Teenagers could sometimes manage to survive okay, but if the victims were younger than puberty, vampirism just fucked them up.

  “I am disappointed that this case is about keeping the wereanimal alive,” Olaf said. “I had hoped to help you kill him.”

  “Even though he’s a he and not a she?” I asked.

  “I told you before, I will help you kill your preferred victim so long as we kill together.”

  He had, which again was high praise from Olaf, just creepy-as-fuck high praise.

  “From what I understand about the case, aren’t we trying to find the real murderer so that we can save the suspect’s life?” Edward asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “That is what Anita wants to do,” Olaf said.

  “The warrant of execution may have the suspect’s name on it, but the way they’re written, they leave us legally able to hunt anyone involved in the murder,” Edward said.

  I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. Save Bobby Marchand, and then we’d see where we were legally.

  Olaf smiled. “You mean we can still execute the real killer?”

  “Legally,” Edward said.

  “Newman and I both think the killer is human. They could go to trial for murder.”

  “They could,” Edward said, “but they already killed once and are trying to use the marshal system to kill a second victim. Do you really think they deserve more consideration from the law just because they’re not preternatural?”

  “Legally, that’s the way the law is written,” I said.

  “It’s just as legal to execute them for it here and now and save the taxpayers a trial,” he said.

  I looked at Edward, trying to figure out if he was humoring Olaf or really believed what he was saying. I finally said, “I’m not sure how I feel about your reasoning.”

  “You argued legalities, Anita. The law is on our side.”

  I sighed, and it was my turn to frown. “I’m fine with killing them if they’re trying to kill us or others. I’m fine if it saves lives, but cold-bloodedly killing them just because we can if they aren’t a danger to anyone else . . . Not sure I can sign off on that.”

  “I will hope that the murderer threatens more victims, then,” Olaf said.

  “Thanks for not saying you hope they kill more people.”

  “You are welcome,” he said.

  I still wasn’t sure if Edward had said it all to give Olaf hope that we’d get to torture and kill as a couple again, or if he’d meant every word he said. I hoped he hadn’t meant it. If we had time and privacy later, I’d ask Edward. I might not like the answer, but I’d like myself less if I was too afraid to ask the question.

  41

  WE INTRODUCED MARSHAL Ted Forrester to Bobby. In clothes, he looked less like a victim and more like a person. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, and jogging shoes, as if he were going to walk out of here soon. That wasn’t true, but the clothes made him seem more real somehow. Bobby’s attitude was more solid now, too, as if the clothes had given him more confidence, or maybe he just felt more himself in them. The deputy who had brought his clothes had forgotten a belt, so Bobby kept pulling his pants up as he paced in his cell. He’d started pacing when we asked him to give us more details about the night of the murder. I didn’t need Olaf’s supernatural senses to know Bobby was nervous and hiding things from us. Bobby ran one hand through his straight blond hair so often that if it had had any body to it, it would have been a mess, but lucky for him it was so straight and so baby fine that it just kept falling back into place.

  The five of us watched him pace back and forth behind the bars like we were at a zoo. Newman said, “Bobby, we’re trying to save your life here. Duke is pissed that I gave you the name of the lawyer that’s willing to try to help you, but it doesn’t matter what the rest of us do if you won’t help yourself.”

  “I told you what happened that night.” He gave a quick look up at us and then went back to staring at the floor as he paced. He couldn’t even meet anyone’s eyes for long. He must have sucked at bluffing in poker.

  I tried. “You said that Jocelyn saw you pass out in your bedroom after you shifted back to human.”

  He nodded and stopped walking long enough to look at me, and then his eyes were back to the floor and the pacing recommenced as if he had lost something small and had to stare at the floor hard to find it.

  “We talked to her, and she said she didn’t see you in your bedroom that night.”

  That made him hesitate between one step and the next, then stumble. He studied my face to see if I was lying to him. I kept my face calm because I wasn’t lying, so it was even easier than normal when interrogating a suspect.

  “But she saw me pass out, or start to. I mean, I saw her in the doorway as I started to black out.”

  “Jocelyn says she wasn’t in your bedroom that night.”

  “I didn’t say she was in my room, just that she saw me pass out. She saw me change back to human, and she knows I came in the window like I always do. I never even went downstairs as a leopard that night. Joshie knows that.”

  I shrugged. “She says you did it, Bobby, that you killed her dad.”

  “Did she see me do it?” he said, and he finally seemed indignant.

  “No, she just found the body,” Newman said.

  “Then I don’t understand. I’ve been thinking about it, and I remember going hunting outside in the woods. The deer I killed should still be in the tree outside my window. It’s where I stash kills that I can’t eat all at once.”

  “Leopards in Africa put kills in trees so lions and hyenas don’t get to them. What are you hiding your kill from here?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Coyotes mostly, though a lot of animals will scavenge. Even the animals that can climb or fly are less likely to try it with the carcass so close to the house. If there’s a fresh deer in the tree, then what I’m remembering is true and I didn’t kill Uncle Ray.”

  “You seemed pretty certain you did it when you first woke up in the cell,” Duke said from the doorway to the offices.

  “I woke up covered in blood, and you told me I’d killed Uncle Ray. What else was I supposed to think? I’ve been trusting your opinions since peewee football league when you were just one of the other dads. You gave all of us on your . . . on the team better advice on how to play than our coach.” Bobby had almost said your son’s, I think. I wanted to know the backstory of Leduc’s dead son, but not enough to pry into something that painful.

  “You said you didn’t remember before,” I said.

  “I didn’t, except in glimpses—sometimes it’s more like remembering dreams than real memories.”

  “You have been a shapeshifter for over ten years, and you still only remember as if it is a dream,” Olaf said.

  “Yes. Do you remember your full moons?”

  “More clearly than you do.”

  “Bobby also shifts only into a leopard about the size of a normal one,” I said.

  “Really?” Edward said.

  “That is not typical,” Olaf said.

  “I just thought it was because Bobby doesn’t seem to be very powerful,” Newman said.

  “That just affects how many forms you shift into, not how
big each of them is,” I said.

  Bobby looked at us, his hands wrapped around the bars of the cell, and I was suddenly aware that his hands fit through the bars and the hallway was narrow. If he’d been a regular shapeshifter, I wouldn’t have wanted to be standing this close. I realized that Edward was standing farther away from the bars. Olaf had moved up with me, but then he didn’t have to worry about Bobby’s extra strength or speed, because he had his own. I had some of my own, true, but that wasn’t it. I didn’t see him as that dangerous, because he probably hadn’t killed his uncle, and . . . he was so not in the same power level as the shapeshifters I lived and worked with regularly. But small dogs can still bite. When had I decided Bobby was more person than suspect? Oh, now I remembered: when I put my body between him and a bullet. Yeah, saving someone’s life usually made me feel protective toward them, damn it.

  Bobby leaned his face in closer to the bars and sniffed loudly, and then he rubbed his cheek against the bars. I wasn’t even sure he realized he’d done the second part. “You must only hang out with really powerful shapeshifters if you think my leopard is small.”

  I moved back from the bars so I could give Edward better eye contact. Olaf moved back with me. Newman stayed near the bars. He wasn’t being cautious enough either, especially after seeing Bobby go apeshit earlier.

  “So you guys haven’t seen many shapeshifters with animal forms as small as regular animals either?” I asked.

  They both shook their heads.

  “The wereleopard that was my mentor was my size in animal form,” Bobby said.

  “Did he contract lycanthropy in Africa, too?” I asked.

  Bobby nodded. “He contacted Uncle Ray because he heard about my attack in the news. His story was almost identical to mine, except that they hadn’t been able to kill the shapeshifter that attacked him and his friends.”

  “I was wondering if it’s a different strain from the one that’s here in the United States,” I said.

  “I’ve never hunted in Africa,” Edward said.