Dyre Page 3

  But she’d been intrigued by the supposed challenge presented by this mongrel pup, this youngest bastard of a Pack full of the same. So she’d taken the job and the gun, even though its very touch seemed to soil her hands, and she waited to follow her orders.

  Then everything had gone straight to Hell when the Human assassin had partially failed in his duty, getting himself killed before Anka could kill him. Which wasn’t necessarily a disaster as far as Anka’s job went, but the mongrel pup had gotten away with the heir-apparent to the North American Dyrehood, and Anka had nearly lost their trail in the downpour that’d started earlier in the evening and hadn’t let up.

  But Anka had eventually found their trail. Had tracked them for two hours, always staying just out of scenting range until the mongrel pup had gotten to the abandoned edges of Lenape Landing.

  Tactically, she’d dug hers and the Dyre-Apparent’s graves. Anka couldn’t have been more pleased. Now, as she stood at the mouth of the alley, scenting the pup’s Change, all ideas of following the orders to use the gun and silver bullets on any Loup who got in her way flew out the figurative window.

  Rolling her shoulders, Anka tossed the gun back the way she’d come and began shrugging off her clothes, letting the sweet agony of the Change flow through the muscle and bone and marrow of her body.

  In the dim moonlight, she could only barely see the pup shifting and Changing with little yips of pain and the usual cracking of bones and tearing of muscles. Coarse black hair sprouted up all over her small frame, and she focused her dark, dark eyes on Anka with keen, cold intelligence.

  Anka laughed, and it came out as a mocking growl. Perhaps her employer had been right, after all. In any event, after years of easy kills, Anka welcomed a challenge. Even one it was likely she would win.

  Change completed, the pup threw back her head and howled in response: both defiance and challenge. There was no fear in it. Not a single note.

  Snarling her anticipation, Anka stepped forward.

  *

  The smaller Loup trotted warily forward, a lean black shadow in a sea of the same, obsidian-dark eyes shining like marbles, hooded and cold. Her teeth were bared, white and long.

  The larger Loup, mouth also open in the Loup-ine equivalent of a smile, loped forward confidently, reddish-brown fur a-bristle, nonetheless.

  Turn around now, or I’ll kill you, the pup said emotionlessly. That surprised Anka, as most pups tended to be hotheads. This one was as cold as ice, with deadly unconcern in her scent and death in her eyes.

  For a moment, Anka felt actual fear, then she shook her head, muzzle twitching as she side-stepped her way closer, heartened when the pup took a step back. It’s you who’ll die tonight, little mongrel. It’s you who should be—

  But Anka didn’t get to finish, because the mongrel pup was leaping for her, all red rage and sudden fury.

  Anka faked to the left then dodged to the right, but the pup seemed to have anticipated her, landing on Anka like a hundred-pound weight. Solid despite her lack of size, she bowled Anka onto her back. She immediately sought Anka’s throat with her muzzle. Anka tried to shake the pup off, but couldn’t. She was like Velcro, her claws embedded in Anka’s flesh.

  Wondering when this fight had gone so wrong, had gotten so far out of her control, Anka did some throat-seeking of her own, expecting the pup to waste time trying to evade her. But the pup didn’t. She was as fearless as she was diminutive, her eyes burning, red, and rabid.

  Anka’s employer hadn’t mentioned that part.

  Suddenly the discarded gun seemed like not such a bad idea.

  That bolt of fear came back with a vengeance, and Anka struggled even harder not to be bitten in any way by the rabid mongrel on top of her, growling and dripping poisonous slather all over Anka’s face. Anka dared not let that slather drip into her mouth. At even the suggestion of rabidity, the Patsono Pack would kill her, assuming some other Pack didn’t take care of her first.

  This is the Loup they let guard their leader? This half-cocked gun? This mad little thing with poison in its veins and murder in its heart? What were they thinking, these upstart American Garoul? What were they—

  Then bitter, murder-salty, madness-coppery saliva dripped into Anka’s nose, and she yelped in horror, more of it dripping into her mouth. Horror mounted upon horror, made her toss her head away and to the side. It was in her, now. And no Pack or Clan would be able to hide her or overlook the growing scent of madness that would overlay her once the rabidity really got its claws into her blood. No one would help her. She would find no forgiveness here in the New World or back in the Old Country. Unlike the Loup of the rumors, rumors that had made their way back to Romania, of the mad wolf who was supposedly allowed to run rabid because its father was an Alpha, there’d be no reprieve for—

  And oh, it all made sense too late: who this mongrel pup was and why the American Council of Alphas had spared her. They’d taken a vicious, remorseless, lunatic of a Hell-hound, and turned her into a guard dog. The Council’s pragmatism and refusal to see any opportunity pass without exploiting it had let them consider and do the unthinkable.

  It was practical and so perfectly American an idea.

  And the renewal of that initial horror proved to be Anka’s undoing, for the jaws from which that evil, poisonous saliva fell descended upon her. Upon her throat, and through it, till those purposeful teeth were gripping her spinal column and yanking upward. Outward.

  The pain isn’t as bad as I thought. Why, it barely hurts at—

  Then a flash of silver-white light, so bright it obliterated even as it exalted, burned even as it soothed, took Anka with it. This light ran and without even a sense of transition or disorientation, Anka was running with it.

  *

  Des’s Loup paced around the fallen body of its enemy, snarling and growling.

  Hungry.

  No, Des told her Loup calmly, a small, easily ignored voice from within. Her Loup laughed its snickering, mad, growling laugh and stopped pacing, lowering its muzzle to the pool of blood spreading around their enemy’s cooling body. It was thirsty, too. Hungry, thirsty, and—

  From behind Des and her Loup came a soft cry that seemed to bring with it the gentle scent of woman-vellum-lilies-innocence. Of power and potential.

  Power and potential the Loup wanted to take into itself.

  Enemy forgotten, the Loup trotted toward the source of that scent.

  As it trotted, that scent became stronger, purer, irresistible. It began to mean everything Des’s Loup wanted and no longer had. It slunk up the rubble, jaws wide and dripping, till it was crouched over the sleeping form from which all things emanated.

  Wide eyes opened again, still blank and unseeing, once again, however, seeming to land on Des’s Loup. To command it, and that command found an anchor in the Loup’s rabid, buzzing-mad blood and brain. In its empty, barren heart.

  And something began to bloom in that arid space. Something that hadn’t touched Des or her Loup in so long, they’d forgotten that feeling even existed. It was both lead and helium, this feeling, heavy as earth and light as air. As frightening as Des’s rabid Loup, itself—more so. And it was also quite beautiful . . . so much so, neither Des nor the Loup could look directly at it for long, for fear that they might be obliterated entirely. Made hollow and refilled with this feeling, and once that happened, where would they be?

  Taken aback, Des’s Loup found itself sitting on its haunches and leaning down to touch its nose to the soft, cool cheek of the Hume-seeming Loup that lay both fevered and freezing on rubble and duffle. Nothing could have startled Des’s Loup more than when a gentle hand settled on its head like a benediction, scratching and ruffling the fur at the scruff of the Loup’s neck before falling away.

  Des’s Loup sat up, only to find those wide, unseeing eyes falling shut again.

  It howled plaintively, wanting them to open once more. To feel that benediction, that sense of belonging and welcome again.

&nbs
p; But it didn’t.

  The Loup finally hung its head . . . and after a minute’s stillness was able to find that blooming sensation welling up within, watering dried, cavernous hollows, bringing life to the lifeless and joy to the joyless.

  Elated and humbled, it tentatively touched this feeling. . . .

  It was pure Moon’s Light. It burned and soothed. It was still as a pond, deep as a river, and it ran.

  It washed clean, and Des’s Loup—Des, belonged to it. Was of it and made for it.

  Des and her Loup, as close to being one as they’d ever been, bathed in it, and let themselves be immersed, until their whole world was Moon’s Light.

  *

  Nearly half an hour later, Jennifer Desiderio stood up shivering, arms crossed over her breasts, knees knocking as they tried to support her in a way of standing that barely seemed to make sense after what seemed like an eternity spent in Loup-form.

  At her feet lay Ruby Knudsen, still shaking, still moaning, but now once more radiating that alarming heat, which showed up as a deep flush under her café-au-lait complexion. For minutes Des could only stare dumbly at her and feel something so big and alien, it defied explanation and forbade observation.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, shattering this reverie and startling Des into taking a step backward onto nothing. She pin-wheeled her arms, but nonetheless fell back down the pile of rubble, scraping and bruising every scrapeable and bruiseable part of her. She landed spine first on her own boots and grunted, the wind knocked out of her. It was several moments before she sat up and reached for her drenched clothes.

  It was time to play Human again.

  *

  By cloudy, drizzling midnight, Des was exhausted from carrying Ruby around and keeping to the shadows and alleyways of Lenape Landing. From the fight with that murderous bitch. From Changing to full Loup form and back in less than an hour.

  She and Ruby were both drenched. At least that would muddy their scents in case someone else came sniffing after them, but Ruby had acquired a racking cough Des didn’t like one bit.

  Keeping that thought firmly in mind, Des stepped up to the huge wrought-iron gate and glanced at the CCD camera mounted atop it like a watchful raven. She knew she must have looked like a drowned rat, carrying a corpse for company.

  Des was, yet again, not remotely in a position of power. But there was nothing to be done about it. She’d barely reached out for the intercom buzzer before the gate swung silently open like something out of a gothic novel.

  Any second thoughts she had about entering were quashed by the suddenly increasing downpour, and Ruby’s soft, pitiful moans and weak shivers. Des trotted down the gravel driveway, past the gatehouse and whichever goon was playing guard that night, to the brooding front door of the estate house. She wouldn’t bother reaching for the knocker. He obviously already knew she was there. Indeed, the front door was already open by the time she climbed the shallow front steps.

  A somber man of middling height waited in a rectangle of soft yellow light that did nothing to soften his features. Unreadable dark eyes flicked from Des, to Ruby, then back to Des. He flared his nostrils disdainfully and sighed as one greatly put upon.

  “Good evening, Jennifer,” Nathan Coulter murmured in his smooth, eternally unruffled tenor. He was the only person who called her Jennifer. The only person left who has a right to, she supposed tiredly. But it still pissed her off.

  “Good evening, sir,” Des mumbled, then gritted her teeth and firmly reminded herself that beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Father.”

  Nathan smiled his thin, amused smile and that also pissed Des off, as did his regal, languid gesture to enter. But for the moment, Ruby Knudsen was safe. That was all that mattered.

  So, Des checked her ego at the door and stepped inside.

  Chapter Three

  Des scurried down the front hall, Nathan gliding along ahead of her. The manor hadn’t changed one bit. It was quite manly, baroque, and richly appointed. Wine-red carpeting ate the sounds of footsteps and voices alike. Wood-paneling and exposed brick infused the air with their own peculiar scents. Dim lighting, barely adequate for Human eyes, made the atmosphere seem both intimate and abyssal all at once. High, vaulted ceilings and entryways hinted at more rooms than Des had ever bothered to count, certainly more than she’d ever been in during her four year tenure here.

  Des could remember the first time she saw the manor house from the outside, at the ripe, old age of fifteen. She’d thought nothing could be more intimidating than the tall, wide, fortress-like pile. Then she’d seen the inside. The house, as well as its owner, seemed to frown down on her from an unimaginable height, the weight of ages looming over her and finding her wanting.

  She shook her head to clear the tired fog from it, and followed Nathan up the wide front staircase, Ruby moaning in her arms. She didn’t look good at all. Her eyes were already sunken into shadowed hollows, her light-brown face visibly flushed from the fever. Her waving hair was dripping wet and coming out of its scraped-back bun, and her clothing was sodden.

  Not that Des looked too much better.

  At the landing to the second floor, Des began to feel mildly awkward. It’d always been this way from the day she came to live at the manor. Her mother’s death was still a fresh, sharp ache in her chest. And Nathan always waiting for her to speak, holding his peace like he was a judge and she was some self-incriminating low-life.

  Despite her discomfort, Des followed Nathan down a familiar stretch of corridor, holding her own peace as they trailed silently through the east wing. Before long, Nathan stopped at a door Des also remembered well.

  “Your room is as you left it…but noticeably cleaner,” Nathan said, opening the door for her with a quiet sigh. One quick look was enough to see that was true, from the funky braided rugs, to the posters of bands she’d now disavow having ever liked.

  Not that it mattered much to Des that her room had been kept as if waiting for her return.

  “Uh, thanks.” She bit her lip and sighed, too. “Look, Nathan—”

  “I take it George is dead?” Nathan cut her off, looking at Ruby. He frowned, looking vaguely perturbed for the first time in the eight years Des had known him. “You reek of his blood and of silver nitrate. And this one smells of his Death-right.”

  Des hung her head for a moment then met Nathan’s eyes, straightening her posture and bearing up under his scrutiny and, no doubt, judgment. Nathan had been part of the Tribunal that had decided to entrust her with George’s life. He’d been one of the yea votes that had talked down the nays. At the time, that had floored Des, and even two-plus years later, still did.

  “Yes. Whoever it was, sent a Hume assassin with a nitrate gun after him. Before he died, George swore me to her.”

  “Another Geas.” Nathan nodded, then he snapped his dark eyes back to Des. “That would be his way. Did he say why he chose this particular Hume to be his heir-apparent?”

  I think it may have been his idea of a joke, Des thought, but didn’t say. After all, Nathan hadn’t asked for her opinion. “He said she came to read to him, sometimes. And I’ve smelled her scent in his apartment more than once over the past year or so.” Shrugging, Des turned and entered her old room, not stopping till she was laying Ruby in her bed, on top of the patchwork coverlet Phil had made for her way back when.

  After a few moments of not knowing what to do next, Des tugged the coverlet out from under Ruby, who’d curled into a fetal position, and threw it over her. Des would’ve tucked her in, too, if she’d known how. It was one of those things Des’s own mother had done for her, once upon a childhood. But unfortunately she’d never taught Des the how of it before she’d died. Of that and a great many other things.

  She sensed Nathan lingering in the doorway behind her.

  “There are those on the Council who’ll want your throat for this,” he said finally, and for once, he didn’t sound offhanded. He sounded grave. “George’s Geas tying you to this Human pro
bably saved your life. For as long as she lives, anyway,” he added.

  Looking at the moaning, limp, fevered girl in her bed, Des sighed again. “Fan-damn-tastic.”

  “Did the assassin say who sent him before you dispatched him?”

  Gritting her teeth, Des glanced at Nathan, catching a strange look on his saturnine face. As usual, she couldn’t read it. “It was either kill him or let him kill the girl. So he didn’t get to say a damn thing. Something else the Council can crucify me for.”

  “Mm. I’ll have Angus lead a cleaning crew to George’s apartment and yours.”

  “And to the alley between the warehouses on Van Allen and 40th Avenues. There’s another assassin there. This one was a Loup.” Des paused. “I’m pretty sure she was sent as back-up in case the first assassin fucked up.”

  Nathan hmmed. “Whoever sent them really went all out to end George’s line.”

  Des nodded, and silence fell between them again, but it was loud. That silence tsked and took Des to task in Nathan’s off-hand tones.

  His gaze was, as always, impenetrable—obsidian upon which to break oneself.

  He looked at Ruby again with what Des could have sworn was genuine curiosity. He approached the bed.

  “The other Alphas will be distressed, to say the least. Several of them had hopes of replacing George as Dyre.” He reached out to touch the already fading scar at the junction of Ruby’s neck and her left shoulder. Without thinking, Des interposed herself between them, slapping his hand away and growling low in her throat.

  Nathan smiled his thin smile again and made no further attempt to examine Ruby’s scar.

  “Very well,” he said simply, his voice rich with what was probably suppressed laughter. Of course, he was amused. After over a century of living and killing when the need arose, Des probably posed no real threat to him. In a contest between the two of them, despite her own prowess in a fight, Des knew she would likely die.