Blood of the Pride (17 page)

“Oh, you have no idea.” I walked to the front door. “Just behave yourself. Frank’s not going to be happy being here and out of familiar territory and I don’t think Jess’s exactly nominating you for blood brother status any time soon.”

At the first knock Bran slid across the varnished hardwood floor in his socks, reaching the door before me. He opened it with a wide smile and gestured for Jess to enter.

Her eyes locked with mine across the room. “Rebecca—Frank Langley. Kelly Langley.” Ignoring Brandon completely she waved in the two adults behind her, immediately taking control of the situation, the room and our lives. “We’ll sit over there.”

Jazz sat up from her position on the soft leather chair and yawned loudly when Jess approached. Picking up on the cues, she hopped off with a disgruntled meow and disappeared around the divider into the bedroom portion of the apartment.

Frank Langley was, to all intents and purposes, nothing more than a huge bear. When he sat down on the sofa he reminded me more of one of those Chinese pandas displayed in the papers every few years when they managed to procreate and continue the survival of their species. The balding, plump man sank into the cushions with a terrified look in his eyes. His wife sat next to him, grabbing his hand with an intensity screaming both fear and anger. She was blond and blue-eyed, a tastefully thin woman whose face was a mask waiting to be painted.

Jess didn’t sit.

She went to the kitchen area and picked up one of the fresh mugs of coffee Bran had set out. She took a deep sniff of the fresh brew, her eyebrows rising in shock and approval.

Bran retaliated by offering her milk from a small creamer plucked from the refrigerator. I tried to ignore the power play going on but I couldn’t help feeling a little pride in the way Bran was handling himself.

“Hello.” I offered my hand to the Langleys. “My name’s Rebecca. Has Jess spoken to you about why you’re here?”

“I’m…not sure.” Frank reached into one pocket of his oversized pants and pulled out a handkerchief that would have doubled as a tablecloth. “She said something ’bout Davis and some problems.”

Kelly sat up, her back ram-rod straight with her hands now folded in her lap. “We were at the Gathering earlier. It’s awful what happened to Ruth.” Her eyes flashed to one side, toward her husband. “Awful.”

I didn’t have to be a psychic to feel the restrained fury in her words. She knew something was wrong and she knew it was her husband’s fault.

“Right.” I didn’t have time to mince words. “I’m investigating the death of Janey Winters, a teacher here in town. She was killed by a Felis.”

The couple rocked back in their seats as if I had bitch-slapped them both at the same time. “What?” Frank stammered while Kelly just stared at me, her mouth hanging open.

“You heard what I said.” I reached down and flipped open the folder on the table. Frank’s face stared up at the two of them, his blank look in the photograph mimicking real life. “This is your file. I requested it because during the investigation I was attacked by a Felis with a white streak down one side of his nose.” I dragged my index finger down my face. “According to family records there aren’t a whole lot of men with that particular marking. You’re one of them.”

“That p-p-p-proves nothing,” Frank said. He waved his hands in the air as if he were trying to fend off a mosquito attack. “There’s got to be a lot of Felis like that. A lot of fellows.” He looked at his wife. “A lot of fellows.”

She glared at him and then crossed her arms. I cleared my throat, bringing their full attention back to yours truly.

“That particular scent, not to mention a hair sample, was also found at the scene of the murder.” I watched Frank wipe his brow again and pat his eyes dry. “I know it’s not you because it’s not your scent.”

He slumped down into the cushions. It wasn’t relief at being found innocent. There was something else there, a sense of foreboding.

He knew the truth.

I reached into my pocket and withdrew the plastic bag filled with the loose fur from my room.

“This is what we found at my house.” I offered it to Kelly first. “It has the scent of your husband but only partially. That would indicate that there’s some sort of genetic connection between my attacker and your husband.”

She opened the bag and pressed it to her face, inhaling deeply with eyes closed.

Her face went scarlet a second later.

Kelly Langley slammed the bag down on the table and turned and slapped her husband, hard. I flinched as her fingerprints began to form an angry rash on his pale skin. For his part, Frank sat there in silence, his hands in his lap. He hadn’t tried to fend off the attack.

“I knew it. You told me I was seeing things that weren’t there, that all those business trips were legit, all the overnight hotel stays.” She burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands.

Jess appeared with a box of tissues plucked off one of the bookshelves. She knelt down at Kelly’s side and offered her the box. “It’ll be okay.” She said in a low, comforting tone and began to rub her back. “It’ll be okay.” She didn’t look at Frank.

Frank sat there, his face growing redder by the second. His eyes went to Jess, then to his sobbing wife, to Bran standing behind me, to the kitchen counter and finally to me. His mouth opened and closed again in a long sequence of empty stutters. Finally he stopped, shook himself and spoke.

“It was…she was…” He glanced at Jess, the fear shooting out in frantic pulses. Jess put her hand on Kelly’s shoulder, snubbing Frank.

“Who was it?” I walked around the table and sat on it, facing Frank. The wood creaked under my weight. I leaned forward, almost butting noses with the terrified man. “Who was it?” I growled, putting as much alpha into it as I could.

“Her name was Kathy.” The sweat poured off his face. “She said she was on birth control. She said that it would be fine.”

“Was she the only one?” Kelly barked, lifting her tear-stained face to face him. “Was she?”

He flinched at every syllable as if it was a strike with Jess’s claws, his hands twitching and ready to fly up to protect himself.

“Hey.” I snapped my fingers to get Frank’s full attention. “She asked you a question. And we need the answer. When, where and who is she? And is she the only one?”

“There was no one else, I swear. It… I mean, it’s not possible. That’s why I didn’t say anything, I thought she was lying.” The panda was rambling almost incoherently now, the words running out of his mouth in a brilliant display of verbal diarrhea.

“Wait a minute,” Bran said from behind me, his voice so low I almost failed to catch it. “You’re saying that you impregnated a woman—a regular human?”

Jess glanced at me and raised an eyebrow as if to ask that I rein my man in.

“It…” Again the handkerchief came up in a vain attempt to dry his face. I could smell the fear, the anxiety…the relief? “It… Her name was Kathy Wright. She worked at the hotel front desk.” He shivered. “It was only a few months before I broke it off. When she called and told me she was pregnant I didn’t know what to say. I knew she’d been faithful to me, or at least I’d thought up until then I was the only one.”

Kathy let out a deep sigh, a painful moan.

Frank didn’t look at her. “I knew it couldn’t be mine but I told her I wasn’t leaving my wife. She told me that it was fine, that she’d get an abortion and no one would know.” His enormous shoulders rose and sank in a shrug. “I didn’t even think about it until she sent me a letter, years later.”

“She had the baby.” I motioned with my hands for him to continue.

“She had the baby.” He wrestled with the damp cloth. “Told me that she wouldn’t bother me again, but she wanted me to know.” The handkerchief fell out of his hands. “A boy.”

Suddenly Kelly lashed out again, this time with claws showing.

The only thing that saved Frank’s throat was Jess’s speed. Her hand shot out, grabbing Kelly’s forearm and yanking her back. It wasn’t enough to save Frank’s face, not totally—but it was enough to keep her from ripping his throat out.

The plump man fell to the right, one hand pressed to the deep gouges on his face while he stared at his wife in disbelief.

“Kelly!” Jess grabbed both hands and spun the angry woman around to face her, the Change starting on both their faces. “Stop it!” She roared with full authority. “Stop it!”

Kelly took a deep breath. The claws on her hands, one set already bloody, began to retract.

Jess remained in Changed shape, her furred face now aimed at the unfortunate man only a few feet away. “You have a child?” The words reverberated through the apartment with such impact it felt like a yell even though she had whispered the words. “You have an undocumented child?”

Frank nodded, a bloody handkerchief pressed to his face. “She told me that she’d leave me alone, never ask for money.” The words came out in a sad whine. “I never thought it was mine. You know we can’t do that, but I didn’t want to insult her by saying so…” The words trailed off when he saw no relief from Jess’s anger.

“There’s an easy solution.” I picked up the bag of loose fur and handed it to him. “Scent this. Tell me if it’s your son.”

He took the bag from me. Frank pressed his nose to the opening. The deep cuts across his cheek still oozed blood. He needed stitches.

Frank’s eyes opened, bloodshot and teary. “It’s her. I can smell her. Kathy, I mean. She’s here, she’s right here with me. It’s my son.”

Jess reached over and snatched the bagged handful of fur away from him, her teeth bared. The elder Felis stood up and grabbed Frank by his shirt, dragging him to his feet.

I went to stand up, to try and move between them. Jess shoved me away with her free hand, sending me crashing to the bare floor.

Kelly curled up at the far end of the couch into a fetal position, crying uncontrollably into her hands. Brandon sprang out from behind the marble island and helped me to my feet, keeping a firm grip on my arm as he glared at the angry woman.

“Jess,” I gasped. “You can’t kill him. We have to know more.” I wasn’t sure if there actually was anything more Frank could offer but I was very sure Brandon would have trouble disposing of a body.

Jess snarled into Langley’s face, the saliva dripping from her fangs. “You…you have broken so many rules that I don’t even know where to begin.” Her eyes narrowed. “And you had the nerve, the gall to try and get Davis to help cover for you.”

Frank squirmed in her grip, not daring to even try to Change. “Davis called me when he heard that my name was being bandied about for your investigation.” He swallowed once, the sound bouncing around the silent room. “I didn’t know there was a murder, I just didn’t want my affair to come out. The rumors, the gossip.” His eyes drifted to the woman on the sofa, still sobbing into her arms. “I didn’t want to hurt her more than I already had.” The overweight man sighed, his eyes downcast. “I accept the decision of the Board.”

“The decision? The decision? Now you want us to make a decision when you made yours without any consultation?” She bellowed, her spittle landing on the terrified man’s face.

Jess spun around and tossed the hapless Langley across the room. The overweight man bounced across the hardwood floor, landing against a set of bookshelves. A handful of paperbacks fluttered down onto his unconscious body. A page stuck to his face and absorbed some of the blood.

Jess spun around to face Bran and me, still fully Changed. I stepped out in front, fighting the urge to cower in front of a stronger foe. In the back of my mind a young girl curled up in a fetal position, terrified at having to face Jess again.

“I’ll be able to track her down, given time.” I forced the fear back down, my voice as steady as I could make it. “A last name, my police contacts—I’ll have a name and an address of this woman soon enough.”

“And then?” Jess whirled around and pointed at the hysterical woman on the couch. “What do we do? You know that kits have to be helped, tutored, trained. There’s a rogue out there, a rogue male…” She shook her head, letting me fill in the blanks.

“Wait a minute.” Bran’s steady voice snapped the tension in the room. “You said that a human can’t breed with a Felis, right?”

Jess stared at him as if he had materialized out of thin air. “Yes.”

“Right.” He pointed at Frank. “So how did he get her pregnant?”

“The obvious way.” Jess’s tongue flicked out over her teeth. “Reb, did you have to get a stupid one too?”

Brandon put up one hand, at just the right level to not challenge her authority. “If that’s true then this Kathy has to be a Felis, as well. Or you’re dealing with a genetic mutation that hasn’t happened before. Or…” His eyes narrowed. “Exactly where did you hear that our kind can’t breed with yours?”

Wrinkles appeared on Jess’s forehead. “We’ve just always known.”

Bran moved closer, his head down slightly. The bastard knew just how to work in front of Jess so not to push her buttons. “Have you done genetic testing?” His gaze flashed to one side to meet mine. “Exactly how many Felis have married outside the family?”

“Ah…” I glanced at Jess. “Two? Three? I don’t know.”

She snorted. “A handful, if that.”

“In how many years? How many generations?” Bran shook his head. “You don’t even want to date outside the Pride, it’s not surprising that so few of you consider marrying humans.” His stare went past Jess and me and focused on the far wall. “How can you pull any sort of data from that sampling that can be reliable? When it’s all based on legends and sayings?”

“Hrmph.” Jess didn’t encourage him but she didn’t stop him.

“Right.” Bran continued, “You can’t make that sort of decision based on a handful of people. It’s likely that we are alike on some biological level but maybe there hasn’t been a lot of half-breeds because of the stigma you place on breeding outside the family.” He waved at the weeping woman. “This is all because you Felis are so close-minded, so afraid to step outside your safety zone. If it scares you you hunt it, you kill it and you throw it out without thinking about the consequences.” He nodded in my direction. “I’ve already seen how great the family is when they come up against something strange or different they can’t control.”

His tone had crept up into the danger/challenge zone.

Jess took a few steps toward Bran. Her lips curled back, showing way more teeth than I was comfortable with.

I moved closer to Bran, reaching inside me to see if I could call my claws up again. I knew even if I could it’d be an uneven fight.

Bran stood his ground, lifting his head to stare straight into Jess’s eyes. “You could have others out there, lost boys and girls without a family because you decided that they can’t exist.” His voice rose again. “This was a long time in coming but it’s here and now you have to figure out what to do with it. You can’t ignore them or banish them from your precious secret society.” He gave me a sad smile before returning to face Jess. “Time to man up, as the saying goes.”

Jess’s right cheek twitched, the scarlet mark dancing up and down on her thin fur. “We always assumed that it was impossible because it hadn’t ever happened.” She shot a glance at me. “We may have…misjudged the depth of that belief.”

To his credit Bran moved back into submissive pose, letting his knees buckle just enough to avoid staring at her eye-to-eye. “A mistake is one thing. Not correcting that mistake when you have the chance is another.”

Her lips twitched upwards as she nodded. “Point taken.” Another look my way. “This one’s smarter than he looks.” She paused, her expression shifting from Board member to woman. “And if there’s more of them out there…” A pained look crossed her face. “Oh, Reb…if there’s more…” Her voice cracked, showing a side of the old broad I hadn’t known existed.

“Let’s take this one step at a time.” I nodded toward Kelly who had curled up with her eyes closed. “First, you take care of her.”

Bran walked behind me, retreating from Jess. He placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed lightly in a show of support.

I patted his hand. “Bran and I will track down the woman and the son and take it from there.”

“If you can.” Jess exhaled, her teeth beginning to retract ever so slowly. “I’m not sure if this shouldn’t return to the Board’s control.”

Brandon frowned. “Wait a minute. You’re going to take the case away from Rebecca?”

“This is beyond what we first thought,” Jess said as she began to return to human form. “Now we’re dealing with a much more dangerous situation.”

I crossed my arms and stared at Jess. “You hired me to find out who killed Janey Winters and I’m going to do that. With or without the Board’s approval.” I rose on my tiptoes. “With. Or. Without.”

Jess stared at me for a minute. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, fangs still drawing back. “If he’s a rogue male you’re dealing with an unknown quality. And he’s already tasted blood.” A sudden softness appeared on her face. “There’s a chance he’ll have to be killed, and I don’t think you’ve got the spirit to do it.” Jess put up her hand before I could answer. “Don’t start. At least, not right now.”

“Not right now.” I looked around the apartment. “Because right now you’ve got two people to take care of. And don’t even think about sweeping this all under the carpet. If Frank meets with a sudden ‘accident’…” I drew in a sharp breath, choosing my words carefully. “I’ll make sure that all the major media outlets find out more about the Felis and our Pride than you ever thought.” I tilted my head toward Brandon. “I can make a lot more noise than you can make quiet. There’s been enough blood shed over this.”

Jess looked at me. “You’ve developed quite an attitude in the past few years.” A smile twitched the edges of her mouth. “Your parents would be proud of you.”

I smiled back, resisting the urge to stomp on her foot in a childish rage. “Get them out of here and let me do my job, and tell Dennis that I’ll have a full report for him as soon as I can. Including a bill.”

The tall woman chuckled. “Understood.” She nodded to Brandon. “Thanks for the coffee.”

Bran answered her with a brusque nod then looked over to where Frank was slowly regaining consciousness. “If I get complaints from the neighbors…”

Jess shrugged and walked to the precariously leaning bookcase and the man at the bottom of it. A single shove pushed the shelves back into place and another brought the portly man to his feet. “Send me the bill if you need to.”

“I…” Frank stammered as Jess pushed him toward the front door. “I’m sorry. It was just a fling, so many years ago… I had no idea…”

“We’re going back to the farm.” Jess helped Kelly to her feet. “The Board will have to decide how to deal with this, and I think everyone needs a bit of a time out.”

A few minutes later there was only the two of us and Jazz, who hopped up on the couch and curled up at one end to begin the lengthy routine of cleaning her snow-white fur, tail-tip to ear-tip. The feline let out a loud and lengthy yawn before returning to the task at hand.

“Dang.” Bran shook his head. “That girl knows how to relax.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee and added a healthy spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk. “But at least we have a suspect now.”

“A hybrid.” Bran rolled his tongue around his mouth, pushing out his cheeks. “Never thought I’d be dealing with a story like that.” A wild look came into his eye. “Wonder what sort of
bling
I could get for this…” The sentence trailed off when he caught my vicious glare.

“Do. Not. Even. Go. There.” I took a sip, trying to force my pulse down to a decent level. “You’re lucky we didn’t have a bloodbath here.”

“Right.” He poured himself the last of the coffee. “Kelly was pretty pissed, that’s true.”

I cradled the mug in both hands. The marble island was a cool oasis compared to the heated discussions that had just occurred. “But not surprising. Married for all those years and now she finds out there’s a bastard son out there.”