Mine to Possess (4 page)

It had been a way to drop off the face of the world, to lose any simmering media attention. But over the years, it had become his name. “We'll talk about you tracking me later,” he said, cold fire burning a hole in his gut. “First, tell me why you need my help.”

“If you're trying to scare me, it's working. That doesn't mean I'm going to cut and run.”

In that bravado-filled challenge, he caught another fleeting glimpse of the girl she'd been. The day they had met, she'd sat there beside him, wide-eyed and terrified to her tiny toes, but stubborn enough not to leave till the paramedics came. “Why not?” he said, shifting his anger into sarcasm. “You're real good at it.”

She raised her face to the canopy and took a deep breath, as if trying to hold on to her temper. He wondered if she'd succeed. His Tally had always been very quiet…except with him. He alone had known that she was neither shy nor particularly calm. The girl had a temper like a stick of dynamite. Quick to heat, quick to blow over.

“Kids are disappearing, not only here but across the country,” she now said, her anger red-hot, but no longer directed at him. “At first, they were labeled runaways, but I knew some of them. They weren't that kind.” Her shoulders drew up. “Now I have proof I was right, and I wish every night that I didn't.” Her voice broke.

“Talk to me.” He didn't like seeing her in pain, never had, probably never would. This familiar stranger, this woman who saw him as a monster, was his one fucking fatal weakness and didn't that just suck?

“They found Mickey's body two weeks ago.” A tear streaked down her cheek. She dashed it away with a furious swipe. “He was eleven years old, bright, so bright, could remember everything he'd ever read.”

“Like you.”

“Yeah. Except instead of being abandoned as a baby, he had the bad luck to live with a mother who always chose abusive men.” She gave him a smile but it was nothing happy. “He was
mine
, Clay. I promised him safety and in return, he went to school every day.” Tremors shook her frame, whitened her knuckles. “Someone beat him to death. Everything was broken. The bastards pulverized his face—like they were wiping him out!”

Anger shot through his bloodstream. He thought of the children in the pack, of what he'd do to anyone who dared harm them. “One of his mother's men?”

“I might have thought so, but Mickey was at a camp out of state when they took him. And it's not only him we lost.” A breath that sounded as if her throat was lined with broken glass. “They found two more bodies this week. At least one more kid remains missing.”

The leopard half of his soul—angry, hurt, and still in shock at her return—wanted to go to her. To hold her. Tactile contact, affection as a method of healing, was the way of changelings, something he'd been taught after being pulled into DarkRiver. But Talin was scared of him. She had told him that to his face, and the sharp knife of it was still buried in his heart. The man wasn't sure he wanted to chance another rejection. Keeping the animal's instincts in check, he finally stepped out of the shadows. “Do you want to be held, Talin?”

Her damp eyes widened at the blunt question, then she nodded in a little jerking motion. Something in him quieted, waiting. “Then come here.”

A pause during which the entire forest seemed to freeze, the night creatures aware of the leopard's tense watchfulness.

“Oh, God, Clay.” Suddenly her arms were wrapped around his back, her cheek pressed against the white cotton of his T-shirt.

Hardly daring to breathe, he closed his own arms around her feminine warmth, blindingly aware of every inch of her pressed into him, every spot of wetness soaking through his T-shirt.

She was so small, so damn soft, her humanity apparent in the delicacy of her skin, the lightness of her bones. The Psy might be fragile in comparison to changelings, but they had powers of the mind to compensate. Humans had the same fragility but none of the psychic abilities. A wave of protectiveness washed over him.

“Shh, Tally.” He used the nickname because, at this moment, he knew her. She had always had a heart too big for her body, a heart that felt such pain for others while ignoring its own. “I'll find your lost one.”

She shook her head against him. “It's too late. Three bodies already. Jonquil is probably dead, too.”

“Then I'll find who did this to them and stop him.”

She stilled against him. “I didn't come here to turn you into a killer again.”

“I
am
a
killer,” he said, unwilling to let her hide from this. “I'm a leopard changeling and in my world, killing to protect your pack is understood and accepted.”

“I'm not part of your pack.”

“No.” So why was he going to help her? Especially after she'd made her opinion of him crystal clear. “No child deserves to die that way.”

A small silence. “Thank you.” She didn't let go. “You've become so strong.”

“I was always strong compared to you.” Now he could snap her in two without thinking. It was that difference in strength that had always kept him away from human females. The rare lovers he took were all changeling. He was who he was. And gentleness was not part of his nature. “Unless you've muscled up and it doesn't show on the surface?”

She laughed, a warm, intrinsically feminine sound. “I'm still a shrimp, but you—you've become a leopard.”

He understood. She had known him as an angry boy trapped inside the claustrophobic walls of their apartment complex. The lack of clean air had stifled the leopard, wounded him on an elemental level. He hadn't even been able to shift without someone calling the cops to report a wild animal on the loose. Then there was Isla, unable to bear the sight of her son in leopard form.

“Are you happy with DarkRiver?” Talin asked now.

“They're my family, my friends.” For Clay, that loyalty meant everything. They accepted him as he was, didn't give a shit that he preferred to roam alone more often than not, invited him into their homes without compunction.

“Who was the blond man with you?”

He stiffened. “Dorian's a sentinel, too.” A pretty one according to most women.

“You two were being rough with those boys.”

“They earned it. Got drunk and smashed up the bar.”

“So you came to take them home.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “You look after each other. Your pack, I mean.”

“I'll be kicking their asses three ways to Sunday soon as they sober up. We're no Swiss Family Robinson.” They couldn't afford to be, especially not now, with the Psy Council attempting to take down the only changeling groups—DarkRiver and SnowDancer—that had dared challenge its absolute rule.

Something made a rumbling sound.

“Hungry, Tally?”

She nodded, but remained plastered to him. “I was so nervous about meeting you, I didn't eat all day.”

“If you don't want to piss me off,” he snapped, “stop talking about how much I scare you.”

“It won't change the truth.” Talin knew she'd surprised him. His muscles bunched. Then he let out a low growl that rolled down her spine like a thousand tiny pinpricks.

“Stop flinching or I'll bite you and really give you something to worry about.”

She blinked. “You wouldn't bite me.” Would he?

“Try it and see.”

Surrounded by all that powerful male muscle, feeling warm and safe, she decided not to push him. Not today. “Will you help me?”

Her answer was a hot breath at her ear. “Keep asking silly questions and see where it gets you.”

She took that as a yes and, though her heart threatened to rip out of her chest, she remained stuck to him. And she prayed. Prayed that she could do this without betraying the one secret that would make Clay truly hate her.

Twenty minutes later,
she found herself sitting in the same bar the young males had smashed up. “It doesn't look too bad.” She nodded at the relatively undamaged walls.

“Manager knows how to build tough. Joe's a packmate.”

“Oh.” She went silent as a curvy blonde with a bad-tempered expression placed Talin's meal in front of her before turning to Clay.

“I hope Cory, Kit, Jase, and the rest of those drunken monkeys get the same punishment I did. Joe thinks it's hysterical to make me wear this frickin' getup.” Her voice was a snarl as she waved at her pink baby-tee and black miniskirt. Teamed with knee-high boots, it turned her into a sexy stunner. But Talin had a feeling that any man stupid enough to put a move on this woman would soon find his arm broken into tiny little pieces.

Clay lifted his beer and took a long pull. “Should've thought of that before you punched out his real waitress, Rina. You're Opal as long as it takes for her nose to heal.”

Rina stamped her foot. “There's nothing wrong with Opal's nose! I only tapped her!”

“You're a DarkRiver soldier. You don't get to throw your temper around.”

Rina's scowl turned into a sensual pout. “Clay, please.”

“Don't even think about it, kitty cat,” he said, a spark of amusement in his eyes that hit Talin with the nausea-inducing strength of a punch to the solar plexus. “Where's my burger?”

Rina actually hissed, all flirtatiousness leaving her face and body. “You know what your problem is? You need to get laid!”

Talin tensed, waiting for the explosion of Clay's sleeping volcano of a temper, but all he did was put down his beer and crook a finger at the blonde. When the scowling woman leaned down, he whispered something in her ear that made her blush bright red. Rising back up, she went straight to the kitchen.

“What did you say to her?” Talin was shocked by the sharp claws of jealousy dragging their way through her body.

“Rina's young. She just needed a little gentling.” His eyes watched her play with her food with disconcerting intensity. “Eat.”

She couldn't, stomach churning with thoughts of how he had “gentled” the sensual young woman. But she took a bite in an effort to keep her mouth shut.

Clay's meal arrived seconds later, delivered by a still-blushing Rina. The young woman hesitated, then leaned down to peck him on the cheek before walking away, all feminine heat and long blonde hair.

Talin had to force herself to swallow the bite she'd taken. That kiss—it had been familiar, affectionate. It didn't fit with the image she'd formed of Clay over the past hour. “She's very pretty.” Damn it! She stuffed the burger into her mouth.

Clay raised an eyebrow. “I don't fuck little girls.”

She almost choked, had to take a long drink of water to get the food down her throat. “That's not what I meant.”

“You always were a possessive little thing.” He took a bite of his own burger and washed it down with beer. “So, who have you talked to about these kills?”

The abrupt change in subject threw her, but only for a moment. “Enforcement when Mickey disappeared. They didn't take it seriously.” She put down her half-eaten burger.

“After the bodies were found?”

“They launched an investigation,” she said. “One of the detectives—Max Shannon—he actually seems to care. He's the one who told me about the other disappearances around the country.”

“But?”

“But I don't think it's anything as simple as a killer targeting runaways. This feels wrong, Clay.”

“Still getting your feelings, huh?”

She shrugged, uncomfortable with the topic. “They're worth nothing. Just this feeling of ‘wrongness.' Women's intuition. What good is that to anyone?”

She'd had the same feelings about Orrin, the man who had been supposed to be an exemplary foster father. She'd made the mistake of sharing those feelings with her old social worker and had gotten her face slapped.

You should count yourself lucky he and his wife are happy to take in a piece of trash like you. If it was me, I'd leave you to rot in the state orphanage.

As an adult, she knew that that social worker had been way out of line, a being who should have never been allowed near his charges. But as a child five weeks from her third birthday, she had believed him. She'd had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. So she had learned to keep silent about her feelings…and everything that came after.

Having no desire to relive the terrors of the past, she focused her attention on the here and now, counting the beads of condensation rolling down the side of Clay's beer bottle. “You said you'd find him—the man who's doing this.”

“Yes.”

She looked up into the indescribable green of his eyes. Forests, she thought, she had always seen forests in Clay's eyes, a freedom that was his gift to her. “Why does everyone automatically assume only men can do bad things? Women can be as evil, as depraved.”

“Delia's still in prison.” His hand clenched around the bottle. “Not long after I got taken in, they found the bodies she and Orrin had buried in the junkyard. There was so much forensic evidence she'll be rotting in jail till the undertakers haul her away.”

“I know.” After being relocated to Larkspur's Nest, she had had constant nightmares in which Delia would come to drag her back to Orrin. He'd be sitting on the bed waiting for her, a rotting corpse with maggots crawling out of every possible orifice. Those dreams had lasted until Ma Larkspur had walked into the bathroom one night and found Talin cowering in the bath. The older woman had gone on the Internet right then and there and downloaded footage of Delia being bundled up into a prison van. Talin had watched that footage obsessively for a month. “They found home recordings of the murders, did you know?”

“My lawyer told me.” He held her gaze, a cool, calm predator with a heart of turbulent fire. “Did they use those recordings to terrorize you?”

She shook her head. “That was their secret pleasure—I used to hear them watching the vids late at night.” While she'd been locked up in her room. They had much preferred to put her in the special punishment closet, but had quickly worked out that her terror was all the greater if they let her run free and unpunished for a few weeks—never knowing when she'd be shoved back into that airless, lightless hole had been a whole different level of torture.

“No one's sure how many kids they murdered,” she said, closing the lid on that bleak memory. “They were smart. They only took a couple of their foster kids. Rest were all runaways.” The dam broke without warning. “You should have never gone to prison! You did the whole world a favor by getting rid of Orrin!”

Clay shrugged. “Judge White offered me a choice of juvie, with an attached anger management course and regular school hours, or a residential psych facility.”

“Psych? Why?”

“He saw I had an anger problem and he was a good enough man to try and sort me out before I went completely off the rails.” He finished off his beer. “I knew if they locked me up in a little white room, I'd go crazy. At least the juvenile facility where I did my time was out of the city and set up for boys. We had space to run, to get physical.”

“But there were fences,” she whispered.

His eyes sharpened. “You say that like you visited me.”

She began to methodically destroy a piece of lettuce that had fallen from her burger. “Zeke got desperate when I still wouldn't talk long after Orrin's death. He thought if I saw you it might help.”

“Tell me.”

“We sat in the parking lot overlooking one of the exercise yards.” She'd been close to nine by then. Mute, broken, lost. “He bribed an administrator to get you to come out somehow. You were dressed in gray sweatpants and a gray tee with the sleeves cut off. I watched you run circuits around the track.”

Clay knew the exact date and time of her visit. His beast had gone crazy that day, desperate for the scent of her—so desperate he'd imagined he could smell it on the breeze. “I ran for hours.”

“I know. I stayed there until you went back inside.” She gave him a shaky smile. “I knew you had to hate the fences but there you were, surviving. I thought if you could do that for me, I could do the same…for you.”

Clay's hands clenched into fists. Damn her. His anger was a whole lot easier to hang on to when she didn't remind him of the girl she'd been. “How did you do?” he asked, giving in to the compulsion to know everything about her.

She took a breath to answer but someone chose to boot up the jukebox at that second. Loud music crashed into the room. It was modulated so as not to damage keen changeling hearing, but it wasn't exactly conducive to talk.

He ran his debit card over the reader built into the table and rose. “Let's go.”

Nodding, she took a quick sip of water, then followed, staying close to him. They met Dorian just outside. The blond sentinel was in the process of getting off his sleek black motorcycle. “That your rabbit?” Hanging up his helmet, he smiled at Talin and it was a charming smile with a hint of the feral. Clay had seen women throw themselves at Dorian after being on the receiving end of that smile. “She's kind of bitesized for you. Why don't you give her to me?”

Clay waited to see what Talin would do, well aware the other sentinel was simply messing with her. According to Pack law, Talin was Clay's because she had come to him. Until and unless she wanted out—Clay's hands fisted again—no packmate would touch her.