Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (20 page)

He pulled the satchel through the bars and zipped it open. Inside were jeans, a T-shirt, and a package of new boxers, his size. They were made of some filmy material that seemed kind of girly, but he didn't complain. The T-shirt hid his scars and the mangled tattoos that were all he had left of the art on his shoulder and arm. As he pulled the shirt on, he caught a flash of gold from the eyes of the mountain lion tattooed there, but when he pulled up the sleeve to inspect it, the glow was gone.

“Visitors?” he asked as he stepped into the jeans.

“Local witches. Leo called them, and they said they might have a way to spell you through the shift, force you into your cat.”

He stilled. Fear crawled up his spine like a snake up a tree. He'd been in the power of witches before. It hadn't been pretty or easy. He zipped up the jeans, feeling her interest, her gaze on him. Without looking at her, he asked, “You'll be here?”

“If you want me to.”

“Yeah. I do. And if they try something hinky, you stop whatever it is they're doing.”

“I'm supposed to know what's hinky with witches?”

He looked at her from under the too-long black hair that curled into his eyes. “I trust you to make an educated guess.” She nodded again, that little chin-drop thing. He used to love that. Still did. But the wary look in her eyes held him off from saying anything about
them
, about their relationship or current lack of one. They had unresolved business, but it had to take a
backseat. He understood that. Jane was always all about business and let nothing stand in the way of that, except sometimes dancing. He had a memory of her dancing once as he played the sax, her body writhing like a cobra on ecstasy, like sex on a stick, hot and sweaty. He went hard again just thinking about it. Jane laughed low, and he could smell his own arousal.

The heavy wooden door opened, and Leonard Pellissier, the Master of the City, walked in, followed by three others, but Rick kept his gaze on the MOC. The stink of vamp, peppery and minty, and blood, thick and slightly chilled, filled the room. Rick's arousal faded quickly, and he stepped back against the far bars, feeling the damp of the iron through his T.

Leo wasn't vamped-out like the last time Rick had seen him, but Leo was still wearing the bloody shirt, which said something about his state of mind. Rick crossed his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits, knowing that made him look defensive, but looking defensive was marginally better than looking aggressive. He got in the first salvo. “I apologize to the Master of the City of New Orleans for hitting you. Him.” Rick wasn't good at the royal third-person speech, and
thee
s and
thou
s had always just confused him. Of course, Jane talked to Leo like she would to any other person, but he had a feeling that Leo allowed a lot of smack talk from Jane that he wouldn't from anyone else.

Leo, his chest not moving with breath, his eyes so black it was hard to read anything in them, studied Rick. Leo was dead. Or undead. Yeah. Standing there like a dead man, no sense of life left in him at all. Nothing in the room moved. No one coughed or sighed or shifted on the stone floor. It was so silent that Rick could hear his heartbeat and the sound of air breathing in and out of his lungs. A good two minutes too long later, Leo took a breath, and the movement startled Rick. He blinked, and that quickly, Leo was smiling.

“You have my blood. I have fed you more than once at the brink of death.”

Rick nodded once, unconsciously mimicking Jane's little chin-drop nod. “The first time, I was on a slab of black stone, being spelled by a witch and drained by a vampire.” He saw Jane start. He had never told her the story. He needed to remedy that. He had a lot of things to tell her, if she chose to listen. Later. Much later.

“I feel the pain that crawls under your skin like acid, burning like flames, like silver through your blood. One of my blood-servants prepared the medicine”—Leo flicked a finger at the tranq dart—“but he did not know what dosage would be required. It helped?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“I tried to bring our priestess to assist you, but she refused, saying she might be injured. I cannot force her, and my own blood was not enough to prevent your contagion, nor were the services of my Mercy Blade. Neither of us can cure you now that the taint has taken firm root.”

Rick looked away, discomfort squirming though him. He remembered—in bits and snatches—the first days after Jane brought him, more dead than alive, to the MOC's Clan Home. Gee DiMercy and Leo had carried Rick to a bed and climbed in with him, healing him as best they could. It had been way more intimate than he was comfortable with, but they had kept him alive, so he couldn't bitch about their methods.

When it was obvious that Rick wasn't going to respond, Leo said, “The local witches wish to assist you. If you will permit.” Rick looked back at him quickly. “The female who spelled you originally is no longer with the coven. You will be safe.”

“Can you keep me drugged through it?”

“Of course.” Leo moved closer, inhaling. “I smell your pain. It grows. I shall send in the witches.” He turned to the man beside him. “Keep him comfortable.” Moving human slow, he walked from the room.

“Yes, boss,” George Dumas said, the words sounding odd when flavored with his faint British accent.

Rick dropped his arms and nodded to the blood-servant. The man was holding an oversized handgun, a tranquilizer gun. Rick had never liked the MOC's primo blood-servant and especially didn't like knowing that the overage half-human blood-sipper had shot him in the butt, but there were better times than now to complain about it. That gun was loaded with his sanity for the next three days. “Dumas.”

“You'll be in charge of the dosing. Ask and I'll shoot. I understand the pain will likely be more intense whenever the moon is up and easier to bear when the moon is below the horizon. Of course, if they get you to shift, you'll be fine.”

Rick's mouth twisted up. “Furry.”

“That too.” There was compassion in the blood-servant's eyes.

Hell.
George Dumas was probably more human than Rick was now. He sighed. “Okay.”

Moments later, five witches entered the room. A tiny blonde approached the bars, getting closer than anyone had since he'd woken up in the cell.

“We've met. You might remember me? Butterfly Lily?” She pointed at an older woman. “And my mom, Feather Storm?”

“I remember.” He also remembered that they had claimed to be
“not
real powerful. Mostly we're used as routing for group workings.”
He'd rather have the most powerful witch in the city here, but beggars couldn't be choosers. “Thank you for coming.”

She introduced the others as Rowan Rose, Running Doe Poppy, and Orchid Sunrise. Rick nodded, not smiling at the silly monikers. If they could help, they could call themselves Catwoman, Batwoman, and Hercules-etta for all he cared. Rowan Rose looked around the room, checked her watch, and shook her head. “We have eighteen minutes to get the circle drawn and the ritual started. This is not going to be fun, girls.” It wasn't. And that was an understatement.

By one a.m., Jane had left the room. By two a.m., Rick was on the floor of his cell, writhing in his own vomit, gagging like the worst case of dry heaves any drunk had ever had, shrieking, panting, screaming like a banshee, and begging for the next dose of medication. He got it. And he didn't wake until the moon fell below the horizon near dawn.

The sound of mocking laughter woke him. His eyes fluttered open, and he blinked, trying to focus on the floor of his cell, his left cheek on the cool, wet stone. His eyes were working but independently; his brain wasn't able to make the dual images into one. Water ran along the floor and trickled into a drain, running off him in fresh rivulets. He remembered where he was. And what he wasn't. And his stomach did somersaults until he gagged. His abdominal muscles cramped hard with the retching, and he wondered how bad his sickness had been to make him hurt this badly afterward despite the healing properties of were-taint in his system. He had a bad feeling that this hell-on-waking sensation was going to become overly familiar for the rest of his life.

He had been hosed off again and was wet to the skin in the clothes Jane had brought him, but at least he wasn't lying in his own filth anymore.
His stomach churned, but he shoved an arm under himself and rested on his elbow as the world whirled around him.

Kemnebi was standing outside the bars, his hands on his hips, a feral smile on his face. He was wearing loose white cotton pants and a button-down shirt, the set woven of cotton and many times washed into a softness that Rick could see. The African smelled of black leopard and jungle nights and freshly killed prey. And cruelty. And anger.

“You survived your first night,” he said. “Good. Now I can watch you suffer again. And again. And eventually you will die in agony on the floor of that cell or by my fangs, my claws, and my killing teeth buried in your throa—”

The blur was faster than Rick could see. Faster than Kemnebi could react. It was less than sight, almost a sound, as of air being displaced. A snarl that echoed off the stone. Followed by the twin thuds of two bodies hitting the wall. The growls, hisses, and snarls of combat. A flash of a silvered blade. A shadow of black and yellow and scarlet. The smell of blood. Movement Rick couldn't follow except as smears on his retinas. Somehow, he was standing.

He knew by the smell that it was Jane fighting. Defending him. But his eyes wouldn't focus. He fell toward the bars, hitting face-first, breaking his fall with his cheek. Pain shattered through him like lightning through a lightning rod, bright as the beginning of the universe, tinted with stars and blood. “Fuck,” he said of the pain, of the fight, of his helplessness. “Fuckfuck
fuck
. Jane?
Jane!
” he screamed.

An instant later George Dumas was in the room, moving almost as quickly as the other two, pulling Jane off the black were-leopard. But she didn't let go, and lifted Kemnebi with her, holding him off the stone. She held a knife at Kemnebi's throat.

Red blood ran into the man's white shirt, staining it scarlet. Rick growled, more vibration than actual sound. The blood smelled so . . . good. Kemnebi slanted a gaze at the cage, his eyes going wide. His irises were green gold. And they were afraid. Rick hissed. He hadn't seen Kemnebi since the first night of the full-moon cycle, and the man had changed. Or Rick had. He just hoped he'd remember that when the drugs wore off. “Being stoned can be a bitch sometimes.” Only when the others all looked his way did he realize he had spoken aloud.

Jane pressed the blade into Kemnebi's neck and snarled, the sound so
unlike her that Rick jerked in surprise, his skin moving over his muscles as if he had a pelt. Her growl echoed off the walls, and she said, “Bruiser, I swear by all that is holy in the highest realms of heaven, if you don't let me go, I'll kill him while you hold him. And I'll smear his blood onto your clothes so the other weres will think that you, and by extension Leo, are responsible for his death.”

“You won't cause an international incident,” George said. But Rick could smell the uncertainty in his sweat. When Jane didn't reply he said, more softly, “Kemnebi is here under the auspices of the International Association of Weres and of the Party of African Weres. He has diplomatic immunity.”

“Won't stop him from dying.”

“No. I suppose it won't.” George relaxed his arms and slowly set both Jane and Kemnebi on the floor. Jane sprawled over the dark-skinned man, her knee pressed hard into Kemnebi's crotch, one hand holding back his head. Her silvered blade was at his throat, and his blood trickled down his neck into his collar and around to the back, where it gathered and plopped to the floor in soft splats of sound. Jane's eyes were golden and glowing. “I am alpha. Say it.”

Kemnebi curled his lips back as if to show fangs. He growled low, the vibration a thrum passing through the stone beneath them and into the soles of Rick's feet.

“Say it. Or die.”

“You are alpha. For now. But you will die beneath my claws, and no one will ever know that—”

“Forever. I am your alpha forever.” She pressed the blade into the cut in his throat and her knee into his testicles. Kemnebi grunted with pain and shock. “What?” She chuckled, actually sounding happy. “You think I didn't take precautions? Look over my shoulder. The other one. See that small round thing in the corner of the wall and ceiling? That's a camera, Kemmy-boy. And I just got you declaring me alpha. So in this country, you are subject to me until you find sufficient reason to challenge me. I can do anything I want to you under were-law.”

Kemnebi's eyes flashed green fire. His teeth were bared, gnashing; but his body language disagreed; he was pinned to the floor by his alpha. Rick smelled his capitulation.

“Yeah. I thought you'd say that,” Jane said. “Leo has very good lawyers. I paid them a small fortune last night to research all this crap, and we both know I'm right. So say it again. I like the way it sounds.”

“You are my
alpha
.” The words were spitting, hissing anger.

“Good. You will take Rick under your kind and loving tutelage and teach him how to be a good were. You will teach him to shift. You will care for him. For now, he is my kit and under my protection. You are his guard. He dies, and you die. For every wound he suffers, you will suffer two. Got it?” When Kem nodded, the motion jerky, she said, “Repeat it. For the camera. For posterity. For the leader of the International Association of Weres. Just so we're all clear.”

As if fighting himself, Kem repeated the words, sputtering as his eyes spat sparks. Rick could smell his humiliation and his subjugation. Satisfied, Jane rose and stepped back until the beta cat Kem, George, and Rick were all visible in her field of vision, but she didn't put the blade away. “We have plans to make. Bruiser, Rick's hurting again. Tranq him.”