Cool Hand (21 page)

After our showers we went back out and found a diner, where we ordered a late lunch.

“What now?” Tullah asked when our spice-rubbed steaks arrived.

“We work on our one and only lead in this town: Savannah.”

“I don’t follow.”

“What happened downtown?” I said.

“We got chased by a group of Warders.”

“Think that through.”

She chewed on her chili with steak garnish.

“The Warders didn’t just stumble across us. They were warned.”

“What does that tell you?”

“They set something up to watch for someone like us.” She thought some more. “That takes time and local contacts. House Romero has to have been cooperating with them. Doesn’t that prove Romero has gone over to Basilikos and Diana’s been captured?”

I grimaced. “Not enough for me to go back to Naryn.”

“Warders running around Albuquerque and hunting down kin is ‘not enough’? What will it take?”

“I just need a bit more,” I said. “Bian and Naryn think it’s Jaworski or Romero himself.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Diana didn’t think Jaworski had gone over. But he’s the Diakon for the Santa Fe Romero. Charles Romero has another guy who’s Diakon here in Albuquerque: Jiaro Amaral. Savannah’s got to have some idea about what’s going on and whether it involves all Romero, or just some of them. She might also have heard something about Diana. There had to be a reason that she was being hunted.”

“Okay, but how are we going to find her?”

“Maybe she went to the Were club that Dominé warned us about. Or maybe they’d have an idea where she went.”

“Amber, I thought you wanted to keep away from the Were.”

“I do. But Savannah is part of my House now. I have to talk to them.”

“These are the rabid, kill-’em-first, ask-questions-later wolves. Can’t wait. That’ll be so much fun. How do you manage to talk without getting your face eaten off?”

“We have a friend who can give us an introduction. I’m going to ask Dominé if she can call ahead and tell them why I’m coming in.”

“That’s not the same as an invitation, is it?”

“No.” I had to admit it wasn’t.

“Permission to speak my mind, Boss.”

Meaning she was asking to say something that would otherwise have got her head bitten off. I eyed her. She didn’t pull that sort of thing often with me. She didn’t need to.

“Yeah?”

“You’re making decisions and then making up justifications for them. You want to go after Savannah because you feel she’s your House. It’s, whatever you call it, the Athanate imperative.”

I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t argue against her assessment. “I can do this, Tullah. I can pull it off.”

Tullah sighed. She could see I was going to do it no matter how much she objected. “I hope so,” she said.

“Amber, this is not safe.” Dominé shared Tullah’s view of my idea, her voice crackling on the speakerphone when we called from the motel. “I’m not their friend, I’m just a client they protect for money.”

“I know,” I said. “But these guys have to have the same concerns the rest of the paranormal world has. Whatever their reputation, they can’t go killing people randomly. That means they have some restraint. I’m not threatening them, and they shouldn’t have any interest in my friends. Why would they want to keep them?”

“But if they are keeping them, for whatever reason, why should they treat us any differently?” Tullah said. “Maybe they’re pissed off with Athanate. Maybe they’re the reason there are Warders downtown. If they’ve got them, they’re risking a confrontation by taking Romero kin, so why would House Altau mean any more to them?”

They were both right. I was rocking back and forth, busting my brain to come up with an argument that they’d missed.

I couldn’t.

But I couldn’t just turn around and leave. I was an Athanate, the leader of a House, and Savannah was part of that House. The thought of abandoning her felt like breaking my leg and grinding the shattered edges together. As nothing but a human, maybe I’d be able to walk away. Maybe.

“Hélas,” Dominé said. “I see it is not a matter for rational thought. Very well, I will take you there.”

“No. Dominé, just tell me where, give me a name and number. You can’t come.”

“Why, because it is too dangerous? Why is that a reason for one and not the other? Besides, I am safest of all of us. They have an income from me, and that is something they
are
rational about.”

You hope.

“Ah. No. Safest is my apprentice. She doesn’t come in with us. If something goes wrong, she has to be able to do something.”

“Like what?”

Thank goodness, Tullah wasn’t arguing with me.

“Improvise.” I snorted. “I’m joking. This isn’t a bad TV movie. Tull, if we don’t come out and call you, you point the truck north and you don’t stop till you get to Denver.”

It took me an hour to get to my meet with Dominé downtown.

I saw her waiting outside the station and came quietly alongside. She jumped when I spoke.

“You sure about this?” I asked.

“I am not sure about it, as you put it, but I am sure about what will happen if you go alone. I have called. They are expecting us and we will not be welcome, but they will at least listen. Come.”

Clubs were scattered in the area on either side of Central Avenue, but she led us a block south.

I remembered the name of the club she’d mentioned, the Bot Wobbly. Tullah and I had given it a wide berth while we were doing our door-to-door, but without knowing it was there, we could easily have walked past it without noticing.

That was, except for the scent of Were. Not the pine woods and mountain marque of the Denver pack; a drier, dustier scent. Not unpleasant, just not
home
. And not welcoming.

I slowed Dominé down inside, letting my eyes adjust.

There was no one on the desk and the place was silent—still too early for business. A long, dim passage sloped down into the basement where the main club was. We walked down through a brash gallery of overlaid posters advertising club events dating back years.

The inner door to the club was guarded by the creature that gave the place its name: a 1950s Sci-Fi robot hanging from the ceiling, made from old trash barrels, dented cans, random scrap metal and a deep-sea diving helmet. Brushing past made it clatter softly like a beat-up wind chime.

Center stage in front of us was a sunken circular dance floor, softly lit from below and ringed above by a sculptured metal gantry like a Hollywood spaceship, with clusters of spotlights hanging down from it. Curving stairs led up from the dance floor to the bar on the far wall. To the left of the bar, a series of round platforms like huge steps rose higher as they progressed along the entire perimeter of the club, ending in one ten feet above the bar. I could make out the bulky shapes of DJ and lighting control equipment up there, harshly backlit.

Cool air was blowing down from vents behind us, and I’d left Mary’s bouquet behind.

I’d just announced to the Were at the bar that a strange wolf was in their territory. In their club.

A group of them sat there. One slipped off his stool, but other than that, they just watched us walking toward them.

Dominé held her head high under that gaze.
Don’t doubt,
she’d said;
they can smell it
. And she was right.

A shape detached itself from the equipment on the platform above the bar. There was the metallic sound of tools landing back in a box and a mild oath. A female voice. The backlighting made the form strangely distorted as she stood looking down. Without warning, she launched herself into the air.

My hand closed on a gun that wasn’t there. She landed lightly, halfway between us and the bar.

“Good afternoon, Rita,” Dominé said, as if this was normal. Maybe it was, for this Rita.

“Dominé.” Rita’s voice was light as an evening breeze. Her tawny hair was pulled back into a ponytail and fixed with a leather tie. Her face was an expressionless oval and her hard eyes didn’t flicker from Dominé until they snapped over to me. “Stranger,” she said.

“Amber Farrell,” I said automatically. “House Farrell and Pack Deauville.”

Her nose flared and she took one step closer.

“Stranger,” she said again.

Yeah, she had it. Stranger and stranger; and not just me. Rita was Were and her scent marque said Albuquerque pack. But the other part of her marque—the faint mental signature that Athanate were better at picking up—that felt different, nothing like any of the werewolves I had met. Nothing like the guys at the bar.

It was crazy, but I was sure she wasn’t wolf.

“Come. Both of you,” she said, spinning on her foot and walking—no,
slinking
—past the Were at the bar.

I didn’t like both of us being taken somewhere. Dominé was just here to introduce me. I’d wanted her to leave immediately. Would arguing reveal weakness? I didn’t know, and Dominé was already walking.

There was one of those subliminal Were snarls from the bar as we followed Rita.

“Don’t mind them,” she said. “Their bite is for when they’re given cause, isn’t it, boys?”

Behind the bar, she led us into a storeroom, turning on the light and then leaping up onto a stack of crated beer that put her about five feet off the ground. She folded her legs gracefully into a half lotus.

At Rita’s gesture, I closed the door behind us. Dominé’s face was pale and she was working hard to hide her fear.

I was tempted to match Rita and leap up somewhere, but I was here to ask for things. I leaned against a stack of barrels and waited.

“Dominé says you’ve lost someone, Stranger.”

“Someones,” I said.

Three of them, to be exact.

“Why are you looking for them?”

My Athanate wanted to say
mine
, at least about Savannah. I settled for, “My need and duty.”

“Not
yours
.” The emphasis was neatly put. If they had Savannah and Claude, they’d know they weren’t my House.

This…
cat
was too quick to let anything past her. Yeah. Cat. Cougar. Were-cougar maybe. Cool, really cool, but I had a job and neither of us were here to make nice. And I had a feeling Rita didn’t make nice so much as toy with prey.

“Not officially mine, no.”

“Unofficially? Explain.”

I glanced at Dominé. Athanate rules dictated that what happened in our world wasn’t shared with humans, but Dominé clearly knew about Were and Athanate. Putting the right names to them was a risk, but less than the risk of Rita misunderstanding something I said if I talked around it.

“The need part: my Athanate Mentor, Diana Ionache, came down to meet House Romero. She’s missing, and I need to get her back safely,” I said. “The duty part: an Athanate of House Romero called Larry Dixon was taken from Albuquerque and compelled to assist in an attack in Denver. I was working to help him escape and adopt him into my House when he was killed by Matlal.”

Rita’s unblinking stare gave nothing away.

“By adopting him, I adopted his kin as well. His last request of me was to find them and get them to safety, if I could. I gave him my word. His kin are in danger; two of them are dead. I saved the third, Savannah, from an attack, but she left to try and find her brother, Claude.” Still nothing from Rita. “I understood he’d come to you. I’m here to get them back, if you’ve got them.”

“For what, exactly?”

“To take them somewhere safer.”

I hated being in this position, but I had no choice. Rita had all the aces in this conversation.

“We have them: your stray,
not-yours
kin, these
Romero
kin,” she confirmed. The way she said Romero made it sound like a curse. “I’m not sure that giving them to you would make them safer, unless House Farrell is bigger than we’ve heard. Or maybe Pack Deauville, whatever that is, has hidden numbers of themselves in Albuquerque the way you seemed to have. Maybe with help from our
friend
.”

Her eyes went to Dominé and back. She blinked, once. Other than that, she hadn’t moved.

I swallowed. “House Farrell is small, and I’ve brought no Were into New Mexico. There are only two of us here. We did stay with Dominé, but the trick we used to remain hidden today is an Adept working. Nothing to do with Dominé.”

“A Were-Athanate hybrid, and a friend of Adepts. You
are
strange, Stranger, and you weren’t invited into our territory.”

“I apologize,” I said.

I was here on
Athanate
business. Best to keep the legal arguments for later, I thought.

“Seeking forgiveness rather than asking permission.” Rita sprang lightly off the crates, making my heart jump. “Not always the quickest way or the best result.”

She crowded Dominé, who was doing excellently at hiding her fear, for a human. The effort was wasted on Rita. She knew exactly the effect she was having.

“Dominé, we have had a good working relationship. Treat it very carefully. I look forward to seeing you in LA.”

She stepped back and I let the tension go. I had no idea how fast Rita was and whether I could have stopped her from hurting Dominé if she’d wanted to. It was a horrible choice to be faced with: react too late and have Dominé injured, too early and mess up the great ‘relationship’ we were building with Rita.

Now it was my turn. I don’t scare easily, and I’d gotten used to having dangerous people glaring at me from very close. I met her green eyes and tried to keep everything calm and cool. Not pushing, but not being pushed either.

“Luckily for Dominé, you interest us, Stranger—Athanate and Were and Adept. But these
Romero
you want, even just kin, they have uses. They have value,” she said.

I opened my mouth to protest, but she went on.

“We’re in the middle of an Athanate battle that affects us all and is no choice of ours. And the
Romero
have Were blood on their hands. That comes at a cost. These strays are important enough that someone is trying to kill them. Why? What secrets do they have?”

“I don’t know.”

Romero had Were blood on their hands?

She made a sound deep in her throat. “Come and see the alpha if you want to get your strays back. Bring the Adept working that hid you from us. You should think hard about how you will pay us. Think very hard. If you make it worth our while, we might even know something of your Mentor.”

Might,
she said. It wasn’t a promise. It was an indicator of how badly the search was going, that it was the best thing I’d heard. If the alpha really could tell me something definite about Diana, I’d take all the crap he could dish out and kiss him on both cheeks.

“Thank you,” I said, working hard to be polite. “When and where?”

“Ten tonight, alone. Look for the Calle del Bosque down in Barelas. If you can’t find him, you aren’t supposed to be there.” She blinked again. “Now go.”

I got Dominé back onto the street and made a call to Tullah. She picked us up outside the station, and drove us toward where Dominé’s car was parked.

Dominé hands were still shaking. Tullah had gotten us take-out coffee, and Dominé had to leave the lid on to stop hers from spilling.

I took Tullah through what had happened.

“Rita can be like that sometimes.” Dominé spoke calmly enough.

Her eyes went from me to Tullah and back. For a human she knew far too much about the paranormal world, and both my Athanate and Were were uneasy with that.

“You were good in the club,” Dominé went on as we stopped by her car. “With Rita, you must meet her toe to toe. You cannot be prey and expect to have any standing with them. You must be a predator. You must have a threat and something to bargain with.”

We got out and she pulled me aside, not trembling any more, but nervous in a way that seemed unlike her. She fiddled with her car keys, her fingers kept touching her jacket, and she didn’t meet my gaze.

“What is it?” I asked.

“This meeting tonight. If you must do it,
helas
, you must do it. I think I shouldn’t be telling you any more.”

“But?”

“There is one more thing you should know about,” she said. “The alpha, Zane.”

My skin prickled. Felix’s words about the New Mexico packs came to mind:
You’d be dead in a day
.

“What about him?”

“You know something of the Were? The way some packs work? The way their alphas behave?” She waited till I nodded. I was no expert, but Alex had described how different packs worked. “Then you know an alpha can demand rights with every female in the pack. Even outside the pack, what he wants, he takes. I think Zane is like that.”

“He’s violent?” I frowned. He couldn’t get away with that for long, surely. “You know this?”

“Not violent. Not when I’ve seen him at the club, anyway.” She laced her fingers together to still them. “I’ve seen him only twice. Both times there was this aura around him. Very dangerous. Very attractive. Both times he saw a woman he wanted, and he had her that night. I don’t know him well enough to know if he has a type, but I have this feeling you’ll intrigue him.”

This aspect of dominance, Alex had told me about. Not many alphas used it, as far as he knew. As an Athanate, I could hardly criticize; we used the same kind of attraction on humans. But it was useful to know I might be on the receiving end.

“Thanks for the warning.”

She looked at me, looked away. “It’s not
precisely
a warning.”

“Ah.”

That chilled me in the pit of my stomach.