Prowlers - 1 (4 page)

"They've been outside all this time and you didn't! think maybe you should tell them I was running late?" Jack asked, thinking Kate was probably ready to go home.

Artie frowned, looked at Jack as though he had been insulted. "Jack, come on. They're smart girls. They'll figure it out. We should go, though. Molly's patience isn't infinite, y'know?"

"She's in love with you," Jack replied archly. "She must be pretty patient, right?"

Artie punched him, slid off the stool, and turned back to Bill Cantwell, who had moved down the bar to hand a pair of sweating Budweiser long-necks to a couple of older guys waiting for a table.

"We'll have to finish our talk another time," Artie called.

"Yeah. Looking forward to it," Bill told him, with a

wave and a look that he usually reserved for rambling drunks and madmen.

Together, Artie and Jack walked past the frosted glass toward the front door. Jack felt surprisingly good, despite the weight of the responsibility he was shrugging off for the night. Or maybe because of it. He strolled toward the door with a calm he did not usually feel, as Artie bounced along beside him, rattling with energy as always, muttering "Hey" and "How ya doin'?" to Bridget's staffers he passed, just in case he'd met them before and forgotten.

As he pushed out the door, Jack glanced at Wendy, the hostess. Short-cropped red hair, green eyes, perfect smile, twenty-five. She was on the phone, but when she saw him she held up a finger to get his attention. "Just a moment, sir," she said into the phone. Then she covered the receiver. "Jack, we've got a party of twelve want to get in at eight-thirty. What do you think?

You want to carve that kind of space out for that big a reservation?"

Jack opened his mouth to respond, to solve the problem, then shook his head and smiled. "Know what, Wendy? I'm not working tonight. You really should check with Courtney."

With that, he pushed through the door behind Artie and out onto the streets ofBoston .

A free man.

Vanilla.

Her eyes darted about, scanning the people around

her as she moved along the sidewalk, on the hunt. On the prowl. Ready to spring but forcing herself to stay calm, to play it cool, to lurk among the prey, unseen Her entire body thrummed with the unreleased energy of her carnal desire, her bloodlust.

Vanilla. j

Where had that scent come from? So enticingly I sweet, but only the barest whiff. With a frown, Jasmine) paused and lifted her nose just a bit, sniffed the air.

There.

An almost newToyota was parked illegally a few! yards back, hazard lights blinking. The engine was not running, and the front windows were open. Through the windshield, Jasmine could see two girls. Young and I tender flesh, perhaps eighteen. No more than twenty. The passenger had wild red hair, past her shoulders, and her laughter as the two girls talked was innocent and warm. The other, the driver, was colder. She was like ice, with short blond hair cut in stylish waves to frame her diamond-cut features. Her voice was full of presumed knowledge and expectation.

She was Vanilla. Her natural human pheromonal scent was masked by some sort of perfume, but it was not offensive to Jasmine's nose the way so many such concoctions were.

Vanilla. She looked cold but smelled sweet. And beneath the ice, the hot, raw vulnerability at the center of all humans.

Jasmine felt a tiny shudder go through her and the hairs on the back of her neck bristled with anticipation.

Her flesh wanted to be released, the beast within yearning to be free, but she focused enough to control the urge. Tanzer had taught her well. Her tongue snaked out and slid along her upper lip. She quivered as she took a deep breath and then let it out. After another moment she crossed the dozen feet between herself and theToyota and crouched by the passenger window.

The girls' conversation faltered and they each shot her a questioning glance.

"Hi!" Jasmine said, light and friendly.

"Hi," the passenger responded hesitantly.

Jasmine inhaled deeply of them, of Vanilla in particular, a smile on her face.

"Do we know you?" Vanilla asked.

"Sorry," Jasmine replied, sublimating her ancient accent as best she could. I’m just a bit lost.

Can you tell me how to find Quincy Market?"

The passenger smiled and pushed her hair behind her ears. "Yeah. You could spit on it from here. You're headed in the right direction. Just. . . right down there where you can see all the people—that's it."

Jasmine thanked them. The girls looked at her oddly, but she did not mind. She had felt an undeniable temptation to move closer, to inhale that aroma. With a tiny, playful wave, she walked on. A moment later she glanced back to see that the girls were once again engaged in conversation and paying no attention to her at all. She ducked into a narrow alley between two aging buildings and headed for the fire

escape. The metal ladder was not down, but she easily made the twelve-foot leap to grasp the first landing.

With a quick glance about to see that she was not being watched, Jasmine scrambled soundlessly up the fire escape to the fourth-floor landing, from which she leaped to the roof. Her muscles rolled beneath her flesh as if they had a life of their own, and as she moved she knew that her features and the texture of her skin had changed.

The beast was surging up inside her. She shook it off and moved to the edge of the roof. From there she watched Vanilla and the other girl in theToyota for another thirteen minutes until two young men walked out of the pub across the street and slid into the backseat of the car. Their scents were interesting as well.

The engine roared to life and the car began to roll off.

Jasmine pursued it. She moved swiftly across the roof, darting with extraordinary speed through the nighttime shadows like a wraith. With a grunt she leaped a sixteen-foot gap between buildings without breaking stride, then continued on.

On the breeze, she scented others in her pack She tilted her head back and uttered their ancient cry, throat vibrating with it. The others responded, moving toward her through the neighborhood. Below, the car took a right turn. Jasmine sprinted to the far end of the roof and leaped out into open space, arms widespread as she fell to a roof two stories lower. She hit, went down to

her knees and rolled, then was up in an instant and running.

By the time her keen eyes detected others of the pack converging, two on the ground and one on the rooftop across the street, she had already identified each of them by scent.

The grayToyota with Vanilla behind the wheel stopped at a traffic signal, then sped up with the flow of traffic when the light turned green. Jasmine's lips curled back from spiked teeth as she gave voice to the ulula-tions of the pack once more. The breeze whipped her hair, and her legs pumped beneath her, carrying her at inhuman speed across the rooftops of the city ofBoston .

The hunt was on.

CHAPTER 2

SO heres this guy, computer software salesman, makes about three hundred thousand a year, if not more, lives in a half-million-dollar house in the burbs with his perfect perky wife and his perfect perky kids and he shows up at the church for the wedding of his best friend with beach chairs and a cooler full of Corona, and he sits in the parking lot drinking beer for an hour before the ceremony starts. Then he has to read the prayers of the faithful, right up there on the altar, and he's slurring his words."

Artie and Molly chuckled good-naturedly, considering they had heard the story before. They had urged Kate to tell it for Jack's benefit, and he was glad they did. He laughed and shook his head in disbelief.

"You've gotta be kidding me," he said. "So this is your sister's husband's best friend? Did she ban the guy from the house?"

"You'd think, right?" Kate replied, rolling her head. But, no. No ban. She just tortures the guy by telling the story every chance she gets, and she uses it to keep him in line as much as possible."

Jack watched her as she spoke, the way her hair—cut into a style that was almost jagged, all sharp, dangerous angles—revealed a soft luster whenever she tilted her head forward. She did that often, and it conveyed a sense of intimacy as if she were speaking only to him. He watched the way her icy blue eyes glinted in the dim lights, and the way her lips moved to form words completely untainted by theBoston accent the rest of them had. Kate's family had moved fromOhio toBoston when she was in the seventh grade.