Prowlers: Wild Things (27 page)

Her bodyguards caught up to her, formed a kind of wedge in front of her, and shoved human and Prowler alike out of her path. Some of the humans grumbled, but the Prowlers caught her scent and either nodded in recognition of her presence or scurried quickly away. Which among them were loyal to her, she wondered, and which were members of the so-called underground?

Human males all through the club stared at her as she went, and some of the women did as well. Jasmine soaked up their lust and fascination. There was power in it.

In the far left corner of the club, not far from the stage, Alec stood with a small clutch of pack members, arms crossed, watching her approach. Jasmine smiled at him and Alec smiled back, though there was anxiety in both his expression and in the way he held himself. He was afraid. Her face flushed with anger and she realized that after the night was through, whether Alec survived or not, she was going to have to find herself another mate. He lacked the proper obedience and the proper respect. He
was
handsome, though, something exotic in his features and the dark curl of his hair. But there were always more handsome males.

Her bodyguards stood aside as they reached that far corner. The other members of the pack also dispersed, giving her room to breathe. Alec tilted his head in an almost formal greeting.

"Good evening, Jasmine," he said.

"It
is
a good evening, isn't it?" she replied, her tone and the playful smile on her lips taunting him, mocking his caution. "Time for a party. Time to make a little mess."

Jasmine looked past him, to where Guillaume Navarre sat grimly between two more members of her pack. He had no restraints save for the presence of so many of his captors and his belief — mistaken — that she still held his niece as well. With a coquettish smile, Jasmine tossed her red hair back and went to sit beside him. One of his guards moved over, giving her room, and Jasmine slid herself along Navarre's body as she sat. Mischief in her heart, she kissed his cheek softly.

"Hello, bait," she whispered. "How long do you think before the mice arrive?"

Navarre — or Cantwell as he preferred to be called — only glared at her balefully.

Alec moved in close and looked down upon them. He kept his voice low, but despite that and despite the music playing, Jasmine was certain the others heard him speak.

"Are you certain this is the way to proceed?" he asked. "There are safer ways. Easier ways. You could hold him anywhere in the city and put the word out, and still they would come."

A snarl escaped her throat and her lips curled in anger. Jasmine glared at him and knew, then, that she was going to have to kill Alec in the morning. "I don't have to explain myself to you, pup," she growled.

He stumbled back a step, as though driven by the force of her anger.

Jasmine sighed and glanced around at the members of her pack gathered there. The others were spread throughout the club, in its shadowy corners, and mingling with the crowd, in search of their targets. They would arrive eventually.

"None of you were in Boston when these humans killed Tanzer. They aren't like other humans. Of course, we have our friend Navarre here, and he will keep out of things as long as his niece's life depends upon it. So he cannot aid them, but they also do not want him killed."

Of course, she knew that if he spotted Olivia, Navarre would try to aid her immediately, but that was why she kept him surrounded by those loyal to her. If he moved against Jasmine, her pack would kill him.

"Navarre's insurance, in a way, but we have a great deal more insurance than that. We have a lot of allies in this room. So do
they
. But you know what else is in this room?" With a grin, she glanced at each of them in turn. "No one? Look around. There are
victims
in this room. Cannon fodder. They cannot blow up the building or set fire to it or attack with guns from the outside. They have to come in to get him. If they want to hurt us, they have to come in to do it. And there are all these wonderful, juicy
victims
in their way."

Senses. It's all about the senses
, Jack thought.

It was a quarter after nine and they had been inside for nearly an hour already. Thornbush was late going on and each minute that ticked by before the music started was another notch up the paranoia scale for him. The crush of humans and Prowlers — he made a game of trying to guess which was which — mingled their sweat and pheromones. They were counting on that to keep Jasmine from being able to sort their scents out of the hundreds of others stewing together in The Voodoo Lounge. As far as they knew, she was the only one among her pack they had ever encountered before, the only one who would be able to recognize their scents.

Their faces, though, that was something else. Jasmine would likely have given descriptions to her pack. Winter and Olivia had insisted that most humans looked much alike to Prowlers, for they never focused too long on their own false faces. Still, better safe than sorry.

Before coming to The Voodoo Lounge, Jack and Molly had changed their appearances. The bouncers had not given her a second glance, nor had they paid any attention to Jack; not even to card them. Apparently the owners of the club weren't terribly concerned about getting busted for serving minors.

Now Jack stared at her and marveled at how completely different Molly looked. They stood together by the bar to the right of the stage and held abandoned drinks they had snatched off the counter, unwilling to directly address the bartender, but wanting to blend in. Though Molly's gaze drifted around the club as she surreptitiously scanned the place for Bill, Jack could barely keep his eyes off her. With a quick dye-wash, Molly had bleached her wild red hair a golden blond, saved for a pair of tightly twisted pigtails that hung down on either side of her face. These had been dyed purple.

Her hair was pulled back into a tight tail with half a dozen rubber bands, evenly spaced, so that it looked more like rope than anything else. Though she normally wore little makeup, a lavender eyeshadow had been daubed liberally under rather than over her eyes. She wore a silk shirt tied in a knot beneath her breasts to show off her gently sloping belly, and she wore black leather pants supplied by Olivia's roommate, Mags.

As he watched, she swirled the ice in her appropriated glass and glanced up at him. She blushed slightly and then glared at him.

"You're staring. Do I look that ridiculous?" she whispered, leaning in close to be heard over the music.

Jack smiled and moved closer to her, sliding his arm around her waist. "You kidding? You look amazing. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the dye job's gonna wash out. But in the for-one-night-only category? You look smokin'."

A sly smile spread across her features and Molly turned away, trying to keep a straight face.

"What?" Jack asked, frowning.

Molly shook her head, but he poked her in the ribs.

"Nothing," she said. "Just sorry it's going to take longer for you to look like you again."

Jack opened his mouth but no reply came out. He couldn't exactly be offended, since he agreed with her completely. With his sister's help, he had cut his hair. Shaved it, more like. There was little more than an inch of hair left on his scalp. At the same time, he had kept the beard stubble on his face, using a razor to shape it so that it seemed like something he had done on purpose.

He had temporary tattoos up and down his forearms, and wore an extremely tight blue cotton shirt and leather pants to match Molly's. Never in his life had he imagined circumstances in which he would have put on a pair of leather pants without a gun to his head, but here he was. From a certain perspective, he knew that both he and Molly looked good, save for the scratch on his cheek. It was healing, but the wound was still obvious to anyone who looked at him. And yet, that was the point. Jasmine and her pack would be looking for them to try to be unobtrusive, inconspicuous. To hide.

Instead, they were doing the opposite. Hiding in plain sight. Instead of wearing some sort of a disguise that would cover their features in hopes of going unnoticed, they had altered their features in such a way as to attract attention. And they did. Neither of them was really comfortable with the kind of looks they were getting from the guys and girls who passed them, but that was the very idea of it.

In unconscious imitation of Molly, Jack swirled the melting ice in his glass and scanned the club again. No sign of Jasmine or Bill, not yet, but in the crush inside The Voodoo Lounge it was not going to be easy to spot anyone.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, his gaze fell upon his sister's face. Courtney looked slick and stylish, hair and clothes perfect, not like a club kid at all. Bowden was at her side, and Courtney leaned into him as though the two of them were semi-drunken lovers. The Prowlers would have their eye out for a woman with a cane, and so Courtney had left hers behind, using Bowden to keep from stumbling. Jack had been terrified to have her along, but she loved Bill and had already gotten her hands dirty in her quest to find and free him. He wasn't about to tell her to stay behind; as if she would have listened.

Besides, she had a role to play in this. They needed her.

Jack smiled at his sister. Her eyes gleamed in the semi-dark club and a kind of electrical charge passed between them.

"I saw her," Courtney said, voice tight, her face a bit pale.

"Jasmine?" Jack mouthed silently.

Courtney nodded.

"Where?" Molly asked.

As surreptitiously as possible, Courtney inclined her head to indicate the opposite side of the room, the bar across from them, the whole club between them. Jack did not want to stare, but he could not help himself. He peered into the crowd, trying to see over heads and between bodies. The house lights were a golden glow like the light of a full moon upon them. On the stage, the roadies worked in darkness now to prepare the stage. Movement out of the corner of his eye caught Jack's attention. Someone carried a microphone stand out to the edge. A moment later, another, larger figure carried out a crate that looked as though it might be a platform for the performers to stand on for solos or something. The crate was placed on the edge of their side of the stage, perhaps fifteen feet from where Jack stood.

He gazed again over the heads of the crowd, trying to see the other side. Dozens of people were milling around the bar, clustering there in an attempt to get drinks before the show started. There were two bartenders on either side and he could see the two over there, eyes down, working quickly, grumbling. He knew how they felt from experience. Rows of bottles behind the bar glistened in the soft golden glow of the house lights.

Then, to the right, in the far corner of the club near the other side of the stage, a kind of clearing appeared in the crowd and Jack noticed a block of grim-faced men and women who did not move to the beat of the piped-in music, who did not speak to one another, who only stared out at the sea of faces in the audience. They were a living wall, blocking off sight of whatever lay behind them like the entourage of some Hollywood celebrity.

"Over there," he said, just loud enough for Molly, Courtney and Bowden to hear.

One by one, they all glanced over and then turned away, not wanting to be too obvious about it.

"We can't be sure of that," Molly told him.

"I'm sure," Jack replied. He glanced at Courtney. "You ready?"

"Does it matter?" she asked.

Again, some spark passed between them, some silent thing that defined who they were as a family.

"No," Jack said, unsmiling. "It doesn't." He turned his gaze upon Bowden, and was distressed to see how afraid the Prowler seemed. Not that Jack blamed him. There was more on the line this night than merely their lives. The fallout from such a conflict could reveal the Prowlers' existence to the public, destroying the chance any of them had at living peacefully amongst humanity.

Somehow, despite his feelings for Bill, Jack couldn't summon too much sympathy. But he understood the trepidation he saw in Bowden's features.

Still, it was happening. And it was happening now.

"Let's do it."

Bowden nodded once, then reached under Courtney's chin, lifted her face to his, and kissed her. Jack bristled and he could see Courtney stiffen awkwardly. But this was the signal they had agreed on.

A strangled cry erupted from the middle of the club, perhaps fifty feet away, back toward the entrance. It ululated, going on and on, and voices were raised in alarm as the patrons of The Voodoo Lounge decided if they wanted to move away from that spot or closer in to get a better view.

Mags, Bowden's roommate, had been watching him. The kiss had told her it was time for her to do her part. Though he could not see her, Jack knew that she had fallen to the floor and begun to simulate convulsions as though she were having some sort of seizure. He smiled at the image, the oldest diversion in the world.

But Jasmine and her pack would immediately assume it was Olivia, or even him and Molly. And, as he expected, Prowlers with dangerous looks on their human faces pushed through the crowd quickly, tearing people away to get a peek.

"Do it," Jack said again, voice low.

Bowden seemed laid back and amiable, almost a slacker Prowler. But before Jack had even completed the second syllable, he was in motion, swift and deadly. With all eyes on Mags' performance at the center of the club, he leaped over the bar brandishing a wicked-looking hunting knife in his left hand. The blade had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, like a magician's sleight of hand. But there was nothing magical about what happened next.

With the music and the shouting and the crush of voices, Bowden slipped silently up behind the nearest bartender and slit his throat. The dead Prowler began to change even as he grabbed at his throat, but Bowden drove him to the floor, out of sight behind the bar. An instant later, Jack saw Bowden lunge upward, wrap a powerful arm around the second bartender's neck and drag him down as well.