The Purest of the Breed (The Community) (7 page)

Pettrila set down her quill. “All this talk is fiddle-faddle, anyway. You have obligations to this family, child.”

Luvera winced.
Oh, oops
. Her mother saw that.

Pettrila shut the cookbook firmly, her amber eyes flashing. “Geology is a noble profession, Luvera. If not for the work your father and I did to unearth the precious minerals of this cave, Ţărână wouldn’t have the vast wealth it now owns. Without doubt, the entire community would have faltered long ago.”

“I know, Mother.” It was just that the thought of studying rocks and gems all day made her want to gouge her eyes out…an attitude that must’ve resonated in her voice.

Scorn flared Pettrila’s nostrils. “Do you think that I want this honorable responsibility laid on
your
shoulders?”

Heat flushed into Luvera’s face. She glanced down at the floor. She could hardly quibble with her mother on that score; there
wasn’t
much to commend Luvera these days. For God’s sake, she couldn’t even get herself out of this house.

“I can’t call upon Devid—your father made certain of that—and I don’t have any other
choices
beyond you. Do I?” A slight tightening of Pettrila’s chin was the only show of sorrow she demonstrated over the death of her other choices, four daughters who’d perished in a 1942 cave collapse.

For some reason Pettrila and Grigore, Luvera’s father, had waited eighteen years after that catastrophe to replace their losses. In 1960, Dev was born. Another four years after that, Luvera came into the world, born to a mother who by that time was the ripe age of one hundred and eight: two very different women born in two different ages. In all of Luvera’s existence, never once had her mother offered her even a scintilla of understanding or sympathy, and Luvera sometimes wished, quite horribly, that Pettrila and Grigore had just left well enough alone with their family.

On the other hand, the moon had proven to rise and set on the Nichitas’ only son. Dev could do no wrong, at least in Grigore’s eyes, and when Dev had done the unthinkable and decided to go into the Warrior Class—a career choice which would elude his duty to the family—Grigore had indulged his son’s dream with hardly a blink. And then immediately thrust the entire burden for taking over the family business onto Luvera’s unwilling shoulders. Without even asking her.

Her mother’s stern eyes were still on her. “Would you have this community perish?”

Guilt lodged like a dead weight in Luvera’s stomach and left a bitter taste in her mouth. It was her mother’s favorite ploy, setting up Luvera’s career path to be a life-or-death calling, when, in reality, Luvera suspected that Pettrila mostly didn’t want the noblest profession in the community to fall to the Vasilichi family. Always involved in only the gritty work of mining, the Vasilichis had positioned themselves to leap into the gemology side of the profession soon after Grigore’s death. Such a coup would’ve been an insufferable prick to Pettrila’s pride, and for Luvera to be responsible for either the financial ruin of the community or for her mother’s step down, however miniscule, from her social strata was not… No, Luvera couldn’t manage the fallout from either.

Attention back on her cookbook, Pettrila lifted the vellum sheet off her desk and held it out to Luvera, her wrist bent at a graceful angle. “Go get these items at the store for me, if you would.”

Their conversation was apparently over. Had Luvera gained anything besides a headache and a stick poked into that soft, insecure part of her? Of course not.

“Um, sure.” She took the paper. “I have to go on an errand, anyway.”

Pettrila’s attention snapped over to her. “Where?”

“Oh, nowhere. The post office just gave a package of mine to someone else by mistake.” Luvera turned and trudged for the door. Something she
wouldn’t
have to explain if she had her own apartment.

“Stand up straight, Luvera.”

“Yes, Mother.”

* * *

“Avoided becoming a Toaster Strudel today.” Gábor slouched into the seat of the Lincoln Town Car, his M16 propped between his legs, and added on a mumble, “Hoo-rah.”

Dev grunted, wearily dropping back against the headrest. Their Town Car transport had just pulled into the large cargo elevator that would take them on the twenty-minute trip home—they both recognized the soft grind of the cables—and heading the one half mile down into the safety of Ţărână was always a bit of a sphincter un-clencher, especially so close to sunrise.

They’d barely made it off the streets of San Diego before dawn hit, and one sunny ray on their Vitamin D-allergic bodies would’ve immediately led to anaphylactic shock, and from there, death. Cutting it that close hadn’t even been worth the risk, either. The Om Rău they’d chased had gotten away.

Dev scrubbed a hand over his face and winced. He felt beat to shit. Tired and sore, his left cheek throbbing like a sonofabitch where Videön had socked him. He’d caught a glance of himself in the rearview, and his face was swollen like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s, his cheek sporting a nasty bruise.
All in a night’s work
. He sank deeper into his seat…

He jerked out of a doze when the elevator lurched to a halt.

He felt the Town Car drive slowly forward off the elevator platform, then stop. The door locks shot up. He and Gábor climbed out, stepping into the vast garage that was home to Ţărână’s half dozen or so vehicles. Some were delivery trucks for the Travelers to bring food and supplies from the surface down into the community, the others were kept on hand for the warriors’ various shenanigans.

Llawell, Ţărână’s body shop guy, was even now busy replacing the Dodge’s blown out window. The man was going to have a field day with the rest of it. The van looked like a damned colander.

A woman dressed in olive drab coveralls was leaning against the driver-side door of the Dodge and chatting with Llawell. Candace was the man’s wife, and a Traveler, one of the regular human females who’d been brought into the community twenty years ago to reproduce with Vârcolac males, before it was discovered that only Dragons could produce viable offspring. Candace had to be in her fifties by now, but barely looked thirty-five. Ah, the many perks of Fiinţă.

Dev and Gábor nodded to the couple as they tramped past, both warriors aiming for the long corridor that led into the main part of Ţărână’s mansion. Serving as home to Roth and his wife in the penthouse suite on the fourth floor, the new Dragon females on the third floor, and the single warriors on the second, the mansion provided every conceivable amenity. The basement housed a huge gym—for both the warriors’ training and fitness-minded others—an armory, Roth’s office, a medical clinic, accommodations for the mansion’s staff, and two luxurious “lockdown” suites for the married women to hole up in during their fertile period when they wanted to avoid pregnancy.

One flight up on the main floor was a grand entrance hall, several parlors of various sizes, a library, a vast computer center for Ţărână’s two techno doinks—a dopey young Vârcolac named Cleeve and Alex Parthen—a rec room, a kitchen with an attached formal dining room, and now there was a large conference room, newly remodeled for the Council with a sliding wall partition that could be opened and closed according to space requirements.

He and Gábor strode by the community’s electrical generator, which purred contentedly behind its floor-to-ceiling metal grate. Overhead an interwoven gray pipeline channeled California’s precious water from topside into the community—stole it, really—turning this part of the corridor into the bowels of a battleship.

Gábor slung his M16 over his shoulder. “So what do you think of those new girls?”

“Hard to say.” Dev shrugged. “They were out of their natural element, you know.”

“Well, I thought they were cute.” Gábor bobbed his eyebrows. “And that brings the total up to eleven.”

“
If
the three new ones stay.”

“Shit, bro, can you imagine eleven Dragons in one room, how good they’d smell? Hoo-rah.”

Dev smiled. “You’d swoon like a lady in a corset, guaranteed.”

Gábor laughed in a burst. “So would you, Nichita. Last I checked you were just as horny.”

He couldn’t argue the point. The instinct to jump-and-hump always jacked high near an unmated female, especially a Dragon, who smelled like a rockin’ sex Popsicle to an unmated Vârcolac male. His near-paralytic inability to hoist himself out from between the legs of that mega-biscuit in the van was a case in point. And with
eleven
? He probably would come embarrassingly close to fainting.

He and Gábor strode along in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m getting one of those Dragons this time,” Gábor said with quiet intensity. “There’s none of that mate-choices bullshit this time, so it’s anybody’s game. No offense to my homies in the Warrior Class, but it’s been way too many decades of a sausage fest.”

“I’ve done the math myself, Pavenic.” Hell, he’d
lived
the math. “We’re going to have to ugly down Thomal, though, if we want half a chance of getting close to one. You know, put some teeth black in his toothpaste or zit powder in his shaving cream.”

“If a pussy Mixed-blood needed to shave, you mean?”

They both laughed. Black-haired, Pure-bred Vârcolac like themselves were the only males who could grow facial hair. It was a masculine advantage they never failed to shove into the face of a blondie: known as a Mixed-blood because they were a combination of both Dragon and Vârcolac.

“Besides, speak for yourself,” Gábor went on. “I know I’m good-looking, bro, even standing next to Golden Boy.”

Dev cocked a brow. “But do the girls know?”

They came to the end of the corridor and stopped in front of another elevator. Dev slipped in his key card, opening the doors, then they went one flight up to the basement floor of the mansion. The elevator doors swished open, and—

Jaċken Brun was standing directly in front, his burly arms crossed over his broad chest and his stance wide. A married man now, Jaċken had exchanged his usual black leathers for black jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. Still not exactly cruise wear, but at least he didn’t always look like the headliner for an Ultimate Fighting bout anymore.

“Hi, Mom,” Gábor chirped. “We’re home.”

Jaċken’s black Om Rău eyes zeroed in on Dev’s bruised face, then shifted over to Gábor. “Any injuries on you I need to know about?”

Gábor swept a hand across his chest. “You mean besides my achy-breaky heart?” He grinned, the pointed tip of a fang peeking out. “When do we get to meet the chicks?”

Jaċken’s eyelids narrowed. “Well, Pavenic, there’s an introductory cocktail party scheduled for tomorrow night, but if you can’t get that smile of yours throttled back, you’ll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush instead.”

“Roger that.” Gábor chuckled. “Throttling back now, sir.”

Yeah, the whole town was under strict guidelines about keeping their fangs hidden until the Big Reveal. A total pain, but a necessary evil. “How’s Thomal?” Dev asked.

“Fine. You and I need to debrief.” Jaċken made a curt gesture of dismissal to Gábor. “Let’s go to my office.”

Shit, really
? He was hungry, needed to take a piss, and his armpits were emitting some kind of nuclear waste smell. He caught back a sigh. “Yes, sir.”

They headed up one more flight to the mansion’s main floor.

Not exactly a paperwork guy, Jaċken maintained an office in the rec room—basically little more than a desk crammed into a corner by the Foosball table. “Take a seat.” Jaċken indicated the chair situated at the corner of the desk, while he landed in the one behind it. He got right to the point. “You split your team.”

“I did,” Dev admitted. “One of the women had been—”

“Sedge and Thomal debriefed me about what happened to the women,” Jaċken cut in. “Your orders were to extract the Dragons and bring them safely into Ţărână. Nothing more.”

Dev leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “It was my assessment that this kind of abuse would be repeated unless we taught the Om Rău a lesson.”

“Bullcrap, Nichita,” Jaċken returned. “You’re not stupid. You know damn well that nothing you could ever do is going to stop Om Rău from hunting Dragons…and being assholes about it.”

Dev felt the muscles in his body tighten, a defensive anger rising in him like a hot wind. “I didn’t botch the mission, Jaċken. I made sure the women were securely on their way to the community before I broke off with Gábor.” He leaned forward in his chair. “You didn’t see this girl Videön raped, okay? She’s the tiniest damned thing, couldn’t weigh more than a buck-and-a-nickel, and there she was, looking at us with these big eyes, and her—”

“You take whatever risks necessary to
save
a woman, Nichita, absolutely, but in this case, the deed had already been done. You acted out of a need for vengeance, pure and simple.” Jaċken gave his head a taut shake. “And it’s exactly unwarranted risk-taking that puts a burr up Roth’s butt, and makes it ten times more difficult for us to get mission clearance the next time.”

Dev sat back again. “Since when do you let Roth dictate what the Warrior Class does?”

A tic pulsed in Jaċken’s cheek. “The Council was created for a reason, Nichita. It exists to help make decisions about important issues that affect the community.
Reasonable
decisions, and not half-cocked judgment calls that could end up getting men killed.”