Eternal Pleasure (15 page)

Okay, she was meeting a werewolf outside a museum tonight. Was that surreal or what? “I’m bringing a friend with me.” No way was she going to meet a werewolf by herself.

There was another long silence. “One friend. No one else.” And the line went dead.

While she was in the bathroom, she freshened up and tried to decide what to do about tonight. Fin had supplied a few basic cosmetics, and Kelly wasn’t proud. A little cheek cream and some lip color gave an impression of life. Then she left the bathroom.

Good things had happened while she’d been gone. Someone had brought breakfast and left some of her clothes on the bed. Ty sat on the couch eating his meal.

He wore a clean pair of jeans. She had a brief but intense underwear moment. Was he wearing any? She forced herself to move on. A fresh shirt hung over the back of a chair.

Neva was tearing apart a huge piece of raw meat set on a platter. Ugh. Still in wolf form.

Kelly grabbed the clothes and ran back into the bathroom to change before settling down next to Ty on the couch.

“Who brought breakfast?” Technically it was afternoon, but for this job, afternoon was the new morning.

“Shen.”

Worry didn’t affect her appetite. She helped herself to eggs, bacon, and toast. Making love was tough work.

Kelly nodded. “Fin’s secretary, or whatever. He hired me. What about the clothes?” His knee touched hers, but she didn’t move it away. Yesterday she would have chosen a chair, but now being near him felt natural. Her reaction to the bare expanse of his chest still tensed her up, though. His low-level erotic hum never let her forget the sexual animal part of him or her reaction to it.

“Shen said they went to your apartment this morning.”

After a fortifying gulp of coffee, she told him about the call.

While Ty thought about what she’d said, Neva padded over to sit next to Kelly. The rest had evidently done the werewolf good, because her eyes were bright and—thank God—sane. Her wolfy expression said she was ready to take an active part in determining her destiny.

“You know, I think Neva should go with me to meet this pack leader. After all, it’s her future we’ll be bargaining for.” Kelly hoped he wouldn’t fight her on this.

“I agree.” Finishing his coffee, he stood. “I need to talk this over with Fin.” He retrieved his shirt, slipped into it, then pulled on a pair of boots. “Relax until I get back.”

“Just a thought, but if I’ve got this straight, you can communicate mentally with Fin. So why do you have to tell him in person?”

“Fin’s mental power is pretty much tied up right now with distracting Zero. When you’re psychically blitzing the enemy, you can’t be bothered with a minor communication unless it’s an emergency.”

“Oh.” Kelly watched him leave. She glanced at Neva. “Relax. Right. Vampires, werewolves, and the ultimate big bad are after our behinds and he wants us to relax. Feeling relaxed yet, Neva?”

Neva shook her massive head and offered Kelly a wolfy grin. Her expression looked hopeful, though. Kelly sort of liked Neva’s can-do attitude.

“I just realized that you only know bits and pieces of what’s going on. Let me fill you in.”

Kelly had just finished her explanation when someone knocked. Now what? She walked to the door and then hesitated. No peephole. But her hesitation only lasted long
enough for her to remember where she was. No unfriendly monster waited on the other side of the door. They were all friendly monsters here.

She opened the door to Shen. “Hi, haven’t seen you for a while. Come in.” Kelly stood aside to let him pass.

A second after she said it, she remembered Neva. Oops. Shen strode past her and then stopped. Neva crouched by the couch, a low rumbling growl warning of bad things to come.

“It’s okay, Neva. You remember Shen. He hired you.”

Neva wasn’t impressed. Her growl grew louder.

Shen wisely backed out into the hall.

Kelly frowned. “I don’t know why you upset her.”

He held up his hands. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m a shape-shifter. Her animal senses my other form. No biggie.”

Shen smiled. About six feet tall with dark hair and eyes, his quick grin might’ve fooled her into thinking he was friendly and uncomplicated. But that was before. Now she knew that no one who worked for Fin was uncomplicated and a smile could hide any number of agendas.

“Shape-shifter? So what’s your other form?” Behind Kelly, Neva’s growling died away.

Shen glanced at his watch. “I’d love to hang and talk, but I need to get you down to the office so I can update some of your employment info before you run off for the night.”

“Sure.” She frowned. “What about Neva?”

“Ty will be back in a few minutes. She’ll be okay alone until then.”

Kelly glanced at Neva. “Do you mind staying by yourself for a short time?”

Neva didn’t go all wild-eyed on her. Instead, the wolf jumped back onto the bed and spread out. Kelly took that as an
I’m cool with being alone
.

Stepping out into the hallway, Kelly pulled the door closed and followed Shen to his office. Grabbing a chair on the other side of his desk, she waited for him to leave the doorway and sit down.

Mesmerized, she stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows behind his desk. Night was falling, and the Houston skyline was lighting up. “Wow, Fin sure likes windows. Can’t say that I blame him. This view is spectacular. I think I get it. He came from an environment where he was never enclosed, so I guess claustrophobia could be a problem when he’s in a building.”

“Very insightful, Kelly.” Fin’s voice was blandly approving.

Uh-oh. Kelly turned her head and watched Fin walk toward the desk. Shen had skipped out on her. This could not be good.

Fin lowered himself to Shen’s chair behind the desk and smiled at her.

If Helen of Troy’s face launched a thousand ships, then Fin’s smile was good for the launch of at least a million rockets. And yet Kelly sensed no emotion behind his expression, nothing to connect her to the man.

His silver hair gleamed, and against the backdrop of the sparkling Houston lights, he looked like some cold, beautiful Christmas tree.

Fin’s bark of laughter was the first really sincere reaction she’d felt from him.

“A Christmas tree? That has to be a first. Now you’ve put me in a good mood for our meeting.”

He really was a gorgeous man. But he also made her mad as hell. “Stay out of my mind.”

“How can I do that when you’re so entertaining?” He held up his hand to forestall her tirade. “Okay, I’ll try.”

“Why the bait and switch?”

“I knew if Ty showed up while I was trying to drag you off to my lair, he’d insist on coming too.” Fin’s expression turned thoughtful. “He’s getting all protective with you. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. He doesn’t need any distractions.”

Her stomach dropped about four floors at the thought that Fin might assign her to another one of the Eleven. And immediately after that, she had an oh-no moment. She cared too much.

Three nights did not a relationship make. Sure, she had impulse issues at times, but she’d never made love with a man after knowing him only three nights. And she’d certainly never done it naked on a balcony. The truth? She’d do it hanging upside down from a tree limb if it kept her close to Ty. A dangerous admission. Dangerous to her emotions. He’d be moving on soon. Dangerous to her health. Caring would make her more likely to follow him into scary situations.

“I have a favor to ask,” Fin said.

Favor? That snapped Kelly back into the moment. “What?”

“I’d like to record your brain waves.”

Okay, that was officially weird.

“
Brain waves?
Mine?”

“Hear me out.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

Fin leaned back and idly tapped his finger on the arm of his chair. “I can see the distant future. I see the problems, the potential solutions, but not the outcomes. Two out of three is a start, though.”

“How distant?” Three nights ago she would’ve dismissed what Fin was saying as idiocy. She knew better now.

“Sixty-five million years.” He was staring at her, but his eyes had that unfocused look that meant his thoughts were elsewhere. “I saw that Zero and his crew would return to Earth and try to raise an army of nonhumans so they could wipe out the human race in 2012. I saw what measures could stop them.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see if anything worked.”

“Is that how you were able to save the Eleven from the extinction event?”

“Yes.” He watched her with those strange silver eyes.

“And my brain waves have something to do with your master plan?”

He grinned. “Not
my
master plan. This is more like the universe’s master plan. Not to fall back on a cliché, but it’s bigger than both of us.”

“Right.” Kelly’s thoughts were in turmoil. Her first
instinct was to walk, because there was something insanely creepy about Fin targeting her millions of years in the past.

“You want to run from me.” Fin captured her gaze and held it. “But you won’t be able to run from what’s coming. No one will. Not you, not your family.”

She hated him. Because he was right. Because he didn’t hesitate to bludgeon her with the truth. Because there wasn’t one speck of warmth in him. He didn’t care about her or her family, just his fight against the Lords of Time or whatever they wanted to be called.

She forced her gaze away from him and focused instead on the Houston skyline behind him. “You know, this is one time I hate the messenger more than the message. What do you love, Fin? What do you have a passion for other than this battle?”

“Nothing. Love is a weakness. I can’t afford to have weaknesses. Now can we get back to the brain waves?” His voice was cold, flat.

“Sure. Explain.” She fought down her anger. Anger would bounce right off that hard shell he called a heart. Of course, just because he had a human body didn’t mean he had the emotions to go with it. Ty
felt
human. Fin was alien.

“I believe in synchronicity. I believe that we were meant to rise at the same time as Zero and his crew. And I believe it’s our affinity for numbers that makes us the right choice to save humanity. There are no coincidences in the universe.”

“And what does that have to do with brain waves?”

“I saw
you
, Kelly, and everything you were. I saw you playing a melody on your flute. No, I didn’t hear it. But I knew it wasn’t composed by you or given to you by someone else.
It was a
part
of you. And I saw the possibility that you would defeat Nine. Unfortunately, that’s all I saw.”

“Not too helpful.” He’d targeted her from the beginning. Shen’s story about talking to someone who said she might be interested in a job had been a lie. The outrageous salary was bait, and she’d bitten.

“But I finally figured it out. I read an article about people who’re using electroencephalograms to record their brain activity and then having it translated into music. They think listening to their own brain music helps with anxiety and insomnia.”

“Or with kicking galactic goons out of Houston.” Kelly didn’t bother asking what this had to do with numbers. She understood the relationship between numbers and music. But there was something terrifying about knowing that the fate of humanity might rest on her and her flute.
Eat your
heart out, Pied Piper
. “Are you sure this is the solution?”

Fin hesitated.

“You’re not.”

He swiveled his chair around to stare into the night. “I don’t know what else it could be. But, no, we won’t know if that’s the answer until you play the tune for Nine.”

“So it’s possible that I could play my brain music and then Nine would do lots of giggling right before he splattered said brain all over some wall.”

“Hypothetically. Although, since he can’t touch you directly, one of his helpers would do the splattering.”

The ball was in her court. “Uh, maybe we could make a CD of my brain music and just mail it to him.”

Fin shook his head. “I
saw
you playing the tune.”

She could say no. She
should
say no. She said yes. “Okay, where do I get an EEG? And before you begin to celebrate, this isn’t a promise that I’ll play my flute in the
face of certain death. I have strong survival instincts. I reserve the right to run like hell if the odds are wrong.”

He spun his chair to face her. “Understood. I have all the equipment here. It’ll take five minutes to record your brain activity, and then you’ll be free. I’ll get the tune to you as soon as the lab finishes up. Memorize it, and then make sure you don’t go anywhere without your flute.”

She stood, and Fin stood with her. “I have a question now that we’re alone. Why haven’t you told your men that they were something else before they were dinosaurs? It’s obvious to me, and God knows I’m not the perceptive type. Why isn’t it obvious to them? Why don’t they ask questions about their past?”

He stopped and stared at her. Kelly felt his stare as a sudden stabbing pain that threatened to shatter her skull. Gasping, she pushed her palms against the sides of her head to hold it together.

“What’s your name?”

She opened her mouth…and nothing came out. Her name? Her freaking
name
. Her mind raced in panicked circles, searching for the word. Gone. She didn’t know her own name.

Fin looked away, and her name was back.
Kelly
. She said it over and over in her head to make sure it was really there.

“Sometimes forgetting is kinder than remembering.” His voice grew harder, colder. “Imagine the worst nightmare you could possibly create, magnify it a hundred times, and it still wouldn’t come close to the horror they’ve forgotten.”

“You’ve wiped their memories.” The enormity of what he’d done to his own men sickened her. And then it made her mad. “Where the hell do you get off playing God? Why are you the only one with a right to remember?”

Fin looked back at her, his expression shutting her and
everyone else out of his world. “There are just so many memories anyone can handle. How would the memory of something unspeakably evil help their concentration now when they need it most?”

“That’s not the point.”

“That’s exactly the point.” He turned toward the door again. “Get this straight, Kelly. We’re going to defeat Zero and his nine buddies one damn number at a time. And I won’t let anyone or anything distract my men from that goal.”

“And if I decide to tell Ty?”

“Do we have to see if you can remember your name again?”

Fin wasn’t subtle about his threats. She’d back off and regroup. Then when she had time to think, she’d decide what to do. The part of her brain in charge of self-preservation thought she should keep her big mouth shut, that this was an internal affair and none of her business. Maybe she’d listen to her brain on this one.

“There are other distractions beside the past. What are you going to do if one of your men falls in love with a human?” Now where’d that question come from?

His harsh laugh managed to sound ominous. “No chance of that. Once she knew what was involved, no woman alive would be willing to claim one of our souls for her own.”

Well, that sounded scary but intriguing. She joined him at the door. “So what does Fin stand for? I can’t think of any carnivores beginning with those letters.”

“Infinity.” He led her toward another room at the end of the hallway.

“I should’ve thought of that. It goes with your number obsession. And since you chose the names, you got to call
yourself anything you wanted. But what kind of dinosaur
were
you?”

Fin paused in front of the closed door. He closed his eyes for a moment. “How does Ty stand all your questions?”

She was getting to him. Good. “It’s part of my charm.”

He pushed the door open, then turned to face her. “I was huge and horrifying, and I don’t have a name because there were only two of us. Scientists haven’t found our fossil remains.” Fin waved her into the room, where a woman in a white coat waited, and then he escaped.

Coward. While the EEG was recording her brain activity, she wondered about the other one like Fin. A mate? Interesting.

Ty was about ready to go looking for Kelly when she finally returned. Instead of dropping onto the couch, she walked over to the wall of windows and stared out.

“It’s amazing. Houston looks just like it always did, but knowing what’s happening below the surface makes it a place I don’t recognize anymore.” She sighed and turned to stare at him. “Do you think it’ll ever go back to the way it was?”

She’d caught him by surprise. “When Nine is gone.”
When I’m gone
.

Without answering, she got a bottle of water from the wet bar’s small fridge and sat on the couch. “I was with Fin. He wanted to record my brain waves so he could have them made into music.” Neva wandered over, and Kelly absently scratched behind her ears.

“Music?” Why hadn’t Fin told him about this? Once again, he got the feeling there were lots of things Fin didn’t tell any of them. And that bothered him.
Why? It never
bothered you before
. He shook his head to clear the fog that seemed to roll in whenever he tried to think about Fin.

“Yeah. He said he can see into the distant future. One of the things he saw was the possibility that I’d defeat Nine by playing my flute. The weird part? He thinks the melody will come from my brain waves.”

Ty knew he was glowering, but he couldn’t help it. “Forget it. You’ll never get close enough to Nine for him to hear you playing your flute. I’ll make sure of that.”

Kelly smiled at him, and he could almost hear cracking sounds as something hard and brittle inside him developed a few more fissures. Dangerous stuff. He’d have to make sure he didn’t get to like that smile too much, because she’d be gone as soon as they took care of Nine.

“I guess Fin knew how you’d react, because he sent Shen to drag me off to his office before you got back.”

He’d talk to Fin later. Not now, because even Ty’s short meeting with him had triggered all kinds of aggressive impulses. Like the urge to plant his fist in Fin’s face for sneaking around behind his back to get to Kelly. “Fin insists we take plenty of help with us tonight. Neva goes, and we have to pick up Q. Someone dropped him off at his apartment last night, but he still doesn’t have a driver. And another one of the Eleven is going with us, too. His name is Spin.”

“Spin? This won’t work. The alpha said I could only bring one friend with me.”

Ty nodded. “I’ll be with you. Neva stays in the car until we’re sure she’s welcome. Q and Spin will be in the wind. Fin isn’t a trusting kind of guy.”

“What if the pack leader senses them?” She shuddered. “I’m tired of being afraid. I need some mental downtime between werewolf wars.”

He dropped onto the couch beside her and tilted her face up until she met his gaze. “I’ll protect you. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

Ty’s relief was way out of proportion to her answer. But his protection was all he had to offer. No money. No shared interests. Hell, he couldn’t even talk to her about movies or TV shows. He was all about brute strength and a past she couldn’t relate to.
And why are you getting so intense
about this anyway
?

He glanced at his watch. “Oh, and we got an invitation while I was talking to Fin. Jude owns a club in the Montrose area, Eternal Pleasure. He wants us to stop by to night about ten. Maybe he has information we can use. I thought we could hit the club first, then get something to eat before meeting your pack leader.”

“Eternal Pleasure?” Kelly looked doubtful. “I’m not dressed for a place with that kind of name. I’ll change when we stop at the apartment.”

He dug Neva’s rope leash out from between the couch’s cushions and dropped it over the werewolf’s head. “Sorry. Have to keep up pretenses.”

They left the room with a sulky Neva and headed down the stairs. A man stood by the front door. Spin. The guy with the all-black outfit and long blond hair. Ty felt the familiar need for violence, but not quite as urgently as usual. Maybe Kelly was having a calming effect on him after all.

When they reached the door, he stuck out his hand. “Ty.”

The man smiled and shook his hand even as his gaze slid to Kelly. “Spin.”

They both tightened their grips. Spin grimaced but refused to back down. Ty felt like the bones in his hand were being crushed. He bore down harder.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Kelly sounded disgusted. “Call it a draw, guys, and get over it.”

Ty grunted and dropped his hand at the same time Spin did. He controlled the need to flex his fingers. After considering his chances of getting away without introducing her, he came down on the side of a grumpy intro. “This is Kelly.” He glanced down at the werewolf. “And this is Neva.”

“Hi, Spin.” Kelly offered her hand, and Spin took it in both of his. “What’s Spin short for?”

She shot Ty a warning glance that stopped his growl before it reached the top of his throat.

“Spinosaurus.” He slid his gaze to Ty, and his grin widened. “Big meat eater like Ty, but with a lot more style and charm. T. rexes were long on attitude but short on personality.”

“I bet I could tear your head off with lots of style and charm.” Ty glared pointedly at where Spin still held Kelly’s hand.

The other man maintained his grip a few seconds longer just to establish that he wasn’t afraid of Ty, then stepped back. “So what’re we doing tonight?”

Ty carefully avoided Kelly’s gaze. She’d be pissed that he’d challenged Spin. Once again, their worlds clashed. In his time, Spin would’ve expected Ty to warn him off his mate.
You’re not her mate, and she’ll hate that you went all
possessive on her
. Again. He clenched his fists. Would he ever adapt to this era?