Feral Pride (10 page)

Then Freddy breathes life back into the room by unveiling some of the most spectacular outfits I’ve seen in my entire life.

I LOWER THE WOOD BLINDS
in the sunroom and turn to drink in the sight of Kayla.

Yowza. It’s a hair past 11
P.M.
, and we’re leaving soon with Aimee and the Wild Card for his big whoop-de-do secret meeting with the Armadillo king at Sanguini’s. Since we’re trying to stay low profile, the restaurant is a perfect rendezvous place. An ideal opportunity for disguise.

Exhibit the lady in front of me. Enhanced lashes, cat’s-eye eyeliner, and a fake silver spiderweb tattoo that spans her face and another that disappears beneath her gold satin bustier. (I love the word
bustier.
) The skirt is a black ballet tutu, revealing long, long, long legs and high, high, high heels. I could do without the hair dye, though it does what it’s supposed to.

The whole look is designed to draw attention from her exquisite face, to keep anyone from recognizing her as the Cat girl of Pine Ridge.

“What do you think of the color?” Kayla reaches to touch her hair. “People are going to notice a black girl with blond hair, but Freddy swears it’s a great distraction. He says no one will recognize me.”

I’d recognize her — by sight and scent — but I’m not most people. She looks sexy in a more obvious way. My fingertips play hopscotch between the threads of her tattoo. “I love it.”

I’ve kissed and been kissed by hundreds of girls, mostly human girls. Kayla is molten lava. She slides her hand in the back pocket of my jeans. I’m still betting virgin, but I pray she’s not committed to it as a lifestyle choice. We’re alone on the first floor. There’s a daybed behind us under the arched windows.

Freddy can always fix her makeup. Navigating past the rattan coffee table is tricky. The corner hits right at the back of my knee, jostling my balance, and I break the kiss. “Kayla . . .”

Her hand comes up, flat against my stomach, holding me there. “What am I doing?”

Is this a trick question? “What’s wrong?”

“It’s not you,” she says, and that strikes me as a terrible way to begin. “This isn’t the time.” Kayla sinks into a morris chair with embroidered star-pattern cushions and starts unbuckling her shoes. “Freddy got me a pair of lace-up boots, too. I’ll run upstairs and —”

“Whoa.” I settle on the daybed, rest my hands on my knees. “What are you thinking?”

She’s checking me out. “You look striking. Grown-up.”

Striking? I’ll say. Freddy brought me a black leather-trim Western-style shirt, black jeans, and designer snakeskin cowboy boots. (Take that, Seth!) I haven’t put on the steampunk eye goggles yet, but my handcrafted steel cross belt buckle is both Goth fashion statement and precautionary. Kayla’s gaze lingers there, and it makes me flush.

“Sorry.” She shields her eyes. “It’s partly Ben. I don’t want it to be, but it is.”

She misses him. That’s only natural. “Listen, kitten, I can wait for —”

“What about Aimee?” Kayla asks. “I know she’s with Clyde, and I understand that you and she are close friends. I’m not worried about that. But before you two met, she had a boyfriend — Travis — who died. Now, you’re into me, and I had a boyfriend who died, too.”

“So, you’re saying . . .” I’m tempted to inform her that, from what I understand, Travis and Aimee never hit official couple status, but that’s beside the point. “
What
are you saying? I have some perverse thing for girls who’ve dated dead guys? Because that’s a coinci —”

“No, I’m saying
people die.
Lula died. Your friend Teghan died. Your friends Kieren and Joshua are lucky to be alive. Yoshi, you’ve been shot at twice in two days. You could die, too.”

Hearing Teghan’s name stings. The old me, the hit-it-and-quit-it Tom Cat, would’ve quipped that desperate times are all the more reason to live, hot and sticky, while we can. God, I miss him.

“IT’S BEEN A WHILE.”
Noelle waltzes into Sanguini’s private dining room at five till midnight. The ravishing werelioness was imprisoned in the cage next to mine on Daemon Island. She was my one fling before Aimee. A sultry older woman.

I thought we had something special. Who knows? Maybe we did. Then it turned out she slaughtered my buddy Travis at the local neighborhood park while she was amped up on transformeaze. Noelle was out of it. She didn’t even realize what she’d done until Yoshi’s sister pulled her off Travis’s mauled body.

“What’re you doing with Pop-Pop Richards?” I want to know. His Majesty hasn’t arrived yet. But Travis was Pop-Pop’s grandson. A “favored prince” of the werearmadillo throne.

A human court might’ve cared that Noelle didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t
intend
to kill anybody. Supposedly, that makes it legally not murder. It doesn’t make him any less dead. Shifters tend to skew more primal. If Travis’s ghost hadn’t interceded with his grandfather on her behalf, Noelle would be toast.

“I’m not here with Richards.” Noelle takes a seat at the opposite end of the table. “I’m representing the interested third party.” Is it wrong how much I love that costume? She’s dressed — blue body paint, dyed red hair — as Mystique of X-Men fame. A shape-shifter disguised as a shape-shifter. She pours herself a glass of ice water. She tosses aside the napkin folded in the shape of a bat and opens an electronic tablet encased in gold leather.

It’s only the two of us in here. I set my mask on the table.

Aimee isn’t going to be thrilled when she finds out Noelle’s tied up in whatever’s happening. It’s not only our fling. Romance crosses species lines all the time. But there’s an extra hormonal, horny
pow
between two shifters of the same kind.

Besides, I was raised as a Possum. I’m new to owning my werelion heritage. Noelle is the only Lion I know. She was with me when I first came into my mane.

“Where have you been?” I ask. “Nora and Freddy were trying to warn you about —”

“I already knew.” Noelle stops typing and looks up. “I hid in plain sight at the zoo.”

“In Lion form?” Of course in Lion form. It pisses me off when haters call us animals. Noelle and I know what it’s like to be caged. But the way things are . . . “Brilliant!”

We laugh together for the first time since our breakup.

I relax my shoulders. Noelle killed Travis, not by choice. I killed Mrs. Great White Hunter on the island, not by choice. Sure, I pounced. Noelle took transformeaze. Neither of us had any way of knowing what would happen. It would be stupid of me to alienate an ally.

“You hear about MCC Injections’ new” — she raises her fingers to make air quotes — “‘transformation-suppressing patch and vaccine’? It’s a modification of the formula for transformeaze. Rather than freezing a shift midway, it blocks one altogether.”

Even money that’s the poison Yoshi found in Agent Masters’s car. Given Noelle’s history, I have to give her credit for going there. She releases her claws. “Have you seen their pet troll, Graham Barnard, on the TV news?” She takes a swipe at thin air. “You think he’s trying to protect the so-called purity of
Homo sapiens
, or do you think he’s in it for the money?”

Noelle has no idea that she’s talking about my girlfriend’s father. “Well, the human servants on Daemon Island were tricked into . . .”

The Lioness weighs me from behind a curtain of lush eyelashes. “Get real.”

Aimee’s dad isn’t exactly a poor dude from a developing country, desperate to help his struggling family make ends meet. He’s a grown-up, big-time all-American corporate flack. “I know him,” I say. “Graham Barnard.” Or at least we’re connected by only one degree of separation. “He’s not exactly up with werepeople power.”

The slightest limp still betrays Noelle’s island injury. With shifters, only the most devastating damage lasts. She rests her palms on the table. “You know Graham Barnard?” Her cleavage is distracting. “You know him how?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “He’s the mouth of the haters. Not the brain trust.”

Noelle glances over my shoulder. I turn in my chair, expecting Armadillo royalty. I find Aimee standing in the doorway instead. Her forehead’s wrinkled. She clasps her hands in front of her, then lets them fall to the sides. She overheard me and Noelle talking trash about her dad.

“Pop-Pop Richards just arrived,” Aimee announces. “Nora asked if you want food.” It’s a BS question. Of course we want food. We always want food. It’s an excuse to check up on me. “I’ll tell her yes.” With that, she practically sprints out of the room.

Crap. I start to chase after Aimee when Pop-Pop struts in. He’s carrying a glass of his preferred single-malt Scotch. (The bar keeps it on reserve.) Two of his rotund royal guards take point outside the room.

“Clyde, what did you do?” Pop-Pop stops me with a couple of stiff fingers to my chest. “Never mind, this is more important.” The Armadillo king slides off the jacket of his pin-striped suit. He drapes it over a chair and acknowledges Noelle with a curt nod.

She responds with a hard swallow. The guilt gnaws at her.

I stay put. We need info on the Snake. I’ll smooth things over with Aimee later.

A light knock on the door signals Freddy’s assistant, Willa. She’s carrying a tray of appetizers — gorgonzola and a selection of olives, the carnivore taster, and the wasabi deviled quail eggs. We settle around the table. I pour His Majesty a glass of water as she drops off the plates. Nobody bothers with small talk. Willa lifts her tray and shuts the door as she exits.

Wasting no time, Pop-Pop leans his barrel body forward. “A critical dignitary knows something about this Snake. Important information.”

So, it isn’t Pop-Pop himself who has the scoop. “Dignitary?”

“He won’t talk to me, Clyde.” Pop-Pop tosses an olive into his mouth. “He considers me beneath him, the arrogant ass! But he’s heard about your experience with the newly discovered mono-forms.”

No more experience than Noelle. She apparently works for whoever it is and is probably his source. “He doesn’t want to talk to Yoshi or Aimee?” We were all on the island together.

Pop-Pop lights up a cigar. “I have a confession, Clyde.” He puffs. “Did you ever wonder why I encouraged your close friendship with my grandson Travis?”

Noelle studies her retracted nails. She painted them blue to match her Mystique persona. Having shifted to claws and back, they’ve returned to their natural color.

I spear a piece of venison blood sausage. “Travis and I were like brothers.”

“It was fitting that you should be,” Pop-Pop informs me. “Two young princes.”

“Princes?” I exclaim, dropping the meat. “Uh, my dad is —”