Primal Desires (3 page)

S
hall we, Sofia?” Jason asked, and took the mortal woman by the arm.

She resisted for a moment. He caught the thought,
What the hell am I doing here?
Then her curiosity got the better of her and she let him lead her forward.

“Do you know what this is about…Jason?” she asked as they followed the old man down a long, ill-lit hallway.

“Not really.”

He could tell that she wanted his reassuring touch on her arm, yet feared any dependence; she fought the craving by deliberately stepping away from him. He shouldn't resent her lack of trust, but he did.

They were led to a large room lined with tall bookshelves, most of them empty, and shown to a pair of threadbare wingback chairs. The old man sat behind an ornate but battered desk. Jason noted that much of the damage to the furniture looked like the marks of animal claws, and the wooden floor was marked with long, deep gouges. It looked like generations of wolf pups had run wild in the place.

“Show her,” the old man told Jason.

“Show me what?” Sofia asked.

“Who are you?” Jason asked the mortal male.

The old man sighed and folded gnarled hands on top of the desk. “So much to explain—I don't know where to start.”

Sofia glanced at her watch. “Talk fast.”

The old man said, “Sofia, I am your great-uncle Pashta Hunyara.”

Her expression went hard. “I don't have any uncles.”

“Great-uncle,” he repeated. “And there is a great deal about yourself you do not know.”

Pashta?
Jason smiled, remembering a fearless toddler in the Romany camp who used to climb onto his lap and demand stories. How quickly they aged.

“You know me, Prime,” Pashta said. “Show the girl the one thing she can believe in.”

Jason remembered what had drawn him to this odd meeting and took the gold coin out of his pocket.

“Where did you get that?” Sofia demanded when he held up the heavy half circle of gold.

“It belonged to a friend of mine,” he told her.

“It belonged to my grandfather,” she said. She reached beneath her blouse and brought out the other half of the coin, hanging on a leather cord. “What are you doing with my talisman?”

Jason tilted his head toward Pashta. “He sent it to me, I think.”

“I did,” the old man said. “Are you going to snatch the other half away from the Prime and run away, Sofia? Or would you like me to explain everything to you?”

• • •

Sofia liked to think that six years in the navy had made her a logical, methodical, and disciplined person. Yet here she was, the wild child she'd fought to tame was trying to claw out into the open again at the first painful mention of family. She had to get herself under control—though being hit with equal parts lust, terror, and weirdness in the last few minutes was enough to rattle anyone.

She sat back down and made herself concentrate on the man who claimed to be her relative, instead of on the man holding the other half of her heart. It took all her willpower to remain polite. “Please explain.”

Pashta smiled, and for a moment he looked just like her grandfather. “First, let me say that we have been searching for you for a long time. For you and your cousin Catherine. Where have you been all these years?”

Her suspicions heightened, and the mention of Cathy shook her. “
You're
the one offering explanations.”

“What do you know of our family history?”

Sofia said nothing, waiting him out.

He sighed. “Our family is different. We have secrets, very deep secrets. We are blessed with great powers, and cursed as well.”

Not to mention being full of bullshit,
she thought.

Hear him out,
Jason advised, his voice so clear it felt like he spoke inside her head.

Sofia turned sharply to look at Cage and was caught by his soothing, reassuring gaze.

This is hard stuff to explain. Harder to believe and accept. Give it a chance. Give Pashta a chance.

His calm voice caressed her soul; she couldn't be afraid with him beside her.

And
that
made no more sense than the old man's talk of curses and blessings.

“We are a tight-knit and insular people. We have to be. Your great-grandparents are the ones who made the decision to bring our people to America after the war. They wanted to start over, to escape the curse, to pretend that we are normal people.”

“I
am
a normal person.”

“You don't really believe that,” Cage said.

She glared at him.

He smiled and pointed toward the old man. “He's beating around the bush because he doesn't know how to explain that a werewolf bit one of your ancestors, and your whole tribe has been hiding from the natural-born werefolk ever since. That about sums it up, doesn't it, Pashta?”

“Were…wolf?”

Pashta nodded.

She smiled. “This is where Marty Feldman shows up and says, ‘There wolf,' right?”

Jason smiled at her reference to
Young Frankenstein,
but Pashta said, “What?”

“There are no such things as werewolves,” she told the old man.

“Just because you've never been formally introduced to any doesn't mean they don't exist,” Jason told her.

How did one get formally introduced to a werewolf? Shake paws?

That would be a polite way to start.

Jason sounded amused and calm, which helped her hold her temper. She didn't know why she found him reassuring when he might be as crazy as Pashta.

“What do you think those animals in the hallway were?” Pashta asked.

She didn't want to think about those slavering monsters. “Hounds of the Baskervilles,” she said. “Go on about my family. Promises of information are how you got me into this nuthouse.”

“We finally found you through the blog where you post about books and films on Live Journal.” The old man chuckled. “It amazes me how anyone can be Googled these days. Some secrets are becoming too hard to keep, don't you agree, Prime?”

Jason nodded. “But we have to keep trying.”

That's what she got for using her real name online. She sighed. “Go on,
Uncle
Pashta.”

“Neither your father nor Catherine's mother wanted anything to do with our heritage, though they both had the gift. She wouldn't use it, and he…he misused it tragically.”

Sofia made a sharp gesture. She didn't want to know anything about her good-for-nothing father, but she'd put up with hearing about him if she could learn other things. Her grandparents and great-grandparents had always been secretive and mysterious.

Maybe because they were hiding from nutty relatives who believed in werewolves.

“Once we finally tracked down you and your cousin, we asked you both here to explain your heritage to you. We asked Jason Cage to come because his skills are necessary to train you.”

So where was Cathy? She glanced at Jason. “What skills?”

“I'm an animal trainer and stage magician,” he said.

“You are the Beast Master!” Pashta proclaimed.

This sounded familiar. “Haven't I seen you on Leno?”

Cage gave a modest shrug.

“You work in Vegas, right?”

“Pay attention!” Pashta demanded. “This is important!”

“It's not our fault that you're making such a botch of the explanations, Pashta,” Jason said.

The old man gestured at Sofia. “I've never had to explain this to a stranger before. We need her to lead the hunt, we need her to train the ferals, but she is not one of us!”

“Nor will she ever be, if you keep thinking of her as an outsider. I can feel you reluctantly pulling out every word you say. It's giving me a headache.”

“The truth is difficult.”

Sofia seethed at knowing her relative wanted her only for some skill she supposedly possessed, even if he was a nutjob. Angry at herself for holding out hope again for some family connection, she got up. “That's it.”

“Wait!” the old man called.

She heard his desperation, but walked out anyway.

J
ason rose, needing to go after her, and held up the coin. “What is really going on here?”

“Do you remember what happened during the war?”

“The experiments? Is that what you meant by ‘It's started again'?”

Pashta nodded. “Some of our people have been taken. Perhaps they have Catherine, as well. She went missing soon after we found her. They may be looking for Sofia after today.” He banged his fist on the scarred wood. “We need that girl. We need you to show her how to tame the beasts those bastards make.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Though first we have to find the beasts, and rescue them.”

Or destroy them,
Jason thought, remembering back to 1943. “Who is doing this? Why?”

Pashta spread his hands out before him. “We don't know very much yet, but we have to act quickly. I'm trying to assemble a team, which is why I need Sofia and you.” He gave him a hard look. “You will honor your vow, won't you?”

When he put it like that, Jason couldn't point out that American werefolk had their own system for dealing with problems. Besides, Pashta's people were not proper werefolk. They were as likely to be hunted as they were to be helped.

“I'll protect the girl,” he said. “I'll train her.”

Pashta pointed to the door. “Then go after her.”

Because he could move faster than a mortal, Jason reached Sofia before she got into her car. He put his hand over hers as she began to open the door and said, “Let's start over, shall we?”

He was almost overwhelmed by the warmth and softness of her skin.

“You seemed like a sane person,” she said as she turned to him. “I don't know why I thought that.”

“It's probably because I'm so handsome and charming.”

“Good Lord, I hope I'm not that shallow.”

He ran his hand up her arm, delighted by the faint shiver this sent through her. “I notice that you aren't denying the attraction.”

“The attraction isn't the problem. The fact that you're a nutjob who believes in werewolves is the problem.” She glanced past his shoulder as an eerie sound filled the air. “Your SUV is howling.”

He sent a soothing thought toward his wolves. “That's just George and Gracie,” he told the suddenly tense woman. “You'll like them once you get to know them.”

“You may have noticed that I don't do well around dogs.”

“They aren't dogs. And neither were those creatures in the house.”

She paled and swallowed hard. “Wolves, then.”

Jason shook his head. “You don't
really
believe that.”

“Of course I do!” Her denial was sharp, and genuine.

“You're a Hunyara. Some instinct in you knows the difference between dogs and wolves, natural-born werefolk and your own lycanthropic relatives.”

She tried to back away from him. And who could blame her? He was going about this as poorly as Pashta. He wanted her badly and that was clouding his thinking.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said, and lifted his hand to touch her temple.

Central Europe, Winter 1943

He went with the Romany to a small encampment far deeper in the forest. It was nearly dawn when they showed him into the shelter of a hut. Inside, a large group of people sat around a small fire. Smoke swirled around the low ceiling. The air was acrid, and hardly warmer than outdoors. Energy permeated the room, almost as visible to Jason as the smoke, and he was aware of being in the presence of several powerful mortal psychics.

Werewolves and psychics? He wondered what was going on, but waited for the others to speak.

One of the younger males bent forward and peered at him closely. “Are you as young as you look, Prime? What are you doing out on your own?”

Jason would have been offended had the questions come from one of his own kind. Now he only shrugged. “There's a war on.”

The old man clipped the younger man behind the ear. “My son is rude, Prime. His name is Grigor. That little one skulking in the shadows when he should be in bed is my youngest, Pashta. I am Sacha Hunyara. And we”—he gestured around him—“are the Outcasts. People not of the mortal world, nor fully members of the supernatural world. We live in hiding, we keep our secrets, but now we need help.”

Being an outcast and fugitive himself, he was prone toward instant sympathy for them. But being softhearted toward mortals was what had gotten him in trouble in the first place.

“Explain,” Jason said.

“What do you know of werewolves?” Grigor asked.

“That most werefolk are born with the ability to change shape to wolf, bear, or whatever they become at will, and keep sane while doing it. But a mortal bitten by one of the werefolk turns into a creature forced to shift into a maddened animal during the full moon.”

“Precisely,” Sacha replied. “Our people, Prime, are somewhere in between. The natural-born see the bitten as diseased, and a threat to their own existence. They are more likely to hunt down and murder the ones their own renegades are responsible for making, than they are to try to help them.”

“Is there help?” Jason asked. “I'm sorry, but I don't know very much about shape-shifters.”

“We tame them,” Sacha told him. “The Hunyara took on that responsibility long ago.”

“We had to,” Grigor added. “It is better to tame than it is to kill members of our own family.”

“Some of us carry the disease,” Sacha said. “An ancestor was bitten, and the tribe cared for him. He escaped during a full moon and bit his own wife and son. She became a werewolf. With the son it was different. Instead of turning him, the attack brought out the skill to reach into the werewolf's mind. Ever since then, some of our people become werewolves, and others are able to control them. I am the current Wolf Tamer of the tribe.”

Northeast of San Diego, Spring, Present Day

“Does that explanation work for you?”

Sofia heard the question as though it were asked from a very long distance, then she realized that Jason's hands were on her face, his body pinning her against her car.

The chill of winter faded, along with the firelight and the faces and words that filled her head. She blinked as the hot, bright afternoon came sharply back into focus.

“What happened?” She looked sharply at the man holding her. He was an illusionist, a stage magician. “How did you do that?”

“Never mind,” he said, and took a step back. His hands moved to her shoulders, warming her more than the sunlight of the fading day. “I'm sorry that you're being asked to take a lot of things that sound like nonsense at face value.”

The screwy thing was that, coming from him, she half wanted to believe this nonsense. Sofia shook her head. “One of us has got to be crazy. You, specifically,” she added.

He laughed. “The supernatural is perfectly normal to me, but I understand your skepticism. Think about what I showed you.” He glanced at the sky and sighed. “We'll talk later.”

“What's wrong with talking right now?”

This was stupid! She should want nothing more than to run away from this guy, yet a knot of loneliness squeezed her heart at the prospect of him leaving. She was never going to see him again, was she?

“Don't look so sad.” He stroked her cheek, cupped her chin in his palm, and looked deep into her eyes. She wanted him to kiss her again. “I want to kiss you, too. May I?”

He lifted her hand to his lips.

So I can find you again,
his voice whispered in her mind.

She thought he was going to kiss the back of her hand, a romantic but terribly old-fashioned gesture. But she didn't mind because she'd been reading a lot of Jane Austen lately.

Instead, he bit her wrist.