Tempting Danger (10 page)

What did it mean to a lupus to be clanless? Why would it happen? Was he outlawed, or had he never been brought into a clan for some reason? She’d tried calling him around supper, but no one answered. Not even an answering machine or voice mail. She’d left a message with the surly gnome who owned the club, since presumably Seabourne would show up for work tonight.

She jotted “Outlaw?” under Seabourne’s name and moved on to the next column: the Azá.

Her pencil began tapping again, this time with irritation. Mech had left a message on her voice mail. He’d interviewed a couple of elders at the Church of the Faithful . . . which would have been okay if he’d checked with her first. She was lead. He wasn’t supposed to hare off on his own.

Not that he’d done a bad job. Mech was methodical, and he’d covered the obvious questions about Fuentes. But the message he’d left raised other questions for her. Tomorrow, she told herself, she’d read his report, then check out the church. And have a little talk with Mech.

Her pencil moved on, stopping at
Lupi
. Under it she’d written, “Promiscuous. Species Bill/prejudice. Pack (Clan): the priority, messy internal politics. Hierarchical. Jealousy?”

Rachel said that lupi weren’t jealous. But Grandmother said the apparent lack of jealousy was nurture, not nature, in action. They were taught not to be sexually possessive, just as children are taught to share their toys.

But childhood greed often lives on into adulthood. Lily had arrested plenty of people who wanted what they wanted, when they wanted it, and didn’t see anything wrong with taking it—as long as they weren’t caught. “Play nice” training didn’t guarantee results.

Had Turner burned with a jealousy all the more powerful for being prohibited, hidden?

Her foot was falling asleep and her hip was throbbing. Lily frowned at the cat. “I am going to have to move soon.”

Dirty Harry’s eyelids lifted just enough for him to glare at her out of baleful yellow slits. He punctuated his nonverbal comment with a flex of one paw, digging the claws into the cloth of her
gi.

“Quit that,” she told him. “I’m in no mood for a demanding male.” In fact, if she didn’t know better, she’d have thought she was getting her period. She felt restless and grouchy, and she’d apparently moved into klutz territory.

She’d landed badly tonight. A simple shoulder throw, and she’d gone down hard, like a beginner afraid of the mat. Hugely embarrassing. John had looked at her so reproachfully. But then, her
sensai
had never really forgiven her for not pursuing the art more diligently. He’d wanted her to compete, but judo had never been about trophies for her. At first it had been a way to feel safe. Now . . . she wasn’t sure. Habit? An unwillingness to lose her skills . . . or maybe she still needed to feel safe.

Her frown deepened. “Okay, Harry, move it. I may need to use that foot again someday.” She reached for him, knowing he’d jump down before he’d let her pick him up and move him.

He did. Then he sat there glaring at her like a fuzzy, malevolent demon, tail twitching. When he was sure he had her attention, he stalked into the kitchen.

“Oh, all right.” She got up and followed him.

He wasn’t supposed to be fed again till morning, but Harry didn’t agree with the vet about his proper weight. She supposed if she’d lived on sparrows and garbage for awhile the way he obviously had, she’d have some food issues, too.

Lily got out the dry food. He looked disgusted and stalked over to the refrigerator. “Just a little bit,” she told him, put the dry food back, and got out some milk. The vet said cow’s milk wasn’t good for cats, especially overweight cats, but Harry adored it, and she hated to deny him his treat. She poured a stingy amount into a saucer and set it down.

Lily wasn’t at all sure she was doing things right with Dirty Harry. He was her first cat—if she bowed to convention and called him hers. Most of the time she thought it was the other way around. She’d found him on the beach about a year ago, half-starved, with one leg swollen and useless and killing him with infection. It was the only time he’d ever let her pick him up.

“So what do you think, Harry?” She leaned against the refrigerator, arms crossed, and watched him lap up his treat. “The animal world—excuse me, I mean nonhuman-type animals—isn’t free of sexual possessiveness. Chances are that’s what happened to your ear, back before we met.”

Harry ignored her.

“And wolves do fight over females. But lupi aren’t exactly wolves, are they? They have rules about fighting, ritualizing it, Grandmother says—though it’s not supposed to happen over a woman.”

Harry polished off the last drop and began cleaning his face. Lily rubbed her hip absently. Something was nagging at her, some sense that things didn’t add up. “Either Turner killed him in a jealous rage, or . . . what?”

She pushed away from the refrigerator and started pacing. It didn’t take many steps to be back in her living room. “Unless Turner is besotted or wildly territorial about Rachel, he didn’t have a reason to kill Fuentes. Maybe he did it. But if not . . . if not, what’s the motive?”

Lily stopped by the window, scowling at the closed drapes. Who benefited by Fuentes’s death? That was always a good question. Half the time, the answer involved money. Maybe not this time, though. There was a small insurance policy through his job, according to Rachel, but it wouldn’t do much more than get him buried.

Passion? He’d played around, again according to Rachel. But it hadn’t been an angry husband or boyfriend who’d killed him. It had been a wolf.

Well, what was the most obvious result of his death?

“Me,” Lily said slowly. “Investigating his murder.” And focusing on Turner because he’d been involved with Rachel, and he was a lupus. And the one thing they were sure of was that Fuentes had been killed by a lupus.

Wait a minute. Maybe the question really was, why had Fuentes been killed by a wolf? Not just by a lupus. A lupus who’d Changed. A lupus who might as well have left her a note telling her one of his kind had done this.

The lupi were most deadly when they were furry, but they were fast and scary-strong in human form, too. He could have killed Fuentes without Changing.

Harry stopped against her leg once, purring. “You’re right,” Lily said. “It’s late. I’d better get to bed.” But as she went through her bedtime routine, one question kept circling around in her head.

Why had Fuentes’s killer Changed?

SEVEN

A
scrappy little road wound up into the mountains northeast of the city. About twenty miles up that road some forgotten county planner had stationed a scenic overlook boasting a cement picnic table and a metal trash drum. At eleven o’clock Rule was waiting there, leaning against his car with his arms crossed and his nose lifted.

The sun was a glaring disk in an empty sky, but there was wind—a sharp, dusty wind smelling of sage and creosote and rabbit. Before him the folded earth descended in irregular humps to the city, satisfyingly distant. A mile up the road, hidden by scruffy oaks and the curve of the little road, lay the entrance to Nokolai lands.

Rule closed his eyes and wished for time. He needed to be in two places at once right now—and neither was where he wanted to be. He’d been trying to reach Cullen all morning. He needed to find him, or at least find out if his friend had pulled one of his disappearing acts. Every so often Cullen dropped out of sight, telling no one where he was going or when he’d be back. It was annoying at the best of times.

This was not the best of times.

Rule held himself in quietness, trying to settle. It had been too long since he’d run these hills in his other form. Too long since he’d even walked them in this one. He needed to absorb and be absorbed by the land, and there was no time . . . yet he was here now.

He looked upwind, searching out the source of the rabbit scent, and found it beneath a scrubby bush, where a dun-colored patch of fur quivered, barely distinguishable from the dirt. Rule watched, motionless himself, and breathed deeply. It helped.

Her face floated across the surface of his mind . . . a heart-shaped face with a strong, straight nose and eyes like black almonds. When she smiled, her mouth made a pretty triangle, and her cheeks rounded. He thought of her skin—thick cream, with honey stirred in. And her scent. A touch spicy. Wholly human. Unique.

The memory aroused him, turned him restless. He wanted to see her now, not two hours from now.

And that, he thought, was not a good sign. Not good at all.

A few minutes later, tires crunched on gravel. The rabbit bolted from its hiding spot. Rule turned to watch a dirty gray Jeep pull up behind his convertible. Two men got out instead of the single man he’d been expecting. Both wore jeans and athletic shoes. Both were bare from the waist up. One—the Jeep’s driver—had three long scars across his chest, remnants of the attack two days ago.

He was a big man, with the build of a fullback and a basketball player’s hands. Unusually dark for a lupus, he had his mother’s coppery skin. His silver-shot hair was black and very short. The leather sheath on his back held a machete; the one at his waist was for his knife. The blades of both would be sharp, Rule knew, in spite of the softness of the metal. There was too much silver in the alloy for it to hold an edge well.

The Jeep’s passenger was built like the blade the first man carried—long and slim, with broad, bony shoulders standing in for the hilt. His face was narrow, his skin and eyes pale, and his light brown hair was long enough to tie back. Most people would have guessed him to be about Rule’s age.

They would have been right. But then, most people didn’t know Rule’s real age. “Mick.” Rule straightened, a familiar wariness stealing the bit of ease he’d snatched. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Drove down,” the slighter of the two men said as he approached. “The vineyard can toddle along without me for a few days. Toby sends his love,” he added. “Along with a request for Sweet Tarts or anything else to rot his teeth. You know how Nettie is about a healthy diet.”

Rule’s heart jumped. “You saw him?”

“For a few minutes, before the slave drivers carted him off to his lessons. You’re overreacting there,” Mick commented. “No need to yank the boy clear across the country. No lupus would harm a child.”

Rule just shook his head. Mick didn’t know about Cullen or what he’d discovered. For now, that’s how Rule wanted it. He held out his hand, and the two of them clasped forearms in formal greeting—then Mick grinned and pounded Rule’s back hard enough to have staggered a human.

It wasn’t the mock-friendly blow that had Rule pulling back, his lip lifting in a snarl, knees flexed, and arms ready at his sides. It was the scent.

The big man gripped Mick’s shoulder. His voice was cavern-deep. “Cry pax.”

“For the Lady’s sake, I just slapped him on the back!”

Benedict snorted. “You stink of so much
seru
even a human would react. I’ve no time to waste on this foolishness. Cry pax.”

Mick looked sullen, but he muttered the word. Rule eased his stance, but it would take a while for the chemicals flooding his body to disperse. The stink of his brother’s hostility hung heavy in the air.

“And you,” Benedict told him, “had better learn control. The Lu Nuncio can’t afford to react like a challenge-crazed adolescent.”

Rule’s lips tightened. He didn’t react that way anymore—except with Mick. The two of them had always been competitive. Mick had envied Rule for living at Clanhome. When they were children, Rule had envied Mick for having a mother who wanted him. But the relationship hadn’t turned bitter until Isen named his youngest son his heir. “I know. I’m on edge.”

“All the more need for control.” Benedict released Mick’s shoulder. “We need to get straight to business. I don’t want to be away from the Rho for long.”

“Your choice,” Rule said. “We could have met closer to him.” Why had Benedict brought Mick to their meeting? He must know there were things Rule couldn’t discuss with anyone else present.

“I argued with him about that, believe it or not,” Mick said, rubbing his shoulder. “Not that it did any good. But I don’t see any reason to ban you from Clanhome.”

Benedict favored him with one of those expressionless looks that used to make Rule squirm, back when Benedict was training him. “You’re very tender about your brother’s rights.”

“I suppose you expected me to rejoice that he’s banned.” One side of Mick’s mouth tucked down. He looked away. “I’ve got a problem with my little brother being Lu Nuncio. You know it, he knows it, everyone knows it. Maybe that makes me all the more angry when someone else shows disrespect.”

“The ban is customary. Wait.” He slashed a hand through the air, cutting Mick off. “I’m aware that custom bars him from the Rho’s presence, not Clanhome. But Isen agreed with my decision.”

Mick looked shocked. Rule wasn’t. He’d guessed as much. Isen hadn’t been asleep or in Sleep the whole time. He could have countermanded Benedict’s orders . . . if he’d wanted to.

“Rule,” Mick said, “I—I don’t know what to say. Our father
can’t
suspect you.”