Wild Blood (16 page)

The cardinal chuckled and winked at Fenris. “My, isn't he the loyal little doggie? And who is this fine figure of a youth?” Amadeo asked, eyeing Skinner as if he were a slave on the auction block. “Another member of your ragtag band no doubt, judging from his abysmal taste in clothes …”

“His name is Skinner. He's only recently discovered his Wild blood.”

“Ah! A virgin!” Amadeo chuckled knowingly.

“Who else is here?” Rend asked, glancing about the lobby.

“I saw the Hound an hour ago in the bar,” Fenris replied as he removed his peaked hat and ran his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “He was drunk, as usual. He had Shaggybreeks with him and they were reminiscing about the Viking invasions by the time I left. There's nothing more tiresome than listening to them rehash the good old days while they're in their cups!”

“It's good seeing you both, and I'd really love to hang and chat,” Rend said as he led Skinner away from the oddly dressed couple, “but we need to get Skinner cleared first. I'll catch both of you later in the bar!”

“Sounds perfect, my pet!” Amadeo grinned. “And be sure to bring your new friend with you!”

“Is that guy really a Nazi?” Skinner whispered as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Was, not is,” Rend stressed. “And, yes, Fenris was a high-ranking member of the Gestapo during World War Two.…”

“But that was over seventy years ago, and he can't be any older than forty-five!”

“Try two hundred and forty-five,” Rend replied. “Vargr aren't like humans in a lot of ways—one of which is aging. Mixed-bloods can live to be four hundred years old, the full-bloods even longer. Hell, Amadeo back there was born the year Christopher Columbus sailed for America!”

“You mean he's over five hundred years old?” Skinner gasped in amazement.

“Yep. His sire was none other than Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Alexander VI. And before you ask, yeah, the Pope was a vargr—and not the only one.”

“I've heard of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, but not this guy …”

“That's because they had different mothers. His was vargr, theirs was human. That's why they're dead and Amadeo is still farting around.”

“I thought you said vargr are impotent in human form.”

“They are—but there are always those willing to do anything to have access to power.”

Rend led Skinner to the east wing and up a narrow flight of steps that twisted back on themselves like the chambers of a nautilus.

“Where are we going?” Skinner asked

“To see the Bitch Queen; the big mama who runs Wolfcane Lodge and controls most of the vargr in North America.”

“Is she Jag and Jez's mother?”

“She's their dame,” Rend said, correcting him. “The pedigreed prefer that term to ‘mother'.”

The narrow staircase ended at a doorway tall enough for a vargr in Wild form to easily enter, but required a human to stoop. Rend rapped on the door jamb and a panel slid open in the door. A second later a vargr poked its snout through the slot and sniffed loudly, then quickly withdrew. A second later the door was unlocked and swung open. The guard glowered first at Rend, then at Skinner. Like the ones posted at the main gate, he carried an automatic weapon slung over one twisted, hairy shoulder. It struck Skinner as about as necessary as a shark carrying a switchblade.

“We're here to see Lady Melusine,” Rend said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Suddenly a tall man dressed in a black frock coat with a stiff Gladstone collar stepped forward. He had long, luxuriant white hair that was pulled away from his face and fastened in a loose ponytail that hung well below his shoulders, and eyes that shone like rubies. “Of course she's expecting them, you moronic lickspittle!” he snapped, speaking with an accent born of the finest British public schools. “Her ladyship told you as much!”

“Forgive me, Lord Feral,” the guard said, cringing in deference. “I forgot.”

“Her ladyship is looking forward to making her acquaintance with your new find,” Feral said to Rend, then gave Skinner a disdainful glare that made it clear that the Bitch Queen's eagerness was not shared.

Lord Feral led them down a richly appointed hallway to the royal presence, his spine ramrod straight and one fist clasped behind him, pressed against the small of his back. Skinner could easily see how similar Jag was to his father. Despite their differences in taste when it came to dress and decorum, they shared an aggressive hauteur that made them bristle with hostile energy.

He and Rend were ushered into a sumptuously appointed bedroom hung with rich tapestries. Seated before a huge vanity table littered with various jars of ointments, unguents and perfumes sat Lady Melusine, Bitch Queen of the Werewolves. Her face was painted dead white and had a small beauty mark pasted to the corner of one of her eyes, which were of a disconcertingly brilliant blue. Her lips and cheeks were so brightly rouged she looked like a porcelain doll. On her head she wore a powdered wig, dressed high and shaped with pads of cotton and wool. As they entered she flashed a brilliant smile with freshly carmined lips.

“Rend! How marvelous to see you again, mon cher! And you've brought a new little friend,
n'est-ce pas
?”

As she rose to greet them Skinner saw she was dressed in a pale lavender taffeta gown, the long V-pointed bodice laced up the front over a stomacher. The long flounced skirt opened in the front and was gathered full at the hip, shored up by stiff petticoats, a bustle and strange basketlike projections worn on each hip. She reminded him more of a cake decoration than a queen.

“Come closer,
mon chien
. I will not harm you,” she said, smiling at Skinner.

“Yes, ma'am,” replied and obediently stepped forward.

“How polite! I like that in a whelp!” Lady Melusine said, fixing him with a sultry gaze Skinner recognized all too well. “Are you a good doggie?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And what is you name,
jeune chien
?”

“Skinner Cade, ma'am.”

“You will have no need of a surname after this weekend; that is a human conceit,” she sniffed in distaste. “Those born outside the Pack surrender their previous identities once they join it. But you may continue to call yourself ‘Skinner'; it is an appropriate vargr name.”

Skinner glanced at Rend, who silently mouthed ‘say thank you', before replying: “Thank you, your ladyship.”

“What a delicious pup you are!” she said with an appreciative smile. “And with such striking eyes! They're quite mesmerizing. I've seen vargr with red, blue and even grey eyes, but never golden. What about you, my dear?” she asked, turning to Lord Feral.

“Only once before,” her consort replied, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he spoke.

“So, dear Skinner, where did my son find you?”

Rend cleared his throat. “I'm the one who brought him into the Pack, milady.”

Lady Melusine raised a delicately tweezed eyebrow in his direction. “Why is that?”

“I had little choice,” Rend said hurriedly. “Skinner was badly wounded. If I hadn't acted when I did, he would have fallen into the hands of the police. And I thought we could use a replacement after we lost Growler in Los Angeles …”

A startled look crossed Melusine's heavily made-up face. “Growler—?”

Rend looked even more uncomfortable than before. “Forgive me, milady. I thought you knew. I was under the impression Jag had notified you—?

“What happened to him?” she asked, all traces of her previous gaiety instantly evaporating.

“We were in East Los Angeles and ran afoul of coyotero while on a hunt along the river …”

Lady Melusine put a hand to her mouth and abruptly turned her back on Rend before he finished speaking.

“Your audience is over,” Lord Feral said curtly. “When you see my son, tell him I would speak with him.”

Rend bowed his head obediently as he hurried Skinner out of the room.

Skinner waited until they were headed back down the curling stairway to ask Rend who Growler was.

“He was Melusine's favorite whelp.”

“You mean he was Jag's brother?”

“Demi-brother,” Rend explained. “His sire was Lord Mammon, Lady Melusine's previous consort, and one of the few she genuinely loved. She made no secret of preferring Growler to the twins.”

“What happened to this Lord Mammon?”

“Feral killed him in the rut melee, of course. That's how you become a consort.”

“You mentioned something about coyotes …?”

“You'll learn about the coyotero, in time,” Rend said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Right now, all you have to do is keep your eyes open the next day or two and you'll discover everything you need to know about vargr society. I've had enough with playing tutor—c'mon, let's go check out the bar!”

Chapter Eighteen

If anyone had ever told Skinner that he would one day be drinking beer in the company of werewolves, listening to them reminisce about the Dark Ages, the Reign of Terror, and Nazi death camps, he would have laughed. And if they'd told him he'd be bored stiff on top of it, he would have thought they were nuts as well.

“And then I shook off their guards and grabbed a knife from the village chieftain and yell: ‘Who dies first?' Well, that gave 'em pause, don't you know!” Shaggybreeks belched to punctuate his story, wiping the beer foam from his mustache. “Then, to make it look good, I went ahead and jumped into a pit full of half-starved wolves anyway! The humans assumed I'd been torn to bloody ribbons, of course, but I had nothing to fear. They were family, you see?”

“Really?” Skinner replied, stifling a yawn.

“Aye! I'm quarter wolf, and I'm proud of it!” Shaggybreeks proclaimed, bringing his tankard down onto table hard enough to slosh its contents. “Not like some I could mention! Way they run things nowadays, I couldn't even be born! My dame—bless her sweet hide—was ulfr. There weren't many half-wolf bitches, even back then. My sire was a vargr by the name of Tarquin. He was a Roman general stationed on the Rhine. After she whelped me, he brought us back to the outpost. He claimed I was his bastard by a Teutonic woman, and kept my dame as a ‘pet'.

“We were a happy, secret family for several years—until my sire was caught mounting my dame while in his Wild skin. He was denounced as a necromancer and drawn and quartered, as was she. I managed to escape the murdering bastards and flee into the Black Forest.” Shaggybreeks fixed Skinner with a drunken stare, made all the more penetrating by his single eyebrow. “What about you, pup? What's your pedigree?”

“I don't know,” he replied with a shrug. “I was raised human.”

“You look like one of Feral's by-blows, if you ask me,” Shaggybreeks grunted as he got to his feet. He was big, burly and excessively hirsute, with tufts of thick body hair peeking out from the neck of his tunic. He wore woolen hose, cross-gartered sandals and a wolf skin cape fastened about his throat with a bronze fibula. It wasn't hard to believe that this hard-drinking, foul-smelling drunkard had once been one of the most feared Viking warriors to terrorize the coasts of Western Europe. “But that's the trouble with vargr today. No sense of history. Excuse me—I need to make room for more ale.”

“Don't let us stop you, cousin,” Fenris sneered. After the Viking lumbered off in the direction of the bathroom, the Nazi leaned forward. “Just so you don't get the wrong idea, we usually exclude those with bestial pedigrees from the Howl. But Shaggybreeks is the last of the old breed, so he is granted special dispensation. The same holds true for the Hound over there,” he said, pointing to a red-headed vargr dressed in nothing but a kilt and blue woad. “They're dinosaurs, really; remnants from when Mankind still dwelt in the land of myth and dream.”

Suddenly the interior of the lounge had become uncomfortably close. Skinner set aside his drink and got to his feet. “Excuse me … I think I need … some air.…”

He staggered through the lobby and out the front door. The smell of aspen leaves and pine needles was bracing and helped clear his head. It was close to dusk and the setting sun threw long shadows across the lodge's carefully manicured lawn. He wasn't in a big hurry to return to his drinking companions, so he decided to take a walk and scout out his surroundings. Anything was preferable to spending the rest of the evening listening to the others drone on and on about their exploits.

Although it was well into spring elsewhere in the country, at this altitude there were still patches of snow and crusted ice underneath the trees and shrubbery. The wind coming down off the nearby mountains was sharp, threatening to become frigid once the sun had set. Still, Skinner found being close to the Wild invigorating, regardless of the situation. Following an instinct he did not fully comprehend, he dropped to the ground and vigorously rolled about on the grass. Without realizing it, he shifted into his Wild skin. However, the sound of high-powered rifle fire put an end to his romp. He sat up, sniffing the air cautiously, then loped off in the direction of the blood he smelled. A second later he spotted the vargr called Snuff standing over a badly wounded human.

“Sector Nine reporting: intruder located and immobilized,” he said, speaking into a hand-held radio.

Skinner moved closer for a better look at the man bleeding to death at Snuff's feet. He was white and looked to be in his mid-thirties, with long, matted hair and an equally unkempt beard. He wore dirty, ragged clothes and a tattered cloth coat that was unsuited for the harsh climate of the Continental Divide There was blood on his lips and blood flowing from his nostrils. Snuff had shot him in the side, doing irreparable damage to his spleen and liver.

“Please …” The dying man gasped, a bubble of bloody froth forming at the corner of his mouth. “Let me see her … I just want to see her …”