“Before you leave, Nasil, please ask Rachel to prepare herself for my bedchamber. I believe I will be feeling quite amorous after this chase.”
Nasil didn’t even want to think about that image. He’d seen Sargon’s version of sex in the past. There had been little left of the woman to take away and dispose of. But the spider seemed a match for him, in more ways than one. Perhaps part of her attraction was that the spiders preyed on their kind. An edge of true danger to his life was something that Sargon had never experienced, as powerful as he had become over the centuries.
Nasil took a deep breath as his master began his chase of the lion and cautiously stepped to the entrance to the side chamber where their prisoners were held. The thrashing of the shifters against their chains didn’t bother him, but the sickly sweet scent of Dr. Portes set his nerves on edge. He stepped into the room, where dozens of battery-operated lanterns brightened the room.
“Dr. Portes? May I speak to you?”
The tiny Guatemalan woman turned from her task of feeding the two men in the cages. They glared at him as he entered, but the spider’s power prevented them from speaking. While he didn’t believe it wise to keep the tiger and lion healthy and at full strength, the good doctor had convinced Sargon it was vital to the experiments.
“Of course, Nasil. How may I assist you?” The singsong, echoing trill in her voice that made her sound like a chorus of cicadas made him shudder every time he heard it. He was certain that she used it only with him, because she knew it bothered him. Her smile was malicious.
“Sargon requests the pleasure of your company in his chamber. He will join you after his hunt.” Nasil struggled to keep the distaste from his voice and scent. She had too willing of an ear in his master, and he had no question about where the doubts about his loyalty had originated.
It was as though she heard his thoughts. “You’ve grown soft and contented in your assumed life, Nasil. You’ve become a danger to our mission. But Sargon will only see your treachery if you’re given enough rope.”
Nasil nodded his head. “I should have guessed that you were the one who suggested it. Why do you hate me so? We both serve the same master.”
She walked toward him, in human form as she did when a spider, with rapid, clipped steps. “Because you’re his favorite, but I intend to be soon. I cannot kill you without incurring his wrath, so I will simply make certain that you’re put in a position to fail.”
Nasil’s eyes narrowed. “Better than you have tried. You have no concept of my full potential, spider.”
Her coal-black eyes moved around in the sockets as she focused on him at short range and smiled again.
“And you have no concept of mine. Thank you for the message. You should hurry to your assignment, Nasil. You wouldn’t want to disappoint Sargon, now would you?”
He didn’t respond. He simply turned on his heel and departed as quickly as he could, determined to prove his loyalty by bringing a quick but painful death to the prisoner inside the German jail. He heard frantic whispers of desperate running in the distance before the cave swallowed the sounds. As he wound his way up to the hidden, secondary exit, he considered his position and that of Zuberi. While chasing the lion was a favorite game of his master’s—one that the tall black man considered a challenge—he had never been forced into a chase while injured.
But perhaps, just perhaps, the point was to catch him today. Only time would tell. But how long would it be before he was the one racing through the darkness with a devil at his heels?
CHAPTER Twelve
“Tahira?”
Bruce’s voice made her look up from the book in her lap. He was sweating profusely and splatters of mud covered his face and gloves. His natural scent of roasted hazelnuts was more intense with the sweat.
“Are you okay in here? It should just be a few more minutes until we’ve got a path cleared.”
“I guess it’s pretty icy out there, huh? I can hear the spinning tires from here.”
He shrugged and walked farther into the room to stand near the fire. He pulled off the leather gloves and wiped his forehead, then held his palms near the roaring flames. “It’s not so much icy as sloppy. It’s melted just enough to turn the snow into soup. But it’s so blasted deep that we push piles with the bumper, and then the wheels slip off the road and we have to dig out. Man, do I wish that Charles had a plow here.”
“Is Larry doing okay out there? I could go out and help.”
Bruce shook his head. “Nah, he’s driving the SUV with the heater blasting, so he’s fine, but my fingers were getting numb, so they sent me in here to warm up for a minute. But with Antoine and Matty both shoveling, it shouldn’t be much longer.”
Tahira threaded the ribbon between the pages she was reading and closed the book. She tapped her nails on the cover as she thought of what to say. “You know, I don’t know what to think about that, so maybe you can give me some advice. I’m not very good at accepting charity. I know I don’t have any money or even a passport, but I don’t like feeling… well, indebted to Antoine. I mean, yeah, we—” She broke off with a blush, not sure if anyone knew what happened upstairs. “But… is this normal for him?
He said that I could buy anything I wanted and he’d put it on his credit card. So is he just, like, massively generous and does that for you guys, too? I mean, I’m flattered that he would be willing to buy me some things that fit. Heck, he didn’t even have to let me use his sister’s stuff up to now. I don’t want to insult him, but—”
If Bruce knew about them having sex, he didn’t give any sign. He just sighed and started to sit down on the chair next to hers, but then remembered the mud and perched on the edge of the low table in front of her. He waggled his head and she couldn’t sort out any particular emotion from the jumble rising from him. “Well, yes and no. He can be quite generous, but he isn’t all that often. He pays us all a good wage, but it’s not like he showers us with cash. Larry and I still had to get a loan for our new condo. But,” he amended, “he did cosign for us when we couldn’t qualify, so that was nice. Not many bosses would do that.”
Tahira raised her brows a bit “He doesn’t pay you enough to qualify for a loan? That doesn’t inspire much confidence.”
“No, no. It’s not like that at all. It’s just that Larry and I have been sending a bunch of money to his aunt, who was really sick—the one here in Stuttgart—and some of our personal bills went overdue. Well, actually, a lot of our bills did, and our credit sucked. I was really embarrassed to tell Antoine, but he was super. He didn’t even ask what happened. He just offered to cosign so we wouldn’t lose the place we had put under contract.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Well, that’s different. But I’m trying to figure out whether to consider this a loan with the clothes and all. Should I offer to pay him back, or would that be insulting?”
Bruce nodded without hesitation. “Definitely insulting. When he does give a gift, he expects it to be taken freely. If it was a loan, you’d already know. Trust me. He doesn’t mince words. All that cat in him, I guess. He’s very up front, so you can usually take him at face value. Unless, of course, he’s lying through his teeth, which he also does very well, because of the council stuff. It’s all confidential and I know some of the issues are really delicate, so he lies about it if pressed. Still, money isn’t all that important to him, so I can’t imagine that it would be worth the trouble. Nah, he’d just tell you.”
“You’re certain? Have you been with Antoine long? I remember he said Larry had been with the show for a dozen years, but you don’t seem that old.”
Bruce laughed and the bright scent of oranges blended with the hazelnut. “Well, I’m older than I look—
I’m over thirty, and Larry’s nearly forty. I’ve been with the show since I was a teenager. I grew up in Reno, and when Antoine first started to tour there, I begged my way into a job shlepping meat for the cats. Hey, what kid doesn’t want to grow up and join the circus?”
Tahira couldn’t help herself from chuckling. “Well, me, for one. The whole ‘girl turns into tiger’ thing was a bit of a shock, because my folks didn’t tell Rabi or me about our background until Rabi turned fourteen. Nobody knew if we would turn, but he started to show some symptoms at my tenth birthday party, and they decided we should know it was a possibility. So, are you like Matty, where you come from a shifting family but didn’t turn?”
He pursed his lips and shook his head, leaning down a bit to rest his forearms on his knees. “Nope. Not me. I was just an ordinary human who got the shock of his life one day.”
When her jaw dropped and she felt herself rear back in surprise, he continued. “Long story, but I’ll make it short. I was just out of high school when they started to advertise the show. I decided that I would show up at the stage door every single day, begging anyone I spotted for a job. I was sort of weird as a teenager. I had posters of tigers and lions plastered all over my bedroom walls, and kept a python as a pet. It was Margo’s husband, Dale, who finally took pity on me. He’s one of the handlers at Antoine’s estate, where they keep the animals until showtime. Of course, I had never actually met Antoine, since he didn’t normally arrive until just before showtime, and I wasn’t supposed to ever be the same room as the cats, because—well, because they’re wild animals. But one day I accidentally walked past a back room in the auditorium on my way home when Antoine was training the cats. He trains them in animal form, and I thought it was really cool that this huge cougar was doing tricks without anyone around, and the other tigers were joining in. So I slipped inside and stayed in the shadows to watch. I figured if the cats decided I was lunch, I could just dive out the door and then lock them in.”
Tahira nodded as she realized where the story was going. “He changed back while you were watching, didn’t he?”
“Man! Did he ever! Max, that’s Simon’s father, was the dominant tiger, and he and Babette got into it. The cougar tried to jump in between them to stop the fight, but they were determined to tear each other up. Of course, I didn’t know that it was a mating thing at the time. They looked out for blood. I was ready to run and find Dale when I heard someone swearing in French. I turned back, and then the cougar just… well, poofed, and there was this naked blond guy in the ring with these ferocious tigers, snarling and roaring and tearing at each other.
“Before I could yell at the guy to get the hell out of there, the tigers froze in mid-bite and raised up into the air. He used his magic to pull them apart while I watched, and then he scolded them. Max actually floated into his cage and the door slammed shut. I just stood there frozen, until I heard a strangled sound behind me and Dale grabbed me by the arm. Naturally, Dale knew all about the Sazi, but he didn’t know what to do about me finding out, so he planted me in the men’s bathroom and locked the door until he had a chance to talk to Antoine.”
“Well at least they didn’t kill you. The Hayalet would have.”
“You should have seen me trying to climb the walls when Antoine walked into the room after I’d been sitting there for an hour or so, because I thought that was exactly what was going to happen. I was totally freaked out! If there had been a window, I would have been so out of there before he showed up. But—” and he smiled a bit at the memory, “he acted like this regular guy, not some sort of weird creature from the Twilight Zone. He was dressed in faded jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt with a smartass saying, almost the same shit as I was wearing. I figured out later that the clothes were intentional to make me comfortable, but it was pretty cool at the time—this big star treating me like a pal. He plopped down on the floor next to the door, tossed me a beer, and asked me to sit down and tell him exactly what I saw.”
“And the rest is history?” she asked. “Is that where you met Larry?”
Bruce nodded and smiled a bit, staring past her out the window. “Yeah. Antoine takes in ‘strays,’ as Margo calls them. Larry was one, and so was Matty—family members who get kicked out of a Sazi house for being human or weak, or even too aggressive. Even someone new in the area looking for a job can find one with the show. The Sazi are really close-knit. They hand out jobs without question if the person is family, regardless of the species, usually for a short time until the person gets in touch with their animal side or gets their head on straight.”
“It was strange—I didn’t even think about Larry as a potential partner for a couple of years after we’d been working together. I had a suspicion I was gay, but had never acted on it with anyone. Larry and I were just buds, going out for beers and hanging out watching sports on TV every weekend. But when he told me he was gay, too, I realized why I was spending so much time with him. I already thought it was cool that he was a snake, and I realized that I didn’t want him to leave when the time came for him to go home to his family.”
“But,” he said, slapping his palms down on his legs and standing up, “on that note, I’d better get my butt back outside and relieve him. Cold weather exhausts him pretty quick, and even with the heater going, he’ll want to lie down and rest for a while.”
“Hey,” Tahira said, glancing down at the book still in her lap, and sliding her finger down the bookmark to open it again, “for what it’s worth, thanks for answering my stupid questions. I guess I’ll go ahead and take the clothes he’s offering.” She shrugged. “I really do need them, and if he says it’s a loan, that’ll be okay. But I’ll presume it’s a gift unless he says otherwise.”
Bruce pulled his gloves back on and raised the hood on his coat, pulling the cords tight around his face.
“No problem. What I’ve found works best is to treat Antoine like any other person. I will warn you; he can be moody, and he has a quick temper. But you’re a cat, too, so you probably know what that’s like. He’s got a terrific sense of humor, though, and is really sharp. Plus,” he said with a wink, “I think he might just like you, if you know what I mean. It’s just a suspicion, of course—”
She blushed again, to the roots of her hair, and hoped it wouldn’t show too horribly. “Yeah, I think I have the same suspicion. I sort of like him, too.”