"I am not getting involved in a war, political or otherwise, between Sabrina and O'Meara. Especially not on O'Meara's side!"
"Why the hell not? She's honest! That's a lot better than Sabrina, who's been trying to box me up and send me to Abu Dhabi since I woke up sporting a tail."
"And what a tail it is!" Jowls sang, and I realized I was lashing. I stilled it, to Jowls’ visible disappointment, and looked back up to Jules.
"And you would be better off if she had succeeded in convincing you to join up with the TAU," Jules replied.
I growled in frustration. "Stop saying that. It did not end well for the last person who tried to force me down a path I didn't want to go. If you won't call her, then give me the number and I will find someone else to do the dialing."
"You don't even know what you’re asking." Jules pulled a cell phone from behind the counter and started to page through numbers. "She'll know it’s me because I'll have to talk to her. And then after she manages to rebond with you, she will go on to still lose this fight with Sabrina. Then you will be either dead or exiled, and Sabrina will be pissed at me for making her goals that much harder."
"Does it help at all that I'm pretty sure that Sabrina killed the Archmagus?"
"No. I would not be surprised in the least, and it only illustrates why helping you is a bad idea."
"So I owe you a favor."
"No, you owe Jowls a favor, as he is making a convincing moral argument on your behalf as well as promising to lose weight, which I have been trying to get him to do for half a decade."
Jowls pushed up against my flank with a purr that was mixed with chortle. "I take payment in chicken livers, catnip and long walks on the beach."
"And making me uncomfortable?"
"Oh, heavens no, you get that for free anytime."
"You realize you are a stereotype on four legs, right?"
"I am not! I've never been in a drama club!"
"Ahem." Jules held out the phone towards me. It read, "Dialing The Flaming Pain in the Ass," which made me think more of Jowls than O'Meara, but I kept my chuckle to myself as I trotted up to the outstretched phone.
"Jules? What the hell do you want?" O'Meara’s voice rushed out of the phone in an angry wave and struck that place in my head where the link had been with the force of a gunshot. My head rang with pain and longing.
"O'Meara! It’s me!" I said, suppressing a wince at O'Meara's phone etiquette, memories of working at a call center stirring in my mind.
"Hello?"
"Your voice won't work over the phone, Thomas—just make a noise," Jules said.
Disappointed, I gave a dejected chirp.
"Thomas?!" Disbelief and hope surged out of the tiny speaker. I responded with a much more enthusiastic chirp. The link started to thrash and probe.
Jules lifted the phone away and spoke to it. "He just walked in about five minutes ago. Said he got kidnapped by werewolves."
"I know! The bastards. The fur bags are impossible to find! We found two of their haunts, and we're sending them a message!"
Oh, crap. So much for Tallow's house. "Tell her to put out the fire!"
Jules shot me a confused look. "He says put out the fire."
"What? Why? They kidnapped him. They moved against a magus! By law they knew to expect vengeance."
"They were being controlled! It’s not their fault. Just . . ." My teeth chattered in frustration, my eyes moving from Jules to Jowls, who had retaken his usual perch on the counter. How much could I say? What had these two thought of Cyndi? "Come back to town. Sabrina's telling people you killed me." Jules repeated my words.
A pause on the other end. Jowls cocked his head and looked at me with an impenetrable expression. Jules's brow furrowed before the speaker came back to life. "All right, we're three hours from town,” O’Meara said. “Stay low." The call winked out.
Jules put the phone back behind the counter. His movements were precise; a tension had filled the room between us. "Thomas," he began, and then took a breath. "Jowls says you have blood on your breath. Feline blood. Whose blood is it?"
I took a step back and looked to Jowls for help, but while there was no sternness there, a wide-eyed sadness confronted me. Guilt, which I had no time for, welled up inside me like a molten lead balloon. I could have lied to Jules but not to Jowls's hurt expression. My teeth clenched. I would have ground them together, but my teeth locked together too tightly. "Cyndi had the entire pack utterly dominated with that blue aura of hers. She tried the same trick on me. I didn't have much choice."
"She's dead?" Jowls’s voice choked.
I started to hedge, to think maybe I had been mistaken. But the sound, the sharp crackle of her vertebra shattering between my jaws, came back to me. I had killed her. Quickly, hopefully painlessly, but it had been what I had done. "Yeah."
Jowls's lower lip trembled, and I thought I was about to see a cat cry for the first time in my life. "You
mad idiot
!" He roared at me so loud that I took steps backwards until my rump hit a display and cell phone cases rained down on top of me. "
I liked you and now you’re dead, dead, dead!
" He flopped over on his back and paddled at the air. "Oh, why do I always like the murderers! Oh, why, cruel world!"
I looked to Jules, who was trying to look stern while giving into the urge to eye-roll at Jowls’s melodrama. "You need to leave now. If you happen to survive whatever Sabrina is cooking, then you best find yourself a powerful patron. When that detail gets out, the TAU will come down on you like a ton of murderous bricks.”
Jowls sniffed. "It’s bit more like a mob than a union sometimes. Good-bye! Enjoy life while you can!" Jowls waved with his paw.
Eyeing them both, I backed up through the door and skedaddled.
I was halfway back to O'Meara’s office when a howl pierced the soft sounds of the town at night. Long and low, not as deep as Pa's but still familiar. Two more shot up after it.
The pack had come to the city.
I
tried to run all of the way back to the office and almost made it before a cramp hit me like a punch to the stomach, and I had to limp the last block. The muzzle extender had been lost in order to breathe. The door to the building still hung loosely off the hinges, and the door to the office was still splintered at the edges.
I heard Tallow’s heavy groans and labored breathing before I left the stairway. The air was thick with a pregnant musk and the sweet tang of blood.
I poked my head through the office door and got a very good view of Tallow's teeth. And then a
far
too close encounter with her tongue.
"Thank Luna it’s you!" Tallow exclaimed as I snorted and sneezed, trying to get the werewolf spittle out of my nose. She had been crouched right near the door, ready to take a chunk out of anyone who came through it. I made a mental note that I had to get back in the habit of knocking on doors, even nonexistent ones, before opening them. "I heard the pack just a few minutes ago." Her voice changed to a deep groan as one paw went to her belly.
In the corner, she had built a large nest composed of every remotely soft thing that had been in the office. The dividers were stripped bare of their fabric to make the skin of the nest, and the couch and chairs had been liberated of their cushions. Ixey's teddy bear sat in the middle of the nest, its stuffing poked through rows of holes and soggy fur. Its glassy eyes seemed to plead for mercy.
Tallow turned and limped back to her nest, collapsing into it with a relieved groan. "It won't be long now."
I paced over and gave her a nuzzle. "What can I do for you?"
A series of howls drifted through the room. I shuddered, and she grimaced through a painful contraction.
"That's Eagle, Kia and Merlot. They'll find us here eventually. They'll be able to smell the birth for miles." By process of elimination Kia had to be the alpha’s mate.
"What happens when they do?"
"We'll see. Gah!" She seized me by the shoulders and pulled me into a crushing hug. "In the meantime, you'll do much better than the teddy bear."
I swear that teddy bear looked relieved.
The next thirty minutes were both painful and rewarding. Tallow’s contractions started coming more and more, causing me to be hugged, squeezed and, in one particularly harrowing moment, bitten. I found her a broomstick to bite after that one. As the birth approached, she seemed to know what to do, which was good because I hadn't a clue. She stopped trying to crack my ribs and settled on her back, just using one hand-paw to squeeze a massive handful of my loose skin while bracing the other on the wall behind her head.
She was panting and groaning constantly, her tongue hanging sideways out of her mouth. Her teeth started to chatter, and the pressure on my poor scruff became a death grip. I asked her what's wrong.
"I-I-I c-can't hold it!" No sooner had the
t
sound passed through her lips did she throw back her head and let loose a howl so loud I swear the windows rattled. Three more howls answered it. "Damn." Tallow groaned but it was too late. It had begun.
The scent of it all was so heady that it almost made me dizzy and, more disturbingly, hungry. Still, once the births started it happened quickly. First a small nose appeared, then as Tallow's entire body seized with the force of the contraction the entire head appeared, and with another the rest of the silver-furred body slipped out. The little cub was adorable, even slick with juices. With his mother groaning and heaving, another soon joined its sibling, this one black with white speckles, and finally a third was ruddy brown, the only one that I could say looked like the wolf I presumed to be their father. They were all far smaller than I had imagined them being in Tallow's huge belly but bigger than mere puppies, about the size of small terriers with huge paws and eyes.
"How many?" Tallow whispered.
"Three."
"Shit. It’s going to be weeks before I have enough tits." I chuckled as she gave a final groan and the mass of afterbirth slid out of her. The scent of the gore redoubled as the pups started to cry for their mother. "Give them to me," Tallow asked in a tired whisper. I looked at her, suddenly nervous, a bit afraid of both her and the fact the cubs smelled delicious. But there was nothing in her amber eyes but trust. As carefully as I could I took the scruff of each one in my mouth and delivered them to their mama. She took each one and began to clean them as only a canine mother could. Three howls split the night air. They were getting closer.
"Nothing to do but wait now." Tallow’s ears were bent with worry.
I looked at the pile of viscera that sat in the middle of the nest. The entire room shouted
pregnant
right up into my nostrils, a scent so potent that even the faintest trace of it would lead the wolves right to the drafty office. An idea occurred to me. "They'll come by scent, right?"
"Yes."
"Then let’s spread the love around." I tugged the topmost layer of fabric free from the nest and folded it over the afterbirth, first one way then the other. I grabbed the top corner and wa-bang—instant afterbirth in a bag.
"Thomas, we'll be safer facing them together. They might listen to reason if they're faced with a fair fight." She sounded as convinced as I was about the idea.
"Well, if I do this right, they won't find you at all."
I took my bag of guts and ran out the door.
It occurred to me I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured that wouldn't be any different from the last two days. I ran down the street in the direction I hoped the pack's howls were coming from. I didn't know this part of town particularly well. I never had cause to go down to the police station. But there was a motel somewhere around here. That might be a good place to stash the first bit of viscera. If I could find a vet clinic or hospital, that would work too.
The streets were absolutely deserted, so I loped unimpeded down the sidewalk, dodging around the pools of light cast by the occasional streetlight. I found the motel just as the wolves let loose another howl. Nice of them to let me know that they were so close by.
The motel itself was one of those basic discount hotels. A cheap wall of concrete blocks surrounded the parking lot and was topped with steel spikes painted white. The motel itself was a long narrow building, three stories high and just wide enough so you could hold two rows of rooms and the hallway. It was my hope that the wolves would be reluctant to rampage through a populated hotel. If not, this was probably an incredibly stupid idea. I had to admit it might be stupid regardless.
Still, keeping Tallow and her pups alive seemed worth the effort. Trouble was, how to get a cougar the size of a Saint Bernard and carrying a sack of dripping meat to boot inside. The front door was out.
I skulked through the car entry gate and hugged the wall as I prowled the perimeter of the building. The parking lot wasn't exactly full as I slunk in between the cars. I didn't see any cameras, but that didn't mean they weren't there. All the doors were closed, but somebody had left a second-story window wide open. It looked like my only way in that didn't require a key or thumbs.