Authors: Nancy Gideon
With one hand, Jacques gripped a thickly corded neck, pushing snapping teeth away as his other groped wildly about, finally closing around a weighty cement urn. He swung hard, hearing bone crack as contact was made. Suddenly freed, he scrambled up, getting a brief look at the crushed features of Rohm Bentley. They’d spent many a late night together over cards and stories, stories they’d never share again. Jacques forced himself to look away and moved on.
He’d barely gone three running strides before another figure slammed into his back, knocking him facefirst into a marble wall etched with a list of the generations housed behind it. Blood spilled from a split in his brow, staining both stone and shirtfront as he was dragged back and up onto his knees by the huge hand crumpling his windpipe.
Just as his vision began to fade and spark, he saw an image glide out of the shadows, long weighted whips whirling overhead before spinning in a deadly arc. The pressure abruptly disappeared from his throat,
allowing him to suck a sharp, sweet breath of air as his attacker fell back, broken neck tangled in jumper cables.
Jessie Vaughn, who’d taught him to spear fish from his flat-bottomed pirogue, would never return home to his mate and three children.
Jacques wobbled to his feet and focused on stealthy shadows moving rapidly up on Nica. Using all his strength, he wrenched one of the metal pickets from the grillwork fence surrounding the Bartlet family and hurled it like a spear straight through the jugular of Bobby Tibble, whose head he’d held over a planter box outside Pat O’Brien’s after one too many Mardi Gras hurricanes. In the darkness, his lifeblood flew like ropes of Krewe beads.
Jacques dropped down onto all fours, stomach roiling, blood and tears blinding his eyes. And then he saw a flash of movement, a sinewy figure springing up to the top of one of the tombs, leaping with the fluidity of spilled mercury from one to the next and the next.
“Max!”
Jacques staggered to his feet, rushing in pursuit.
He heard just a whisper. Like a fierce bird of prey, Nica swooped down from the concrete cross atop one of the crypts, leaping over his head and onto the man lunging at him from behind. He heard them both fall but didn’t look back as the sound of Nica’s snarls overtook brief panicked cries.
Finally, Jacques paused, breathing hard, gaze flying
the length of two shadowed paths, seeing nothing. Then a ripple like dark smoke from a chimney.
“Max!”
He took a running step and the stone beneath his feet cracked, splitting open for a jarring drop into a buried vault hidden beneath tangled ropes of ivy. His feet broke through aged and weakened wood, landing atop he didn’t want to consider what . . . or who. It took him a dazed moment to take stock of his situation, wedged midchest between two slabs of stone caving downward, arms pinned to his sides.
And then he heard a soft rumbling growl.
Jacques couldn’t turn toward the sound, but he could sense Savoie somewhere close behind him.
“This is your doing, LaRoche.”
As his gaze came up, a pipe slammed against his jaw. Pain burst through his brain like fireworks, bright and explosive, settling into dizzying pindots of color.
Morris came into view. “You think you’re something, don’t you, with your fancy new friends and that manipulative little whore, stripping me of my job and my pride right in front of everybody. You’re not much now, are you? You should have minded your bar and your own business. Now I’m gonna have to finish it because Tib didn’t have the heart to.”
As Morris raised the pipe to deliver a skull-cracking blow, a hiss sounded behind him, followed by the blinding phosphorescent flash of the road flare. It struck Morris in the back, igniting his shirt, sending him in tight circles, arms flailing. Nica knocked him to
the ground and crouched down, knee on his sternum, her smile coldly vicious, her mouth wet and red.
“I got to wondering on the drive out here,” she began. “Why keep Savoie alive? Why didn’t you just kill him and take him out to dump in the swamps? He was worth more alive than dead, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Morris moaned.
“Frost said he had someone on the inside, and that someone was you, wasn’t it? How much did it take for you to betray your own kind?”
“It wasn’t like that. They caught me on my Patrol, told me no one had to die if I’d let them have Savoie. They gave me a card with a number on it. I was gonna throw it away, until he brought them back.” He screamed wildly to Jacques, “Why did you bring them back? You’re gonna kill us all!”
“Oh, yeah, right. You were just doing your duty to your clan, removing a dangerous threat,” Nica sneered. “For a tidy profit. That’s what this was about. You were turning Savoie in for cash.”
Morris surged up suddenly, fear lending him the strength to topple her. He’d scrambled a few yards when the lethal shape of Max Savoie sprang and flattened him to the ground, separating head from shoulders in one swift killing blow.
Nica gripped Jacques under the arms, twisting his torso, pounding on the stones with her heels until they gave way, increasing the opening far enough for her to pull him out. He crawled onto the grass, weaving up to
his feet only to be taken down on his back again with Max crouched over him drooling blood, eyes flaming gold and red.
Instead of struggling, Jacques caught his face between his hands, holding him away, keeping him still. “Max, you know me. Look at me. I’m your friend. I’m here to help you. I’m here to take you home.”
Panting, snarling with each breath, Max hesitated. And that gave Nica enough time to come up behind him, seizing the side of his neck in a fierce compression that had him dropping across Jacques in a motionless heap.
“Vulcan neck pinch,” she confided as she lifted Savoie’s slack weight off Jacques, then hoisted Max up over her shoulder. “I’ll put him in the car while you call for a cleanup crew. We make a pretty kick-ass team, boss.”
Jacques was silent. The asses they’d kicked had belonged to friends whose faces would haunt his dreams.
Twenty-three
D
awn pinked over the river as Susanna let herself into the apartment. She hummed with an excitement she couldn’t wait to share with Jacques, news that would change their future.
Even cut short by the terse message Charlotte received from MacCreedy, the meeting with Father Furness proved one of startling hope and opportunity. Imagine, the burly priest, a leader of the Naturalist movement in New Orleans with a network and contacts even more sophisticated than the ones she’d tapped in the North.
Furness was surprisingly knowledgeable, and after several enthusiastic hours of discussion, he’d made her a dream offer: a place within their network to conduct her research, unmolested by fear or ignorance. Her own lab, funded by a cause she believed in, to further the health and safety of those she cared for. Unrestricted avenues to explore with a database and technical support equal to what she was used to.
And best of all, the chance to make New Orleans her home. To have a real family, a rich life to experience with all her senses.
Her first thought was to get to Jacques. Her heart
quivered expectantly. To begin a true relationship with him, to confess her secrets, her soul. Picturing Pearl’s reaction to decorating her own room with color and texture and art flooded her with tender joy. Her mate, their daughter, days and nights entwined. Her vision grew starry with tears of something she’d never expected to find—happiness.
The apartment was dark, drapes drawn tight against the lightening sky. She felt Jacques’s presence before actually seeing him seated at the table, an empty plate pooled with fresh meat juices before him, an unopened bottle in his hand. The stillness of his mood checked her, making her cautious and concerned.
“I left you a note,” she began. Was he angry with her for breaking her promise? There was something unsettling about him. He didn’t look her way.
“I saw it.”
A flat statement of fact with no hint of what lay in wait behind it.
“I’ve had a breakthrough in my research. It was right there in front of me the whole time.” Her euphoria surged again as the words burbled up and with it, her need to share everything with him.
“Then you’ll be glad to return to your own lab.”
His words stopped her cold.
As Susanna’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, she could see something else on the table—printouts of an airline confirmation and a boarding pass.
He continued in that low, level tone that had her trembling. “Your flight leaves at 10:30. You’ll want to
call and let him know your arrival time so he can pick you up.”
She held herself up by sheer force of will. “Why?”
“I promised you’d be returned. It’s best you go now.”
“But things have changed. We need to talk—”
“Things have changed,” he agreed gruffly. “Everything’s changed.”
A horrible sense of dread settled in her belly. “Jacques, what’s happened?”
He was so still, so terrifyingly calm.
“To keep you here any longer would invite retaliation we can’t afford. Maybe once they get you back they won’t feel inclined to punish us.”
His words were a harsh slap. “You only came for Max.”
His fingers followed the shape of the bottle as if memorizing its cool contours. “He’s our leader, our future. Sacrifices need to be made to protect both. I didn’t really understand that until tonight.”
“Jack, what’s happened?”
He looked up at her then, his eyes a flash of silver. “That’s not my name. That’s not who I am.”
Why was he pushing her away? What had she done?
Then she saw the black sheen of blood on his shirtfront, on his face, and gasped.
Jacques blinked painfully as Susanna turned on the overhead light. He angled away as she came to crouch down beside his chair, shying from the touch of her hand.
“You’re hurt. Let me see.”
“I’ll live.” His glum tone said that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. He resisted as she cupped his cheek, then finally allowed her to turn his face toward her.
The damage was fading, the split in his brow almost healed. But the way he avoided her gaze hinted at things unmended. Terrible, hurtful things.
Without a word or a sound, he leaned against her, resting his head upon her breast, eyes closing, pose vulnerable despite the tension strung tightly through him.
What had happened? What hadn’t he told her?
She held him close, one hand stroking over the coarse bristle of his hair, the other riding the seismic tremors that shook briefly through massive shoulders. Then he pulled away.
“Get your things together,” he told her with a savage finality. “I’m going to clean up, then we’ll send you home to your family.”
Her wide gaze followed him down the hall until he was out of sight. Before panic could control her twisting emotions, Susanna reached for a steadying numbness to get her to her feet, to get body and mind to comply as her expectations fell away in ruin. It was somehow simpler to remove herself from those awful, wrenching feelings of loss and crushing sorrow, to find comfort in the cloaking blankness she’d practiced since birth.
She went into the bedroom to gather what she needed to take with her, ignoring the things that linked her to this colorful world. She shut down all her sensory receptors, refusing to process the scents and sounds of Jacques in the shower, the way the water heated his
skin, the crisp, clean smell of lather. She packed with an automatic efficiency, then returned to the living room to wait, refusing to feel anything.
If he wanted her gone, she’d go. Why make it complex with questions, arguments, or pleading? The obvious fact was he’d risk his life for the future Savoie represented but not for a chance for them to live in it together. That chance had died when she’d had his past stripped from him, when she hadn’t trusted him with that truth upon her return.
Susanna burned the sight of him into her mind as he came into the living room. He’d pulled on loose jeans, work boots, and a crisp, barely buttoned white shirt. Moisture from the shower still dotted the expanse of chest left uncovered. The shadow of a beard darkened the line of his strong jaw and arched up to circle the swell of his upper lip. Under the heavy ridge of his brows, his deep-set eyes appeared black and impenetrable as he took in her attire, the soft ivory blouse and crisply creased beige slacks, and the carry-on sitting next to her sensible shoes.
“You’re traveling light.”
“I won’t be allowed to keep anything from here where I’m going.” Nothing except her memories. “I’m ready.”
No reason to prolong the inevitable. She picked up her bag and started for the door. When her hand closed over the knob, his surrounded it.
Jacques’s body pressed up behind her, flattening her against the door. Her eyes squeezed shut as he nuzzled
her throat, the heat of his mouth sending tremors along her nervous system. His strong tongue stroked up from her delicate collarbone to circle her ear, eliciting more powerful quivers, weakening her knees, altering the tempo of her heartbeat. As his other big hand dragged up her thigh, she rocked back, grinding her hips into him, provoking an ever-hardening response.
The quick pants of his breath became low and raspy, deepening into growls. His nails lengthened and curved, snagging on the fabric of her pants. His already massive body thickened, increasing until he overwhelmed her with his preternatural size and primitive, unstoppable power. Yet he hesitated.
Susanna’s hand slid over his, fingers threading, lifting his rough palm to her lips. “Yes,” she whispered.
He snatched her against him with an abruptness that struck the breath from her lungs, carrying her to the couch, not to lay her upon it but to drape her over its arm. She heard fabric tear as he shed his shirt. Then he caught the collar of her blouse to rip it from her. His bare skin brushed over hers, hot, smooth, glorious.
Emotions roiled through her in a wild, urgent tangle; desire, need, demanding to be satisfied. She heard a vibration rumble in her throat, an answering growl as he tore down her pants and kneed her legs apart.