Asher pulled a bag of blood out of the refrigerator in his office and passed it to Kane. He also put out a glass in case Kane didn't want to drink from the bag.
Kane looked at the glass, remembering the times he had drunk from fine crystal goblets. Times spent with Violet.
"What's the story?" Asher asked.
"I told you."
"No, I meant with you. Vengeance didn't help you?"
"It rid me of the anger."
"But not the rest of it." Asher settled on a chair behind his desk, facing Kane across it. Kane finally seated himself and bit the bag open. He hesitated, then decided not to use a glass, not to remind himself of Violet through such a simple thing. He drained the bag flat in seconds then passed it back to Asher, who tossed it into a biohazard container.
They faced each other across the desk, Asher clearly waiting, Kane reluctant to speak. Yet he couldn't blame Asher for his curiosity. Few enough vampires emerge on the other side of claiming, and he must certainly have been curious about it.
"The world is still bleak," he said finally. "I may ask you for mercy."
Asher lifted one brow. "I hope you don't."
"It would be your obligation." It was one obligation all vampires respected: if one of their kind could take this life no longer, a request for mercy—death—was always honored.
"Don't ask it of me," Asher said. "I need you."
"For this fight?" Kane sounded almost scornful. "I don't care anymore, Asher. I gave you the warning because I felt I owed it to you. If vampires want to destroy each other, why should I care?"
"You used to care. And maybe your problem right now is that you're not allowing yourself to care about anything. You're wallowing, Kane."
The rage that flashed through Kane just then almost made him leap across the desk and attack Asher. He gripped the arms of his chair until his fingers buried themselves in the leather and then the padding beneath. "How would you know what I am going through?" The words emerged from between his clenched teeth.
"You're right, I don't know," Asher replied calmly. "But I know what you used to be. What I see before me now is a man who won't let go."
"I can't let go."
"Perhaps not." Asher sighed. "If you want to die, at least die doing something important. Don't make it pointless by asking me to break your neck."
The tension between them nearly made the air sizzle. But then Kane released his anger, acknowledging that it was misdirected. Asher wasn't his problem. An interrupted claiming was his problem. Weariness was his problem.
"I'll think about it."
"Thank you." Asher leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the desktop. "I should probably just take Julie and run. If there's going to be a bloodbath, she's my first concern."
"It would be the wise thing, but I've noted you often avoid the easiest course."
Asher flashed a brief smile. "It looks that way."
Kane shook his head. "Oh, you always have a reason for what you do, mon ami. Battling demons, fighting your own kind. Most would call that insane."
"I call it necessary."
"Which is exactly why you won't flee." Kane released his grip on the chair arms and crossed his legs. "And you have a problem now in your office."
"When do I not?"
One corner of Kane's mouth twitched upward. "True. But this one is intriguing. She can't be human."
"Not fully, in any event. That much is clear."
"We—or you, actually—must now concern ourselves with whether she might be an additional threat. She smells human, however, or I would not have brought her here."
"I agree about her aroma. She certainly doesn't smell like anything else I've ever met." He drummed his fingers again briefly. "Well, she's certainly not in league with the rogues. I doubt that even someone who heals as swiftly as she does would have volunteered to be treated like that."
"I agree. So now let us go learn what we can."
The blood he had drunk had energized him, cold and nearly lifeless as it was. Things didn't look quite as bleak as they had when he'd arrived here hungry. But they were still bleak.
Violet's death had left a gaping hole in his heart, his mind, his life, and he was sure he would never be able to fill it.
But for now, he decided, perhaps Asher was right. If he was going to choose death, he might as well die fighting. The idea better suited his nature. Maybe that was why he had hesitated to take the final step for so long: the notion of leaving quietly just didn't fit him. A death in battle...well, there was something to be said for that.
Tessa had showered and changed into a pair of too-tight, too-short jeans and a baggy sweatshirt that Mackenzie and Julie had managed to find for her. She still huddled in a corner of the couch but no longer looked ready to spring.
And she smelled better. Kane appreciated the fact that he didn't have to keep fighting the allure of her blood. As a human morsel, she enticed him amply. He had needed to feed not only because he had been hungry, but because when he was hungry, resisting temptation became harder.
Now that she was cleaned up, he could see she was pretty. Her eyes had an unusual blue-gray color that reminded him of something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Her hair, wet and straight to her shoulder, showed premature streaks of white and gray amidst the dark curtain. Around her neck on leather thong was an unusual crystal wolf's head that caught and splintered light.
A curious, unusual human to be sure. If human she was.
Kane looked at Asher, who nodded. So he began.
"I saved you," Kane said. "I took you from the park. I found you near death, and while I was preparing to take you from there, one for the rogues who attacked you arrived to finish you off. I gutted him, Tessa. I gutted him and broke his neck, then carried you away."
Horror and satisfaction warred on her face. Horror, no doubt, at his description of the kill, but satisfaction from knowing one of her attackers had met such a fate. She scowled. "You didn't save me for my sake."
"No," Kane agreed. "I brought you here for the sake of my friend, Asher. You were proof of what I had to say."
"So why should I care?"
"Because you're still alive."
Her frown deepened, but she moved uneasily. He leaned toward her, lowering his voice to that hypnotic tone that usually got vampires what they wanted. He fixed her with his gaze, holding her in thrall.
"What are you, Tessa?"
She didn't respond. Some mortals were immune to being vamped, although not very many, but he was disappointed anyway. They needed to know, and she was refusing to tell. He did note, however, that she didn't quite seem able to break from his gaze. At least he had that advantage.
Then he noticed something else, something that unsettled him to his very core: her gaze was holding him as much as his was holding hers. It was calling to him almost as strongly as her blood. He wanted her in every way possible.
"Merde!" he swore and tore himself away.
Mackenzie's sarcastic voice filled the room. "Another fail for the great Kane."
"Mackenzie," Asher said sharply. "We have enough on our plates. Don't give Kane a hard time."
"At least not until you tell me I can," she said too sweetly. "Or until the next time he interferes with my life."
Kane barely spared her a glance. He was more focused on Asher, who had to make the next attempt. He noticed that Julie began to look uneasy herself, as if finally realizing that Tessa might mean more trouble.
Asher spoke. He didn't even attempt to vamp Tessa. "Ok. You don't want to tell us anything. But right now we're wondering if you're in league with the folks who want to start this war, because if there's one thing we all know for certain, it's that you're not purely human."
Kane switched his gaze back to Tessa. She was looking at Asher now, so their gazes didn't lock. She bit her lip, clearly hesitating.
"I don't want to start, or even help in, a war among you bloodsuckers," she said finally, an edge in her voice. "I wouldn't mind if you were all dead. I want nothing to do with your kind. But I won't do a single thing that would harm a human. Not one."
"I feel enlightened," Kane said sarcastically. "While I understand your animus toward us, given what those rogues did, you still haven't answered the question. Are you a threat?"
"Not that I can do anything about it," Tessa said fiercely, "but I am your mortal enemy."
She might as well have dropped a bomb in the room, she thought with satisfaction. Everyone stood perfectly still and regarded her with concern.
"Well," said Mackenzie, breaking the silence finally, "I feel ever so much better. Since I'm human, I guess I can just take a hike now."
"But you won't," Julie said. A frown creased her brow. "You would harm my husband?"
"If I could," Tessa said. "Husband? He holds you in thrall. You're a slave to him."
"No, I am not. He can't vamp me at all. And you don't know what you're talking about."
Asher touched her arm. "Easy, my love. She can't and won't hurt me. As long as she's not going to join the rogues, I don't care what she does."
Julie looked at him. "But we don't even know what she is."
"Tessa Grey," Kane said with quiet significance.
Ice water trickled down Tessa's spine, depriving her of any satisfactions she might have felt at making her opinion of vampires known.
Reluctantly, she looked at him.
"I know who you are."
He couldn't possibly know. Her heart began to gallop and her mouth turned dry. Even her family couldn't identify her anything except a normal.
"Who?" Asher asked.
"I heard of them when I was up north. De Grey. You're a member of the Shadow Valley pack, aren't you?"
His eyes bored into her. They were golden now, no longer black, but they still seemed to pin her and cleaved her tongue. Deprived of speech, she could only stare.
"So, ma belle," he said with soft satisfaction, "why haven't you shifted shape? Are two of us too much?"
Her heart plummeted and her throat closed. Terror and hatred warred in her. Surely they would kill her now.
"But she doesn't smell like a lycanthrope," Asher said.
"Oh. My. God." Mackenzie groaned. "A werewolf? Here?"
Kane never took his gaze from her. "She's not a lycanthrope," he said. "If she were, she'd have shifted to protect herself from us. They never meet our kind in any other form."
He started smiling, and Tessa wished she could spring at him like her family would and separate his head from his body. She did not like that smile at all.
"Poor, broken little wolf," he said. "You can't change. Did they exile you?"
Oh, how she loathed him then. But however she felt, she retained enough sense to know that springing at a vampire would only cost her, probably her life. She glared at him. "They're not like that."
He shrugged. "I really don't care. What I care about is that the mystery is solved. Now I have another question. Are you going to send for your pack? Because if you do, your pack may meet more death than success. I really wouldn't mind it, you know. The four of us can leave town."
Tessa swallowed hard, torn. If this war they had talked about really was about to happen, she certainly didn't want her pack involved. Indeed, her mother would probably shrug and say to let the vampires kill each other. On the other hand, if she didn't threaten these bloodsuckers with her pack, what might they do to her.
"If you let me go," she said finally, "I don't want to involve them."
Asher spoke. "I already told you that you could go. I don't keep prisoners." He waved to the door.
"But," said Kane softly, "it still might be wiser to wait for dawn, little wolf. Those with fewer scruples than Asher are amassing."
"Why should you care?" she demanded, struggling toward anger to banish her fear and something approaching despair. "Your kind loathes mine. You hunt us like animals."
"I thought it was the other way around," Kane said, a faint amusement in his voice. "Your kind would like to see ours exterminated. From my perspective, I have no interest in lycanthropes. They make terrible food, and if they don't attack me, then I care nothing at all one way or the other."
She didn't believe him. She'd grown up with warnings about bloodsuckers. "We don't hurt humans," she said. "You do."
"Some of us do," Asher said. "Which is the precise reason we're evidently about to go to war."
"Asher protects humans," Julie said, unable to conceal her anger. "Do you?"
Tessa couldn't answer. By and large, the packs preferred to live alone and be left alone, much like ordinary wolves. They avoided mingling with humans, and they loathed vampires because they attacked humans, which no pack would do because they were human—at least part of the time. A pack killed wild game only to eat, and otherwise only in self-defense. Vampires killed for pleasure. But no, they didn't protect anything or anyone except themselves. Something like shame niggled at her, making her so uncomfortable that her anger revived.
"Why," she repeated, "do you care what happens to me?"
"Because," said Kane, "I have no quarrel with you. Unless you want to start one."
Outside in the night, sirens began to whoop. Almost at the same time, a phone tweeted.
"That's me," Julie said. "I guess I need to go to work." She rose and went to get a cell phone from her desk.
"It's your night off," Asher protested.
"If they need me, it's because it's more than the on-duty medical examiner can handle," she replied, then touched her phone and answered.
"It's begun," Kane said.
Asher straighten. "I'm going with her to watch over her. Mackenzie, you stay here no matter what. I don't want you exposed. Kane, keep an eye on both of them."
Julie disappeared into the inner sanctum and returned in a few minutes clad in jeans and a jacket. "It's going to be a long night," she remarked as she headed for the door. Asher disappeared with her.
Kane, starting at the two woman, sighed. "C'est la guerre."
Mackenzie sat working at her desk. Kane appeared lost in somber thought. Tessa was left to dart looks at them between staring down at her hands, which clenched and unclenched as emotions roiled through her like racing white water.
The vampires were going to war. For her kind, that ought to be cause for jubilation, except she knew who would get caught in the middle: humans. While she was not fully human herself, she was human enough. She had lived among humans long enough to be horrified at that and ashamed that her own pack would probably stand aside and let it happen.
Lycanthropes didn't involve themselves in the affairs of humans or nonhumans if they could avoid it. They preferred a solitary existence among their own kind, to live free and to be safe. Their lives were, for the most part, contented if not always happy. Their own little world.
But tonight had altered her view. Just a little. It didn't feel like an earthquake yet, but some inner voice warned her that it could become one.
She looked up again and found Mackenzie studying her.
Mackenzie spoke. "So you're a werewolf?"
"Not really." Her shame, her sorrow, but true.
"You can't shape-shift?"
"No."
Mackenzie shook her head. "Well, I'm glad you can't. But you probably aren't."
"I hate it."
"I guess I would, too, if I were you. But you weren't exiled?"
"No." Tessa didn't want to talk about it. Didn't want to touch on the grief and longing that had made her leave of her own accord to try to live as a normal. She ached to run with her pack, yet she couldn't. She couldn't live with the daily reminder that she was different, or with the feeling that she was a burden and not an equal. No one had encouraged her to leave, not a single one. She simply couldn't take being the only normal in the pack.
Much as she disliked Kane, she couldn't deny she was exactly what he had called her: a broken wolf.
She sighed and looked at the clock, counting the hours until dawn. Since it was winter, dawn remained far away.
"So you live here now?" Mackenzie asked. "What do you do?"
"I work in university administration and take classes when I can."
"What kind of classes?"
Considering the horror Mackenzie had initially expressed over Tessa's lycanthropy, her questions now seemed surprisingly friendly. "Whatever I need. I'm just starting, but I think I'd like to be a nurse."
Kane made a sound and she reluctantly looked at him.
"Another altruist."
"What's wrong with that?" she demanded.
"I don't recall saying anything was wrong with it," he retorted
"Your tone."
"A thousand pardons, ma chere dame."
"Don't mind him," Mackenzie said. "He's always a pain. Between being a former French aristocrat and losing his mate last year, he's a little insane. We make excuses for him."
Kane barely blinked, but to Tessa, he seemed to tense. Tessa didn't think poking a vampire was exactly smart, but Mackenzie apparently thought she was perfectly safe.
More food for thought, thoughts that crashed hard against her belief that all vampires were bloodsucking monsters.
"What were you, Kane?" Mackenzie asked. "A duke or something?"
Kane waved a hand and for a few seconds, it appeared he wouldn't answer. "You are full of questions, Mackenzie."
"I'm curious since I'm stuck with you."
"I was the Marquis Durand."
"A real honest-to-gosh marquis." Mackenzie's voice dropped sarcasm. "I'm impressed."
"Don't be, ma petite. All it brought me was a dank prison cell and the promise of a ride on the tumbrel to the guillotine."
Astonishment filled Tessa. He was that old? But Mackenzie had a different reaction and dropped her sarcasm entirely.
"Is that why you became a vampire?"
"It was the only way to survive. Enough. I don't care to discuss my past, s'il vous plaît."
Mackenzie put her chin in her hand. "It's going to be a long night if both of you keep imitating clams."
Surprisingly, Tessa felt a little bubble of laughter rising. She tried to quell it but failed, and a giggle escaped her. A reaction to all the stress of the night, she thought, but Mackenzie was certainly a piece of work.
Mackenzie grinned at her. "Neither of you exactly looks like a clam." She paused. "Here's the thing. But I really don't know anything about werewolves, and I'm curious. As for you, Kane, a little illumination would go a long way. You owe me for having kidnapped me."
"As I recall, that was one of my stupider moments and you made me regret my idiocy almost from the first second."
"He kidnapped you," Tessa said, aghast.
"For all of ten minutes," Mackenzie admitted. "He needed an entrée with a friend of Asher's and he'd already ticked the guy off. So I was his key." She shrugged. "I was made at the time because once he carried me off to Soren's, I didn't have my car. I had to wait hours to catch the bus."
Tessa listened in astonishment. What upset Mackenzie was waiting to take the bus? Not being kidnapped?
"Of course, I didn't like being kidnapped for general reasons. Like not having a say about where I was going or when." She frowned at Kane.
"I apologized. Would you like another one?"
Mac waved her hand. "I doubt it would be sincere now." She sighed, then looked at the clock herself. "Just tell me, Kane. How bad could I get?"
"You saw the condition Tessa was in. Multiply that by dozens a night. All of it to force a confrontation with Asher. They plan a reign of terror, because that is what they will enjoy. Asher is just an excuse for it."
Mackenzie 's frown looked frightened. "Will others come to help him?"
"I don't know. Soren perhaps."
"But he can't stand against a whole bunch of vampires. Not alone."
"I did not say he would be alone. But how many come to help and when, I cannot say. The minute vampires begin their spree, this city will become unsafe for both our kind. Some may choose to wait for another time and place to rid of us of these rogues. I simply don't know."
"Couldn't Asher just leave? Why don't they just come here and confront him?"
"I told you, they want their amusement. And they know Asher well enough. He won't leave because he won't want a single human to suffer because of him. If he turned his back to this city, they might still do as they play, and possibly more of it. This is a start, Mac. These rogues want to satisfy their lusts unfettered. So far they have never gotten together in a large group, and thus we have been able to control them. It was always one or two at a time, and if they would not agree to follow the rule, then we would get rid of them."
He closed his eyes a moment. "There are places where they rule. Few and far between, but not places I would choose to dwell. Not all the monster stories you hear are folklore and legend."
"I kind of figured that out when I met you."
Kane didn't respond to the insult. "You see," he said quietly, "as technology and communications improve, they must hide farther and farther away, going to places where the people are regarded as so primitive that no one believes the stories. Places where deaths and maulings can be blamed on other animals. But now they want a modern city."
"They won't succeed."
His eyes snapped open. "Tell me, Mackenzie, how the news will report tonight's murders tomorrow night. They will at first assume there is a madman. As the killings mount, they will consider a gang of some sort. How long do you think it will be before any humans' start speaking openly of vampires? But Asher will know. And Asher will try to stop them. That's what they want. And one they've removed Asher, they can hold the city in thrall with terror and take their victims by will. Because so few of you can resist our enticements. You are drawn to us, you obey us, you want us."
Mackenzie looked glum. Tessa felt again that icy trickle along her spine. The image he painted revolted and terrified her.
"Merde!" He rose to his feet and started pacing, moving so quickly he was almost impossible to see.
"Quit it," Mackenzie said. "You're making me dizzy."
"Then close your eyes." But he slowed down.
"What about you?" Mackenzie asked. "Are you going to help Asher?"
"Right now I am finding it difficult to be in this room. I am the fox guarding the henhouse."
Tessa drew her legs beneath her, ready to leap from the couch. "Can you control yourself, fox?"
Swiftly he crossed to her and bent over her. He closed his golden eyes and drew a deep breath. She knew he was smelling her. Helplessly, she shrank back.
"You smell like a banquet," he said. "You arouse my hunger, even though I'm not hungry. Take heed."
Then, before she knew he had moved, he was back in his chair. "Yes," he said flatly, "I can control myself. But it does not make me less dangerous."
That was a mixed-up statement, she thought as she started breathing again. He could control himself, but he was still dangerous?
She fell silent, thinking that never before had she felt so caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.