“Uh-huh.” She waved toward the figure on the bed. “So you don’t want to jump his bones?”
I opened my mouth to tell her I would never even think anything so crass, but the words refused to come. I let my gaze linger on Avery for a moment, feeling my cheeks heat up as I met her eyes. “Attraction between two consenting adults is not a shameful thing, Miss Prude. Yes, I happen to find Avery . . . interesting. He’s different from any other man I’ve known.”
“I’ll say he is.”
“There’s no need to be snide. You know what I mean. I like him. He’s fascinating. I mean, think about it, Cora—he’s a vampire jaguar! That’s just so amazing!”
She rolled her eyes and kicked at the bed again. “You’re nuts, that’s what you are. I can’t imagine finding a bloodsucker sexy. And if you think I’m going to sit around this dump for four hours waiting for Sleeping Beauty there to wake up, you’re even nuttier than I think you are.” Scorn dripped from every word.
“He wouldn’t be asleep if you hadn’t tranquilized him,” I hastened to point out.
“Yeah, yeah, move past that,” she answered, blithely unaware of my sharp glance. “You would have done the same for me.”
“No, I wouldn’t have.”
“I say we—” She paused and shot me a curious look. “You really would not have saved me from a bloodsucker?”
“No. Not if you mean someone like Avery.”
“But . . . he’s bad!” she said, waving her hand toward the comatose man. “Despite your thinking he’s Mr. Sexy Pants, he’s evil, Jas! Evil!”
“How do you know that? You don’t, do you? No, you don’t. But because you had some bizarre past-life experience—the idea of which, I have to admit, I think is totally unrealistic and hard to believe—you’re a vampiphobe.”
“You don’t have any problem with a jaguar-shaped Scottish vampire, but you mock my very frightening and absolutely real past-life regression?” Cora asked, her arms crossed.
I glanced away and cleared my throat. “Point taken. I will accept that you believe you underwent a past-life regression—”
She coughed meaningfully.
“That you experienced a past-life regression wherein you saw a vampire chomp on some woman who lopped off your head with an ox cart, but that doesn’t give you any right to assume that all vampires are the chomping sort. Avery seems perfectly nice, perfectly civilized, and, frankly, sexy as hell.”
“Keys,” Cora said, holding out her hand.
“What?”
“Give me the keys to your truck. Clearly you are under that thrall thing he mentioned, and you’re not thinking straight. I need to go find the nearest hardware store to pick up a stake and a shovel and maybe an ax or a chain saw, just in case Drac here gets uppity when he wakes up.”
I was about to protest such a ridiculous idea when two things struck me: The first was that there were no hardware stores within an hour’s drive, and the second was that I would much rather be alone with Avery than have my somewhat truculent sister present to put a damper on everything.
Just what constituted “everything” was something I wasn’t willing to examine at the moment, but I had to admit the idea of a few hours in Avery’s company held a great attraction.
“All right, you can borrow the truck for a bit, but just you remember it belongs to the state, and I’m responsible for it, so be careful.”
“Call me if he wakes up. And don’t let him have any more of your blood. Maybe that’s how he maintains control of you.” She marched off, shoulders twitching with irritation, her head high with determination.
I waited until I saw her drive off down the highway—in the direction that led deeper into the mountains, and away from populated areas—before turning back to examine Avery’s pulse and breathing again.
Judging by the slow, steady pulse, I knew I had nothing but time until he came around. “Time,” I mused to myself, tapping my fingers on the cheaply laminated table. “Hmm. What I would really like to do is to go see the Leshies. If you’re sure Albert and his group are the ones who turned you into a jaguar, then I need to talk to them. I mean, what’s to stop them from doing it again? I can’t have the area flooded with exotic cats—there would be no end of trouble explaining that, not even if I knew how to do so. No, Albert has to be made to stop, and he and I have always had a pretty good relationship. Not like his weird sons, but that doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Avery snorted in his sleep.
I waffled for a few minutes, but there was really no choice between staying in the dim, mildewy, tacky motel for hours watching him sleep, or taking a brisk hike through the woods to confront the man who may or may not be out changing innocent vampires into exotic cats.
“The question now is whether or not I should tell Cora where I’m going,” I said to Avery’s back. He snored softly in response. “I agree completely. If I tell her, she’ll just insist on turning around and accompanying me, and while Albert knows and trusts me, he doesn’t know Cora. And his whole group is rather skittish where people are concerned, so really, the best idea is to just leave a note and go from there. Right? Right. I’m so glad you see things my way.”
I scribbled a brief note and taped it to the spotted mirror that grimly reflected images with a sense of futility and hopelessness that was beginning to get on my nerves. I blew a saucy kiss to the blond man snoring gently on the bed, and I escaped the depressing confines of the room.
The motel was made up of twelve little cabins spread out in a drunken line on either side of an equally squalid office, all of which clung to the side of the highway that ran up into the mountains, through to the eastern side of the state. I took stock of my surroundings, pulled up a map on my cell phone, and scurried around behind our cabin to the dense alpine growth. I knew from times tramping through the region that there was a narrow dirt road about a mile away used by utility officials to maintain the large power lines that ran up and over the mountain pass. If I remembered correctly, the western edge of Albert Baum’s land wasn’t more than another mile east of that track. It wouldn’t take me more than an hour to hike across the Baum land to Albert’s compound, have a quick chat with him, and be back before Avery woke up.
Twenty minutes later, as I ignored a weathered No Trespassing—Private Wildlife Preserve sign that hung from one corner on a listing fence pole to climb a rotting wooden fence (no barbed wire for the animal-oriented Leshy group), I congratulated myself on my smart thinking. “I’ll have Albert Baum all taken care of by the time Avery wakes up. Maybe Albert can even remove whatever it is he did to Avery.”
A thought occurred to me in a voice that sounded almost identical to that of my sister. “I’m not compelled to help him,” I argued with what I knew she’d say if she was with me. “He’s a nice man, no matter what you think. And don’t ask me how I know; I just do—I could see into his mind, and although he’s very full of himself, he’s . . .” My voice trailed off as I trudged across a small open meadow, and I struggled for a word to define what I felt inside of Avery.
A female Roosevelt elk and her calf, no doubt one of Albert’s transplants from the Olympic National Park, emerged from the dense growth of trees and watched me warily as I followed a game trail through the knee-high grass. I made an abstracted mental note to check my clothing over carefully for deer ticks before I entered Albert’s compound.
“Honorable, that’s the word,” I said finally as I left the meadow and struggled up a short, sharp incline. “He’s honorable.”
“Aye, but you’re not,” a man’s voice said from behind me. I spun around, out of sheer instinct my hand on my tranquilizing gun, only to find a tall, lanky man with long brown hair scowling at me.
“Oh, hello. You’re Franz Baum, aren’t you?”
“Dieter,” he corrected me, taking a step toward me that was filled with
enough menace to have me scrambling backward up the hill. “Franz is my brother.”
“That’s right. I don’t know if you remember me or not. My name is Jacintha Ferreira and I’m—”
“You’re the female from the government. The one who’s always after Da.” He continued to stalk toward me, lifting his chin to sniff the air. “You’re not in heat.”
I blinked a couple of times as I crested the hill, glancing quickly behind me. In the distance, about half a mile away, I could see the earth-tone tops of the half dozen durable canvas tents that made up the Leshy compound. “What on earth does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”
“What are you doing here if it’s not for breeding?” Dieter asked, sniffing the air again. Suddenly, he froze; then, before I could do so much as take a breath, he growled, “You smell like him!” and leaped toward me.
Time seemed to slow down just like something out of a movie special effect. I watched with openmouthed astonishment as Dieter’s body, in midair, did that same sort of shimmering thing that Avery had done. His clothing fell to the ground as a large, slavering gray wolf slammed into my chest, knocking me backward a good two yards. Instinctively, I put up my hands to keep the wolf from snapping my neck, but before I could so much as rally a single thought, a furious scream ripped through the still afternoon air. It was the scream of a cat, a big cat, and all it took was the flash of black as a large body sailed through the air, landing on the wolf and yanking him to the side, to let me know that Avery had woken up a whole lot earlier than I imagined.
“Holy Mary and all the saints!” I yelled, scrambling out of the way of their bodies as the two predators attacked each other. “Is everyone around here a shape-shifter? Knock it off, both of you! Right, that’s it. You want to play hardball? I can play hardball. Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Avery at least glanced toward me when I took up a shooter’s stance and aimed my tranquilizing gun at the twisting, snarling mass of gray and black bodies, but the Dieter-wolf paid absolutely no attention.
“Big mistake,” I told him. Narrowing my eyes, my hands following the pair as they fought while I waited for the moment when the wolf’s body would be exposed long enough for me to get off a shot.
The gun popped and bucked in my hands as that moment came. Dieter didn’t seem to notice it until I yelled at Avery not to kill him. Dieter, who was trying to snap his jaws on Avery’s thick, heavily muscled neck, suddenly staggered. Avery would have gone for a killing blow, but I moved forward quickly, saying as I did, “It’s okay. I got him. He’ll be out in another couple of seconds. Please don’t kill him. I have no idea how I’d explain it to his father.”
The big cat was breathing heavily, his eyes glittering with a feral desire that I had no trouble identifying.
“Calm down, Avery. It’s over. Look—he’s asleep now, see?” I gestured toward the wolf as he collapsed onto the ground. “Everything’s okay.”
“That is not in the least bit true,” he answered as the cat’s body did the shimmer into his normal human form. There was blood on his neck and shoulder.
“Are you hurt?” I pulled out a couple of tissues, my gut tight as I tried to stop the flow of blood from the deep bites.
“Yes, but not seriously. What are you doing?”
“Dabbing. I don’t want to hurt you. What on earth . . . ?”
“I told you it wasn’t serious.” The blood had already stopped sluggishly pulsing from his wounds, and before my amazed eyes, the puncture marks began to close and heal over.
“That’s amazing!”
“Not really. Moravians have tremendous powers of recuperation.” He glanced around, then turned on his heel and stalked across the small clearing. No longer concerned about his being injured, I allowed myself to enjoy the view. I made a little effort to keep from ogling his bare butt as he walked away, but it was no good, and I knew it. I gave in and had a good, long look, admiring the length of his legs, the easy stride, the muscled calves that swept with gentle curves up to heavily muscled thighs.
You have the nicest butt I’ve ever seen, I found myself telling him.
Thank you. It’s all the riding we do. My mother says she fell in love with my father because he rode daily.
You have parents? I asked, somewhat surprised as he disappeared into the trees.
Of course I do. Don’t you?
Well . . . yes. But I mean, vampires . . . I thought you guys were made? That’s what happens in the Anne Rice books, anyway.
Popular mortal fiction is not a representation of reality, was all he said before he emerged from the trees, clad once again in the vet’s emergency clothing.
So your parents were vampires?
My father is a Dark One; my mother is his Beloved. She got his soul back for him, but not until my oldest brother was born. He’s married now to his own Beloved. In fact, it’s because of the two of them that I’m here.
“Oh? They sent you out here to become a whatchamacallit? Therion?”
“No.” He looked grim as he marched up to me, his eyes on the prone form of the wolf. “Sam—that’s Paen’s Beloved—is a private investigator. I do work for them occasionally. They sent me here to discover who was shipping exotic animals to a private reserve in Scotland. Why did you leave me?”
“I didn’t leave you,” I said, wondering about the reserve. “What sort of exotic animals?”
“I was asleep, assumedly because that blasted sister of yours shot me with that gun, and you weren’t there when I woke up. If that’s not leaving me, I’d like to know what is.”
“I wanted to talk to Albert Baum. Exotic as in animals from the Pacific Northwest? Or something else?”
“Both. What did you do to set Dieter off on you?” he asked, nudging the body of the wolf with his bare foot.
“Nothing. He said I smelled like him, whoever he is.”
“Me.”
“Huh?”
“You smell like me.” Avery gave the prone wolf a sour look.
“I do no such thing,” I said, scandalized for no explainable reason. I took a couple of steps back and tried to take a covert whiff of myself to see if I smelled like a man.
His expression morphed into impatience. “You wouldn’t be able to smell it. Only therions can. Dieter probably recognized my scent on you, knew you must have been with me, and attacked.”
“Oh, really? And why would he do that? What have you done to him?”
“Nothing.”
I really enjoyed watching the expressions flit across his face. I’ve heard it said that some people’s thoughts are transparent, but Avery was the first person I’d met whose expressions mirrored every emotion he was feeling. Most men leaned toward somewhat stoic expressions until you got to know them well, but Avery was different. Right now, the chagrin on his face that chased away the impatience told me volumes. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of an expression he’d wear when he was in the throes of sexual ecstasy.
“That will have to wait,” he said, frowning at the wolf. “Right now we have to get you out of here so I can deal with Baum and his band of insane tree huggers.”
“Excuse me?” I put out a hand to stop him as he came toward me.
“Tree huggers. It means someone who—”
“I know what it means,” I interrupted, noting that his expression was now one of grave concern. About what? “What did you mean with that bit about it having to wait? You were reading my mind again, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said without the slightest hint of apology or embarrassment that I had caught him. “Why should I be embarrassed?”
“Stop it!” I shouted, putting my hands over my ears as if that would keep my thoughts in, and him out.
“It’s not something I can help any more than you can help being able to read my expression, which
I assure you is inscrutable to others.”
I had my doubts about that.
“What I meant is that I can’t make love to you right now, as you clearly wish me to.”
“I wish no such thing!” I said, shocked and, at the same time, strangely titillated at the thought. “I just met you! And you were a panther at the time!”
“Jaguar,” he corrected.
“Gargh! You see? You have me so crazy, I don’t know what I’m saying!”
He put his hands on my shoulders and gave me a quick, hard kiss that effectively stopped my wailing. “Yes, we’ve just met each other. And no, I hadn’t anticipated settling down to just one woman now. I’m known all over Scotland for my sexual prowess. I’m a highly desired lover and have been much in demand for almost two hundred years.”
“You’re about to get a pop in the mouth,” I warned, my fingers curling into a fist.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that you are clearly my Beloved, and that we will spend the rest of our lives together. And since there isn’t a Moravian born who didn’t fall madly in love with his Beloved, and vice versa, I anticipate that will be the state of things between us, as well.”
I stared at him in astonishment. “You’re not trying to say you’re in love with me, are you?”
“No,” he admitted slowly, a look of discomfort in his eyes. “I’m not one of those fall-in-love-at-first-sight sort of people, Jacintha. In fact, I’m not sure I ever have . . . No. That doesn’t matter now.”
“If I recall correctly what you told me earlier, and I assure you I have a very good memory for conversations, you told me you had your soul, and only Beloveds could get them back for your fellow vampires. So how can I be one if you have your soul?”
“There are Beloveds, and then there are Beloveds,” he said as if that made sense, then grabbed my hand and started pulling me back the way I’d come before I was attacked. “How long will Dieter be out?”