Lisandro was near the door, looking out and drinking the yummy coffee. Bernardo trailed over to join us. He seemed to be enjoying the coffee, though he’d added enough cream to make it tan, probably added sugar, too. I thought about calling him a pussy, but decided it wasn’t worth it, I’d actually started adding cream and sugar to some coffee myself. Never throw stones if you think they’re going to come back and hit you.
A wave of dizziness rolled over me. I steadied myself against the desk and Nicky grabbed my arm. “Are you all right?”
“Dizzy,” I said. My knees began to slide out from under me and the coffee spilled down the side of the desk. Nicky caught me. “Anita!”
Lisandro collapsed. His empty coffee cup rolled across the floor. I thought, Oh shit, the coffee, but I couldn’t seem to form the words out loud. I tried to reach for a gun, but I couldn’t make my arms move enough. Nicky was holding all my weight in one arm, tucking me against his body, because he had his gun out; so did Olaf.
Bernardo collapsed to the floor with his gun in his hand. The damned coffee spilled about half of a cup into the worn carpet.
Ron, the clerk, was holding his hands out from his body, “I didn’t know . . .” Olaf shot him in the chest. The shot was like an explosion. I fought to focus through the dizzy, tilting world, and had a moment to see the door behind the desk open black and empty, but somehow I knew it wasn’t empty. The black cloak and white mask were clear for a second as it moved in a blur so that it wasn’t there when Olaf and Nicky fired.
I heard the bell on the door, and the last thing I saw before the dizziness ate the rest of the world was a blurring wave of black cloaks coming toward us. My last clear thought was, Please, God, let that be the drug, and not their real speed.
I heard Nicky yelling my name in the dark.
35
IT WAS COLD. Cold and hard. I was lying on something hard and cold, my cheek pressed to the rough chill of it. My hand spasmed and my hands were tied behind my back. My eyes opened wide, pulse shoved into my throat, heart thudding. I could see a darkly stained stone wall. I pulled at the ropes behind my back, but the rope was tight, biting into my wrists when I tugged on it. I moved my legs and realized my ankles were bound together, too. My boots protected my ankles, so the rope didn’t bite into the skin, but they were tied just as tight. My heart was threatening to choke me, as if I needed to swallow it back down into my chest. I was so scared my skin ran cold with it, and it had nothing to do with the concrete floor.
I tried to think through the panic. Was there anyone to see me move? Had the movements been small enough that my captors hadn’t noticed, or was I alone? There was nothing against the one wall I could see. The wall was water stained, which was probably one of the things that made the floor damp. I forced myself to notice things; there just wasn’t a lot to notice. But just taking the time to try had slowed my pulse, helped chase back the panic. I was tied up, but I wasn’t hurt as far as I could tell. I’d come to in worse places, with lots worse happening to me.
I felt movement behind me. Maybe I heard it, but it was as if the air currents stirred behind me and I just knew that someone was behind me, and that they were close. I fought not to tense more than I already had, but it’s almost impossible not to tense when you’re tied up and you have no idea who or what is coming up behind you. Being completely helpless makes you tense.
“If you had just come with me and my master, things would have been so much simpler.” The deep growl of voice was the shapeshifter from the motel, the one that had stabbed Karlton and made her a werewolf. So at least I knew his flavor of shifter; that was something, not much, but something.
I swallowed and found my voice. “Simpler for whom?”
“Whom, you say, whom, when I have you tied up on the floor, helpless.” I heard the brush of cloth now, and small noises that I couldn’t have told you what they were exactly, but I’d have bet money that he was crawling on the floor toward me.
I felt the heat of him behind me, before the white mask and hood of his face peered over my shoulder. He leaned over my face so I could see that the eyes in the mask were pale green, and not human. He had wolf eyes in his human face, which might mean that the reason his voice was growly was because he’d spent too much time in animal form, either because he liked it, or because he’d been forced as punishment. The eyes usually changed first, and then the teeth, and then internal mouth and throat changes so the voice stayed deeper.
His eyes were so close to me that I could see the edges of them and knew he was frowning. “You aren’t afraid, and you’re thinking something. What are you thinking that has helped you let go of your fear of just a moment before?”
I decided that truth didn’t hurt. “Who kept you in animal shape until your eyes stayed wolf even in human form?”
He growled at me, leaning that smooth, white mask close and closer until I couldn’t focus on his green wolf eyes and all I could see was the white blur of the mask. My pulse sped up again; I couldn’t help it. I was tied up and helpless, and he was looming over me. I wouldn’t have wanted a human to do it, let alone a werewolf, though honestly that wasn’t the part that bothered me. It was the white mask, and the speed I’d seen that first night. He was Harlequin, and being at their mercy, that bothered me.
I heard him draw in a deep breath behind the blur of mask. He pressed that smooth porcelain against my cheek and sniffed. “Now you’re afraid; good.”
He curled himself against the back of my body, pressing that cool, artificial face against mine. My vision was filled up with the blur of that white mask. One of his arms snaked across the front of my body, pressing us close together. He was enough taller than me that it was mostly his upper body that pressed so tight against the back of mine.
I fought to control my pulse, my heart rate. He wanted me to be afraid, and anything he wanted I didn’t want to give him. My pulse quieted, heart rate going down. He growled in a low, heavy line that vibrated through his chest and neck along my body. It hit that back part of the brain that still remembers huddling around a fire with the night pressing close, and when that growl came out of the dark, you knew that something out there was going to kill you. I couldn’t keep my heart from beating faster, couldn’t keep it from sending my blood pumping hard and fast through my body. He growled harder, the vibration of it shivering down my spine, warning me that teeth and fangs came next after that sound.
I caught the faint musk of wolf like a half-remembered perfume, he was pressed so close. Something stirred inside me; a white shape rose in the dark of my mind. My wolf stood up inside me and shook her mostly white fur like any canine rising from a long nap.
He went very still beside me, and his voice was even deeper, so full of the growl that he’d been doing that it sounded like it would hurt for a human throat to talk like that. “What is that?”
“You have a nose,” I said, in a voice that was only a little shaky. “Use it.”
He drew in a deep rush of air, then let it trickle out slowly, the way some people let wine sit on their tongue. Swallowing the wine slowly, so they catch every nuance of it. My wolf sniffed the air back, as if she were catching his scent, too.
“Wolf; you can’t be wolf,” he growled.
“Why not?” I asked, and it was almost a whisper because his face was close enough that much more than a whisper would be shouting.
“She wouldn’t want your body if you were a werewolf,” he growled next to my face.
“Why not?” I asked, again.
“She can’t control wolves.” I felt him tense. I don’t think he was supposed to share that.
“Only cats,” I said.
“Yes.” The growl was beginning to fade a little, and it was more of a bass whisper, as if he didn’t want to be overheard. The Harlequin had bugged all our businesses in St. Louis once, so we were probably being listened to, if not watched, right this minute.