Five rich husbands… it was a wonder she hadn't had a hundred.
I whistled low under my breath. "Nik, she's going to eat you alive." That was all right. He was going to enjoy every minute of it.
In less than five minutes she was back. Scooping up the pile of violet silk, she said lightly, "Come along, Caliban. We have an invitation to a very private and exclusive game."
"Lucky us," I offered blandly. Carrying my beer, I followed in her wake.
The room was the same as a thousand others like it. Spare, smoky, and marginally clean. The owner wasn't wasting any overhead prettying the place up—that was clear to see. Although the painting of dogs playing poker that hung crookedly on the wall was a weirdly appropriate touch. Maybe that sociopathic puck had a little of Goodfellow in him after all.
As we stepped through the door, all eyes locked on Promise. The circle of black, brown, yellow, and pumpkin orange eyes held an identical emotion: awed lust. Then those eyes moved to me, but the looks I received were a helluva lot less complimentary. It was the same reaction I received from most nonhumans. There was the incredulous sniff, followed by expressions of sheer disgust and revulsion. This time, however, as the cherry on top, one of the wolves actually peed himself. Now, there was someone who'd obviously actually crossed paths with an Auphe at some point.
To most, the Auphe were a legend. Real and true, but with such a dwindled population that chances were good you might luck out and never see one in your lifetime. It was the kind of luck to pray for. But Auphe had always been the top of the food chain, and wolves, full-blown egotistic predators that they were, didn't like being reminded that once in a while they too were prey. And I wasn't about to tell them that a new spot had opened up for King of the Mountain.
The wolf in urine-stained jeans moved out of his chair and slithered past us through the door, giving me the widest berth he could. I lifted an arm and gave my pit an experimental whiff. "What? Do I offend?" In reality I didn't blame him. There had been times that the Auphe had me wanting to piss my own pants.
Boaz ignored me for a more pleasant subject. "We have a new player, I see," he said, unreadable icy eyes resting on Promise.
"May I take a seat?" She gave him a slow smile. "Preferably a clean one."
Nodding at the wolf across the table from him, Boaz ordered flatly, "Leave." The guy scrambled to obey, scattering cards before him like leaves. As I held the chair for her, Promise took a seat and I took up position behind. With arms folded and eyelids drooping, I did my best to look sleepy and harmless. Niko would've said that was essentially my natural state. There might have been some truth in that, but pulling it off in a room full of werewolves wasn't as easy as all that.
"Why is that with you?" The repulsed sneer on Boaz's face as he bared teeth in my direction needed no faking at all.
Promise reached back and gave my arm a proprietary pat. "He's here to carry my winnings."
At least she hadn't said to carry her purse. It was nice having a shred of masculinity left to my name. As she gathered the cards before her, Boaz grunted, "A dangerous pet to keep."
"Where is the pleasure without the peril?" With a fathomless gaze from beneath sable brown lashes, she handed the cards to the hulking figure to her right and asked, "Shall we play, then?"
The game started and I was witness to some of the most subtle flirting I'd seen in my life. Granted, with my social agenda, that wasn't saying much. Still, I recognized excellence in the field when I saw it. Surrounded by creatures both lethal and of questionable hygiene, Promise was as at ease as she was at a charity event or dinner party. Soft conversation, pale polished nails touched to ivory skin. The hair of a jungle cat. Those pooches didn't have a chance. Grinning to myself, I watched the players and tried to keep my eyes from settling on Boaz too often. It didn't stop the doubts. Caleb had said that Cerberus's rival was a drinker and a talker. From what I'd seen so far he didn't seem the type. Cold, controlled, he was a wolf of ice and steel. But after an hour passed, my skepticism was proved wrong. Boaz started tossing them back. It started slowly, but by the end of hour two his drinking hand was in near-constant motion.
Despite a discipline that I would've guessed ruled his business as well as his personal life… kinky… he was really putting the booze away. It was a fact that everyone had a weakness, and the more common ones were common for a reason. He stuck with the hard stuff as the game wore on, and finally, just as my legs started falling asleep, he began to talk.
It wasn't exactly a river of information, more of a vodka-flavored trickle, but it was what we were there to hear. "That two-headed son of a bitch."
The human wolf to his left hunched slightly, ears twitching with an unlikely flexibility. Apparently this was a familiar and potentially explosive refrain. "He's a shit all right, boss. We all seen it," he offered in a placating tone.
Boaz was in no mood to be soothed. "Misshapen thing, he's no good for the pack. No good for the hunt. He should've been culled." He drained his glass. "Culled a long time ago."
"Culled." It was whispered around the circle. Heads nodded, some human, some shaggy.
"He's deformed, weak, wrong." Knuckles blanched white around the cheap glass tumbler.
The heads nodded again. "Deformed." "Wrong." None repeated the word "weak." They seemed sure that while Cerberus was many, many things… disturbing things… weak wasn't one of them. As much as Boaz didn't want to admit it, that telling omission said that Cerberus was strong, cunning, and a power to be reckoned with. And wasn't that really what got Boaz's goat?
"He's an aberration." The glass shattered in his hand, blood-coated shards falling to the table, and a homicidal grin of suddenly lengthening teeth was aimed in our direction. "An aberration who sends his spies among us. Did you like the show, spies? Were you entertained?" Growing nails speared through the table as if it were cheap cardboard and his gaze focused on me. "You smell like Auphe, but I think you'll taste of human."
Spies. It was either a paranoid and freakishly good guess or someone under Cerberus had loose lips. And I wasn't a big believer in good guesses. It was a safe bet that someone had given us up, but I didn't wait around to ponder the subject. Neither did Promise. She performed a flip over my head that was a quicksilver study in deadly grace. I heard her land behind me and I wasted no time in pulling my Glock. I was going to get off only a few shots in these closed quarters; I had to make them count. Boaz was my choice for deadliest flavor of the month and I popped off my first shot in his direction. He was already half-changed as he catapulted across the table toward me, twisting to avoid my bullet. It was a lost cause. It took him high in the chest. Then his lost cause became mine; he kept coming. Silver bullets, like so many other things, were a myth. Your average lead worked just fine… eventually. But right now his jaws, about the size of a Kodiak bear's, were headed inexorably for my throat. I blocked him with my left forearm, ramming my arm far enough into his mouth that I could've tickled Boaz's tonsils. Less than that and my bone would've snapped like a twig. But back where the leverage was weaker, it held… barely. Granted, there was a white-hot pain from my fingertips to my shoulder that had black spots clouding the edges of my vision, but that was the absolute least of my concerns. I still held the gun in my right hand and I pulled the trigger again and again. With his chest against mine I couldn't aim for his heart, but there was someplace else open and vulnerable. Every one of my bullets found a home in Boaz's center torso, about diaphragm level. If that didn't stop him, nothing would. He might be the biggest baddest son of a were-bitch to walk the earth, but he had to breathe.