Moonshifted. Part 23

I set my stuff down in the spare room, then went into the bathroom and calculated the risks of showering in a strange house with a strange man in it versus being sticky with strange blood for the rest of the night. Disgust won over sanity, and I stripped out of everything, except for my silver bracelet, and hopped into the shower stall.

The hot water made it easier to think, but it didn't solve any of my problems. Everything I owned was torn, broken, covered in blood, or absorbed into a creepy cyborg. I still owed a vampire a new hand. Weres were attacking me, and I had a date with a vampire on New Year's Eve night. My thoughts spiraled like the water down the drain. I lost track of time.

There was a knock on the bathroom door. "Did you drown?"

"No."

The door opened up, and I prepared to be scared, tried to sc.r.a.pe together some adrenaline left over somewhere, deep down inside, but Lucas just set down extra towels on the counter and closed the door again. I turned off the shower and dried myself off-remembering that Gideon had worn my bathrobe out the door, one more thing I'd never see again-and carefully picked up all of my bloodstained clothes. I walked down the hall to the room where I'd relocated Minnie. The door to her cat carrier was open, but she still sat inside, like Lucas's carpeting was lava.

"I know. Boy, do I know." I dried out my hair as best I could, and thoroughly dried off my body. Then I hunted through the clean things I'd brought-sweatpants and baggy shirt. Asher's cuff didn't go with these, and I didn't want to be unkind. If Lucas was going to kill me, he would have done it in the shower to keep the carpet clean. I snorted at my morbid self and put the cuff inside Minnie's cat carrier. Then I la.s.soed my silver belt around my waist one more time and untucked my shirt, so I could be a little protected but not openly rude. As armored as I was going to get, I went back outside.

"Hey."

"Hey." Lucas stood in his kitchen, not much bigger than my own. "I made coffee. I didn't know what else to do."

"Thanks." I took the mug from him. Might as well drink coffee and stay up. It was at least one thing I was good at.

"How's Minnie?"

"Unhappy."

"I believe that's tonight's theme. Cream? Sugar?"

"Both," I said, and he handed them over one at a time. Once I'd doctored my coffee to within an inch of its life, I walked out into his living room and sat down in a chair covered in cat fur. Of course.

"How are you feeling?" he asked. He sat across from me on a couch with his own coffee mug. He was wearing a white tank top now, which made it easy to see his tattoos. The one sleeve was blurry, covered in old work, but the newer sleeve was still fresh, ornate, gorgeous. "Are you sh.e.l.l-shocked?"

"I've seen people die before. Not in my living room, but-" I shrugged, attempting to be cavalier.

"Sure you don't want to tell me what was he looking for?" Lucas said, with his head tilted forward. His tone was casual, kind. Downright friendly.

"What does it matter, when he was a were?" I asked back.

Lucas's eyebrows rose at this. "You make a good point."

"How is it that there are weres you don't know about? My vampire friend can't make new vampires without permission from her people." I didn't tell him that Veronica had technically been illegal. "How does that work for weres?"

"Viktor's family still has connections. He could have brought them in from out of town-Helen told me that he'd be a problem, even before I moved out." He gave his coffee a rueful smile. "I wished I'd listened to her."

"And what, killed him?"

"Maybe. If that's what it would have taken to avoid all this. Winter would have done it. Winter would have killed him the first day. He didn't appreciate other contenders." Lucas leaned back. "That's why I worry I don't have it in me."

"Viktor called me yesterday. He said you all were setting him up." I watched him carefully for any reaction, but Lucas was only surprised.

"He called you?"

"Have you ever heard of House Grey?" I decided to press whatever small advantage I'd gained.

Lucas looked baffled. "No. That's a vampire naming convention, isn't it? I can ask around." His phone beeped, and he glanced at it. "Just as I thought. Jorgen is p.i.s.sed."

"He can't fight in your stead?"

"Hardly. He's only bitten."

Like the guy on my living room floor. "Can bitten people bite other people and change them?"

"No. It doesn't work like that. Only major weres can make more weres. There's not many loopholes. Unless you want to skin me and wear my pelt, that is." Lucas gave me a look. "What they were looking for at your place-did they find it?"

"I'm sorry, Lucas." I shrugged without answering him. Anna, I trusted, even if she was currently bathing in blood. Lucas, not so much.

"What can I do to change your mind?" he went on.

For all I knew his cleaner was right now tearing through my house again. I suddenly felt trapped in his small living room, wearing nothing but one silver-buckled belt for protection. Drinking a drink he'd made for me that could have been roofied or poisoned or- "No-don't." He put his hand out. "I didn't mean to frighten you. You're safe here. I swear."

I squinted at him. "Are were-promises like vampire-promises?"

He gave me a roguish smile. "Depends on the were." His phone rang this time. He looked at who was calling, and hung up. "Sorry. Jorgen again. I have to leave it on for when the cleaner calls. But I don't want to hear it from Jorgen."

I imagined Jorgen back at that were-bar, discovering Lucas's absence and frothing at the mouth. "I don't get why you have to fight so much."

"To prove my ability to lead. Miss me on one night? Catch me on the next. It's not a match, really, it's a performance. Like I'm a magician and my wolf's the rabbit. How many times can I pull it out of the hat?" Lucas turned his phone's screen off. "It's a miracle Winter lived to see his amazingly old age, with them doing this to him."

I leaned forward, fascinated. "What's it cost you to change?"

"Pride? No, not really. I'm sure one of those vets you work with told you." He looked at me, and I waited quietly for his answer. "Each time you change it eats minutes off your life. It's like tapping into the bottom of the hourgla.s.s G.o.d gave you, draining out the grains of sand."

I hadn't thought of it like that, when Gina first explained it. It made everything seem more horrific. "Is it worth it?"

"On the nights when it's not for show, when you're outside as you were meant to be, yes. I can't imagine how frightening it was for little Fenris at the hospital, without a pack, being out of place. But in the land where you belong, it's perfect. You can feel it's what you were meant to do, to be. Through the pads on all your paws." He jerked his chin at me. "What'd it cost you to be a nurse?"

"My sanity. Three years of school. A lot of student loans."

"Not literally. The parts when you're in it, when you're there."

"Heh." I stared down at the end of my coffee. "Most nights there's a lot of people being unhappy with you. They've heard news they don't want to hear, and you can't change that for them. You spend a lot of nights pushing dying people like boulders up very steep hills."

"What's it like when it works, when you feel it?"

I thought about it. "Those parts don't happen as often as I might like." The most recent one involved his uncle, on the pavement, but I didn't think I would tell him that. Because sometimes you could do everything right, and it still didn't turn out well. "When you see something that needs doing, and you know you're the right one to do it, even if you're scared-it's good. There's a lot of charting around those times, though. And sometimes being yelled at by drunks."

Lucas snorted. "My dad was a drunk."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I never was sure which came first, the alcohol, or the a.s.shole. He did this to me." Lucas stroked a finger along the dent on his nose. "Said if I changed into a wolf to heal it, he'd rip off my arm and beat me with it. I believed him."

"How old were you?"

"Fifteen. He always preferred to fight me as a human. He said the wolf would know how to fight when the time came-it was the human half that needed training," Lucas said, his voice an imitation of his father's. "It took me years before I realized he did it so he'd be bigger than me for most of my life."

"That's awful."

"Yeah, it was. I spent a lot of time in JV after that. He always waited until the day of the full moon to spring me. Thought he was punishing me. Little did he know, I preferred staying in jail."

"Lucas-" I set my coffee mug down on the ground and drew an equation in the air between us. "You've had a rough life, you don't have an education, you're not from here. And you're going to lead the Deepest Snow wolf pack why again, exactly?"

"I'm of age, and I'm the closest related male blood. It's how our system works." He shrugged. "I'm only holding the spot until Fenris Jr. comes of age. Believe me, I don't want it."

"I just don't see why you're more competent than, say, Jorgen."

"He's bitten. He doesn't know what being a wolf is like. He's still chained by what made him a man."

"Then why don't you give them shots to cure him and the others? Or do they really all opt in?"

Lucas gawked at me, then laughed. "I'm just imagining you interrogating my uncle. Jorgen would tell you his service to my family is an honor-he was bitten by the old man himself. And as for opting in-the world is full of paths, Edie." He leaned forward, even with me, and his voice went rough, otherworldly, like the wolf was pushing through. "Sometimes you take one, and it gets you lost in the woods."

I sat very still, and for a moment I felt like a rabbit must feel when a hawk's shadow crosses above. Then Lucas laughed and shook his head. "I'm teasing, of course."

"Of course," I readily agreed. I held my mug out. "More coffee, please?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

I watched him as he walked back to his kitchen, barefoot on the tile floor. He poured more coffee, and I wondered how far I'd get if I flung it into his face and ran for the door. Consciously, I didn't feel like I was in danger, but my subconscious had other opinions something fierce. Maybe it was the predator-and-prey thing I was picking up on-he the spider, I the fly.

On his way back with my mug, his phone chirped from the kitchen table. He got the message, and brought the phone with him. "They're done with your place now." He handed the mug and the phone over at the same time, with the screen still lit. "So you can see they're not telling me anything other than that."

I took the coffee and sipped it-he'd put in sugar and cream for me already, made it just the way I'd had it before. "For all I know, this could be an elaborate code." I was only half teasing.

"Don't give my people so much credit. In the wild, a dumb wolf would starve or get killed. But as humans nine-tenths of the time, a higher percentage of us are able to b.u.mble on day-to-day than you'd think."

"Well. Thanks for the coffee. I should probably be getting home now."

He frowned down at me. "Or you could just stay here tonight. It'd be easy for me to protect you here."

I looked around the confines of Lucas's small living room. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"You still don't trust me?"

"I don't know how I can. Sorry."

If he'd looked angry, I'd have been scared. Instead he seemed bemused, and he reached for his phone. "Fine. I'll call you a cab. He's one of ours-he can stay outside your apartment for the rest of the night."

His phone call sounded very real. He gave them an address and everything. I packed my stuff, after getting another trash bag for my stained clothing-maybe I should carry around trash bags just in case, at the rate I was going-and Minnie was still in the carrier, still growling her displeasure. After that, I didn't know how long we had to kill until the cab arrived.

"You're still sure I can't change your mind?" he asked when I was in the living room again, Minnie at my side. His eyes searched my face. "I promise no harm will come to you tonight."

"You just told me people wander off and get lost in dark woods. That makes it hard to believe you."

Lucas snorted and looked at the ground. "That was a mistake."

"Lucas, I want to believe you-which is probably why I should go."

I reached down and picked up my mug to carry it into the kitchen, and Minnie hissed behind me. I looked over, and she wasn't looking at me- I turned around and Lucas was gone. In his place was a wolf as big as the couch. I stepped back. It took up so much s.p.a.ce I felt like there was little room left to breathe. Not it-he. Lucas. His fur was the color of a worn penny, dull red, with streaks of gray. Minnie kept hissing.

"Is frightening my cat really the best way to convince me?" I picked her up and set her on the couch, away from him. When I looked back, he was sitting on his haunches, watching me with copper eyes. He got down on all fours and stretched toward me, head low. He crept nearer, bowed down, until he was an arm's length away. He kept looking, and I did my best not to move.

He could have attacked. He would have won. But he kept coming closer until his wet nose almost touched my kneeling thigh.

I reached one finger out, to trace the fine hairs on his muzzle the wrong direction. Lucas the wolf closed his eyes. Bolder, I stroked a path up to his eyebrow. The fur wasn't soft, but tactilely different than I expected. Somewhere between bristles and fur, both thick and springy. I ran the palm of my hand down the back of his neck, pressed it into his fur, felt it give, and then the solid muscle hidden underneath.

His head turned slowly to the side, and his teeth caught my wrist. His rough, warm tongue ran over my hand.

There was a knock at the door. My ride.

I pulled my hand away slowly, and he bit down a little more, pulling me toward him. His teeth were like the ends of blunt pens-not needle-sharp, but his jaw could crush my wrist and I would never chart again.

Then he let me go.

There was another knock at the door. Louder, insistent.

"If the world is full of paths, why does yours have to be the one lined with puppies?"

Lucas's eyebrows, and lips, pulled up into a literally wolfish grin. He sat up and bit my bicep with his frightening-not-frightening teeth, and then licked at my throat. I closed my eyes and laughed and pushed him away, and found myself touching skin.

"I'm a wolf, not a dog." He was sitting on the floor very near me now, completely naked. My hands were on his chest, and I pulled them back with a yelp. "Are you really so frightened of me?"

"No. But I should be. That's the problem."

"Edie, I don't want you to be afraid." He was near enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him, feverish. He was beautiful, and I could see all of him now, his tattoos scrolling up and down both arms, his stomach lean, his c.o.c.k hard.

I'd spent the past few weeks angry, frustrated, overthinking things, running scared. Here was something I could do that would be so simple, and feel so good, if I just let it. I was tired of fighting, I was lonely-and I was hungry. "I don't want to be afraid either."

The door knocked one final, last time, and I could hear someone cursing behind it as they walked away. I didn't jump up to follow.

Lucas reached out for me, ran his hand into my wet hair, caught a fistful, and gently pulled. His eyes-they were still his wolf's eyes, bright, searching my own, as he leaned in near and breathed deeply. His hand in my hair tightened, and he pulled away to look at me. His chest rose and fell, breathing hard, like he'd been fighting, and I felt the same sensation, mirrored in my own. I twisted my head and my wet hair slid through the fingers of his hand.

"I can smell you," he said, his voice deeper, more rough. "Still afraid-but curious. Ready."

I felt more naked than I had in the shower, even though I still had on clothes. "You're not wrong," I said, my voice low.

"Once we start, this close to the moon-" he said, and I could see the tension flow through him. He was as hungry as I was, but he was still tempered with restraint. "There's no going back."