Читать книгу Rogue - Rachel Vincent - Страница 11

My father paced back and forth in front of the sturdy oak desk in one corner of his office, the telephone pressed to his right ear. His stride was characteristically long, smooth, and confident, in contrast to the tension clear in the lines of his face. From the telephone receiver came the steady cadence of Parker’s voice, calmly explaining what he’d found.

I sat on the leather love seat with Marc, listening in on my father’s phone call.

We weren’t just being nosy, though; it was expected. If my father hadn’t wanted us to hear, he would have kicked us out of his concrete-walled, and thus virtually soundproof, sanctuary. Most humans would have used the speaker phone, but we didn’t bother.

Ethan and Vic sat opposite us, on the matching leather love seat. Covering the hardwood at the center of the seating arrangement was an Oriental rug in rich shades of silver, jade, and black, across which my father paced as he listened to Parker’s report.

What I’d gleaned from the conversation so far was that Parker and Holden, his youngest brother, had found the body of a stray in an alley behind a restaurant in New Orleans—in broad daylight. Parker had left the Lazy S the day before to drive Holden back to campus for his senior year at Loyola, after a month-long visit to the ranch. Holden had talked him into staying for a late lunch at his favorite Cajun restaurant in nearby Metairie. After their meal, and probably a couple of drinks, if I knew Parker, the Pierce brothers had gone outside to catch a cab back to campus. Instead they’d caught the scent of an unknown stray.

New Orleans and the surrounding communities were on the edge of the south-central territory. Our territory. As one of my father’s enforcers, Parker was honor bound to find the trespasser and escort him across the border into Mississippi, as Marc and I had done with Dan Painter two days earlier. But as the search for the stray in New Orleans led them to the alley behind the restaurant, the scent grew stronger rather than weaker. The stray wasn’t running from them, which meant that he was either looking for a fight, or he’d already found one. And lost.

After a few minutes, Holden spotted a foot sticking out from beneath a pile of trash, and they knew why the stray hadn’t run. Shoving aside several garbage bags, most already torn open by neighborhood dogs, they uncovered the corpse of a Caucasian male in his midtwenties. He was definitely a stray, and he was definitely murdered. Unless your definition of natural causes includes a snapped neck. Mine doesn’t.

“Please tell me you didn’t leave the body exposed,” my father said, one thick hand massaging his temples as he paced. His glasses lay on his desk blotter, looking abandoned and useless.

Parker’s voice carried over the line, surprisingly clear. “Don’t worry. We covered it back up with garbage, and we’re still in the alley. It’s not like we can walk around Metairie smelling like day-old crawfish. What do you want us to do?”

My father’s silence caught my ear, and I looked up to find him standing still, his eyes closed in concentration. While we didn’t bury bodies on a daily basis, disposing of a corpse was nothing new for an enforcer, and generally required little more than a phone call to the Alpha to report the situation.

Unfortunately, this case couldn’t be handled quite so simply; the body was found in the middle of the day, in a very wellpopulated place. That hardly ever happened, because even most strays had the sense to take care of werecat business in the dark, and in complete isolation from human society. To do otherwise was to risk revealing our existence to the human world. It was an issue of self-preservation, which—unlike humans—most members of our species seem to understand instinctively.

Still, every now and then we came across a werecat—be he stray, wild, or Pride—who showed no interest in hiding his activities, and thus our very existence, from the rest of the world. While public exposure would be most threatening to strays, who had no network of protection, ultimately we all stood to lose everything we had. And we weren’t about to stand back and let that happen.

Disclosure—the Council’s term for the failure of a werecat to keep his existence secret—was a capital crime, and leaving a body unburied fell well within the definition of disclosure. The Territorial Council’s policy on capital criminals—called rogues—was to eliminate them as soon as possible, using any means necessary. Enter my father, Alpha of the southcentral Pride and head of the Territorial Council.

The fate of the rogue who’d killed the Metairie stray was already sealed. My father was his judge, and Marc his executioner. And there would be no appeal.

However, before we could worry about catching and eliminating the murderer, we had to figure out what to do with his victim, a rather interesting dilemma. How do you dispose of a murdered werecat in the middle of the day, in the outskirts of New Orleans?

Ethan shifted on the couch, and his movement drew my attention. He scratched one bare shoulder absently as he stared at our father, clearly as intent on listening in as I was.

Finally, my father stopped pacing. He stood in front of his desk with his back to the room, the phone still pressed to his ear. “What other businesses open into the alley?”

“Um…hang on,” Parker said. Holden’s slightly higherpitched voice came through, muffled and indistinct, then Parker was back on the line. “It looks like…a florist, another restaurant, a print shop, an antique store, a hardware store, and…I think that’s a dry cleaner. Why? What do you have in mind?”

“Where did you leave the van?” the Alpha asked in lieu of an answer. Parker had taken our old twelve-passenger van, loaded with Holden’s luggage.

“On campus, about four miles away.”

“Have you already unloaded it?”

“Yeah, last night,” Parker said.

“Okay, listen carefully,” my father began, and an attentive silence descended in the office, as well as over the line. “Send Holden into the hardware store for two pairs of painter’s coveralls and two pairs of work gloves. When he gets back, you put on one set of coveralls and gloves, then give him the keys to the van and some cash. Tell him to take a cab back to campus, empty several of his moving boxes and throw them in the back of the van, to give you both a reason to be in the alley. While he’s gone, you stay with the body, just in case.

“When Holden returns, back the van as far into the alley as you can without drawing attention, while he puts his gear on. Then, get the plastic sheeting and a roll of duct tape from the emergency kit in the van. Lay some plastic in the bottom of my van. Use a double layer. If you get rotten food in the carpet, you’ll spend all night scrubbing it out.”

I frowned, disturbed by the realization that my father was more worried about the carpet of his fourteen-year-old van than about the body whose disposal he was planning. But that was one of the things that made him a good Alpha. He did what had to be done. And he thought of everything. Everything.

My father plucked his glasses from his desktop, wiping the lenses on a handkerchief from his pocket, the phone propped on his shoulder. “I assume you’re alone in the alley?”

“At the moment,” Parker said. “A guy came to dump trash from the restaurant a minute or two ago, but he went back in. He didn’t even notice us.”

“Good.” My father balanced the glasses carefully on his nose and began pacing across the hardwood floor again, from the front of his desk to the back of the couch where Vic and Ethan sat. “Put the body in the van, close the doors, wrap him in more of the plastic, and tape it up. Do it quickly, and do it in that order. Then take off the coveralls and wrap them up separately. Drive Holden back to school. Obey the speed limits and draw no attention to yourself.” That was standard practice, the reminder of which Parker didn’t need, but Marc couldn’t hear often enough. “After you drop him off, come home, and we’ll handle the disposal from here.”

I turned to face Marc, my eyebrows arched at him in question. “Why?” I mouthed silently, hoping he understood an Alpha’s thought process better than I did. After all, he’d been an enforcer for more than a decade.

Marc held up his index finger, motioning that he’d explain it to me in a minute. Or maybe that I could ask the question aloud in a minute. Regardless, I’d have to wait. I hate waiting.

My father made Parker repeat his instructions word for word, which was also unnecessary. But our fearless leader was not a risk-taker, which was why I didn’t understand his order to bring the body home.

Never shit where you sleep. That was rule number two for disposing of a corpse. Of course, my father’s phrasing was a bit different, but the point remained; corpses were always disposed of far from the Lazy S, and I knew of at least two burial sites between New Orleans and East Texas, neither of which had been used recently. So why would he want the body brought home? Unless he wanted to see it. Or maybe smell it. But why?

The answer hit me almost as soon as I’d thought the question. We’d found two bodies in three days, which was unusual, but not that big of a deal. Violence, like everything else in life, seemed to come and go in cycles. Sometimes we’d go a year without a problem, then deal with several bodies not of our own making in a single month.

What had obviously piqued the Alpha’s interest in this case was the fact that both of the victims had died of a broken neck, which meant the killers had acted in human form. That was almost unheard of. Most homicidal strays killed in cat form, by biting through the back of the victim’s skull, ripping out his throat, or—my least favorite—by eviscerating the poor fool.

But these victims had both been killed in the same, very rare manner. They were related. They had to be. Which meant the foreign cat we’d smelled on Moore was still roaming free in the south-central territory, apparently exercising his own brand of population control—and in the process, breaking more of the council’s laws than I could even begin to list.

Not that this particular rogue gave a damn about our council’s laws. Especially if it was a jungle cat. Jungle cats are to Pride cats what wolves are to the domestic dog. They’re feral. Brutal. Governed by instinct, instead of logic or law. Rather than convening to debate the best course of action, jungle cats converge to fight, and what the victor says, goes.

Such behavior has only escaped notice by humanity because—unlike Pride cats the world over—jungle cats live in…well, the jungle. They’re native to the Amazon, the deepest, darkest, least-explored wilderness on the face of the planet, where people go missing without explanation on a regular basis. Where humanity is, for the most part, still afraid to build its concrete roads and cell towers, the universal security blankets of the modern era.

But this jungle cat—if the worst-case scenario was accurate—had stepped out of the jungle, and here, his uncivilized behavior would not go unnoticed by the human authorities. Not without our help, at least. And we would help him, all right. We’d help him right out of this life and into the next one.

I swallowed thickly, still watching my father. Fear chilled my blood at the thought of confronting another jungle cat, even as anger curled my hands into fists in my lap. Sweaty, nervous fists.

When he was satisfied with Parker’s recitation, my father said goodbye and dropped the cordless receiver back into its cradle. For a moment, he stood with his back to us, his still form framed by the sides of the glass-shelved display cabinet behind his desk, where his plaques and trophies gleamed beneath recessed lights my mother had positioned strategically.

The Alpha turned, releasing a weary-sounding sigh, then made his way across the room. When he sank into his armchair facing us all, I noticed for the first time how stiff he seemed, as if the action hurt, and I realized with a jolt of shock that my father was growing old. Too old, possibly, to deal with another jungle cat leaving his mark—and his corpses—all over our territory.

When he continued to stare at the rug beneath his feet instead of speaking, I glanced at Ethan, who shrugged at me. Marc was first to break the silence. “Did you want me and Faythe to get a whiff of the body, Greg?”

My father nodded, his green-eyed gaze flitting from Marc to me. “We need to connect the murders, if possible,” he said, confirming my suspicion. He cracked one knuckle, an old habit that sometimes meant he was angry, but in this case indicated deep thought. “But you might not find anything. This latest body may simply be the result of a careless new stray who hasn’t learned to control himself, or to cover his kills.”

Ethan frowned. “How do we know that’s not the case with Moore?”

Vic shifted in his seat, and leather creaked beneath him. “From what Marc told me last night, Moore’s attacker wasn’t new. Nowhere near.”

I whirled on Marc, wondering what he’d caught that I’d missed. “How do you figure that?” I hadn’t known there was a difference between the scent of an old stray and that of a new one.

“Moore’s scars. Most of them were old and faded.”

My eyes were drawn to Marc’s chest, where I knew similar marks lay hidden beneath a vintage Van Halen concert T-shirt. His scars were old and faded, too. Marc had been scratched—and thus infected—fifteen years earlier, when he was barely fourteen. “So, Moore wasn’t new.” I shrugged, still staring at his chest. “What does that matter? We’re talking about the killer being new, not the victim, right?”

Marc crossed his arms over his pecs, as if he knew what I was thinking. “Moore had dozens of healed wounds. He’d obviously been in several brawls, and I’m guessing he won most of them, since they didn’t kill him. There’s no way a new stray could take out someone with as much experience as Bradley Moore clearly had.”

Oh. That made sense. “Okay, but that’s sort of a moot point,” I said, my hand hanging over the end table to my right, my fingers brushing the back of a pewter cat reared to pounce. “Whether the killer is newly infected or not—whether he’s even a stray—doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Moore may have been killed by a jungle cat. And this new one probably was, too.”

“Jungle cat? We’re looking for a jungle cat?” Ethan glanced back and forth between me and Marc. “When were you guys going to enlighten the rest of us?”

“We aren’t sure about it yet.” My father frowned, displeased by my loose tongue. “And you’re on a need-to-know basis. I saw no need to alarm everyone without further proof of a problem.”

“Well, now we have proof,” Ethan muttered, drawing a stony frown from our father.

The Alpha folded his arms over his chest. “No, we don’t. And we won’t, until Parker gets back with the body.”

“Okay, that’ll tell us about the new body. But how sure are we that Moore was killed by a jungle cat?” Vic asked.

“Not completely,” Marc admitted, patting my leg. “But it’s certainly possible. The scent was definitely foreign.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make sense, either.” I brushed his hand off, distracted by the thoughts swirling through my head like colors in a kaleidoscope. “Jungle strays usually rip their victims apart.” We knew that for a fact, after cleaning up the mess Luiz had made of a couple of college girls at the beginning of the summer. “Neck-snapping seems a little too neat and orderly.”

“And too easy,” Marc added. “Moore didn’t fight back, which means he probably never saw it coming. He must have known his murderer and trusted the bastard.” He paused, frowning at no one in particular. “Why would he trust another stray, especially a jungle cat?”

Vic arched his eyebrows. “Why would he even know a jungle cat? We executed the only one I’ve ever met.” Not for being a jungle cat. For kidnapping, rape, and murder—the unholy trinity of crimes.

My father cracked another knuckle and we all turned toward his chair, where he’d sat quietly for the past few minutes, content to let us discuss the situation on our own—no doubt another aspect of our training. When he had our full attention, the lines around his mouth deepened. “That seems to be the bottom line. With any luck, knowing how Moore and his killer are connected will tell us how to find the rogue.” He stood, signaling the end of the impromptu meeting. “We’ll know more when Parker gets back with his corpse.”

Ethan snickered, then swallowed his laughter at a stern look from my father. I hid my own smile against Marc’s shoulder. My dad had a weird way of referring to every dead body by the name of the person who found it. Or the person who rendered it dead in the first place. His habit was nothing short of macabre, and as a child, I’d flinched each time he’d made such a reference.

The guys thought it was hilarious. They kept a running total of all the corpses attributed to them by my father, as if it were a point of pride. I hadn’t been a bit surprised to find out a month earlier that Marc held the lead by a comfortable margin. I was disturbed by that fact, however, because I happened to know that he’d never actually discovered a single body. What that said about his kill count was enough to give me nightmares. And enough to make me seriously consider requesting a new field partner.

“Parker should be back by nine-thirty, so I want everyone in the barn at a quarter to ten. And I need a couple of volunteers to man the incinerator when we’re done with the body.” My father’s gaze settled on Marc automatically, and Marc in turn stared at Vic.

“No way.” Vic shook his head vehemently, short brown waves bouncing. “Owen and I just got back from patrolling.”

Marc blinked at him. “Faythe and I disposed of the last body.”

“Digging a hole’s one thing. Cremating a corpse, then grinding up the solid chunks, is something else entirely.” Vic closed his eyes briefly, no doubt remembering the one time he’d run the incinerator. “That smell stays with you.”

Ethan sighed, glancing from one to the other in irritation. “It’s not like the body’s going to sit up and yell boo, you big babies.” He turned to face our father with a contrived look of stoicism—his best shot at appearing serious. “Jace and I will do it.” No one bothered to ask if he wanted to consult his partner before volunteering them both. Jace Hammond would follow Ethan into hell and back, if he thought there’d be a decent per diem and a cold bottle of beer in it for him.

“Where is Pretty Boy?” Marc asked, his hand going stiff in mine. A quick glance at his face revealed a mask of tension stretched across the familiar strong, dark features, and I exhaled in frustration. I’d spent all summer waiting for the delicate truce between Marc and Jace to fail, and so far they’d both surprised me, but that fact had the fragile feel of transience.

“Jace went to the liquor store,” Ethan said, searching my eyes quickly before running a hand through his thick black hair. “It’s his turn to restock the supplies.”

“Okay,” my father said in his Alpha voice, bringing us back on topic as all eyes turned his way. “Spread the word. Nine-forty-five in the barn. Anyone more than a minute late takes a dock in pay. That means you, Ethan.” He headed for the hall with my brother right behind him, trying to talk his way out of his latest tardy fine.

“But, Dad, if you’d seen that waitress, you’d totally understand….”

My father rolled his eyes. “Don’t embarrass yourself with excuses.” He stopped and turned to face Ethan, his expression even more stern than usual. “And while we’re discussing your social life…are you properly prepared for your date this evening?”

I nearly choked trying to hold back laughter, and both Vic and Marc shook with their own efforts.

“Yeah, I’m good. Thanks for asking.” Ethan slapped my father’s shoulder, as if he were talking to one of the other guys, rather than the Alpha. “I’m glad we could have this little talk.”

“I’m serious, Ethan.” My father’s expression darkened. “The world isn’t ready for your offspring. And neither am I.”

“I know, I know. I’ve got it covered.” With that, Ethan headed down the hall toward his room. My father followed, shaking his head silently. As soon as they were gone, Vic fell on the couch in laughter, holding his stomach as if it hurt. Marc and I collapsed onto the love seat, laughing until tears formed in our eyes.

Birth control was not a topic werecats discussed very often. Most tabbies wanted children, and until recently, we’d thought toms couldn’t impregnate human women.

We’d been wrong. Toms could, in fact, produce children with human women. Rarely. The proof was…well…strays. All strays.

According to Dr. John Eames, a geneticist from one of the northern Prides, every single stray he’d tested over the course of a ten-year study turned out to have a half-human, halfwerecat genome. Or something like that. The layman’s version was that strays, according to the good doctor, already had werecat genes before they were infected. Genes they’d inherited from an unknown werecat ancestor somewhere in the branches of their various family trees.

His conclusion was that normal humans—without these recessive werecat genes—cannot be “infected.” But that those with the genes can have their werecat halves “activated” by a simple scratch or bite.

I didn’t pretend to understand all the details, and neither did most of the toms I knew. Especially Ethan. All he cared about was that his social life had been disrupted by what he saw as a microscopic risk. The procreational equivalent of hitting a bull’s-eye with an arrow from a mile away. But my parents were taking no chances, and I found the irony as frustrating as Ethan did. From me, they wanted children. From my brothers, they wanted prevention.

Still grinning, Marc leaned back against the arm of the love seat. “We still have three hours until dinner,” he said, running one hand slowly up my thigh.

I smiled. “Oh yeah? Whatcha cookin’?”

My mother served a sit-down dinner five nights a week, because that’s what her mother had always done. But on Saturdays, it was fend for yourself or starve. And tonight—Mon-day—was my parents’ date night every week that my father was home, as it had been since before I could remember. When he was out of town, Michael “Atlas” Sanders, my oldest brother, took her out to dinner, eager as always to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, for all to see. The big suck-up.

Marc put his hands around my waist and twisted to lift me into his lap. I straddled him, my knees pressed against his hips while my fingers played along the hard lines of his chest. Leaning forward, he pushed aside my hair with his nose, purring into my ear. “If you cook, I’ll make it worth your while.”

“You’ll do dishes?” Grinning, I pushed him back gently, my fingertips trailing down to his stomach, to skim over each firm ripple through his shirt. With each bump, I felt his pulse spike, and mine responded in kind. He licked his lips and his eyes roamed down from my face, lingering several inches south of my collarbones.

Promising chills raced across my skin as his hands slid slowly up from my waist. His fingers brushed the sides of my breasts through my workout bra, and my breath caught in my throat. Marc smiled at my reaction, but the look in his eyes was more heat than humor.

One hand cupping the base of my skull, he pulled me toward him and his lips grazed my cheek. “I had something else in mind, though my idea did involve something hot and wet.”

Behind me, someone snorted, and I jumped. My head whipped around fast enough to make my neck pop. Vic sat on the couch across from us, his arms crossed over a chest only slightly less well defined than the one beneath my hands. I’d forgotten he was there, and judging by the look on Marc’s face, so had he. Embarrassed, I twisted around to sit on the couch, my leg pressed against Marc’s.

“You know, no one likes a voyeur,” Marc said, the hint of a smile ruining any attempt to sound serious.

“Not true,” Vic insisted. “Some people get their kicks from being watched. I know this chick in Atlanta…”

I rolled my eyes, and he laughed, then changed tactics. “Anyway, I’d only be a voyeur if I’d invaded your privacy.” He spread his arms wide to indicate the office around us. “If you didn’t want an audience, you should have taken your show off the stage and into the bedroom.”

I let my forehead fall to rest on Marc’s shoulder, my ponytail tumbling forward to hide my flaming cheeks. “I think he’s got us there.”

“So.” Vic grinned. “Who’s cooking?”

I did a mental inventory of the other members of our household, searching for someone else to saddle with the chore. Parker was still on the road, and Ryan was locked up, and thus less than worthless regarding household labor. “Where’s Owen?” I asked, my mouth already watering at the thought of our resident cowboy’s chicken-fried steak.

“He took the tractor to Livingston to be repaired and won’t be back for a couple of hours. And Jace and Ethan have a double date with a set of twins they met at Sonic.” Vic crossed his hands over his chest and tried to hide a smile. I frowned, sure he was kidding, but his expression said otherwise. “Seriously. And they can’t even tell the girls apart.”

I winced in sympathy for the twins I’d never met. “So, we’re back to Marc and his world-famous mac and cheese with hot dogs,” I said, rubbing Marc’s shoulder.

He shrugged out from under my hand. “I’ll race you for it. Loser cooks. And cleans,” he added as an afterthought.

“To the tree line?” The sparkle in my eyes reflected back at me in Marc’s pupils. He knew I loved to run.

He shook his head. “Too easy. Make it the stream.”

I nodded. “But you have to stop and Shift once you hit the trees.”

“Fine.” Marc turned to face Vic. “You in?”

“For a free meal?” Vic grinned, his blue eyes shining with more pure joy than I’d seen in them in the three months since his sister was murdered. “Hell yeah.”

“On the count of three.” I glanced from one to the other, and leather creaked as they prepared to jump to their feet. “One…”

“Two-three,” Marc finished for me. I frowned, but before I could cry “foul,” he hoisted me into the air by my waist and tossed me across the rug, without so much as a grunt. “Catch,” he shouted to Vic, who’d just bolted up from his seat on the couch.

Vic’s eyes went wide as I sailed toward him, unable to stop or even change my trajectory. My arms flailed in the air, and I landed on him with all the grace of a hippo dancing the Nutcracker. My momentum drove us both back onto the couch, where he plopped down sideways, and my knee nearly hit his groin. My forehead smacked the back of the couch over Vic’s shoulder, and my front teeth clicked together sharply. By the time I’d recovered enough balance to stand, fury no doubt glinting in my eyes, Marc was nowhere in sight.

Growling, I launched myself toward the hall as a screen door slammed on the other side of the house.

Damn it, Faythe, I thought, as mad at myself as I was at Marc. Will you never learn?