Gee DiMercy, Leo Pellissier’s Mercy Blade, had told him Jane could help. Which made no sense. Jane worked for the vamps as a security expert and rogue-vamp killer. Jane wasn’t a were. But something in Gee’s voice had been Nhenconvincing, and Rick had found himself on his bike, blasting down the roads and across the Mississippi, into the Big Easy, believing Jane could—and maybe would, even after he’d betrayed her—help him.
Pain raging in him like a rabid cat clawing the inside of his skin, Rick had bent over the bike and roared away from the MOC’s Clan Home. Later, when he was on the edge of dreams, still-shot moments of that ride came to him: taking the bridge east, flying in at nearly a hundred miles per hour, threading the needle between two eighteen-wheelers, hearing his own voice screaming with rage. Taking a curve, one boot on the pavement, the sole actually smoking. Dodging a car as it ran a red light, his reflexes like lightning on meth.
One thing stayed in the forefront of his mind—he had to get to Jane. She would know how to help. Help him to shift or help him to resist or maybe put a bullet through his brain if nothing better presented itself. He knew, because they’d had something once and because there had been no closure yet, and because Jane Yellowrock had saved his life.
He ended up on her street. She was half a block down, standing beside her bike in the middle of the street, her helmet off, her hair streaming back in the heated breeze, as if she had heard him coming and was waiting for him. He downshifted the red Kow-bike and puttered to a stop. Put his feet down, bracing himself. His head and face were hidden by his helmet and face shield, and for a long moment, feeling anonymous yet knowing he wasn’t, knowing that she had to know who he was, he watched her.
As the breeze that carried his scent reached her, her eyes did a feral shift and glowed golden. A lot like his tonight, except her eyes were always amber and his had been Frenchy black until this full moon. His first full moon with the taint of were-cat blood rushing through his veins, making him half crazy with the pain.
Jane stalked toward him, her booted steps muffled beneath the sound of his bike, her body moving slowly, a liquid, feline heat in her walk. He keyed off the bike and slung his leg over it. Threw back the face mask and pulled off the helmet. Dropped it, knowing he’d scarred it, not caring. He took a breath.
The night was alive with smells, so rich and intense that it was like being hit with a bat at full swing and like being stroked along his entire body all at once. His eyes closed in something akin to holy rapture. He smelled fish and coffee and hot grease and tar from the streets and water everywhere. The slow-moving bayous that wend through New Orleans, smelling of grasses and heated mud and rain-washed animal offal, nutria and deer and old blood. Lake Pontchartrain with the reek of old pollution and oil and the warmth of the sun on its waters. And the Mississippi River. He had never thought that water might smell of power, but it did, a heady mixture of mountain and snow and rain and animal, of the scents of tugboats and fish and water treatment plants. Of every source of its water all along its course through the nation. And riding over it all he smelled the Gulf of Mexico, fresh and salty and . . . amazing. The odors twined with the pain racing under his skin, becoming one with it. And he could smell his pain, like old meat and rancid butter. He never knew that pain had a smell.
Jane’s boots drew closer, the leather soles abrading on the asphalt. The wind shifted, capricious, and he smelled her before she reache Sre ll ofd him, and he knew instantly that she wasn’t human. How could he have missed that scent before? She was redolent of big-cat but not leopard, not Kenyan jungle nights and African tribal drums. She smelled of wild rushing streams and craggy passes clogged by snow; her scent sang of wildfire, of the cold taint of iron in the water trickling from cracks in the stone faces of mountains. Heat and blood pooled deep in his groin with an ache that wanted release. “I can’t ssshift. It hurtsss,” he said, his voice a growling hiss.
“I know,” she whispered.
His eyes still closed, he felt her hand lift. The warmth and texture of her energy were like spiky vines, thorny and sharp, as her palm came close to his face. Her skin was like silk as it slid across his cheek. Tears burned beneath his lids, hot as acid. He had betrayed her.
“I can’t ssshift. Kemnebi ssshays—” The words growled to a stop. He couldn’t shift into his were-cat, but his vocal cords weren’t working right either. With the rise of the full moon, his body had leaped toward the change and slammed to a halt, like a motorcycle hitting a rock cliff wall at a hundred twenty. His sense of smell was acute, his eyes were funky, and his voice was gone. His teeth felt weird against his tongue. Pain rode him like he was a bitch in a prison cell—no way out. None.
Her hand was hot, smelling of cat and clean sheets and the remembered smell of sex. He leaned his face into her palm, breathing deeply. She stroked his cheek, and her skin smelled better than anything he had ever smelled, better than Safia. And far, far better than the werewolves who had tortured him.
“Kem says what?” she whispered.
“Kem shasss shometing isss w’ong wi’ me.”