“Won’t stop him from dying.”
“No. I suppose it won’t.” George relaxed his arms and slowly set both Jane and Kemnebi on the floor. Jane sprawled over the dark-skinned man, her knee pressed hard into Kemnebi’s crotch, one hand holding back his head. Her silvered blade was at his throat, and his blood trickled down his neck into his collar and around to the back, where it gathered and plopped to the floor in soft splats of sound. Jane’s eyes were Ss softly, golden and glowing. “I am alpha. Say it.”
Kemnebi curled his lips back as if to show fangs. He growled low, the vibration a thrum passing through the stone beneath them and into the soles of Rick’s feet.
“Say it. Or die.”
“You are alpha. For now. But you will die beneath my claws and no one will ever know that—”
“Forever. I am your alpha forever.” She pressed the blade into the cut in his throat and her knee into his testicles. Kemnebi grunted with pain and shock. “What?” She chuckled, actually sounding happy. “You think I didn’t take precautions? Look over my shoulder. The other one. See that small round thing in the corner of the wall and ceiling? That’s a camera, Kemmy-boy. And I just got you declaring me alpha. So in this country, you are subject to me until you find sufficient reason to challenge me. I can do anything I want to you under were-law.”
Kemnebi’s eyes flashed green fire. His teeth were bared, gnashing; but his body language disagreed; he was pinned to the floor by his alpha. Rick smelled his capitulation.
“Yeah. I thought you’d say that,” Jane said. “Leo has very good lawyers. I paid them a small fortune last night to research all this crap, and we both know I’m right. So say it again. I like the way it sounds.”
“You are my alpha.” The words were spitting, hissing anger.
“Good. You will take Rick under your kind and loving tutelage and teach him how to be a good were. You will teach him to shift. You will care for him. For now, he is my kit and under my protection. You are his guard. He dies, and you die. For every wound he suffers, you will suffer two. Got it?” When Kem nodded, the motion jerky, she said, “Repeat it. For the camera. For posterity. For the leader of the International Association of Weres. Just so we’re all clear.”
As if fighting himself, Kem repeated the words, sputtering as his eyes spat sparks. Rick could smell his humiliation and his subjugation. Satisfied, Jane rose and stepped back until the beta cat Kem, George, and Rick were all visible in her field of vision, but she didn’t put the blade away. “We have plans to make. Bruiser, Rick’s hurting again. Trank him.”
Rick saw George lift an arm, heard the soft spat of sound as the shot was fired. Felt the pain in his upper thigh. Without looking, he reached down and gripped the metal dart, pulled it from his leg, and tossed it at the blood-servant. It clattered to the floor. That was the last sound Rick heard as he toppled and the stone came at him, slowly filling his vision until gray, wet rock was all that there was in the world.
The floor hit and he bounced slightly, but the drugs were racing through him and he didn’t feel the landing. He lay there, the earth itself wavering, swimming, the stone beneath him leaching out his body heat.
He had been a cop until the weres got him. He had been Jane’s boyfriend and lover until the weres got him. Now he was in a cage, trying to go furry and still keep his sanity, hoping to sur Shoprievive the pain, while the primo blood-servant of the Master of the City of New Orleans shot him full of drugs.
The drugs lifted and carried him like a small limb on the mighty waters of the Mississippi. Down and down and down. And now . . . he was nothing.
Rick woke to the sight of daylight through tall trees and the scent of mountains. Jane’s mountains. He was lying on a sleeping bag in a tent staked on a bed of leaves, its sides unzipped to allow air and light in through the mesh walls. He was out of pain, drug-free, and alive.
Rolling to his back, he stared out, seeing mountain on one side, rising high, and a path on the other, leading down. He smelled people, strangers, though not close by; Kemnebi, beer, and food were very close. Fainter, he smelled Jane, the scent telling him she had gone. She had gotten him out of New Orleans and away from vamps and witches and a barred cell. Once again she had saved his life. He owed her. Especially he owed her an explanation, but it might be a while before he got that chance.
The still shots of the past three days raced through his mind, images of people, of Leo, of George, of witches with coven names that hid their identities. He vaguely remembered Leo telling him that he had an extended leave of absence from NOPD—New Orleans Police Department—negotiated by a lawyer Leo kept as dinner.