Beneath the Skin (7 page)

I liked her more, which was a good thing considering we would be bond mates soon.

Two nights from tonight, the bonding ceremony would take place. My head was full of the idea that I was going to move to Berlin and join a pack and be a part of things again. I would have time to truly fall in love with Rudi, something I felt as if I were already doing. He reawakened so many things inside me. It was a jumble of desire, longing and anticipation and, yes, fear. Fear of the unknown. Anything could happen. I was not the same Constance who had boldly bonded with Grey, then Elena, secure in the knowledge I was loved and would be with someone until I was old and either they died first or I did. It would be so far in the future as to be almost unimaginable.

Rudi had secured one of the mattresses behind a painted screen of a Paris street, which featured a brasserie and wrought-iron tables and chairs, the hint of a waiter lurking behind a door.

He was sprawled on the mattress as he drank from a bottle of water. It had a blue label. A pink-labeled bottle rested beside him.

I tossed him my blue-labeled bottle and he tossed me the pink one.

“Properly hydrated.” I sank beside him, smiling. I felt a little shy, a little turned-on. This would be so much easier, this group thing, with alcohol, but it dehydrated. Plus it disoriented.

Everyone wanted to be sharp in wolf form. What was the point of blunted senses? All afternoon I’d both looked forward to and dreaded this moment. I wanted so much to participate, but I was also scared. Today no champagne clouded my judgment and I knew I should tell Rudi about my wolf and what to expect, but I found myself tongue-tied with lust. It drove all sense of responsibility and trepidation out of my head.

Later
, I told myself.
You can tell him later, Stanzie.

Rudi had on a pair of dark jeans and a blue sweater. It had rolled up a bit to reveal a slice of his taut stomach. I reached out and ran my hand up under the fabric to his chest. Yes, he was muscled in all the right places. I hadn’t had sex in so long. No one had touched me, or had been there to touch back. I craved it like a drug that drove all sense from my mind.

Your wolf needs to be discussed, Stanzie
, I lectured myself, but in the next breath the thought was gone and all I wanted was the connection with another person from the Pack. And him. I wanted him.

He grinned as I touched him and tossed his empty water bottle to the floor. Something flashed across his face, a grimace.

“Your hand’s cold,” he told me. Of course it was. I had an ice-cold bottle of water. He unscrewed the cap of the bottle I’d given him and drank some. I finished my first bottle, and as I reached for the second, he playfully grabbed me and pushed me down onto the mattress so he could kiss me.

“Why are you so serious?” he wondered between kisses. At first they were light, but gradually they deepened. He slid his hands beneath my sweater and I didn’t mind that they were cold. Besides, he only teased me. Before I knew it, he sat up, back propped against the wall.

“Drink more water,” he suggested with a slanted grin. He touched his bottle to mine.

An amorous couple passed by then. They almost had to walk across us to get to the

screened mattress near ours.

I looked up at the interruption and found myself staring into the face of Liam Murphy. He was being tugged along by a gorgeous brunette with sultry brown eyes.

He gave me one of his damned grins, and I almost threw my water bottle at his face, but that would have been a waste of good hydration.

Instead I ignored him. The brunette said something that made him laugh and they were gone, thankfully.

I turned back to Rudi. I was going to say something disparaging about Murphy, but I didn’t because Rudi was very pale. He was sweating too.

“I don’t feel very well, Stanzie.” His blue eyes slitted against some internal pain.

“Maybe you should drink some water,” I suggested, not knowing what the hell to do. And he did. “I’ll go find a grandmother. Do I think I should?”

A grandmother would know what to do. Maybe he’d eaten something bad at lunch. I felt a momentary relief that I probably wouldn’t be participating in the Great Hunt and was immediately ashamed of myself. Coward.

Remorsefully, I reached out to touch his face and he grabbed my wrist with his hands hard enough I thought I might scream, only I was too shocked.

“Stanzie,” he gasped, his eyes locked pleadingly to mine. Then he died.

The light left his eyes. Something bright and essential leaped from his still body and dissipated into the nothing.

His body convulsed, his fingers slackened and his arms fell to his sides. His eyes--his empty eyes--stayed open. But he saw nothing.

“Rudi?” I choked out. My disbelieving hand reached out to touch his face and my fingers communicated the truth to my stuttering brain.

I screamed then. I screamed and couldn’t stop because this was not happening. This was not real. It was a nightmare and if I screamed loud enough I would open my eyes and be in my little single bed in the Paris hotel. The day would just be starting, it would not be ending. Not this way.

The screen collapsed when I blundered into it, as I shrieked both his name and my

wordless horror.

Somebody grabbed me, forced me down to the ground and I struggled, kicking and

clawing, but he was stronger.

“Stop. Constance, stop screaming. Stop screaming right now!” There was an Irish lilt in the man’s voice, more Irish than he’d sounded the night before when I’d met him. He was scared too but in way more control than I was.

“You’ve got to stop screaming and tell me what happened!” Liam Murphy had lipstick on his cheek. His white shirt was half unbuttoned. His hair was tousled as if someone had passionately run her fingers through it. He hadn’t shaved and my scrabbling fingers rasped against the stubble on his cheeks and chin.

“He’s dead! Rudi is dead!” I screamed at him. I hit out at him, tried to hurt him because Rudi was dead and there was nothing I could do about it.

I couldn’t take a deep breath and my head felt as if it were full of helium as it tried to float away from my body. My eyes wouldn’t focus. Murphy’s face alternated between huge and miniscule as I struggled to drag enough air into my lungs to keep from suffocating. My skin was clammy with cold perspiration one moment and then dry and burning hot the next.

Murphy held me down, his face tight with determination. Even though I couldn’t see

straight, his gaze never left mine, not for a second, even when a pandemonium of noise and movement erupted behind us where Rudi’s body rested.

“Jesus Christ,” somebody said. “Jesus Christ.”

“Was it poison? In the bottle? Look, there’s an empty bottle near him and another one half full. Was something in it?”

Babbling voices competed with each other as Liam Murphy and I stared at each other.

I’d stopped screaming, but my heart pounded so fast and hard I thought I was dying.

Things got very bright then very dim and the voices got louder then softer. Sometimes I couldn’t understand them, sometimes I could.

“Rudi’s dead,” I said again. Conversationally. Trying it out so it would take on some sort of meaning.

Murphy sat on top me, legs to either side of my torso, pinning me down. He had both arms up above my head, wrists together, blocking me from any movement.

His chest heaved from exertion or maybe stress. His gaze never, ever left mine.

“I’m going to let you up now,” he said, also conversationally. “And you’re not going to run or scream. Are you?” The Irish lilt was more subdued now. I realized he was conscious of it and guarded against how much of it he revealed in everyday, ordinary speech.

I shook my head, because my heart beat too hard for me to speak.

“You need to answer me, Constance. I’ll not let you up until I know you can do what I ask you to do. So I’m asking again. You’re not going to run or scream, are you now? You’re going to stand by me and do whatever they tell you to do. They’re going to want to ask questions and you’re going to answer them and you’re not going to scream and get hysterical. Tell me I’m right.”

“You’ll stay with me?” I begged. I felt that maybe--maybe--I could do it if at least one familiar face was in the background somewhere. “I’m so alone, Murphy. I don’t have anyone and I’m scared.”

“Don’t be scared,” he said. “I’ll stay with you if you promise not to run or scream. Deal?”

People were gathered around us. I felt them watching us. Some were fascinated, some impatient--all of them were confused. There was anger too. I could smell that.

“Deal,” I said and he nodded in solemn approval of my decision. He helped me to my

feet, glaring at the ones who tried to step forward.

“My mouth is so dry,” I whispered because it was. It hurt it was so dry.

“Give her some water,” Murphy snapped.

“No, not that one. We need to analyze that,” a woman protested.

“Just get her some goddamned water, someone, please!” Murphy was angry now. On my

behalf? Or at everything, including me?

Someone handed me a half-drunk bottle of water and I gulped at it gratefully, as I

clutched it in my hands while Murphy guided me by the elbow out of the ballroom. He knew where we were going. I didn’t. All I knew was that Rudi was dead and the water tasted divine.

again. It had been hours now since they’d brought me to the little room with the white marble fireplace and the museum-quality furniture. The grandfather clock in the corner had chimed every quarter hour and I’d heard the distinctive sound thirteen times now. I was numb and could no longer felt the empty water bottle I had crushed between my hands.

Murphy sat beside me. His temper had spiraled up and up with each chime of that

damned clock. At some point he’d re-buttoned his shirt, but he still had the lipstick smudge--now faded--across one cheek. His hair was still a tousled mess, his dark eyes flat and murderous.

A French woman from the Great Council, Celine Ducharme, asked most of the questions.

Jason Allerton was there too, but mostly he was quiet. Listening. Taking notes. Not on paper but inside his head. Three Advisors were present. They were the ones who took notes on paper--one in French, one in English, one in German. The German one was for Rudi’s pack.

Rudi’s pack snarled and paced on the other side of the door. I heard them sometimes.

Lucy sobbing, Roxanne trying not to, Theresa talking in fast German with a pack member I had not met and did not want to meet, considering the circumstances.

The first time Celine Ducharme asked me that question I had stared at her blankly,

because things weren’t making much sense.

“She’s in shock, goddamn all of you,” Murphy had snarled. “Why can’t this wait? Let her get herself together. Can’t you see she’s barely even hearing you?”

While Ducharme’s eyes had narrowed menacingly when Murphy swore at her, Allerton

had simply sat in his chair, silent, and calm. He had a very Zen quality to him I envied, even though at that point I felt more out of my body than in it.

Councilor Ducharme had glared daggers at Murphy then repeated her question to me,

leaning in toward my face, glowering. Her lipstick was a shade between coral and scarlet. There were fine lines in the skin around her mouth. She balanced between middle and old age. I figured she had ten years max left on the Council before she became a grandmother. There were no grandmothers on the Councils. Or grandfathers, for that matter. No, one morning soon enough she would not be able to cover the wrinkles with skillful makeup and all the hair dye in the world wouldn’t cover the gray. If she hadn’t gracefully stepped down from the Great Council, she would be asked to leave it to exist on the charity of her pack. That day, it seemed to me, couldn’t come soon enough.

Murphy’s voice had dripped sarcasm. “What kind of a kangaroo court is this? You’ve

already decided she’s guilty, haven’t you?”

“What did you put in the water, Constance?” Celine Ducharme asked it again for maybe the twentieth time.

“Nothing,” I answered for maybe the twelfth time. I was gradually regaining my sense of surroundings. I had to pee--all that goddamned water.

“I grow tired of this.” She gave the room a sour look and Murphy gave her one of his trademark smirks, for once not aimed at me.

“I was tired of this three and half hours ago,” he said.

“You can leave any time you like,
monsieur
!” Ducharme flared. “I’m not even sure why you’re here? Why are you here? You saw nothing. You explained that much already.”

“She’s only said she didn’t put anything in the water about fifteen times now. You’re still asking the same question, though. Why don’t you ask me what I saw over and over again?

Maybe I’ll change my answer the way you want her to change hers.”

“I believed you,” declared Ducharme. Ice frosted her words so that I shivered

involuntarily.

“I’m not getting anything off her that indicates she’s lying, Councilor,” argued Murphy.

“The Pack are not as easy to read as Others are,
monsieur
,” the Councilor reminded him.

“She could be very good at this. I think she must be. After all he died right in front of her and here she is being defiant and refusing to cooperate. Highly suspicious.”

“She is cooperating. Just because she’s not telling you what you want to hear doesn’t mean she’s not cooperating.” Murphy’s jaw was tight and he had to almost force the words out.

Ducharme gave him a pitying smile.

“You have nothing that ties her to this man’s death tonight,” Murphy’s mouth twisted in disgust.

“When the tox screens come back from the water analysis, we’ll see about that,
Monsieur
Murphy.”

Murphy glanced irritably at his watch and shook his wrist as if he could make time go faster that way. “You aren’t going to keep us boxed up in here until then, are you?”

“As I’ve said repeatedly, you can leave whenever you like. In fact, I wish you would.