Nine Lives of an Urban Panther (11 page)

I stood. “Shirt.”

Tucker took off his button-up shirt and tossed it at me. I slipped it on as fast as I could and my mind seemed to work better not bare naked.

The moment I was covered, Tucker turned around. “What the hell was that?”

“I don't know, Tucker.”

I looked down at myself, the hum of the shift still in along my skin. And I was starving. Anything that I had remembered to eat in the past day was burned through with the energy of the shift.

My stomach churned as I looked down at the torso of a ghoul at my feet. There were very distinctive claw marks all over the body. Blood I could handle, had spilled it and had it spilled, but rotten body fluids were a new kind of gore that even on my second exposure was still hard to manage.

Tucker stormed over to me. “You lost control, didn't you? I mean, you were the fastest I've ever seen you, but you lost control.”

I rolled up my sleeves, nearly ripping the poor things off with my anger. “What do you want me to say, Tucker? That I've been too busy to eat or run or shift in the past six weeks? Fine, you're right. Feel better?”

Tucker ran his fingers through his hair. He let out a long sigh. “No.”

“Tell anyone and I'll have to eat you, but your point has been made. Okay?”

Tucker looked around the room. “What are these things?”

“Ghouls, according to Jessa.”

“In the middle of the day? In Plano?”

“Guess they don't care about zip codes.”

I nudged the body at my feet and black ooze seeped out of the flesh and into the carpet. “Can you call Jessa? See if she can get the Cleaners over here? I'm going to try to find my bag.”

Tucker nodded and called Jessa. I went back into the kitchen to see if there was anything left of my pants.

There was another body in the kitchen. It almost matched the black granite countertops of the new construction.

My clothes were shredded and probably the reason the panther went after them with a vengeance. Those jeans were fairly new. At least the purse was relatively not soaked in ghoul guts.

Careful of the oozing body on the tile next to me, I dug around in my pants pockets for the keys to my car. As I was grabbing my Chucks, something caught my eye on the chest of the thing lying next to me.

Pretty sure it wasn't going to move because the left side of its head had been smashed in, I carefully reached over and flicked what was left of its shirt off of something carved into its chest.

The Demon Lock. I would have known it anywhere. This thing was marked by Jovan?

My brain, the part that had been bred to be a horror movie writer, to think the thoughts that normal happy people never think about, began to churn out a story. And when it got to the end, I turned around and threw up everything that I'd consumed in the past two days into the perfect inlayed kitchen sink. It was mostly coffee but the peanuts made a reappearance as well.

“Violet?”

I wiped my mouth on a sleeve and looked up at him. “They were part of the Pride.”

“What?” Tucker seemed more concerned with my illness than my realization. He opened a few of the cabinets and found an unopened case of bottled water in the fridge.

I tore the plastic top off a bottle and gulped down the cold water. When I was pretty sure that my stomach was going to stay where it was, I turned to Tucker.

“Check out the mark on its chest. He's got the Demon Lock.”

Tucker slipped into policeman mode and I felt him harden his stomach to take in the sight. I was going to have to learn that trick. He knelt down by the body and took a good hard look at the mark.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

Tucker stood and leaned on the counter next to me. “What does it mean?”

“Would you like to hear my gloom and doom version?”

He didn't nod. I wouldn't have wanted to hear it either.

“I think that's what happens when Jovan calls upon the mark. He sucks all the magic and life out of them and they are left like this, hollow and hungry.”

Tucker gulped and I watched the slow bob of his Adam's apple. He reached up and stroked the white, long-dormant scar upon his own breast. “Are you sure?”

“No. But when my gut goes for the worse possible scenario, it's usually right.”

“Why would Jovan do this?”

I looked down at the body. It made sense now. Why I didn't feel any energy from them. Why I hadn't, even in a better condition, been able to feel any attack coming. Jovan was calling in Haverty's debt to him. Must take six months for news to travel to the Neveranth that I had killed his little partner in power.

Or six months for Spencer to find the demon he'd been searching for when all of this started.

My entire body tightened and I shook hard. Part of it was the exhaustion, part of it was the solid proof that my worse half was scheming again.

“Vi?”

I looked up at Tucker. I wasn't ready to say that story out loud yet. “I've got four pack with this mark, Tucker. I need to get to them.”

“You need to rest.”

“How? I've got four people bound to me that might turn into meat suits if I don't act on this now.”

I started for the door and Tucker grabbed my arms hard and turned me toward him. “You need to go home.”

The doorbell rang. We both looked toward the front door like we were prepared for a stampede of elephants through it.

“Do the Cleaners really move that fast?” Tucker whispered.

I wriggled out of his hands and stepped over parts to the front door to look out the peephole. Sure enough, Kurt and the rest of the fearsome fashion Foursome were outside with Jessa, who, bless her pointy head, had my emergency duffle bag from her place.

I threw the door open. “Brace yourselves.”

“Oh pfft,” Kurt said as he pushed past Jessa and I.

But all four of the perfectly coiffed men stopped when they saw the carnage in the living room. They were experts in making girls pretty and cleansing the evil out of a place with their special brand of fairy magic. This was certainly the worse thing that I'd thrown at them.

I pulled Jessa into the foyer and kept her there with a hand on her arm.

“Please tell me that's not ghoul guts?” she said with the most disgusted look on her face as she looked at my black-streaked self.

“It's ghoul guts.”

Jessa did a full body shiver of disgust before she handed my duffle over. “What is this place?”

“One of the Haverty properties. Value might have gone down if they knew about the ghouls hiding in the pantry.”

“And my mother wonders why I don't cook.”

I walked into the living room and the Cleaners were still looking at what was left of everything. The four men in their identical suites just looked around and tried to figure out how they were going to clean up the mess I'd made. Kurt stared at a particularly interesting black splatter on the ceiling.

“Can you handle it?” I asked Kurt.

“We got highlights on you. We can handle a little dismemberment.”

I snorted and went into the bathroom. The water was turned on even though it was more than obvious that no one had ever lived here. I got some hot water going and rinsed off.

Everything hurt. My head, my skin. The panther had come to my rescue again. Or had she come to the aid of those poor creatures, put them out of their misery? Maybe that's why she pushed me away, to make the hard decision for me. Lord knows that if this lot of ghouls had looked at me like that other one in the alley had, I don't know if I could have ripped them into a million pieces like she had.

I shook my head. Pronouns were getting in the way again. I had chosen to block it out because I'm not strong enough to make that choice right now, to end a being's life, mercifully or not.

A knock echoed through the bathroom.

“Chaz called. He's at home,” Jessa said.

Yay. Wasn't today's failure going to be a fun talk?

“Still in there?” Jessa asked again.

“Still standing.” Barely.

“Hurry up. The Cleaners want us out of here.”

I hurried as best I could. I dried off with Tucker's shirt and pulled out my emergency cat suit. Jessa's gift to me: a black velour track suit from Bebe, magically charmed to shift with me. The stretchy material softened the aches and pains.

She opened the door as I was brushing my teeth.

“Tucker filled me in on what happened. You really think those things are Wanderers?”

I nodded, then spit and rinsed. “I do.”

“Was Spencer involved?”

A nervous laugh bubbled out of me as I put my toothbrush back in my bag. Hot tears welled up in my eyes and I sat on the sink and looked at her.

“Whoa, Vi.” Jessa jumped and came into the bathroom, shutting the door quickly behind her.

“I know he's involved somehow. Antagonists just don't fall out of the story, Jessa. They always come back. He's behind this, and if I don't find out soon, I'm four pack members down and might not make it out myself.”

“Hey,” she rubbed my arm. “Haven't seen defeatist Violet in a while. I was just getting used to kick-ass Violet. Where'd she go?”

“She hasn't slept in five, six days, hasn't eaten in two, and woke up naked in front of her Riko.”

“Is this one of those pep talk moments? Tucker's pretty good at those.”

“Been getting private pep talks?”

I said it quickly, as a joke, but a flush ran through Jessa like I'd never seen before. There was a sprinkle of roses and raindrops in the air around me and a bright lavender twinkle in her eye.

“Seriously?”

Jessa pulled her hand away from my arm and pressed herself against the bathroom wall. The smell of roses faded away but the lavender twinkle didn't. “We just talk.”

“Are we talking business or more like what's your favorite Italian dinner and can I buy it for you sometime?”

“No. Just talk. About pack stuff and magic and maybe about music.”

My jaw dropped. “You and Tucker?”

“There is no me and Tucker. We just talk. And he might have gone on a few patrols with me when you were busy.”

“Oh my God, Jessa.” I smiled all the way down to my aching toes. “That's great.”

“There's nothing to be great. He helps me keep you sane and he's a gentleman and . . .” Jessa dropped her face into her hands. “I sound stupid, don't I?”

“No. You sound like a girl with a crush.”

She looked up at me and her little face hardened. “You will not make fun of this, Violet.”

“I promise.”

“I'm serious. No dog jokes, no ‘has he shown you his gun,' and so help me God, if you make a ‘getting tail' joke, I will shove you into the Neveranth myself.”

She was serious. It was more than her idle threats. There was something that fluttered in her energy. Something light and hopeful. And so help me, I was not going to be the thing that squashed it.

“I promise,” I said softly and I reached out my hand to her.

She took it cautiously.

“I won't even mention it, until you want to, and I'll keep it mum from Tucker.”

“But he's your Riko. What if it all ends badly?”

I smiled. “You were here first.”

Tucker's voice carried across the bedroom. “The Cleaners really want us out of here.”

“Coming,” I called back and winked at Jessa before looking at my bedraggled image in the mirror. “I've got a million calls to make, four people to hunt down, a—”

Jessa stopped me. “You're going home. You can restore the natural order of things from your couch with a full stomach.”

 

Chapter Eleven

I
HAD TO
flip through my planner to remember the phone numbers of the four pack members that needed to be watched over. Thanks to my smart phone, I found the number of the nearest Sprouts to the town home and found out that Evan was still at work. I'd send someone over there to explain things to Hannah.

I pulled up to the curb in front of my house and stayed in my car to make the next call.

How the hell was I going to explain this?
Hi, you might turn into a zombie, so if you could just stick around another pack member, that would be great.

The phone call picked up on the first ring. “Prima Jordan? I was just about to call you,” Jane said. There was a slight lilt to her voice, some accent that I hadn't asked about yet that curled around her words. She was quiet and just so very proper. There wasn't any other way to describe her.

“Something wrong?”

“My mark hurts.”

I gulped. “I know. Where are you?”

“At home.”

Jane lived alone on some property on the outskirts of town. It was perfect for her animal side, a white horse, but it was a good thirty-minute drive from here. I was running out of bedrooms, but I needed her with someone.

“Okay, Jane. I don't want to freak you out, but I don't want you alone. So you've got a choice. You can come to my place and sleep on a couch for a few nights, or Gator lives over on your side of town, over in Forney, I think.”

“Which one is Gator?”

“Tall redheaded guy, looks like a construction worker.”

“I am not sure about that.”

I nodded. “Okay. Well, I'll text you my address and you can pack a bag for a few days.”

“What about work?”

“Work is fine, but I don't want you alone at night.”

“Should I be scared, Prima Jordan?”

“No, don't be scared. In fact, I need you to do whatever makes you happy, so if you've got a favorite pair of pajamas, or if you need to get your nails done, I need you to stay positive.”

“That might be the strangest advice I have ever heard,” she said.

“Well, welcome to the pack. I'll see you tonight.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

I flinched at the title and hung up to call the next one.

“Hola, esta dia buena a la Rosarios.”

I could hear the bang and clang of the busy restaurant behind him. “Mr. Rosario, it's Violet Jordan.”

“Prima,” the older man greeted me with his thick Spanish accent.

“Do you know where Julian is?”

“Working. Did he do something wrong?”

I laughed. The three Rosario boys were troublemakers in the most wholesome kind of troublemaking, but like Hannah and Evan, Haverty had only seen the need to mark the middle son with the Lock.

“No, Mr. Rosario. Just make sure that he's not alone for the next couple of days. And call me if anything happens.”

“Is it the Lock?”

These guys really were all on the same wavelength. I wished I could take credit for some of that, but not yet. “I'm just being careful. Will we be seeing you and your wife at the full moon?”

“We can't all leave the restaurant, Prima.”

“Understood. But I'll need the boys there.”

“Si, Si. They will be there.”

“Good. Take care of yourself.”

“Adios, Prima.”

I leaned my head back against the headrest as I hung up. Three down, one to go.

Knuckles rapped against my passenger door and I saw Chaz standing out on the sidewalk. I unlocked the door and he opened it and climbed in.

“What are you doing?”

“Phone calls. Welcome to my new mobile office.”

He too leaned his head back on the headrest.

I'd missed him. One day away and I'd missed the golden in his eyes, the warm musky smell of him.

“Jessa said you got attacked by ghouls. Again.”

“Yep.”

He let out a long sigh. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad was today?”

“Fifteen.”

He sat up straight in the seat. “What? Why? She said it was four against two?”

“Remember a really long time ago when you told me that the panther needed to fulfill its three primary urges?”

“Yeah. Think it was Iris, but yeah. Why?”

“I haven't been running, or eating nearly enough or anything really that would satisfy the panther, so when she got a chance to stomp on something today, she took it.”

Chaz gave me a hard look. “Did you wind up naked?”

“Pretty much.”

“Did Tucker jump down your throat about it?”

“Pretty much.”

He looked down at the console between us. “Guess I suck more at this fiancé thing than I thought.”

“How is me ending up naked your fault in any way?”

“I'm supposed to take care of you, help you get to the best version of yourself and since we've been engaged, you've nearly missed the full moon, stopped sleeping and eating, and lost control of your shift.”

I smiled and slipped my hand into his. “Then why don't you take me inside and cook me dinner?”

“Because I need to talk to you about my trip.” He squeezed my hand.

That wasn't good.

“Here in the car? We have nearly two hours with no one in the house.”

Chaz settled into the passenger seat, as much as he could in the small space. I couldn't afford the Miata with the leg room. “It's quiet here.”

I popped my seat into a more reclined position and readied for a story. “Shoot.”

“Andrea needed me to find a pack of ghouls roaming her city.”

My skin prickled. “Did they have the Demon Lock?”

Chaz frowned. “Yeah, actually. Turns out they used to be . . .”

“Members of the Order and now they are nothing but mindless shells of their former selves hoping to chomp on some Wanderer flesh?” I filled in. I popped the seat back to a sitting position, remembering why I had been in the car making the phone calls in the first place.

There was a beautiful furrow between his hazel eyes. “How do you know this?”

“Figured it out after this afternoon. The four ghouls had the Lock and my brain went to its usual dark place.”

“What happened to them?”

“The demon on the other end of the Lock. The whole reason Haverty promised off members of his pack was to get more power and I'm thinking Jovan is calling in his debts now that he knows Haverty is dead.”

“Why?”

“Well, when I thought it was just here, I would have said he'd found out Haverty wasn't the big dog anymore and was cashing in his chips.”

“But now that it's happening all over the place?”

“I don't know.”

Chaz sighed. “So do that thing where you make stuff up with your writer brain.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Look at the big picture and puzzle piece it together like the plot lines in your movies.”

I sighed, but humored him. I closed my eyes and saw the ghouls again. And the Demon Lock. And what I thought Jovan might look like. In my head he was this evil dark beastie with horns like the devil from
Legend.

Why would the evil lord of the netherverse need to call upon power from our realm, and slowly? Chaz didn't mention hordes of ghouls, just a small pack. A few here and there. Chaz hadn't mentioned a change of power in San Antonio, and in the six months I'd been on the circuit, he hadn't mentioned a power shift from light to dark.

So I'm evil and going one by one through old ties that probably don't mean much to me, but I'm still getting more powerful.

“He's either pulling on their ties because he's teaching someone else, or he's trying not to get caught. But if he enjoys chaos as much as everyone seems to think that he does . . .”

“He's teaching someone how to control others.”

The vision of the ghoul with the Lock on his chest flashed across my brain and my stomach churned again.

“What else? That's your ‘something else' face,” Chaz said.

I licked my lips and told him what I wasn't ready to admit to Tucker. “What if he's teaching Spencer?”

Chaz gulped. “That's a conclusion I'm not ready to jump to. “

I knew Chaz and he would need proof. “Can you see if you can fill in the blanks?”

Chaz nodded and somewhere in the conversation, all the golden had faded from his features as he was put to work. “I can ask around, get on the white hat broadband and see if anyone else has noticed a ghoul influx.”

I chuckled. “We just said ghoul influx in a grown up conversation. Our lives are weird.”

He squeezed my hand. “At least they are ours.”

I smiled, a warm happy smile for just one moment in the quiet car with my fiancé.

T
HE FIRST ROUND
of housemates landed at about six thirty that evening and the ebb and flow was constant after. Nash and Kandice finished up the dinner that Chaz made for me while I took a very hot shower and a fifteen-minute cat nap. Chaz went to his house when I wasn't alone to get some laundry and supplies. Tucker showed up and paced, because that's helpful in a crisis, and by the time Jane made it to my place, it was eight in the evening and everyone had settled into sitcoms and ice cream bars Nash had picked up on the way home.

“Like I said,” I narrated as I lead Jane upstairs, her dark eyes wide. “It's a little cramped. Kandice is in the guest room right now. Shadow has his bed down stairs.”

“Which one is Shadow?” she asked.

“The dog, but he's actually a man just cursed to stay in the shift.”

“Oh.”

“Which leaves my office for you. I've got a recliner in there. It's worn, but sleeps pretty comfortable.”

I opened the door for her and went around grabbing my laptop and power chord from the desk and a few notebooks so I could work from the kitchen table. “I'm right across the hall and the bathroom is the one with the vacancy sign. It was Chaz's idea after a few unfortunately incidents early on.”

Jane nodded and set her bag down on the recliner. “I still wish I knew why you told me to come here. I mean, I am hardly anyone.”

“First of all, never think that. You are Jane and the prettiest white horse I've ever seen. Secondly, you belong here as much as any other pack member. And thirdly, Jovan's been calling on the Demon Lock and I want to do everything in my power to keep you safe from him.”

Jane went pale. Her sun-kissed skin went sallow and she collapsed into the chair next to her. “I knew you told the truth but . . .”

I knelt down before her. “I'm not going to pull punches. I want you to know the truth so you can fight for yourself.”

“How am I supposed to fend off Jovan?” her voice was small and quaking.

I took her hands and strengthened the ties between us. “Well, by being happy, feeling safe. Jovan gets into your fear and your heartache, so be happy. I've got a library full of books, a living room full of friends, and a freezer full of ice-cream sandwiches and chocolate. It's an urban paradise.”

Jane finally cracked a smile, which was all I was going for.

“Now, if you'd like to join us downstairs, I'll be working and Tucker will be pacing and Nash will be looking at us like we are idiots, but there will be ice cream and coffee. I'm always good for coffee.”

I
WASN'T EVEN
through my story arc or my first ice cream bar when my phone rang.

“Hewwo,” I managed with a full mouth.

“Vi, It's Devin. Have you been to the coffee shop today?”

Had I? “I think I was there yesterday. Why?”

“Today's the last day. They're closing their doors at midnight.”

My entire body tensed. “What?”

“Massive sign. Didn't Bastian tell you?”

I stood and ran through every memory of the blond-haired manager. “No.”

“Well, I suggest you get down here and have one last coffee with me before this place is gone.”

I looked up at Tucker, who looked like I'd just flipped on the Defcon 5 buzzer.

“I can't, Devin. We're in research mode tonight before the full moon.”

“Oh, right, well. I'll drink a double in your honor.”

My neurons screamed out at the missed opportunity for caffeine, especially knowing what I was going to be doing the rest of the night. The rest of me could use a Devin fix.

“Well, twist my arm. I'll be there in ten.” I hung up the phone and looked at Tucker. “I need to go out for a little bit. Tell Chaz when he gets back?”

“Now? Where?”

“I'll be fine, Tucker. I just need thirty minutes and a coffee and I'll be back good as new.”

I went to the front door to slip on my Chucks.

“You can't leave, Violet.”

Tucker was just about to be between me and coffee. Maybe my Riko didn't know me as well as he thought he did. “I'll be at the coffee shop. It's as safe as this place.”

He tried to protest again but it fell flat when I grabbed my purse.

“Thirty minutes. What can happen in thirty minutes?”