The Passion (53 page)

I looked into my brother's eyes and I saw it there: release, peace at last. This tortured soul who had dreamed so high and fal en so low, who had found joy in the one thing most forbidden to him… now he could rest. Now they both could rest.

But knowing this did not make my pain any easier to subdue. Even as his pulse slowed in my ear, as his breath stopped and his blood pooled, my mind was screaming, my body recoiling, a thousand blinding blows descending on my skul —
No, damn you, no,
you can't do this, my brother, don't die
! And it was too late. I col apsed upon his lifeless body with my bloody muzzle buried in his fur and I begged some sign of life to welcome me. There was none.

In my soul, I wept.

I felt at last the nudge of a guard, cal ing me back to the present, and to those who needed me. I pushed myself away, I staggered back. I sat down and lifted my head and howled my grief to the sky.

It was a long time before I could make myself change into human form and enter the building.

Through Denis's eyes I had seen already the wonders they had uncovered: the artistry and magnificence of a mysterious race of werewolves now long gone. None of it surprised me; al of it awed me.

I knew as wel where I would find Tessa, and my wife. Naked, I ascended a staircase carved of heavy dark wood, its banisters and rails formed in the shape of hundreds of individual wolves. I crossed a smooth stone floor and entered an upper chamber made warm by a roaring fire, and I knew already what I would see: my Tessa, shrunken and worn from the rigors of a summer childbirth, her life al but wrung out of her. Elise stood beside her bed in human form, wrapped in a cloak of brushed and softened animal skins. Her cheeks were wet with tears and her eyes were aglow with wonder and her mother's arms, so long empty, now held the infant daughter born of my brother and of the human he had loved.

My eyes met Elise's, and a moment of

understanding passed between us. She took the infant, the smal , cooing, perfectly healthy infant, to the sunny window, rocking it in her arms. I sat upon the bed beside Tessa, and I fumbled for her hand.

"
Chérie
," I said, but my voice broke; I could say no more. I could smel the death on her. Her face was like wax and her eyes were deeply sunken and rimmed with black. Her smal chest barely rose and fel with each breath. Her hand was limp and icy in my own. Perhaps, had Denis lived, she would have held on a few more weeks for the sake of the child.

Without him she didn't have a chance.

With the last of her strength she turned her head and opened her eyes. Yet it seemed to take forever for those eyes to focus and recognize me. I saw the need to smile in them, but her dry, cracked lips could not form the expression. "Alexander," she whispered.

Desperately, hopelessly, I brought her hand to my lips. "I am here,
chérie
, come to take you home."

Her silence forgave me.

After a time a shadow fluttered in her eyes, and anxiety cracked her voice as awareness fought its way through confusion. "My child…"

"Is mine," I assured her swiftly. I extended my arm and Elise was beside us, placing the swathed bundle on the pil ow near Tessa's cheek, yet never removing her protective embrace from it. "From this moment on, every advantage, every comfort, al the best this world can offer. This I promise you…" My voice thickened, and I stroked her brow. "My dearest treasure, and my truest friend."

Her features relaxed, and her eyes drifted closed. "It was good," she whispered, "what we did…"
It was
good
.

As it so often happens among us, death took the mated couple within moments of each other. She died quietly, and in peace, and when she was gone Elise lifted that smal , warm bundle that smel ed of werewolf and looked so human and placed it in my arms. I gazed into the sweet sleeping face, and I fel in love.

It was good.

PART SIX

Central Park, New York

The Present

Chapter Thirty-two

The shadows were lightening by the time Alexander finished speaking, the fog thinning to pale, wind-stirred wisps. The clatter and rattle of awakening civilization reached them on muffled waves of sound: automobile tires and car alarms; coffeepots and horses' hooves; the thunder of subway trains and the metal ic bounce of manhole covers. Voices live, and voices broadcast. Music. The city stirred and stretched and rustled sleepily. Soon the day would begin.

It was a moment before Alexander resumed. He sounded tired, defeated, as though the tel ing had aged him centuries instead of hours. "In another six months, our own child was born. We cal ed him Matise."

Nicholas looked at him sharply, but Alexander did not respond. He went on. "As you know, Elise's vision for the pack was realized over the next two decades, al of us coming together with our various talents and strengths to form what is now the Devoncroix Corporation. It was with the advent of the European wars that we moved the pack headquarters to the compound in Alaska, so you see even that—the very symbol of our heritage and our power—we owe to a werewolf and a human whose story can never be known.

"We cal ed the child Brianna. Elise would have nothing but that she be adopted into the pack and raised as one of our own. Her scent was werewolf, and the pack never guessed. Only her blood smel ed of the human mix. She inherited her father's bright red hair and her mother's big eyes, her father's intel ect and her mother's charm… She was in fact a most extraordinary female." A smile of reminiscence softened his features and the tension left his bearing as he let himself drift into kinder times. "She was, of course, remarkably bright for the child of a human, and she demonstrated excel ent auditory and olfactory abilities—was in many ways as accomplished as any werewolf in the pack. But she never experienced the Passion, never learned to change form. As you know,

anthropomorphs—who are in every other way werewolf, but lack the ability to change—

occasional y occur in nature, and no one knows why. We let the pack think this was the case with Brianna, and no hint ever escaped about her heritage."

He drew a breath, and with it seemed to let the memories of Brianna drift away. "Other children were born to us, twelve in al , and each one a greater joy than the last. This, too, you wil understand when you find your own mate."

Nicholas said, very careful y, "I have never known a brother by the name of Matise, nor a sister Brianna."

"They would be some sixty years your senior."

Alexander's tone was even, but his face was like stone, his gaze fixed straight ahead on some point unseen. "They both left the pack before you were born."

"Left the pack? Why?"

Alexander hesitated. "Brianna was—unsettled. Not surprising, considering her background. To live among werewolves, but never to
be
a werewolf—

you and I can never imagine how it must have been for her. Eventual y she sought her own path, living a life of scandal and notoriety by both human and werewolf standards. Matise and she, being so close in age, were great friends from infancy, and when she struck out on her own—wel , he had always been her staunchest defender to the pack. He continued to be so in the world of humans as wel .

He died some years ago."

The way he said that last, so flatly, so unemotional y, assured Nicholas that there was more to that story than had been spoken—and that now was not the time to ask for details. His head was spinning with the impact of what he had already learned, and that in itself was more than enough for him to try to absorb.

"Brianna." Nicholas said the word softly, and mostly to himself.
Only her blood smel ed of the human
mix
. So the blood scent in the laboratory belonged to Brianna. The hybrid spawn of his father's brother and a human woman. His cousin.

Once again the horror of the night washed over him, and with it the even greater, more powerful horror of the truth. It was a moment before he could speak again. When he did, his voice was harsh, forceful, made so mostly through his own effort to keep it from shaking. "She is more than just a monstrous abomination, a mutant hybrid that should never have taken hold in her mother's womb. She is a member of our ruling family.
Your niece
. And she is part human."

"Perhaps more importantly, she was the direct descendant of a fal en martyr of the Brotherhood."

Alexander's voice was low, heavy with fatigue now, or just simple resignation. "The human offspring of perhaps the most famous human-hater of the century. Simple knowledge of her existence could breathe new life into a sect within our population that should have died out long ago. She could become the spark that ignites both sides of a battle that's at the flashpoint already."

Nicholas drew in a sharp breath. "The kil er, the werewolf who attacked the lab was after the hybrid?"

Alexander took a long deep breath. The scent that came from him now was something Nicholas barely recognized in his father. It was very close to fear.

"I recognized him—not the person, but the form, from years ago in Siberia. The old pack that I dispersed… not al of them were accounted for.

There have been tales over the years that some of them went wild, fol owed us to Alaska when we left Europe, and have been living like savages off the land in the far north. There was little harm in this as long as they bothered no one and brought no attention to themselves, but now it appears… they may have begun to organize. This one, at least, found out about the hybrid, and with such a weapon at his disposal there is no limit to the damage they could do."

Nicholas nodded, his own throat dry. "A human-werewolf hybrid would be the living proof of exactly the kinds of disasters the Dark Brothers have been warning about for centuries. It would be al they need to launch a campaign to annihilate the human race. And once it was known that this—this creature was spawned by a member of our own family, we would be powerless, everything we've achieved destroyed."

"When Denis was captured," Alexander said soberly, "the Dark Brothers lost their power. For al of this century they've been little more than a philosophy, distasteful ramblings of discontent here and there in smal pockets around the world. But if these wild werewolves have taken up the Cause, and if they know about the hybrid…"

Alexander looked at his son steadily. "When I said you would condemn us al to war, I didn't mean war with humans. I meant war within ourselves."

Nicholas met the gaze of his elder for a long and solemn moment. The weight of the future was heavy on his shoulders. "You've kept the secret al these years. How many more must die for it?"

Alexander replied, "That depends on you."

"Why did she come back, after al these years?

Where is she now? This hybrid, this—Brianna?" His cousin. His flesh. A horror, yes. But his
family
.

Alexander said, "Dead."

Nicholas stared at him. The jolt he felt was inexplicable. Over the past few hours he had been drawn into the world of Tessa the human and his uncle Denis; he had come to accept the existence of their hybrid child with horror and fascination… the cousin of his flesh, the sister he might have known.

Miracle or monster? Now she was dead, and he would never have the opportunity to decide for himself.

"Where is her body?" he demanded. "There was no hybrid corpse in that building. Did you dispose of it?"

Alexander directed his gaze to the shadow-line of tal trees silhouetted against the graying sky. How old he seemed. Old, and… smal , somehow. "She did not die in that room," he said, "but she is dead nonetheless. I closed her eyes with my own hands, just as I did her mother's."

Of course. Having escaped the attack on the lab, where would she have gone except to her parents—

or those she believed to be her parents—Alexander and Elise Devoncroix? Their apartment was only a few blocks away, and natural y they would have taken her in… to die.

The disappointment Nicholas felt was acute and inexplicable.

Dead. The hybrid, the aberration of nature, the monstrous mistake that could destroy them al was dead, the threat was gone. But so was the cousin he had never known, the adopted sister who bore his family name. Whether she lived or died was not to be determined by outlaws. She was dead, and so were three others. No one had the right to do that.

If the intent of the feral werewolf had been to goad Nicholas into turning the pack against al humankind, he had failed. If his mission had been the simple destruction of the hybrid, he had succeeded. But there were others out there, if Alexander was right, and if they had achieved a sufficient level of sophistication to wreak the havoc that had been done this night, only a fool would ignore them now. Disaster had been averted tonight, but only by inches. There were no guarantees for the future.

"If there are others out there," he said lowly,

"whether living in the wild or on the streets of New York… if they knew about this plot, and participated in it, they wil be held accountable. I wil track them down, and make certain of it."

"The Dark Brothers, in one form or another, wil be with us always," Alexander said. His voice was very tired now. "It's vanity to believe otherwise."