Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series) (7 page)

Good night, Jess
.

CHARLIE
BLACK BEAR

    
He had been thinking, and he had changed his
mind. He dialed the number
they
had
given him. It rang once.

    
“Yes.”

    
“Uh, look, I need to talk to someone—”

    
“You can talk to me.” The voice was still
quiet but now radiated command. “What do you want? We don’t have any of the
tests ready for you.”

    
“That’s the thing,” Charlie said, looking at
his office walls and not seeing them. “I’m calling because I’m out. I’m not in
a position to give you anything anymore. The deal’s off.”

    
The voice chuckled mirthlessly. “Charlie
Black Bear, you are trying my patience, and we’ve only been on this call thirty
seconds.”

    
Charlie sighed. “Look, you guys came to me.
I didn’t ask you for anything. You—”

    
“Hold on, Mr. Bear.”

    
Charlie waited, hoping to finish the call
before someone knocked on his door and interrupted him. The phone in his pocket
buzzed and vibrated. His personal phone.

    
The voice in his ear said: “Mr. Bear? You
have a text message.”

    
There was a note of slightly more authentic
amusement in that steely voice.

    
“Uh, yes, but—”

    
“Check your message. Now.”

    
Charlie felt the blood in his extremities
turn suddenly chill. He reached into his pocket and slid out the phone as if it
were a snake. Unlocked it and checked the screen.
Unrecognized number
.

    
There was no text, but there was an attached
photo.

    
Charlie Black Bear half-stood, but his feet
wouldn’t move and he hunched over his desk as his strength failed him
momentarily.

    
The photo was of his wife and daughter,
standing in their driveway, in
his
driveway. They weren’t aware of the camera – and seemed to be engaged in
conversation.

    
What made Charlie’s breath catch was the
fact that the photo was clear and vivid except for a small blur, his youngest
daughter moving her hand.
And they were
wearing the same clothes he'd seen them wearing that morning
.

    
“Mr. Bear,” said the voice in his ear. He
looked at his office land-line receiver as if it was the first he’d ever seen.
About to turn into a rattlesnake. “Mr. Bear, your wife and daughter –
both very lovely, by the way – will be
very
disappointed if you don’t follow your instructions.”

    
Charlie couldn’t speak.

    
“Mr. Bear, do you understand?”

    
He gritted his teeth and felt the pain grind
through his head and jaw. A rushing sound grew in his ears.
Vision really can turn red
, he mused
almost dispassionately.

    
“Mr. Bear!”

    
“I get you. I got it.”
Gritted teeth, hurting his skull. The red gauze curtain still in place
across his field of vision.

    
“Yes?” A chuckle.

    
“I’ll wait for your call.”

    
“Yes, you will.”

JESSIE

    
She used her key and
quietly entered Nick’s large East Side apartment. Few people knew that when the
building had gone condo some years before, Lupo had bought the vacant apartment
next door and had an arch built between the two spaces, which now gave him four
bedrooms and a redundant kitchen he’d remodeled as an isolation cell in case he
had to ride out a full moon at home. Even though his control over the Creature
had increased greatly, the nights of the full moon could still
kick his ass
, as he put it, wreaking
havoc on his life. And then he was a danger to everyone, including her. Maybe
someday that would change, but for now it was a fact of their relationship
neither wanted to address.

As soon as
she was inside, she picked up the heavy scent of musk. It hit her nostrils
hard.

The Creature
.

He’d been
out. And now… was he back from the hunt?

    
The door across from
her opened and in the half-light seeping in from the tall reinforced windows
and from the blue flame from the gas fireplace, she saw Nick watching her. His
eyes worked better than hers in the dimness, but as he approached she saw
enough to know he was naked. And
very
happy
to see her.

Even in the
shadows, his muscled body was visible enough that she felt warmth cross her
features. Her cheeks burned and her ache for him increased.

“Nick,” she
began.

    
“Jess, I— ” He
began, simultaneously.

They
chuckled.

“You first,”
he said.

His voice
had that gravelly post-Change quality. It made her tingle in all the right
places.

    
“I had to get away,”
she explained. “I thought if I called, you’d convince me not to drive down this
late.”

She sensed a
wave of musk overtaking her. Even across the floor, all the way around the
leather sofa and armchair, she could feel his desire and hers mingling.

“I'm not so
sure I would have told you not to drive down,” he said. “But I’m on a case
– a weird one – and I had to let
It
out to run. To hunt.”

“And now?”

“Grabbing a
few hours’ sleep. An early start.”

He stepped
closer, almost ghostly quiet on the hardwood floors.

“Did you
feel me coming?” she said.

“No, but I
plan to,” he whispered, smiling gently in the shadows.

She
chuckled, but her mouth had gone dry.

Suddenly
they were face to face and she had little memory of how that had happened, but
she reached out and lay her hand on his chest and felt the coarse hair and the
familiar shiver cascaded down her spine.

Her hand
caressed his warm skin and traveled downward, and she found him there. Large
and waiting.

“Ooooh, Mr.
Lupo, what big—”

He didn’t
let her finish. He swept her up in his embrace and their lips mashed together
in the perfect fit of well-accustomed lovers. She felt his rigid flesh
straining toward her, brushing her thigh. His eyes seemed to glow into hers as
they tasted each other.

She
fantasized she could see the Creature crouching way back there, far back in his
eyes, watching her.
Maybe not so far
back…
It made the heat between them sizzle all the more. His eyes were
doing their shift from color to color, rolling from brown to green and back
again so they seemed to shimmer in the light from the fireplace.

She let him
guide her down to the sofa, shedding clothes as their lips melted together and
their tongues danced around each other's.

This part of
their relationship had never waned, never faltered, and despite the challenges
they'd been handed by circumstances, she knew it would take a major rift to
break them apart. On the other hand, she knew that major rifts were more
possible now in the world they lived in. She put the thought out of her mind,
which was occupied with the soft spread of lust rapidly turning to pleasure,
the warming of her flesh and tingling of her limbs.

Half-naked
now, she opened up to him and when he took her, the intensity of his desire was
almost overwhelming. He thrust into her with the longing of a lonely man who has
given up on the possibility of companionship. She felt him reach deeply into
her and went with him, letting him give of himself until their flesh united
like molten rock flowing into a vessel. His hungry mouth found her nipples, tongue
swirling around first one and then the other, and she felt herself climbing the
slope that would lead to her release.

Just then he
withdrew, leaving her so inexplicably empty that she gasped. Then they switched
positions, she sensing his need –
and
her own
– for him to thrust into her from behind, so he could reach
even deeper. On her elbows and knees, with him behind her, his rough but gentle
hands caressed her breasts and he leaned over her back so his mouth could meet
hers when she tilted her head to the side.

And as their
furious rhythm increased, the heat spreading from body to body even as their
lips and tongues continued to meld together, Jessie had the fleeting thought
that she was glad she’d made the atypical evening trip after all. Sweat poured
off their skin, seemed to boil and evaporate. She groaned as the friction and
the pleasure grew nearly unbearable as he coaxed her to the plateau, and then
they were over. There was only the warmth of their connection, as they slowed
their pace and she stared into his intense and mysterious eyes, and then
nothing else at all.

THE ARCHER

His aunt
wasn’t a blood relation. She’d been his foster mom after…
after they’d turned him away
. After he’d been ground up, from one
system to another even less forgiving one, ground up and spit out, and then all
over again. He’d gone through six foster families before reaching Rose Billings
and her family, and while Rose herself was a fairly decent foster parent, her
three natural sons terrified him until...

Until
it
had happened.

Maybe he'd
snapped.

He
remembered
it
well, and sometimes he wallowed
willingly in how good it made him feel. How he had resolved that particular
problem. Sometimes he could close his eyes and relive it, and he would be able
to smile.

Randy was
the middle Billings boy, a cunning-eyed little bastard with a knack for causing
trouble he then invariably blamed on…
others
.
Whoever was around. The Archer caught hell from Rose or her alcoholic second
husband (another real asshole, that one, whose mean streak was a mile wide) a
hundred times for something he hadn’t done.

An ink spill
on a new sofa?

Grass burned
by spilled gasoline?

A bicycle
wheel bent into a pretzel shape?

A neighbor’s
pet dog
accidentally
killed by rat
poison?

These and many
more were all brought to you by Randy, but someone else had paid the price. All
for Randy's amusement, the need for which seemed infinite and perverse.

And though
Rose was indeed decent, as foster parents went, she despised rule-breakers, and
she never saw that Randy and occasionally his accomplice brothers were the
culprits. Their cons were well-imagined and well-executed, so when she looked
for the source of the problem, it was always
him
she saw. Her blinders caused the one foster child so much pain,
so much trouble he hadn't sought. Her punishments were arcane and tended to
last days – days without this privilege or that toy, days with an added
burden of endless chores, days made longer and more intolerable because they
gave Randy and his willing minions more opportunity to needle, sabotage, and
torture. And they took the opportunity, time after time, until Rose Billings
never saw anyone but
him
as the
problem in any scenario.

So the boy
who would become the Archer had tasted the sharp end of one of the wide leather
belts handed down by the long-gone first husband. Sometimes Rose Billings
herself, sometimes her soused partner, a useless sack of pus as the young
Archer thought of him, would wield the punishing whip with equal gusto.

And the
foster child had suffered for those sadistic Billings bastards, until the day
he snapped – or whatever it was that happened – and when he and
Randy were the only ones standing at the flattened top of the bluff overlooking
a narrow bend in the Fox River, way behind the sprawling Billings homestead, he
had shoved Randy over the edge and listened with glee as the kid’s ragged scream
was cut short.

Then the
Archer had followed, scrambling down the gravelly zig-zag path until he’d
reached the devil boy, whose neck was at an acute angle where he lay cradled by
a thorny bush that had broken his fall somewhat. But not enough, definitely not
enough.

Ah yes, the
Archer-to-be had chuckled at the wonder of it all. The reversal of fortune had
been immediate, if not exactly premeditated. He wiped bits of gravel embedded
in the seat of his pants, breathless with suppressed joy.

And then the
devil boy opened his eyes and stared at him, unable to speak, his crazed gaze
pleading.

And the
Archer remembered all the trouble, all the pain, all the humiliation he’d
suffered at Randy’s hands, all the punishment, all the missed suppers, all the
whippings with that damned belt…