Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes (29 page)

Shit. Half-head.

A joke about her freaking hairstyle. And the joke’s on me.

“Hello, Amber,” she said, her voice barely louder than the hiss of sand against the window slats.

“Cameron.” I sat opposite her. “I’m disappointed. No dark confessionals in old churches. No buzzy voices and burning incense. No drama.”

I was lying about the last part.

“They all served a purpose.” Her real voice was all late-night radio, warm and smooth as chocolate.

“And that purpose is finished?”

She nodded, a tiny movement.

Her face wasn’t the usual western African structure of strong, broad planes. She was angles and edges, Eastern African, maybe Somali or Ethiopian heritage. The eyes were dark-rimmed, quick and bright, the nose sharp, the mouth full, but hinting at impatience.

A stunning blend of rich Nile black and clever Egyptian haughtiness.

She could have told me one of her ancestors had been a pharaoh, and I would have believed it without any problem.

And scary. Lots of that. Whether or not my brain believed she was as crazy as the stories made out, some part of my gut had her pegged as unstable.

“Well, I don’t understand,” I said. “What was the purpose, exactly? Why did you put such an effort into disguise last time?”

“Because I’m not crazy.”

That was avoiding the question, but I had to laugh.

The whole New Mexico setup was designed to keep other werewolves away. The reputation of the Albuquerque and Santa Fe Were was that they were near-rogue, slathering brutes. Even Felix, only four hundred miles away, had believed the myths they built up around themselves. No one came and messed with the New Mexico packs if they could avoid it.

All the disguise and deception was working to that end.

Why?

Cameron sat, clearly wanting me to puzzle it all out rather than have to tell me.

What did I know about them?

The New Mexico packs did things that no other packs seemed to do. They accepted other Were into their ranks without discrimination. Rita was a were-cougar and she was a lieutenant in the Albuquerque pack. I knew of no other pack that did that, though maybe the Las Vegas pack would, when Lynch returned home. Even Felix, who was broadminded for an old alpha, hadn’t wanted to. I wasn’t even sure where he’d gotten to in his decisions about having a lieutenant, Ursula, who was either a skinwalker or simply able to manifest as a bear and a wolf.

And the New Mexico packs
associated
, and were looking to expand that association. An association—not a casual alliance, but something deeper, deep enough that Zane, the Albuquerque alpha, was happy to come to Denver and present himself as a lieutenant of Cameron’s.

Who was a woman. A female alpha.

The only other one I knew of was Billie in LA, and she wasn’t accepted even by her neighbors.

The New Mexico packs were
radically
different. And they were trying to form an association to counter the Confederation.

“If it got out that you weren’t crazy…” I said, and Cameron’s head dipped fractionally in encouragement. “If that got out, let alone the news that you’re a woman—”

“I’d be ass-deep in challenges before the sun went down. The challengers would be fighting each other for the opportunity to try me. The Confederation, meanwhile, would be laughing.”

I sat back and thought it through. For all the hints of an impatient personality, Cameron stayed calm and watchful, content to let me figure it out.

Would she really get challenges just for being different? Or just for being a woman alpha?

I didn’t know enough alphas. I didn’t know enough about what happened in a challenge. The LA Were didn’t challenge Billie. The Belles made it clear they weren’t interested in being acquired, and their territory wasn’t anything to fight over. But New Mexico? The state was huge, and prime werewolf country. If even relatively sane alphas like Stillman in the Cimarron pack thought they stood a chance to acquire the whole state of New Mexico with the defeat of one little female alpha…

And whether they succeeded or not, New Mexico would be thrown into turmoil. There’d be no opportunity for any more expansion while it went on.

If Cameron won…

I looked her over. There was nothing to gauge from her body, half-hidden as it was in her coat, but she carried herself with a huge confidence. And dominance played a big part in how fearsome a wolf an alpha could turn into. Even if I hadn’t known she was alpha over a huge territory and several packs, I’d have guessed her to be a significantly dangerous wolf.

So… If she won, then would the packs of the defeated alphas come over to her? A woman? Or would they revolt and just be easy pickings for the Confederation?

“Or it might start small,” she said. “I’d win against the first couple. I might even take over their packs. But then everyone would know about it. With every pack I took over, the prize would only become bigger. There’s nothing to stop a dozen of them turning up and challenging me, one after the other. And even if I kept winning, there’d be no way we could assimilate that many packs.”

“So you have to expand slowly. You get Zane, or one of your other male alphas from your sub-packs, to front up,” I said. “You associate, you change the way new associate packs think, and only when you think they’ll accept it do they learn that there’s a female alpha on top.”

She nodded again.

“But you can’t do that now,” I went on. “You can’t afford the time. The Confederation is pressing. And at the same time you need to hurry up, you’re finding even more extreme bigots as alphas, like in LA.”

“And San Francisco. And San Diego, San Jose, Russian River, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Reno and Flagstaff. Packs from Houston all the way down the coast to Miami, and that’s just the ones we know about.” Dark anger flared in her eyes before she went on. “The entire Confederation is the same, of course, all the way up into Canada. But…it’s not only the Confederation that’s raising the urgency.”

I narrowed my eyes and wished I hadn’t been so out of the flow for the last month.

What’s changing?

The New Assembly. Political structures forming in the packs. And…

My stomach lurched.

Felix.

Just across the border from her, a new super-pack was forming around the Denver pack. And worse, it was mainly because of me. The werewolf underground would be spreading the news that Felix wanted the ritual only for allies.

What would that have looked like to Cameron?

She hadn’t come all the way to Denver today without a purpose. She was here because of the threat that Felix posed, whether he intended to or not.

Even if she and Felix never contested anything, having two alliances against the Confederation would split their effort and weaken the defense.

And Felix would be thinking exactly the same way—that Cameron was a threat.

“You and Felix threaten each other,” I said. “You’ve got to talk. It’s not deliberate, it’s just misunderstanding.”

She tilted her head, eyes glittering in the lamplight.

If I was reading her right, that meant I’d only gotten part of the truth. And she wasn’t going to tell me outright. This was some kind of test.

Why had she called me to Santa Fe when I was down in New Mexico?

She’d wanted to question me about Felix’s intentions. She’d made me agree to a limited association with Pack Deauville so she could visit Denver.

Yes, but my gut told me there was more. She’d wanted to see me. She’d wanted to test me against her own dominance.

Was that so she had an idea of how dominant Felix might be?

What had testing me told her?

She was dominant, but not that powerful—

I looked up and she was still watching me, waiting to see whether I’d reached that point.

Her eyes seemed to expand. Her dominance flowed out. Not colored by anger, as it had been last time.

Strong!

I’d forgotten how strong she was.

The room receded. My lungs struggled to get oxygen.

She didn’t move and yet she seemed to loom.

Shit, but she’s strong!

She’d been impressed when we’d fought our dominance duel in Santa Fe, but either she hadn’t been trying so hard, or she’d grown in the last month.

My heart rate surged and a feeling of weakness shocked my muscles.

I pushed back. It was like getting in a shoving contest with the Hill Bitch.

And as that realization came to me, it simply stopped.

I was panting. Cameron had a sheen of sweat on her brow. For all her effort to look as if it was nothing, I’d gotten through to her. In fact, her heartrate was up, her breathing was deeper and her eyes had a fixed look.

I took what consolation I could from that. I wasn’t top bitch. I’d have to live with it.

“No,” she said, struggling to keep her voice level. “In case you were thinking it, I wasn’t testing myself against you, here or in Santa Fe, for some cunning plan to find out whether I could take on Felix.”

“Why then?”

She shrugged elegantly. “I needed to be sure the direction I was thinking of taking was worthwhile for me. That your alpha was worthwhile. Better than precipitating things and getting into a pissing match directly with him.”

So she had been measuring Felix by testing her dominance against me, but not to take him on? Why then?

“What direction is that?”

She laughed and hedged. “I need you to do something for me. Something that will put Felix off balance a little. Something that will give me an advantage.”

“Why would I do that? He’s my senior alpha. And I’m a Denver Were; I submit to Felix because it’s the best thing for all of Colorado, let alone Denver. I won’t go against that. And that means I won’t go against Felix.”

“That so?” She smiled: quick, wolf-sharp, a smile full of teeth. “Not for anything?”

I glared at her.

“Say you help me,” she said. “If my plan works, in return, I’ll agree to association with House Trang, and with Altau too, if you want it.” She waved her hand. “Done, just like that.”

Just like that.

Her eyes were fever-bright, watching my reaction.

“I won’t work against the Denver pack,” I said. Surely, she was just testing my loyalty? The reward she was dangling in front of me—all of Skylur’s impossible demands about New Mexico delivered without even needing to go down there—that was all kinds of tempting for my Athanate side, but it was nothing to my Were side.

“Good,” she said. “Because what I’m going to ask you to do will directly benefit the Denver pack, all its allies and sub-packs, more than anything you could achieve on your own.”

Arrogant, much?

And…

Do I look that stupid?

She’d just said she wanted an advantage over Felix. How could she claim that would be a benefit for Denver?

Trick him into an association, maybe?

“If you want an association with Felix, why not ask him? Why involve me?”

She laughed, a short, angry laugh.

“He wouldn’t read a letter, wouldn’t even answer a phone call from me. Any one of my wolves gets within a half-mile of Coykuti, and that hillbilly nephew of Felix’s starts blasting away with his shotgun.”

She had a point. Duane took his job seriously, as he should; there’d been assassination attempts from alphas too cowardly to challenge.

So my job was to get her to Coykuti without being shot.

Why would she think that’d put Felix off balance?

And why was she getting so worked up? She was like an athlete psyching herself up before the big race. Heart rate up again. Breathing deeper. Fidgeting.

No, not a racetrack athlete, more like a boxer. As if she were going to challenge him.

She saw that I saw and she stopped—sat as still as an Egyptian carving, staring at me.

“Besides,” she said, “it’s not
association
I want.”

“Huh?”

“Gods! Zane said you had a brain. Use it!” She slapped her hand on the table, making me jump. “You’re a female alpha. What did you have to do to talk to the LA packs? Put that brain of yours to work, woman,” she snapped. “Connect the frigging dots.”

I frowned.

Oh, my God!

“No!” I spluttered as it dawned on me where she was headed. I stood up, knocking the chair over. “No! No freaking way! You are not getting me to do that.”

An hour later, I stood in the yard in front of Coykuti ranch. I’d never felt so alone. So exposed.

I’d rather perform another ritual in the middle of Denver, stark naked and without Nick to lead the dance, than be standing here.

I’d called ahead. That much I’d insisted on, and Cameron had allowed it. Felix knew I was bringing Cameron here. Knew it was formal—two lieutenants would attend from each side. But as soon as Felix had started questioning what it was all about, Cameron had reached across and ended the call.

“I know what I’m doing,” she’d said.

She might, but I was freaking lost in the complexities of Were behavior. Did she really think it would turn out better if she surprised him? How the hell had she convinced me to help her?

We’d come in the Hill Bitch. I’d had to leave Yelena with Cameron’s truck. Formal Were meetings of this type were restrictive on who could come. The two alphas, each with two lieutenants. And one intermediary, only one, ‘in good standing with both parties’. Whether I would remain in good standing with Felix after this, I wasn’t sure. In fact, I thought I’d expended all my good standing with him today, between Yelena telling him to fuck off and Cameron ending the call before I could warn him what was happening.

I’d slammed the truck door behind me after I got out, and it stayed closed, just as the door to the ranch stayed closed.

I stood halfway between the truck and the ranch, as I’d been told to.

I felt eyes burning into me from both sides.

A cold wind came sliding down the mountain, sighing out beneath the dark shadows of the pine, slipping over the maroon roof of the ranch house and chilling the sweat on my forehead as I waited.

There was a werewolf etiquette to these meetings. The first to move had to be from the guest. The delay was all about showing balls.

I snorted.

At least, that’s what Felix would think it was about until he saw Cameron. Like everyone else, he’d be thinking Cameron was a male alpha until she got out of the truck.

I heard the truck’s doors open behind me, and I sensed rather than heard Cameron’s lieutenants pour themselves out onto the yard.

Rita, in cougar form. Zane in wolf.

The front door of Coykuti opened.

For a second, Ursula stood there, staring at me. Not happy.

She’s not going to change. Felix isn’t going to accept a meeting. She’s just going to tell us to get the hell out of here.

But she was only making a point, making them wait. She shucked her clothes in a few practiced steps and changed.

Bear!

Alphas would normally have two lieutenants in wolf form to meet another alpha.

Cameron had declared her difference.
I have a cougar lieutenant.

Felix was playing this like a poker game.
I’ll see your cougar and raise you a bear.

Score one for Felix.

I bit my lip.

Ricky followed Ursula onto the porch, frowned at me, shed his clothes and changed.

The four lieutenants placed themselves at the corners of a square, about ten paces a side, centered on me. This was Were super-formal.

Next, after another delay, Cameron would step out of the truck. Guest first.

But she didn’t get the chance.

Felix walked onto the porch, down the steps and into the yard, coming to a stop at the invisible boundary of the square.

You are unconventional,
he was saying
. So what? I can throw convention aside.

I heard the truck door open behind me, and an immediate, sharp intake of breath from Felix as he caught sight of Cameron.

Sorry, Felix, but you’ve been massively outdone on the unconventional aspect.

Score one for Cameron, just for being a female alpha of a group of packs.

If it hadn’t been so damned serious, I would risk the hysteria and start laughing anyway.

I couldn’t turn around yet. I had to strain my ears to hear the soft sound of her boots on the drive.

Once she reached the square, I could begin the formal introduction.

Where it went from there…

The noise behind me stopped, giving me my cue.

“I am Amber Farrell, House Farrell, sub-House of House Altau and co-alpha of Pack Deauville, sub-Pack of the Denver pack and associate of the New Mexico group of packs.”

I cringed at the last part, but Felix didn’t so much as twitch.

“I’m here to present my associates in good faith to my alpha.”

I was the alpha of a sub-pack. That got me the right to stand here and make my little speech. The right to get him to come out and stand there. That far and no further. This was where he could tell me to go screw myself.

He didn’t tell either of us to get screwed, but his dominance began to ramp up. It was like the wind coming down the mountain: cool, assured, depthless.

I’d been warned to expect a display.

“Felix Larimer,” I went on, when it was obvious he wasn’t going to speak yet. “Alpha of the Denver pack, territory of Colorado, my alpha. I ask you to welcome my associate, Cameron Zerenegus, alpha of Santa Fe and the New Mexico group of packs, territory of New Mexico and adjacent lands.”

I’d done as Cameron had asked and introduced them as equals: kept it short and not listed the ‘adjacent’ territories. Not called her leader of the Southern League or anything like that.

Still no reaction from Felix, except for the steady push of dominance.

As I understood it, if he’d allowed the meeting to go this far, then Were rules of a civil exchange and safety applied, but he was under no obligation to entertain a proposal. Of any kind.

I still could not believe that Cameron had roped me into this. It was going to go so, so wrong.

The whole point of this play-acting was this damned proposal.

In the meantime, since Felix had started it, Cameron was allowed to let her dominance off the leash, and she did. It felt darker and deeper than Felix’s dominance, but they matched each other in strength.

Neither of them was really trying at the moment, but I was right in the middle of it, buffeted backwards and forwards.

Felix finally spoke. “Welcome.”

It sounded like he was chewing dirt.

Next up, I had to receive Cameron’s permission to open the discussion for her in Felix’s hearing, so I turned around, my legs clumsy in the two-way blast of dominance.

I swallowed.

Cameron had left the bulky coat in the car. She was now wearing a sort of chainmail crop-top that looked to be made of oiled gold. It gleamed and moved with her body. Her dark skin was alluringly covered, and yet not covered, beneath the top.

Hellfire!

Really
all out to create an impression.

Score two for Cameron, for style.

Was it working on Felix? He was the only one that mattered here.

“Cameron,” I forced the formal words out, “may I introduce the matter you requested?”

Damn, I was supposed to use her full name and pack title
.

I sucked at this formal diplomacy stuff.

She didn’t take any notice. She was staring past me at Felix, chest heaving with the effort of fighting off Felix’s dominance as he ramped it up again.

“Yes.” Sounded like she had the same mouthful of dirt he had.

Back to Felix. I was feeling dizzy now from the competing flows of dominance. There was a weight on my chest and it was an effort to keep standing up.

He hadn’t moved. His legs were locked and he was staring back at Cameron.

Wonderful. Stick a couple of alphas near each other and the only thing they’re interested in is testing their dominance out, regardless of what they came to do. I wanted to shout at them
there’s more important stuff here
, but even the demon in my throat was starved of air.

Heaven help me.

Everything hinged on this—Felix’s reaction to Cameron’s proposal. Everything. Skylur’s demands on me for Altau’s association with Were packs in New Mexico. A single Were group to oppose the Confederation. A group capable of serious representation in the Assembly.

Felix is never going to go for it.

Here goes nothing.

Deep breath. “On behalf of the alpha of Santa Fe, I’m asking you to consider—”

“What adjacent lands?” Felix cut across me, addressing Cameron directly. “You’re claiming territory in adjacent states?”

“I am,” Cameron replied. “Tucson, Mesa and Holbrook in Arizona. Amarillo and San Antonio in Texas.”

“By association?”

“No, those are full sub-packs,” she said. “You want associations? Phoenix, Austin and Dallas. Alliances? Sixteen more in Arizona and Texas.”

“Some empire you’re building there, Zerenegus. Will Phoenix become a sub-pack next? Austin? Will you start putting your own alphas in place?”

“We’re not the Confederation. We’re a league. I don’t ask alphas to submit to me. What about your empire, Larimer?”

“I have no—”

“Alphas are throwing themselves at you,” she said.

Felix snorted. It took effort. Sweat stood out on his brow and his head had lowered—not submissively, more like a bull ready to charge. “You mean packs are allying themselves with me for mutual interest.”

“Oh, yeah. And that’s what Stillman over in Cimarron will tell himself every day in the mirror. It’s just for his pack’s protection. You’re a good neighbor. Never that you’re more dominant than him. Oh, no, never that.”

“We’ve never contested—”

“Because deep down he knows,” Cameron said, voice raised. “He knew you were stronger before. Now that all the Wyoming and Utah and Kansas packs are cozying up to you, building up your dominance, you’re so far out of his league he may as well roll over.”

Shit.
That last comment was one of those ambiguous, sort-of-sexual insults that got Were fighting.

I tried to haul back the conversation before it fell off a cliff. “I think what the Santa Fe alpha meant—”

“I heard what she said.” Felix cut me off. “What else would I expect from her? She has no idea about the concept of civil behavior between neighbors.”

“I get neighborliness just fine. I don’t have a nephew that speaks through his shotgun at anyone who shows up at Coykuti to talk.”

“No, you just kill anyone who shows up in your territory.” Felix started to pace on the invisible edge of the square.

His dominance took a harsher edge. Less for show. The real power was coming through now.

Not good.

“And you welcome them? We maintain the same territorial—” Cameron began.

“And it’s not as if you even run your own territory well,” Felix bulldozed on. “You encouraged rogues to form packs on our borders.”

“I didn’t set that border. My territory used to end at Taos. Gold Hill and Ute Mountain were
your
problem until you fixed it by deciding
your
territory ended at the state border,” Cameron shot back. “So,
then
we had to take them on. We had to fix it.”

“
You
fixed it?” Felix was incredulous.

“We were handling it. We got them to fight each other—”

“Which pushed Gold Hill into making an association with the Confederation!”

“The Confederation did that to come in behind you,” Cameron yelled, “not because of anything we—”

“And if you’re saying now that’s your territory, where the hell were you while we were fighting the Confederation there?” Felix matched her, decibel for decibel.

“Keeping the rest of them from kicking your badly prepared ass all the way back to Denver. The bulk of the Wind River pack never made it into the mountains, thanks to us. And where were you when it came to clean up? Guns, bodies and trucks all over Carson Park just left for humans to find!”

Cameron was not giving an inch. Her dominance stepped right up to counter Felix’s. There was no hint from either of them that they were near their limits. The tumult of dominance just built and built, smooth and relentless as gravity.

However much I thought I could stand up to one of them, on a good day, with Alex to support me, the power unleashed by the pair of them was battering me down. My knees were buckling. The four lieutenants weren’t doing any better; their heads were down almost on the dirt.

Last attempt. I sucked in air and shouted, “I think we ought to restart the conversation—”

“Enough!” Felix’s voice thundered. My world seemed to wobble and tilt. I found myself down on one knee, looking at the ground and trying to prop myself up with one arm.

“Go!”

The dominance fight switched off, swift and clean as a blade. Both sides.

Shit! Failed. Didn’t even get to speak my piece. Cameron’s proposal. Nothing.