SevenMarkPackAttackMobi (13 page)

“That’s where Amber comes in. Thank Gaia, we have her.”

“I know everything, pretty much, up to the actual Houdini.” Hood took Giselle’s hand. I swear, they acted like teenagers. He studied her fingers, brought them to his lips, kissed each one on the nail. She has pretty, dainty little hands.

Amber tucked her hands up under her armpits while I watched Giselle and Hood.

He told her, “I like this color.”

“I know. Amber told me.”

Hood and I, both, looked at Amber’s profile--between us. He must’ve been mind talking to her. He’s fucking phenomenal with that shit. I realize it now. She turned her head and looked at him, too, but they never said anything out loud.

“It had to be the Gaia-damned friggin’ bastets.” Saying it was like unloading a gun. Emptying my chest. It was a relief. I just let it explode from my lips. Maybe I wanted her to look at me.

She did. Amber’s head swung around and she asked, “You don’t like the cats?”

So, I was thinking...again...what friggin’ world had I stepped off into? “Of course I hate the cats. Don’t you?”

Her lips twisted into a smile, real slowly it spread. “Actually, I’ve always been more of a cat person than a dog lover.”

Hood said congenially, “I’ve been trying to bring her around.”

She snorted. “Is that what you were doing?”

“I wish you’d just fall in love with a wolf so we could get over it all.”

“Wait,” I said, “What does Amber falling in love with a wolf have to do with anything?”

That was met with silence.

Frank said, “You might as well tell him. He won’t hate you for it.” Still, he was staring out the window, and he’d rolled his shoulder up.

“Tell me what?”

Amber hissed, “Hood bit me.”

I blinked. “What?”

Chapter Nine

I glanced toward the pilot. He was my man, but how would he take news like that? He had his headphones on. Who could tell if he was listening, though?

“He’s not.” Hood said, “Giselle slipped him a Mickey.”

Spying around the man, I looked to see if he had any morph issues going on. None.

Amber complained, “Frank never should’ve pissed you off. That’s what caused it. It’s only a problem when the drug is first introduced into your system. It’ll mutate and--given a few more doses--work in synergy with your synapses.”

Mutate? No thanks. No more doses for me, then. My gaze darted to Hood.

He shrugged. “You’re not the first.”

He didn’t care if I’d morphed like a freak?

To that, he said, “It was drug-induced, we’ll forgive you this time.”

So...Hood knew about the medication. That didn’t jibe with the comments about getting killed if people knew...hm. We wanted to keep the info from someone else? Someone...more scarier than Hood, with more power? Someone Hood didn’t trust?

Would you shut the fuck up?
Frank shifted in his seat.
You can think later.

I changed the subject, because obviously I was going to have to do some brain-guard exercises. “Now that I think about things, if I go to Missouri to investigate--there will be no leap whatsoever for people to connect Bark’s disappearance with the M.W.D. scare.”

“Of course.” Hood had already thought of that. “We have a plan.”

The pilot announced, “Vegas in sight, sir.”

“Vegas?” Confused, I glanced forward. Sure enough, the panorama of the Las Vegas valley spread out before us.

Hood answered, “Take her down.”

Creeps. The hair all over my body stood up. My trusted pilot deferred to Hood, and obviously completed his orders? I had never mentioned Vegas. Hell, that was as far away from Missouri as it could be, just about. And when had Hood gotten to him?

Spies everywhere. Trust no one. Watch your back. Bark had said that to me more times than I could count. And I’d laughed at his paranoia. Sent him to a shrink.

To Frank.

Complete mental silence. Dead, pin dropping,
nothing
.

It stretched. My blood pressure went up.

Finally, Frank turned around in his seat and looked me in the eye. There was no wavering, no cowering, no affected beta behavior. Alpha attitude, no other term for his confidence, and the cutting edge in his gaze.

Clearly concise, no stuttering, he said, “You are the weak link here, Mark. Remember that and get your brain
the fuck
under control before you step out onto that tarmac, or I’ll take you out personally.”

That took some assimilation. He was serious. Dead serious.

I blanked my mind then. Because I knew I would instantly go to thinking about crinosing on his ass the minute he turned his back. Not that I’d jump him from behind. Fuck no. I’d apeshit his punky little white ass...

That’s what I thought--the minute I got a second alone, out of range from the lot of them. I didn’t dare let myself think of ripping anyone a new asshole while I sat there, absorbing the fact that they all seemed to agree that I was the weak link in the troop.

That was a whole new concept to me. Me, weak?

I swear to Gaia--the minute I met Amber, I was being taught a new meaning of life. Yeah, I’d been a beta for all of my existence, and happy to be there. But I was no damn weak link. And I didn’t like anyone thinking I was. Especially Amber. I couldn’t stand to see even a peripheral view of, her expression at that moment. But Frank’s gaze went from mine to hers. I think they were mind talking out of my range of perception. A higher brain wave or something, and that definitely didn’t help my confidence level.

Giselle crossed her legs, great legs from all accounts, and smiled at me when I glanced over at her. “I’m going to distract you soon as we get on the ground. I promised. Remember?”

Hood’s fingers dug into her shoulder.

Amber seethed.

I said, “No. I’m okay. I’ll get it together. Don’t worry.” I mean, I’d never been a fuck up before. Or a Gaia-damned weak link. I’d come through. I just needed to figure out what the hell was going on.

Amber licked her lips and cut past me with, “The wedding party idea won’t work if you’re paying more attention to him, Giselle, than Hood.”

Giselle wrinkled her nose, and I’m sure others would think it was cute. I remember Bark mentioning that about her, how she turned her nose up when she found something distasteful. But...I got the distinct impression that it wasn’t me that caused her reaction. Or actually, Amber’s tone.

She confirmed it a second later by saying, “We all know our priorities, and my forte is in one area alone. I’ll do my job. Besides,” she flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Hood isn’t marrying me for love. It’s a front for this excursion.”

He lifted his hand off her altogether, agreeing a little too quickly with, “Right. No one would believe that my marrying her means either of us expect fidelity.”

Narrowing my lids, I asked, “So, you’re saying that Giselle is going to do her job...with me? Help me to--”

Amber cut me off, real bitchy like, “You want it spelled out, you piece of--”

Hood growled, “Amber.”

Her lips slapped shut. She leaned back, staring straight ahead. But she didn’t stay quiet. She muttered a second later, “He’s a friggin’ throwback to the ice age if you gotta spell out who is gonna fuck his brains out next.” She turned to Hood, then, and, very succinctly, asked, “And you’re telling me that this is the natural breeding that’s supposed to take over the planet? Sorry. I don’t see it.”

Okay. Now, I have to clarify something. Earlier I mentioned that I know for a fact that Amber is a true-blood garou. And now I’ve explained that Hood bit her. And she’s a scenter, at that. And on top of all that, she’s cast aspersions on my breeding. It doesn’t quite work, does it?

It does, though. In my twilight zone, that is. I found out later that Amber is not just a true-blood carrier of the garou genetic makeup, she also is a carrier of the bastet genes, too. There’s your explanation of the cat scent that bugged me. Tamped down with pharmaceutically engineered synthetic hormone therapy. And the whole friggin’ scenter deal? It was a myth because people don’t breed cat to dog. Right? Rarely did it ever happen, and even more rarely did the offspring reach notable age. No one really talked about what caused the anomaly because before the biogenetic leaps at Lobos, no one knew.

Somewhere in those last few minutes before we landed in Vegas, conversations I’d had with Bark clicked in. And so did the whole mind-block wall. I managed to erect one and think behind it.

You could say that Amber’s personal feminine odor played with my psyche. Had me thinking
cat, and Bark
. Maybe that helped me connect the dots?

My brother had a total obsession with the bastets, now that I look back. I just didn’t realize how deep it went. Or that his comments were merely acclimatizations for me, to lead me down his garden path, to get me used to the possibilities that were going to face me. Some say that Bark was always a futuristic thinker. I thought he was obsessed with the bastet political agenda and it spilled over into other areas. I convinced myself for years that his trips to garouville were simply to get info out of whores and lowlifes. And maybe that’s how it started for him.

Now, why in hell would Hood bite Amber? What genetic make-up transferred there, in his saliva? I glanced over at Giselle again.

She reached up and rubbed a spot on the back of her neck/shoulder area. I’d seen her do it several times. When Hood noticed, he reached over, put a hand on hers, and drew her toward him, where he whispered, lips close to her ear. We all heard what he said, “You’re making me hungry. Stop.”

I had to think about that.

Maybe I wasn’t blocking my thoughts as well as I believed. I mean, I was thinking about Amber being bitten by Hood. Then Giselle rubbed her
bite mark
. And Hood said that.

My belly curdled. But I didn’t know about the bite mark until we got on the ground. Thirty minutes later, we were checked into Caesar’s Palace. Hood took care of that. A penthouse apartment with multiple bedrooms. Spacious, elegant.

Frank wasted no time in hitting the bar, and serving up drinks. Giselle splayed herself on him practically, catering to his ego. And he took it in stride, as if he was used to that. Frank, a stud?

Amber, too, hovered near him, chatting and laughing with the two of them. I went to the window and watched it in the reflection. Frank made them giggle like schoolgirls with his inane chat. I had never been a chatter. Or a smooth talker of any kind.

I must have ozoned, the images blurring into the skylights of Vegas.

Giselle shocked the hell out of me when she draped herself around me, curling up to my chest, offering a scotch straight up. “Here. You need this, I think.”

She batted her lashes, smiled, licked her lips purposefully and added, “I won’t take no for an answer.”

“What is this?” Call me paranoid. I swirled the amber fluid, looking for signs of dissolution. It looked clear, straight.

Giselle threw her head back and laughed.

I wasn’t interested in her, or the promise she’d made. Consider me neutered on the sight of Amber. Except as I lifted the drink to my lips, and glanced into the reflection again, I saw Frank and Amber. He grabbed her by the jaw, pulled her close, and kissed her hard.

That whiskey went down hard, and I took Giselle’s hand, dragged her to the nearest bedroom and slammed the door behind us. I tossed the glass on a chair, resisting the urge to crash it into the marble fireplace. I yanked Giselle into my arms, by virtue of the hand I held. I tugged it to my chest and she just sort’ve rolled into me, her hands trapped between us.