The Passion (34 page)

Confidence warmed his eyes as he sipped his wine.

"I see you have given my proposal some thought."

Tessa took off her gloves and her hat with its pretty green ribbons dampened by the sweat of her distress and the dust of the road. She placed them on a gilded table that had carved cherubs for the legs, and she went to the big window that overlooked the vineyards. Alexander had told her a werewolf could smel a lie. She dared not lie to this one.

"I think you were right about"—here her voice almost broke—"the queen and Alexander."

"Of course I was."

"She means to marry him."

"I'm not surprised."

"I can't stop her."

"Of course you can."

It was another moment before she felt strong enough to turn and look at him. Her palms made damp spots where they pressed against her skirt.

She kept her hands flat at her sides.

"This thing," she inquired evenly, "when must it be done?"

She saw the light of avarice in his eyes, a glint above his wineglass. "Tonight," he said. "I wil show you the place to wait, where she's sure to come and no one wil notice you. In the confusion of the pack run, you can easily escape."

"But for how long?" she returned sharply. "I'll be kil ed if they catch me."

"Sil y child, they won't catch you. One human smel s much like another to us, and how are they to know it was you? Come." He moved to the setee before the fireplace and lifted a long wooden box from its resting place there. "I have a gift for you."

He opened the box and held it out to her. Inside, nestled against a gray velvet lining, was a walnut-stocked, brass-trimmed rifle.

Tessa's throat went dry. A few moments passed before she could speak. "If I refuse to assist you,"

she managed to say, "if I find your game is not to my taste—what wil you do then?"

His voice and his face grew cold. "I wil send an army and kil them al in their sleep. This way wil be less bloody, but it matters little to me. You should remember that if I come for the queen, Alexander wil be the first to die. She wil not be al owed to take a mate."

For a long time Tessa didn't move. She stood there with her eyes fixed upon the rifle in the box, then slowly she stepped forward and picked it up and held it in her hands. Denis smiled.

Alexander
, she thought,
don't desert me now. Come
home, please
…

Yet she knew even then, in some smal stil part of her mind, that the history of this night had been written the moment she entered Alexander Devoncroix's house, and she was but a pawn in events much larger than she could even imagine.

She could do her best, but that was al .

And she knew, too, in that same smal stil part of her mind, that her best would not be enough.

ALEXANDER

Chapter Eighteen

We are a people who love celebrations, gatherings and revelries and wil exploit any opportunity for festivity. The four major festivals of the year are celebrated on the change of seasons—Vernal Equinox, Summer Solstice, Harvest Moon and Winter Solstice—and are rooted in antiquity. Human pagans long ago appropriated our holidays and somehow began to associate them with moon worship and sorcery, perhaps because we must have seemed the masters of sorcery to them, and because of our great fondness for assembling on moonlit nights. As for the origins of the celebrations, no one remembers. We did not develop as an agricultural society, so the change of seasons cannot have meant much to us, and our only relationship with the moon is the fact that it facilitates hunting. Nonetheless, the festivals have not lost their appeal and are celebrated much in the same way today that they were eons ago.

Of al the seasonal celebrations the Summer Festival was the most wel attended, for obvious reasons. June in central France is a most hospitable place, and what could be more conducive to the pack run—an essential part of any celebration—

than the mild, bright nights, lush greenery and rushing streams of summer?

I think in times of old the Summer Festival had much more of a bacchanalian flavor than its modern expression.

But even though we are a more civilized species in many ways, the purpose of the run has always been to indulge our baser instincts. This we do with triumphant abandon.

To run with the pack is perhaps the single most thril ing experience a werewolf can have outside the mating bond. It is the very essence of what we are, strength through unity, power through the order of hierarchy; the mastery of flesh and nature. Whether the available pack consists of a half-dozen neighbors after a dinner party or a formal gathering of candidates competing for a job or a position of power, the run is the most honest, determining event of our lives.

And the Festival runs are the quintessential definition of what it means to be a werewolf.

Between moonrise and moonset on the night of a Festival run, lives may be changed: old conflicts resolved and new ones begun, mates chosen, young conceived, debts forgiven, friendships forged.

This is why we would perish if forced to spend al of our time in human form and why al of us, whether we confess it or not, feel pity for humans, who are trapped in their one shape and their one life and ensnared by al the foolish stiff-boned defenses that go with it. Stripped naked, we can hide nothing from each other. Reduced to our most savage instincts and glorying in them, we are as nature intended, unafraid and unashamed. How can one help but pity a species that wil never know the dignity of respect, trust and companionship granted to us each time we do something so simple as indulge ourselves in our purest natures?

Most of us rested that day, gathering our energy for the athletic demands of the night, and many of us fasted to sharpen our hunting instincts and to better appreciate the exquisite sensual pleasure of the first kil . We began to assemble at dusk, gathering in the gardens, parks and clearings that surrounded the Palais, assigning ourselves to groups according to our status and our family ties.

I myself rose naked from the stones when they began to cool, and felt the promise of what was undoubtedly to be the most significant night of my life prickle in my bel y. The electric scent of others, hot with expectation, was in the air. It went through me like a sexual thril . And, as with the best of sex, I control ed my appetite, savored the sensation, let the anticipation become part of the ecstasy.

I gave Gault permission to depart before me, and he thanked me for my indulgence by shedding his clothes and transforming before me. Ah, that was sweet. He had a dramatic flair and a visceral appeal which had rightly earned him a reputation as a heartbreaker among both males and females of our kind. It brought me to the edge of arousal. The burnt-spices scent of his Change lingered in the room and I luxuriated in it, stepping into the deepest cones of aroma with my arms upraised and letting it drip over me like fragrant dew.

Murmurs and whispers and inarticulate half-formed moans of pleasure and impatience fil ed my ears, a soothing background sea that rose and ebbed like the tide of my pulse. I took a glass of wine to the terrace outside my room and watched the sunset, listened to the tide of murmured voices, felt the swel of the rising moon in my blood. Only when I detected the whisper of her scent on the air did the simmering broth of sensation in which I indulged myself reach its boiling point. It became an exercise of wil to restrain myself as I walked through the garden, fol owing the lure of moon and the woman who, by doing nothing more than breathing the air I breathed, drew me helplessly, rapturously into the circle of her flame.

The night was deep and purple on the far edges of dusk, and the rising moon was a pale and shadowed silver above the curve of the hil s.

Hovering over al was a faint haze of mist which would dissipate as the night deepened and the temperature equalized, but which was soft on the vision and muffling to the ears. I came into the garden and paused for a moment to appreciate the beauty of the scene before me, the rulers of the earth gathering to celebrate their magnificence.

Some, like myself, moved naked through the dusk, shoulders and thighs silvered in the pale light.

Others draped themselves in silk robes that swirled and fluttered graceful y in the breeze. Some, mostly the gravid or those of middle and lower status, had transformed already, but even among them the mood was tense and expectant. We moved together, in wolf and human form, fol owing the silent cal of our leader.

She stood atop the ancient Cal ing Rock in the clearing. She wore a waistless silk robe of that rich blue which was her signature color, fastened on either shoulder to leave her arms bare. Her chin was lifted, her shoulders were high, her eyes quietly surveying and assessing her pack. Nothing moved about her at al except the aurora of her hair, which rippled and lifted around her shoulders and waist with the rise and fal of the breeze.

We assembled around her, hundreds of us, in the ritual clearing that had been designed for this purpose, arranging ourselves according to age and status. I was young, unmated and of high status; I would have taken my place at the forefront of the circle even if I had not already lost my heart to the queen. But as I stepped up beside the other strong young aristocrats who would vie for her attention tonight, with the ache in my bel y and the fire in my brain, I was fil ed with a sense of certainty and a strength of purpose beyond anything which even I, who have never been at a lack for confidence, had ever known before. Had she merely beckoned me with her finger I could have left gravity behind and flown through the air to her side.

But she did not beckon me. Her eyes moved one by one over the assembled aristocracy, greeting them, and one by one they dropped their eyes. But when her eyes met mine I held her gaze, letting her read my heart there, my promise, the ferocity of my passion, the boldness of my spirit—bold enough to match her own, strong enough to run beside her. It was difficult, the meeting of the gazes, and she did not make it easy for me. My heart thundered and my muscles ached and darts of lightning stabbed into my brain. But just as my skin broke out with a layer of sweat and the backs of my knees began to tremble, she closed her eyes, and her expression softened into an expression of beatific serenity. A preternatural stil ness fel over the assemblage.

She lifted her hands and released the shoulder clasps of her garment, which puddled about her feet like a mountain waterfal . She stood naked before us, the most beautiful female on earth, the strongest, the wisest, the fastest and the fiercest of al our kind, and we longed for her as one; we held our col ective breath in simple, inexpressible adoration.

She raised her arms and tilted back her head, elongating the muscles of her torso and thrusting forward her breasts. She tightened the muscles of her buttocks and her thighs, rising up on her toes until the smooth lines of her calves were hard knots of powerful muscle. Taut pectorals sharpened the shadowed indentations beneath her arms as she flexed her hands, spreading her fingers to the sky.

Our hearts pounded, pounded to watch her, to feel her. The gathering electrical stream around her body caught her hair and lifted it like a playful wind sprite away from her form, swirling and floating on unseen magnetic currents in the air. My throat closed with the beauty of it.

And then, with a cry that went through to our very souls, Elise Devoncroix sprang into the air, and gathering the particles of the night about her in a fearsome swirl of color and sound, she became herself, our queen.

Ah, for words to describe such a moment. The roar of a hundred werewolf voices responding to her cal , the density of light and power and surging magic as al around me werewolves embraced the Passion; the tide of swel ing, pul ing, swirling, pulsing sensation. The song of werewolf. The symphony of Passion. It anchored itself in my solar plexus, deep in the womb of my soul, spreading itself outward in a series of hot rippling thril s that stole my breath and robbed my mind of al but the most basic coherence.

My penis grew stiff and hot, my testicles throbbed with engorgement. My veins fil ed and swel ed and pulsed, flooding my skin with heat, blurring my vision, roaring in my ears. My hands were numb and heavy, my feet like clubs, my lips thick and inarticulate, incapable of passing a sound save for the cry, the song, the inescapable, inevitable fierce and savage, joyous answer to the cal of my leader.

My life for you
, it said.
My soul for you
, I answered.

And, oh, the pain. The sweet savage twisting of need, the roar of desire, the sweat that burst like droplets of blood from my skin and dripped onto the ground. I trembled. I cried out, letting my voice ululate long into the clear night sky. I raised my hands to the sky and I luxuriated in every sensation, in each exquisite attenuated throb of pleasure and need, in each tightening pul of fierce desire. I immersed myself in the electric musk of a hundred Changes, I drank in the Passion of werewolves great and smal and I let it torture me, let it strengthen me. I wanted to know it al . And when at last I had drained every gram of sensation from the moment, when I above al remained sweating, straining, aching, holding on to my human form by sheer force of wil , I released my essence into an explosion of fever and purpose; I surrendered to the Passion.

When the convulsions of sensate pleasure subsided, when I was whole and strong and cognizant again, clearer in head and stronger in body than I had ever been before, she was there, my beautiful blond wolf, sapphire eyes fixed on mine, sparking with chal enge and magnetic in their al ure. I leapt for her. We ran.