spoke. He didn’t even attempt to vamp Dani. “Okay. You don’t want to tell us anything. But right now we’re wondering if you’re in league with the folks who want to start this war, because if there’s one thing we all know for certain, it’s that you’re not purely human.”
Luc switched his gaze back to Dani. She was looking at Jude now, so their gazes didn’t lock. She bit her lip, clearly hesitating.
“I don’t want to start, or even help in, a war among you bloodsuckers,” she said finally, an edge in her voice. “I wouldn’t mind if you were all dead. I want nothing to do with your kind. But I won’t do a single thing that would harm a human. Not one.”
“I feel enlightened,” Luc said sarcastically. “While I understand your animus toward us, given what those rogues did, you still haven’t answered the question. Are you a threat?”
“Not that I can do anything about it,” Dani said fiercely, “but I am your mortal enemy.”
She might as well have dropped a bomb in the room, she thought with satisfaction. Everyone stood perfectly still and regarded her with concern.
“Well,” said Chloe, breaking the silence finally, “I feel ever so much better. Since I’m human, I guess I can just take a hike now.”
“But you won’t,” Terri said. A frown creased her brow. “You would harm my husband?”
“If I could,” Dani said. “Husband? He holds you in thrall. You’re a slave to him.”
“No, I am not. He can’t vamp me at all. And you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jude touched her arm. “Easy, my love. She can’t and won’t hurt me. As long as she’s not going to join the rogues, I don’t care what she does.”
Terri looked at him. “But we don’t even know what she is.”
“Dani Makar,” Luc said with quiet significance.
Ice water trickled down Dani’s spine, depriving her of any satisfaction she might have felt at making her opinion of vampires known.
Reluctantly, she looked at him.
“I know who you are.”
He couldn’t possibly know. Her heart began to gallop and her mouth turned dry. Even her family couldn’t identify her as anything except a normal.
“Who?” Jude asked.
“I heard of them when I was up north. Makar. You’re a member of the Makari pack, aren’t you?”
His eyes bored into her. They were golden now, no longer black, but they still seemed to pin her and cleave her tongue. Deprived of speech, she could only stare.
“So, ma belle,” he said with soft satisfaction, “why haven’t you shifted shape? Are two of us too much?”
Her heart plummeted and her throat closed. Terror and hatred warred in her. Surely they would kill her now.
“But she doesn’t smell like a lycanthrope,” Jude said.
“Oh. My. God.” Chloe groaned. “A werewolf? Here?”
Luc never took his gaze from her. “She’s not a lycanthrope,” he said. “If she were, she’d have shifted to protect herself from us. They never meet our kind in any other form.”
He started smiling, and Dani wished she could spring at him like her family would and separate his head from his body. She did not like that smile at all.
“Poor, broken little wolf,” he said. “You can’t change. Did they exile you?”
Oh, how she loathed him then. But however she felt, she retained enough sense to know that springing at a vampire would only cost her, probably her life. She glared at him. “They’re not like that.”
He shrugged. “I really don’t care. What I care about is that the mystery is solved. Now I have another question. Are you going to send for your pack? Because if you do, given the gathering of vampires that is happening right now, your pack may meet more death than success. I really wouldn’t mind it, you know. The four of us can leave town.”
Dani swallowed hard, torn. If this war they had talked about really was about to happen, she certainly didn’t want her pack involved. Indeed, her mother would probably shrug and say to let the vampires kill each other. On the other hand, if she didn’t threaten these bloodsuckers with her pack, what might they do to her?
“If you let me go,” she said finally, “I don’t want to involve them.”
Jude spoke. “I already told you that you could go. I don’t keep prisoners.” He waved to the door.
“But,” said Luc softly, “it still might be wiser to wait for dawn, little wolf. Those with fewer scruples than Jude are amassing.”
“Why should you care?” she demanded, struggling toward anger to banish her fear and something approaching despair. “Your kind loathes mine. You hunt us like animals.”
“I thought it was the other way around,” Luc said, a faint amusement in his voice. “Your kind would like to see ours exterminated. From my perspective, I have no interest in lycanthropes. They make terrible food, and if they don’t attack me, then I care nothing at all one way or the other.”
She didn’t believe him. She’d grown up with warnings about bloodsuckers. “We don’t hurt humans,” she said. “You do.”
“Some of us do,” Jude said. “Which is the precise reason we’re evidently about to go to war.”
“Jude protects humans,” Terri said, unable to conceal her anger. “Do you?”
Dani couldn’t answer. By and large, the packs preferred to live alone and be left alone, much like ordinary wolves. They avoided mingling with humans, and they loathed vampires because they attacked humans, which no pack would do because they were human—at least part of the time. A pack killed wild game only to eat, and otherwise only in self-defense. Vampires killed for pleasure. But no, they didn’t protect anything or anyone except themselves. Something like shame niggled at her, making her so uncomfortable that her anger revived.
“Why,” she repeated, “do you care what happens to me?”
“Because,” said Luc, “I have no quarrel with you. Unless you want to start one.”
Outside in the night, sirens began to whoop. Almost at the same time, a phone tweeted.
“That’s me,” Terri said. “I guess I need to go to work.” She rose and went to get a cell phone from the desk.
“It’s your night off,” Jude protested.
“If they need me, it’s because it’s more than the on-duty medical examiner can handle,” she replied, then touched her phone and answered.
“It’s begun,” Luc said. “It’s begun.”
Jude
