Meanwhile, the woman who was staring down the muzzle of her gun . . . had just put two and two together—and come up with what in her tradition would be called werewolf.
Not exactly news that made somebody feel calm and relaxed.
And to that point, Rio was shaking so badly, he had a thought that she was liable to pull the trigger by mistake—and deadly was deadly, whether you meant to or not.
“Rio.”
He meant to go on from there. But what could he say?
“What are you,” she repeated. This time with a cold levelness to her tone.
“I am . . . what I am.”
“That’s no fucking answer.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. You know what’s going on—”
“No, I do not! I don’t understand anything. What the hell is that—what the hell are you?”
“I’m not any different than I ever was—”
“You’re not human!” she cried out.
“And haven’t been all along.”
She seemed to lose her voice. Or maybe she was worried it was her mind.
“I didn’t know it.” She emphasized the point with the muzzle of her gun. “It was a helluva detail to leave out.”
“And what would you have done. Seriously, think about it. I walk up to you on the streets of Caldwell and tell you, ‘Hey, I’m a half-breed wolven, pleased to meet you, how ’bout we do fifty million dollars in drug trade over the next two months together. Great. Sign here.’” He leaned forward. “That would have gone just great, right? Smooth as fucking glass.”
As his temper started to get away from him, he turned from her and walked up and back on the dirt lane. If she wanted to shoot him? Fucking fine. Good luck getting his bastard, no-good, double-crossing cousin out from under the Monte Carlo—
“This is your cousin?”
While her words cut through his internal—or supposedly internal—monologue, he snapped into focus and realized he’d said all that out loud.
Fine. Whatever.
He wheeled around and marched right up to her. “Okay, you want to know everything.” He jabbed a finger over her shoulder. “That was a fucking prison you were in back there. And there isn’t a goddamn human in it. The drug trade is so we can survive and have the bare minimum for food, water, and health care.” Now he poked his finger at the dead man-like form wedged under the car. “And that male, along with a couple of others, were who put me in this hell back in the eighties. So there. You know all my story.”
As her eyes went back and forth between him and the dead body, he snapped, “If you shoot me now, you’re going to have to move both of us out of your way before you can hit the gas. I’d recommend you have me get him off to the side first before you do me like you did the Executioner.”
There was a tense moment. And then she slowly lowered the weapon.
“I don’t understand any of this,” she mumbled.
“Your understanding is not required. Reality really doesn’t give a shit about rational and reasonable. Trust me, if I’ve learned nothing else during the last—”
“What’s the other half,” she interrupted. “What’s your . . . other part.”
Lucan looked up at the sky.
Then he leveled his head. And curled his upper lip.
For the first time around her, he let his fangs elongate—and had to ignore a tingling hunger as he considered all the soft places on her he could sink them into.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the myth,” he said in a low voice. “But you humans have it all wrong. As usual.”
“Vampire,” she whispered in terror.
Annnnnnnnd it was time for a little breakie-poo.
Rio’s legs made the executive decision without any consultation from her mind or the pesky free will thing that usually controlled negotiations between the body and the brain: One second, she was standing. The next she was in a sit, right on the shoulder of the lane.
The good news—maybe it was training—was that she had the forethought to make sure she didn’t pull the trigger on the way down or on impact. And now that she was on her ass, literally and figuratively, she put the nine millimeter on its side on the dirt.
Then she crossed her hands in her lap like she was in church.
After a moment, there were noises: Shuffling, pulling, a grunt or two. She couldn’t tell what Luke was doing exactly, but she could guess the general gist of things.
Then his face was in front of hers. He even waved his hand before her eyes.
“I don’t understand,” she heard herself say. Which was what was going through her mind over and over again.
Luke knelt down. “I can make it go away.”
“What?”
“I can make you forget everything. You won’t remember any part of this. It will be as if it never occurred.”
That explains it, she thought.
“The guard. And then what you did in the . . . back at the . . .” She winced as her head hurt. “You do that to people, don’t you. Manipulate their memories.”
“It’ll be easier on you.”
“No,” she said weakly. “I don’t want that. My . . . mind . . . is not yours to take.”
When he didn’t respond, she started to relive everything—just to check and see what might have been taken: “My cover was blown and Mozart sent someone to kidnap me from my apartment. I woke up in his actual house. He didn’t show me his face—he drugged me—” She paused and looked at the front of the Monte Carlo. “What’s that growling? I thought he was dead—”
“Sorry.” Luke slapped a palm over his mouth. “I get a little . . . aggressive sometimes.”
Rio turned herself to him and looked at him properly for the first time. “You attacked that guy with the knife. That was you. It wasn’t a stray dog.”
“Well, technically, it was the wolven in me. But yeah, I sent him forward to save you.”
“You sent . . .”
“It’s like having two people in one skin. I’m mostly in control. But in certain circumstances, he comes out, and he does what he does. He’s very dangerous.”
“Why didn’t he hurt me?” Was she really talking like this? “Because you told him not to?”
“No, he knows you. He knows . . . you. That’s the only way I can explain it.”
“You look so . . . normal.”