Skinwalker (Jane Yellowrock #1)

I let the door close without making a scene because none of the humans was chained, showed signs of physical abuse—if I didn’t count multiple fang marks—or looked drugged. Well, drugged beyond the blood bliss they experienced when fed upon by a suitably mature vamp. I moved on. Fast. Back to the reception room and a fresh plate of piglet and salmon. This time I added a cracker and three grapes and meandered on.

A female vamp, walking alone, slowed when she scented me. She smiled, an attempt at humanness, intended to disarm. It worked. I stopped, curious. Waiting. When I didn’t speak, she leaned in, too close, way inside my personal space. I tensed, but her fangs stayed back, out of sight, and she didn’t try to bite me. She only sniffed my neck. So I didn’t react. Much.

She stepped back and tilted her head. “I am Bettina, blood-master of Clan Rousseau.” I nodded, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. Cat got my tongue. The titter tried to rise yet again. Rousseau was a beautiful woman, with mixed-race heritage, mostly African and European. “They tell me that the rogue hunter is here tonight, as a guest of Pellissier. Are you she?”

When I nodded, she walked around me, a dance step, like a cat walks, one foot carefully placed at a time. She breathed in as she moved. Taking my scent. “You smell so . . . good. Will you call me when this . . . unpleasantness . . . is over?” She stopped in front of me, looking up into my eyes. “I wish to know you better.”

There was something in her eyes that said the “know you better” part was in the biblical sense. Lucky me. I swallowed. A smile started in her eyes. And they landed on my throat.

“Bettina. Pellissier wishes to speak with you.”

We both turned to the small, rotund human at her side. I had no idea how long he had stood there, but the look on his face said it had been long enough. “Please visit,” she said, extending a card that hadn’t been in her hand a moment past. And she followed the man away.

“Okaaaay,” I murmured to the walls. “Next time I’ll wear a whole bottle of perfume.”

To the left of the foyer and food was a bar, three waiters serving real liquor, wine, and beer, not blood. I took a second glass of champagne and continued my tour. Behind the bar, a short hallway led to a music room with some stringed instruments and a grand piano. Probably priceless. I wondered who played, and figured it might be Leo. He looked like the type. As the thought entered my mind, a half dozen vamps walked in the room and a male vamp sat at the piano. He began to play, pounding the keys in something martial, the notes rising to the ceiling and spilling out into the hallway, deliberately overpowering the strings in the reception room. The other vamps laughed at the sophomoric prank and one ran to peek around the corner at the human musicians. I guess they thought it was funny. I left.

Through a connecting doorway, I found an empty, two- storied library filled with books, leather furniture, and a first-class sound system playing a soft salsa, which is not the way a salsa is meant to be listened to. I shut the door to the music room, impressed when the pounding piano was muted out. Really good soundproofing in the house: You could kill someone and not have to worry about the screams. I hunted around until I found the sound system controls in a recessed console and upped the volume. Alone, I ate piglet and salmon while my feet danced and I studied the titles on the walls. Some were in English, some were French, Spanish, and maybe Latin. And there were a few that looked Greek. Leo can read Greek?

Inside a glass case were twenty-four fired-clay, metal, and carved-wood tablets on display stands, clearly ancient and valuable. I couldn’t resist looking over their security and waved at the high-tech minicameras focused on them. Pretty good, if the cameras were monitored. When the door opened a scant twelve seconds later, and Bruiser entered, I patted myself on the back. “Not bad,” I said, toasting him with my glass. Which was nearly empty.

“I think you’ve had enough,” he said with an amused smile, as he stole away the glass and the empty plate. “Mr. Pellissier wants to see you.”

“Yeah?” I took the dishes back and set them on the console. “Do you salsa?”

“Not in years,” he said.

“It’s been a while for me too,” I said, turning and taking his hands, ignoring Beast’s amusement at the double enten dre. I placed one of his hands on my hip and kept the other, tapped my foot, and moved into a fast forward step, forcing him into a back step. To give him credit, he followed my lead. And then he took over. Firmly. Salsa is a three-step-pause-three-step dance—a reinvention of the mambo from the original rumba, and it moves.

Bruiser took me into a side step, dropped his arm down, up into a J, leading me into two simple turns, and instantly into a double turn as we found our rhythm. After that, things got sweaty. The man could dance. It was half seduction, half contest, as if he offered me his bed while testing my footing, my reflexes, and my ability to respond to his vamp-enhanced speed all at once. Our gazes locked, his brown eyes holding mine as I followed his lead. Seduction pheromones, his and mine, filled the air. I wanted to run my fingers through his dark hair and maybe touch the little mole. With my tongue.

The music swelled. Fast. Fast, fast, fast, Beast in control of my reflexes, which told Bruiser all kinds of things about me. I didn’t care. The volume rose, dropped, went from fast-paced to slow. I missed a step, only because I was unfamiliar with his lead, not because I didn’t know the move. Bruiser’s eyes held mine as his hand slid along my side, over my hip. He took my waist and jerked me close at the finale, a tango move I hadn’t tried since class.

The music fell silent. We stood in perfect position, chest to chest, breathing hard. A single clap followed in the stillness. Another. Bruiser broke contact, stepping back faster than the dance. My hands were left empty, in the air. I turned to the doorway.

Leo stood there. The door closed behind him. His eyes were on Bruiser. Something crackled in the air between them. Challenge. Anger. Beast growled. Both vamp and man turned to me. Feeling Beast just beneath my skin, pelt moving in anticipation, I laughed, the sound cruel, a bit wild. “Bruiser is good. Are you better?” I/we challenged the predator.

Emotion thrummed through the room: anger, disputation, confrontation, alpha pheromones. The smell of violence baited. For a moment I thought that whatever was between the two males would boil over, but Leo broke, taking a single breath, and the scents evolved from censure, to startlement, to curiosity, to . . . eagerness as his eyes studied me. An anticipation as strong as Beast’s rose on the air. All Leo’s. From Bruiser, I felt a trace of sentiment, perhaps disappointment, but overshadowed by his master’s impatience.

The next track started, a mellow, sex-laden rumba. The rumba is a slower, more formal dance than the salsa, and Leo moved to me, his body already in the dance, his feet in the slow-quick-quick-quick steps of the dance. He took my hands and placed one on his shoulder, starting with an eighth turn of the box step. When the music rose, he pursued it into a quarter-turn box, faster, and then a series of turns and dips, drawing me closer with each measure until only a hint of space separated us. He led me into a difficult cucaracha step, not one I had practiced except with my instructor, but Leo’s lead was flawless, beating Raul hands down, his body balanced so perfectly it was poetry to follow. We finished the set with a fast, twisting pretzel of a turn and a dip, my body bent back over his thigh, his body over mine, his eyes bearing down into mine in a classic predator-prey posture.

Beast reared up hard, fast, shoving him back. Growling. The sound was lost in the applause. Gazes fastened to one another, we stared, breath heaving. I was vaguely aware of vamps in the doorway, clapping. Cheering. And then Leo vamped out.

His eyes bled crimson, pupils widening to vampy black. His fangs snapped down. And he growled back at Beast. The crowd in the doorway fell silent, that scary vamp-silence that always presaged violence. Bruiser pushed between us, took Leo’s hand, and mine, and led us forward, hands raised like actors on a stage. Weirdly, totally unexpectedly, Leo and I broke gazes, allowing Bruiser the upper hand. He bent forward, pulling us into a deep bow.

“Mithrans, I present Leo Pellissier and his . . . human . . . dance partner, Jane Yellowrock.” The pauses at “human” were infinitesimal, but present. The applause started again, uncertain, then growing stronger, more assured, as they believed the growls had been part of a performance. Smiling impeccably, Bruiser led us to the doorway and the accolades of the vamps.

I slipped away from my host shortly thereafter and made a quick round of the second story, searching for and not finding a staircase to the attic or third story. Not once did I scent rogue. I did catch a hint of the woman the rogue and Rick were sleeping with, and later, one of the underlying taints the rogue carried in his blood, but they were lost in the press of guests.

I knew Leo wanted to talk to me, but after the dance and the way he looked at me, like I was a tasty treat, I wanted to avoid that. Totally. So I kept a wary eye as I hunted through the house, turning down a hallway or slipping into an empty room when I spotted him, smelled him, or heard his voice. He wasn’t stalking me, exactly, but a frustrated reek pervaded his scent, and I figured I was part of it. But I was able to keep away, and Beast was having a good time helping.

When a bell sounded over the house intercom and sound system, I figured it was time for the presentation of the guests. Curious, I hid behind a marble statue on a matching marble stand over the foyer and watched. Leo stood with his back to the front door, facing the crowd, who gathered vamp fast or drugged-blood-junkie slow, and smiled at them all, the genial host.

“I thank you all for gathering,” he said, a slight accent on the word “gathering,”“in Clan Pellissier for this celebration. Our clans may no longer expand as they once did, held to lower numbers by Vampira Carta, U.S. law, and social convention. So when a new Mithran is added to us, it is a blessing. And when two are given over to us to fulfill a contract of marriage and clan binding, it is a significant event.” He flashed a brilliant smile, all human-looking teeth. “Tonight I present to my honored guests my future daughter-in-law and her brother, Amitee and Fernand Marchand, and the bride’s future husband”—he paused, drawing it out, as if in expectation of some huge event—“my son and scion and heir, Immanuel Pellissier.”