Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

  The place smelled thickly of sex. As if—what else were a bunch of hunky men supposed to do when they weren’t onstage?

  They perked up, straightening, peeling themselves off their perches. They moved like water, graceful, without a sound. They wore jeans and pants, riding low on their hips. No shirts. Their chests were long expanses of enticing skin. They stalked forward on bare feet, never taking their gazes from me, like I was some interesting new toy they had to examine—a mouse stuffed with catnip, maybe.

  I should have run from there. But the warmth of Balthasar’s body kept me in place. Drew me closer. This was a place of great mystery, his gaze seemed to tell me. Didn’t I want to learn their secrets? Avi’s smile and relaxed stance made me think that nothing was wrong.

  They were all in their twenties, young and fit. They definitely worked out. Their muscles shifted and flexed under their perfect skin. They were model-perfect, watching me with expressive eyes. Fanning around me, they cocked their heads, taking breaths, smelling me, studying me from every angle. My breath caught. I could feel my heart pounding.

  Lycanthropes had to shape-shift only on nights of the full moon; the power to shift was voluntary at other times. We could choose to shift, or we did so instinctively, in dangerous situations. Balthasar’s whole show was based on that, that they could shape-shift at will and retain some of their humanity through the transformation. As a result, this place was more animal than human, and these men had their beasts looking out of their eyes, right at the surface, because they changed into their lycanthropic forms almost every day in order to perform. We weren’t meant to spend so much time in our animal forms. Not if we had any hope of remaining human, of living as humans. But they didn’t seem too put out by it all. Living together like this, isolated, they probably didn’t have to deal with their humanity any more than they wanted to.

  But what about territory? Instinct? A group of male cats would never live together in a pack like this. And that was where the human side came in. Their looks were far too calculating to be driven purely by instinct.

  They stayed just out of reach. I kept thinking one of them, or all of them, would reach out and touch me. If they did, I might retreat in a panic. Or I might reach back. I was blushing, all the way to my gut.

  “Is she for us?” one of them said. He was closest, and he kept his gaze on my chest, like he could see through my dress.

  My shoulders bunched up, the hair on my neck stiffening. Some of them—they were looking at me like they wanted to start batting me around with their paws.

  “She’s a guest,” Balthasar said, and the other made a disappointed click in answer. He turned his shoulder, brushing against one of his packmates as he did. The latter snapped at him, a quick bite at air, but he also leaned into the touch.

  They stood close to each other, touching, leaning against each other’s backs and shoulders even as they stripped me with their gazes. The exchange disturbed me. Did Balthasar often bring women here as cat toys?

  I looked at the ceiling, the faux-stone pillars, the carpet, my feet, anything. But I could smell them, their hormones, the sweat on their skin. I might have sounded a little panicked when I said, “The women in the show. . . they’re not here? They’re not lycanthropes?”

  He shook his head. “They’re just assistants. They’re not really part of the act.” Or part of the pack, the pride of felines.

  “Even the one at the end? Because she looked pretty integral. Is she one of you?”

  A couple of them chuckled, others ducked to hide smiles. There was a joke here I was missing.

  “I suppose in a sense she’s one of us,” Balthasar said finally.

  “Can I meet her?”

  “She’s shy,” he said.

  But she strutted around onstage half naked, I wanted to say. “So there aren’t any other women here at all? Where’s Nick?”

  “I’m here.” And there he was, striding through a doorway on the far side of the room. There was a hallway there, and I couldn’t see where it led. Rooms, maybe. Nick looked just as cocky as he had the first time I saw him, striding toward me like he knew he looked good and planned on showing it off. “Welcome to our humble abode. I hope the boys are showing you a good time.”

  “They’re trying, I’m sure.”

  Balthasar wore a dark look. The sly smile hadn’t changed, but he gazed at Nick warningly.

  Trouble in paradise? Competition? Hmm.

  “I need to find Ben,” I said, the focus of my life pulling me back from them. “As much as I’d love to stay here and socialize with you all, if you don’t know anything, I need to get going and track down the next lead.” Even if it meant wandering the streets and calling his name. I would, if I had to.

  In the meantime, the pack moved closer to me, slinking, noses flaring as they worked overtime to smell me. Any moment now, they’d reach out and start touching me. I backed up a step, surveying the crowd of handsome, earnest faces surrounding me. I was betting they didn’t get out much. They were all smiling, vacuous. Cult, anyone?

  “Hey, guys, back off a little,” Avi said, stepping between me and the Calvin Klein ad auditions. “You don’t want to scare her off when she just got here.”

  Balthasar, who hadn’t made a move to intervene, gave an indulgent smile. “He’s right. Sanjay, why don’t you bring over some drinks? Maybe some water. Shall the rest of us sit? We can talk about Kitty’s problem.” He gestured to another artfully arranged pile of cushions. Just what I needed: all of us lying around on the floor together. What was my problem again?

  Nevertheless, I found myself lounging back against a cushion, legs primly tucked under me, surrounded by men who looked like they might start purring. Balthasar was on one side, Nick on the other, and Avi was at my feet.

  I needed a distraction. “So tell me about the murals. The old stories. Is that where you get your inspiration?” I glanced around at the group, directing the question to all of them. Their rapt attention was making me nervous, and I didn’t want to act nervous around them. I didn’t want to seem weak.

  “It’s more than inspiration,” he said. “I suppose you could almost say it’s a belief system.”

  “Yeah? Like a religion?”

  “Those stories have to do with the creation of the world. People have forgotten about it in our modern world. I think part of why we’re here is to remind people how wild things once were. How chaotic.”

  “Okay,” I said, but my stare was blank, not really getting it. Sanjay arrived with drinks, a tray, a few glasses, and a pitcher. It looked like water, but when I brought the glass up to take a drink, I wrinkled my nose. It didn’t smell right. Drugged, maybe? Maybe it was just a weird brand of bottled water.

  Balthasar took a long swig from his glass, which somehow didn’t make me feel any better. No one else had anything to drink. It made them seem even more like pets instead of people gathered around us, gazing adoringly while they waited for a touch or a word.

  Nick said, “I’ve been arguing with him. I think we should go public. Then we could make the show really wild, add shape-shifting onstage—”

  “Ew!” I said, appalled. Shifting was such a personal, traumatic thing. Doing it in public, in front of spectators—which I had actually done, filmed in captivity, completely against my will—seemed so wrong, so invasive.

  But I had to admit, it would make for great box-office draw.

  “We’re not that sensationalist,” Balthasar said, frowning at Nick.

  “Hence all the whips and chains,” I said wryly.

  “You liked it?” Balthasar said.

  “I have to admit, lurid sex is an easy way to shock people. And it gets the blood going.”

  Nick narrowed his gaze and smiled. “In more ways than you know.”

  Balthasar and Nick both loomed over me, where I slouched against the cushion. Once again, I lay there belly up, looking up at them, a picture of submission, and I didn’t want to be there.

  I sat up and put the g
lass aside. “Do you know anything about Faber and what might have happened to Ben, or not?”

  “Ah, yes, Ben. The other wolf. Your mate,” Balthasar said.

  I tensed, my mind ringing with alarms. Ben hadn’t been with me for the show, Nick hadn’t seen him, there was no way he’d even know about him. I’d told Balthasar that I had a fiancé. I hadn’t said he was a werewolf.

  Keep cool, I told myself. Act indifferent. “Why do you think he’s a wolf?”

  He leaned close, so his breath stirred my hair. “I can smell him on you. It’ll take more than a night to get his scent off you.” He was so close to me he tipped his head to kiss my brow. A warm dry pressure of lips, that was all. Something one friend might do to another to give comfort. Then he shifted, tilting forward to move the kiss to my lips. I could smell him, heat, spice, and fire. Hands touched me, Balthasar’s, on my chin, my arm. And other hands—Nick’s, maybe, on my leg, moving up my thigh. Yet another on my ankle. They all pressed close, a dozen men—boys, some of them. Creatures. With beseeching looks in their eyes, like they needed me to stay, like they’d never seen anything like me and I was treasure to them. It made me flush and feel giddy. But Wolf was cornered.

  I was drowning. I couldn’t breathe. I want my mate, Wolf whispered.

  Snarling, teeth bared, I stood, shoving away hands, extricating myself from the mob, and backed to the middle of the floor. My shoulders hunched, head low, glaring a challenge—a cornered wolf. Attention from willing males was fine, but feeling helpless wasn’t. Not anymore. We’d had enough of that and weren’t going to go back. If one of them took another step toward me, Wolf would take matters into her own hands. Claws.

  Taking a deep breath, I made myself stay calm. There were doorknobs between me and the outside, which meant I had to stay human to get out of this.

  “I don’t know what your game is, I don’t know what’s up with you and werewolves and this crazy fucked-up town. But I’m going to go find my mate now.”

  “Kitty, wait,” Balthasar said. His voice remained buttery: the seductive tone never left him. “We can help. If there’s a lost werewolf in this town, I can find him—”

  An alarm rang. A real one. The deep, electric drone of a fire alarm echoed from the hallway outside. It sounded closer than I would have expected; the suite of rooms seemed so large, and we had seemed so far away from the rest of the hotel.

  Balthasar’s packlings glanced at each other in confusion.

  I ran to the front door. Surely this wasn’t for real. It was a drill, or a false alarm. Then again, I thought: if a major Vegas hotel was going to go up in flames, of course it would be the one where I was at the moment.

  I touched the main door. It wasn’t hot. By this time, Balthasar was on the phone—there was a phone tucked away in the corner of the first room. As I opened the door to leave, he called out—

  “Wait, Kitty, they’re telling me it’s a false alarm—”

  That might have been the case, but I was still going to use the opportunity to get the heck out of there.

  The hall was empty. Maybe everyone but me thought it was a false alarm. Or maybe Balthasar and friends had the whole floor to themselves. Distinct possibility, which made me walk faster. The elevator didn’t seem to be working, probably because of the fire alarm, so I took the stairs. If walking down eight floors didn’t sober me up, nothing would.

  The fire alarm echoing through the concrete stairwell gave me a roaring headache.

  Ten minutes without heat and smoke convinced me that this was, in fact, a false alarm. Between about the fourth and fifth floors, I rounded the corner, intending to plop down on the step and catch my breath. Maybe try to analyze what had happened over the last half hour. But movement caught my eye, someone darting across the landing below me. The door giving access to the floor opened, and the figure looked back at me, urgency tightening his features. He was tall, tan-skinned, and wore a suit.

  It was Evan. And I thought I saw a gun in his other hand.

  It all passed as a blur before he was in the hallway, and the door shut behind him. But my nerves spiked, and I ran to the door, opened it, looked—he wasn’t there. Or he was very good at hiding. First Sylvia, now Evan. What was going on here?

  Belatedly, I slipped back into the stairwell and pressed myself to the wall, in case bullets did start flying. I was almost gasping for breath; my heart was racing and my head swimming from the alarm and the alcohol. I couldn’t hear anything. I could smell the trace of aftershave and a wool suit that might have been Evan’s. Might have been anyone’s. My imagination conjured the scent of gun oil. I couldn’t be sure of anything.

  Carefully, I continued the rest of the way to the lobby. Taking every step carefully, I listened for footsteps, for the sound of a gun being cocked, and I breathed slowly, waiting to catch a scent. I made very slow progress.

  By the time I reached the lobby, the alarm had stopped, but my nerves hadn’t stilled. The place was packed with people coming and going, milling in the resulting confusion. A guy in a firefighter coat and helmet walked past, obviously not in a hurry. No real emergency, but people were still confused. Like nothing so much as a flock of nervous sheep. Then a voice called, “Kitty!”

  Brenda stood in the lobby ahead of me, gesturing me over. I never, ever thought this would happen, but I was happy to see her. When I reached her, she pulled me over to the wall. She kept looking around us like she expected demons to spring from the walls.

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Have you found Ben? I thought I saw Evan upstairs—”

  “Yeah, he’s the one who pulled the fire alarm.”

  “Wow. I think I should thank him,” I said.

  “No doubt,” she said with a huff. “Did you know that animal act is actually a bunch of lycanthropes?”

  I said, totally sardonic, “Yeah. I might have figured that one out.”

  “And you got yourself stuck up there in the middle of them?” she said, disbelieving. “What were you thinking? Those guys are bad news.”

  “So I’ve heard, but no one will tell me why. What have you found out?”

  “Everyone keeps out of their way. Even our crowd. And that’s saying something. What were you doing there?” She had a hand on her hip and looked accusing.

  Avoiding getting seduced, I thought but shook my head. I understood why Balthasar and his gang made me nervous. But they made everyone nervous. “I thought they might know something about what happened to Ben.”

  “And did they?” I shook my head, and she said, “We haven’t done much better. Word is that Faber’s lying low after his ring at the Olympus poker tournament went bust. I haven’t heard anything about him taking Ben. He’s keeping it real quiet.”

  “How did you guys end up here?”

  “Keeping track of you. Boris and Sylvia are on the hunt.”

  “What? I spotted Sylvia at the Napoli—”

  “They’re keeping tabs on you. So we’re keeping tabs on them.”

  “Are they here?” I said, looking around wildly.

  “No, unfortunately.”

  Unfortunately? I was counting that a small blessing at the moment.

  I sensed movement, another set of footsteps approaching. Evan. He strode from the elevator, scanned the lobby, spotted us, and came over. All business, all focused intensity. Even when he joined us, looking me up and down, nodding once when he found me in one piece, part of his attention stayed outward, watching the crowd. I had a feeling he could tell me a lot about all the people here from a few fleeting details, in Sherlock Holmesian fashion.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You better thank me. I hear that Balthasar guy doesn’t like werewolves. Drives ’em out of town when he can.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t trying to drive me out,” I said, my smile thin. Except out of my wits, maybe.

  He turned to Brenda. “Boris and Sylvia didn’t track her here. I can’t find any sign of them.”

  “But they’re still out there,
and I want to know where.”

  “Then let’s go hunting,” Evan said, a quirk to his lips and a glint in his eyes. People like him lived for moments like this, I bet. In fact, both of them were grinning.

  “What about me?” I said. “What about Ben?”

  “We’re still looking,” Evan said. “We still have leads to follow.”

  Brenda said, “There’s a chance those two know something. If they do, we’ll get it out of them.” If this had been a movie, she would have drawn her gun and cocked it right then, to accentuate her point. Not that that would have made me feel any better.

  “In the meantime,” Evan said to me, “We’re going to take you back to your hotel. And you should stay there until we know Sylvia’s not gunning for you. Got it?”

  My thoughts were too tangled to argue. I wanted to go with them. I wanted to find Ben now. I also wanted to bury my face in a pillow. And get rid of these damned heels.

  At this point, it was easier to agree.

  They escorted me to a cab, which drove us back to the Olympus. This was very nice of them, I supposed. But I had a feeling they were doing it not necessarily because they liked me, but because they really hated Boris and Sylvia. That, I couldn’t argue with. I got a little more annoyed when they walked me from the front lobby to the elevator, then into the elevator and to the room.

  Evan left me with final instructions: “Keep the door locked. Keep the chain on. Don’t answer the door for anyone. Stay here, right?”

  “I’m not stupid, you know,” I said. He glared at me like he didn’t agree with that assessment.

  “Call us if anything happens. If you spot those goons, or if you hear from Ben, call us.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  They didn’t leave until I closed the door and they heard the chain slide into place. I could tell because watched them through the peephole.

  So here I was, safe and sound, with nothing to do but wait for Ben. To wait and see what else went horribly wrong. I took the opportunity to peel off the pain-inducing shoes and change out of the dress and into jeans and a T-shirt. My poor abused dress. The one Ben wanted to take off me.