“It’s not my thing,” Chloe flatly refused. “Our people should see what kind of a person I really am—not pretending to be.”
Kim didn’t argue.
The room was smaller than she expected; there really were only a hundred cat people, like a studio audience, ten by ten and packed. While it was a relief., it was also kind of sad: there were only three Prides in America, and this was one of them, and there were so few. … Chloe was the leader of a dying people, an endangered race.
Someone had set up the projection TV as she had asked, and all watched, horrified, the news about their old leader flicker across the screen through reporters’ mouths and on a colorful banner at the bottom. When she thought they had seen enough, Chloe nodded at the guy in the back—Mai A/V geek?—and went out on the little stage, behind Kim.
Her friend, now completely in her role of priestess, held out her hands, closed her eyes, and began to sing. Like the night of the Hunt, when Chloe had first heard a traditional Mai chant, this was just as strange and wailing. It was impossible to predict where the melody would go; Kim changed tone and octave without warning. It sounded as sad and alien as Chloe felt her people looked right then.
Suddenly she felt them right then.
As the hymn continued and she looked out at the faces, Chloe could feel the collective emotions of the group. Fear. Sadness. Expectation. We are so few! We have lost so many! And now this …
Hope, as they looked at her.
Igor was trying to pay attention,, but feelings of betrayal and pain were so strong that he wasn’t really connected to the others.
She felt strange warmth, like everyone was where they should be: here they were, her Pride, together, waiting for her.
There was one off note, one small thing missing, like someone wasn’t there.
After Kim finished, Chloe stepped up, no longer afraid or nervous. Here were her people. She was their leader. She cleared her throat.
“For those of you who haven’t met me yet, I am Chloe King, Pride Leader and your Chosen One.”
It sounded so stilted and strange, but everyone was listening raptly.
“Sergei Shaddar was not your true leader. Though he had good intentions, they were carried out with evil means. The man you thought you were following to some sort of happy-ever-after brought only violence and death. Even those closest to him had no idea of the extent of his activities.” Of course, the kizekh probably had a pretty good idea, since he must have used them to carry out some of his directives. … But she would stick to her line of amnesty and forgiveness.
“When I met with him at the theater where he was killed, the Rogue was already there, waiting for me.”
There was no noise from the reserved Mai, but Chloe felt the collective shock of a hundred people.
“The two had been working together to kill all possible Chosen Ones, including my sister. I don’t know if Sergei actually killed any himself, but he told the Rogue where she would be and where I would show up, and Alexander did the rest. Once he had me in his sights, Sergei was also no longer any use to him and the Rogue killed him as well.”
“I cannot believe a Mai would kill another Mai! There are so few of us,” a Mai wailed.
“There are bad people even among us, just as there are good people among the humans, like my mom. And Brian. And Paul and Amy.”
Scanning the small crowd, she saw Alyec. Their eyes locked for a moment and he smiled—genuinely, without what had happened between them recently getting in the way. Supporting her. She smiled back without thinking.
“My mother, your previous Chosen One—it was her dream to unite all of the Eastern European Mai, those who had been scattered by war and exile and violence and our curse.
“As your new Pride Leader, I believe it is time now that we are all together to embrace our new land fully.” There was a little hesitation at this—they were not all here yet, and where was she going with this? “Sergei was right about one more thing—you shouldn’t have to live here like rats holed up. You should be free to pursue your own destinies and come together because you want to, not because you’re forced to.
“You’re in America now, in some ways no different from any other immigrants. From now on we abide by its laws. That means no more revenge and wars with the Tenth Blade. They break the law—they will be punished accordingly. As you might have seen from the news, they are hot in pursuit of the Rogue. And you know why? Because I told them he was Sergei’s murderer.”
This time there was an audible gasp.
Kim was off to one side, Chloe suddenly noticed, talking with whoever it was running the TV.
“The police will track him down and arrest him. He will be punished for this and his other crimes.…”
“Chloe,” Kim murmured, coming to her side, “forgive me for interrupting, but Ivan has told me there’s something on the news we should see—he TiVo’ed the last few minutes.…”
“Put it on.” Kim nodded to the back and the projection television came on again.
Somehow Chloe wasn’t surprised to see a photo of her biological mother appear next to the CNN guy’s face, as one of the dead counted by Sergei’s hand.
“… Anastasia Leon, member and leader of an obscure tribe of Eastern European nomads, originally from Turkey, had returned to her people’s homeland. Investigators are now turning up evidence that she was one of the first of Sergei Shaddar’s political murders; the sources are unsure why….”
Anastasia Leon. That was her mother’s name. And there she was. A photo similar to the one that Chloe had held in her hand just a couple of weeks ago, of a woman with waist-length black hair and a wide, untamed smile, furrowed brow and determined eyes.
She gestured for the sound to be turned back down.
The Mai looked stunned; some were weeping, some growling. Chloe felt a mix of pity and bewilderment that none of them had seen this coming.
“See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Secrecy and survival has forced you to follow a man who murdered your Pride Leader. This causeless violence between us and the Tenth Blade ends now. All it does is breed more violence and plays for power among ourselves—look what Sergei did to my sister, and look what Brian’s people did to him.
“I am your new Chosen One, and I will lead you to safety and prosperity—but only through peace.”
There was a pause. Were they going to clap? Drum her out? What happened next? Chloe desperately tried to feel the strange empathy she had experienced before, but it had faded to a dull heartbeat.
Suddenly Alyec leapt to his feet and roared. The only time Chloe had ever heard anything like it was when she’d lost her cool with Keira—and scared the bejesus out of the other girl. It was a deep, frightening sound that seemed much too loud and deep for his human frame to produce. His eyes were slit and scary; his claws were out.
Valerie stood up next and joined him.
Soon everyone was standing and howling and roaring, a deafening clamor that should have frightened Chloe but didn’t. For just a moment the link was back and she could feel their energy and power and love—the support of the Pride.
Kim didn’t roar, choosing to give her a strangely human thumbs-up.
When Chloe retired to give her mom a quick call, letting her know how it went, she was exhausted. Still not a public speaker, she realized. Just able to do it when called for. Igor waited patiently close by for her to get off the phone.
“Honored One … ?” he asked politely.
“Yes, Igor?” Chloe asked as she set down the phone. Soon she would get back on the bandwagon of making them call her Chloe. It seemed too much to do right now, though.
“I wanted to say … I think you are right.” It didn’t look like he was forcing himself to say this; he seemed full of the stillness and peace that she herself had experienced that afternoon. “Maybe it’s because I deal—dealt—with humans more than Sergei, but we should follow their laws. Especially if we stay. And even if we don’t stay—nomads can’
t make asses of themselves everywhere they go. Otherwise we won’t be welcomed back.” There was the faintest smile on his lips.
“Thanks, Igor. That really means a lot to me.” And that was it—it was over. All of the tension between them for the last few days, all of his irritation at her. But the sadness was still there, and Chloe knew that he would be thinking a lot about Sergei in the upcoming weeks, remembering the good things while sifting through them, looking for signs of the ruthless killer beneath. “I never knew my biological father,” she added softly. “And my adopted dad skipped out when I was little. Sergei was the third father I lost—and in some ways, the one I was closest to.”
Igor nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Hey,” Chloe said, changing the subject and remembering the absence she had felt at the beginning of the speech. “Where’s Dmitry, by the way?”
He was the bodyguard Sergei had assigned to her when she was feeling rebellious living with the Mai, the one who came to protect her when they went out to see Star Wars. Along with Ellen, another member of the kizekh—and, she was pretty sure, his lover.
She was expecting a quick answer, like, Oh, he patrols and guards the upstairs while the Pride meets to keep them safe.
But Igor’s face, blank and confused, told another story.
This is one of those loose ends, Chloe realized tiredly. One of those unexplained things that’s gonna come back and bite me in the ass later. She was getting so much wiser so quickly … and it didn’t make her happier.
Sixteen
Eventually Chloe Was able to quietly extract herself from the crowd and slip away to the hospital room. Brian was actually reading, beneath a single light floating alone in the darkness.
“Hey,” she said, smiling.
“Hey.” He put down his book and looked up at her eagerly. There was one thin bandage around his head now, mostly white and unstained. His hair was a little fluffier, like it had been cleaned, and his eyes were brighter, though they were still surrounded by bruises and cuts. But there was definitely something more alive about him, pink and healthy, and Chloe felt a little rush of pride that maybe, just maybe, she’d been the one to lift the age-old human-Mai curse.
The book, Chloe noticed as she came closer, was Blood Meridian. It looked like a Western.
“Not a lot of reading choices down here,” he said, shrugging. “But this is pretty good.”
“Are they treating you okay?” she asked, pulling up a metal stool.
“Are you kidding?” Brian snorted. “Whatever they think of me, they keep it to themselves. It’s all ‘Honored One’ this and ‘Chosen One’ that and ‘as she desires….’ Although the doctor, I think, really is good. And kind of funny, for a Mai.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chloe demanded, taking his hand.
“As someone who has been forced to study them most of his life, I gotta tell you: most of your compatriots don’t really have much of a sense of humor.”
Chloe opened her mouth to disagree, then thought about it. He was right.
She shrugged. “We had a big powwow upstairs.”
“I heard. Well, I didn’t actually hear, but everyone was talking about it. Everything okay?”
Chloe sighed and told him about Sergei and the Rogue and her reporting it to the police and the subsequent follow-up investigations and how he appeared to have killed her entire biological family except for her dad, who no one knew or seemed to really care about. She had to stop once to call her mom, which Brian later teased her about, but he sat quietly, eyes twinkling, while she called.
“Well.” She stretched, yawning. “That’s about it.”
“What now?”
“Now?” She extended her claws without thinking and scratched at a particularly itchy spot on her head. She hoped it wasn’t dandruff. Or whatever cats got. “Now I think I find my old bedroom, crawl into bed, and sleep until hell freezes over—or I have to call my mom again, in about three hours.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” Brian suggested quietly.
Chloe looked at him. He wasn’t kidding. In fact, she had never seen him look at her more seriously. He reached out a hand and touched her lips—a hand that was connected to a really toned arm, peach-colored and muscled. He moved his fingers along her cheek and jaw to run his hand through her hair.
Then she eased off the stool and lowered the metal side of his hospital bed.
“It will be just like a sleepover,” he said, grinning.
“No pillow fights for you,” she murmured, pulling back the sheet and kissing his neck.
In the morning, Chloe woke up cramped and sleepy.
She had only missed one phone call to her mom—the 4 a.m. one—and Anna King had called her at exactly five minutes past. While it wasn’t exactly convenient to answer, the consequences would have been far worse, so Chloe had forced herself to.
Brian made little murmuring noises as she carefully disengaged herself and slid off the side of the bed.
“C’m back soon,” he mumbled, trying to open his eyes and failing. “Miss you.”
Chloe leaned over and kissed him. Brian smiled but was soon snoring again.
How do I feel? Chloe asked herself, picking her jeans up off the floor and putting them on. They fit softly and nicely, like third-day jeans always did.
Do I feel different?
She made her way through the benches of hospital-y stuff, surprising Dr. Lovsky, who was carrying a breakfast tray for Brian.
“Oh, uh, morning. Honored One,” the older woman said, a little shocked when she realized the two of them had been together all night. But whether it was because he was a human or that hanky-panky in general had gone on in her little sterile kingdom, Chloe couldn’t tell.
“Morning,” she said cheerfully before resuming her thoughts and her progression upstairs. Maybe there was a whole ceremonial day-after-New-Pride-Leader-speech breakfast fete in her honor. That would be terribly embarrassing, but there might be fruit salad.
Sniffing the air and using her Mai hearing, Chloe was sort of disappointed she didn’t hear any of the sounds that might be associated with fete preparations, so she went to the kitchenette instead, where at least she smelled coffee.
Kim was in there already, getting her morning green tea.
“Honored One,” she said, dipping her tea bag and her head at the same time.
“Chloe,” Chloe corrected grumpily, getting a cup. Since she had been away, they had installed a cool new coffee machine where you could choose a packet of ten different kinds of coffee, or tea, or even hot chocolate—and press some buttons and the machine would make you almost anything. Of course, the packets were made out of nonbiodegradable Mylar, so as soon as things calmed down around here, Chloe would have to start pushing to get rid of it.
Surely a Chosen One could do that.
Her aim was still a little off: as she poured the milk, the coffee overflowed her cup—at least it wasn’t plastic foam—and spilled on the counter.
“Damn,” Chloe grumbled, carefully lifting the cup to her mouth to sip the excess off. She almost felt hung over.
“Did you sleep well?” Kim asked.
Chloe frowned, looking her friend in the eye, but there were no double entendres. It was an innocent question.
“Not … exactly.”
Kim nodded wisely. “Did you and Brian have sex together?”
Chloe choked on her coffee and spat it out, spilling some more from the cup as she did. “What the hell?” she demanded.
The cat-earred girl barely hid her smile. “I was just curious.”
Chloe had opened her mouth to say something about the private lives of Chosen Ones when Igor came into the room.
“Honored One.” He gave her a quick nod. “You should come quick. Dmitry is back—he’s killed someone.”
There goes the happy ending that was just beginning. Why wasn’t anything easy?
She followed Igor out and into Sergei’s office. Kim came padd
ing quietly behind. For some reason, Chloe didn’t mind her constant presence, even when it wasn’t exactly invited. She was never distracting, opinionated, or full of herself.
Chloe expected to find him standing tall, impassive, scary, threatening—like he normally was. The kizekh were the soldier class, after all—and from what she had seen at the fight on the Presidio, they were quite effective and disciplined in their own scary, catlike way.
Instead he was sitting on a chair, bent over and weeping. Olga was standing next to him, a hand on his shoulder.
“Honored One!” Dmitry whirled around—of course he would have heard them talking. His senses were probably almost as sharp as Kim’s. The big guard threw himself to his knees at her feet and touched her ankles. “I did not know! That he was a murderer of our people—that he—that he—killed our Chosen One!” Chloe was confused for a moment before she realized he meant her biological mother. He was old enough to remember her, she realized, and had maybe even met her before he came over.
“What happened?” Chloe asked as gently as she could, considering there was a crazy murdering adult below her wailing and prostrating himself.
“When I learned the news of our Pri—of Sergei’s death, I grew incensed and swore vengeance!”
Chloe turned to glare at Igor.
“He wasn’t around when I passed along your no-vengeance thing,” he protested. “And even if he was, well, tensions were running a little high….”
“I went to a place where I knew there would be one of the filthy human Order patrolling,” Dmitry said, a hard glint in his eye as he recalled. “And killed the coward with my bare claws.” Then he began to weep again. “I thought I was avenging our leader, our great protector…. I knew you were the One, but he was as a father to us in the days between you and the One before….”
“Do you remember which one you mur—uh, killed?” Chloe asked.