“He’s Russian? Russian Mafia?” Cora asked, looking confused. “You know, Jas, this is odd. Really odd. I think you have even my past-life regression beat.”
Moravian Dark One is the technical term. And before you ask, yes, I have my soul.
“What a bizarre thing to say.”
“What is?” Cora asked, watching the jaguar closely.
“He told me he is from Russia, and he has his soul.”
“Hmm. It must be important, though. I mean, why would a strange jaguar march up and tell you he has a soul if it wasn’t important? Hey, why is he banging his head on the wall?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask him. Avery—”
“Huh?”
“He said that’s his name. Avery, why are you banging your head on the wall?”
You and your sister are driving me daft, woman! I told you I have my soul because of what I am. Dark Ones don’t have souls. I have one; hence the fact I’m what is normally referred to as a Moravian. My parents were Joined before I was born, you see.
“Uh . . .”
“What’s he saying?” Cora asked in a whisper, plucking at my sleeve.
Now, my brother Paen, he didn’t have a soul, not until he met Sam. She got it back for him, which is a long story I won’t go into now. Will you please change me back so I can return to being a perfectly normal Moravian?
“He’s talking about some people called Dark Ones who don’t have souls. Maybe I’m not the insane one after all,” I said, considering the cat. “Maybe he is.”
I’m not insane, although I’m about to get very, very pissed, and you don’t want me to go there.
“Oh?” I tipped my head and looked the wobbly cat up and down. “Why? What will you do?”
For a moment, my mind was filled with erotic images, those involving a handsome blond, blue-eyed man doing the most amazing things to me, things that set my body humming with desire and passion. “Holy Mary!”
There’s more, but I don’t think you’re ready to hear about it, the cat said in a sage voice, squinting at me. Now, whatever it is you did to me, make it stop.
“I didn’t do anything to you.”
Cora looked from the cat to me. “He thinks you did something to him? Did what?”
“Turned him into a jaguar, evidently.”
Do I look like I was born yesterday? His eyes narrowed even more as he eyed me up and down. Are you nursing a grudge against me? Did I love you and leave you? I don’t recall doing so, but the events of last night are a bit fuzzy. Still, you don’t look like the kind of woman I’d get tired of quickly.
“You are really offensive, you know that?” I told him. “If you were a man and you said that to me, I’d deck you.”
“Now you’ve lost me.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s just being cranky.”
I am not cranky! I do not get cranky! And I am a man. Well, I’m male, since Moravians aren’t strictly human. Change me back!
“How many times do I have to tell you that I didn’t do anything to you! I’m an officer of the fish and wildlife department. I’m not a . . .” My hands waved around in a vague gesture as I turned to my sister. “What sort of person turns other people into jaguars?”
“Oh, mercy. I don’t know.” She bit her lower lip. “A witch, maybe?”
“I think Wiccan is the politically correct term these days, and I’m not sure they can change people into things,” I answered, turning back to the cat. “Well, I don’t know what sort of person would change someone into a jaguar. I mean, that’s impossible to begin with, but I’m not very well versed on folklore, so I don’t know what that would be, but whatever it is, I’m not one.”
Folklore, he said slowly, as a speculative look came into his unnaturally blue eyes. The Leshies!
Now that was a word I was familiar with. “Leshies? Did you say Leshies?”
Yes. Danielle’s family, to be specific. Oh Christ, that I do remember. She wanted me to marry her.
“The animal whackos?” Cora asked.
The cat looked consideringly at her. You know them?
“I do, a little. Cora doesn’t.”
“I don’t what?”
“Know the Leshies. I’ve dealt with them a few times,” I said cautiously.
You’re not part of them, are you?
“No. I told you, I work for the state. But what does a group of animal rights activists have to do with you?” It was becoming easier and easier to believe that the cat wasn’t what he seemed, although my brain had a hard time wrapping itself around the thought that the jaguar before me was really a man.
I just told you. Danielle wanted me to marry her. But I refused. Somehow, one of the Leshies changed me into a panther.
“Jaguar,” I said automatically.
I wonder who changed me? It was probably her father, the wicked old sod. She said he wouldn’t let the matter lie when I turned her down.
“You’re talking about Albert Baum, aren’t you? I’ve never met his daughter, I’m afraid.”
That’s the bastard. He did this to me! Well, if he thinks that’s the end of the matter, he can bloody well think again. No one messes with a Moravian.
“What’s he saying?” Cora hissed.
I gave her a brief rundown before turning back to the cat. “I’m sorry. I’m still confused. You keep saying you’re from Moravia, but you’re also Scottish?”
Moravians are commonly referred to in mortal terms as vampires, he said absently. I could feel him thinking furiously, creating and discarding any number of plans of revenge.
“Vampires?” I gasped, the word reverberating in my brain.
“What?” Cora reeled back.
“Avery the cat says he’s . . . a vampire,” I said, feeling my eyes bug out a little.
“Oh my God, not another one!” Cora wailed, scooting away from him. “They’re everywhere!”
I’d prefer it if you would use the term Moravian. Vampire is so Twilight.
“The kind of vampire who sucks blood?” I asked, feeling it important to make that point clear.
Moravian. Yes. Do you have some sort of problem grasping that concept?
“A Dracula sort of vampire, with stakes, and children of the night?”
“They’re following me!” Cora yelled as she turned and ran down the hallway toward the large metal back door. “Everywhere I go, they’re there! First Patsy’s neighbor, now a vampire cat—what next?”
The cat sighed into my mind and bumped my knee with his nose. M-o-r . . . Oh, to hell with it. Call me whatever you want; it doesn’t matter. I have to get back to the Leshy compound and make Albert Baum change me back.
“Back into a vampire.”
You seem to be stuck on that point.
“Well, you have to admit, you don’t run into vampires every day,” I pointed out.
Actually, I do. My brothers are Moravians, as well, as I believe I just mentioned. He wobbled over to the door that led to the area where the cats lived and banged his head on the doorknob.
I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the faintest twinges of a tension headache. “Now, wait—that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen movies. What you’re saying is that you’re a werewolf vampire, and you know, that’s completely against all the rules.”
Werepanther, I believe, would be the technical term. And who says there’s a rule that Moravians can’t be shape-shifters? Just because I don’t know of any doesn’t mean there haven’t been some. Damn it. Come open this door for me.
“Werejaguar.”
Avery, werejaguar vampire cat, shot me a look filled with undiluted irritation. Panther sounds more manly.
“It’s a misnomer, however. You wouldn’t want to go around telling people you’re a panther when you??
?re not, now, would you?”
Lovely. I get the anal-retentive cat whisperer, he answered, trying to turn the doorknob by getting a grip on it with his teeth.
“I am not anal retentive! And stop that—you’re getting slobber all over the handle. All right. For the sake of time, my sanity, and to keep my sister from having a nervous breakdown—Cora! Stop yelling. You’re upsetting the cats in the back! Go outside to the truck and get the camera for me if you’re upset. I’m just going to move past the whole impossibility of the situation. Just show me you are what you say you are, and I’ll help you. How, I don’t know, but I’ll try my best.”
Show you?
“Yes, show me.”
Two furry black dots that were his eyebrows rose. Is that a proposition? Because if it is, I’m going to be obliged to you if you could wait until I’m back in human form to take you up on it.
“I meant show me that you’re a werejaguar vampire. Change.”
Change?
My hands did a fluttery thing. “What are you, a werejaguar vampire parrot now? Change. All the movies I’ve seen and books I’ve read say that were-whatevers can change their forms themselves. They don’t need their girlfriend’s father to do it for them.”
I am not a whatever. I am a Moravian werejaguar, and a damned nice specimen of one, if this handsome black coat is anything to go by. And Danielle wasn’t my girlfriend. I don’t have a girlfriend, thus making me able to take you up on your proposition later. She was just a means to an end.
“Thus thinketh many men,” I said, the vision of Greg rising briefly in my mind. “Very few actually come right out and say it, though. I may award you bonus points for that. So are you going to change or not?”
You might be on to something there, he answered thoughtfully. Let me see . . . hmm. How do you suppose you go about changing your form?
I shrugged. “I don’t know; I’m not a werejaguar. I imagine concentrating might do the job. Maybe like meditation—clear your mind of everything but the image of you as a vampire, and see if that does the trick.”
His pretty blue eyes squinted at nothing as he focused his attention, one lip curling up as an odd, abstracted expression formed on his face.
“You look constipated.”
He stopped squinting to glare at me. Flatterer.
“I meant that you’re trying too hard. Haven’t you ever done yoga or meditated? You need to relax, allow yourself to become one with the universe, let your mind wander. While, of course, holding the shape-shifting thought.”
When I get back to the Baum compound, there’s going to be hell to pay, he swore as he slumped down onto the ground, his big head between his paws. I can’t relax. I’m too stressed.
“For heaven’s sake . . .” I plopped down onto the ground next to him, and scratched behind one of the rounded furry ears, gently moving across his neck to the other ear.
A low, thick, rough purr of delight answered the quasi massage. His eyes, which had been shut tight, popped open in surprise. I can purr!
“All cats can, in some form or another. Yours is particularly . . .”
Masculine?
“Rough. Close your eyes again, let your thoughts go, and when you feel at peace, try to shift back into your normal form,” I said helpfully, waiting to see if he was speaking the truth. The idea of there really being vampires trotting around the earth was more than enough to raise my skeptical objections, but the thought of one who had been changed into a jaguar? That was beyond bizarre.
I kept stroking his head until the purr eventually trailed off, his breathing deep and slow. I was just about to nudge his shoulder in case he had drifted off to sleep when my vision went wonky, shimmering and blurring for a few seconds before the cat’s body elongated, the mass of it stretching and changing until I sat gazing down with absolute astonishment at the man’s blond head that lay under my stroking fingers.
He turned his head to the side to consider my hand, pressing a kiss to my palm before I could snatch it back.
“You’re . . . human.”
“Not quite, but close enough to make no difference to you.”
“You’re human. And . . . naked.” I couldn’t help but notice that. I’d have to have been blind not to notice the thick curve of muscles on his bare shoulder and arm.
“Am I? So I am,” he said, pushing himself off the ground into a sitting position.
I tried not to look, I really did, but I would defy any woman to find herself sitting next to a naked man and not look. Especially when he was as easy on the eyes as this one was.
“Holy—”
“Mary and all the little saints. Yes, I know. You were right,” he said, smiling lazily at me. “All I had to do was relax. Thanks for petting me. Are you going to stare at my cock for long? I don’t mind, but this floor is cold when you’re not covered in fur.”
Blushing, I dragged my eyes up from his genitals to stare at his chest, my mouth slightly ajar, my brain refusing to understand what it was seeing. He leaned forward, gently placing a finger under my chin and closing my mouth, his gaze fastened on my lips. “Oh, what the hell,” he said, using his thumb to prod my chin down a smidgen. Then before I could ask him what on earth he was doing, he leaned forward and kissed me.
At least that was what it started out as, his lips moving across mine in a salute of gratitude, but the second his tongue slid between my lips, a sense of hunger rose in him, a primal, animalistic need to take from me, and what shocked me to my toenails was my desire to give him what he wanted.
“All right, I have the camera, and I insist that you come away from that fur-covered, bloodsucking Nos-feratu this instant—good Lord! He’s attacking you!”
There was a whoosh of air and a metallic clang, followed almost immediately by the sound of a ripe melon being smacked with a blunt object.
“Get away from her, you fiend!” Cora yelled. I blinked at the sight of Avery laid out flat on his back, blood dripping slowly from a cut over his eye.
“What—”
“Come on! We have to run before he comes around!” Cora dropped the fire extinguisher and grabbed my arm, trying to haul me to my feet.
“He wasn’t attacking me, you idiot! He was kissing me! What on earth have you done to the poor man?” I pushed Cora away to examine the bloody lump on Avery’s head. He moaned as I gently pressed my fingers around the lump. “Thank God, I don’t think you broke anything.”
“Jas!” Cora slapped her hands on her legs in frustration. “He’s not a poor man; he’s a vampire!”
“So? That’s no reason to go braining him with a fire extinguisher. Avery? Can you hear me?”
“He’s a bloodsucker! A naked bloodsucker! Everyone knows those are the worst kind!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I pushed a lock of his hair away from the blood. Avery moaned again, turning his face into my leg as he swore softly.
“Don’t you understand, Jas? He drinks people’s blood!”
“You were absolutely fine with him when you thought he was a werejaguar,” I pointed out.
“That’s different!”
“Oh really? How?”
She blinked at me. “He’s . . . deadly.”
“I’m deadly in any form,” Avery said, touching his wound and wincing. “Bloody hell, woman. What did you hit me with?”
“You don’t want to know,” I told him, helping him sit up. I had to admit I didn’t at all mind the silky sensation of his naked back against my hands. “How do you feel?”
“That’s it. I give up. He’s clearly got you under his sway, or lure, or whatever it is vampires do. There’s no hope for you now,” Cora said, slumping down the wall to sit on the floor. “Next you’ll be eating bugs and calling him master.”
“It’s called a thrall, and we don’t do that,” Av
ery told her, squinting at the blood on his fingers.
“You don’t?” she asked.
“No.” He gave me a long look; then one side of his mouth quirked up. “Although you can call me master if you like.”
Chapter 3
“I still don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I know you don’t, Cora. But if you can think of another way to explain to Allison and Jo and the other ladies why the jaguar they all saw has disappeared, leaving Avery in its place, then I’m all ears. Because frankly, I barely believe what happened myself—speaking of which, I think we deserve extra bonus points for not running around screaming with our hands waving in the air—and I just don’t think I’m up to the explanations needed that would convince five other people of what really happened.”
“Hrmph.” She glared at the tall figure of a man as he emerged from the small room that served as a hospital for the cats in residence. Luckily, the vet who came by twice a week was male, and if he was heavier and shorter than Avery, at least his emergency clothing fit well enough for Avery to leave the building. “I don’t trust him, not one little bit.”
“Life’s a bitch,” I said absently as I tucked my tranquilizing gun back into its holster.
“Jas!”
I paused with my hand on the knob of the back door, surprised by the vehemence in her voice. “What?”
“He’s a vampire!” she hissed, glancing over her shoulder at Avery as he walked toward us. Somehow, he’d acquired a baseball cap and a beat-up leather jacket that had clearly seen better days.
“So?”
“Just a little bit ago you were telling me they didn’t exist.”
“Clearly I was wrong. I mean, you can’t deny the evidence, Cora. What we have here is a shape-shifting vampire, which I gather is fairly rare.”
“What’s rare?” Avery asked as he stopped next to us. He slipped into the coat and pulled the brim of the hat low on his forehead.
“You are.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I guess I am. I can’t think of any other Moravian who’s also a therion.”