And out of the shiny black paint stared his eyes. Pale green eyes—the eyes of a cornered beast, trapped and ready to kill or die to get free.
Eyes Imani had seen in her dreams.
Nine
“Well, Councilor—I trust you can see why your client must be executed.”
Judge Thoughtgood’s voice broke through the spell that had fallen over Imani when she looked into the pale green eyes of her client.
“What?” she asked, looking away from J’are, who had stopped struggling, at least, and was simply crouching on the floor, growling menacingly like a cornered dog.
“I said, I trust you can see why this Kindred must die,” the judge repeated impatiently. “He is a menace to our society—the moment he got loose, he would not hesitate to rip out any number of innocent throats.”
Imani thought that there probably weren’t many of those, considering how the Yonnites lived. But she kept that thought to herself. Right now, she had to find a way to keep her client alive despite himself.
“I must respectfully disagree, your honor,” she said, lifting her chin. “I believe my client is simply, er, upset but that he can be calmed down and taken safely out in public.”
“Is that right?” Judge Thoughtgood’s blue eyebrows were almost up to her blue hairline. “And would you care to make the attempt of ‘calming him down’ yourself, Councilor?”
Imani felt a quiver of fear in her stomach. She remembered Commander Sylvan telling her that Nightwalker Kindred were prone to going into a “feral state” and how he had warned her she must not allow her client to go into that state.
But here he was, growling like an animal and clearly out of his mind. What had been done to him in the Yonnite correctional facility to force this reaction from him? And how in the world could she reverse it?
Please, she thought. Oh please, I have to find a way to fix this—a way to bring him back and save him. What can I do?
She took another look at the snarling, feral Kindred and a memory suddenly surfaced in her mind.
Her best friend in high school, Kara, had been raised on a farm. When her mom and dad split up, Kara had moved to the city to live with her mom. But she spent holidays and breaks at her dad’s farm, riding horses and helping him with his favorite hobby—training and rehabilitating abused wolfdogs.
A wolfdog was a crossbreed—a dog bred with a wolf in an attempt to marry the physical characteristics, strength, and stamina of the wolf with the tractable nature of a dog.
It didn’t always work out.
Imani remembered one particular wolf dog who had been rescued from a kill shelter. He had started out as a sweet puppy, the previous owner had claimed, but as he grew he became a menace. A huge, savage, untrainable animal that snapped at everyone and everything and growled menacingly whenever anyone approached him. Yet somehow Kara’s father had managed to quiet him in just a few minutes.
Imani had been watching from a safe distance when he did it and afterwards she’d asked how in the world he had managed to get the savage wolfdog to calm down.
“It’s all in your energy,” Kara’s father had replied obliquely. “Animals don’t react well to unstable energy. You have to be calm and have faith in yourself—absolute confidence. And the animal has to feel that you want what’s good for him—that you’re not just another asshole out to hurt him. He had to feel that you’re a good guy.”
That’s me, Imari thought. I’m the good guy in this situation. I’m here to help. I just have to trust that I can make him understand that.
Still, she would be taking an awful risk. Even though J’are hadn’t killed his Mistress, he had killed five other inmates in the Yonnite jail—so he was no stranger to violence. He might rip out her throat the minute she got near him. Then they would both be dead.
But it was a chance she would have to take
“Well, Councilor?” Judge Thoughtgood said, frowning. “I’m waiting. Can you demonstrate this savage beast is fit to take into public or not?”
Imani stilled the panicky little voice in the back of her head shouting that she needed to run away as fast as possible and never come back.
I just have to show no fear and have confidence in myself, she told herself firmly.
Taking a deep breath, she began to walk towards the snarling Nightwalker, who was still crouched low on the floor, looking at her distrustfully. Remembering that the best way to introduce yourself to a new dog was to let them smell you, she put out a hand.
“All right now,” she said softly but firmly. “All right now, boy—come on. It’s okay. It’s o—”
But the words died in her throat when he suddenly shot up to his full height of almost seven feet. Looming over her, he bared his teeth and snarled—a low, menacing sound whose meaning couldn’t be clearer:
Back off or you die!
Imani caught her breath and put the hand she’d offered him to her pounding heart. He had fangs, she saw—but not like a Blood Kindred, who only had fangs in the upper jaw. No, J’are had fangs in both his upper and lower jaws.
Teeth like a wolf, she thought. Or maybe like a panther.
No wonder the Yonnites had assumed he had ripped his Mistress’s head off—he was certainly equipped to do it.
Standing there in her bra and panties with an angry killer Kindred looming over her, Imani wanted desperately to run away.
He was wearing a harness, she saw—thick leather straps which held his arms close to his body and manacled his hands in front of him. That and the
