“Yes, he did. He was shooting blanks. No harm done.” Aunt B looked at me.
“That’s to be expected, the beastweres are sterile,” I said to say something.
Aunt B’s face stretched a bit. “Not always.”
“Oh.”
“Occasionally, very, very occasionally, they make babies.”
“Oh.”
Andrea sighed. “Sometimes babies survive.”
“You’re a child of a hyenawere?” I just blurted it right out.
Everybody winced.
“Yes,” Andrea said. “I’m beastkin. My father was born hyena.”
Now it made sense. She didn’t catch Lyc-V from the attack, because she was born into it. “Does Ted know?”
“He might suspect,” Andrea said. “But he has no proof.”
I shrugged. “I won’t tell him if you don’t. What happened to Julie?”
“Just like that?” the female bouda interrupted. “It doesn’t bother you that she is a child of an animal?”
“No. Why should it? Anyway, what happened to Julie?”
The boudas looked at Aunt B. Aunt B looked at me. “The Code says we’re human first. We’re born human; we die human. That is the natural form, the dominant form. We must assert it and set it above the beast, because that is the natural way.”
“The beastkin are born beast,” Andrea said softly. “It follows that beast is our natural form, but as we grow, we lose the ability to become beast, because we’re hybrid. Therefore I’m an animal that’s crippled at birth. Unnatural.”
Oh for crying out loud. “Andrea, you’re my friend. I don’t have many of those. How you were born, what you look like, what anybody else thinks makes no difference to me. When I needed help, you helped me and that’s all that matters. Now, can you please, please tell me what happened to my kid?”
Andrea twitched her nose. A nervous cackle spilled from her and she choked it off. “A homeless boy came to the vault.”
“Red.”
“Yes. Julie told me he was her boyfriend. He was covered in blood and he collapsed by the door. Julie went hysterical. I opened the door and he threw something at me, a powder.” She frowned, exposing white teeth. “I carried a shaman charm in my skull to keep from turning during the flare. Usually I have no trouble, but the magic ran too high. Whatever he did…” She raised her hands. “It interfered with the charm. I started turning, but I couldn’t finish. He grabbed Julie and dragged her out.”
Red made me very, very angry.
“Your sword’s smoking,” the female bouda said.
“It does that occasionally.” My voice sounded flat. That little shit. What the hell was he doing? And where was I going to look for him? The city was full of spots where two street kids could hide. Ten million to one, the reeves would find them before me.
Aunt B leaned forward. “By tradition, all beastkin are killed at birth. If any of the older shapeshifters find out she’s here, I’ll have a mob at my doorstep.”
The male bouda licked his lips. “It might be fun.”
Aunt B reached out and casually smacked him on the back of the head.
“Ow.”
“Is that Curran’s cat outside my door?”
“Yes.”
“He’s caught Andrea’s scent by now and he’ll report. You’ll have to tell Curran something. It’s better not to lie.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” I walked out.
Chapter 20
Curran’s hair fell to his shoulders. Long, blond, luxuriously wavy, it framed his face like a mane. He sat in a room in the Pack Keep, reading a battered paperback under a cone of electric light from a small lamp. He didn’t raise his head as Jim ushered me into the room and closed the door.
Just me and the Beast Lord. And the night, spilling into the room through the wide-open window.
Jim hadn’t said a word to me on the way over here. I was on thin ice.
“What’s the deal with the hair?”
Curran tore his gaze from the book and grimaced. “Grows every flare. Can’t help it.”
We stared at each other. “Waiting for the Fabio joke,” he said.
The fatigue rolled over me in a sluggish wave. When I opened my mouth, my voice sounded dull, stripped of all life and inflection. “I brought a sick beastkin to the bouda house. She’s my friend. If you’re going to kill her, you’ll have to go through me.”
He closed his eyes tight, put his hand over them, and rubbed his face. I sat in a chair and kept my mouth shut, letting him work through his pain.
“Why me?” he said finally. “Are you on some sort of mission to fuck up my life?”
“I try my best to avoid you.”
“You’re doing a hell of a job.”
“I honestly don’t mean to cause problems.”
“You don’t cause problems. An unpiloted vampire causes problems. You cause catastrophes.”
He sighed. “No. I haven’t killed any beastkin, and I’m not going to start now. It’s an old, elitist custom. I’d have cut the legs from under it when Corwin found us, but there was a lot of opposition and crushing it without hurt feelings was tiresome and time-consuming. If your friend wants to join the Pack, I suppose I’ll have to revisit the issue.”
The sword in my sheath kept my spine from bending all the way and I very much wanted to either slump forward or to lean back. Even my vertebrae were tired. I unzipped my leather jacket, shrugged it off, unbuckled the sword, and set it in the sheath next to me. “She wants to hide. She’s a member of the Order.” He’d figure it out eventually anyway. “I’m going to help her to cover it up. After I find Julie.”
“You lost the girl?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
I leaned back. “Her shaman boyfriend snatched her from my friend. He did something that caused her to start shifting, but she couldn’t finish.”
“Go on.”
“I found her, loaded her into a cart, and drove her to the hyenas.”
He gave me an odd look. “You drove her from the Order to there through the deep magic?”
“Yeah. We did pretty good except for some weirdness at a gas station.”
He thought about it. “How long ago did all this happen?”
“Hours.”
“Derek couldn’t pick up Julie’s scent at the scene?” A slight growl of disapproval crept into his voice.
I shook my head. “The shaman used too much wolfsbane. I’ll find her. I just don’t know how yet.”
“If there is anything I can do, I’ll help. Don’t get excited. It’s not because of you. For the child. If it wasn’t for her and the flare, I’d throw your dumb ass out of this window.”
“What does the flare have to do with it?”
“I don’t want it to be attributed to a loss of control on my part. When I throw you out of the window, I want there to be no doubt the act was deliberate.”
