Lover Beware (3 page)

"You do have your legal history down."

"I've boned up."

Rule Turner's forehead was smooth. No tattoo, nor any sign that one had been removed. The authorities had used a special, silver-infused dye to tattoo the registration number, since the body of a were would otherwise have healed the tiny wounds inflicted by a needle within minutes. "You never registered, did you?"

"Why, Detective, I do believe that's a personal question."

"And I do believe you're obnoxious. That's a personal comment, by the way. I understand the drug was very unpopular with the lupi."

"Since the side effects ranged from vertigo to nausea to impotence—yes, it was unpopular. But even if they'd been able to refine their damned drug, no one wanted it."

His voice had lost its subtle balance between seduction and mockery. The emotion she heard was real, and personal.

They'd reached the subbasement. He pushed open the door and held it for her, as he had before. She went through it, uncomfortably aware that he was inviting her to expose her back to him.

The parking garage looked like others everywhere—gray and ugly. The air was hot and smelled of exhaust fumes. The light was flat, fluorescent, and grimly bright. "You didn't want to give up the Change."

"We no more wish to give it up than you would want to be chemically lobotomized. Still, I suppose it was an improvement over being killed or castrated."

She paused, startled. "Castrated?"

"Ah. A gap in your legal history, Detective." His eyes were oddly pale in the artificial light. "Yes, for a few years some states dealt with 'the lupi problem' the way scientists have dealt with fruit flies—by rendering us unable to breed. It was considered more humane than shooting us on sight, like rabid dogs."

He radiated anger, far more than the glimpse she'd had before. His face was taut with it. An old anger, she thought, but one that hadn't lost any of its power over time. Over the castration? Yes, she decided. His people had been killed, imprisoned, chained, drugged, tattooed, but it was the castration that made him vibrate with suppressed rage.

Had he been...

No, that was stupid. According to the file on her desk, Rule Turner had two sons, by two different mothers. Neither of whom he'd bothered to marry.

Even if he hadn't been a lycanthrope, he would so not be her type. She nodded to the left. "My car is this way."

"Mine isn't. I prefer to drive myself."

"Life is full of these little disappointments." She started walking without waiting to see if he followed.

After a bare second's pause, he did. "Are you used to having your way, Detective, or simply testing my willingness to cooperate?"

"I'm used to driving myself.Californiahasn't allowed the kind of vigilantism you described for over three decades, you know." And never castration.

"Which is one reason my clan chose to settle here."

Lily knew about the Nokolai enclave in the mountains outside the city, of course. She'd gone there shortly after the first murder—and been turned away at the gate, politely but firmly. It was outside the city limits, so she lacked the authority to insist she be allowed inside. The lupi were a secretive people. Not without reason, given the persecutions of the past. But

those persecutions hadn't been entirely without reason, either.

Before the change in the laws, the enclave had masqueraded as a religious commune. Most people knew differently now, but they didn't realize that the land that made up the enclave was owned by the Nokolai chief personally. So was the other property Lily had found—a ranch in northernCalifornia, some choiceL.A.real estate, and several condos here inSan Diego.

The Nokolai chief was a rich man. His son seemed to do pretty well for himself, too.

She stopped at a plain white sedan that looked like a dozen others lined up beneath the low ceiling. He stood on the other side of the car, waiting for her to unlock it. Their eyes met. Her spine tingled. “There's a bill due to come before the House this fall," she said. “The Species Citizenship Bill. According to what I've read, you're strongly in favor of it"

"Interested in politics, are you?"

“The Supreme Court ruling already gives you citizenship. The Species Citizenship Bill won't change that, but it will declare lupi and others of the Blood nonhuman."

"But entitled to the rights and responsibilities of citizenship whether we're on two feet or four." He studied her face a moment, then nodded as if he'd confirmed something. "You don't approve of a law that would treat a beast as a person."

"I don't understand why you'd want to be declared non-human!"

He lifted those tilted eyebrows. "I am a lupus of Clan Nokolai. What else matters?"

Arrogant bastard. Lily swung her door open and slid inside. She could well believe he was royal. She could also, all too easily, believe he was a predator.

She let him in and started the engine. He slid in beside her and, after a second's hesitation, reached for the seat belt.

It occurred to her that a car was another small, enclosed space. She punched the buttons to let down the windows. “Hope you don't mind," she said casually. "I like fresh air."

"Not at all. I'm sure the air will grow fresher soon."

At the moment it smelled of oil, exhaust fumes, and hot concrete. Heat rose in her cheeks, but she didn't think he'd notice. She was, quite literally, thick-skinned. Neither bruises nor blushes showed much. "Do you really think you'll be able to sniff out the identity of the attacker?"

"I don't know. My senses aren't as acute in this form. It's worth trying."

"A less acute sense of smell would be a blessing at the morgue." With sudden alarm, she added, "Unless you plan to, ah—"

"I won't Change. Aside from the discomfort, and the danger of doing so in these surroundings, it is not allowed. Not within the city."

"The Change is uncomfortable?"

"It can be. We are tied to nature. Changing while surrounded by buildings, concrete, and steel instead of earth and sky, is ... possible. But it exacts a price."

She thought about that as she pulled out into traffic. Had whoever Changed in order to kill done it in a park, or some other pocket of nature? "You say you're forbidden to Change within the city limits. You're not talking about the law."

"My Lupois forbade this many years ago."

"Lupois?"

"You would say 'king' or 'high prince.' Though perhaps 'clan chief is closer." He was sitting with his forearm propped on the window opening. Air streamed through, pouring itself around that narrow, sculpted face, whipping his hair around it.

She spotted a gap in the other lane between a panel truck and an SUV, accelerated smoothly, and whipped into it. The panel truck honked. Turner's hand clenched tightly on the door. Charitably, she chose to overlook that. “The Lupois is your father."

"Yes."

The Change was intensely important to him, to all lupi, from what he'd said. If the Lupois had the authority to forbid or restrict it, that was considerable power. "And do all members of your clan obey the Lupois in this?"

"I would have said yes, until I heard of the first killing. Now I don't know."

"You think it's someone from your clan."

"I don't know," he repeated, and she heard a thread of anger or frustration in his voice. "We are the only clan nearSan Diego, but we aren't the only lupi."

He would want it to be someone outside his clan, she thought, signaling for the turn. "I know about big, close-knit families. I come from one myself. A brother, two sisters, three

uncles, four aunts, lots of cousins. Both of my father's parents are still living. Then there's Grandmother."

If he thought it was ridiculous for her to compare her extended family to a lupus clan, he didn't say so. "You say 'grandmother' as if she were the only one to bear that title."

"She's one of a kind, all right. My sister and I call her Tiger Lady—though not to her face. I'm named after her. That is, I bear the English version of her name."

"My name is Anglicized, too."

She glanced at him quickly. "Turner?"

"No, Rule. It was originally Reule. French."

"So what does it mean?" The light was about to change. She accelerated through it without quite running up the bumper of the car ahead of her.

"Little wolf." He exhaled. "Get a lot of tickets, do you?"

"No." She hadn't seen him tense this time, but out of the corner of her eye she did catch him relaxing again. She grinned. "I'm a good driver, actually. Good reflexes. Not as fast as yours, I suppose. I guess it might be nerve-wracking to have someone whose reflexes are half the speed of yours in the driver's seat."

"Only if they think they're invulnerable," he said dryly.

"You're the one who ought to feel invulnerable. It takes a lot to hurt a lupus, doesn't it?"

"Because we heal so quickly, we can take a lot of damage. But we have the same nerve endings humans do. We hurt every bit as much."

He thought of himself as a lupus. Not as a human. For the next few blocks she couldn't think of anything more to say.

Chapter 4

LILY HATED THE morgue. It was an unprofessional reaction, one she'd tried to overcome, but she had yet to set foot inside the cold, white walls without feeling repelled.

It wasn't the bodies that got to her. Nor the smell. It was what happened to those bodies here that made her skin feel two sizes too small. Autopsies were necessary. They were also the final, most complete invasion of privacy possible.

The attendant was new—at least, Lily hadn't run across her before. She was young, African American, her hair cropped very short to show off an elegant head and neck. And she was staring at Rule Turner.

Did the man have that effect on every woman whose path he crossed? "Detective Yu," she said, holding out her shield in the soft leather case her brother had given her for her birthday last year. "I understand you've got Carlos Fuentes chilled down. We need to have a look."

She blinked, then stood. "Sure. This way, Detective."

Lily's shoulders and spine were tight as she and Turner followed the attendant down a short hall.

"You don't like this place, either," he said abruptly.

She looked at him. There was strain around his eyes, and

his lips were thinned. "I guess it smells pretty bad here to you."

"It's not the smell that bothers me."

The attendant spoke cheerily as she pulled on one of the handles and slid the long drawer out. "Here you go."

What blood was left in the body had settled, of course. The back and buttocks would be livid, but the undamaged part of his face, his shoulders, and his upper chest were waxy and pale. He looked cold beneath the thin sheet. And very dead.

Lily's lips tightened. She glanced at Rule. "The sheet—?"

"I'll need it off."

The attendant looked surprised, then upset as she removed the sheet. That puzzled Lily. Why would a morgue attendant be upset at being asked to remove a sheet from a body? The obvious assumption was that Rule was here to identify the victim and, given the condition of the dead man's face, looking at the body made sense.

Oh. Lily's lips twitched. The young woman didn't like the idea that Rule might be intimately familiar with another man's body. Well, no one enjoyed having their dreams snuffed out. Even the brief, silly ones.

Rule bent close to the ravaged throat and sniffed.

"Hey!" The attendant grabbed his shoulder and tried to pull him back. She might have been tugging on a Buick, for all the effect she had. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

"Exactly what he's been asked to do." Lily took the woman's arm and firmly urged her back. "By Chief Delgado."

"He was asked to sniff a corpse?" she exclaimed, outraged.

Lily lifted both eyebrows as if the question were absurd, rather than the action. "Yes."

The attendant looked as if she would have bolted from the room if regulations hadn't called for her to remain. Lily didn't much want to watch him, either, but perversity or pride kept her from looking away.

He made a thorough job of it, smelling all up and down the body, paying close attention to the wounds and the cold, flaccid hands. He was intent, focused, and somehow still impossibly elegant. Not like a beast at all—more like a wine connoisseur about to deliver a verdict on the bouquets of various vintages.

And that thought was both absurd and macabre. Lily bit her lip to keep from giggling like an idiot

At last he straightened, met her eyes, and shook his head slightly.

"You couldn't tell."

"He was killed by a lupus," he said flatly. "Beyond that..." He shrugged. "Very little scent remains."

"We already knew the killer was a lupus."

"Perhaps you did. I didn't until now. There are some who might want to fake the slaying of men by lupi."

Lily remembered their audience, a wide-eyed attendant who might talk to the wrong person, like a reporter. She jerked her head, indicating she wanted him to follow, and headed for the door.

He thanked the attendant politely. She should have done that, she thought, upset and not knowing why. Had she counted so much on his sense of smell to give her a lead? That was foolish.

He caught up with her at the door and took her elbow. “I want coffee. Something to get the taste of this place out of my mouth."

Before she stopped to think, she'd agreed. Together they left that cold, bright room with its neatly filed bodies.

INSTINCT TOOK HER to Bennie's Bar & Grill. Bennie's was large, dark, and noisy, known for its cheeseburgers. As soon as she stepped inside, Lily sighed. Usually her instincts weren't this lousy.

Bennie's was a cop hangout.

It wasn't crowded at this hour. She only spotted two faces she knew as they headed for the back, but everyone seemed to recognize the man with her. The looks she and Rule drew varied from startled to snarly. Cops were good with faces, and his was memorable.

By the time they sat in a booth near the rest rooms, she was feeling self-conscious and prickly. "I wonder if this is how a white woman felt inSelmain 1960 if she went into a restaurant with a black man."