Unleashed by Shadows (By Moonlight Book 10) (21 page)

Cale sat up straight as Lee’s pale gaze met his.

“I want you to release Mr. Terry into my care and control. Any debt he has to you will be paid, and he’ll have no further obligation to you whatsoever. Provided he wins this evening. Is that agreeable to you, Mr. Creed?”

“I don’t own him. I can’t sell him to you. It’s up to him.”

“Then go away, Mr. Creed, so we can discuss it between the two of us.”

Silas looked to Cale for direction, and at his slight nod, finished his coffee, stood and extended his hand to Lee. “I look forward to working with you.” They shook on that, and MacCreedy left without another word.

Cale immediately took the defensive. “I’m not a whore.”

Lee arched a fair brow. “Is that how you see yourself, Mr. Terry, as someone to be bought and sold?”

“Isn’t that what just happened? Did I misunderstand something? If so, explain it to me.”

“You wanted out of your arrangement with Creed. Here’s your opportunity.”

“By becoming your bitch? I don’t think so. I already have rich friends who buy me things.”

“If I wanted you for my, how did you delicately put it, my bitch, that would have already happened. For all your posturing, you have a very low opinion of yourself. And of me, apparently. Apologize for both those things. Now.”

A long beat then a gruff, “I apologize.”

“I accept, for the moment. I’m not such a fool as to think you really mean it.”

“Why me?”

A slow, candid smile. “I like you. You’re unexpected. And you’re dangerous. I find those things intriguing.”

“Yeah, for the moment. And what happens when I’m not so entertaining anymore? Back on the street with nothing more than the clothes on my back. I’ve had enough of being tossed aside.”

“If you leave, it will be by your choice, not mine.”

A long, wary study. “And what if I’d rather just fight for you than fuck you?”

“That, too, would be your choice.”

“I assume there are rules.”

“Yes, of course. A man in my position must insist on boundaries. What’s mine is mine. I will not share, for instance, with that pretty little blonde who occupies your bed.”

Cale registered no emotion. “She’s just someone from my past who was available and willing. She was always more interested in Creed. She’s gone now, anyway.”

“And your pretty friends?”

“Are the brothers I always wanted when I was growing up alone. They’re friends. That’s all. I don’t have time for romance. Sex is easier. Fighting is better still.”

“Let me see your hands.”  He beckoned with his own until Cale cautiously slid his across the table top. Lee lifted them several inches off the surface, letting go so his palms rested on air. And shook as if from some fierce turbulence. Cale made quick fists and tucked them out of sight.

“You didn’t think I’d hear about last night?” Casper began conversationally. “You didn’t think I’d find out that my top fighter was scoring illegals and brawling in a public place? Or that I would be all right with those things?”

“It was a mistake,” Cale growled defensively.

“It could have been your last one. What were you doing in a place like that?”

“I have a problem, all right? It got me in trouble. That’s why I had to leave Nevada. That’s why I didn’t want to go back to it, to the Kick. I like it too much.” He turned away, posture rigid as he confessed with enough truth to be convincing, “So much, it owns me.”

A light touch brushed his shoulder. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I can help you control it. Just promise you’ll never go to such places again. Their product could kill you. I’ll see you have what you need, when you need it.” A pause then a fierce, “You were lucky.”

Cale glanced his way. “How’s that?”

“Did you think Dwight was just being friendly? You’re his biggest competition. It was no accident you nearly overdosed.”

Shock and anger flashed across his expression then Cale was stoic once more. “Why?”

A faint smile. “You’re not sparring with a band of brothers. These are cold, deadly killers who want what winning will bring them. He not only wanted you kicked off the circuit, he didn’t want you to survive.” His smile spread when that lethal glow began to burn in the other’s eyes. “You’ll have your chance to settle things with Dwight. This evening. Until then, here’s something safe to take the edge off.”

The capsule disappeared from Lee’s soft palm. Just to keep him safe around others. That’s what Cale told himself.

“Thank you, for both things.”

Moved by his sincerity, Casper put a hand to Cale’s face, tracing his bone structure with fingertips, his lips with his thumb. “I would be very good to you,” he vowed. He let his hand drop. “Consider your options, Mr. Terry. It’s your choice.”

Cale strode from the bar, focus sharp, nerves steady. As he brushed past Silas, he said, “I’m going up to talk to my brothers and pack. Tell the missus you’ll have a new roommate.”

“That’s going to go over well.”

Cale didn’t comment or pause. As the elevator carried him upward, he had one thing only on his mind. Finding out who had betrayed him to Casper Lee where Kendra was concerned.

*

Kendra woke wrapped in the warmth of Cale’s shirt and scent if not his arms.

She hadn’t been able to sleep alone in the strange bed, in the huge silent house, until she’d found the soft, pre-worn knit tee among the items he’d left behind, and slipped it on to hug close in lieu of his presence beside her. But waking without him, without having heard from him, she found it a poor substitute.

Since Brigit was a notorious late sleeper, the sound of female voices surprised Kendra as she came downstairs. They drew her through the large dining room out onto the veranda where Tina Babineau sat chatting with Helen, the housekeeper she’d briefly met the previous day. With the detective’s wife, the dour faced woman was all fond smiles, but her professional manner returned the instant she spotted their new guest. She quickly got up from the glass-topped wicker table where they’d been sharing coffee to say, “Good morning, Mrs. Terriot. May I fix you some breakfast?”

She eyed the fluffy omelet on Tina’s plate. “That looks wonderful. Coffee with cream and sugar. Thank you. And please, it’s Kendra.”

With a stiff smile and a nod, Helen withdrew.

Kendra bent to quickly embrace her sister-in-law, catching onto her similar melancholy as Tina said, “Alain told me you were staying here. Oscar wouldn’t give me a minute’s peace until I brought him out to see Giles. They’re in that car museum of a garage with their heads under a hood.”

“Did Alain come with you?”

No mistaking the evasion in her dark eyes. “No. He got in late, and had things to do this morning, so we came alone.” After a hesitation, Tina added, “He was out with Cale and one of his brothers. He didn’t say where.”

An equal suspicion crept up on Kendra. “Do you know what they were doing? Was it business?”

“He said it wasn’t.”

“But you don’t believe him.”

A pause then a quiet, “No. He’s hiding something from me, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Join the club. “Something dangerous?”

“Isn’t it always? Has Cale said anything to you?”

“He was too busy getting me out of the way so I wouldn’t have the chance to ask him.”

They commiserated silently as Helen returned with the lovely breakfast Kendra no longer wanted to eat. As soon as she withdrew, Tina ventured, “Does Silas know what they’re up to?”

“He wouldn’t tell me if he did. And I’m getting sick and tired of all this for our own good bull.” Kendra covered her sister-in-law’s hand for a bonding squeeze. “How are we supposed to help them if they won’t talk to us?”  She studied the other female for an intuitive moment then added gently, “You can talk to me, Tina. I don’t know if it’ll help, but it couldn’t hurt.”

Those dark, tormented eyes lifted. “I lied to him, Kendra, and he’ll never forgive me. Never.”

“About what?” What could be so terrible as to come between such an obviously perfect for one another pair? That question had her wondering on a deeper level about her own relationship with Cale. Nothing was perfect.

“He thought I was the woman of his dreams, and I turned out to be a nightmare.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“He didn’t know you were Shape-shifters?”

“I didn’t know we were Shape-shifters! I didn’t know my parents had adopted me when I was a baby. They raised me like I was their own. We were a military family, always moving around. I was always the outsider. I didn’t realize it was because I wasn’t like anyone else at school or church or in our neighborhood.”

“How did you meet Oscar’s father? You don’t have to tell me if it’s too personal.”

A bitter laugh. “There’s nothing to tell. I don’t remember ever meeting him.” She went on to tell Kendra about her one youthful rebellion, when during a shopping trip in Chicago, she’d been lured away from her mother by a group of teens with whom she shared an instant compelling kinship. And how she’d woken up days later on a park bench with only two reminders of where she’d been: a gorgeous string of pearls left about her neck and a child growing within her womb.

“My parents said I’d been abducted and raped. I couldn’t tell them anything different because I had no memory of what had happened. I’d just turned fifteen. I’d never even kissed a boy.” She dashed the wetness from her cheeks almost angrily. “When I started to show, we came here to New Orleans to see my parents’ friend Father Furness. They decided it would be best for me to stay with him then go out of the country on a mission trip after Oscar was born. I didn’t return until he was almost eight years old. We went back to living at Father Furness’s parish church, St. Bart’s, under a new last name with all new paperwork that added two years to my age. I thought it was because my father was afraid of the scandal.”

“But he was trying to protect you from the truth.”

Tina nodded miserably.

“So how did you meet Alain?”

“Father Furness introduced us. He said Alain was the type of young man I could feel safe with.”

“Someone who could protect you,” Kendra surmised.

Again, Tina nodded, her expression softening. “He was everything I could have hoped for. Polite, gentle, good with Oscar. And so dreamy I couldn’t believe my luck. I don’t know what the father told him, but it was months before he even tried to kiss me, and by then, if he hadn’t, I was ready to throw myself at him.”

Kendra smiled at that, familiar with the feeling.

“I was crazy in love with him and so thrilled when he asked to marry me. He was perfect. Our life was perfect.”

“What happened?”

“My parents were killed. It was supposed to look like a home invasion, but they’d been tortured.”

“To get information about you.” Horror rose cold and shivery within Kendra chest.

“To find Christina MacCreedy Terriot and her son, son of Rollo Moytes and brother to Max Savoie. Shape-shifter royalty to them, but a monster to the man who’d married her.”

“But you didn’t know. How could he blame you?”

“It didn’t matter, Kendra. We both knew there was something different about Oscar that kept him from bonding with the kids at school and with Alain, the way he did with Max and Silas and now Cale. He says he doesn’t blame us, but he can’t look past the truth that was hidden from him when he gave us his heart and his name. That we’re abominations.”

Kendra pulled her into a tight embrace, whispering fiercely, “You know that’s not true. It’s not.”

“Then why is he so determined to push us away. Why does he want to send us to become someone else’s burden?”

“Family is never a burden, Tina.”

“Cale wants to make us his, and I’m running out of reasons to object.”

*

The venue was a rundown gym that had closed for the evening, bags stilled, empty ring in heavy shadow. Strong odors of sweat and liniment held a strange note of expensive perfume. Cale, Silas, and Nica followed the diminutive O’Leary into a surprisingly clean locker room where a tall, slender woman with severe face and clothes waited with a smiling Casper Lee. Her laser blue eyes cut between Silas and Cale in question then settled upon the smaller man.

Without a word or introduction, she stepped up to Cale, taking his chin in a surprising strong grip so she could examine his eyes, ears and even his teeth. “Strip,” she ordered crisply.

Jacket, tee shirt, boots, socks, and jeans were discarded until he stood in snug knit briefs under the harsh glare of ceiling lights.

“Everything,” she insisted, tone impatient.

“What if I’m bashful?”

“Then I’m wasting my time here. Don’t speak unless you’re asked a question.”

Cale peeled off his underwear and endured their inspection, the woman’s clinically critical, Lee’s intimately detailed. He tried to pretend Silas and Nica had suddenly been struck blind.

The woman circled him, chilly fingers testing muscle, tracing the scars on his back, particularly the low trio of knife wounds. She noted the band on his upper arm.

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

She rolled down the band to examine the art it covered. “What’s this?”

“A tattoo.”

“What does it mean?”

“That I had too much to drink.”

She gave the back of his arm a vicious pinch. “Don’t attempt to be clever. The significance?”

“What I wanted to become, but never could be.”

“I know this mark. Terriot. You are one of them?”

“Not enough of one to be of any value.”

The bitter bite of his words satisfied her. She moved to stand in front of him, startling a quick inhalation as she boldly cupped his genitals.

“Are you virile?”

“I’ve had no complaints.”

“There’s that not so clever mouth again.” This time her pinch was harder to ignore. He sucked a breath but didn’t wince. “Any offspring?”

“None that I know of.” And if she didn’t stop twisting, perhaps none ever. His posture relaxed only slightly when she finally released him. “Can I get dressed?”

“Not yet.” Under Lee’s caressing stare, Cale waited for her to open the medical bag resting on the bench beside them, withdrawing vials and a syringe. “I’d like to take some samples first.” She tied tubing about his bicep, twisting his arm palm up. “Nice veins.”