Chapter Six

Community of ??ran?, 6:11 p.m.

Luvera Nichita shifted from footto foot in the doorway, running her work apron through her fingers as the orchestral beauty of Bach floated softly around her from a hidden sound system. A grandfather clock lorded over the living room, keeping time with perfect Swiss accuracy, and the furniture and objets d'art on their étagère were all poised on the glossy parquet hardwood floor with Architectural Digest precision. Nothing but the best in the Nichita household. Nothing that ever felt like home, even though she'd lived here forever.

"Are you going to speak, child?" Her mother was seated at a custom-made maple roll top desk, her posture as erect and precise as the surrounding furnishings.

Pettrila Nichita had become an elder seven years ago, her appearance changing abruptly, as was the way of aging in their race—one day, young, the next day, old, like a snap of the fingers. Lines now creased Pettrila's eyes, her body sagged a bit, although Pettrila would never allow herself to be anything but flawlessly slender, and gray hair fanned out from the temples of her short, styled black hair like skunky streaks.

"Yes, um…" The strings of Luvera's apron tangled in her fingers. "Jennilith has asked me to move in with her again."

Pettrila elegantly dipped the tip of her quill into a small antique ink-pot. A leather-bound cookbook was open in front of her. She must be hostessing the next bridge club, a small, elite group of women handpicked by Pettrila herself of only the noblest Pure-bred matrons. Basically, a bunch of old prows who somehow managed to make Luvera feel as useless and disappointing to them as she was to her mother.

She'd make doubly sure to waitress at Garwald's that night.

"You're not married," her mother pronounced. "You should live at home."

Luvera sighed under her breath. At one hundred fifty-seven, a modern woman Pettrila was not. "Mother, I'm forty-nine."

"A baby." Pettrila turned a page in the cookbook and peered down her nose at a recipe for aspic.

Gack, who liked jellied meat? "In Varcolac years, yes, I'm young, but that's an awfully long time to live at home."

In her willowy script, Pettrila wrote down several ingredients across a sheet of vellum paper. "That Jennilith isn't a good influence."

Luvera secretly rolled her eyes. Who was, in her mother's opinion?

Pettrila re-dipped her quill. "At any rate, Jennilith will surely be moving into a house in ??ran?'s residential neighborhood soon, and then where will that leave you?"

Luvera scrunched her fingers around her apron.

Pettrila sniffed. "Roth has practically tied a ribbon around the girl and put her in thathuman's bed."

Luvera bit her lip, her throat overflowing with a sudden, sharp longing. That human was Alexander Parthen, who, like his sister Toni, was a Dragon of the extremely rare Royal Fey kind. So, yes, considering his bloodlines, it was perfectly reasonable that Roth would want Alex and Jennilith to get together. Jennilith was the last female of Royal Fey Varcolac bloodlines. Luvera should be supportive. The match was perfect—heck, their offspring would probably be genetic demigods—and Jennilith was one of her best friends. Problem was, Luvera herself was insanely in love with the smart, off-beat, adorably nerdy Alex. Which was sad and pathetic.

Pettrila set down her quill. "All this talk is fiddle-faddle, anyway. You have obligations to this family, child."

Luvera winced. Oh, oops. Her mother saw that.

Pettrila shut the cookbook firmly, her amber eyes flashing. "Geology is a noble profession, Luvera. If not for the work your father and I did to unearth the precious minerals of this cave, ??ran? wouldn't have the vast wealth it now owns. Without doubt, the entire community would have faltered long ago."

"I know, Mother." It was just that the thought of studying rocks and gems all day made her want to gouge her eyes out…an attitude that must've resonated in her voice.

Scorn flared Pettrila's nostrils. "Do you think that I want this honorable responsibility laid on your shoulders?"

Heat flushed into Luvera's face. She glanced down at the floor. She could hardly quibble with her mother on that score; there wasn't much to commend Luvera these days. For God's sake, she couldn't even get herself out of this house.

"I can't call upon Devid—your father made certain of that—and I don't have any other choices beyond you. Do I?" A slight tightening of Pettrila's chin was the only show of sorrow she demonstrated over the death of her other choices, four daughters who'd perished in a 1942 cave collapse.

For some reason Pettrila and Grigore, Luvera's father, had waited eighteen years after that catastrophe to replace their losses. In 1960, Dev was born. Another four years after that, Luvera came into the world, born to a mother who by that time was the ripe age of one hundred and eight: two very different women born in two different ages. In all of Luvera's existence, never once had her mother offered her even a scintilla of understanding or sympathy, and Luvera sometimes wished, quite horribly, that Pettrila and Grigore had just left well enough alone with their family.

On the other hand, the moon had proven to rise and set on the Nichitas' only son. Dev could do no wrong, at least in Grigore's eyes, and when Dev had done the unthinkable and decided to go into the Warrior Class—a career choice which would elude his duty to the family—Grigore had indulged his son's dream with hardly a blink. And then immediately thrust the entire burden for taking over the family business onto Luvera's unwilling shoulders. Without even asking her.

Her mother's stern eyes were still on her. "Would you have this community perish?"

Guilt lodged like a dead weight in Luvera's stomach and left a bitter taste in her mouth. It was her mother's favorite ploy, setting up Luvera's career path to be a life-or-death calling, when, in reality, Luvera suspected that Pettrila mostly didn't want the noblest profession in the community to fall to the Vasilichi family. Always involved in only the gritty work of mining, the Vasilichis had positioned themselves to leap into the gemology side of the profession soon after Grigore's death. Such a coup would've been an insufferable prick to Pettrila's pride, and for Luvera to be responsible for either the financial ruin of the community or for her mother's step down, however miniscule, from her social strata was not… No, Luvera couldn't manage the fallout from either.

Attention back on her cookbook, Pettrila lifted the vellum sheet off her desk and held it out to Luvera, her wrist bent at a graceful angle. "Go get these items at the store for me, if you would."

Their conversation was apparently over. Had Luvera gained anything besides a headache and a stick poked into that soft, insecure part of her? Of course not.

"Um, sure." She took the paper. "I have to go on an errand, anyway."

Pettrila's attention snapped over to her. "Where?"

"Oh, nowhere. The post office just gave a package of mine to someone else by mistake." Luvera turned and trudged for the door. Something she wouldn't have to explain if she had her own apartment.

"Stand up straight, Luvera."

"Yes, Mother."

* * *

"Avoided becoming a Toaster Strudeltoday." Gábor slouched into the seat of the Lincoln Town Car, his M16 propped between his legs, and added on a mumble, "Hoo-rah."

Dev grunted, wearily dropping back against the headrest. Their Town Car transport had just pulled into the large cargo elevator that would take them on the twenty-minute trip home—they both recognized the soft grind of the cables—and heading the one half mile down into the safety of ??ran? was always a bit of a sphincter un-clencher, especially so close to sunrise.

They'd barely made it off the streets of San Diego before dawn hit, and one sunny ray on their Vitamin D-allergic bodies would've immediately led to anaphylactic shock, and from there, death. Cutting it that close hadn't even been worth the risk, either. The Om R?u they'd chased had gotten away.

Dev scrubbed a hand over his face and winced. He felt beat to shit. Tired and sore, his left cheek throbbing like a sonofabitch where Videon had socked him. He'd caught a glance of himself in the rearview, and his face was swollen like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man's, his cheek sporting a nasty bruise. All in a night's work. He sank deeper into his seat…

He jerked out of a doze when the elevator lurched to a halt.

He felt the Town Car drive slowly forward off the elevator platform, then stop. The door locks shot up. He and Gábor climbed out, stepping into the vast garage that was home to ??ran?'s half dozen or so vehicles. Some were delivery trucks for the Travelers to bring food and supplies from the surface down into the community, the others were kept on hand for the warriors' various shenanigans.

Llawell, ??ran?'s body shop guy, was even now busy replacing the Dodge's blown out window. The man was going to have a field day with the rest of it. The van looked like a damned colander.

A woman dressed in olive drab coveralls was leaning against the driver-side door of the Dodge and chatting with Llawell. Candace was the man's wife, and a Traveler, one of the regular human females who'd been brought into the community twenty years ago to reproduce with Varcolac males, before it was discovered that only Dragons could produce viable offspring. Candace had to be in her fifties by now, but barely looked thirty-five. Ah, the many perks of Fiin??.

Dev and Gábor nodded to the couple as they tramped past, both warriors aiming for the long corridor that led into the main part of ??ran?'s mansion. Serving as home to Roth and his wife in the penthouse suite on the fourth floor, the new Dragon females on the third floor, and the single warriors on the second, the mansion provided every conceivable amenity. The basement housed a huge gym—for both the warriors' training and fitness-minded others—an armory, Roth's office, a medical clinic, accommodations for the mansion's staff, and two luxurious "lockdown" suites for the married women to hole up in during their fertile period when they wanted to avoid pregnancy.

One flight up on the main floor was a grand entrance hall, several parlors of various sizes, a library, a vast computer center for ??ran?'s two techno doinks—a dopey young Varcolac named Cleeve and Alex Parthen—a rec room, a kitchen with an attached formal dining room, and now there was a large conference room, newly remodeled for the Council with a sliding wall partition that could be opened and closed according to space requirements.

He and Gábor strode by the community's electrical generator, which purred contentedly behind its floor-to-ceiling metal grate. Overhead an interwoven gray pipeline channeled California's precious water from topside into the community—stole it, really—turning this part of the corridor into the bowels of a battleship.

Gábor slung his M16 over his shoulder. "So what do you think of those new girls?"

"Hard to say." Dev shrugged. "They were out of their natural element, you know."

"Well, I thought they were cute." Gábor bobbed his eyebrows. "And that brings the total up to eleven."

"If the three new ones stay."

"Shit, bro, can you imagine eleven Dragons in one room, how good they'd smell? Hoo-rah."

Dev smiled. "You'd swoon like a lady in a corset, guaranteed."

Gábor laughed in a burst. "So would you, Nichita. Last I checked you were just as horny."

He couldn't argue the point. The instinct to jump-and-hump always jacked high near an unmated female, especially a Dragon, who smelled like a rockin' sex Popsicle to an unmated Varcolac male. His near-paralytic inability to hoist himself out from between the legs of that mega-biscuit in the van was a case in point. And with eleven? He probably would come embarrassingly close to fainting.

He and Gábor strode along in silence for a few minutes.

"I'm getting one of those Dragons this time," Gábor said with quiet intensity. "There's none of that mate-choices bullshit this time, so it's anybody's game. No offense to my homies in the Warrior Class, but it's been way too many decades of a sausage fest."

"I've done the math myself, Pavenic." Hell, he'd lived the math. "We're going to have to ugly down Thomal, though, if we want half a chance of getting close to one. You know, put some teeth black in his toothpaste or zit powder in his shaving cream."

"If a pussy Mixed-blood needed to shave, you mean?"

They both laughed. Black-haired, Pure-bred Varcolac like themselves were the only males who could grow facial hair. It was a masculine advantage they never failed to shove into the face of a blondie: known as a Mixed-blood because they were a combination of both Dragon and Varcolac.

"Besides, speak for yourself," Gábor went on. "I know I'm good-looking, bro, even standing next to Golden Boy."

Dev cocked a brow. "But do the girls know?"

They came to the end of the corridor and stopped in front of another elevator. Dev slipped in his key card, opening the doors, then they went one flight up to the basement floor of the mansion. The elevator doors swished open, and—

Jacken Brun was standing directly in front, his burly arms crossed over his broad chest and his stance wide. A married man now, Jacken had exchanged his usual black leathers for black jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. Still not exactly cruise wear, but at least he didn't always look like the headliner for an Ultimate Fighting bout anymore.

"Hi, Mom," Gábor chirped. "We're home."

Jacken's black Om R?u eyes zeroed in on Dev's bruised face, then shifted over to Gábor. "Any injuries on you I need to know about?"

Gábor swept a hand across his chest. "You mean besides my achy-breaky heart?" He grinned, the pointed tip of a fang peeking out. "When do we get to meet the chicks?"

Jacken's eyelids narrowed. "Well, Pavenic, there's an introductory cocktail party scheduled for tomorrow night, but if you can't get that smile of yours throttled back, you'll be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush instead."

"Roger that." Gábor chuckled. "Throttling back now, sir."

Yeah, the whole town was under strict guidelines about keeping their fangs hidden until the Big Reveal. A total pain, but a necessary evil. "How's Thomal?" Dev asked.

"Fine. You and I need to debrief." Jacken made a curt gesture of dismissal to Gábor. "Let's go to my office."

Shit, really? He was hungry, needed to take a piss, and his armpits were emitting some kind of nuclear waste smell. He caught back a sigh. "Yes, sir."

They headed up one more flight to the mansion's main floor.

Not exactly a paperwork guy, Jacken maintained an office in the rec room—basically little more than a desk crammed into a corner by the Foosball table. "Take a seat." Jacken indicated the chair situated at the corner of the desk, while he landed in the one behind it. He got right to the point. "You split your team."

"I did," Dev admitted. "One of the women had been—"

"Sedge and Thomal debriefed me about what happened to the women," Jacken cut in. "Your orders were to extract the Dragons and bring them safely into ??ran?. Nothing more."

Dev leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "It was my assessment that this kind of abuse would be repeated unless we taught the Om R?u a lesson."

"Bullcrap, Nichita," Jacken returned. "You're not stupid. You know damn well that nothing you could ever do is going to stop Om R?u from hunting Dragons…and being assholes about it."

Dev felt the muscles in his body tighten, a defensive anger rising in him like a hot wind. "I didn't botch the mission, Jacken. I made sure the women were securely on their way to the community before I broke off with Gábor." He leaned forward in his chair. "You didn't see this girl Videon raped, okay? She's the tiniest damned thing, couldn't weigh more than a buck-and-a-nickel, and there she was, looking at us with these big eyes, and her—"

"You take whatever risks necessary to save a woman, Nichita, absolutely, but in this case, the deed had already been done. You acted out of a need for vengeance, pure and simple." Jacken gave his head a taut shake. "And it's exactly unwarranted risk-taking that puts a burr up Roth's butt, and makes it ten times more difficult for us to get mission clearance the next time."

Dev sat back again. "Since when do you let Roth dictate what the Warrior Class does?"

A tic pulsed in Jacken's cheek. "The Council was created for a reason, Nichita. It exists to help make decisions about important issues that affect the community. Reasonable decisions, and not half-cocked judgment calls that could end up getting men killed."

Dev knotted his jaw. This wasn't a debriefing, it was a hand-Dev-his-ass session. "I didn't think," he said through set teeth, "that it was half-cocked to try and track those fuckers into their lair. When else would their scent be so fresh? You do want to know where this topside faction holes up, don't you, Jacken?"

"Why sure, Dev. So what was this, then?" Jacken arched his brows in a way that brought a sting to Dev's cheeks. "A recon mission you were on or a lesson-teaching one?"

He glanced away, cursing under his breath.

"It was a different mission for a different time, that's what it was." Jacken gestured abruptly. "You were already outnumbered, for chrissake, and then you take only one man with you to go chase down two factions of Om R?u?"

Heat burned through Dev's chest. "There wasn't one warrior on the team who didn't agree with what I did."

"Who gives a shit? Leadership isn't about providing everyone with a happy hard-on. It's about the ability to make difficult decisions." Jacken thrust to his feet. "We clear?"

"Yes, sir." Dev stood, too, fighting the urge to ball his hands into fists. "And I should probably make it clear that if I had it to do all over again, I'd make the same decision." Because he hadn't been fucking wrong.

Jacken paused, then exhaled forcefully. "You're one of the best fighters I have, Dev, quick and strong and a great strategist, but this is where you fall off the vine—you do what you want to do and damn the consequences. I have plans for you, but you need to learn to view the big picture when you're out in the field and not just your own self-involved version of it."

Dev's throat filled, but this time, he kept his comment to himself.

"I won't pull you off leadership for now. But I need you to think about what I said." Jacken jerked his chin toward the door. "Hit the showers."

Dev turned on his heel and stalked out of the rec room, heading straight for the armory. He slammed his mangled M4 into the gun rack, then took off for the mansion's front door rather than continuing one more flight up to his bedroom. He smelled like a dump—an actual pile of shit or a garbage site, it was a toss-up—but, screw it. He was going to Garwald's Pub for a drink.