Asil’s Fourth Date Dating Terrors #8
“No.” Alan stumbled down a step—not from clumsiness; he was not clumsy.
He was a werewolf. But he was torn between loyalty to Ruby and the demands of a dominant wolf.
The power gap was so large between a submissive wolf and Asil that Alan’s resistance was impressive.
“I don’t have the right to share Ruby’s secrets. You have to ask her.”
His refusal could not last, but Asil decided to wait until they were off the stairway before he forced the issue. If Alan fell all the way down the stairs, he’d make enough noise to summon the others. He would try persuasion first.
“I can help,” Asil assured him, knowing Alan would hear the truth in his words. “I understand you wish your Ruby—”
Our Ruby, growled his wolf. And it was far too soon for that.
“—would tell me everything herself,” he told Alan as they came to the ground floor.
For lack of another goal, he continued into the reception room and dropped the cords to the ground.
“But she seems to think that she needs to handle her own problems. I do not think she can do so. Nor do I think we are going to have much time.”
He based that on his experience with his previous three dates.
Alan shook his head, hunching his shoulders as he dropped his cords onto the ground on top of Asil’s. “It isn’t my place—”
Asil could make him—they both knew it.
“You must,” Asil said, his voice gentle.
But he backed off again because the pressure he was putting on the submissive wolf was bothering his own wolf—submissives were to be cared for.
He said, “There are few others in history who have been as strong, as capable as I.”
It was not his habit to manifest false modesty. That others were unused to meeting someone of his abilities—of his magnificence—was not his problem. That did not mean he didn’t understand how his statements of truth affected people.
He expected to amuse Alan, to soften the atmosphere so they could better converse.
“I know,” said Alan.
Pleased, Asil continued, “It is my duty to protect the innocent because they cannot protect themselves.” He tipped Alan’s face up to meet Asil’s eyes, knowing his wolf peered out, too.
It was not a threat—and it was something he had not dared to do since before this city was built on a swamp—to allow his wolf such freedom.
“That is your job, too. Protect your people, Alan Choo. Tell me what you know.”
Alan’s lips parted—and closed again as they both heard Ruby running down the stairs.
Ruby held a wire for Max and privately came to the conclusion that by the time they were through fixing the camera, not even Miranda would be able to get it to work again. Something tugged at her shirt.
She looked over her shoulder to see Dusty, his face expressionless as always, pointing to where Alan and Asil had just been.
He is questioning our wolf. Though Dusty’s face was several feet from her, his voice whispered directly into her ear and let puffs of air brush past her cheek. From long practice she didn’t jump. Dusty was harmless. Mostly.
She let the wire go and ignored Max’s indignant exclamation. “Peg,” she said. “Take over here. Terry, don’t kill Peg, or vice versa. I have to go hunt down my date.”
She thought Dusty might come with her—he tended to follow drama—but she was alone as she ran down the stairs. Charming and sweet he might be, but Asil was more dominant than Alan—and in her limited experience, dominant wolves didn’t even know when they were being overbearing.
She heard Asil say, his voice warm and soft, “Tell me what you know.”
Ruby found them in the reception room and took in the body language with something approaching fury. “Are you bullying Alan?” she asked—though it wasn’t a question.
“No.” To her surprise, when Alan turned to her, there was a smile on his face.
His smile widened and his voice was peaceful when he approached her.
He kissed her cheek. “No, he isn’t. You need to tell him about your problem.
He’s promised to help. I’m going upstairs to keep everyone in the ballroom until you’re finished. ”
And he left her alone with her date.
Asil raised an eyebrow at her. “What do you have to lose?” he said. “Whoever has you bound is coming, no?”
“I can run,” she told him.
His liquid eyes grew sad. “No, querida mía. You are tired of running. This is why you have summoned me.”
She stared at him, feeling tears gathering in her eyes, and she did not know why except she wanted—oh, how she wanted—to give him her trouble. It had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the burning sensation radiating from her tattoo.
“He is nearly here,” she told him, whispering it. “He isn’t supposed to come yet.”
“Tell me,” he invited, his eyes the color of Medici gold—old, violent, and compelling. His voice was rich with invitation, coaxing her to trust him.
“He told me he bought me.” Her voice and body were stiff.
She didn’t know why she started there when the story could be boiled down to the few sentences she’d told Miranda.
She looked away from Asil’s exquisite face because there was no beauty in this story.
“I don’t know who he bought me from. But I don’t remember anyone else.
All I remember of being a child is him—and being sick all the time. ”
Impulsively she struggled with the laces on her wrist covering, but they wouldn’t cooperate with her tear-blinded eyes and the shaking clumsiness of her fingers.
Asil’s graceful, well-kept hands closed over her hands, stilling them.
He made a single elegant gesture, and the leather separated and fell away from her wrist, revealing the ugly black lines of symbols on her skin.
“He did this after the first time I ran away. I was still a child.” She tapped one of the dark lines.
“This is his blood. He told me I could never escape him with these. Then he quit locking the door.” She didn’t want Asil to think her weak—though of course she was.
“I tried removing the skin—but the marks go all the way to the bone.” She paused.
“I could cut the whole thing off.” She had thought about it more than once.
Except for when he’d broken her wristband, Asil had not released her hands. His grip was soft and she knew she could pull away if she wanted to. But somehow, she had the feeling that as long as he touched her, nothing could harm her. It wasn’t magic. It was just him.
“A possibility,” he murmured. There was a velvet growl in his tone. “But not a good one. No need to be hasty just yet. What does he want from you, Ruby? Why does he bind your magic and try to keep you close?”
But that wasn’t a question she wanted to answer.
“Do you think I haven’t had people who tried to help me before?” She turned away, pulling her hands free and rubbing at her eyes. “Good people who were hurt—killed—because of me.”
He didn’t ask why, if she were reluctant to have anyone else hurt, she had agreed to arranging this date. She answered him anyway.
“If it weren’t for Miranda, I’d never have agreed to asking you to come,” she said.
“You’d have to meet her. She’s about four and a half feet tall with a temper like a wet cat.
When she’s really mad, she screams at you in Mandarin.
” Ruby heaved a sigh. “And she’s six months pregnant with a baby who isn’t sure he wants to hang in for the finish. I didn’t want to upset her.”
He was so quiet that she could imagine herself alone. She turned around to see him standing exactly where he had been when she pulled free.
“I was supposed to beguile you with my wiles,” she told him.
“Such as they are. Then you would want to help me. I would do magic, any magic, and he would come because that’s how he finds me when his tattoo doesn’t work—like in a city of steel and iron.
Hopefully he would come while you were still here and willing to fight for me.
“You were set up.” She swallowed. “It wasn’t fair. I wasn’t going to let it happen.” She wanted him to know that. “He wasn’t supposed to come unless I did magic. A lot of it.”
“Ah well,” said Asil with a graceful shrug. He didn’t look at all upset. “Who is he?”
She bowed her head. “A monster,” she told the werewolf, and was rewarded with a smile that displayed very white teeth. And she gave in. “I don’t know what he is other than fae.” She paused, and then whispered the awful part, the part she was ashamed of. “He feeds from me.”
Asil tilted his head so she knew he was listening. He didn’t say anything—probably because he judged she was likely to tell him more that way.
“He lets me escape sometimes,” she told him, knowing that it was true. “I think it’s because if he didn’t, I would have died a long time ago. It is hard to live without hope.” And didn’t that sound pathetic and helpless. She grimaced at herself.
“Feeds how? Like a vampire?” he asked when she didn’t say anything more.
She shook her head. “It isn’t…isn’t usually physical—though he does that sometimes, too. Drinks my blood, eats my flesh.”
The lines around her wrist suddenly lit from within, as if they had been inked with blue neon instead of blood. Her world stopped.
Did she really hear the creak of wood? Or did her imagination supply the sound of his feet on the front porch?
“He is here,” she told Asil.
She’d locked the main door of the house, but it didn’t surprise her when she heard the door open and shut. She heard him and felt him walk into the reception room. Her eyes held Asil’s as hands closed over her shoulders.
“Ruby, my Ruby,” her captor said. She’d always thought his voice beautiful, but compared to Asil’s it was thin and a little harsh. “I named her so because her price is above rubies,” he said conversationally. “Ruby, don’t be rude. Introduce me to your werewolf friend. Is this Alan?”
Wendigo, said Asil’s wolf. Wechuge. Jikininki. Preta. Hungry ghost.
None of those terms was precisely correct, Asil thought, but they weren’t wrong, either.