Cat Scratch Fever; Blue-Collar Werewolves V (14 page)

“I read.” Brandon’s sneered out the side of
his mouth. “You might try it sometime.”

“I’m about four inches taller.” And he had
more than the three obvious cat forms his Changed form suggested.
Matthew was a freak as a human. Apparently, he was going to be the
freak of the supernatural world too.

He could feel them inside him, like the
outfits he remembered his mother having for different occasions.
And here is the lion for when you need to intimidate the hell out
of someone or the tiger for when size matters most. The cheetah for
hauling-ass. The cougar and jaguar vied for top hunter, though the
leopard seemed to have more killing range. The memory of leaping
onto that goon’s back, of biting that guy, rocked him with an
almost physical flashback. Even now, he could practically taste the
blood. Feel the crunch of bone.

“And your muscle mass has increased too.”
Brandon’s comment brought Matthew suddenly back to the present. He
focused on the here and now of the other man’s words. “So, no
problem. Your body is accommodating the needs of your Change. Don’t
worry about it.” Brandon’s jeans pocket buzzed with the sound of a
cell phone. He shrugged, digging the device out. “I have a bag in
the car with extra gear.” At Matthew’s look of confusion, he
smirked. “Parked several blocks away. In case there was trouble.
”

“Hey.” His brother-in-law’s voice went soft
and worried as he shouldered his way out of the closet. “Everything
okay?” Matthew could hear babies crying from the phone.

“No, it’s the normal chaos,” answered a
woman’s voice. “I miss you and I worry. Aren’t you finished yet?
”

“Ah. No,” Brandon hedged, he glared at both
Matthew and Nathan, as his scent changed subtly. “It’s going well.
And I’m fine. Really. I’ll be home soon.” He ended the call and
crossed his arms defensively, with a small warning growl.

“That woman is going to skin you alive and
hang you on the clothesline to dry.” Observed Nathan as he strolled
to the bed and flopped on it. Ramses blinked open his eyes from his
stealthily re-appropriated spot in the middle of the bed and
studied the werepanther as if he’d been there all along.

Nathan offered a hand halfway to the cat,
then obliged by rubbing furry ears when Ramses tilted his head in
invitation. Nathan stretched out, before cutting his eyes at the
irritated werewolf. Matthew could feel him getting at something,
waiting with a certain fatalism as his panther poked at the already
stirred up wolf. “The Ridley females are not known for putting up
with duplicity for long.”

Change shimmered in the air. Brandon faced
Nathan with bared fangs and claws. “I am not lying to my mate.”

Nathan gave a slow smile, ending in a smirk.
“
You
feel like you are. And that’s what counts.”

Matthew moved, placing himself between them
before any thought registered. He took the blow, the raking of
claws designed to tear flesh from bone across his chest. It hurt
like hell, but he didn’t cringe away. He grimaced though and held
his arms out as if they were playing basketball and he was blocking
Brandon. What he was really trying to do was make some kind of
connection with the pissed werewolf. Something that would help him
understand what was really bothering Brandon.

He wasn’t naïve to think that the werewolf
was altruistic and was helping him adjust for the hell of it. He
didn’t really even think that Brandon’s original motive was getting
him to attend a stupid birthday party picnic. Matthew had been out
of his mother’s and sister’s lives for more than half his life. As
a know-it-all teen, he’d been an asshole to Brandon and the rest of
the Weis foster kids. A total prick to his mother and sister.

Matthew had bowed out of the wedding to Weis
and never acknowledged his mom’s adoption of the kids. All for a
college education.

Matthew frowned. No. If he was honest with
himself, he’d admit that he’d been afraid of what people thought.
Not of what they’d thought of his mom and sister and their
strangeness. Mom and Karen had always been strong. His father was
the weakest link.

You can’t possibly want to connect with
the dog.
Ramses accused. Matthew turned his head to look at
Nathan. “Take the cat and go check on the others.” Nathan frowned
in protest, half sitting up. “Go.” He reinforced the command with a
little ‘push’ of forcefulness. He was pleased when Nathan scooped
up the cat with a mumbled apology for Ramses.

The door shut behind them and Matthew
relaxed. He left Brandon to himself while he went to the bathroom
for a towel to press against the dripping wounds.

Man, his second day as a Were and he already
had the scrapes to prove it. At this rate he was going to get his
throat ripped out by the end of the week. Matthew sighed.

“Those won’t heal as fast as an injury made
by normal means.” Brandon said from the doorway.

Matthew met the other man’s eyes in the
mirror. Brandon looked unrepentant. The impressions he received
from scent and the very faint connection he felt reinforced that
understanding. Surprisingly, he felt no resentment. It was done.
The present was more important than the past, even a past only
minutes old. If only he could apply the same feelings to his life
before the Change. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? I’m the one who tagged you. And
I’m not sorry in the least.” Brandon looked truly confused.

“For…Nathan,” he amended at the last
moment.

“Now you’re the one lying.” Real amusement
danced in the werewolf’s eyes. His face was as bland as ever. “Your
body’s chemicals change and the heartbeat picks up with the stress
of deceit,” he explained. “You can smell and hear the lie if you
pay attention.”

“Well damn. A human lie-detector,” mused
Matthew. He looked down to study the deep scratches and wondered if
he should put some kind of ointment on them to keep out infection.
Gauze was definitely in order. He opened the medicine cabinet for
what he needed.

“Not human.” Brandon corrected, leaning
against the doorjamb. “What are you sorry about?”

“That I got in the way. Shit this hurts.” He
stretched the gauze and held it in place one-handed while he ripped
off a strip of paper tape off the roll with his teeth. The tape
smoothed into place with only minimal twisting and bunching. “So
why are you still hiding up here with me? I figured you’d be more
comfortable with the werewolves.”

“For one, call them werewolves and they’ll
gladly rip your intestines out. Wolven, as a general rule, have
serious superiority issues.”

“And you don’t?” Matthew pressed another
piece of tape into place. Glancing up he caught the other man’s
shrug. Personally, he thought that he was getting a bit better at
the one handed doctoring thing. This one was less crooked than the
first. “Okay. What’s the second?”

“They’re not my Pack.” The answer was flat,
devoid of any acceptance of the other werew—
wolven
at
all.

“I’m not even what you are. They’re at least
the same…animal? Race?” The next piece of tape mangled so badly
that he had to trash it. “Whatever.”

“Species,” Brandon clarified. “And you are
connected to me by our mother. And by Nathan’s connection to my
Pack.”

“That guy called you his nephew.” The memory
was a bit blurry. He looked up from mangling another strip. Brandon
shrugged again.

“My father was originally from the Tarrant
County Pack. Paul Sheppard is the Canis Pater here. Gavin Sheppard
is my dad’s half-brother by blood.” After the third messed up piece
of tape in a row, Brandon moved to take the tape. The look he gave
Matthew reminded him of one his mom used to give when he was being
particularly clumsy at a simple task. Or obtuse.

Brandon tore off a strip and pressed it into
place with surprising gentleness. “Wolven are very insular by
nature. When Adam Weis became alpha of the Anderson County Pack,
his bonds to his old Pack were severed. His blood relatives may
have fond memories for him. But the deciding loyalties are always
who is Pack and who is not.” Brandon finished his explanation with
a last, perfect strip of tape.

“But—” Matthew stopped, the cat inside him
going on alert as they both felt and heard the disturbance
downstairs.

Chapter Ten

Naomi sat on a bar stool in a filched
t-shirt and boxers and admired the beautiful glass topped
wrought-iron dinette set. The task gave her a reason to ignore the
wolven roaming the house like a bunch of nosey guard dogs. They
sniffed; they ate the contents of the refrigerator, growled at the
cat, Ramses, who held his own like a temple cat defending his
sanctuary. Which, of course, he was.

The task also anchored her in her favorite
part of the house, out of range of Morrow’s bad tempered sulk in
the living room. The tiger didn’t want the wolven in the house,
didn’t want Naomi fussing over his injuries, and didn’t want to
stay in the same town as his captors. Simmering rage and resentment
made up Morrow’s attitude. Nathan had made good on his early
ramblings of life-tasks. Once he’d decided Matthew was The Leo,
he’d stuck to his new liege like glue.

Naomi didn’t blame either cat for their
feelings. Her own were just as confused. She touched the borrowed
t-shirt covering the mark that had appeared shortly after her stand
for independence from her mother and aunts’ home. If Nathan were
wrong, then how did that explain the mark? She was the deciding
factor in her own destiny, not Nathan’s goddess. Not a Leo who had
been missing for over two thousand years. What would they do if
Matthew turned his back on them now? Then again—What if he actually
believed and tried to do the impossible?

Since the loss of The Leo, the far-reaching
feline empire had slowly moved apart. Males, always restless,
wandered, looking for something they could never find. Females
often grouped together to bear and raise their kits in safety.
Still, there was always a basic loyalty that demanded they were on
the side of the cats when it came to the other animal groups.
Despite the abandonment of Bastet, leopards and cheetahs foretold
the return of the Leo like Christian preachers warned of the coming
of Christ.
Be ready. He is coming.
He is coming.

She shook off the fancifulness with a little
shiver. Matthew Ridley’s ability to Change into multiple cat forms
was based in science, not because a long dead or dismissive god had
finally taken interest in the clans again. It didn’t mean that
Nathan’s beliefs and life-tasks were true.

Not liking her thoughts, Naomi turned her
attention back to what Matthew’s house told her about the man. Like
the rest of the house’s furnishings, it was masculine. The sheer
amount of the iron pieces led her to believe that he either spent
everything he earned on acquiring new ironwork, or he made them
himself. She’d expected a different atmosphere for a powerful
psychic. Except for the Van Helsing-style Hunters, most were
bookworms, soft knowledge-seekers that shied away from the
supernatural. Morrow’s irritated growl and the spike of power in
the air jerked her from her introspection, drawing her attention to
the living area.

As expected, the wolven were in full
aggressive mode. Unexpected, they weren’t about to attack Morrow.
The human-form tiger, and the wolves circled a surprised human at
the front entryway. Nathan appeared from the hallway, with the cat
in his arms. Ramses growled and hissed before jumping down, fluffed
and affronted. His tail stood straight up in the air.

“Who are you people?” The man’s pallid skin
and bloodshot eyes didn’t appear healthy. “What’s going on here?”
he swayed. The reek of alcohol might not have been obvious to
another human, but to a room for of shape shifters, it was
overpowering.

Morrow looked to Naomi. The wolves looked to
their leader, Gavin. The leader held up a hand and peered at Naomi.
Full circle, she frowned and glanced at Nathan. He shrugged and
crossed his arms, his irritation transforming into amused
curiosity.

“My task is to serve the Leo, my Lia.”
Rather than deny Nathan’s linking her with Matthew, she growled
irritably and advanced on the disturbance before they woke him up.
Leo or not, the man had been through hell yesterday and deserved
some rest before the serious decision-making took place.

“Matthew!” yelled the drunk man. His
red-eyed gaze focused on her as she entered the circle and
travelled lewdly over her t-shirt and boxers. “Well, well. Mebee
the boy isn’t so limp after all. Matthew! You two-faced little
bastard. You had a party and didn’t invite your old man.”

“Hello.” She offered a smile, hoping it was
welcoming, and held out a hand in greeting. “I’m Naomi.”

“Heh-heh. I’ll just bet you are.” He listed
to one side, missing Morrow’s deep throated sound of disgust and
Gavin’s disgusted lip curl. “Where’s the booze?”

“I could kill him for you,” offered the
wolven. “As a freebie.”

“Let me.” Morrow said.

“No. That is probably not a good idea.”
Naomi tried smiling again and reached for the man’s arm. “Nathan,
could you call a taxi? We can wait for it in the kitchen.” Out of
sight and hopefully out of earshot of the others.

“Matthew!”

“Ever-loving Chri—” Matthew erupted from the
bedroom, followed closely by Brandon. Bandages seeping blood clued
her in to the fact that he hadn’t been sleeping after all. She’d
just been too wrapped up in her own problems to try untangle all
the conflicting sounds, scents, and energies that seemed to build
up when too many supernaturals were in close confines. “Dad.” He
sighed and pushed past the wolven to take his arm from Naomi. She
didn’t blame him for putting himself between his father and her.
The man wasn’t well and was obviously a null or too drunk to focus.
Normal humans were vulnerable.