He painted an attractive picture. A utopia, almost. But these societies also made blood sacrifices to their gods. We could idealize the past all we wanted, at the price of ignoring the drawbacks.
“Is that what you’re doing here? Trying to re-create that kind of society?”
He just smiled. “Come in, see the rest of our home.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. The bare part, not even touching the dress’s narrow strap. His touch was fire. Every muscle in my body clenched. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t even think of it. His words rang over me. I am part of the procession, which stretches back to the dawn of time. That made me powerful.
When I moved, my bones creaked. I heard them,
and the noise jarred me. I stepped away, took myself out of the burning, alluring grasp. I took a deep breath, tried to get oxygen back to my brain. There was something in the air here. . .
“Ben’s missing,” I said, wincing mentally, because blurting it out like that wasn’t sly or smart at all. Not if Balthasar had a hand in it. I was supposed to be smart about this. “Ben’s my fiancé, and a crimelord named Faber might have taken him. The police are looking, but they haven’t found anything, and I’m running out of ideas. Dom said you might know something.”
“Dom?” Balthasar said, chuckling. “We don’t hear much from Dom. Let’s sit down and we can talk about this.”
I didn’t know what to call the room he took me to. It was much like the foyer, the great hall, rich in its decorations, exotic for the lack of anything I’d call chairs and sofas, anything that might identify it as a living room. I might have called it a dormitory, or a barracks: futons, made up with sheets and pillows, lined one wall. But there was also a fountain, water dribbling over round gray stones, in the middle of the room, and chaise lounges, and draped over these in a most decorative manner—dangling their fingers in the water, stretched out on cushions—were a group of young men. They were all glowingly gorgeous, smooth-skinned, bronzed, muscular. At the sound of Balthasar’s voice, they looked up at me with alluringly hooded gazes. They had wicked smiles. Balthasar was the pirate captain, and here was his crew.
Part of me really wanted to run now. But they were all so attractive.
“So you all live here together?” I said, working to keep my voice steady. “All the performers?” I was hoping Nick would be around. He’d been the first one I’d met, and for some reason he seemed like the one most likely to tell me the truth. I assumed there was another truth under all this.
“We’re a pack, of sorts,” Balthasar said, with Avi nodding in agreement. He gestured forward with a sweep of his arm, worthy of his best showmanship. “Meet the cast.”
They were a pack of lycanthropes, unmistakable, and this was their territory, but I sensed more to it than that. The smell of the place had another layer to it, threatening but even more alien. My skin tingled with it. I wasn’t an invader here. I was. . . something else.
The place smelled thickly of sex. As if—what else were a bunch of hunky men supposed to do when they weren’t onstage?
They perked up, straightening, peeling themselves off their perches. They moved like water, graceful, without a sound. They wore jeans and pants, riding low on their hips. No shirts. Their chests were long expanses of enticing skin. They stalked forward on bare feet, never taking their gazes from me, like I was some interesting new toy they had to examine—a mouse stuffed with catnip, maybe.
I should have run from there. But the warmth of Balthasar’s body kept me in place. Drew me closer. This was a place of great mystery, his gaze seemed to tell me. Didn’t I want to learn their secrets? Avi’s smile and relaxed stance made me think that nothing was wrong.
They were all in their twenties, young and fit. They definitely worked out. Their muscles shifted and flexed under their perfect skin. They were model-perfect, watching me with expressive eyes. Fanning around me, they cocked their heads, taking breaths, smelling me, studying me from every angle. My breath caught. I could feel my heart pounding.
Lycanthropes had to shape-shift only on nights of the full moon; the power to shift was voluntary at other times. We could choose to shift, or we did so instinctively, in dangerous situations. Balthasar’s whole show was based on that, that they could shape-shift at will and retain some of their humanity through the transformation. As a result, this place was more animal than human, and these men had their beasts looking out of their eyes, right at the surface, because they changed into their lycanthropic forms almost every day in order to perform. We weren’t meant to spend so much time in our animal forms. Not if we had any hope of remaining human, of living as humans. But they didn’t seem too put out by it all. Living together like this, isolated, they probably didn’t have to deal with their humanity any more than they wanted to.
But what about territory? Instinct? A group of male cats would never live together in a pack like this. And that was where the human side came in. Their looks were far too calculating to be driven purely by instinct.
They stayed just out of reach. I kept thinking one of them, or all of them, would reach out and touch me. If they did, I might retreat in a panic. Or I might reach back. I was blushing, all the way to my gut.
“Is she for us?” one of them said. He was closest, and he kept his gaze on my chest, like he could see through my dress.
My shoulders bunched up, the hair on my neck stiffening. Some of them—they were looking at me like they wanted to start batting me around with their paws.
“She’s a guest,” Balthasar said, and the other made a disappointed click in answer. He turned his shoulder, brushing against one of his packmates as he did. The latter snapped at him, a quick bite at air, but he also leaned into the touch.
They stood close to each other, touching, leaning against each other’s backs and shoulders even as they stripped me with their gazes. The exchange disturbed me. Did Balthasar often bring women here as cat toys?
I looked at the ceiling, the faux-stone pillars, the carpet, my feet, anything. But I could smell them, their hormones, the sweat on their skin. I might have sounded a little panicked when I said, “The women in the show. . . they’re not here? They’re not lycanthropes?”
He shook his head. “They’re just assistants. They’re not really part of the act.” Or part of the pack, the pride of felines.
“Even the one at the end? Because she looked pretty integral. Is she one of you?”
A couple of them chuckled, others ducked to hide smiles. There was a joke here I was missing.
“I suppose in a sense she’s one of us,” Balthasar said finally.
“Can I meet her?”