Chapter Thirty

“Grandpa?” I repeated, glancing at the guy behind me, who kept his eyes fixed on John.

“Tell her,” he ordered.

My gaze went to Rodolfo. He continued to lean in the doorway, his slumped shoulders proj ecting exhaustion, even as the tilt of his head broadcast awareness of every movement and word.

There was something familiar about him. I looked at the other man. With shorter hair, a goatee, and sunglasses, he would be John’s twin. What was going on?

“First things first.” I j abbed a finger at the intruder. “Who the hell are you?”

His bright blue eyes flicked to John, then back to me. “Adam Ruelle.”

I frowned. I’d heard that name recently.

“Your friend Sullivan is a guest of my dungeon,” he continued.

“Dungeon?” My voice squeaked.

“I mean cage. Big one. Silver bars.”

That explained why I knew the name but not much else. “How did you get in here and, more importantly, why?”

His lips tilted. Not a smile, but close. I wondered if the man ever truly smiled, which gave him a lot in common with John.

“I was once in de army,” he said. “I did a lot of breaking and entering in places where, if they caught me, I’d wish I were dead long before I was.”

Translation: hush-hush, Special Forces stuff. The locks on Rising Moon, and on my bedroom door for that matter, would have been child’s play to a guy like him.

“Once I spoke with Murphy,” he continued, “and I heard de name Rodolfo, I had to come.”

“Why?”

“Rodolfo means ‘famous wolf’ in Spanish.”

“That seems to be the consensus,” I said.

“Ruelle means ‘famous wolf’ in French.”

Uh-oh.

“It’s at de heart of our curse. The reason man turns into wolf and not alligator, snake, hedgehog. Names have power.”

I must have been staring at him blankly—could you blame me?—because he continued to explain.

“You’ve heard of de loup-garou? Our crescent moon curse?”

“I got the highlights.”

He swept out his hand. “Meet de cursed one.”

I glanced at John. He continued to stand immobile, everything he felt and thought hidden behind those damnable glasses.

“That’s impossible,” I said.

“You’ve seen a man turn into a wolf. Nothing’s impossible.”

Memories flickered—of John telling me he’d been touched by God’s wrath. If that wasn’t a curse, I don’t know what was. I still couldn’t believe it.

“I asked you if you were a werewolf,” I pointed out. “You said you weren’t.”

“I’m a loup-garou.”

My eyes narrowed. “You’re a liar.”

“Of course he is,” Adam snapped. “You think if he murders de innocent night after night, year after year, century after century, he’d balk at lying?”

I rounded on Adam. “Why do you know so damned much?”

“I’m cursed too. Or I will be if Grandpère ever dies. I become a loup-garou and my son after me and so on until de end of time, or we break this curse.” He sighed. “My money’s on de end of time.”

“You’re telling me John is your grandfather”—I glanced back and forth between the two of them —”even though he looks young enough to be your brother.”

“Looks deceive. He was born in eighteen thirty, died de first time in eighteen fifty-eight.”

“His name isn’t even Ruelle.” I grasped any excuse to refute this claim. “It’s Rodolfo.”

“No,” Adam said, “it isn’t. He took another name when he came back here. What I don’t understand is why?” His gaze went to John—or whatever his name was. “Why would you come to New Orleans, Grandpère?”

“Quit calling him that!” I snapped.

Hearing a man who appeared thirty years old calling another who appeared of equal age “Grandpa”

made me want to shriek mindlessly until my mind snapped, if it hadn’t already.

“Should I call him by de name he was born with?” Adam asked. “Henri,” he said, pronouncing the name in the French manner, dropping the h, putting the accent on the second syllable. “Why did you come here?”

“He can’t be who you say he is,” I put in desperately. “Cassandra told me any afflictions heal once a person becomes a werewolf. He’s blind.”

“No,” Adam murmured. “He isn’t.”

Slowly John straightened away from the doorj amb, lifting his hand to his sunglasses, then removing them.

I’d wished countless times that I could see the color or the expression of his eyes. Now I could.

They were blue; they were agonized, and they were no more blind than mine were.

“Why?” I turned away. “Why pretend?”

“I’m sure he didn’t want anyone to recognize him, or me as de case may be,” Adam said. “No one would suspect him either. A blind man can’t be a murderer.”

I flinched. I’d said as much to Sullivan.

“I’m not a murderer.” John’s voice was low and furious.

Adam snorted. “Grandpère, you’re one of de most vicious beasts in history. Angelus has nothing on you.”

“Angelus?” John asked.

” Buffy the Vamp ire Slayer,” I murmured absently. “Television show—hot guy, vicious vampire.”

“I’m not a vampire.”

“Werewolf. Vampire. What’s the difference?” I threw up my hands. “You kill people, don’t you?”

John’s eyes met mine. “Not anymore.”

“People are dying all over de place,” Adam interj ected. “You expect me to believe you aren’t involved?”

John rubbed his forehead. I kept getting distracted by the blue of his eyes. Hell, just seeing his eyes was such a novelty I couldn’t get past it.

“I didn’t say that.” He dropped his hand and leaned back against the wall. “I’m not killing p eop le.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I’m killing werewolves. They aren’t people anymore.”

“And neither are you,” Adam murmured.

Suddenly the room was hot; I was dizzy. I’d had sex with this man, only he wasn’t a man. Not really.

I ran into the bathroom and threw up.

It didn’t take long. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. When I was done with the dry heaves, I levered myself to my feet and saw John hovering.

“Back off.” I doused my head with cold water, then brushed my teeth.

My mind raced, trying to remember all that had happened in New Orleans, all that I’d heard and learned.

I came out of the bathroom to discover Adam and John on opposite sides of the room. Adam appeared
contrite. “This is a lot to take in.”

I just glared at him, then I turned the evil eye on his grandp ère. “Sullivan said he recognized the eyes of the wolf that attacked him; from the very beginning something about you bothered him.”

I paused, considering that John might have killed Sullivan because of me. How many times had he come in the room when the detective had been touching me, whispering to me, had John even seen us kiss?

He’d never seemed j ealous; but then, he hadn’t seemed evil either.

I pulled my attention back to the big question. “Was that why you killed him?”

“I haven’t been making new wolves,” John insisted. “I’ve been killing the old ones.”

“And I should believe you because you’ve been so truthful up to this point?”

“Why are you here, Henri?” Adam repeated.

“My name is John now.”

“You can call yourself by any name you like, but it doesn’t change who you are.”

“You think I don’t know that?” John’s voice broke on the last word. “I hear them shrieking. Hundreds upon hundreds haunt me. It doesn’t matter that I’m different now, they won’t let me rest.”

I remembered his headaches, his nightmares, the times I’d heard him talking to himself in the dark.

“What do you mean by different?” I asked.

The two men exchanged glances, and John dipped his chin. Adam turned to me. “Once bitten, or cursed, humans are possessed by a demon.”

“I know.” Or at least that was what I’d been told, and my firsthand observations of the changes in Sullivan had made me believe.

I stared into John’s eyes. I saw many things, some of them frightening but none of them evil.

“What happened to you?” I asked him.

“There’s a cure.”

“Which is why we captured Sullivan,” I murmured, turning to Adam. “So why isn’t John cured?”

I couldn’t call him Henri; I just couldn’t.

“Because he was cursed and not bitten de demon was removed, but de need to shift and to kill remained.”

“Killing werewolves takes care of the hunger,” John said.

“What about the fail-safe in the virus?”

“What do you know about it?” Adam demanded.

“Murphy was chatty.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “He always is. As near as we can figure, being cursed or cured or having de normal process of being a werewolf screwed up in some way throws de fail-safe out of whack. It’s happened before.”

“Again I have to ask why you know so freaking much about this and just who the hell is ‘we’?”

Adam shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Or what, you’d have to kill me? Get in line.”

“No one will hurt you, Anne—” John began.

“Except you?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“How do you know what you’ll do when you’ve got fangs and a tail?”

“I know,” John said tightly. “One of the special talents of a werewolf—wolf body, people brain.”

“No wonder they’re so dangerous.”

“Got that right,” Adam muttered.

The idea of a beast with teeth, claws, the remarkable abilities of a wolf, and the intelligence of a human, it boggled the mind.

“I still can’t believe this is real.”

My eye caught on a shiny silver obj ect atop my nightstand. Adam had discarded the letter opener. I scooped it up and swooped it toward John’s arm.

The scent of burning hair and flesh made me drop the weapon. As it clattered to the ground between us, smoke curled upward.

He stared at me impassively. “You believe me now?”

I couldn’t speak, could only stare at the white scar on his forearm. “I thought all wounds healed once you were a werewolf?”

“Unless they’re made with silver.”

Reaching out, I turned John’s palm over and stared at the thin white line across his wrist.