Bobby started to look down at the ground again, but I waved a hand in front of his face so close that he startled back from it. He frowned at me, a moment of anger flashing through his eyes. And with that anger came the faintest warmth of his beast, like the hint of heat when you walk too close to an oven. There’s no need to open the door to know it’ll burn you.
My own inner beast rose toward his. Oh, I knew the oven was on, but there was something sweet baking inside it, and my own inner leopard wanted to find out if it was cookies or cake. I had better control than that normally, but something about Bobby had unsettled me.
His eyes went wide with surprise. “How can you be . . .” he started to whisper, and then stopped himself, glancing toward the officers outside the bars. He thought I was a wereleopard like him, but he didn’t want to out me. It was still legal grounds for dismissal from most police forces or military. The preternatural branch was the exception, but Bobby didn’t know that. Just like he couldn’t have known that I carried multiple strands of lycanthropy inside me, but never changed form. The doctors thought that catching so many types of the disease so close together had made me a medical miracle, so I was a carrier but didn’t have a full-blown case of any of the inner beasts I carried.
I stared into his blue eyes in their mask of blood and said, “There’s more blood on you somewhere, isn’t there, Bobby?”
“Yes,” he whispered as he met my gaze.
“Show me, Bobby, please.”
“I don’t want everyone to see,” he whispered, voice even lower.
Newman said, “Can you give us some privacy, Duke, Frankie?”
“Privacy, what the hell do you need privacy for? We brought Bobby in here jaybird naked. We seen the show.”
Bobby flinched at that and went back to looking at the floor. What little animation had been in his face just drained away.
“Humor us, Sheriff,” I said.
“I won’t leave you in there alone with him unarmed, but we can turn our backs if that will help.”
“If that’s the most privacy we can get, then we’ll take it,” I said.
The sheriff turned his broad back first, thumbs in his duty belt. He had to tell the deputy to turn around. She seemed puzzled, but she turned around with my weapons still dangling off of her.
I leaned in close to Bobby and said, “They won’t see now, Bobby.”
“They already saw. You heard Duke.” He sounded stricken; that was the only word for it.
Newman spoke slow and soft; he’d caught on to what I was doing. “We want to help you, Bobby, but you’ve got to help us do that.”
Bobby shook his head, still staring at the floor.
I called just a hint of leopard back so that it glided along my skin and trailed like warmth between us. It made him look at me again. “Bobby, show me, please.”
He stared into my eyes as if he couldn’t look away, and he slowly began to drop the blanket. Newman didn’t try to catch it this time. He just let it fall open to expose the front of Bobby Marchand’s body. There was blood on his groin, caked into the short hairs around him.
He started to shake, and if Newman hadn’t caught him from behind, he’d have fallen as much as his chains would have let him. “What did I do? What did I do to Uncle Ray? God, please tell me I didn’t do that to him. I don’t know why I would do that. I never, ever thought about anything like that. He’s my dad. I would never, but if I didn’t, then why is there blood there? What the hell happened last night?” He wailed his grief and horror. More than a scream, it was what people meant when they used to say keening for the dead.
Bobby’s grief tore through him, and like all strong emotions could, it brought out his beast. Newman was still trying to get him on the bunk with the chains, with Bobby’s nearly deadweight hampering him, when I felt the rush of heat. It was as if I’d opened the oven instead of just walking past it. That blast of heat washed over me in a skin-prickling rush. Bobby raised his face upward and wailed again, but this time his eyes were pure yellow. His leopard looked out of his human face. It was the first part of his humanity to go, but it wouldn’t be the last.
4
“HIS EYES. LOOK at his eyes,” Anthony said.
Leduc yelled, “He’s shifting. Get out of there!”
Newman dropped Bobby and let him fall to his knees and one hand. The other hand was still chained to the bed and couldn’t touch the floor. Newman went for the door, but I could tell that the heat wasn’t enough yet. Bobby was still fighting his beast, still trying to win control back. I let myself glance at the door. Anthony had her shotgun to her shoulder like she knew how to use it. Leduc had opened the cell door for Newman. He barked an order at the deputy, telling her to put the barrel through the bars, not to hold it outside them. As soon as Newman was in the open doorway, Leduc drew his sidearm and aimed it at the fallen man. They had no idea that Bobby was still fighting to stay human. They couldn’t feel it. If I left the cell, they’d just shoot him, and I couldn’t even blame them.
I went to my knees beside Bobby and spoke low. “I’m here, Bobby. I’m right here.”
His yellow leopard eyes stared at me from inches away. His voice came out as a growl. “Get out. Can’t . . . hold it.”
“Get out of there, Blake!” Leduc yelled.
“He’s still fighting not to shift,” I said, but I never looked away from those bright yellow eyes. I touched Bobby’s arm, and his power jumped from him to me. It called my own inner leopard like I knew it would, but I trusted my control. I’d played this game before on both sides of the problem. My energy made his stumble, for lack of a better word.