Kingdom of Fangs, page 17
Maddie’s eyes widened. Ooo-kay. That was blunt. She glanced around to see if she was the only one picking up on this chick’s vibes. And now she understood what was compelling. Confidence. The woman exuded it, wore it like a second skin. And this chick was feeling all sorts of confidence in her attraction for Roan. Maddie swallowed thickly.
Roan held the woman’s stare long enough that the tension in the room began to grow, and unless Maddie was reading the room wrong, it wasn’t the good kind of tension. Finally, just as Taras started to move, Roan spoke. “I’ve told you before, Celine, I’m not for you.”
Celine’s gaze jumped to Maddie, a brow rising as her lips pursed.
“Why are you looking at me like I just stole your lollipop? Get your flipping tattoo and see if it’s his face plastered on your bicep, then you’ll have your answer.” Typically, Katy was the most aggressive of their trio, but it seemed with Katy gone and Lola on lion duty, Maddie had jumped happily into that driver’s seat.
A hand gripped Maddie’s arm and started pulling her away, though not roughly. But Maddie tugged against it, which wasn’t helping things go smoothly. She jerked her arm again.
“Roan,” Lyra called out, causing them both to halt abruptly.
“Why are you dragging me off like an errant toddler?” Maddie rubbed her arm where he’d gripped her.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked quietly.
She frowned. “What?”
He motioned to where she held her arm. “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Not at all. I’m just irritated.”
“With me?” Roan asked, his voice carefully blank.
Maddie shrugged. “Probably, but I’ve been irritated with you since I met you. So I don’t know what it feels like to not be irritated with you.”
“That’s fair.”
“Roan, please,” Lyra called out again.
“Come on.” He motioned for Maddie to follow him.
“Wait.” She pointed to herself. “I’m coming, too?”
“Where I go, you go.”
“Roan, I’m not going to run off.” Maddie wished he’d trust her.
“Hey.”
Maddie felt a hand on her face, and she was shaken from the memory. How long had she been standing there thinking about, well, mostly him? The guy standing right there, touching her. He touched her a lot, now that she thought about it.
“Here’s your room.” He motioned to a closed door. “I’m across the hall if you need anything.”
She narrowed her eyes. “To guard me?”
Roan blew out a breath, dropping his hand from her face, and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, to protect you.”
“Why? I mean, why you?” Maddie tossed up a hand. “Couldn’t, literally, any of Taras’s warriors protect me.”
Roan’s muscles flexed. The dangerous man—the one she’d seen outside of Lola’s room just before they’d faced Callon—suddenly stood before her. “Because it’s my job.”
Then he left her standing there. He walked across the hall, opened his door, and stepped into his room, closing the door behind him.
Maddie stared at the shut door for what felt like forever.
Eventually, she heard his voice through the door. “Go to bed, Madeline.”
Her eyes rolled to the ceiling. “It was just a lucky guess,” she muttered as she turned to her door. “How many names is Maddie short for?”
Chapter 12
Is She Behaving?
“I never understood why Lola loved her cat so much. Okay, I mean I still don’t, because Otto is way cooler. Dog just sits and glares at you. Otto at least glares at you and threatens you with hilarious bodily harm, and then in the same breath he offers to feed you. I’m trying to figure out if he’s feeding me because I’m going to be a sacrifice or if he’s afraid I might accidentally die and then he’d get in trouble.” ~Katy
A woman stood in the massive kitchen, cooking everything Otto told her to make. She grumbled at him, but obeyed. Apparently, she’d pissed someone off bad enough to earn kitchen duty.
“Are you human?” The woman blinked at Katy, and her eyes, which had looked like that of a normal human, suddenly looked very not normal. They looked like Slick’s eyes, slitted like a snakes.
“Right.” Katy snapped her fingers. “Not human.”
“No, but we have humans in the house.”
“Can I ask your name? Because in my head you’re ‘the woman,’ and that’s just annoying.”
She laughed. “I’m Vreene.”
“Cool name. I’m Katy.”
“I know. You’re the talk of the pit.”
Katy’s brow rose. “The pit? You guys actually call yourselves a pit of snakes?” She knew that was the technical term for a group of snakes, but den was also sometimes used.
Vreene shrugged. “Some of us. But we’re not all snakes, of course. We’re reptilians of all varieties. Some of those who aren’t snakes get all scaly about it if we don’t include them. So, generally, we just call it the house.”
Katy leaned against the counter as Vreene made her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Scaly? Like they get all up in their feels?” That’s hilarious.
Vreene smiled and nodded.
Katy was truly intrigued. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since Gage had left, not that she was marking time on the new BG and AG standard. Oh, hell, she totally was. Her mind was thoroughly embedded in AG—After Gage—mode. What happened to not starting a war over her? Where had that sentiment gone? Katy couldn’t stop glancing at the blasted phone, waiting for a text from Gage that never came. When her constant checking finally made her and Otto go batty, the little lizard relented and let her out of the room. So, here she was in the kitchen meeting Vreene.
“Why are there other humans here? And why am I the talk of the pit? Thanks for the sandwich.” Katy took the offered plate.
“No worries.” Vreene waved her off. “All kingdom headquarters have some humans. Animi stay here all the time while they’re waiting to find a mate. And then some of the humans that work in King Azure’s clubs stay here, too.”
“Clubs?” Katy glanced at Otto, then back at Vreene .
“He owns several nightclubs,” Vreene explained. “I’m talking high-end, classy clubs. These are the types of clubs that you gotta be someone or know someone who is someone to get in. His dancers are top-notch.”
“Ahh, so not a strip club?” She quickly raised the hand that wasn’t holding the sandwich. “Not that I am judging, because, girl, I am not. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to pay the bills. I get it.”
Vreene laughed.
Otto made a snorting sound. “Something wrong in her head.”
“He’s constantly telling me he’s going to bite me.” Katy took a bite of the sandwich and then groaned because, hello, peanut butter and jelly.
“Has he seriously tried to bite you? And you’d know because he would have at least scraped the skin.” Vreene glanced at Otto from the corner of her eye.
Katy shook her head, unable to speak because, well, again, peanut butter and jelly.
“Then he likes you. But because I like you, I’ll give you some advice.” Vreene leaned toward her and motioned at Otto. “If he tries to bite you, throat punch him and get away as fast as you can. His bite would kill you in seconds.”
Katy screeched, or at least tried to, but it came out more like a strangled cry because her mouth was full of peanut butter. When she finally forced it down, she snapped, “What!” Her eyes widened, and she looked at Otto, whose tail was tucked beneath him and his arms folded tightly against his chest. “I thought it would be like, like… just a cat bite or something.”
“You’re in the Kingdom of Venom, Little Wolf,” Vreene said. “Venom is in the name. No cat bites here. You’re the talk of the pit because the King has declared you hands-off. Which is odd, since you’re an animus, and every single male in our kingdom will want the chance to win your heart.”
Everything Vreene said should have shocked her, but it was the “Little Wolf" comment that grabbed her attention and held on. The Linkname made her think of Gage, which made her pissy all over that he hadn’t texted her. Not that he owed her a text. Why she felt like he owed her a text, she had no idea. They’d met each other yesterday, spent all of thirty seconds in each other’s presence, and that had been that.
“It’s been real.” Vreene tossed a butter knife in the sink and headed for a doorway leading out of the kitchen. “I like you, Katy. I hope you stick around.”
“Thanks, Vreene.” She gave a shrug. “No offense, but I got two best friends back home that I miss, so I hope I don’t.”
“I feel ya.” Vreene nodded and then waved over her shoulder.
The silence left behind was palpable as Katy leaned onto the counter over her half-eaten sandwich. She didn’t even want it anymore. She looked over at Otto, who was still in his hunched position in the corner, as if he’d been scolded and told to go stand there. Katy sighed. “What are you doing over there?” She motioned him to the chair at the massive island in the middle of the kitchen. “Come sit down. You can eat the rest of my sandwich. I’m full.”
Otto looked up at her, his big, yellow eyes full of apprehension. “I not going to bite you,” he said softly.
“I know, but I make no promises that I won’t bite you.”
He frowned at her as he walked over and scurried up the stool. “You teeth flat. I not feel them.”
“You could pretend it hurt,” she suggested.
Otto scrunched up his face. “Why?”
“To make me feel better.”
He harrumphed as she pushed the plate in front of him. “Eat. Then can we walk around some more? I’m sick of sitting in that room.”
Otto’s eye darted about as he nibbled at the sandwich. “We careful or King Azure—”
“Will torture, maim, and otherwise make us miserable,” she cut him off. “Got it.” Katy gave him a thumbs up. “I like to live life on the edge.” She drummed her hands on the counter next to him. “Come on, hurry up. I’m antsy.” Katy pulled the cell phone from her pocket. She felt as if it was burning a damn hole there. She kept it covered, low, and close to her body as she glanced at the screen. One text. “Yes!”
“What?” Otto hissed.
“He texted.”
“Master Gage?”
Katy slipped the phone back away and lifted a brow. “Master Gage?” she asked slowly.
Otto visibly swallowed. Then he suddenly scurried down. He grabbed her pant leg and began pulling eagerly. “You want to see the things. I shows you.”
Katy bit her bottom lip as she narrowed her eyes on the little lizard. He was trying to distract her, the twerp. Fine. She’d let him. For now. But, later, she’d find out what Otto was hiding.
They walked through what had to be the five-hundredth—okay not really, but it sure felt like it to Katy—door. “There’s a movie theater in this old mansion?”
Otto shut the door behind them. “Old house, been dated up.”
“You talk so weird.” Katy walked into what looked like a legit cinema, except it was slightly smaller, containing two aisles and four rows of stadium-style seating.
“Movies.” Otto’s face broke into a brilliant smile.
Katy couldn’t help but return it. “You like movies.”
He nodded. “Yes. Much.”
“How come?” Katy plopped down into a seat in the middle row.
Otto picked up a remote and climbed up into the seat beside her. His short legs didn’t even make it to the edge of the seat. He pointed the remote at the enormous screen. “Escape.” The simple word was said with such reverence and awe.
Katy tilted her head, studying her reptilian companion. “Escape? The movies are an escape for you?”
Otto nodded enthusiastically, his bulbous eyes growing distant. “In movies, bad things can happen. But then…” He waved a clawed hand expressively. “There is the happy! Good overcomes. The evil is tramped.” He turned to Katy, his expression earnest. “Here, the happy is scale deep. But the bad, it goes deep, deep. They hidden things. Shadows. Dark things. But in movies…” Otto’s voice took on a tone of wonder. “Free. Lights. At the end, sunshine comes, music plays. Everyone good.”
Katy’s throat tightened with emotion. She saw now in stark clarity what she’d suspected before. This place was Otto’s prison, too. But for him, it wasn’t even gilded. The movies were his glimpse of how he hoped life could be.
Reaching over, she gave his hand a gentle squeeze. The scales were rough against her human flesh, and Katy found she liked the dichotomy of his tough exterior encasing a secretly gentle nature. “I understand that. Everyone needs light in their life, especially if all you’ve been surrounded by is darkness.” Katy’s brow pinched as she looked at him. “Have you always served Azure?”
Otto blinked rapidly. His lips seemed to tremble, but then he composed himself. “Damarians serve Visata.” It was the clearest and most straightforward thing she’d heard him say. “Otto not created to serve Azure, or any other than the Creator. You know Him?”
“My friend, who is now a … mate…” Katy stumbled over the word. It was still weird to her. “To a Damarian. She told me about Visata. That’s your Creator. Right? Like God for the human race?”
Otto nodded. He spoke again, but it wasn’t in English or any language that Katy had ever heard.
“Wait, Otto, stop,” she interrupted him. “You’re not speaking my language, literally.”
He flapped his little arms and then stood up in his chair, which made him eye-level with her. “I gets excited and speaks my real language,” he explained. “Visata, He created us, and He loves us. But some, likes”—Otto glanced over his shoulder at the closed door and then turned back to Katy and whispered—“like him, thinks they are above all. They step on everything else, trample.” He stomped his feet as he spoke, and Katy watched as Otto became more animated and confident. “Crush and takes what isn’t theirs.”
“Why does Visata allow this?”
Otto blinked several times, his large, yellow eyes staring into hers. His head tilted, and he looked thoughtful. “Why does the human’s God allow bad?”
Katy leaned back in the chair and sighed. “Wow, I did not expect to get into any deep philosophical discussions today. Honestly, that is a question I don’t have an answer for, which is why I asked a lizard with his own Creator.” How many times had Katy wondered why the world was the way it was? How many times had she heard someone else ask the same thing? She looked at Otto. “You’re old. Doesn’t that make you wise? Like the wise, old owl, only in this case you’re the wise, old lizard.”
He gave her a dry look. “I lennser not lizard.”
Katy shrugged. “Is there a difference?”
“I bite you.”
“No you won’t.” Katy shook her finger at him. “Now, give me the secrets of life, Old One. Why do bad people get to be bad and prosper with their evil cackles and overflowing coffers?”
Otto sat back down. To Katy’s surprise, he took her hand, which was much larger than his. He patted it and then rested it in between his. “Visata know that this treasure, all they have in this life, they chase. Greed. Selfish. Visata is opposite of those. He is good. Pure. If you seek to be like Him, you will try not to be those things.”
“And Visata loves you when you’re doing those good things?”
Otto frowned. “No, Kat. I not valuable because of what I do or not do. I valuable because Visata love me. What Azure doing, that angers Visata, but it also makes Him sad. Azure is His child, like me.” He patted his chest. “What father not hurt when child does wrong?”
Katy hadn’t ever thought of it that way. A parent, a child. The Creator and His created. How hard it must be to watch the ones you love so much hurt themselves by making choices you know are going to cause them, as well as others, pain.
“You know, you speak a lot better when you’re not around Azure.”
“Stress,” Otto said softly. “It makes harder, the words.”
Katy nodded. “Understandable. When I get stressed, words get hard for me, too. But only because I want to say unkind ones. You should know, I have a love of words. Usually, I have a Word of the Day. Since being dragged into this little human trafficking scenario, I haven’t managed to use one, but I’m going to give you one because I’ve been feeling this word ever since I met Gage. I think I’m going to crawl out of my own skin. I feel … bamboozled.”
“Your mouth broke.” Otto’s face was blank as he blinked at her.
“It means beguiled, or enchanted, or charmed, which I believe Gage, the dire wolf, has somehow done to me because I can’t stop thinking about him. I’m fighting every single, repressed, teenage girl-obsessive tendency to check my phone and respond to that text and ask why the heck it’s taken him twenty-four hours to text me in the first place. I don’t even know the freaking dude.”
Otto’s mouth dropped open, and then his scales started to change color, becoming a dark blue, which was something Katy hadn’t seen them do before. For a second, and miraculously the first time, her mind jumped to just what kind of lizard he must be—a chameleon? But wouldn’t his eyes protrude and zip around in all directions? A salamander? They change colors, right? But wouldn’t he need water? Otto snapped his mouth closed, pulling Katy from her thoughts and his scales, which had begun to change back to their usual green.
“Otto?” she asked slowly.
“Kat.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you know?”
“I knows things. In Damaria, there—”
“Nope. Not about Damaria. About Gage. And about this crazy urge.”
“Animal magnetism,” Otto spat out. “You animus. You have mark of Kingdom of Fangs. You just reacting to his wolf. Popcorns!” He threw his little arms up in the air. “Good for movies. I gets all the popcorns.” The lizard jumped to the floor and hurried away. This time, she watched and saw that he climbed up the wall, twisted the knob, pulled, and climbed right out around the wall. The door closed behind him.
