Dark Challenge. Christine Feehan. Dark Series – book 5

She swore softly and flounced over to the picnic table. Forest, the male leopard that always traveled with them, was stretched out the entire length of the table. Irritably, Desari shoved at him. “Get down.”

The cat answered her with a contemptuous raise of his lip, but he didn’t budge. Dayan turned around to stare at her in surprise. “What is wrong with you?”

“Everything. Nothing. I do not know. The bus is broken down for the fourth time this month. Barack has no idea how to fix vehicles; he just tinkers with them all the time. No one wants to buy a new one, and I keep saying we have to either learn to fix the motor ourselves or hire a mechanic to travel with us. It is not like we cannot afford it.” Desari began pacing again, unable to remain still.

“The cats would never tolerate a human around us,” Darius said as he materialized beside the table. He reached out to shove the male leopard from his perch.

“They will have to tolerate it,” Desari snapped, her black eyes flashing at her brother, then searching the sky and woods all around them. Where was Julian? Where are you? It slipped out before she could censor it, the cry for his mind touch. It was met with silence, and her agitation increased. Why did it matter so much? After all, what was he to her? A lover. People took lovers all the time. Barack was a hound dog. At least he had been for a couple of centuries there. Desari brought her mind up sharply. She couldn’t think about this. Couldn’t think about Julian and where he might be.

“Dara, be calm,” Darius ordered softly. “Your state of mind has nothing to do with our vehicle.”

“Do not presume to know my state of mind,” she snapped back. “I have told all of you over and over that we need a new motor home. Even the truck is breaking down now. Does anyone want to do anything about it? Syndil’s too busy hiding from the world. Barack is molting somewhere. Dayan and you pay no attention to the details of our life.”

“I get up on the stage every night,” Dayan said, defending himself. “And I write the songs and the music for you. I do not know anything about motors, nor do I wish to know. We are not mortals to deal with such things.”

Darius simply watched his sister without speaking. She was rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if she were cold. The night air was cool but not uncommonly so. She was abnormally pale.

“Getting up on the stage is not attending to the necessary details, Dayan,” Desari informed him. “We have to book the tours, keep track of the accounts, plan the routes, see that we can always provide for the cats, ensure that we have adequate gas and stores for whatever could break down while we are on the road. We must look human, act human. Do you do any of that, Dayan? I say we need new vehicles or a mechanic. You others had just better choose which you prefer or shut up and live with any decision I make.”

Darius raised an elegant eyebrow. “And what do you think is the best solution, Dara? A mechanic? The cats would probably eat the man before we finished interviewing him. But perhaps if you found someone the cats found unappetizing, we could allow him to travel with us.”

“A human? A male?” Dayan was outraged. “That would not be tolerable around our women.”

Desari’s head snapped up, her dark eyes flashing fire. “We women are not your possessions, Dayan. We have the right to do as we please, to be around whomever—male or female, mortal, or immortal—we choose. You do not rule us, and you never will.”

Dayan let out his breath in a long, slow hiss of disapproval. “This stranger you chose to consort with last night must have given you a virus. Your disposition has gone downhill, Desari.”

“Dayan.” Darius stepped between his sister and his second in command. “That will be enough. The’stranger,’ Julian Savage, is a powerful Carpathian, a hunter of the undead. We would do well to learn what we can from him. If he comes to this camp, you will treat him with respect as one of us.”