Chapter One

San Francisco, May 1882

Cort glanced one last time at the girl on the stage and spread his cards with a flourish.

"Royal Flush," he drawled with a lazy smile. "It seems the luck is with me tonight, gentleman."

They weren't happy. The game had been grueling, even for Cort. The players were the best, all specially—and secretly—invited to the tournament, all hoping to win prizes no legitimate game could offer.

Prizes like the girl, who stared across the room with a blank gaze, lost to whatever concoction her captors had given her. She was most definitely beautiful. Her figure was slender, her face, even beneath the absurd white paint, as classically lovely as a that of a Greek nymph, her golden hair begging for a man's caress.

She couldn't have been more than fourteen.

Cort's smile tightened. It was her young age as well as her beauty and apparently untouched virginity that made wealthy, hard-hearted men fight to win her. Many such girls could be bought, and sold, in the grim back-alleys and sordid dives of San Francisco's Barbary Coast.

But not girls like this one, who so clearly was no child of San Francisco's underworld. Who was of European descent, not one of the unfortunate Chinese immigrants who so routinely fell victim to unscrupulous traffickers in human flesh. Someone had taken a risk in making her a prize in the tournament, if only the secondary one; the organizers of this contest were confident that the girl would simply disappear, hidden away by the winner until anyone who might look for her had given her up for dead.

Cort's gaze came to rest on the man whose hand had lost to his. Ernest Cochrane wasn't accustomed to losing. His lust for the girl had been manifest from the moment they'd sat down at the table. He had a very bad reputation on the Coast, even if he had deceived the high and mighty with whom he associated in his "normal" life. If he'd won her, she'd have been subject to a life of perpetual degradation, a sexual plaything for one of the most powerful men in California.

Until he tired of her, of course. Then she might, if she were lucky, but sold to another man, less discriminating in his desires.

Or she might end up in the Bay. Cochrane wouldn't want to risk any chance that his wife and children and fellow entrepreneurs might learn what a villain he truly was.

The others were no better. Even those he didn't know stank of corruption and dissipation. They were dangerous men, and every one of Cort's instincts had rebelled against his becoming involved. He wasn't some gallant bent on protecting womankind from fates worse than death, however well he played the role of gentleman. If she hadn't been so young, he might have ignored the girl's plight. Yuri had urged him not to be a fool.

But it was done now, and Cochrane was glaring at him with bitter hatred in his eyes.

"Luck," he said in his smooth, too-cultured voice, "has a way of turning, Renier." He nodded to one of the liveried attendants. "We'll have another deck."

Cort rose from his chair. "I do thank you, Mr. Cochrane, gentleman, but I am finished for the evening, and I believe this game has been won in accordance with the rules of the tournament." He tipped his hat. "Perhaps another time."

"I'm an impatient man, Mr. Renier. And I have doubts that this game was played honestly."

"If I were an impatient man myself, Cochrane, I might choose to take offense at your insinuation." He inclined his head. "Bonsoir, messieurs."

Of course he well knew it wouldn't end so easily. He heard Cochrane's hatchet man come out of the shadows before the hooligan had gone a foot outside his hiding place behind the curtains on either side of the stage. Cort casually hooked his thumb in the waistband of his trousers. The man behind him breathed sharply and shifted his weight.

"Now, now, Monsieur Cochrane," Cort said. "We wouldn't wish this diverting interlude to end on an unpleasant note, would we?"

"Another game," Cochrane said, less smoothly than before.

"I think not."

The hatchet-man lunged. Cort turned lightly, caught the man's wrist before his fist could descend, and twisted his fingers. The man yelped and fell to his knees, cradling his broken limb to his chest.

Cort sighed and shook his head, flipping his coat away from his waist. "As you see, gentleman, I carry no weapons. However, I find it quite unmannerly to attack a gentleman when his back is turned." He bowed to Cochrane. "I bid you good evening."

His ears were pricked as he walked away, but no one came after him. They'd been at least a little impressed by his demonstration, though how long that would last was another question entirely. It would be the better part of valor by far to leave this establishment as soon as possible.

And he'd have to take his prize with him, even if he didn't want her and had no place to put her. He was threading his way among the gaming tables toward the stage when Yuri came puffing up to join him.

"Why did you do it?" Yuri whispered, his accent thick with distress. "You have lost us half a million dollars and made enemies we cannot afford. Have you gone completely mad?"

Oh, yes, Cort thought, recognizing the true height of his foolishness. He could avoid Cochrane's henchman for a while, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his time in San Francisco watching his back, and fighting was always a last resort. His strength and speed had a way of attracting too much attention. And the kind of attention he liked had nothing to do with being loup-garou.

"Don't fret, mon ami," he said. "Has my luck ever failed us yet?"

The question was sheer bluster, of course. He had not always had such luck; in fact, he and Yuri had been nearly penniless when they had arrived in San Francisco. Nor had there been much improvement over the past several months. Not until the tournament.

But he had chosen to compete in the secondary match and thrown a fortune away for the sake of sentimentality that should have been crushed long ago, like all the other passions he had discarded over the years.

"Would you have me leave a child to such a wretched fate?" he asked.

Yuri had just opened his mouth for a sarcastic reply when a tall, thin man with a crooked nose rushed up to them. His gaze darted from Yuri to Cort and over Cort's shoulder to the table he had left.

"Cortland Renier?" he asked.

Cort bowed. "At your service."

"You're ready to claim your prize?"

"I am."

"Come this way."

The thin man scurried off, and Cort strode after him. Yuri rushed to keep up.

"I think you'd best stay behind," Cort said over his shoulder. "The girl may be frightened if both of us approach her."

Yuri snorted. "And you care so much for the feelings of this girl you have never seen before?"

"I intend to protect my winnings," Cort said.

"I am not going back into that room," Yuri said, gesturing behind him.

"In that case, I would suggest that you go home."

Yuri muttered a curse in his native language and stopped. The thin man went through a door at the left foot of the stage, which opened up into a small anteroom. A second door led to a larger room, empty save for a few broken chairs, a table laden with various prizes, and a quartet of rough-looking characters Cort supposed must serve as guards.

The girl sat in the only sound chair in the room, utterly still in her white nightgown, her hands limply folded in her lap. The smell of laudanum and some sickly perfume hung over her in a choking cloud. She looked like a doll, which Cort assumed had been the point of dressing her so … every bit the waif, innocent and pliable and ready to be used. What she might be like free of the narcotic was anyone's guess.

The guards glowered at him as he approached the girl. She didn't look up.

"Bonjour, ma chère," he said softly.

Her fingers twitched, but she continued to stare at the floor some three feet from tips of her small white toes. Cort moved into her line of sight.

"It's all right," he said. "No one will hurt you."

Slowly, so slowly that the movement was hardly visible, she lifted her head, her gaze sliding up the length of his body. Her eyes, when they met his, were remarkable, even clouded with the effects of laudanum or whatever else they had given her. Their color was neither green nor blue but some intermediate between them, the color of the sea on a clear, still day.

The knowledge struck him all at once, stealing his breath. He had been more of a fool than even he had realized. The girl wasn't merely some unfortunate who had run afoul of the most vicious elements of the Barbary Coast. It was remarkable that she had been taken at all.

For she was loup-garou. And he understood then why he had been compelled to rescue her.

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