by Lauren Dawes
I propelled myself up another few steps, kicking wildly as I went. A cut opened up on his cheek when I swiped at his face, but it healed almost instantly. Up and up we went, playing this strange game of cat and mouse, only the victor of this game got murder added to their tally.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I went through the door, just not in the way I expected. Draco launched himself at me, landing on my back and riding me to the kitchen floor the basement opened on to. Wood splintered as the doorway shattered around us.
“I’m not a fucking unicorn!” I yelled, jerking and jostling, trying to dislodge him. He was strong, but I didn’t think he was at full strength. Perhaps Faline’s death had weakened him somehow? Whatever the reason, I was fucking grateful. Now all I needed was Reaver to start playing nice.
As Draco flipped me over onto my back, he wrenched my head to the side and tipped my chin up, giving him unfettered access to my throat and the carotid artery that pounded against my skin. Oh, hell no. I was not a juice box. As he leaned in, his mouth open, his fangs growing from tiny points to two-inch monstrosities, I sucked in a breath and braced for my throat to be torn out. I was not, however, braced for the scream that sounded as if it was being forcefully ripped from his vocal cords…with a pair of hot pliers.
My opal had flared back to life, this time holding its glow. It grew in intensity, and whatever it was, whatever it was doing, Draco did not appreciate it. Rearing back, he hissed at me, his features no longer that of a man, but of the monster hidden under his skin. His eyes glowed like hot coals. Black veins erupted all over his skin, raised and pulsing, and his mouth was a terrifying snarl with daggers for teeth.
Shielding his eyes from the glow, he reached blindly for my neck. And that was when I felt Reaver down by my left hand. I clutched at the magnificently mercurial blade and brought it up, swinging it in an arc that cleaved the head from Draco’s body. His head landed to my right, his body listed to the left, blood spewing from both appendages and smattering across my chest in an X. It coated my legs and lower torso until I looked as if I’d gone all Carrie on his ass. Which, I guessed, I kind of had.
I sat up with a wince, bringing the blade with me. I stared at it. “You have some of the best and worst timing in the world.”
Panting, breathless, I clung to the opal, which had stopped glowing as soon as Draco’s head separated from his body. I needed to find out how it worked. I needed a fucking shower. Then a therapy session.
Shit.
Joanna Wong wouldn’t know what hit her.
Eighteen
I had the good sense to call Wolfe and tell him what had happened. He wasn’t too happy to hear from me at three in the morning, but I told him that not having baby vampires running around anymore would be his reward for taking the call. He cursed me out a little, then said he would send a team to the scene.
As I sat in the stainless steel and cherry wood kitchen waiting, I tried to work through everything. The most pressing thing was the secrets my parents had kept from me. I had to find out more, and I had to find out how this opal was connected. I glanced down at Reaver, still coated in blood. My impulse was to clean the thing, but I didn’t want to mess with the crime scene any more than I already had.
My right shoulder throbbed, as did the cut on my hand, the bump on my head, and my knee. These past few days had been a real shit show, but I actually kind of enjoyed them. It sure beat a desk job in any case. I glanced up when I heard the front door open.
“McKenzie?” someone called.
“In the kitchen,” I shouted back happily.
Two cops in thick jackets came in and took in the scene, then looked at me. Reaver, conveniently, disappeared. “EMTs are on the way.”
“Thanks.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Vampire?” I replied.
The first guy, whose nametag said his name was Ramirez, said, “No, I mean how in the hell did you sever someone’s head completely? Look at you, you’re five foot three.”
I glowered. “Five four, douche canoe,” I snarled.
Ramirez put his hands up in surrender. “Sorry. Wouldn’t want to deny you an inch.”
“An inch makes all the difference,” I shot back sweetly, looking down at his junk.
He shook his head. “Yeah, yeah.” Looking over his shoulder, he said to his partner, “Come on. Wonder Woman here will be okay for a few minutes.”
“There’s more fun downstairs,” I said. “I got a little decapitation happy,” I added with a shrug. “Bad habit. I’m going to therapy for it.”
The two cops shook their heads and went downstairs. I was either going to be a fucking badass for killing two supes by decapitation… or I was going to be the freak of nature who killed two supes by decapitation. Either way, I was alive and the bad guys were dead, but the bastards had left me a puzzle to figure out all on my own.
It was only after a few more minutes when I heard the sirens. The EMTs were here, and I was closer to falling into a bed. When they walked into the kitchen, they looked at Draco, then at me.
“He said I was short,” I told them with a shrug. One of them blanched a little, then put his professional face on.
Dropping his jump bag onto the counter beside me, he said, “What’s your name?”
“Cat.”
“Okay, Cat, can you tell me what happened?”
“Where would you like me to start?”
“At the beginning, preferably.”
So I did. I saved him the trouble of listening to everything that had happened before the night out. That was just for my therapist to know. I also left out the part about my parents and Draco’s reasoning for targeting me specifically. I played dumb when he asked about how I decapitated the big bad vampire, letting them think I was some sort of supernatural with awesome strength. Sometimes, being unassuming was the best way to fuck someone over.
By the time the EMTs were done, the house was crawling with CSI, cataloguing everything they could find. I thought it was kind of stupid actually to have PIG in place for investigating paranormal crimes, but not have a paranormal CSI. What if some things were enchanted or magical in nature, so when they went and touched it, they ended up cursing themselves or killing someone else? Maybe that was something I could bring up with Wolfe when I reported to him tomorrow.
“We’re going to take you to the hospital now, Cat. Did you need to collect anything from here?”
I shivered in the blanket they’d given me and shook my head. “I’m ready to leave this house of horrors.”
When I arrived at hospital, I was taken straight to the ER to have my shoulder x-rayed. They were concerned that more damage had been done with the cuffs and wanted a better look at my knee, which had blown up to the size of a grapefruit. They stitched up my hand and gave me a cold compress for my head. By the time I was wheeled onto the ward, the sun was well established in the sky and the clock on the wall read nine-fourteen.
I fell asleep as soon as the wheels were locked in place.
The next time I woke, someone was stroking my arm. I peeled open my eyes to find Sawyer there. He looked hollowed out. Black rings were under his eyes, and all the color had leached from his face. I thought he’d even lost a little weight.
“You’re awake.”
I nodded. “You are too. Which was it in the end—loss of all bodily fluids, or did someone knock you out?”
He grimaced and looked away. “The owner of the club eventually knocked me out at closing time. I…” He sighed. “I wasn’t myself.”
“Is that what normally happens if you’re denied?”
He nodded, just once. “It hasn’t happened in a very long time.”
“I’m sorry then, since I was one the who… ran, I guess.”
“You were right to get the hell out of there, Cat. If we’d fucked, things would’ve been so different.”
I shrugged, instantly regretting it. I sucked in a hiss and looked down at the sling keeping my right a
rm immobile. Sawyer’s fingers tightened around my hand.
“Your shoulder will be fine with rest—you didn’t dislocate it again, but it did get strained. I’m not sure what other injuries you have. The nurses and doctors aren’t too forthcoming with people who aren’t immediate family, and since you didn’t have a next of kin registered, they’re even less willing to talk to me.”
“I don’t have a next of kin because Draco killed my parents.”
“He did what? What the hell happened last night, Cat?”
I stared at him, waiting for any hint that he knew about me, about my past, or about what happened. “My parents were part of an organization called Rogue Faction. Have you heard of them before?”
He frowned. “I’d heard of teams of humans who were believers before we revealed ourselves, but I didn’t think they were organized in any particular way. You’re saying they were?”
“If what Draco said is true, then yes. They’re organized, and if Draco didn’t kill them all, there are more of them out there. I tend to take everything a psychopath says with a grain of salt.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“When I was ten, my mom just didn’t come home from a trip, and when my dad did, he looked dead himself. Apparently, my father went on a killing spree. He was looking for revenge, for absolution. He was clearing out a kiss in Turkey when Draco found him. Draco was the lone survivor of his Italian kiss, and he blamed my father for the slaughter. So he killed him. And he wanted to kill me because apparently, I’m a combination of two of the strongest bloodlines in Rogue Faction.”
“You?” His brows shot up in disbelief.
I nodded. “Me. Draco wanted me dead, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction.” I looked around the hospital room. It was nice for someplace sterile and white. “Did you hear about Faline?”
His expression turned stormy, his eyes darkening to nearly black. “I heard. She was working with him?”
“Apparently. Evidently, he promised her she wouldn’t become sick and die if she fed exclusively from him. She felt like that was a good deal.”
“But she’s been a cop for years. I don’t understand how she could just switch sides like that.”
It was a rhetorical question, but I answered him anyway. “You yourself said you’d give anything to stop this cycle of perpetual loneliness. What if a woman said to you that she could make it all stop? You could stop screwing everything that moved and be happy and healthy with just one female. Would you do it?”
“In a heartbeat,” he replied.
“And there’s your answer, Sawyer Taylor.”
His gaze clearing, it drifted over to Reaver, which was propped up in the other visitor’s chair in the corner. It hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Did it show up in time to save you?”
I nodded. “It went away in time to have my ass handed to me too, but it showed up again when it mattered.”
My partner’s expression vacillated between anguish, guilt, and anger. “I’m so sorry, Cat.”
“For what?”
The muscle in his jaw feathered. “For not being there. For not noticing you were gone.”
“You were under the influence of a spell.”
“That’s not an excuse. You broke it…” He looked down at where my opal was sitting against my sternum, hidden by the gown. “You broke through the spell while I was chained to a biological imperative.”
“You can’t fight your nature, Sawyer.” Reaching out slowly, I placed my hand on his. “You’re an incubus. Sex is what you need, what you do, what you think, breathe, and eat.” I retracted my hand and settled it on my stomach. “I am but a lowly human,” I said with a wink.
“You’re more than that, Cat, and you know it.”
I raised my brows, inviting him to say more. Hey, I was in a hospital room with an aching shoulder, a busted knee, and bruised to the hilt. I could do with a little ego stroking.
“You have no idea, do you? You should’ve been dead in the principal’s office that first day we met. That Renfield was going to kill you.”
I was going to shrug, to dismiss his words, but then I thought about it. “I am pretty amazing, right?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I’d say so.”
Silence fell on the room. “Can we link it all to Draco? I mean, does it all fit?”
I thought it did, but Sawyer was better at understanding the supernatural stuff than I was. “I think so. The Renfield in the principal’s office was one of his. He was making the baby vampires in order to draw you out, although how he knew you’d be the one…” He paused, then swore.
“What? What is it?”
“Faline.”
“Oh, I love this game. Dead.” He gave me a look. “You’re supposed to say the first word you think of when you hear the word ‘dead.’”
Shaking his head, he said, “Faline was supposed to be my partner, not you. About a week before you came strolling into the office, she said she wanted to work alone. I couldn’t understand it at the time, because we worked so well together. Now it makes sense. She was engineering it so that you would become my partner.”
“None of the other members of PIG have partners,” I pointed out.
“That’s because they don’t play nice,” he replied. “Well, except for Brax, but he never goes out into the field. He’s more of our secretary.”
“I’m going to tell him you said that.”
He shook his head. “Faline played me, played us, the whole time.”
I thought back to her showing up at my kickboxing class, then at my apartment after the crash. She did seem to just know where I was going to be, popping up at the most convenient time.
“I’m glad she’s dead,” I said, holding Sawyer’s gaze. “I’m glad I killed her. You can’t have people you don’t trust guarding your back.”
He smiled. “You’re right about that, Cat.”
When Sawyer went to get something to eat and to sneak me in a hamburger, I picked up my phone from the rolling table beside my bed and unlocked it. I had about a gazillion missed calls and texts from Sasha. I began scrolling through, feeling more and more guilty as the simple wording of ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ turned into ‘OMFG, WHERE ARE YOU???’ toward the end.
I shut down the message app and called her.
“Oh, my fucking god!’ she shouted when the call connected. “Why haven’t you been answering my calls and texts?”
“Hey, Sash,” I said lamely. “I’m really—”
“Don’t you dare say sorry,” she screeched. Yanking the phone away from my ear, I wondered if she was part banshee and didn’t know it. Slowly, like I was bringing a grenade with the pin pulled out back to my head, I listened as she continued her rant.
“…at class, Mike asked about you and you didn’t answer my calls and I thought you were dead andwhythefuckdidn’tyouanswermycallsandtexts?”
I cringed. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. When my friend stopped long enough to take a breath, I cut in. “I’m sorry, Sasha. Things got…” Murderous? Nah, too dramatic. Busy? Not dramatic enough. “Things were crazy at work. Long hours. Trips to the hospital. Things like that.”
“The hospital? Is that where you are right now?”
I sucked on my teeth for a moment, wondering how much I could tell her without her coming down here. I was getting out soon, and I didn’t want her to come all the way down here if I wasn’t going to be here for much longer. “Yes?”
Stunned silence.
I soaked it up while I could.
“Yes?? What the fuck happened to you?”
Sighing, I ran my fingertips over the textured blanket around my legs. “I may have gone to a sex club and maybe, kind of gotten into a fight with a succubus and then a vampire?”
“You may have?” she retorted.
Yeah, it was a pretty fucking thin excuse. “I did and now he’s dead, so all good.”
Sasha exhaled sharply, and when she spoke a
gain, her voice was modulated. “Okay. I know you’re a cop, Cat, so I knew things like this were going to happen. I’d just hoped that you would’ve told me about them.”
And didn’t that just make me feel like shit? I was a terrible friend. “I’d intended to, Sash, but things just got out of control.”
This was the first time we’d ever had an argument like this, so I wasn’t sure what I could or should say. In the end, I settled for good old-fashioned contrition. “I really am sorry. And I promise I’ll keep you in the loop when I can.”
She sniffed. “That’s all I can ask.” There was a beat of silence, then, “So I’ve met someone…”
I smiled as I listened to Sasha wax lyrical about the dick size of the guy she was dating, how much of a fucking boss he was in the bedroom, and how they were seeing each other again tonight. Although this was a fucked-up conversation to be having with me in the hospital, it did actually make me feel better. I was reconnecting with my friend, and it made me realize how lucky I was to have her.
Nineteen
I ended up staying at the hospital for another few days. My knee had a severe bone bruise, leaving me in a brace and regularly icing it for at least a month. In the meantime, I was on light duties, which meant I stayed at my desk for most of the day while Sawyer went out and interviewed people.
I didn’t mind it much, until about day three. That’s when I started climbing the fucking walls, itching to get out there and solve crimes with my partner. With my partner… I kind of liked the way those words sounded. My prejudice against supes was waning as I learned that, like people, not all of them are a bag of dicks. Some of them were genuinely nice and genuinely likable. The jury was still out on Wolfe though.
So, I spent my days hanging with Brax in between Sawyer’s return from interviews or crime scenes. We’d play paper hoops and shoot the shit. It turned out the guy was a member of the local werewolf pack.
