by Faith Hunter
“My were-taint will heal it,” he said, offhand. “But yours is bad.” He knelt, lifted my arm, and I saw that blood coated my sleeve. He peeled back the cut cloth to reveal the injury, three oozing wounds, parallel, made by vamp talons. The lacerations were about two inches across and cut into the deltoid muscle deeply enough that when he pressed it open, a tiny pulse of blood started, rhythmic and steady. A tiny artery had been severed.
“I’ll heal it when I shift,” I murmured.
Rick sat beside me and opened a military med kit on his belt. Inside was a tourniquet, the kind a medic put on a severed limb to stop the bleeding, packages of sterile gauze and alcohol pads and cleanser. Stuff to sew up a wound, black thread and tiny curved needles. A syringe of clear fluid. It was marked MORPHINE.
“You are not sewing me up,” I said.
Rick laughed. “No. I’m not. But I will pack it until we can get out of here.”
“Okay. Sure.”
I watched as he tore away my sleeve and cleaned and bandaged my wound. He tied the gauze snugly and wound cling wrap around my arm. It hurt, but I watched his hands, sure and steady as he worked. I smelled his scent, sweat and blood and cat. When he was done, he raised his eyes to me and smiled, flashing that small crooked bottom tooth. A shiver cut through me, burning and icy.
Rick lifted a hand and touched my burned face. Gently. So gently. I closed my eyes, inhaling him. Wanting him, and knowing that I couldn’t have him without risking contracting the were-taint. “You smell so good,” I whispered.
“I miss you,” he whispered.
“I miss you too,” I said. “This so sucks.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. It does. What’s worse, now I have a job that’s likely to pit us against each other way too often.” And then he was gone, taking his med kit and its little syringe to a soldier we had thought was dead but who was still with us. In agony.
I looked up to find Eli’s gray eyes on me, a strange look on his face, an odd amalgam of something sharper than mere curiosity, more intense than suspicion. And maybe something like longing. It took me by surprise. He studied me and I studied him. And then he turned away.* * *
A bit less than an hour after sunset, Leo arrived in a rented, extra-long stretch limo. With him was Sabina, the outclan priestess, healed of the disease that had taken her down, and three blood-servants chosen for battle experience, more so than beauty. Lounging on the beautiful upholstery was Grégoire, Leo’s secondo heir, dressed in sky blue silk pajamas. Next to him on the long seat were the surprises. Rick introduced his unit—a werewolf stuck in wolf form, and Pea, a juvenile grindylow—and with them was his supervisor at PsyLED. Her name was Soul. She was gorgeous.
Soul could have been anywhere from forty to sixty, the kind of woman who was ageless and sexy and sultry, and made all the men in visual distance perk up and think about taking her to the nearest hotel. She had smooth olive skin and black, flashing eyes and platinum hair, the kind nature gives some formerly black-haired women. It hung down her back in long, supple waves. And she had curves in all the right places. I disliked her on sight.
I stepped back behind the wall and studied her. Soul was wearing some kind of long, floating, diaphanous dress made of layers of silk gauze that brushed her feet. Over it she wore a watered silk coat to her knees. She was wearing a pair of black dancing shoes with straps over the instep that I coveted. Around her neck was a thin gold chain with a solid gold apple depending from it. In Beast sight, she glowed with the heat of magical energies, not witch, not were, but something not human. She was also carrying a staff with a psy-meter mounted on the top. A supernat working for PsyLED. Great. Just freaking ducky.
Soul, the wolf, and Pea went straight to Rick. Leo came straight to me. Instantly I flashed on the forced feeding, the pain and the fury and the helplessness. My hands clenched, but I forced down my reaction, knowing that anything I felt he could read in my body language, or smell drifting from my pores. I took a slow breath and blew it out.
“Report,” Leo said. It sounded like a military command and I was forced to remember that Leo had fought in wars for centuries, Grégoire at his side, as he was now. Or leading the way. Despite his slight build, delicate form, and silk pjs, or perhaps because of it all, Grégoire was a fierce warrior. I’d seen him jump in front of a bound demon armed with nothing but a sword and zeal. Leo was scary in totally different ways. The MOC was just freaky powerful.
“We beat ’em. I guess. But your enemy wasn’t here. Sorry, Leo.”
He lifted one black brow in that elegant and infuriating way he had, and said, “You are bleeding. Humans are dead. Mithrans are dead, and their blood smells of disease. I require details, my Enforcer.”
I sighed. And there it was. The instigating factor of all the crap I was in just now—my claim to be his Enforcer.
And then Leo leaned in, his nose near my collarbone. He sniffed once, delicately, and stood back, his face puzzled. He turned to his second and said, “Something is different.”
Grégoire leaned in as well and sniffed. He said, “Your bonding with your Enforcer has undergone a metamorphosis.”
Oh, crap. They could tell that by my smell?
Grégoire clasped his hands behind his back and walked in a half circle around me like I was a mare he might buy. I narrowed my eyes at him. If I hadn’t been so weak from blood loss, I might’ve socked him. “Interesting,” Grégoire said.
To a blood-servant standing at his back, Leo said, “Bring my injured servant a chair before she falls supine.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
One Punch with a Set of Brass Knucks
I refused the chair. I was feeling stubborn and ornery. I sat, bloody and exhausted, on the floor of the first level, my back to the wall, watching the cleanup. My involvement here was done. The battle between Leo and de Allyon had resulted in the death of humans, attacked by diseased vamps. Two of Derek’s men had sustained life-threatening injuries, Vodka Martini and Vodka Lime Rickey. Even with a good supply of vamp-blood to heal them, they might not make it. Vampira Carta had been bypassed, we had a vamp war on our hands, and I had no idea where de Allyon was. I hated to think that things couldn’t get much worse—because they always could. They always did.
A congressional committee had been looking at the supernatural problem as it related to law enforcement for ages, trying to come up with a way to apply human law to supernatural creatures. So far, they had not been successful, but scuttlebutt in the vamp hunting community said that PsyLED had been granted sweeping powers to deal with it. With us.
The human police agencies were now involved in this situation, and PsyLED, with Rick acting as OIC and PI, the officer in charge and principal investigator. It was his first big case, and he was coming up with a laundry list of legal charges against the enemy vamps still alive. Rick had called in the crime scene investigators from PsyLED HQ. He had also informed us that the witch circle in the middle of the cinder-block room had been a portal to a cell holding hungry vamps. Like, how was I supposed to know that? And how did he?
Soul followed Rick around like one of his pets, observing and evaluating, agreeing with everything Rick said. Rick was her prized pupil. My arm throbbed. My skin burned. Jealousy skulked through me on pointy little claws.
Close to midnight, Rick finally circled back to me. He knelt near me and said, “You look like hell. You need to shift.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
He chuckled, looking over his crime scene, and went suddenly silent. His wolf was sitting beside Soul, and the werewolf had dropped his head. His hackles rose. He stood and prowled across the room toward us slowly, lifting his paws one at a time, as if he’d just sighted prey. And the prey was me. I watched the huge white wolf, not moving, freezing like a rabbit in the grass. The wolf wasn’t a real wolf, but a werewolf who had been zapped with angel power and was now stuck in wolf form. Pea rode his back, the green catlike grindylow’s claws caught in the beautiful fur. The wolf sped up, almost trotti
ng, his eyes on me, and Pea hissed in warning, tightening her grip.
“Brute, hold,” Rick commanded. The wolf stopped, but his growl went up in volume. Soul studied us across the room, surprised. Pea chattered and yanked on the wolf’s fur, agitated. Rick said, “What’s gotten into him?”
“Me, I think.” To the were, I said, “I took you down once. I can take you down again. And your pet Pea will slit your throat if you bite me. You better think about that before you try to get back at me.”
“You took him down?” Rick asked.
“Yeah. When he was in human form. One punch with a set of brass knucks. I think I broke his jaw.”
Brute, which was a good name for the werewolf, growled deep in his throat, more a vibration than a sound. His silver-blue eyes bored into me. Pea hissed and dug in with her claws; the scent of werewolf blood flooded out. I started laughing, which was probably not the smartest thing I could have done, but I was so tired I couldn’t hold it in.
Rick stepped to the pair and put his hand on Brute’s side. The vibration stopped. Brute lowered his head in threat, but it was a future threat, not one he’d fulfill right now. He snarled, his eyes not leaving mine. The wolf huffed in disgust and dropped to his stomach, putting his head on his paws. Pea mewled and petted the were, grooming his white fur. Rick shook his head. “I have the weirdest life,” he muttered, and he walked off.
A moment later he was back, holding a key. He pointed it at his animal unit. “Stay with Soul, guys.” He lowered his other hand to me for a hand up. “Come on. We’re going for a ride.” I let him pull me to my feet, feeling the new power in his body as he lifted me effortlessly. I followed him outside, my body aching and exhausted.
We ducked under the crime scene tape and went directly to Grégoire’s limo, where Rick pushed me into the passenger seat and drove us out of the city, stopping at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Without a word he went inside, and I lay back in the seat and closed my eyes. I had gotten a nap, but my arm was throbbing, and my skin was burning where the vamp-blood had landed. I must have fallen asleep, because he was back in five seconds with three hams, a box of protein bars, and a ham sandwich. He expected me to shift and heal myself. Rick restarted the limo and took my hand as he pulled out of the lot.
Holding hands, silent, he drove down through Natchez Under the Hill, into the dark, the town’s lights throwing dark shadows into the car. He parked next to the river, the limo engine silent. He stared out over the black water. It was moving fast, eddies and swirls and little fluffs of foam here and there.
“The docks and warehouses and old homes here were all built on the backs of slave labor. Just like New Orleans,” he said. “Now, a century and a half after the fall of slavery, it’s beautiful and awful all at once.”
That was a very un-Rick-like comment. I looked out over the massive waterway, weeping willows and fall-painted trees on its verdant banks. Downstream, where a stream joined the river, there was a small rookery of white egrets, looking like a cloud caught in the branches of dead trees. Rick studied the water, and I turned to him, wondering how much the were-taint, and all he’d been through, had changed him. Was still changing him. I finally broke the silence. “You’re healed,” I said.
He shrugged. “I heal fast now.”
I thought about that. “How was the last full moon?” I asked.
“I did okay.” He shrugged again. “Solved a crime. Got a badge.” After a moment, he said, “Lost my girl.”
Beast rose in me, watching him, intent as if he was prey. Mine, she murmured. “I haven’t gone anywhere,” I said.
“I can’t have sex. If I have sex with you, Pea will kill me. Then she’ll kill you.”
Unexpected tears blurred my vision. I tightened my grip on his hand. He returned the pressure, his gaze still on the river. “There’s more to love than sex,” I said.
He didn’t look at me. “Do you love me, Jane?”
I swallowed past the sudden pain in my throat. “Yeah. Do you love me?”
“Yeah.” He smiled then. “We’re so damn romantic.”
I laughed, fighting down tears. We were holding hands so tightly we’d have broken the bones of a normal human. “We’ll find a way through this eventually,” I said. “Both of our species are long-lived, barring fatal accidents like getting eaten.” Rick’s brows went up at that one, but he still didn’t turn to me. “Just because we can’t be together today doesn’t mean we won’t be able to be together tomorrow.”
“Our jobs, you for the vamps, me with PsyLED, put us at odds.” He had said that earlier and the repetition made me listen more closely. “I haven’t told anyone what you are, but you’re a skinwalker and I’m a cop.” He stared hard into the night, and I got a bad feeling about what Rick might say next. “If you went renegade and, say, ate someone’s liver—”
“U’tlun’ta,” I said. The Cherokee word was pronounced “hut luna,” and was what one of my species became when we got old, went crazy, and started eating humans.
Rick let the ghost of a smile cross his mouth and said, “Yeah. That. We studied American tribal mythology as part of our training.” He stared out over the Mississippi, her waters a muted susurration and a deep thrum, like the heartbeat of the world. “Don’t make me have to kill you. Shoot you with silver.”
I thought about that while the river ran past and my arm throbbed. “If I started killing humans, I’d want you to shoot me.”
After a longer moment, he said, “Glad we got that straight. Like I said. Romantic. But we can’t be together.” It was half a question, and I shook my head in a silent no. We couldn’t be together because sex would infect me with black were-leopard blood-taint. At the thought, tears gathered in my eyes.
Rick made a ruminating sound, halfway between a thoughtful hmmm and a grunt. “So, in the meantime we . . . what? Date others?”
Mine, Beast thought.
I wondered if his dating others included the witch, Soul. My heart hurt when I said, “Seems only fair. See each other when we can.”
Rick turned to me then, his cat rising in his eyes. “Play when we can?” He meant play in bed, which we’d done once and which had been pretty close to fantastic. Okay, had been totally fantastic.
My heart lightened and my lips curved up slightly. “Play. Yeah. Play.”
“I can smell your blood,” he said. “I can smell that you’ve lost a lot, too much, and you’re still bleeding. You need to shift.” He opened his door and pulled me across the seat and out. I felt faint-headed from standing so quickly, and leaned against the car as Rick grabbed the groceries, a blanket, and slid an arm around my waist to support me, which felt all kinds of weird. I wasn’t used to being supported. In any way. But Rick was inhumanly strong now, my weight almost nothing on him. He led me down, toward the river, away from the lights of the city on the bluff and from the noise of Natchez Under the Hill, and into the shadows. The night was chill, with a faint wind. I could smell the water and the egrets and the hams. I had never fed Beast ham, especially not cooked ham, and I wondered how she would like the sugar-crusted honey-baked one and the bacon-wrapped one. My mouth started watering just thinking of the meat. Yeah. I needed to shift.
In a secluded spot Rick spread out the blanket, put the hams on the grass, and ripped them open. He lay down on the blanket. “Strip,” he commanded.
I spluttered, thinking, So much for any thoughts of romance.
“I dare you.” He lay back on the blanket with his hands behind his head.
“I’ve always thought taking dares was stupid.”
“I’ve always thought you naked was wonderful.”
Which put a totally different characteristic on his command. I felt in my pocket and found the lion’s tooth I used when I needed to shift in an unexpected place or time. My arm was throbbing. I had lost a lot of blood. I sighed and started dropping blades. They made an impressive pile. Next to them I dropped the utility belt and the lightweight Kevlar vest, followed by the holsters and weap
ons. Then I pulled off combat boots and socks. The grass prickled my bare soles. When I unbuttoned the camo pants, Rick’s eyes started a soft yellow-green glow. I could smell his cat, musky and hot-blooded.
I held his eyes as I slid the pants off, my body hidden by shadows and the long tails of the black shirt. The cold November night air hit my legs. Chill bumps rose on my skin. My body tightened all over.
I unbuttoned the shirt cuffs, exposing my wrists. Started on the buttons down the front of the shirt. Rick’s eyes glowed greener. His cat scent filled the night, merging with the powerful water-fish-pollution stench of the enormous river. I slowed, a heaviness filling me. His eyes holding me.
Slowly, I pushed the shirt off my shoulders. Let it fall to the grass. It caught at my wound, the dried blood like glue. I felt fresh trickles across my skin. The cut was pounding, aching beneath the bandage. Ignored. My breath came fast. I unbuckled the black bra. Let it fall. The night caressed my stomach and across my breasts. Rick’s eyes seemed to follow the wind. My nipples tightened and a turgid warmth settled low in my belly.
I hooked my fingers in my panties and slid them down. When I stood, Rick was watching me, his eyes a bright, sharp green-gold glow. The scent of our cats caught up on the slow breeze and played lazily in the small clearing.
Mine, Beast thought. And she slammed down through me. I knelt on the grass and bent over Rick, purring. I rubbed my cheek to his, his rough nighttime beard scratching. I scraped my jaw along his, scent-marking him. He was purring now too, the twin vibrations filling the air.
His hands clenched, as if to keep from grabbing me. “Shift,” he said, his voice tight. “Or we’re gonna be in trouble. You smell too good.”
I laughed, my voice deeper than my own, and sat back on my heels. His eyes traveled over me as I arched back and wrapped my fingers around the tooth. Beast was so close to the surface that the transition started instantly. My spine whipped back, hard. Pelt sprouted. I entered the gray place of the change.* * *
