Her eyes grew heavy. She was going to fall asleep in the arms of the man she loved, the man who loved her. It was a new beginning for both of them.
Chapter Thirteen
Early the next morning Nix slipped out of bed and went quietly into the living room to gather her clothes. Her muscles protested some of the movement, reminding her that it had been five years since she’d exercised in quite the way she had last night. She smiled and winced as she bent to pick up one of her socks. God, what a night. She and Tobias had never made love in such a deeply intimate way before. Their couplings had always been born out of desperate lust, even with all the love they’d felt.
Maybe it was her newfound maturity, maybe it was Tobias’s care in not drawing out the demon. Whatever it was, it had worked. She had felt the tug of her inner demon briefly and not strongly enough that she couldn’t fight it back. Thinking of all the time they’d wasted, she pressed her lips together. Had it really been a waste of time? Maybe they were rushing into things too fast now. No, she had to believe that things happened for a reason. Tobias had been meant to go away, to leave her to fend for herself. She really thought that was what had made her finally grow up. There was nothing like a broken heart to mature you.
After taking a quick shower, she started to get dressed. She held up her panties and grimaced. She really didn’t want to put those back on after she’d just cleaned herself up. She tugged on her jeans and fastened them, then wadded up her panties and stuffed them in her pocket. Holding her boots in one hand, she padded in bare feet back into the master bedroom.
“You weren’t planning on trying to sneak out, were you?” Tobias’s voice was rough with sleep. She looked up to see him leaning on one elbow, eyes blinking, dark hair in a lovely tousled mess. There was just enough sunlight to cast shadows over his chest, defining his toned musculature.
She dragged her eyes back to his face. There wasn’t time for any morning nooky, as much as she might like to jump right back in bed. “Sneak out on a vampire? Hardly. I need to get home and change, and grab some breakfast. Unless you have something other than blood in your refrigerator.” When he grimaced, she laughed and perched on the edge of the bed to draw on her socks. “Then we need to call Dante and head down to the observatory. When we spoke to Rinda’s friend Samantha, she talked about Rinda’s affair with a married man, and almost as an aside she’d commented how Mt. Bigelow was a perfect place to study the area of space where the rift occurred.”
Tobias lazily scratched his chest. “I’m with you so far.”
“Well, when you consider what Luc told me, that there are radio transmissions being sent through a mini rift and that the council is aware of them…” She started pulling on her boots. “We need to go back to Mt. Bigelow and talk to those scientists again, especially that head guy, the good-looker who was so nervous.” She twisted around to look at him. “Besides, my poor baby Rufus needs to go outside, and I need to feed him, too.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You have a baby? And you named him Rufus?”
She shot him a grimace. “He’s my dog. Just what’s wrong with his name?”
“For a dog? Not a thing. For a baby?” His eyes darkened and settled low on her belly. “I wouldn’t want any son of mine to get saddled with the name Rufus.”
A slow smile curved her lips. He might not be thrilled with the name, but he didn’t look at all adverse to having a son. She flushed at the thought of carrying his child, of holding the proof of their love in her arms. Before she turned into a maudlin sap, she teased, “Yeah, like Tobias is such a grand name.”
He looked hurt for a second but couldn’t hold on to the expression. His grin was more carefree than she’d ever seen it. “Yes, well, Tobias Caine was the name of the human I took possession of when I first came through the rift, and I felt it was time to honor him by using his name again. Now that preternaturals are known, I won’t have to ever give it up.” This time his frown was genuine. “Unless you really don’t like it.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “It’s a fine name, really. You do him proud.” She got up and stretched. “Shall I call Dante, then? I can have him meet us at council HQ since it’s centrally located for all of us, and we can go to Tucson from there.”
“Sure.” He lay back down and clasped his hands beneath his head. Biceps bulged and pectorals flexed with his movement. “Just make sure he eats breakfast before we leave. I don’t want to sit and watch him stuffing his face again.”
Nix laughed. “He sure can put it away, can’t he?” She stopped beside the bed and leaned down to kiss him again. He brought one big hand up and cupped the back of her neck, holding her still. When she drew back, her breath came a little faster than before.
“Sure I can’t talk you into staying a little longer?” His stormy eyes gleamed with desire.
She groaned. “You are awfully tempting, but I’m sure.” She pushed herself away before she could succumb. The spirit was more willing than the flesh, which was too sore. “Don’t go back to sleep,” she said as she walked toward the bedroom door.
“I just might. You wore me out.”
“Hah. That’s a good one.” If anyone had been in danger of getting worn out, it was her. Most vampires were like the Energizer Bunny—they kept going and going and going.
Or make that coming and coming and coming.
She paused in the doorway and looked back at him. His gaze met hers. “Tobias, I love you.”
His slow smile made her heart melt. “I love you, too, honey. I always have. Always will.” He looked so delicious lying there, arms bent, showing off the definition in his biceps, the dark green sheet bunched around his hips.
She tracked the happy trail of hair down his belly, below his navel before it was lost to sight. A bulge grew beneath the sheet as she watched. She’d taken three steps back into the room before she caught herself. She held out a hand and let out a small growl. “I’ll see you later.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the room before she could change her mind. As much as both of them might want to, they couldn’t spend all day in bed. But once this case was over… Yeah, all the more reason to solve it, and solve it fast.
She opened the front door and almost tripped over a medium-sized cooler on the welcome mat. “Uh, Tobias?” she called back into the house. “You have a delivery.”
“It’s my daily blood supply,” he yelled. “Put it in the fridge, please.”
She bent and grabbed the handle of the cooler and carried it into the kitchen. Setting it down on the counter, she flipped up the lid and saw four bottles of blood in a wire basket. She opened the large refrigerator and shook her head to see it was empty except for one lonely glass of blood. “Well, here now you have four new friends,” she murmured, and put the bottles on the shelf. She set the empty basket in the cooler and headed back toward the front door. “See you later,” she yelled back to Tobias.
“All right.”
On her way home, Nix called Dante. He answered on the first ring. She glanced at her watch. Six a.m. “Oh,” she said. “This early I thought I’d get your voice mail.”
“I’m always up early to get the horses fed and turned out into the paddock,” he said. “Did something happen?”
“No. Tobias and I are heading back down to Tucson this morning, and wanted to see if you’re available.” She turned into her parking lot and pulled into her spot. Holding the phone between her cheek and shoulder, she shut off the car and hopped out.
“Sure. Do we want to grab some breakfast first?”
Remembering the look on Tobias’s face when he’d mentioned making sure they ate first, she grinned. “I’m just gonna fix myself something here. Why don’t you meet us at council headquarters around seven thirty? Does that give you enough time to do what you need to do?”
“Yep. See you then.” He ended the call.
Nix dropped her phone into her purse and let herself into her apartment. Rufus was waiting, whining, and pressing against her legs. She we
nt down on her haunches and loved on him for a minute, letting him lick her and doing her best to reassure him he was all right. “Let’s go outside,” she said, and grabbed his leash.
After he’d taken care of business she put out a scoop of dog food for him and slid a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster. Waiting for the bread to toast she peeled a banana and put it on a small plate, then grabbed a yogurt and took off the lid. The toast popped up. She slathered one slice with peanut butter and the other with orange marmalade.
Nix wandered into the living room and sat on the sofa with feet propped up on the coffee table. Rufus finished his food and sat beside her, his head resting on her shin, his big doggy eyes looking pitiful. She gave him the last bite of her toast, the one with peanut butter, laughing at his antics when the toast stuck to the roof of his mouth. Getting up, she carried her empty plate into the kitchen.
An hour later she was dressed in clean clothes and on her way to the council building. Dante was already there, leaning against the front fender of his truck, and, as she got out of her car, Tobias pulled up in his SUV.
“Well, the gang’s all here,” Dante said, pushing away from his vehicle. As usual he wore a suit jacket and button-down shirt with blue jeans and sturdy work shoes. When she’d commented to him once that she was surprised he didn’t wear cowboy boots, he’d responded that it was too hard to run in boots. Thick-soled work shoes like the beat cops wore were better.
The passenger side window of the SUV rolled down. “Let’s go,” Tobias called out.
Dante opened the back door, grinning at Nix. This time she was fine with riding up front with Tobias. She just sent the grin back at Dante and opened the front passenger door. Just as she was about to climb in, one of the council guards called her name. She turned to look at him.
“The council wants to see you and Tobias,” he said.
“Now?” She frowned and glanced at her watch. It was just now seven thirty. Why in the hell were they in so early?
“Now.”
She heard Tobias’s aggrieved sigh and closed the door. Dante closed his door, too, and they stepped away from the SUV so Tobias could park it. She looked at Dante. “Do you want to wait for us?”
“May as well.” He jerked his head toward the building. “Is there a spare office I can use? I have my laptop with me and can work on some reports while I wait.”
She cleared her throat. “They really don’t want non-preternaturals in the building unless they’re there for a meeting. Sorry.”
He shrugged. “No problem. The cab of my truck’ll work.”
Tobias walked up to them. “So you’ll wait for us?”
Dante nodded. “As long as you don’t take too long. Some of us do grow old, you know.”
“We’ll get a message out to you if it looks like it’s going to take too long.”
“You make it sound like we’ll be trying for a prison break,” Nix said. “Which, now that I think on that a bit, isn’t too far from the truth.”
Tobias chuckled. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Nix looked at Dante. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
His gaze went from her to Tobias and back again, his expression one she’d seen before—the detective trying to puzzle something out that was bothering him. “I’ll be here,” he said slowly.
Nix and Tobias went inside and were called straight into the council chambers.
Deoul, Caladh, and Braithwaite were there, in their high-backed seats behind the big table, dressed in their formal white council robes. Caladh looked highly displeased, while Deoul and Braithwaite seemed unusually satisfied. Wondering what was going on, Nix glanced at Tobias, who seemed…ill at ease. “What’s going on?” she whispered.
He gave an unconvincing shrug. He knew something was up, she was sure of it. He might not be certain that what he knew was what they wanted to talk about, but he knew something.
Deoul sat with folded arms, one leg crossed over the other in indolent grace. “First of all, we have confirmation on the identity of the latest victim. One of our criminalists found a wallet in a nearby Dumpster belonging to Desmond Dumond. The body, what bits of it were recovered, has been positively identified as his.”
“Dumond?” Tobias asked. “They’re sure?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“You knew him?” Nix asked Tobias, then said dryly, “What am I saying? Of course you knew him. You know just about everybody on the planet. And if you don’t know a particular person, you know someone who does.”
“That is neither here nor there,” Deoul said before Tobias could respond to her soft jibe. “We have become aware in the last couple of years that there is a group of preternaturals who may be seeking to undermine this and other councils worldwide.” He sent Tobias a look that Nix didn’t understand, a shared glance she wasn’t a part of. “We had asked Dumond to infiltrate the local group.”
“It appears he succeeded. To a point,” Tobias responded.
“That’s our thought as well.” Caladh leaned forward. “We hadn’t heard from him in about six months, but we suspected it was because he had managed to infiltrate deep enough that he didn’t want to take the chance of blowing his cover.”
“It’s a bit coincidental that he wound up dead, don’t you think?” Tobias clasped his hands behind his back.
The council members nodded. “We think it can be safely surmised,” Deoul said, “that Dumond was killed for his involvement in the group. The question is: Were Pickett and Novellus killed for the same reason?”
“It would also be a coincidence if they were killed the way they were and were not involved, don’t you think?” Nix asked. Amarinda’s murder was tied into her study of the rift. It had nothing to do with an affair with a married man, Nix was sure of it.
“Perhaps.” Deoul stared at her a moment. “Which brings me to our next item.” He rested his forearms on the table and linked his fingers together. Slyness slid across his face. “Since it has been determined through both evidence and your own statements to this council that humans are not involved in these killings, your services on this case are no longer required.”
“Wait! What?” Nix glanced at Tobias, who stood ramrod straight and silent. She looked again at Deoul. “You can’t take me off the case.” Her heart leaped into her throat. There was too much at stake for her to be removed from this case. They’d just found out about the rift device, for one thing, and now to find out the last victim had infiltrated a group that may very well have a connection to the rift communications? She had to stay involved!
“Of course I can take you off the case. You work for me, remember?” Deoul’s tone held sarcasm and irritating condescension. It made her want to smack him. One day, maybe she’d get that chance. Either when there were no repercussions or when she no longer wanted or needed this job.
“Actually, she works for us,” Caladh muttered. He slouched in his chair and drummed the fingers of one hand on the table. “But unfortunately, Nix, the standard procedure is to remove a liaison when the population he or she represents is not involved in the case. You know that. You’re our human liaison, and humans are not involved.”
“But exceptions have been made before—”
“Not for you.” Deoul slashed a hand through the air. “Not on this case.”
She’d always known she wasn’t Deoul’s favorite, but now he really seemed to have a bug up his butt about her. “Why not this case?”
“You’re too close to it. Not only were you a friend of one of the victims, but…” His gaze slid to Tobias. “As we had confirmed yesterday, the scent of demon has been prevalent at each scene.”
Her mouth dropped and she turned toward Tobias. The man she loved. The man who’d said he would keep this secret. “You told them?” she whispered.
“I didn’t say it was prevalent,” he corrected. He looked at her, apology in his eyes. “They already knew, Nix. I merely confirmed their intel.”
�
��Sure they did.” She glared at him, having a hard time believing she’d let him do this to her again. But she’d deal with that in a few minutes. For now, she turned back to the council members. She wasn’t going to go without a fight. “I can still help. I have contacts—”
“Who may very well be the ones behind the attacks.” Deoul shook his head. “No. This is not open for debate. You’re off this case.” When she didn’t move, his voice rose. “You are dismissed, Ms. de la Fuente.”
She looked at Tobias, mouth open in shock. He met her gaze and gave a little shrug. She knew he wouldn’t go into it with her in front of the council, but, by God, he could do better than shrug at her. Before she could say anything though, the council president spoke again.
“Go. Now.” Deoul gave a wave of his hand in perfunctory dismissal.
She didn’t budge. Bony-assed fairy. As her anger and outrage mounted, her inner demon began clawing its way to the surface, sending fire to churn in her gut, and slide beneath her skin. She lifted one hand and scratched the skin concealing her horn buds, where the sensation was the worst.
“Nix.” Tobias’s voice was low. Cautionary. “Just go. I’ll see what I can do.”
She tightened her lips. “You’ve probably already done more than enough, thanks.” Looking at the council, she dipped her head. Twisting on her heel, she strode out of the room, uncaring that the force of her shove slammed the double doors against the walls as they flew open. She ignored the two guards who hurried to close them behind her. Deoul was a first-rate bastard, and Tobias wasn’t far behind him. She even, at this moment, hated him a little bit.
Nix stalked to the far end of the hallway and slammed her fist against the wall. Staring out the window, she tried to calm down and think about this logically. This wasn’t the first time she’d been released from a case. As Caladh had said, it was protocol. If neither the victim nor the suspect was human, there was nothing for the human liaison to do.
What had her most concerned was that Tobias had talked to them about the demon scent at the crime scenes and hadn’t told her. She felt like all that sweet talk from last night meant nothing. The words were like ash in her mouth now.
Kiss of the Vampire Page 19
