He stood a good five foot ten, if I had to hazard a guess, and I pegged him to weigh about 180. He wasn’t overweight, nor was he uncommonly skinny—or fit.
The only thing about him that stood out to me was the fact that nothing stood out.
Oh, and the fact that he practically exuded panic.
When he caught sight of Justin, a light flared in the back of his eyes. A game smile curved his lips, though, and I watched as he lifted a hand in greeting. “Greaves, man. What are you doing down here in hell? I didn’t think the Abyss was your speed.”
Justin bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile as he turned to face the man we’d come here to find.
So maybe he’d found us, but I was still going to call it a successful night.
I caught the hilt of my blade and managed to yank it one-handed from the wall while I continued to brace Stripe. Once the blade was free, I let the son-of-a-bitch go. He hit the ground with a muffled thud. A bloody streak decorated the wall where he’d stood.
“Looks like you had a run-in with Dally.” Saul smiled. It was a little more confident than the last one. Since Justin hadn’t killed him yet, I guess he felt more secure.
That just proved what an idiot he was. Justin wouldn’t kill until he had what he needed.
“He’s a sad little dickwad,” Saul said, still talking, his voice too laidback and easy to call it jabbering—but he wasn’t waiting for a response and his gaze didn’t linger in any one spot, either. “Likes to rough up the girls.” He shot me a look. “He get too rough with you, honey?”
For a second, the words didn’t process. Then I had to fight not to pick my jaw up. Did he mean—
“I need information,” Justin cut in, his voice iced.
“Yeah, yeah.” Saul looked around, eyes bouncing over the two servers who still hovered near the bar. They wouldn’t look at him and I saw a muscle pulse in his jaw, watched his eyes flicker before his gaze slid back to us. “Sure. I tell you what, we’ll just grab us a booth—”
“Can’t be here. Confidential.” Justin’s hands hung loose at his sides.
Saul nodded. “I’ll just go get dressed then.”
He turned.
Justin moved to follow.
I could hear how Saul had picked up his pace, his bare feet slapping on the wooden floor. Justin disappeared through the door. Then he swore and I could hear him all but running.
I rushed for the door and then stopped.
Justin partially blocked my view, but I shifted a little more, just enough to see around his lean body and what I saw made my brows go up.
Saul lay sprawled on the ground, head turned toward me, a dazed look on his face. There was a woman standing over him and I looked at her long and hard, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
“Marcia.”
She cocked her head, not saying a single word.
I glanced to the side and saw the bartender, a man who was almost ridiculously pretty, standing there. “Please tell me you didn’t injure him too grievously, love.”
“No.” She nudged him with her foot, her nose wrinkling. “He still breathes.” After a moment, she added, “And he’ll be able to talk. For a while at least.”
She looked at me, then, and the green-gold of her eyes flashed to wolf-green.
“That should have been more useful.”
We watched as the black van pulled away, driven by Marcia. John was in the back with Tremble—apparently, his partner had too much of a temper to be trusted around the skin trader. They’d taken him out through the back, although it seemed a wasted effort. Absolutely nobody in the Abyss would pay any attention to anything that didn’t involve their own neck.
“Think Dair hired them?” I asked softly.
“No idea.” He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Probably. Or at least he knows they’re here. I’ve heard of them. They play by the rules so they wouldn’t have been digging around in the MacDonald’s backyard without his authorization.”
Although we’d been this close to grabbing Saul, Marcia and John had been circling in on him for weeks, and the bottom line was…we wouldn’t have gotten him away from two alpha wolves if we’d tried.
Those alpha wolves, though, hadn’t minded sharing info. They wouldn’t share a lot, but we got the gist of it. They’d been hired to investigate some problematic issues—that sound so very like a wolf, uptight and proper—and their search had led them here. To Saul.
“It wasn’t a total waste,” Justin said when I turned to look at him.
I snorted. “Well, no. We know he was involved. We know he had been under suspicion. But what else do we know that we hadn’t known before this?”
By unspoken agreement, we turned and started down the narrow alley, away from Howler’s.
“I don’t know yet.” Justin shrugged. “But we’ll figure it out. They also promised to keep us apprised of any information they got from him.”
“Think they’ll actually do that?”
He glanced at me. “Yep.”
“It still feels unfinished.” But there was nothing to be done about it. They’d been there first; they’d taken him down and that’s the way the game was played. Honor among thieves and bounty hunters and fellow problem-solvers. I turned and walked away.
Justin fell into step with me. “He wasn’t working solo on this, you know.”
“Yeah.” Through my teeth, I blew out a short puff of air. “A couple of them were all nervy when we were there. We need to pay them a visit.”
“I’m surprised John and Marcia weren’t more keen to move on them as well,” Justin said quietly.
“Maybe they just saw them as pawns.”
“Pawns or not, they played into a dangerous game—on their own. They should have been dealt with.”
We turned the corner, our destination the car we’d parked a couple blocks away from the bar. Both necessity and common sense dictated it. The road in front of Howler’s had been pocked with potholes big enough to swallow a car. I could see the smooth gleam of Justin’s ride just ahead of us.
I stopped. “We need to…”
The words died in my throat as my ears caught a noise—so faint I barely heard it.
I couldn’t miss the scent of blood, though. It washed over me and turned my stomach.
It froze me. For just a split second, it froze me.
Then I launched myself forward.
I felt Justin reach out for me, heard him shout my name. I ignored him, my entire focus gathered on the building tucked between the two taller ones—the one that looked like it was only waiting for one final shove before it tumbled down into nothing but walls and rubble.
Howlers. That stink was coming from Howler’s.
I didn’t even pause when I reached the door, just slowed enough to shoulder it open. I slammed my hand against the wall, searching for the light switches while the coppery, sweet scent of blood clouded inside my head, choking me.
Light flooded the room just as my boot heel hit something slick and wet. My stomach lurched horribly.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down…
But of course I did.
I looked down and found myself staring at something thick and rubbery, almost ropey. Gorge rushed up my throat as my brain supplied the name to what it was I’d just stepped in.
To what it was that was flung with almost childish glee across the entire part of the bar.
All those trivia facts about how many feet and yards there are of intestines in your gut…I guess they really can be stretched out end to end to cover a football field. Or at last enough to be thrown around a room like bloody surreal holiday decorations from hell.
I heard movement behind me and immediately flung out a hand to stop whoever it was.
“What the…”
Recognizing Justin’s voice, I lowered my arm.
“Somebody didn’t want them to talk,” I said woodenly.
My gaze landed on one of the bodies—this one was m
ostly intact, save for the disturbingly destroyed skull. Somebody had all but ripped the top half of the head off. I’d seen the injury that had resulted from that before, from somebody grabbing a person and savagely wrenching their mouth open, breaking the jaw—and other things.
The person who’d received that injury had been a shapeshifter—a youth under Annette’s brutal hand. He’d survived it.
This woman had been human.
She, of course, hadn’t.
“Somebody didn’t even want them to scream.”
I was less than a mile from home when I got a message from Damon.
I miss you.
After the grim, fruitless hunt, those simple words brought a much needed warmth to the hollowness inside my chest.
We’d hunted for the killer—and it had only been one. Justin had been able to learn that much, but not much else. I tried to find a trail to follow, but there just wasn’t anything and by the time twilight rolled around, I was so fucking tired, I couldn’t have tracked a child leaving a trail of bread crumbs.
But those three words eased the ache in my heart, changed my plans from a long hot shower followed by a boring dinner and an even more boring evening where I made notes and muttered and complained to spending the evening with Damon. A long hot soak in his tub, a decent meal that I didn’t have to cook, and maybe I’d even bounce some things off him, wait for that weird connection in my head to happen. Things always connected for me. They did.
I just had to wait for the right thing to make them connect, or the right sound, or…well, even Damon.
I responded back. I miss you, too. You busy?
Not if you’re available.
The response made me smile and I tossed the phone back down onto the seat next to me after I told him I’d be at the Lair later. Forty minutes—tops.
A half mile from home, I had to amend it to an hour—tops. If I’m lucky.
A vampire was trailing me.
I was almost certain it was Abraham, but I had to be certain.
I gave it another moment for my body to adjust and sure enough, I could feel it. Abraham, just like any other vampire, felt other. They were the most different among NHs. Human once, then not, they could mimic emotions, but they rarely felt them.
There is something different about each of them, though, and I’d come to recognize Abraham.
Sighing, I parked my car and waited there as he came to land in front of me in a gathering of shadows.
They’d faded by the time I climbed out of the car, my hand gripping the sword I’d pulled from the passenger seat. “We have got to stop meeting like this.” I paused and then added, “Really. I do have an office.”
He ignored that comment. “I hear you caught Saul Tremble.”
“Yes.” Rubbing my thumb along the grip of the blade, I said, “I was surprised you didn’t show up. You’ve got a habit of doing that.”
“I was…resting.”
In a crypt or coffin? I bit the words back but they still danced on the tip of my tongue.
The cool look on his face told me that he had a good idea at my thoughts anyway. Smug, creepy bastard. I really didn’t like that I liked him. Scowling, I rested the sheathed tip of my blade on the pavement and propped my other hand on my hip. “You here because you’re lonely or you got a reason? Because if you’re just lonely…”
“I’ve got a healthy respect for life and limb,” he said, his voice filled with wry humor. “I can’t decide what would be more dangerous—you with a sword or your man with his temper.”
My man. There was no contest. But I appreciated the fact that he didn’t just toss me out with the bathwater.
“Why don’t you tell me what you need to tell me, then?” I asked.
“In a hurry?” His nostrils flared. “You smell impatient.”
“That’s because I’ve been working all day and I want to get a bite to eat and crash.”
I wasn’t even lying. I just didn’t plan on crashing here.
His lips twitched again, his near black eyes glowing. “Very well. It concerns Icarus.” He looked around, those insightful eyes taking in everything, be it a bit of shrubbery or a car or a cat creeping across the ground as it stalked a mouse. A moment later, we both heard the mouse’s final squeaks. The cat won tonight. They often did. “I have information that might be…important.”
I lifted a brow.
His mouth tightened. “Must we discuss it in the open?”
“Most of the people who live here are working stiffs,” I told him dryly. “They couldn’t care less about what I do—no, wait. Scratch that. They prefer not to know what I do.”
“Good. Then let’s keep them in the dark… and discuss this elsewhere.”
Elsewhere ended up being inside my apartment.
I can’t believe I was letting the undead into my place.
At the same time, I took it as one of the biggest victories I’d made since I’d walked away from that icy fortress on the mountainside. I’d found it in me to trust myself again. This wasn’t about trusting Abraham—under the instinctive fear, my gut already knew he wasn’t a threat, but I had to get under the fear.
And I was doing it.
Still…
I didn’t offer him anything.
Vampires could take food or drink—it was a misnomer, one likely spread by them, that they could only imbibe blood. But I didn’t keep blood on hand and I didn’t see the point in wasting what I had when he’d only be taking it out of courtesy.
“Okay.” I propped my blade up against the nearest bar stool and took up position right next to it. Yeah, I’d decided I could probably trust him, but I was still a paranoid bitch. “Why don’t you fill me in on just what is going on?”
Abraham stood in front of the couch, his eyes on the weapons I had there. It seemed he and I couldn’t get past our mutual fascination with weapons. His gaze roamed over the curves of the Sais I had on the wall. They were old, too old to use, but too beautiful to keep hidden away. “It’s an ugly thing that’s happening, Kit. Very ugly.”
My instinct was to fire back something full of sarcasm and grim humor. I grabbed that instinct by the neck and strangled it. “Yeah.” I nodded in agreement. “It is.”
He didn’t even look at me. Head lowering, he focused on the polished tips of his boots—good boots, I couldn’t help but notice. They’d hold up to a long, hard hunt.
“Icarus was supposed to meet a young vampire by the name of Trident. He had lost much of his family and he wasn’t…thriving in his current circumstances.”
The note in Abraham’s voice made everything inside me freeze. But I didn’t say anything.
“Trident hailed from the Marlowe family and he was…well, to be blunt, he was the whipping boy. He was strong, though, one of their pillars—or he would have been, had they nurtured it. Icarus won’t share the details, but he tells me that he was to meet with Trident. They were going to…discuss things.” Abraham drew the words out and when he lifted his brow at me, I heard all the things he couldn’t say.
There was trouble in Marlowe house.
“It’s uncommon, but there are ways for one vampire to shift his bloodvow to another vampire’s line. Icarus will not confirm this, but I believe he was trying to bring Trident into our house.” He was quiet a moment. “It would be just like him. Icarus was fond of saving the lost.”
“Was he?”
He flicked me a look. “Very. In our world, Kit, having goals keeps you grounded.”
I wondered if that meant sane or human. He said nothing else and a grim silence stretched out.
“What happened, Abraham?”
“We can’t really say…not exactly. Icarus knows he arrived at the designated spot. He knows he was there—and that Trident wasn’t. At least Trident wasn’t there initially. Whether he ever arrived…” Abraham shrugged. “We cannot say. Icarus heard a noise. He tells me he didn’t recognize it at first, but days later, as he was imprisoned, he understood it. It was the sound of a
n arrow.”
He flicked me a look as my blood turned to ice. “It’s an unusual sound, Kit, the noise an arrow makes as it cuts through the air.”
“What happened next?” I had to force the words out. Not many people used a bow. I could count the number of people I knew who used a bow and arrow on one hand—and still have fingers left over. Of them, I was the best.
“He doesn’t remember.” Abraham’s expression was dark and grim. “He heard the arrow, there was pain and darkness, and then he was in the place where you found him. Whatever was on the arrow drugged him and we believe that is what kept us from sensing him, and him from reaching out to us for help. They continued to drug him, injecting him with a yellowish substance. The effects of it cleared within twenty-four hours and we could once again sense him.”
Abraham looked away. “Icarus never saw Trident. But…”
The clawing in my gut only increased at his hesitation. “But what?”`
“Trident is no more. When I went to speak with him, I was told he’d become unstable and had to be eliminated.” Abraham inclined his head. “Naturally, as I am not of Marlowe house, there is little more I can do, few angles I can pursue. But Icarus doesn’t believe it—not what they say about Trident. He tells me the youth was too strong. Too stable. He wouldn’t have become unstable. He would have been as Icarus was. As…”
He hesitated.
“As you are.”
He said nothing, but I knew I was right. Something about him simply felt…different. Too close to human.
“So where does this lead us?” I asked softly.
“To an unpleasant place.” Abraham folded his arms across his chest and although the light in my living room was bright, the shadows around him seemed to strengthen, cuing in on his moods. “If somebody was watching them, aware of their meeting and knew that Trident wouldn’t be at that meeting—or perhaps they mistook one for another…”
My brain took over.
It spelled a whole hell of a lot of trouble.
“You still think this is related to Saul?” I whispered.
“No.” Abraham’s expression was troubled. “Marlowe House rarely deals with mortals on any level. Very few vampires do.”
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