by Laken Cane
Just barely, I made it to my car without having a breakdown at the gross state of my body. “Eww, eww, eww,” I chanted under my breath, then climbed in and slammed shut the door. I was shivering from the slimy cold, and the second I started the old car, I cranked up the heater.
It blew out cold air and as I waited impatiently for it to heat, I stared out my window.
Shane climbed into his truck and drove away without saying a word.
And finally, the interior of my car was warm and cozy and dark, but there was no way to relax. I’d had sex with Shane.
It would have been fine except we really didn’t like each other. The wild sex didn’t change that. And we had to work together.
“Awkward,” I whispered.
I hadn’t been careful. I hadn’t even thought about things like pregnancy or STD’s.
I grabbed my phone, suddenly panicked, and texted Miriam as I drove. Apparently, I wasn’t careful when it came to most things.
I need the morning after pill.
She texted me back right away. Even at four a.m. most of Bay Town was awake. The supernaturals were night people.
How long before you get here?
Twenty minutes.
It’ll be in your room when you get home.
Thanks, Miriam.
She waited for two minutes before sending another text.
I’ll want all the details. Come find me when you wake up. Hashtag girltalk. Lol.
I sighed, then stuffed my phone back into the pocket of Shane’s jacket. My clothes…no way could I have crawled back into those ripped, wet jeans. Shane had cut them off me. They were ruined shreds of fabric, littering the ground along with the clothes from the vampires who’d disappeared.
Shane’s kills hadn’t disappeared—they just dried up into something resembling earthworm casings like the vampire I’d killed behind the bar.
The vampires I’d killed using Silverlight, though, they were gone.
When Shane had silently handed me his coat, I’d taken it gratefully. Then I’d scrambled around on the ground, searching for my belongings. Phone, knife, car keys, flashlights, Silverlight.
It was a pitiful shame, the way I was so careless with her.
I’d found one of my stakes, but the others were long gone. No biggie. I could always get more stakes.
When I arrived at Angus’s house, I sat in the car for a good five minutes, watching the house. The absolute last thing I wanted was to run into Angus in the state I was in. He’d smell the sex. I would never, ever live that down.
I crept up the back stairs to my room, realizing that living with Angus and his brood was no better for me than living in the city. I would start looking for a place of my own tomorrow.
Today.
I didn’t see Angus—he was probably still at the store, doing paperwork. He didn’t need the restaurant, but he’d said it made him legitimate to the humans. They liked a supernatural to have a little something—not too much of something, of course, but a little something. So he’d opened the store in the Bay Town Business Park, and used it to be something closer to what made him and his family a little more acceptable to the humans of Red Valley.
Angus wasn’t immortal, but without being outright killed, he would live a few hundred years. Nearly all the supernaturals lived outrageously long lives. It wasn’t something to envy, he’d told me once.
With long lives came lots of pain. And lots of wealth. The supernaturals had been amassing great sums of money for hundreds of years. It came in handy when they had to pay off the authorities, make people happy, and exist in a world in which they were unable to work side by side with the humans.
And in Angus’s case, it also came in handy when there were dozens of exes and offspring to take care of.
So when I crept up to my temporary room, holding my breath, I counted myself lucky that the only person I saw was Angus’s ten-year-old daughter, a strange little child named Nava.
She glanced at me, then hugged the wall as she hurried by.
I slipped into my room and closed the door. I locked it, then leaned back against it and closed my eyes, sighing.
“Trinity.”
I screamed and shot my eyes open, then gaped. Clayton stood at my bed with his empty eyes and his blank face, his hands at his side.
“What are you doing?” I asked. I’d rather have been seen by Angus than Clayton.
“Miriam sent me with a package.” He gestured at the nightstand. “I put it in the top drawer.”
“Son of a bitch.” I rubbed my temples. Of course she’d sent Clayton. She wasn’t going to deliver them herself.
“You look…” He shook his head. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I just need to get cleaned up and eat something.” I sniffed the air. “Do I smell…?”
“I picked up a pizza,” he said. “It’s on the desk.”
“Thanks,” I murmured. “That was really very nice of you.”
“I had to leave,” he said.
“I know.”
“I didn’t like leaving you there. Not with…”
I squinted, then drifted toward the bathroom. I really didn’t want to get too close to him. Not smelling the way I did. “Not with what?”
“Copas,” he replied. “Not with Copas.”
I wet my lips, my gaze sliding away from his. “It was fine. There were so many vampires. We killed them all.” I stared at the floor.
He studied me quietly, then, “Trinity.”
“Yes?” I murmured.
“I was a new hunter once. Don’t be hard on yourself.”
My breath caught in my throat. He knew.
Before I could think of a thing to say, he reached into the drawer, then tossed me a small package. “Clean up,” he said. “Eat. Sleep. You will be…”
I stared at him, clutching the package to my chest, and waited.
“Extraordinary,” he finished, finally.
When I turned away, breathless, he stopped me once again. “The vampires will gradually stop testing you. It usually takes a new hunter a couple of years to integrate—if she survives that long. The more you hunt, the quicker the process.” He ran his stare over my body. “It will happen for you much faster than it does for most.”
A tendril of hope snaked through me. “They’ll leave me alone?”
His smile was faint. “Well…no. But they’ll stop coming in droves. Right now they believe they have a chance to destroy you. Because you’re so new, you’re giving off a certain…scent. It attracts them, enrages them, and they will try to destroy you. But they’re dying. You’re proving yourself. They’ll accept you as an equal, or better, and they will stop coming for you.” He shrugged. “It’s a matter of self-preservation and it’s as instinctive as their drive to challenge you.”
“So all I have to do is stay alive and wait them out.”
“Hunt. If you stop hunting, the cycle will begin again.”
“That’s why Shane can walk around without a bunch of vampires descending with pitchforks and torches?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a relief.”
He nodded. “Soon, they’ll hide from you.”
I hesitated. “You don’t hunt. Why don’t they come for you?”
He stiffened immediately, and was quiet for so long things began to get awkward. Finally, he spoke. “I’m no longer a hunter. It didn’t come back when I did.”
And his desolation at that fact was so severe it broke my heart.
Miriam had taken away everything he’d ever been. The killer, the hunter, the man.
There wasn’t anything I could say to that. I walked toward the bathroom. “Goodnight, Clayton,” I whispered.
When I left the bathroom forty-five minutes later, he was gone. I sat on the bed and ate cold pizza, every muscle in my body aching. But it wasn’t a bad ache, somehow. I was getting physically stronger.
I called the captain. I left a message on his voicemail, telling him about the battle of the
night. I explained to him that on the way out of the woods I’d still had Gray’s scent. He hadn’t been one of the vampires I’d fought—or if he had been, he’d taken off when things got rough. He was still alive. Still out there.
“I’ll find him tonight,” I promised. Big promise, but I meant well. I could find Gray if the vampires would stop attacking me every time I stepped foot in the woods. And if Clayton had told me the truth, that would happen. Eventually.
I wondered why Shane hadn’t educated me on that fact. Some teacher he was. And then I got a blistering image of him thrusting into me, his mouth buried against the side of my throat, his hands holding me in a punishing grip, and I lay back and allowed that breathtaking, overwhelming memory to take me where it would.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I need a place to live,” I told Rhys, taking a seat in front of his desk. I didn’t care if real estate were a front for him—all the supernaturals had fronts, and they still took their chosen jobs seriously. “I can’t keep staying with Angus. I need privacy.”
Rhys steepled his long fingers, his brown eyes bright and amused, and gave me a wide, white smile. And still, I saw the darkness in that smile. He would never be able to hide it from me. I wasn’t sure why, but there it was.
Maybe he knew it, maybe he didn’t. I wasn’t going to tell him, though, or ask him what sort of monster he was. It wasn’t like he’d tell me, anyway.
“Two of his exes are moving back in,” he said. “If things aren’t loud enough already with his many children and their nannies, two ex-girlfriends in the same house? It’ll be a circus. I almost feel bad for our Angus.”
“He didn’t tell me that,” I said. “I’m not sure even Angus’s house is big enough for that.”
“No one’s house is,” he agreed. “And after they deliver the new babies, they’ll likely find the situation unacceptable and walk away with fistfuls of cash and fresh resolutions to stay away from the irresistible bull.”
“It’s insane,” I murmured. “So many babies.”
He shrugged. “Angus loves two things above all else—fucking and fighting. He satisfies his love of fighting with his occasional nights in the ring, and all the other nights, he is spreading his seed far and wide. Someday, one of the children is going to hunt him down and kick his ass.” He beamed.
“But birth control,” I said.
“Angus doesn’t use birth control. He seems to think he’ll burn in the fires of supernatural hell if he wastes his seed, and that he’d be dooming a potential life to eternity on earth as a spirit, forever unloved and abandoned and alone.” He leaned forward, his fascination with the workings of Angus’s mind obvious. “He’s a crazy shifter, but he loves his children.” He grinned. “And some of his women. I can only imagine how many kids he’d have if most of his partners weren’t handling the birth control issue.”
I shook my head, torn between awe and disdain. Then I frowned. “What do you mean he fights in the ring?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you know anything about your boss, Trinity?”
“More now than I did a few minutes ago.” Then I waved my hand, impatient. “Never mind. I don’t have time for this. I have to go out with…Shane in a few hours. Can you help me find a place in Bay Town?”
He considered me, and he had the good manners not to mention the fact that I’d stumbled over Shane’s name like it was a big, handsome rock in my path. “Yes. Absolutely. What are you looking for in a home, Trinity?”
“I don’t have a lot of furniture. Or…any.”
“Something furnished. Got it. What else?”
“Two beds. Two baths.” I shrugged. “That’s about it, I guess.”
“Neighbors?”
I shrugged. “It’s Bay Town. They’re not going to care what I do.”
“True enough.” He grinned. “I have some properties in mind. I’ll take you around to look at them in a couple of days.”
I stood, then reached across his desk to shake his hand. After a moment of surprised hesitation, he took my fingers in his, almost gingerly.
“Thanks, Rhys.”
“Happy to help.” He squeezed my fingers before releasing them. “You be careful out there tonight.”
“I will.”
“If you need help,” he said, as I opened his door, “you call me. Understand, Trinity?”
I looked back at him. “Yeah, okay.” But I wasn’t really sure I did understand. He seemed to be trying to tell me something, but I had no idea what it was.
When I left his office, I headed next door to Stark’s Pizza. I missed the place, but I wouldn’t be going back to work there. My future was secured. At least, I believed it was. I’d take Gray to Captain Crawford, and soon, I’d have more work than I could handle.
A thought struck me and I stood still, staring into the distance as I considered the possibilities. I’d need an office, and there were empties in the business park. As soon as I could, I’d lease some space and hang my shingle. Even though the captain had no plans to give me a badge, I was a legitimate hunter.
I’d squeeze myself in beside the necromancer, and—
“Trinity!”
As though I’d summoned her by thinking about her, Miriam appeared in the doorway of her office. “Come here.” After she delivered the order, she ducked back inside, absolutely certain that I would follow.
I’d forgotten her request for “girl talk,” and I wasn’t looking forward to it. But she’d done me a favor, and if all she wanted in return were details of Shane’s prowess as a lover, she should prepare to have her mind blown.
I grinned and jogged to her office, but promptly lost my grin when I spotted Clayton standing behind her chair.
She beckoned lazily. “Sit, darling. Let’s have that talk.”
I avoided Clayton’s stare and sat in front of the desk, feeling a little like an unruly student called to the principal’s office.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asked. “A cold drink?”
“No, thanks,” I replied, crossing and uncrossing my arms. I shifted from one hip to the other, and finally, I slouched in my chair and studied my fingernails.
“For pity’s sake,” Miriam said. “Get her a Xanax, Clayton.”
“No, thank you,” I said, when he moved immediately to do as she’d bid. “What do you want to talk about, Miriam?”
She waved Clayton away and stood, then came to sit in the chair beside me. “Tell me everything.”
I glanced at Clayton, and could feel the heat climbing my cheeks.
She followed my glance, then threw back her head and laughed. “Oh honey! He has so few pleasures left in life—let him stay. Let him listen.” She leaned across and grabbed my hand. “He’s not allowed to have sex—not even with himself. And he’s not allowed the pleasure of another person’s touch. Well,” she amended, “except for mine, and my touches are not pleasing, are they, Clayton?”
“No,” he answered.
“Do you know,” she continued, her voice a conspiratorial murmur, “what the absence of touch can do to a person?”
I only realized I was squeezing her fingers too tightly when she grimaced, but she didn’t attempt to pull away.
“Don’t, Miriam,” I said. “I don’t like the monster in you.”
She pursed her lips. “When you were attacked by the incubus, and you climbed naked into his arms, you became the first person to touch him sexually, lovingly, or otherwise-ly since I ripped him from his grave.”
“I couldn’t help it,” I muttered.
“Oh, I know that, Trin. If I thought you’d done it deliberately, why, I’d have scratched out your pretty gray eyes.” She grinned.
She wasn’t joking.
I let my gaze wander to Clayton. He stood without emotion, patient and blank, slender and innocuous, but dangerous nonetheless. It was a restrained danger—restrained by Miriam. I wasn’t sure what kept him from exploding.
I’d have killed her in her sleep.
“Why do you have him protecting me?” I asked her.
“Why? Because I can. Because you’re a hunter—a bloodhunter—and that makes you precious to the supernaturals, Trinity. Hunters are the only ones standing between the hideous vampires and world domination.” She smiled, but something lurked in her eyes. Fear, maybe.
Then she patted my hand. “You look so serious. Tell me a story. Let’s lighten the mood.” She was earnest, her eyes large and sincere, the corners of her mouth turned up in a hopeful smile. “Shane has been a fantasy of mine since the day I met him.”
I could understand that, despite the fact that he wasn’t exactly my favorite person. There was something about him that went far beyond physical looks. “How long have you known him?”
She squinted. “Hmm…about, let’s see…ten or eleven years now.”
“How long were you with his brother?”
“Three years. Then I had to kill the son of a bitch.” Her laughter pealed joyfully, and I wasn’t sure if she were joking or telling a scary truth.
“He was human,” I realized, finally, dryly. “I doubt you killed him.”
She shrugged. “Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about you and my sweet Shane.”
“Sweet.” I snorted. “Not even a little bit.”
“I know what happens when new hunters get swept up in the emotion of the fight,” she said. “And the kill. But what is so delicious is the fact that Shane is not new. And he doesn’t like you. But he did you anyway.” She leaned toward me, her bright stare devouring my face. “Didn’t he?”
I felt a streak of pity for her. I wasn’t sure why—but it made me talk, that pity. I gave her what she needed. “After the vampires were destroyed…” I shook my head, remembering. “I was overflowing with…emotion, I guess. With passion. It was almost like having the Foam of Aphrodite on my body. Even worse. There was this need so huge, so extreme, that I couldn’t control myself.”
“Oh,” she said. “What did Shane do? Did he hurt you?” She was breathless, eager. Her lips were parted, and she darted out her tongue to wet them. She ran her hand up my forearm, then back down to entangle her fingers with mine. “Tell me.”
