“How does not helping bring him home protect him?”
Useless waste—the sound of the whip whistling through the air. I turned around and looked up at him. “You know what the holy hell happened to my back? My grandmother did it to me. While my aunts watched. The first time happened when I was eight. The second, when I nine. It was a yearly, sometimes monthly, occurrence until I ran away when I was fifteen. And if somebody had tried to take me home? I would have either killed them…or myself.”
Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I headed outside.
Maybe the Queen Bitch hadn’t beaten that boy, but somehow I knew life at the lair hadn’t been easy for him.
I’d figured that out just by the look in Marcus’ eyes.
Chapter Ten
Marcus wasn’t at the club.
We found him at his house and his dad didn’t want to let me in.
If it wasn’t for the bruiser at my back, I knew I wouldn’t have gotten in, either.
“He’s starting to spike,” the man said, staring at me with narrowed eyes. “A human girl—a pretty one—walking in there isn’t going to help. Especially once she starts smelling scared.”
“I’m not going to freak out on him,” I said. “I just need to ask him a couple of questions about Doyle.”
“He doesn’t know anything.” The father shook his head.
“I think he might know more than he realizes.”
“Are you calling my kid a liar?”
Oh, for crying out loud. Mildly, I pointed out, “That isn’t what I said. I said, very clearly, I think he might know more than he thinks. I found out some information about some other missing kids and I need to ask him a few more questions.”
“And when he starts coming after you because you smell like dinner or sex, what are you going to do?”
“He’s not going to get within a foot of her,” Damon said, edging in front of me. “But, Conley, you’re going to let her in, and you’re going to do it now before I decide to get pissed off.”
A growl trickled from the father’s throat. “You can’t threaten me for protecting my kid.”
“She’s not a fucking threat to him.”
“She’s human! And when he scares the shit out of her—”
“She doesn’t have the sense to be scared,” Damon snapped. “Trust me, I’ve seen her in action. And I won’t let the kid get near her. Now let her do her job.”
I rubbed my temple as the headache pounded, ever close. This job was proving to be so much fun. Maybe Colleen could brew up some sort of tonic for the permanent headache I was living with.
It took a few more minutes and once Conley agreed, reluctantly, he looked me over with a critical eye. “Just how good are you with your weapons?” he demanded.
I cocked a brow. “Pretty damn good.”
“She’ll take them off,” Damon said.
Conley shook his head. “How is your control?”
Serenely, I smiled. “Well, unless it’s the jerk at my back…it’s generally flawless. I don’t draw down unless I absolutely have to. Don’t worry, I have no absolutely no desire to harm your child.”
Another thirty seconds passed and then he nodded. “Keep your weapons. If you’re a fighter, you’ll feel better with them on, meaning you’re not going to walk around in a cloud of fear. That automatically makes things better from the get-go. Just don’t draw them.”
I laid a hand on the sword, stroked the hand. “I’ll leave the sword someplace else…it’s the most obvious one.”
Behind me, Damon snorted.
Conley went to say something, but I shook my head. “It’s fine. And I appreciate the gesture.”
He shrugged. “I was one of the Assembly’s exterminators before I had a family—my wife was one of the Banner cops. She wouldn’t go anywhere without a weapon. I understand fighters.”
I left the sword on the kitchen table after he gestured to it. “He’s downstairs. It’s quiet. Dark. We soundproofed it for just this purpose after we found Erica was pregnant. The less stimulation a kid going through the spike has to deal with, the better. Keep this short and quick, Ms. Colbana. Please.”
I nodded.
Then he opened the door and slid through. “A few minutes with him first.” He looked at Damon over my shoulder. “You come in first and stay between them for the first couple of minutes.”
After the door shut behind Conley, I looked at Damon. “It gets tiresome having you constantly refer to me as being too stupid to be scared,” I said, focusing on that instead of what I was getting ready to do. Baiting him felt almost normal.
“Having you constantly refer to me as the asshole or the jerk gets pretty old, too. I’ve got a name.”
“You do? Damn. I thought for sure you’d introduced yourself as Lord Asshole the first day.” Sighing, I shook my head. “Your name must have slipped my mind.”
Turning away from him, I focused on the back window and let the minutes tick away.
Long, empty minutes.
Five of them. And then Damon moved, lingering at my back just long enough to murmur, “Do not come out from behind me until I tell you to, baby girl. You hear me?”
I glared at his back. “Excuse me? Baby…”
The door opened and he stepped inside.
Scowling, I reminded myself to yell at him later.
It was dark.
I smelled sweat.
The musk of cat.
Fear.
Automatically, my palm started to itch, but I ignored it. I was just going to talk to a scared kid.
“Stay up on the landing,” Conley called from somewhere in that black maw.
I followed the sound, or tried to, from what I could see behind Damon’s wide back.
“Ask what you want to ask,” Damon said quietly.
“Marcus.”
I heard a weird little clicking sound.
“Hey, Marcus…I…ah.”
A panting sound. Something whipped by the ground just in front of the landing. Fast. Too fast. A big, warm arm came around me. I would not acknowledge that Damon’s presence felt a little comforting just then. No way, no how.
This was just a kid.
My heart is strong—
“Marcus, I need to know if you know anything about the ′glades.”
A strange little growl came from below my feet. I looked down. Through the metal grate, I saw him.
Fur was sprouting on his face. Melting in. Growing back. An endless, odd little wave that was disturbing as hell to look at. Muscles rippled, bulged, out of place on his still-skinny frame. It was freaky as hell.
But in the dark, dank light of the room, I saw one thing clearly enough.
His eyes were still scared.
Sinking to my knees, I smiled at him through the metal grate. “Hey, kid.”
“Nugget.” His lips peeled back from his teeth. “You wanna come down here and keep me company?”
“Can’t. I’m still looking for Doyle.”
Damon sank down next to me, the caged energy of his presence wrapped around me, too close, too close—
Marcus closed his eyes and I watched as his nostrils flared. Breathing in the scents. “You don’t smell just human,” he said abruptly.
“That’s because I’m not. Doyle, Marcus. I need to talk to you about him,” I said gently. “Can you help me?”
“He had to run,” Marcus whispered. “Had to.”
Then he started to shake his head, fear entering his eyes as he darted a look at Damon. And the fear grew.
A knot settled in my gut.
There was something he wanted…maybe even needed to tell me, but he wouldn’t, not while Damon was there. And Damon wasn’t going to leave me alone with the kid. I knew that as well as I knew my own name.
“I’m going to hazard a guess,” I said quietly. “You don’t have to say if I’m right or if I’m wrong. You don’t have to say anything, and you’re not in trouble for this, because it’s just some stupid half-human runnin
g her mouth.”
I felt Damon’s body tense.
“He didn’t feel safe at home, did he?”
Snarling flooded the room and the blur tearing across the room didn’t stop until he was lost in shadows too thick for me to penetrate. “Okay, okay,” I said quietly as fear rose up thick enough to choke even me. “We don’t have to talk about that. But the ′glades. Marcus, I need to know if he ever told you about the ′glades. I think he’s in danger there. Other kids have gone missing.”
There was no answer.
Not in words, anyway. Not for a long, long time.
But he did start to whine. Low, weird noises, like a sob trapped in a throat that just couldn’t cry the way a human needed to.
“You’re walking a dangerous line,” Damon whispered in my ear as I unlocked the car.
“Had to ask.”
“And when Conley talks?”
Blowing out a breath, I jerked the door open. Or tried. I couldn’t back up enough to open it because Damon was still right behind me. “Why in the hell do you have to hover three inches away from me all the time?” I dropped my head against the car. “Don’t you people know what personal space is?”
“Yes. And I have this weird fascination with invading yours.” He brushed the hair off the back of my neck and I tensed as I felt the pad of his thumb slip over one of my scars. “You haven’t answered. What are you going to do when Conley talks?”
“He won’t,” I said shortly. “It serves him no purpose and the boy is already too scared to say anything. It would only risk his son getting hurt if he said a word about the boy suspecting the ward of the Alpha being unsafe in his own home. And if most of the cats really are protective of their young, I suspect it would be…frowned up…for her to be abusive. Would be bad if he ran away from home because he was afraid of living with her, huh?”
“That’s not what the deal is.”
I snorted and turned around. “Like hell.” Glaring up at him, I said, “I don’t know whether you feel obligated to lie like that or if you really believe it, but she hurt him.”
The storm in his eyes spread over his face as he lowered it to growl at me. “I don’t lie, baby girl.”
Oh. Yes. “Stop calling me baby girl, asshole.”
Sidestepping away, I jerked the door open. It slammed into his midsection. He grunted a little and I smiled as I wiggled into the car through the narrow opening. “We need to get going. I want to go by my place and pack a bag.”
Somehow, I didn’t think we’d find all the answers we needed in a couple of hours.
Ninety minutes into the drive, the phone rang.
The ringtone was Aerosmith’s Crying. An old classic. I used to love the song, then I made the bad mistake of programming it for any and all numbers associated with Jude.
Sighing, I put it on speaker. Since Damon would hear the conversation anyway, I might as well keep my hands on the wheel. That way I wouldn’t have to fight with him for control of the damn phone if he decided to join in on the conversation as he’d tried to do several times.
Bad enough on city streets but when I speeding down the interstate at over ninety miles an hour? Even worse.
“Colbana,” I said.
“Kit…”
Jude. He’d deigned to call me himself. Wow. Wasn’t I special?
His voice rolled over me like a hand sheathed in a silk glove and I hated the fact that goose bumps broke across my skin.
“Hello, Jude, bane of my existence,” I said sourly.
“Darling Kit, the sweet nothings you whisper to me…I treasure each and every one.”
“Oh, bite me.” Then I snapped my mouth shut and mentally swore.
Next to me, Damon closed his eyes and shook his head.
On the phone, Jude laughed. “Kit, I count the days until I do just that. Tell me…is that miserable bodyguard of yours there? I hear another person breathing.”
“What do you want, leech?” Damon said, his voice flat.
“Pleasant as always,” Jude murmured. “Are you taking care of my Kit, Damon?”
“I’m seeing that a contracted employee of the Cats stays safe.” He shot me a narrow look. “I couldn’t care less about taking care of anything of yours.”
Ouch. “As much as I love being talked about like I’m a toy or something, can we please not? Jude, what do you want?”
“I sent Evangeline to your office to speak with you, but you weren’t there.”
“I’m often not there.” I cut around a truck and arrowed back into the right lane. “My job involves me leaving the office a lot.”
“But I don’t feel you so strongly…”
I hissed as I felt that whisper in the back of my mind. Faint. Very faint. But there. “How can I protect you when you don’t let me know you are leaving…?”
I wanted to snarl at him. Wanted to hang up the damn phone and tell him not to call. To stay out of my damned head.
But Damon was staring at me oddly and Jude was talking—
“Are you going to be back in the office today? I had information about the upcoming job,” he said, his voice cool, polite. So very Jude.
“No. I’m out of town, probably for a few days.”
“Where?” Out loud, he said, “When can I anticipate your return? I need to get this information to you.”
Blowing out a breath, I said, “I’m following up a lead I received on earlier about my current job. I’m not going to be available for your case for a while yet, so Angie is just going to have keep her britches on.”
“You’re going south…very well. I’ll keep watch.”
I curled my lip and disconnected the call.
“He seems a little too protective of you,” Damon said.
“I’ve noticed,” I said dryly. And you have no clue.
“Why is that?”
“Apparently he finds me as amusing you find me irritating.”
“Not possible,” he muttered, settling low in his seat and blowing out a sigh. “Not possible at all.”
Chapter Eleven
The outer house of the Green Road met at a ramshackle old place that looked like it had been built to withstand hurricanes, wild witchcraft and werecreatures of all kinds.
And it looked like it had done all of those things and more.
I slid my sword into my sheath before I started toward the house.
“You think they’ll let you take that in there?”
“Yep.”
The disbelieving look in eyes was enough to have me biting back a laugh.
“The Green Road witches are crazier than most of them,” he said, keeping his voice low. “They only allow combat if you’re one of their warrior-trained ones, and everybody else is expected to be a pacifist. You carrying a blade in there is practically a declaration of war.”
“Really?”
He dragged his hands up and down over his face. “You just like seeing me have to fight over your cute ass.”
“Do me a favor and quit referring to my ass in any way,” I said.
He pushed around me as we reached the door.
“Damon, damn it.”
He paused and shot a look at me. “Wow. You did remember my name.”
The door blew open before he could knock.
The woman there was almost as tall as he was, nearly as wide, and her hair blood-red, streaked with pink and blue. Her eyes were greener than mine and her lips were black.
Just looking at her made my eyes hurt.
She stood there, glaring at Damon.
This could get ugly, I decided. I saw the magic dancing over her like a bird mantling its wings. Damon hadn’t been wrong. Green Road was full of powerful witches and most of them were pacifists. But their warriors were mad-powerful and they took their job of protecting the non-fighters very, very seriously.
This was one of the warriors, I could see it on her.
It could be amusing…a talented witch was a match for a strong shifter. Maybe even an even match. Hell, in
the right situation, a warrior witch was almost an army. Of course, this wasn’t one of those situations. Still, it would be one hell of a fight.
But damn it all.
I cleared my throat. “Hi. Colleen Antrim was supposed to send word about me. My name is Kit Colbana.”
Her green eyes cut my way and I felt the weight of her gaze like an anvil dropping down in my head. She studied me and I could feel the pressure of her magic riffling through me, tasting me, taking me in. “You went after Mandy,” she said quietly.
“Yes.” I bit my tongue on the rest of the words. I went after her when you all wouldn’t. Colleen had broken away from the witches when her daughter was born without magic. The witch who had headed the Green Road at the time had been a bigoted piece of work and Colleen hadn’t wanted that around her daughter. When she’d reached out to them for help, none of them had responded.
A few more seconds ticked away and then she nodded. “You’re good people. Shame the kid died.” She stood aside and said, “Come on in, Kit. You’re welcome here.”
I edged around Damon and headed inside.
He made to follow, only to freeze at the door. I’d felt the magic ripple and accept me, but it had closed immediately after. Sighing, I turned and looked at the witch. She was still studying him.
“Who is he?” she asked.
He glared at her. “Damon Lee. Cat clan of Florida.”
The witch acted as though he hadn’t spoken, still watching me. I realized it was up to me whether he came in or not. And since we were in a house of witches, they could rebuild any ward he might try to power through. Sweet, sweet justice, I thought…
But, shit. I’d told him we were at a truce. And whether or not he intended to hold to it, I didn’t give my word easily.
“He’s kinda sorta my bodyguard,” I said tiredly. “And I kinda sorta agreed to work with him on the job I’m doing.” I looked at him through the weight of wards I couldn’t see. “I can’t ask you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, but he’s not going to hurt anybody who doesn’t threaten him or me, and I’d rather not listen to him bitch at me—if you’d let him in, I’d appreciate it.”
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