by T. G. Ayer
I straightened and rubbed my hands on my knees. Beside me, Logan hadn’t moved, and I shook my head, feeling the familiar pull of disappointment. I should be used to it by now. Wishing didn’t guarantee the wish to come true.
I got to my feet, sadness filling me to the core. I was halfway to the door when a sound echoed inside the room.
The hair on my neck rose, and my heart began to race, slamming hard against my ribs. I turned slowly, half expecting to have imagined Logan’s voice calling my name.
“Kai?” Logan said again, his voice scratching and breaking on the single syllable.
“Logan?” I said softly, before launching into a sprint that brought me to his side within two seconds.
He was staring at me, his dark eyes raking my form, his lips turned up into a smile. “Shit-faced huh?” he asked, laughter brimming in his voice.
I let out a chuckle. “Stalkers and albino demons and world domination demon-hunting powers, and all you got was me getting shit-faced?” I said, sinking down beside him.
He grinned and shook his head. “Come here,” he said softly.
I didn’t wait for further encouragement. I shifted closer and leaned onto his chest, my lips meeting his in a gentle, tear-filled kiss. Half my mind had convinced me that I was dreaming and that when I opened my eyes, I’d see that I’d imagine the whole damn thing.
But when our lips parted, and my eyes opened, I found myself staring into the eyes of the man who I adored.
“Welcome back,” I whispered. Tears filled my eyes, and I didn’t even bother to wipe them away. My hands were too busy tracing the lines of his face, skimming his stubbled chin and touching his lips. “Dear Ailuros, I’m so glad you’re back.”
Logan laughed and shifted so that he turned on his side and was facing me. “I’m glad I’m back too. I’m going to need a chiropractor from all this lying down.” Then he frowned. “Hope I don’t have bedsores on my ass.”
I giggled. “Don’t worry. Sienna and I rolled you over regularly enough. And we did physio too, every day.”
He scowled. “So, you were having your way with me while I was unconscious.” He shook his head. “What a dirty woman you are.”
“Shut up.” I laughed and swatted at his arm. “We had a chaperone, okay. Your very adorable sister.”
“How is she doing?” he asked, suddenly serious.
“She’s been strong. Sometimes I think she’s been stronger than I ever could have been.”
His lips twisted into a grin but he didn’t comment.
I smiled and patted his cheek. “Must be that royal blood running in her veins.”
The mention of royal blood stole the humor from his face, and he reached for my hand. “Kai. I need to talk to you about something.” There was an urgency in his voice that sent ripples of terror running up and down my spine.
I patted his hand. “And I need to talk to you too, but I don’t think this is the time. You just woke up. The last thing we need is for you to overtax yourself and end up back in your coma.”
“Kai, look,” Logan shifted onto his elbows, his tone more urgent now. “I have to—”
“Kai’s right, Logan. You need to rest.” Sienna walked into the room, a huge smile on her face.
“I’ve rested enough, brat,” he snapped. But despite his tone, the smile on his face confirmed he was nowhere near in a bad mood. “I just got up, and now you want me to go back to bed?”
She glared at him, and as I watched, I got the feeling that there was more going on between them than a sister demanding a brother get some rest.
It reminded me that they were twins, and dragons at that. I still hadn’t gotten my head around the fact that my lover was a dragon shifter.
I pushed the thoughts aside. “We can tie you down, if that helps,” I said, my tone serious.
Two pairs of eyes turned to look at me. Ten seconds later both siblings burst out laughing, and Logan sank back onto the pillow and heaved a sigh.
“Maybe you are right. Laughing is a rather tiring exercise.”
Sienna rolled her eyes, then moved closer to Logan. “Here. Let’s help him sit up for a while.”
“He’s right here and can probably make such a decision for himself,” said Logan sternly.
Neither one of us paid him any attention. We eased him upright and allowed him to wriggle backward. Then I fluffed up his pillow and waited as he settled back.
As I straightened, I heard the soft crackle of paper behind me. “Crap,” I muttered and reached for the courier calling cards that I’d stashed in my back pocket. How lucky I was that I’d decided against throwing the faux-leather pants in the wash.
I withdrew the stack of cards and tried to flatten them out. When I looked up, I found Logan watching me. “Parcels for Tara?” he asked.
I nodded. He knew well enough considering I usually gave him a rundown of my day which sometimes included visits to Tara’s shop.
I tapped the stack of cards on my palm. “Yeah, I totally forgot all about them.”
“What with being shit-faced an all,” said Logan, his expression deadpan.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You be quiet.”
“Not a chance. I haven’t used these pipes in ages. I need to make sure they still work.”
I bent to give him a kiss. “Yeah, just don’t do any singing in the shower, okay. We don’t want you to break your voice.”
Logan curled an arm around my waist. “Hey, I thought you like me serenading you in the shower.”
“You’ve done no such thing,” I said swatting at his arm. Then I moved away, glancing up at Sienna who looked like she was about to explode with laughter. “And have some respect. Your sister doesn’t need to know the gory details.”
“Nah, I’ve heard his singing,” she said airily. “What do you call it when you cross a drunk donkey with a parrot high on klonk?”
I burst out laughing. I didn’t need to know what klonk was to get the gist of what she meant.
I headed out of the room giving the pair a wave. The siblings’ laughter followed me all the way to the ground floor.
Logan was awake now, which meant that I didn’t need to send him away without explaining face to face the dangers that surrounded us.
I should have been relieved.
I wasn’t.
Chapter 21
I gunned the engine and felt it roar beneath me as I coasted along the winding country roads. The sun had risen mere hours ago and yet its heat soaked into my helmet as though it was at its zenith. For a moment, I was reminded that now that Logan was awake, I’d likely have to return his motorbike and consider buying one for myself.
I just couldn’t imagine what my father would say though. It was all well and good for his mother to drive a mean machine like this but every time I’d mentioned it, he’d given me that look. The one where I knew I was better off going no further.
Now, things had changed. I had a death sentence hanging over my head. Surely that was enough to support the argument for a bike. I shook my head. Why was I even debating this with myself? I was an adult. I could make my own decisions even when they came with two wheels.
As I took a bend in the road, a dark green sedan sped out from a dirt road on my left. He must have misjudged the distance and had left it a little too late. Even his reckless speed wouldn’t have saved him from slamming his back fender right into my bike.
Thankfully, fight or flight meant my panther rose immediately to the surface and helped with my reaction time.
I swerved away and managed to avoid the collision with no more than an inch to spare, spinning around and skidding to a halt in the middle of the road, counting myself lucky that there was no other traffic behind me. The driver pounded his horn, and I watched him wave and yell as if the near-collision was my fault.
I would have done nothing. I would have just shaken off the incident and driven to the depot to collect Tara’s neglected parcels. I would have brushed the incident off as road rage and the
guy as a waste of space. Had he not looked over his shoulder long enough for me to identify him.
Councilman Marsden had almost wiped me off the road.
The thought made me feel uncomfortable and edgy. And suspicious. Had he meant to do that? As the car disappeared down the blacktop, I scanned the dirt road from which he’d emerged at such a speed.
I made a note of the address, meaning to have Baz check the place out for me once he returned from helping Horner out on a case. From the little yellow postbox on the side of the gravel drive, I gathered Marsden could have been visiting someone. Or he could have been lying in wait.
The only problem with that line of thinking was it begged the assumption that he knew I would be riding a man-sized bike and that it was me hidden behind the near opaque helmet face.
Still, if we had a mole feeding Marsden and the council information what was stopping them from sharing the make, model and registration of the bike anyway?
No. I shook my head. This was really an accident. Or rather an almost-accident.
I was still alive, still in one piece.
I gunned the engine and sped after him, keeping my eye on his car in the distance. I made certain to maintain a good following distance, only allowing myself to get closer when Marsden slowed and stopped at a crossroads for traffic. I pulled up alongside him, but he was barely paying any attention to me. Nor was he keeping his eye on the road.
He appeared to be yelling at someone, his mobile phone to his ear, his forehead scrunched. His agitation was clear even as he finally lifted his eyes and scanned the road. The car jerked suddenly as he attempted to cross, again misjudging the distance between himself and the oncoming vehicle.
Where had this man learned to drive?
The sound of horns blaring was clear inside my helmet, and I winced as Marsden braked, tires burning as he narrowly missed being T-boned by a truck-and-trailer that swerved around his nose, avoiding a collision.
Stupid man.
Marsden backed the car up and waited for an opening, driving with a little more awareness and street smarts this time. He crossed the road, and I followed, just like any other vehicle would.
He appeared not to notice or care, which I found quite strange. Surely considering he’d almost killed me, and had followed up with yelling and swearing, he’d be at least partially aware that the biker was driving alongside him.
But he kept his eyes on the road, and his head to his phone, his sedan weaving left and right a little too erratically for my liking. I hung back, putting some distance between us, allowing him to pull away.
He’d taken a turn leading us away from the city and toward the state line between Illinois and Indiana. When he braked suddenly then skidded onto what looked like another dirt road, I slowed and scanned the route.
Dense tree growth camouflaged the narrow dirt road, but Marsden had raised enough dust on the road to allow me to confirm and follow without him seeing me.
I followed the trail slowly until I could make out a slate roof in the distance. The thick forest of trees stopped a few yards from the house, almost as if the dilapidated building held it away by sheer force of will. I abandoned the motorcycle, pushing it into a nearby thicket and covering it with broken branches.
I straightened and considered shifting and scanning the area in panther form, but Marsden himself was a shifter of the bobcat persuasion. He’d sniff me out faster than he would smell a human on the property.
The human form tended to dull the scent of our inner beasts, something I considered protection at this point in time. Ask me later, and I may have a different answer.
From where I stood hidden by the trees, it was clear that the building was truly abandoned. A stately stone mansion that resembled an English Tudor home, it appeared to be in sad repair. Dozens of slate tiles were missing from the roof, and many of the windows were either boarded up or shattered.
Marsden shoved the front door open, wrestling with the unusually wide door as it stuck, likely due to the waterlogged wooden door frames. After a few moments, the door gave, and he entered into the darkness, his presence disturbing a flock of birds. Loud squawking emanated from the front entrance as more than two dozen yellow-beaked black birds surged out of the doorway in an explosion of feathers and raucous cawing.
I used my panther hearing to listen to Marsden’s progress inside the house, and to the surrounding land to search for anyone else who could be watching me watch the house.
The forest was still and silent, showing no sign of occupants or intruders. Now that the birds had flown off and were settling in the branches of dozens of nearby trees, I was able to hear Marsden’s footsteps as he walked deeper into the house.
As soon as I felt that he was far enough away, I hurried toward the front door, fairly confident that nobody was hiding in the tree-line watching me approach the dilapidated house.
The entire building smacked of dereliction, and as I stepped across the threshold, I felt I was inhaling dereliction. The air was musty, that earthy smell of mold, probably filling the walls.
As I entered the front hall the presence of mold was confirmed by walls dark with mold spots and water stains mostly near the ceiling.
I paused for a moment and listened for Marsden. A few moments passed before I found the sound of his heartbeat, overlaid on that of another, more rapidly beating, heart.
Walkers use both smell and hearing to hunt and to identify both friend and foe. I’d listened to Marsden’s heart once before at a council meeting, and was familiar enough with his patterns and his scent to know it was him in one of the upstairs room.
What stilled my breathing was my familiarity with the second set of heartbeats. The other occupant of the house was also known to me. Not familiar enough that I recognized the identity of the person, just sufficient to know that I’d been close enough to its owner to recognize it.
So Marsden was meeting someone I knew. Someone familiar to me. That meant the person who’d been feeding information to the Walker Council was likely right here inside this house, currently meeting with Marsden.
I moved slowly toward the stairs, staring up at the floor above just in case either one of them decided to check who approached.
Neither did.
I listened again and moved to the first stair. It gave off a low creak, but with the sound of the birds outside, not to mention the whistling of the air coming in through the roof and making its way through the house, I believed I was safe.
Each step was painstaking, but the closer I got to the second floor the easier it was to hear the hum of voices. By the time I got to the landing, I was able to register the second occupant’s voice. It was a woman.
My mind immediately began filing through possibilities, but I thrust the thoughts away. There was really no point. I’d confirm the identity of the traitor in the next few moments. No sense in losing concentration over it.
The voices came from down the hall to the left. Two open doorways stood across from each other, one with the door half open, the other flung wide.
With my back to the wall, I shifted closer and peered into the room from which the voices echoed. The speakers stood in the middle of the bare floor, with one of them pacing. From the sharp sound of the heels as it hit the wood floor, I guessed the pacer to be the woman.
From where I stood, I was able to make out a shoulder and the side of her head before she spun on her heel and headed back in her pacing.
I didn’t need to see her face to know who she was. The sound of her voice was clear enough, but the content of her conversation put all the nails in her coffin.
Anjelo’s mother, Stella Alvarez.
Chapter 22
Stella’s voice echoed in the room. “You didn’t say lives would be in danger. You used me.” Her voice was high and shrill, filled with panic.
Marsden laughed, and I could almost imagine the flash of white teeth and the mean look in his eye. “Stella, you were the one who came to me. You were the one who said
you deserved compensation.”
“Compensation, yes. My son was killed because of the Odel girl’s carelessness, for leading him down the wrong path. Now I’m almost destitute, forced out of retirement to make enough money to put food on my table. But that doesn’t mean I wanted threats of beheadings!”
“What did you expect us to do, Stella? We couldn’t just let her breed with that human. You know the law.”
“The law? That’s your stupid law,” Stella scoffed, pausing in her pacing. “We all know walkers have been breeding with humans for centuries with no issues. That’s just something you all cooked up to get the Odels out of power.”
“Which would mean they also get their comeuppance,” Marsden said. His tone was placating, but the hard edge of his voice implied he was struggling to remain calm. Stella was trying his patience, and that worried me.
I wasn’t surprised when a soft click emanated from the room, and my blood froze. I was familiar enough with the sound of the releasing of the safety on a revolver.
Someone inside the room had a gun. And they were well and truly ready to use it. Stella was in danger, and I needed to get in there before she was hurt.
I shifted one foot closer to get a better look at their locations, my plan being to head inside, grab Stella and bring her to safety before Marsden ended up blowing her head off.
The floorboard creaked beneath my foot, and I sucked in a breath. Footsteps hurried toward the door, and I had no choice but to slip inside the doorway beside me, glad that though the opening was narrow, it was just enough for me to slip through without disturbing the door.
Inside the room, I scanned the place for a hiding spot, finding only the closet available. With little choice, I rushed to the half-open closet door and almost stepped inside the darkness.
Feet on the threshold, some strange instinct—a sense of foreboding or self-preservation—bade me stop and I did, finding myself balancing on the edge of the floor with nothing but a drop all the way to the basement below me.
