I had no idea what time it was because my cell phone had died before all this chaos happened. It was only now that we were in a relative moment of calm that I even thought to wonder.
"Do you know what time it is?" I asked Maisey
I hadn't thought about it, but my sister had been abnormally quiet ever since the crazy truck ride to the bar. When I looked at her now, I saw she was sweating slightly and looked... off.
"Hey," I said suddenly, gripping her arm. "Are you okay?"
Maisey startled, then smiled a little shakily. "What? Yeah. I just can't believe all this is happening."
I nodded. "I know. I'm actually waiting for the moment when I have a mental breakdown. All things considered; I'm surprised I've been handling this as well as I have. I mean, vampires and werewolves, right? They're going to have to stop calling it supernatural or paranormal in books. I guess I'll just be reading 'supernormal romance' books from now on." I laughed at the thought, but Maisey only gave me a brief sympathetic smile.
I remembered the guy in the hallway. The one we'd put in the truck and hadn't seen. That wasn't just a random guy to my sister, and I figured that's why she was so preoccupied. Even if Riggs said he'd be okay, we didn't know how much we could trust what came out of his mouth.
That made me think of the cute guy down the hall. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I would’ve considered it the adventure of all adventures to have to-go coffees in my apartment with him. And now look at me.
"It's pretty crazy being out like this," I said, trying to make idle conversation.
Maisey seemed even more sick at that. She reached out and pulled me in for a side hug. "We need to get you somewhere clean as soon as we get Gravy Boat. And I'm going to triple check that we got all your meds when we are back at the apartment."
I nodded. There was the old Maisey.
I thought about asking her more about the whole vampire thing. Our brief conversation was still at the front of my thoughts, but I didn't want to remind her of Steve. I wondered if werewolves like Riggs had supernatural healing abilities, too. What if I became a werewolf instead of a vampire to fix my immune system? I grinned stupidly at the thought, picturing coarse brown hair sprouting from my boobs.
Gross.
But the way Fang had just transformed the tips of his fingers made me wonder how much I really knew about werewolves. They didn't quite seem like the out of control, full moon bound transforming kind. If anything, they reminded me more of shifters from paranormal romance books I'd read. But I wondered how much I really knew. Maybe Fang couldn't transform more than he had without giving in to his inner beast, or something like that.
I stared at the back of Riggs while he stalked in front of us, wondering. It was bizarre to think that he was something I'd only read about in books—something I'd thought was make-believe until just half an hour ago.
He was clearly on high alert as we walked. He also seemed to think we'd be less likely to be attacked on foot, which didn't entirely make sense to me. Maybe this Fang guy had a reputation and he wanted it to be obvious we were together? But if that was the case, I would've imagined he'd seem more grateful to have his help.
Either way, I found Riggs' paranoia rubbing off on me. I was studying rooftops and darkened windows as we walked, waiting for pale, monstrous faces to appear with glinting red eyes.
Once, I thought I saw a figure on a rooftop, but when I looked again, there was nothing.
I knew we were close to my apartment when I saw the police lights. The whole front of the building was taped off and at least fifty people in uniforms from various departments were standing around. Some had pads out and appeared to be collecting interviews from witnesses. Others were wearing hazmat style suits and heading inside with complicated equipment.
"How are we supposed to get in?" I asked.
Riggs made an annoyed noise—he had a lot of those, I noted. There was the standard-issue heavy breath of annoyance. He also had a grunt of displeasure. There was even a groan for the most highly annoying annoyances. "You wait here. I'll climb in through the window."
I chuckled. Then I realized he was serious. "What? Like parkour? I mean, I love that episode of The Office as much as anybody else, but I don't see how-"
I trailed off. Riggs was already loping across the street toward our building.
"Get her medicine!" Maisey yelled.
Riggs threw a thumbs up over his shoulder, then jogged to the left side of the building. It was a good twenty or thirty yards from the main police activity. It was also in a dark patch between two streetlights.
He paused for a moment at the base of the building, looked both ways, then did a jump that seemed just barely too high to be possible.
I blinked, watching in confusion. I expected him to scrabble for a handhold and fall back down, but when he spread his arms out like a rock climber, they seemed to find firm purchase. He didn't fall, and in an instant, he was reaching hand over hand across the brick, climbing effortlessly.
"How..." I whispered.
Maisey was beside me, holding to my shoulders tight.
Fang grinned at us, wiggling his fingers. "Werewolf claws," he said. "Trade secret."
“At least it was until you blabbed about it,” Maisey said.
I nodded absently, still staring at Riggs who had reached our third-floor window in just a few seconds. He peered inside, then pushed the window up and climbed through.
"What's he going to do about the people inside?" I asked.
"Riggs is a legend," Fang whispered.
"That doesn't answer the question," Maisey said.
Fang shook his head. "Riggs is the guy you get when the thing you need done is impossible." He was still whispering, like he was repeating some kind of urban legend that was meant to be told around darkened campfires.
"Him?" I asked, gesturing to the window. "He seems more like the grumpy jerk you tell kids to leave alone."
"Nah. There’s not a werewolf in the states who doesn’t know about Riggs. That dude has done some shit. But he came here to disappear. Course a guy like him can't really disappear, but he's trying. That guy," Fang said, pointing to the window, where the darkened silhouette of a large man just appeared. "He's what any werewolf on the up and up wants to be. He's-"
Riggs swung one long leg out over the window ledge, appeared to lose his balance, and fell three stories. It all happened so fast.
One minute he was climbing out the window with something tucked under his arm, the next he was falling.
I only had enough time to realize he was holding Gravy Boat III up in the air as he fell like a guy might hold his girlfriend's purse while she tried on clothes.
He hit the ground with an audible thud. Gravy Boat was jolted from his grasp and landed lightly on Riggs' chest. As if he hadn't just plummeted from the third floor, Gravy Boat casually crossed the street, glared at me, then meowed.
I ignored him and stared at the motionless form of Riggs on the ground. "Oh my God," I whispered. I wasn't exactly sure how to feel. The man was kidnapping my sister and I—or something close enough to it that I didn't think the distinction mattered a great deal. But it didn't mean I wanted him to die.
"He'll be fine," Fang said. He cleared his throat. "Maybe just a little rusty from retirement. But he'll heal right up. Give him a sec."
Sure enough, Riggs sat up, shook his head, then got to his feet and limped toward us. After a few shaky steps, he was moving normally again.
"Fuck," he grumbled once he got near us. He knelt down and pointed a finger at Gravy boat, making eye contact with the cat. "If you ever do that again, I will make sure I land on you instead of saving your ugly ass. Got it?"
I smiled. Riggs was talking to the cat like he actually expected him to understand every word. "What did he do?"
"He licked me." Riggs visibly shuddered. "He fucking licked my ear right when I was carrying him out the window."
I laughed.
Gravy Boat's only response to the threat
was to weave around Rigg's legs and let out a dignified yowl.
"How did you do that without getting caught?" I asked.
Riggs started walking back the way we'd come and our whole unlikely group followed after him. I had to jog to catch up to him. I noticed Maisey stuck close by me, as if she was worried Riggs was going to bite. Maybe that wasn't the most ridiculous thing to worry about, actually.
"Crime scenes are chaotic places. People from different departments all doing different jobs. If you act like you know what you're doing, chances are, you get left alone."
"Nobody thought it was weird when you grabbed a cat and a bunch of pill bottles?"
Riggs shrugged. "A woman asked what I was doing. Nobody else cared."
"What'd you tell her?"
"I said he was a suspect,” Riggs shrugged, pointing to Gravy Boat. “Then I fell out the window."
"Right," I said slowly, grinning at the mental image of that.
Riggs kept looking down in disgust at Gravy Boat, who was stalking along beside him like a wrinkly, hairless shadow. "I was kind of hoping he'd run away."
"For some reason, he seems to like you."
"Bad instincts," Riggs guessed.
I studied Riggs. He was easily the most attractive man I'd ever interacted with. Granted, that carried about as much weight as a t-rex's arms, coming from me. But still, I'd seen movies. And I’d creepily stared at people from my window.
Riggs was in a class all of his own. Tall, athletic, rugged with stubble running across his jaw and dusting his upper lip. He had nice lips, too. I didn't know if it was just knowing he was a werewolf, but I thought I could see wolf-like qualities in his features now. There was a kind of angular edge to his eyes and a sharpness to his eyebrows that made me think of a hunter. There was a sharpness to his canines—just subtle, but now that I was looking for it, I saw it. He even moved with a kind of deadly grace.
"Fang said you are a legend. What was he talking about?"
"He's full of shit, is what."
"Fang hears everything," Fang said, raising his voice from a little ways behind us as we walked.
"Fang is an idiot," Riggs said. "And he shouldn't be talking to you about werewolf business. I'm going to keep you alive, and when this is over, I'm going to set you and your sister loose. The less you know about our kind when that happens, the better. And if Fang wants to keep his balls attached to his body, he'll remember that."
"Fang would be honored if Riggs touched his balls."
Riggs made one of his many sounds to signal his annoyance. This one was the heavy exhalation variety, but he followed it up with increasing his pace until I couldn't have kept up unless I wanted to embarrass myself by jogging after him.
Even with all the craziness of the last few hours, I was smiling.
I was smiling because for once, I was the one doing something, even if it was running for my life. Even if it was getting dragged along through a world I barely understood by a man who seemed to hate the world.
It was my adventure, for once, and it was my story.
But my excitement suddenly dropped out of my stomach when I shivered. I'd just been thinking it was a muggy, hot night half an hour ago, hadn't I?
Maisey was always watching me like a hawk, and she noticed. She moved beside me, then put her hand to my forehead. Her face was already paler than usual, but all the remaining color drained from it when she looked at me. "You're burning up."
"What?" Riggs asked. He and Gravy Boat had been leading the way, but he came back toward me then. He put his big hands on my cheeks, then touched my forehead. "She's sick?"
"No shit she's sick," Maisey said. "I told you about her immune system, but you've been dragging her around like you're trying to get her sick."
He was searching my face for some sign, like he thought I might start spouting projectile vomit at any moment. "How did you get sick so fast?" he asked.
I grinned. Now that I paid closer attention, I could feel I was a little woozy. "We all have our talents," I said, trying to force a smile. “To be fair, I did insist we go get Gravy Boat.”
Riggs didn't bother asking permission before he scooped me up and carried me in front of him. It was the classic "fireman rescuing someone from a fire" type of carry. He had one arm under my legs and the other holding my back so I was against his hard, oddly warm chest.
He started jogging at a rapid pace, despite having to lug me around with him.
The movement meant my hips and shoulder bumped into his stomach and chest with every step. To my increasingly sick, pathetically sexually deprived mind, it was about the most erotic thing I'd experienced since Fifty Shades of Grey. Or at least since he’d spit-shined my face outside the bar.
I blinked a few times, trying to clear my head. I was just getting loopy from my fever. I hadn't lived my whole life in a bubble to come out of it and start catching the hots for the first man to pay attention to me—especially considering this "man" only loosely qualified as a member of my own species.
No. The inter-species thing wasn't the big hurdle. The fact that he was rude, abrasive, and a jerkface was the biggest hurdle.
He wasn't the charming prince I'd always daydreamed about rescuing me from my germ-free castle. It was more like the hot pool guy asking if you wanted to sneak out and smoke a joint on the roof with him. Hardly a sparkling romantic fantasy.
So I needed to stop paying attention to how nice it felt to be held by him. I also needed to stop sneakily trying to take mental snapshots of the way his body felt against me and saving them for later. That was absolutely not smart.
Then again, it hardly mattered. Riggs the werewolf was about to get a front row seat to my condition. He'd see what kind of burden I was on everybody around me, and he'd run for the hills. Just like my dad had run from my mom in the end.
That, or the shadowy figures I saw following us on the rooftops would kill us first.
The loopiness was really settling in. I laughed, pointing to them. “Look!” I said. “Vampires!” I thought it was a hallucination, but Riggs' grip on me tightened as soon as he looked where I was pointing.
"Shit," he said.
12
Riggs
I couldn't tell how many were up there. All I knew was that we weren't alone. We hadn't been from the start, but the vamps on the rooftops hadn't made a move yet.
The pale fuckers were always slinking around on rooftops. These ones seemed to know my reputation because they hadn't made a move when we left The Wet Flea. They'd just followed. But I'd only sensed two or three before. Now I could see half a dozen, maybe more.
That, and now Sylvie couldn't move on her own. It'd be a lot harder to try to get away when I had to carry her.
We were close, though. Maybe another minute of jogging and we'd be there, but I could tell Maisey was struggling to keep up. She'd looked fit, but something was wrong with the human. She seemed to only notice Sylvie's condition, but I'd been picking up something with the older sister, too. It was hard to tell exactly what was wrong with her because she still reeked of vampire. I guessed some blood had gotten its way under her clothes. Thankfully, it was probably subtle enough that the howlers wouldn’t notice and cause trouble for us.
They were both a fucking mess, and I was the idiot who had decided to rope myself into their problems.
Dumbass.
"Carry the angry one," I called over my shoulder to Fang.
"He's asking me for help!" Fang shouted. "You got it, Captain Riggs."
"Don't call me that," I shouted.
I heard a brief yelp of surprise and indignance, then confirmed that Fang had Maisey over his shoulder, ass up. Gravy Boat was easily keeping up with me—unfortunately.
We were just about to reach The Wet Flea when a lone figure dropped from the darkness to land in the street in front of us. He was tall and thin, with silver hair and a cocky, arrogant resting face.
"Lazarus," I said.
"Riggs," he replied, mouth twisting around
my name. “We meet again.”
“You’re not on neutral ground this time, asshole. Either get out of my way, or this will be the last time we meet.”
"I was delighted when I found out you were the werewolf who decided to meddle. But I'm prepared to make you an offer. Walk away now and hand us the girls. Do this, and I'll consider our conflict resolved. Continue to resist, and... well." He spread his hands, as if to say, "rules are rules."
I met his icy blue eyes. "Fuck you."
Lazarus smiled, but it didn't touch the rest of his face. "I was hoping you would say that. But I do have to ask. Why these women? What are they to you?"
"The enemy of my enemy, or some shit like that.”
He stared at me with a look on his face I didn't like. Then he angled his chin down, narrowing his eyes at me as amusement twinkled in them. "You don't know, do you?"
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't see the advantage in admitting that. "I know all I need to know."
"Yeah," Fang said, a little too loudly. "And Riggs will fuck you up if you don't get out of our way. Any friends you brought, too. He'll fuck them up. Then he'll piss on their corpses!"
"Fang," I muttered.
Gravy Boat took a step in front of me and hissed at Lazarus, arching his ugly, wrinkled ass up in the air. Maybe the little bastard wasn't all bad, after all.
"Last chance," Lazarus said. "Hand them over, or this gets ugly."
"It got ugly the moment you decided to show that thing you call a face in front of us," Fang said.
"Fang," I growled. "Would you please shut the fuck up?"
Lazarus was motionless. I braced myself for him to attack or try to grab the girls. I had Sylvie clutched tight. In that moment, I realized I cared about keeping her safe in a different way than I cared about keeping her sister, Maisey, safe.
I didn't have time to unpack that. I also didn't plan to let anything happen to either of them. I felt my wolf stirring inside, readying himself to shift into action if needed. It seemed my wolf shared in my protectiveness towards Sylvie. Or maybe that’s where it was coming from in the first place.
I Bite She Sucks Page 5
