I could not get my fangs to suck back up into my
gums.
I crinkled my nose and tried to think of
unappetizing things, but all I could come up with was cold cow blood. A line of
drool spilled over my bottom lip, thanks to my mouth hanging open like an idiot.
I wiped it away with the sleeve of my coat and made a slurping noise that only
kids who wore retainers had a good excuse for.
The bedroom closet in Casey Poe’s apartment was
dark, but enough light seeped through the slats on the door that Mandy took
notice of my condition. The whites of her eyes swelled as she glared at me.
“You didn’t drink enough blood before we left,” she
accused in a razor-sharp whisper.
“Did too.”
“I told you to have a second pot.”
“I had three,” I hissed.
“Must be the adrenaline then,” Mandy said, her
voice dropping lower. She readjusted herself in the small nook we’d made
between the hanging clothes. “You haven’t been out of the house in a good
while.”
I nodded, refraining from speaking again as my
elongated eye teeth made the act uncomfortable. Besides that, if I accidentally
cut my lip and spilled fresh blood, our hiding spot would be blown all to hell.
The werewolf we waited for would scent us long before he entered Casey’s
apartment.
I still wasn’t convinced that the activated carbon we’d
dusted onto our clothes would fix that, but Mandy had insisted it would make
any lingering trace of us smell like ancient history. She’d also said that the
pile of dirty laundry on Casey’s bed was strong enough to draw flies from the
next state over.
Thank goodness the girl was such a shitty
housekeeper. At least breathing through my mouth meant that I didn’t have to
endure the odorific fog hanging in the air.
Mandy squinted down at her watch. Again. Her nerves
were just as itchy as mine. We’d both be getting our asses chewed when we
returned to the duke’s manor—though if our suspect made an appearance tonight,
the backlash would be tenfold.
Can’t
have your blood and drink it too, I reminded myself. Saving the day—or night—was
worth the royal reaming that was sure to follow.
Casey Poe was Phillip Salinger’s daughter. The
half-sired minion Kassandra had sent to kill off Dante’s potential scions had
knocked up another donor-in-training at the blood finishing school he’d
attended as a teen. Casey’s mother had died giving birth. She never outed him
as the father, and he’d decided not to officially claim the child either—not
after being accepted into the Duchess of House Lilith’s personal blood harem.
As sleazy as that made Phillip in my book, I
respected him for keeping tabs on the girl. Dante had granted me access to
Blood Vice’s resources and permission to investigate after Phillip and
Kassandra had been coffin-locked. I wanted to know how the duchess had done
it—how she’d convinced someone to commit such awful crimes and forfeit their
life for hers.
Was it blind devotion? Blackmail? Hypnosis?
Between Blood Vice’s private DNA library, their
back door into Interpol’s DNA database, and Phillip’s online search history,
I’d pieced together the big picture.
Casey’s youth had been far from ideal. She’d played
musical foster homes until her seventeenth birthday, then dropped off the grid
until five years later, when she ended up in a Chicago hospital after being
viciously raped and left for dead. The news article about the incident
mentioned a series of similar attacks in the area, and the only other survivor
had been murdered the day after she was released from the hospital.
The creep was covering his tracks. Blood Vice only
stepped in if a crime was glaringly supernatural or wild animals were
suspected, especially in a big city. By not shifting, he’d managed to keep the
evidence within human jurisdiction—until I’d taken a closer look at Casey’s lab
results.
Spawning non-consensual werewolves was punishable
by death. If the guilty party wasn’t pledged to a pack, then the sentence was
carried out by the Vampiric High Council.
A second article that turned up in Phillip’s search
history detailed how Casey had made a miraculous recovery before going missing
from the hospital. From there, she dropped off the grid again, though Phillip’s
bank account statements were noticeably lighter from then on.
He’d sent gift cards for groceries, signed her up
for a subscription butcher box under a fake name, and made rent and utility
payments for the apartment—which, while not the fanciest of abodes, was close
to a conservation area where she could run during full moons. Phillip had taken
care of everything for her.
Right up until All Hallows’ Eve when he’d been laid
down for a long, velvety nap.
I should’ve turned the information over to the duke
and Blood Vice. But the last time Dante had allowed me to help with a case had
been…anticlimactic. He’d pulled me at
the first sign of progress—after I had
made a significant discovery. Like snatching a baby bird out of the sky before
it could fly more than two feet from the nest.
I couldn’t stomach that again. Not after all the
time I’d spent training to be a part of Blood Vice. Not after all the legwork
I’d put into this investigation. It was ridiculous. Frilly dresses and regal balls
were nice, but I belonged out here,
where I could make a difference.
Besides, it wasn’t as though any of House Lilith’s
enemies knew what Mandy and I were up
to tonight. No one did. We’d kept the simple yet brilliant plan we’d hatched to
ourselves for days. Tonight, it was just us—well, us and the big bad werewolf
prying open Casey’s bedroom window.
I still couldn’t close my mouth, but I held my
breath and silently begged my pulse to find somewhere other than my ears to do
its relentless thundering.
Mandy stood perfectly still beside me, eyes level
with a gap in the closet door slats. The skin between her brows creased, and I realized
that she hadn’t expected this to work. Hell,
I hadn’t expected it to work. What kind of creep-o stalker responded this
quickly to bait? And years later, at that.
Red flooded my vision, and the man’s outline came
into view as he hooked a leg over the windowsill and climbed inside. The fire
escape stairwell rattled behind him, and he paused, tilting his nose in the
air.
I could smell the tequila that saturated Casey’s
bed sheets from the closet. We’d found it in her kitchen and helped ourselves.
It was a nice touch, considering the fake DUI claim included in the carpool
requests I’d posted online—after sending Casey off on an all-expenses paid
cruise to the Bahamas.
At least someone was enjoying my life savings.
When tall, dark, and creepy closed the window
behind him, my grip tightened around the silver-pronged stun gun I’d brought
with me. My coat felt uncomfortably light, considering I usually kept a .40 in
each breast pocket. But shooting up an apartment in north St. Louis would involve
the human PD. We were going to have hell to pay with the duke as it was, so I’d
resigned myself to the stun gun.
Mandy’s eyes took on a golden sheen as the man
turned toward the closet. She could shift in a matter of seconds, but I had a
feeling it wouldn’t be fast enough to keep us out of Shit Creek if this guy
decided that he wanted our hiding spot.
As his head turned back toward the bed, drool oozed
from the corner of my mouth, and I instinctively slurped. It was just a small
sound, but for a werewolf, it might as well have been a fire alarm.
I shoved Mandy into the shadowy corner of the
closet—under the longer items of clothes and behind a cheap wicker hamper—just
before the closet door ripped open. It smacked the bedroom wall and rattled as
if it might break right off its hinges.
Then a fist connected with my jaw.
My mouth snapped shut at the impact, and both fangs
broke the flesh of my bottom lip. Hot blood filled my mouth and dribbled onto
my chin. The man’s yellow eyes glowed in the dark as he sucked in a deep breath
through his nose.
“Vampire,” he whispered.
I expected the revelation to spook him, but something
in his tone suggested that he was more intrigued than threatened. I covered my
aching mouth with one hand and thrust the stun gun at his chest, but he caught
my wrist, leaving the silver prongs to crackle mid-air.
“Are you here for my girl?” he asked, taking hold
of my opposite wrist and prying my hand away from my mouth.
“She’s not your girl.” I spat the words at him,
dotting his face with my blood as he pulled me out of the closet.
Though the room was dark, the Eye of Blood picked
out the man’s every detail—the thin mustache, a chipped front tooth, receding
hairline. He drew my arms apart, forcing me closer to him so he could take
another whiff.
“Mmmm,” he moaned. “You have a weakness for the
she-wolves.”
I took the opportunity to jam my knee into his
groin. Fair fights were for the sparing ring.
A human would have released me and crumpled to the
ground. Not this one. A slow, rolling growl that sounded more like a purr
rushed past his lips.
“I prefer humans myself,” he said, tightening his
grip on my wrists until I felt something pop. “I’ve never had a bloodsucker.”
Then he
wrenched me off my feet. The tips of my boots grazed the ceiling. Half a second
later, my back flopped heavily onto Casey’s cheap mattress, and all the air
left my lungs.
Before I could regain my breath, the werewolf was
on top of me. His thick legs straddled mine, pinning me to the bed. Another
grating purr echoed in my ears as he lowered his face to mine, lapping at the
blood that had spilled from my mouth and trailed across my cheek. His weight
pressed me deeper into the mattress, and I wheezed out a pathetic noise in
protest.
The joints in my wrists felt loose. My hands and
fingers tingled at the lack of circulation, but I hadn’t dropped the stun gun. I
squeezed the buttons on either side of the device, taking comfort in the motion
despite its uselessness. The werewolf still had hold of my wrists, and now my
arms were stretched over the booze-soaked mounds of Casey’s laundry.
Just as the creep’s tongue reached the corner of my
mouth, he paused and lifted his head, sniffing the air. I feared that he’d
finally figured out Mandy’s scent wasn’t coming from me, but rather the closet
where she was likely mid-shift. But then I smelled it, too.
Smoke coiled up from the dirty socks and tee shirts
on the bed beside us. I stared at it, just as confused as my assailant—until I
realized how close my hand with the stun gun was. The clothes suddenly ignited,
and we both gasped as flames reached for our faces.
I tried to roll onto my side, away from the fire,
but I couldn’t move. As alarmed as he was, the werewolf refused to let go of me.
I wasn’t going anywhere fast.
He brought my wrists up over my head and tried to
grasp them in one of his meaty hands. I didn’t make it easy for him, which
earned me a sharp slap once he managed the feat. Then he attempted to snuff out
the fire with one of Casey’s pillows.
I squeezed the stun gun again, angling the prongs
down at the stretch of mattress above us. Without the pile of clothes for
cover, he noticed this time.
“Sneaky bitch.” He abandoned the small fire to reach
for the device, but he didn’t quite make it.
The bed jolted, and then Mandy’s dark wolf was on
his back, teeth sinking into his shoulder. The man garbled out a broken scream.
He balled his free hand into a fist and punched Mandy in the muzzle. A whine
punctuated her growl, but she held on, jerking her head as she tried to pull
him off me.
I bucked my hips, hoping to unbalance the creep.
The flaming pile of clothes burned brighter, spreading now that it had been
left unattended. It sent our shadows dancing across the walls of Casey’s room
and a film of slick sweat over my skin.
I ignored the throbbing pain in my wrists and
groaned through clenched teeth as I strained to pull my hands apart. The
werewolf’s grip was failing, thanks to Mandy and the fire.
One hand finally sprang free. The creep let go of
my other to grasp at the stun gun, but Mandy gave his shoulder another yank. His
hand came down on my face instead. My bottom lip seared with fresh pain as he
clawed at my face, and I felt the pads of his fingertips roughen against my
skin.
He’s
attempting to shift. My mind exploded with panic. We were having a hard
enough time with him in human form. As a wolf, he’d be ten times worse.
I stabbed the stun gun into the man’s chest. The
silver prongs ripped holes in his shirt, and his eyes faded from yellow to dark
brown as I lit up his world. My fingers shook violently, but I had enough
strength left to squeeze the device until the asshole began foaming at the
mouth.
Mandy pawed my arm and yipped at the fire. She
pressed her muzzle into the man’s arm as he slumped and began to slide off me,
pushing him toward the flames. She intended to use his limp body to put the
fire out. At least one of us still had their head screwed on tight.
I did what I could to help. The man’s chest flopped
onto the bed beside me, covering the bulk of the retail kindling and blowing
hot ash in my face. I scrambled off the bed and to the opposite side of the
room before hacking my lungs out.
Mandy shifted and used Casey’s pillow to put out
the rest of the flames. When she was done, she clicked on the bedside lamp. Her
naked body was spattered with blood and soot, yet she crinkled her nose at the
mess I’d made of Casey’s bed.
I wondered how Blood Vice would cover this up for
our unaware host. She was a wolf, so maybe the truth wasn’t entirely out of the
question. All I knew was that my work here was done.
“So…” Mandy said, taking in the charred sheets and
unconscious werewolf. “High-five now or later—after we call this nightmare in
and survive the aftermath?”
“Later. Much later,” I said, rotating my bruised
wrists.
I was already debating whether I should use my mild
injuries to gain sympathy from the duke. I’d receive none from my sire. But
whatever cross words they had for me was a small price to pay compared to what
Mandy and I had accomplished tonight.
That’s what I told myself anyway as I watched Mandy
retrieve her cell phone from her abandoned coat and punch in Dante’s number.