“Do you honestly want me to offer to be your boyfriend?” he finally asked.
I was saved from having to reply to his strange question when the heavy metal door leading into Bella Luna’s kitchen exploded open, banging against the brick wall of the building. A large mass came flying out of the doorway and landed halfway across the back parking lot. It rolled a few feet before stopping and groaning. Whoever it was, was still alive…for now.
A series of low growls filled the darkness, drawing my gaze back toward the restaurant. Three men stepped out of the restaurant, their eyes glowing a frightening copperish-red. They were all dressed in black slacks and pristine white shirts. The trio was followed by Barrett, who stood outlined by the light coming from the doorway. His broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist. He was one hundred percent hard muscle, and by the way he clenched his fists at his side, seriously pissed.
“Did the guy try to leave without paying his check?” Knox whispered below the blood-chilling growls.
“No,” I murmured, my concentration elsewhere. I had already reached out to the creature to discover the mass was human; he had pulled a knife on a female server in the restaurant—a female shapeshifter. Sifting briefly through the thoughts in his mind, I discovered that his name was Franklin Thomas and he was from the Daylight Coalition. “Shit,” I hissed. This lump of blood and stupidity was the one I had come to fetch.
Putting one sneaker on the soft leather seat, I launched myself over the door of the convertible. I had to get between the schmuck and the lycans before they tore him up. My stomach knotted and I struggled to keep my voice firm and even. “You can’t do this, Barrett.”
“I’m sorry, but our agreement is off,” Barrett replied in a low voice, not at all sounding sorry. “He attacked Erica, threatened her.”
Damn it all to hell. I didn’t know most of the lycanthropes by name, but I had made a point of learning the names of Barrett’s immediate family. Erica was Barrett’s younger sister. Of all the people the human could have picked, he chose a blood member of the ruling family. I was no longer sure I could delay his execution now.
“Barrett, we both know that business comes before personal in our world,” I countered in a gentle yet firm voice. With four lycans spread out before me, I wasn’t sure I could keep them all at bay. “The secret comes before personal vendettas.”
“I’ll not let you tie my hands like this!” Barrett took a step closer to me, and the other werewolves closed in as well. The air seemed to shimmer with power. They wouldn’t bother to shift, but they would call on whatever energy they had at their disposal to take me down and get to the human.
Slowly walk over to the man and get him to his feet, I directed Knox telepathically.
“I need your patience. This man owes me answers. He may have killed Bryce and I think he attempted to kill Knox and me earlier tonight.”
“No!” The sound was more of a snarl than actual English, but I got the point and so did his compatriots. They all thought I was going to kill the human because he potentially attacked me first. It would be my right, and Barrett was pissed because his sister’s slight would never be properly avenged. But, no, I didn’t plan on killing the human. I had a much better idea in mind.
As the werewolves lurched forward, I threw out my hands to my sides, creating a semicircle of fire between me and the lycans. It wouldn’t stop them for long, but I needed only a few seconds.
Get him out of here, I ordered Knox. I’ll catch up.
I heard the man groan once and then there was only the soft whisper of fabric. Knox had lifted up the human and run to a safer location. I didn’t need to tell him to be careful. My main concern was the man doing something stupid to anger Knox, who could kill him before I’d had my chance to question the Coalition flunky.
The moment I felt that Knox was a few blocks away, I lowered and extinguished the flames. The lycanthropes didn’t hesitate. I narrowly dodged one fist flying toward my face and answered by slamming the heel of my palm into his solar plexus. The air exploded from his lungs, dropping him to his knees as he gasped for air. Balanced on the balls of my feet, I spun to my left and ducked down as another charged. I landed two blows and dodged one before I finally sent him flying across the parking lot.
The third stood back, his body hunched over as he struggled to find a way to take me down when his two companions so quickly failed. Barrett also remained in the background, his large hands clenched into fists. He was still smart enough to know that if he attacked me it could cause an all-out war between the shifters and the vampires in my domain. For now, this was just a little scuffle and I was simply defending myself.
I was shaky on my feet and there was a fine trembling in my fingers, but the rest in the car had given me the strength I needed to face off against Barrett if it came down to it. “I won’t kill him, Barrett,” I called out, my eyes locked on the one lycanthrope besides the Alpha that was still standing. “I need answers, and that man dead won’t help me get those answers.”
“Mira—”
“You can have him back when I’m done, I promise.”
“Are you serious?” The hardened edge had left his voice—he seemed surprised by my offer. The change in tone was enough to get his people to give me a little more space.
“Dead serious.”
“Leave us.” Without another word, the three werewolves filed out of the parking lot and back into the restaurant, closing the door behind them. The power that had flooded the small parking lot instantly left with the light breeze that blew through, shifting the leaves in the nearby trees. “He tried to kill you?” Barrett said once we were alone.
“He’s not the only one.”
“We didn’t—”
I knew what he was about to say and I cut him off. “He’s not the only one who’s tried to kill me tonight and he won’t be the last. There’s always someone trying to kill me. It’s the world we live in.”
“Your world, not mine,” Barrett corrected.
I smiled at him as I walked over to my car. “I’ll contact you when I’m done with the human,” I said, then drove off before he could say anything further. Whether Barrett wanted to admit it or not, we lived in the same world, with rules that threatened to choke those that could not accept it. I loved this world and its tight boundaries. Finding ways to manipulate the system we all lived in was one of the few things that still got the blood pumping in my veins, so to speak.
7
I located Knox at a warehouse a few blocks away from Bella Luna. It seemed as if he was reluctant to stray too far considering I had been outnumbered by a group of angry lycanthropes. But then, Knox still had a touching tendency to underestimate me.
After my car was properly stowed, I joined him in the nearly empty warehouse with the Daylight Coalition member. The dark-haired man paced the open area, his eyes never straying long from Knox as he looked for possible exit routes.
“There are two doors on the ground floor and a third on the second floor that leads to the roof,” I announced as I soundlessly walked across the main floor. I knew the warehouse because I owned it. It was kept empty for meetings just like this one.
The overhead lights remained out, but patches of light spilled through dirty windows into the gritty expanse filled with large crates and warped wooden pallets. I stepped into a square of light and stayed there so Franklin could see me clearly. “But you won’t make it to any of those exits unless I want you to.”
“Why’d you kidnap me?” he demanded in a harsh, ugly voice. His accent didn’t contain any of the soft Southern drawl that I had become accustomed to when dealing with humans. He was from somewhere up north originally.
“Kidnap you? I think you mean saved your sorry ass.” Knox laughed deeply, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his torn jeans as he leaned against the wall. “You threaten the sister of the owner of Bella Luna, and you expect to walk out with your balls still attached? Very unlikely, my friend.”
“I’
m not your friend!” he raged, taking one step closer to Knox before backing off again.
“I know what you are!” Franklin shouted. He paced toward me as if his courage had returned for a second before it left him and he paced away. “You’re a vampire.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to deny it, but I let the comment pass. If he was the one that blew up Bryce’s house, then he mostly likely saw me at the house seconds before it exploded, and now I stood unharmed before him. Was there a better explanation than the fact that I was a nightwalker? Well, none that would make any sense.
“And you’re a member of the Daylight Coalition,” I said with a light shrug of my shoulders. He honestly seemed shocked by my sudden pronouncement. He stumbled backward a couple steps and shook his head, causing me to laugh. “You know about us, but do you honestly think we wouldn’t know about you?”
I stopped laughing suddenly, letting the silence overwhelm him before I started speaking again. “You kill nightwalkers. This morning, you killed one by the name of Bryce at the edge of town. He was tall, slender, with brown hair and freckles. He looked like he was nineteen. You killed him and made sure the body was left in a spot where the sunlight could reach it.” As I spoke, I watched the memories playing back in his mind like a silent movie. In a slightly broken jumble, I saw Franklin drag Bryce’s unconscious body up from the basement. With an enormous knife, he sawed opened the nightwalker’s chest and cut out the heart. He then removed the head. The whole time, Franklin was grinning as he was washed in Bryce’s blood.
Bryce had been asleep and completely helpless when the human struck just after sunrise. Nothing in heaven or earth could have wakened him. Some would argue that at least he felt no pain. But he also had no chance to fight back. No chance to fight for his right to exist.
I suppressed a shiver that bit at my muscles and ignored the ache in my fangs. I couldn’t kill this coldhearted monster. I needed the answers he held. He knew the why and the final who.
“How did you find out about Bryce?” I asked, doing the best I could to swallow back my anger. “I can’t imagine you found him on your own considering that you’re not from around here.” I squatted like a toad among his memories, waiting for the image of the person who had betrayed Bryce. Yet I was momentarily distracted by the smile that blossomed on his face. The scowl that twisted his features melted away, and his eyes widened as a grin split his mouth.
“I didn’t know about him until one of your kind told me about him,” he proudly announced, hoping to get a rise out of me, but I didn’t react. I had already suspected that a nightwalker was somehow involved in this mess. But hearing those ugly words fall from his lips didn’t stop the flash of anger that ripped through me.
“Who?” I whispered.
“Why would I tell you?”
“In hopes of getting a quick, merciful death.” I took two quick steps out of the light, approaching my companion. He lurched backward, nearly stumbling in his awkward haste. I smiled as his own smile faded. “You can tell me or I can pick it out of your mind. Besides, why would you want to protect this nightwalker?”
“What do I care about some stupid fucking vamp? She came to me bitching about being turned against her will and that she wanted me to kill the bastard that did it. She was some blond bitch. Said her name was Katie.”
As he spoke, I watched him mentally replay the moment when she had approached him at night in a lonely parking lot. But something was off. Katie was not now nor was she ever a nightwalker. And yet the image of the nightwalker was blurred so that I could only pick out the figure’s slight form and blond hair. The person was definitely female, but the face was unclear. The nightwalker that spoke to him had tampered with his memory, but had not done a very good job of it.
Did you see? I silently asked Knox, who was still watching from the other side of the room. I never heard him move, but I could feel that he was now closer to me than he had been only seconds earlier.
Yes. That’s not Katie. She wasn’t a nightwalker, unless…
I saw the body. She’s not rising tomorrow night. She’s gone. Even if Katie hadn’t been drained of all her blood, it was unlikely she would have been able to heal her broken neck in the process of being reborn. In general, the human had to be in working order if he or she was going to be brought over. We could heal nearly any wound once we were nightwalkers, but we all had to start off in good shape.
“You’ve been lied to, my friend,” I commented, turning my attention back to the human. It wasn’t Katie. Furthermore, the nightwalker had lied about the reason for having Bryce killed. It was impossible to be made into a nightwalker against your will. If you didn’t want it, you died. And sometimes, even if you did want it, you died. You had to fight death for your soul during the process and he wasn’t the most congenial loser.
“What the hell do I care? A vampire is dead. One less to prey on humans.”
“Yes,” I hissed. “One less.” Turning on my right heel, I headed back toward the entrance of the warehouse with Knox at my side. I was done with the human. Between his uninformative answers and his damaged memories, I had gotten from him all the information I was going to be able to get. I was content to hand him over to Barrett. I had a bigger target in mind at this point. While combing through Franklin’s mind, I had caught the address for a Coalition safe house in Atlanta and a second one in Memphis, Tennessee. I’d see to it that that information was put to good use.
The shot was like an explosion in the silence of the warehouse. Pain punctured my back to the right of my spine, ripping through flesh and organs, before exiting through my chest. My whole body bowed and jerked forward. I slid a couple inches on the tips of my toes before my knees gave out on me and I collapsed to the floor. The bastard had missed my heart, but the bullet cut through one of my lungs. Lucky for me, I didn’t need my lungs any longer, and it wouldn’t take long for the damage to repair itself.
Knox knelt beside me, one hand on my arm while I pressed a hand to my chest to stem the bleeding. “Are you okay?” he demanded in a snarl. He was simply waiting for me to say that I was okay before he launched himself at Franklin.
“You forgot to search him?” I bit out.
“I’m sorry. I…I forgot. I’ll take care of him now.”
“He’s mine,” I replied in a low growl. Gripping Knox’s arm, I jumped to my feet and rushed across the warehouse to where the human stood, attempting to unload the contents of his handgun into my body. However, all the bullets went wide. There was no hitting me. I was moving too fast. A grim blur of color in the dimly lit warehouse. He didn’t know I was there until my hands closed around his throat and I threw him against one of the support beams. By then, his gun was clicking sadly, out of bullets.
“You have my undivided attention now,” I said, leaning in close enough that my breath brushed against his ear. “Is there something you wanted?” My chest pressed against his shirt, soaking up some of my blood. I pulled back just far enough that he could now see my fangs, sending a shiver of fear through him.
My hands clenching his shirt trembled as I fought the urge to sink my teeth into his throat. But it was more than just the need to drink in his blood. The monster that lay deep within my chest roared to life, demanding that I rip flesh and break bone. I wanted to hear him scream in pain until the sound echoed through the empty warehouse. I needed him drowning in pain, instead of emitting the terrified little whimpers that escaped him now.
Slowly I regained control of myself. In my world, I had the right to tear and rend and shred. He attacked me first. He tried to kill me at Bryce’s and again here. Unfortunately, I had other plans for this shivering sack of flesh that would serve me better than a moment’s joy in killing this bastard.
“I thought so,” I said, shoving him a little as I released his shirt.
Again, I turned and walked away. Knox accompanied me out of the warehouse. His mouth opened the moment the steel door closed with a solid clang behind us. “We forgot to ask abou
t the video camera,” Knox said, sliding to a stop in the gravel.
“He’ll only lie about it, wasting our time,” I said, halting him before he could go back into the warehouse.
“But if they have your picture—”
“I’m screwed, I know.” Screwed was an understatement. If it got out that I was a nightwalker, even as a joke, the Coven would have my head and heart on a platter before sunrise. “Do we have anyone who might be able to hack into the Coalition database?”
“Hackers? Nightwalkers, no. But Barrett has at least a pair.”
“Perfect.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Barrett’s number. “He’s at the warehouse, but won’t remain here for long. He’s all yours now,” I announced as soon as he picked up the line.
“Thank you,” Barrett murmured in a low voice. He was grateful, but he wasn’t particularly happy. He owed me now and it sat heavy in his stomach.
“You can track him by the scent of my blood,” I added, twisting the knife.
Barrett knew the only way my blood would get on Franklin would be if he managed to wound me. He now owed me a very big favor considering I had walked away from a very personal slight so that he could have his revenge. And if there was one thing that all the other races had in common, it was the fact that not one of us liked to be beholden to the other.
“What do you need?” he said as if he were grinding the words up in his clenched teeth.
“A favor. He may have gotten me on film earlier. I need all evidence of it erased. Files, e-mails, and possibly data removed from the Coalition database. Do you have people who can handle it?”
“You know I do,” he replied. His voice sounded a lot less gruff than earlier. As favors went, this one was fairly easy. His people were potentially getting access to our enemy’s files while he was evening a score with me.
“My fate is in your hands.”