Sliver of Silver (Blushing Death)

by Sabol, Suzanne M.

  “I won’t abandon her,” Jade whispered with conviction. Even I knew not to challenge that tone. I hoped Kurt knew by now not to challenge her either.

  “Fine, but you don’t go anywhere without me,” he growled, his voice a deep rumble in his chest.

  “Fine,” she placated with a little laugh. “Like I could get rid of you anyway,” she added with a warm smile lighting her eyes. It was sweet. I’d never expected sweet out of Jade. She reached over and kissed him on the cheek, a soft delicate little press of lips that was too intimate for me to witness. My heart ached and my chest tightened at the idea of what could happen to either of them. I wouldn’t be able to bear Jade’s blood on my hands.

  “Look,” Kurt said in a soft easy tone. “They’re clearing out and the tape’s come down. Tag said it was the same two so he’ll be checking the grounds tonight, we have inside duty.”

  “Okay, race you inside,” she teased.

  Jade got out of the truck and the passenger side door closed.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Kurt huffed.

  I sat up and stared at him through the rearview mirror.

  “If anything happens to her,” he growled. He didn’t have to finish. I knew by the pain in his eyes it would kill him.

  “I know,” I replied in a husky whisper.

  He nodded once and got out of the truck.

  Once we got into the house, Jade disappeared downstairs in the command center. Kurt shut the front door behind him and locked it tight. When he didn’t move to follow her, I knew there was something else he needed to talk to me about.

  I sat on the couch in a yogi style and rested my hands in my lap. The sense of responsibility to hear him out was stronger than I understood, a need to protect him that was getting more and more common the more I interacted with the wolves. The urge was a light tugging in my gut, sometimes so strong it hurt. I had to protect him and keep him safe. I was responsible for him, for all of them.

  “Jade’s my mate,” he blurted, with no pretense and no explanation.

  Mating was magical as well as an emotional experience for the werewolves. It was kind of a big deal since a mate was forever. It wasn’t a topic to put out there lightly.

  “I wouldn’t put it to her so bluntly.” I choked on my laughter.

  He paced the room as his wolf became restless, rippling beneath his skin. His eyes shifted to a coal black where the iris and the pupil were inseparable. Each deep, calming breath he took and each light step on the balls of his feet calmed him and his wolf.

  “I know, I know,” he said, waving me off. “I love her and so does he,” he said, pointing to his chest. “She fits us,” he whispered.

  I’d never heard any of them talk about their wolf as a separate entity. “What does mating feel like?” I asked, more curios than anything else.

  “My bones hum when she’s around,” he said. A smile crept across his face before he continued. “It feels like there’s a sting attached to us. It links her to me and me to her. I want to take her into my power and keep her safe,” he almost purred.

  “Does she know what becoming your mate would mean? From my understanding, it’s a lot more serious than marriage,” I huffed. “I think maybe the two of you need to have a very long conversation.” I stood and closed the distance between us. I placed my hand on his arm, letting his warmth seep into me and hoping he felt the reassurance I wanted him to read in my eyes.

  For the first time, with his downcast eyes and the pulse of Pack magic surging through me, I felt bigger than Kurt. He wasn’t there to take care of me anymore. I was there to take care of him. Pack power rushed through me in a whirlwind and my place in the pack structure twisted in my gut as the smell of him filled my nose. The scent of woods, bark, and heavy musk overwhelmed my senses and took over.

  Ours, she hummed through my mind.

  “I know, I’m just afraid of what she’s going to say,” he muttered.

  “You won’t know until you ask,” I reassured him.

  Patting my hand on his arm, he took my palm in his own, bringing my fingers up to his cheek. He rubbed my knuckles across his stubbly cheek. Turning his head, Kurt exposed his throat to me like Tag had done in the Manit.

  This is just creepy. Once someone had said the word Eithina out loud, everyone just accepted it like it wasn’t in question. Well, I don’t want to be Eithina. I want things to go back to normal.

  He raised his eyes to me with a pensive expression on his face as he sensed my tension. The hesitation in his gaze hurt more than I wanted it to. I tugged my hand slowly from his grasp. With a nod and a heavy sigh that sounded defeated, he walked away.

  I was grateful for the space he gave me but I felt guilty, like I’d let him down. There was something I had to know, especially while we were alone. A question had been forming in my mind for the last few days and I couldn’t let it go.

  “Kurt,” I whispered. After his description of finding his mate, I had to know. Turning, he caught the desperation in my tone. I had to appear pathetic and small to him but he was the only person I could ask and not feel ridiculous. He was the only person I could ask that would give me a straight answer. Patrick would avoid the question altogether, and Dean would try to make me feel better. I wanted the truth, needed it.

  “When Danny and I were first dating, Candace made an appearance at one of our dates and made him ask me to leave,” I said, taking a deep shuddering breath.

  “Yeah, she tended to do that, especially with Danny.” He shrugged.

  “He followed me,” I said with a tear in my eye. “He said it was because he loved me. Could he have disobeyed her like that because he loved me, or was it because I was more dominant than she was? Because I’m—?” I started, but couldn’t bring myself to say the word . . . Eithina. I couldn’t admit it out loud. I hadn’t even known Dean then. I didn’t believe in fate and I refused to acknowledge it now.

  Kurt watched me for a few minutes as I hugged myself, trying to stop the trembling sparking through my entire body. The pitied expression on his face broke my heart. I knew the answer before he said it but something inside me needed to hear him say the words to make it real.

  “I’m sorry, honey, but no matter how much he loved you, not even a mate bond could make him disobey a direct order from Gaoh or the Beta.” His words were filled with that sympathetic kindness I had been hearing a lot in the last few months. “Only Gaoh and Eithina outrank Beta and could make him disobey a Beta’s order.”

  I felt like a wounded animal, aching, stumbling, and hoping that I could just hide until it all went away. I didn’t know how to stop this horrible damaged feeling burning through me like a wild fire. I nodded absently. My knees were weak as the realization struck me hard in the gut that I’d loved Danny thinking I’d meant more to him than I actually did. I’d just been stronger than he was. Collapsing onto the couch with my head in my hands, tears stung the back of my eyes as I let that realization sink in.

  “Are you okay?” Kurt whispered, kneeling down in front of me. He stroked my hair back away from my face with his large, warm hands.

  “No, but I’ll be fine,” I said, finally turning my head up to meet his gaze. “Don’t worry about me. Jade’s waiting for you. Go on.”

  I just wanted him to go. I didn’t want to face the fact that my life wasn’t my own anymore and possibly never had been.

  Chapter 11

  Even in the pitch darkness of predawn, I knew she was there. Alex wore a light fragrance of patchouli oil that filled my nose and turned my stomach.

  I’d had a roommate in college who’d burned nothing but patchouli; candles, incense, and anything else she could get her hands on. I hated it then and I hated it now.

  Alex perched on my bed with her legs crossed like she was a 12-year-old kid. I flicked on the light, filling
my bedroom with the soft yellow light of the ceiling fan. She didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. Her hair was bright bubblegum pink and shaped in an upturned faux hawk curving along the crown of her head. An original Def Leopard concert T-shirt from 1986 hugged her body snugly. In faded jeans with tears across the knees, worn spots in many other places, she looked like a teenage instead of a six-hundred-year-old vampire. I kicked my shoes off in her direction, out of spite really, and started for my closet.

  “Alex, I’m tired,” I snapped, throwing the dirty clothes I’d been wearing into the hamper as I undressed. Thoughts of Danny, Candace, and Dean lingered in my mind as tears burned at the back of my eyes.

  “What happened here tonight?” she asked, unaffected.

  Turning to glance at her over my shoulder, I caught her familiar blank stare but there was nothing behind her eyes.

  “Ask Patrick,” I snapped. I wasn’t in the mood for playing games, not tonight. I wanted to forget all of them and all the mystical bullshit that went with them.

  “He won’t talk to me,” she admitted, finally showing the hurt she’d hidden beneath the stoicism.

  I felt bad for about a second and a half, and then realized if Patrick didn’t want to tell her, it was probably for a good reason and none of my damned business.

  “There are like a hundred damned people in this house. Any one of them can tell you. I need to get some damned sleep,” I grouched, throwing my jeans into the closet for another day.

  She stood, clutching the bedpost in her small, but deadly, hands. The wood of the bedpost groaned and cracked under her grip and I didn’t flinch.

  “How can you be so ungrateful?” she snapped as she paced my bedroom. The scent of her fear wafted through the room like smoke from a fire and just as pungent.

  “Ungrateful?” I fired back.

  Now, I was mad.

  “I had a fucking hand nailed to my front fucking door and I can smell your fear like I’m a damned werewolf. Which part of that should I be grateful for?” I shouted. The house below went still as everyone inside and out stopped.

  I climbed into bed and plopped down onto it like a petulant child, throwing back the comforter in an exaggerated display of force. She watched my little tantrum in silence. After a moment of tense silence, as my heart thumped heavy in my chest, she sat down on the edge of my bed and watched me fuss with the comforter. I wasn’t about to make eye contact and let her see how much she hurt me, or how her little comment had struck a nerve that was already raw. She was smart enough not to comment.

  “Sometimes I forget how human you still are,” she sighed, almost to herself. Alex focused her gaze, her midnight-dark Hispanic eyes on me, making me feel small. “You are powerful,” she stated as if it was fact. “More powerful than you or any of us probably understands yet. You’re a killer. A protector.”

  I wasn’t a killer. I wasn’t.

  “That’s why they fear you, why they respect you. It’s why they love you,” she said. “That’s why they risk so much to keep you safe. These are the reasons you should be grateful.” She stalked from my room without a word more. She’d said enough.

  The first hot tear slid down my cheek, and I didn’t have the strength to hold the rest back. I lay back in my bed and cried, burying my face in the pillow. The tears came too easy, as if they had been waiting in the wings for too long. I hated what I had become. I wasn’t a killer. I didn’t want to be a killer. I wanted to be normal.

  “Is she all right?” Amblan clamored from the first floor as her voice echoed up to my room. “It’s all over the news.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Kurt muttered as if I’d already gone to sleep. “She went upstairs to bed.” The sound of Amblan’s quick feet on the stairs echoed in the silent house. My bedroom door creaked open only a sliver as she peeked in to check on me.

  The dull boing of the television being turned on caught me off guard and my heart skipped a beat just as the soft slide of the DVD player opened. Am knew me better than anyone and fresh tears filled my eyes. The opening music of Disney’s Robin Hood filled my bedroom.

  God, I love that stupid fox.

  Am slipped in bed behind me and draped an arm over me, hugging me in tight against her. I don’t know why I started to cry harder. I didn’t deserve her comfort, or her thoughtfulness. I didn’t deserve any of it. That big gaping hole inside of me just got bigger and bigger every day, eating everything else that got in its way as it consumed me whole.

  “Shh,” she soothed in my ear. “You’re all right.”

  She stroked my hair. Such a simple comfort but my chest tightened anyway. She was wrong. I wasn’t all right. I could feel the wrongness in me but I didn’t know how to fix it.

  “Go to sleep,” she whispered, and for the first time in a long time, I was happy to go to sleep. “Everything’ll be okay,” she whispered.

  Just for a moment I lied to myself and believed her.

  Chapter 12

  I sat in my office working on next year’s budget, happily submerging myself in blissfully mindless numbers and mundane tasks. No vampires or werewolves here. No emotional drama to clog up my day. It was wonderful.

  My office was silent except for the clatter of my fingers on the keyboard and the click of my mouse.

  A low-toned, dying cow sound filled my office as the phone rang, setting my teeth on edge. I picked it up as quickly as I could to make that horrible sound end. I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

  “Hello, this is Dahlia,” I said in a semi-fake singsong voice that I hoped sounded professional.

  “We found the rest of your friend,” Derek said in as close to a snarl as his human throat would allow. “I need you downtown,” he barked. “Now.”

  “I’m at work,” I said, lowering my voice. I didn’t want my coworker in the next office to hear any part of my conversation. We had separate offices but the walls were paper-thin. I could hear everything that went on in his office and he could hear everything that went on in mine. They already thought I was slacking off. I didn’t need them to think I was bat shit crazy, too.

  “So take lunch. This concerns you directly now, so get your ass down here.”

  The line went dead.

  “Derek? Derek?” Shit! I slammed the phone down, sitting for a minute without moving, without breathing. I could make it quick and be back in an hour. Right? I could do it.

  “Hey, Trevor,” I called with a question in my voice. Trevor was 52 years old, a bit on the pudgy side, slow as molasses when he did anything, and one of the sweetest men I’d ever met.

  “Yeah,” he called back through the wall in the same questioning inflection.

  “Do you mind if I go to lunch a little early?” I asked with an edge of desperation to my voice. He wasn’t my boss but I was in a dangerous position at the moment and couldn’t afford to do anything wrong. I was being careful for a change.

  “Nah, not at all.”

  I grabbed my bag and headed out the door before he could finish that thought. My phone vibrated in my bag and I snatched it from the bottom of my purse. There was a text message waiting for me.

  122 W. Pearl Alley

  The address was helpful but I could’ve found the place without it. The scene was the only location downtown surrounded by police cars other than police headquarters. I was tired of seeing flashing red-and-blue lights.

  I’d honked my horn several times in long, solid notes before I even made the attempt to cross the police barricade. I didn’t have the time to haggle with the guy at the line in charge of keeping people out. Derek found me immediately since the head of every police officer within earshot of my horn turned. I wanted to get this over with and get back to work. Time was running out.

  “Jesus, Kid, was that necessary?” he gruffed as he ushered me under the tape.


  “Yes,” I answered. He handed me a pair of booties to put over my shoes. I glanced down at them and then at my heels and rolled my eyes. It wasn’t going to work. He shook his head.

  “I came from work, what did you think I wore, tennis shoes?” I mocked. His attitude was killing me, absolutely fucking killing me.

  “They’ll work. You’ll just have to tuck the booties in and don’t walk too hard,” he said in a huff, moving toward the group of officers gathered down at the end of the alley.

  The Marriott to the right and the Federal courthouse to the left shrouded the alley in shadow. The pavement was covered in a glittering spray of broken glass and a wide gruesome splatter of blood but there was no body.

  I gazed up the tall, mirrored windows of the Marriott. One of the windows of the hotel was busted out, explaining the glass all over the pavement.

  The Marriott’s windows were too thick. Hotels didn’t want to be liable if someone decided to jump, so most hotels windows don’t open. In order to bust that window out, someone with superhuman strength would’ve had to put a large piece of furniture through the glass. I slipped the booties over my shoes and pushed through the crowd of cops behind Derek to get a better look.

  A large pool of thick, congealed blood pooled on the ground, stretching across the alley and staining the gray pavement brown. The surface of the blood glistened as the slivers of sunlight permitted by the surrounding skyscrapers reflected off the broken glass lodged in the blood. The body of a woman dangled a few feet from the ground by her rope-bound ankles.

  I counted the windows up from the ground to the busted out pane. Five, six, seven. She’d been tossed from what appeared to be the tenth floor.

  “They cracked her skull like a coconut,” Derek said in a deadpan voice. “Her brain is gone,” he finished without looking at me. His eyes were completely focused on the blood staining the street and the body still hanging from her ankles.