Focusing on the next message, I tried to will my mind blank.
A familiar voice rolled out of the machine and my heart stopped for one very brief second. It was only a second. Really.
“Hey, Kitty-kitty.”
Justin.
I closed my eyes.
Justin Greaves. He was the one partner—in this life—who could make me sweat when it came to swordplay—actual swords.
And…until Damon, there wasn’t a man alive who had ever made my heart race but Justin had come close. He’d been the one who made me realize sex wasn’t a bad thing and that had taken some doing.
I heard something crack and I looked down, realized I’d broken my pencil.
“Dunno where you are or when you’ll get this message, but I need to talk to you. I have a job for you and you kind of have to take it.”
I made a face. Justin was a Banner cop now. He was the Banner contact I’d reached out to the other day…apparently we’d been trading calls. I kept meaning get the upgrade that would connect the line here to my cell, but I hadn’t done it yet. I’d think about it when I didn’t have the money, and when I did…well. Other things came up.
Why was a Banner cop calling me? Why was Justin calling me?
Banner had seduced him with the promises of You get to kill things and we’ll give you lots of weapons. He liked weapons almost as much as I did. And he liked killing things…well, when they needed killing. Justin was like a loaded gun, a good weapon and he was most efficient when he had a target.
“Call me, set up a time, Kitty-kitty. Don’t make me track you down, okay? You really do have to take this job…trust me.”
I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck.
Trust him. That was a problem. I did trust Justin. There weren’t a lot of people I was willing to say that about but he was definitely one of them.
The message ended and I sat there, staring at nothing.
I trusted him, but I sure as hell didn’t want to take any job that he might have to offer.
Jobs and Justin meant one thing: a connection to the Banner unit. The Banner units were exterminators. Non-human exterminators. Banner cops, slang for the Bureau of American Non-Human Affairs—were basically men and women like Justin, highly skilled, very deadly people who went out and eliminated the NHs who had been deemed too deadly to live. Generally, they didn’t get to play much because us non-humans patrolled our own. That was the job of the packs, the clans, the order of witches and the Assembly in general. But sometimes there were those who slipped past the ever-watchful eyes of the Assembly.
Sometimes there were those the Assembly turned a blind eye to and the Banner cops stepped up to the plate.
If Justin was calling me, it was entirely likely that he wanted my help in tracking somebody down.
Damn it all to hell.
Chapter Four
I excel at ignoring certain things.
Justin wouldn’t be ignored for long, but I could damn well put him off for one day and that was exactly what I did.
I had to get to the bank. Two checks from two different jobs, just waiting to be cashed.
And besides…I had a date. Since I had some money that didn’t immediately have to be poured into fixing or strengthening my wards, I did something I never did. I went and bought a new outfit.
Nothing fancy because I still needed to be able to move, especially since I was meeting Damon at Drake’s. Walking into a shapeshifter hangout looking like a sex kitten wasn’t going to do me any good, because then I’d be nervous and I’d freak myself out…yeah, not going there.
But a new top, the same shade of gray as Damon’s eyes, new jeans. I could do that. I saw a pair boots that I found myself coveting, but I wasn’t about to do that today. New boots required breaking in. No, thanks. I did give in and buy a shiny, sparkling pair of earrings that fell in silvery threads almost to my shoulders. Not real silver. It wouldn’t bother Damon unless it got jabbed into his flesh, but it was the thought that counted.
I would have liked to gone home and changed, showered, but I was on avoidance mode. That meant no going home. Justin knew where I lived. Instead, I changed in one of the ladies’ changing rooms after I’d bought the clothes.
I managed to kill time until a little after seven and then I headed out, doing a quick glance around the parking lot on my way to the car. No sign of Justin, his bike, or one of the infamous Banner cars.
So far, so good.
The drive to Drake’s took thirty minutes and I was twenty minutes early. Didn’t matter. I’d go inside and wait for Damon in there, because I figure the last thing Justin was going to do was walk into that bar looking for me, even if he did track me down.
I’d just pushed the door open when I heard the roar of a motorcycle engine. I grimaced but didn’t look back. Justin. He’d tracked me down, alright. I felt the weight of his gaze slam into my back but I just kept walking.
I’d call him in the morning.
If it was that important, he would have called again, right?
He hadn’t. So it could wait.
* * * * *
I went from the frying pan into the fire, it seemed, as I crossed over that threshold. Justin Greaves looking for me and now a good forty shifters staring at me.
Almost immediately, they all looked away.
The only exception was a slim man of almost ridiculous beauty.
He had black hair done in a queue, pulled back from his face. His skin was pale gold, his eyes liquid black and he was even more insanely polite than the wolves.
In the past few months, I’d also learned that Chang was one of Damon’s friends. A close one, too.
Sometimes I liked him.
I never trusted him.
“Hello, Kit.”
“Chang.” I shifted my grip on my sword. I wasn’t wearing her. The sheath would look damned weird considering I’d attempted to look somewhat girly tonight. If Damon wasn’t coming…
A faint smile tugged at Chang’s lips. “He’s on his way. He just asked if I would come in case you arrived early.”
“Great.” I sighed and rubbed my brow. “Because we all know I’d can’t handle myself, right?”
“Nobody said that,” Chang said. He gestured toward the back, courteously reaching for my elbow. My left one, of course, keeping away from my sword arm. Chang was all about being nice. “Would you like to sit?”
I shrugged away from him. “No. I want a drink.”
Ever wise, Chang didn’t offer to get it for me and returned to his seat.
After I’d gotten a beer, I made my way through the crowd and settled down in the one open booth, keeping my sword on the table. Nobody spoke to me. Nobody looked at me.
The noise level in the bar was conspicuously much quieter than it had been earlier, too. Way to kill people’s fun, Kit, I thought sourly.
I was five seconds away from sending Damon a message, calling the thing off when the door blew open and two rednecks came stumbling in.
Stumbling against each other, snorting and laughing. One of them was almost as big as Goliath, a friend of mine from way, way back. Goliath didn’t come by his name lightly. This guy, though, unlike Goliath, had a vague look in his eyes.
Some village has misplaced their idiot.
Big, strong, dumb. And a shapeshifter. Something isn’t right with the world when you put that much strength and power in a body that wouldn’t have the sense to control it.
But the other one was worse.
His gaze bounced around the bar and immediately locked on me.
Great.
I studied them as they made their way over to me. They weren’t wolf or cat. And the nervous energy hovering over them made my skin crawl in a way I recognized too well. Rats.
I hated rats. Hated them with a passion.
The big guy’s eyes were getting beady every now and then, too. Going to lose it in here?
Oh, yes. This wasn’t good.
They came to a stumbling halt in
front of me.
Behind them, I saw Chang rising from his chair.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
He cocked a slim black brow and folded his arms over his chest.
“Since when does a shifter bar serve meat…you’re supposed to be on the menu,” the skinny one said. “Not having food served to you.”
“Oh, trust me. Nobody here wants to take a bite out of me.” I tapped my nails on the table, keeping my hand away from my blade. “I’m too stringy.”
“You’d be good enough for me.” He bent down and peered at me. “Get up. Get out. You’re in shifter territory which means if you get fucked over, it’s your own damned fault.”
When I didn’t move, he did. I don’t know if he was going to grab me or hit me nor did I really care.
Shoving the booth back from the table, I jumped into a crouch and landed on the seat, hand gripping my sword. Three men had eased forward, surrounding him. The man seemed to think they wanted to play. “There’s not enough for everybody, boys,” he said, laughing.
“Chang?” one of them said.
“She can have him if she wants him.”
One gaped at Chang.
The second just shoved the skinny rat at me.
Others took the big bastard down.
I wasn’t paying too much attention, though, because the fucker coming at me had decided to change his skin and there was nothing less attractive than a wererat in the nude.
Muscles bulged in places they shouldn’t and his legs were all out of proportion. He shouldn’t be able to move well, if life and science were fair, but he could. As he came at me with a screaming sort of hiss, I held steady until the very last second and then moved, using his momentum against him as I spun and moved. I buried my sword deep, deep into the cavity of his chest.
I shoved forward with all the strength I had in me as I did so, riding him down.
He wasn’t strong and his body had frozen as he took the silver of my blade into him. Now I was crouched on top of that misshapen body, smelling the way the silver burnt him, the stink of it in my nostrils while his body trembled and writhed under mine.
“Now. Who were you calling meat?”
The other one was roaring pitifully. From the corner of my eye, I saw him, struggling under the weight of four bodies and staring at us.
“Get the fuck off of me!” the rat beneath me wailed.
I was pondering just how to answer that when the door opened and I felt the blast of heat rolling over me.
“You know, here’s the problem,” I said, leaning on my blade and staring down into his eyes. “One…you’re on neutral ground. Drake’s is very, very neutral and you attacked me for no reason. Two…I’m not human.”
I smiled at him. “My dad was…but my mother wasn’t.”
I could feel that heat spreading over me now and despite the insanity of the situation, my body was ready to jump up and down, all but giddy with pleasure. Damon was just a few feet away. I couldn’t hear him, I hadn’t seen him, but I could feel him.
“Since my mom wasn’t human, that means under the ANH charter, I’m not recognized as such.” I continued to watch the nerves bleeding into the man’s eyes. “Never mind the fact that if you hunt humans on neutral ground in East Orlando, you’re fucked. We hunt your kind down and eat you for breakfast here.”
“I want the fucking Alpha,” he snarled. “Where’s the Lady?”
I laughed. “Oh, that’s funny. You’re a fucking rat and you want to throw yourself on the mercy of the cat’s Alpha?”
“There’s no pack here! We have to align with somebody and you can’t deny me that right. That’s in the fucking charter,” he said and then he whimpered as I twisted my blade.
“Well, that brings us to the third problem…and really, it’s your biggest. If you’re smart, you’ll just move around until the silver in my sword shreds your heart,” I said.
Damon took a step closer.
“I want the fucking Alpha!”
“Kit. Introduce him to the third problem,” Damon said, crouching down by me.
“Sure.” I twisted the blade again. “You sure you don’t want to just kill yourself, rat?”
He spat in my face.
“Oh. That was stupid. But hey, it’s your funeral…” I stood up and wiped the saliva from my chin, jerking my blade out of his skinny chest. I watched his injured form melt back into his human one. “Meet your biggest problem.”
As Damon moved forward, I smiled. “This is the new Alpha. He’s also…mine.”
* * * * *
The body of the dead rat was carried out of the bar a few minutes later. I guess maybe I could have done the kind thing and killed him while I had my blade buried in him.
But he was a shapeshifter, he’d come onto shifter land and fucked with shifter rules. That was Damon’s territory, not mine. Especially since he was still settling in here as Alpha.
The big guy was howling and crying like somebody had taken his toy away. Damon eyed him narrowly but I think we both realized the same thing. Something wasn’t completely right with that one. Whether or not Damon had to do anything about him was yet to be seen.
Chang and the others muscled him out the door as Damon turned to stare at me.
“That wasn’t my fault,” I said, lifting my hands.
“Did I say it was, baby girl?” A faint smile tugged at his lips.
And me, stupid, idiot hormonal me? I stood there and felt my heart jump up to dance around in my throat like it had wings.
“You do realize I had this entire problem handled, right?”
“Oh, I can tell that. Believe me. I’m still fucking pissed off.” His hand cupped the back of my neck for a moment before stroking it down the back of my shirt. “You’ve got a pretty new shirt on…and there’s blood on it.”
I sighed and glanced down. “Blood on me, too. So much for a date, huh?”
He nuzzled my neck. “Go wash up. I’ll have some food put together and we’ll just eat at your place.”
I wanted to argue.
But I had blood on me. I was dirty…I couldn’t stand to be dirty.
* * * * *
Five minutes in the restroom at Drake’s wasn’t enough to make me feel clean, but it helped.
I had the blood off my arms, off my hands. I’d washed my face and inspected my pretty new shirt…Damon had liked it, noticed it was new…I could get the blood out. The surplice styled neckline kind of hid the fact that I wasn’t exactly generously endowed and it softened the lean lines of my body, so I was pretty damned glad the shirt wasn’t going to have go in the garbage.
I lingered a few more minutes to try and calm my spinning brain. Mentally, I was in knots and I even knew why, but I had to get it under wraps or I wasn’t going to have a very good date night. It was already screwed-up considering my boyfriend had just killed a rat.
Rats. I grimaced. I swear, rats in my life were never good omens. The last time one had showed up my life, the relatively calm existence I’d created for myself had been disrupted and I’d never gotten it back.
Of course, if I’d been living that life, I wouldn’t have found Damon.
Or rather, Damon wouldn’t have found me.
Oddly enough, that thought managed to undo a few of those knots in my brain and I was able to smile a little as I left the bathroom.
As I was crossing the floor, I noticed the tables had been pushed back into place. One of the girls cleaning up the floor glanced up at me and I was startled to see a faint grin on her face as she saw me.
Startled enough that I stopped and just stared at her.
None of these people smiled at me.
They ignored me. On occasion, when they did look at me, it was usually with a faint sense of bemusement like they couldn’t figure me out. Every once in a while, one of them was stupid enough to look at me with outright dislike, but that hadn’t happened in a while, or if it had, they’d gotten better about hiding it, because those looks pissed Damon off.
I just ignored them.
But they didn’t smile at me.
Well, Chang did, sometimes.
Damon smiled at me. Even before we’d gotten together, he’d smiled at me. When I wasn’t frustrating him or pissing him off, I’d amused him. Actually, I still do that.
But the rest of the shifters, I know they don’t have much use for me and if it wasn’t for Damon, I doubt they’d tolerate having me in here if I wasn’t on business.
Still, that was definitely a smile on her face.
Okay.
I was about ready to smile back at her when Damon appeared at my side and stroked a hand down my back. “Food will be ready in another five minutes.”
“That’s quick,” I said, looking away from the girl.
Forget the confusion of her smile.
I had the pleasure of his now.
He flicked one of my earrings. “Were you here long?”
“Nope. Not very. Five, maybe ten minutes.”
He glanced over to where Chang was sitting. “And Chang was here.”
I sighed. “We can talk about this later, right?”
“Nothing to talk about, Kit,” he said.
But he wasn’t being entirely truthful.
I knew it as well as he did.
One of the shifter cats—I think his name was Grayson—approached and I was glad. I didn’t have to find something else to talk about, or try and act like I wasn’t aggravated with him if he suggested that I should have let his good buddy Chang handle things.
“Alpha.”
I squeezed Damon’s hand. “I’ll wait at the bar.”
He didn’t let go. “I’m rather engaged at the moment.” He was staring at Grayson, an unyielding look in his eyes.
“It won’t take long,” Grayson said quietly, ducking his head respectfully. “I could buy the girl a drink and—”
“The girl has a name.” Damon’s eyes were gleaming now, and I knew that gleam meant dangerous things.
I tried to tug my hand away again, discreetly. When he didn’t let go this time, I gave up.
“I came here to have dinner and couple hours away with my lady,” Damon said, not bothering to keep his voice low or even polite. He awarded the entire bar a dark look. “It’s kind of been shot to hell, as you all can see, but that doesn’t mean I don’t plan on salvaging it. If anybody has business with me, they can see to it in the normal way. Not when I’m trying to have a fucking meal.”
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