by Karen Chance
Twenty minutes later, Dory was still shaken, although that could have had something to do with floundering through a mile or more of swamp. The "ground" around here was mostly moss and algae-covered water, with the rest ankle deep mud spiked with trippy little roots. None of which acted like roots should and stayed underground!
But she'd made it. She was currently looking at a little building exactly like the one Dreads had described: tin roof, wooden walls, stilts to keep it out of the muck, and quite possibly the most obnoxious odor she had ever smelled emanating from it. Seriously, there should have been blue clouds hovering over the top, only she didn't see any. Of course, she couldn't see much out of seriously watering eyes.
Well, at least she couldn't miss it, she thought, squatting in a tree and rolling a joint.
It wasn't likely to cover the smell, but that was okay since her nose had basically shut down in self-defense at this point. It wasn't likely to help anything else, either, which was more of a problem. A big problem, since her dhampir nature tended to rear its ugly -- and scary, and completely insane -- head, whenever she got a little too upset.
Like after feeding a guy to a bunch of modern dinosaurs, for instance.
Yeah, yeah, she hadn't had a choice. She knew that. There's a big difference between feeling sorry for someone and dying for him, and Dory wasn't a saint. She'd never pretended to be. If he'd taken half a second to talk to her . . . .
But they never talked to her. Vamps freaked out when the bogeyman showed up, and death was usually the only thing on their minds. Hers. And that was when they didn't blame her for killing one of their family. Conversation had definitely not been on the menu.
Of course, you didn't try, her conscience murmured.
Yeah, like she'd had a chance!
Sometimes she didn't know what was wrong with her. She was dhampir. She wasn't supposed to worry about things like this. She was supposed to kill everything in a room and walk away, unaffected. Her other half, the one that was squirming away under her skin right now, sure didn't have a problem with that. She'd woken up in too many rooms full of corpses, after it had decided to come out for a joy ride, to know.
And she'd worried over every one of them.
At least she had for a long time. These days she had a better grip on herself, and had developed tricks to keep the tiger in its cage. So when it did get out, it was usually in the middle of a knock down drag out when she was bleeding and in pain and not thinking clearly enough to tamp it down.
And in those cases, the people she found when she woke up weren't the kind you grieved over.
But it hadn't always been that way. There'd been a lot of years when she'd stared around in horror at piles of bloody, broken bodies, and wondered: did they all deserve it? Could they all have needed killing? Or did her other half not care? Did it just get caught up in the moment, like she'd seen some vamps do, laughing as they slaughtered dozens, laughing even as they were stabbed over and over and --
Stop it!
But she could still feel it, feel the tiger pacing, knew it wanted out. Despite the horror story of an evening, it was still hungry. Because it was always fucking hungry and --
"Shut up!" she said, aloud, which was stupid this close to her prey. Not to mention crazy -- talking to herself in the middle of a swamp, all alone, because she'd just killed the only other --
Stop it!
And finally, she did.
Dory lit up, leaned back, and relaxed her body, letting a far more fragrant haze engulf her. She breathed in, feeling the weed's calming smoke hit the burning core of her rage, like a bucket on a bonfire. But it was better than nothing.
Calm, she told herself. Don't think. Just breathe.
It would have been easier if she wasn't injured. But her expensive suit had taken a tear in the hell pit, along with a good two inches of the calf below, courtesy of some literal stick in the mud. It wasn't a physical problem -- her battered skull was more of an issue -- but it was leaking and that tended to make her other half . . . antsy.
Like it needed the help.
But the weed was strong, the wound was already closing, and she wasn't in any immediate danger. The tiger finally went back to sleep. Alone at last, Dory gazed through hanging strands of moss at the little shack, hoping no one had noticed her earlier slip up.
But it didn't look like it. In fact, she didn't see any movement outside at all. Looked like the guys were cozied up in the little house, blissfully ignorant and busy cooking up their latest batch of --
Dory stopped, her eyes narrowing through a smoky exhale.
Because cooking up . . . what?
She'd been a little too busy to think about it before, but now she wondered. Their suppliers were down south. They sent the pills through the mail, like generic medicine. She didn't have to take Dreads' word for that; she'd seen the labels on the boxes. And then the pills went into the poppets.
So what, exactly, were they cooking?
She stubbed out her blunt and went to find out.
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