“But possibly?”
“Theoretically. Lore tells us a scratch or bite can do it, but you need to transfer a lot of saliva in the bite for it to take. I’ve never known someone to be turned from a scratch.”
He put my hand on his arm. “Let’s go back. I can eat later.”
I pulled my hand back, formed a staff of light, grabbed him with my left arm and tried not to wince at the pull to the torn muscles under the arm — and took us back to Aaron’s backyard.
Queenie was gone, and everyone present gave us a wide berth.
I let go of Dawg and stepped sideways so we’d both have room to fight. “Where is she?”
“Abbott took her next door,” said Kendra. “He’s told me to pay Bran whatever is necessary to see to your healing, in a show of good faith. She didn’t broadcast her intentions until she sprang into the air, and he couldn’t stop her at that point. You have his assurance that she will not attack again.”
Fuck, as much as I needed Bran’s blood, I didn’t want it. I couldn’t turn it down, though. My choice was probably surgery to fix the muscles, followed by a hospital stay — or a couple of days of Bran’s blood.
She was speaking formally, so I responded the same. “I will accept the offer of powerful Lugat blood, and Abbott and I will discuss a way to negotiate a truce in the coming days.”
Kendra used a conversational tone to say, “Fuck, I hope so,” and then went back to her official, business, spokesperson voice. “Abbott will arrange a time for talks. He requests Aaron and Bran as mediators.”
I took a breath and tried not to wince. “Aaron, Bran, and Mordecai.”
“Agreed.”
I was quickly losing momentum. I let the staff absorb back into my energy field, and didn’t argue when Dawg stepped to me and held my arm. At least he didn’t try to carry me.
However, the next thing I knew, Aaron had swept me into his arms and was walking towards the house.
“Dammit, Bug. I don’t like it when you get hurt.”
I looked around and found Sophia, who was watching with a grin.
“Your dragon is annoying me. My legs still work.”
“Annoying people is kind of a hobby for him, but go with it. Let him take care of you.”
“Who do you want in the room?” Aaron asked.
I considered the politics as well as the personal shit. “Dawg. Mordecai. Bran. Probably Kendra? If you want to stay, you can, but you’ll need to see to your other guests.”
“Sophia can handle the party. I’ll stay.”
“Dawg needs food.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Mordecai cleared a path in front of us. Bran fell in line behind us, and Dawg stayed near me, protecting my head in case someone attacked from the side. Not that anyone would mess with someone in Aaron Drake’s arms.
It turned out, her claws had landed on my back and swiped around my side until they hit Dawg’s arm, so I had a much larger injury than I’d realized. Thankfully, my ribcage had protected my inner organs. Six inches lower and she’d have shredded important internal organs.
Dawg was handed three plates of food while Bran made a production of dripping his blood into a glass of Jack Daniels.
“Save me one of the tops of those buns, please,” I told Dawg. “Sometimes chasing this mess with food helps.” Other times, I’m sure I’ll throw up anything I dare try to eat.
It took me four large gulps to get the noxious, disgusting blood down. The Jack helped cover the taste a little, but nothing could ever make it taste less than horrid. I hoped this meant I wouldn’t get blood-lust this time — it’d tasted good when it’d made me want more.
Someone had draped a black cloth over the sofa I sat on, so I didn’t have to worry about bleeding on it. I leaned sideways into Mordecai and closed my eyes.
“Thank you, Bran. I realize Abbott will pay you, but you still get my thanks. How much will I need?”
“You’ll be going home with him,” said Kendra. “Every two hours throughout the night, and he’ll wake twice before you leave for New York tomorrow evening to give you more. You’ll be tender for the trip, but you should be mostly healed by Monday morning, and fully healed by Tuesday.”
“And if I die in the next ten days, I’ll be Lugat.”
“Correct.”
“I won’t be leaving your side during that time,” said Mordecai.
“I can’t get you into the meeting Monday,” Aaron told him, “but you’re more than welcome to stand guard outside the door. Horse will also be guarding the door, so you’ll have company.”
“Who’ll be inside with her?”
“I will.” I hadn’t even known Nathan had come into the room. I looked at him in surprise, and he looked away from me to tell Aaron, “I’ll ride up with them, and I have the clearances to get into the meeting. Let them know to add me to the agenda.”
Aaron nodded, and I kept my mouth shut. Nathan couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me, but he didn’t want me dead. Damned cat.
I looked at Dawg, trying to figure out how to tell him he shouldn’t go to Bran’s with me, but he beat me to it.
“It’s okay. You go get healed at Bran’s, and we’ll move our plans to another night.”
“I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire. It’s my fault you were hurt.”
He chuckled. “Not the first time I’ve been hurt, won’t be the last. You got me somewhere safe to change. We’re good.”
“I believe it’s time for Kirsten and me to take our leave,” said Bran. “Mordecai, you’re welcome to come, though you have to know I’m capable of keeping her safe.”
“I’ll accept the invitation. Thank you for making it.”
I looked at Nathan, who stared at me with zero emotion. He was a wall.
“You don’t go after Abbott or Queenie for this,” I told him. “I’ll fight my own battles. Things are shaky enough for you politically, and we need to be working to fix things, not make them worse.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you acted unilaterally to punish Gavin.”
I lifted my chin and held my ground. “Ya’ll might not like what I did, but not a single one of you can say I didn’t have the right to do it, nor can you say you’d have done something less. I won’t apologize for taking action against him, but I’ll try my best to keep it from blossoming into all-out war.”
6
In the limo on the way to Bran’s, I retrieved my phone from my pocket and texted Cora to call me when she could talk. She’d left a few voicemails and a bunch of texts asking if I was okay. She called back within seconds, and I gave her a brief rundown of the events of the night — minus the sexy stuff.
“I kept wanting to ask if you were going to let Gavin get away with it, but then I worried you weren’t going to take action and my questions might make you change your mind. I should’ve asked.”
“I wanted to give you deniability. I’m glad you didn’t. Are you okay? I need to make sure I didn’t pull on you.”
“You didn’t. I knew something was wrong and I tried to send you energy, but you didn’t pull from me.”
“Are you having fun, at least?”
“I would be if I wasn’t working. You’re fading fast. I’ll let you go. You need sleep, and probably food, too.”
My time with Bran is hazy. I fell asleep in the limo, and was awakened to drink more of his blood when we arrived at his hotel-sized mansion.
Bran and Mordecai talked most of the night, and I slept fitfully. I hated having to wake up and drink more, but I tried my best not to whine.
I usually wait until the last minute to pack, but I’d already put my suits into a carrier and my other clothes into a small bag, so I only needed to pack my makeup and hair stuff. Mordecai took us to my house through the nothingness a few hours before we were due at the airport, and refused to leave my side while I worked on my hair and face, dressed, and finished packing.
He stood at the door to my bathroom and watched me put my makeup on
as if he’d never seen anyone put eyeliner on before.
When I eyed him in the mirror, he told me, “Abbott is paying recompense for Queenie’s actions. The money will go to you. I accepted his terms, though I’d like to punish Queenie just for messing up the possibility of a night with you and Dawg last night. I got the feeling you were seriously considering it.”
I had been, but I was glad the opportunity had been taken away. I needed to think it through a whole helluva lot more.
“I was semi-seriously considering it, but in the light of day, it seems like a really bad idea.”
“Why do you think it works so well with Dawg?”
“He doesn’t want a relationship. It’s safe to like him and have fun with him. He isn’t going to want to move in and change my life.”
“Cora moved in and changed your life. Do you resent her for it?”
“Not the same thing, and you know it.”
“You have responsibilities towards her. The two of you have to navigate paying the bills, cleaning the house, fixing food, and dealing with the many conflicts that come at you from the outside world.”
“But she’s my friend, not my girlfriend. We’ve merged our lives somewhat, but we don’t have to ask permission of each other to do stuff.”
“And with Nathan?”
“It was getting pretty serious even though there was nowhere to go. I can’t explain Nathan.”
“And you won’t be able to explain me, but if we decide to become intimate without needing your training as an excuse, I promise to try not to become overbearing. Updates on your schedule will be appreciated, but I never want you to feel as if you’re asking permission. I’ll offer as much as I can about my schedule, though you have to know I won’t be able to tell you all of it.”
“Because you aren’t at liberty to share such things with mere humans?”
He crossed his arms. I’d hit the nail on the head, but he didn’t want to answer and admit to it.
“I’ll go on occasional dates with you and see where it takes our energy. I’m not promising sex, nor am I saying it’s off the table. That’s all I can offer.”
“Accepted. You need a salad, and some boiled eggs. Let’s head downstairs, and you can sit and watch me make them.”
He was right about me needing fresh greens, and probably right about the eggs, too.
The plane ride up would’ve been horribly awkward if it hadn’t been for Gabby and Horse. Nathan sat with his arms crossed, moody as fuck. Mordecai positioned himself between us, and I didn’t stop him.
With my heightened senses from Bran’s blood, I smelled emotions, but I couldn’t pull the scents apart to figure out what was coming from who. Also, there were so many other smells on the plane, I wished I could wear a mask to filter everything out.
I read through Gabby’s presentation and asked questions, and she made minor changes on her laptop while we talked.
She’d been raised by her father — an infamous serial killer — and had insight into the mindset even before her years of psychiatry and criminal justice in college. I ran through it the first time in sheer analyst mode, but once we made it to the hotel, I went through it in devil’s advocate mode, arguing everything I could so she could form arguments against whatever the government agents and officials threw at her the next day.
When we finished, Horse said, “This would be easier with supernatural law enforcement.”
“It would,” agreed Nathan, “and a few of the people in the room will be, but most are human with no knowledge of us.”
Nathan’s phone rang, and he answered it on speakerphone. I was the only person in the room who wouldn’t be able to hear both sides of the conversation, so he did it for me. A nice gesture, which I figured would be followed by him going out of his way to be an asshole. I was analyzing him as a therapist these days because it helped keep me from getting my feelings hurt as badly.
“Check your email for an updated list of attendees,” came Aaron’s voice. “Ryan’s been invited as an outside contractor.”
Nathan glanced at me before looking back to the phone. “Which means the upper brass are acknowledging we can’t apprehend the subject with normal means.”
“If they’re going to offer a bounty, I want you, Ranger, and Patrick on it.”
“In a race against Ryan?”
“It’ll be a big bounty.”
Nathan laughed. “Yeah, it will. Okay. I’ll be sure to make our intentions known.”
When Nathan hung up, I looked to Gabby, thinking. “What happens if you overlay the kills with the moon? I know they aren’t all going to be on the new moon, but are some of them? Could this be the Celrau playing cat and mouse with us?”
“There’s a kill every three to seven days, and yes, there’s always one on the new moon, so it’s possible, but the Celrau melt what’s left of the bodies, or toss them in the fires of Hell. They don’t leave them lying around the Human Realm.”
“What if they started? And how does the moon work in Faerie? Could they be turning people more often?”
Everyone looked at Mordecai, who closed his eyes and looked pained. “They can’t be in Faerie.”
My mind went back to Manandán, and the fact he’d made their gateways.
“How about Oceana?” I asked. “Mab and Titania aren’t in charge there, and I’m sure there are islands, yes?”
“There’s a new moon in Faerie every fourteen days, and it doesn’t correlate to ours. If they’re using the new moon there, here, and in other realms, they’re bringing the bodies back as proof.” He looked around the room before explaining. “There are rules against polluting realms with the dead of…” He sighed. “They’d need to prove the dead were brought back here, to the realm in which they were born. Hence, the bodies. They can take them to the Hell Realm to get rid of them, but not the other realms.”
“It’s a decent theory,” said Nathan, “but forensics points to a single killer.”
“A splinter group, maybe?” I asked. “But they were turning a bunch of people at once in Hell, and this would mean they’re only turning one person per full moon, because there’s only one body at a time.”
“If they’re using gateways to move back and forth, there’s no way to know where the next body will show up,” said Nathan.
“I can’t use any of this in tomorrow’s meeting.” Gabby looked fierce. Rabbits are known for being terrified of their own shadow, and I knew she felt safe with Horse and Nathan close, but she was still terribly brave.
“It’s just a theory, but it might be worth it for us to pull Ryan in and run it by him.” I turned towards Nathan. “I know Aaron wants the bounty, but it’s more important we stop this than fight over who stops it, right?”
“We rarely beat Ryan to the bad guy,” said Patrick. “It happens occasionally, so Aaron will set us on something worth millions, but Ryan’s probably gonna be the one to bag him, once he sets his nose on it.”
I’d found out Cora was worth well over a million dollars when we bought our house. She said she’d been in on a few big bounty jobs and had taken a large split, plus, she makes more than she spends, and puts it away so she can retire young if she wants. I assumed most of the top people at Drake had managed to partake of some large bounties.
Ryan probably could’ve retired years ago, but he had to keep going if he wanted to keep from aging like a normal human. That had to be a bitch.
“Is there anything saying ya’ll can’t work with Ryan?”
No one said anything for at least a minute. I stared at Nathan, but Patrick finally said, “Ryan isn’t exactly a team player. He has to be in control, and that doesn’t work so well with our leadership.”
“Ah. Who has the bigger dick?”
Nathan’s look threatened to freeze the blood running through my veins, and I held my hands up. “I do not want to know anything about Ryan’s genitalia. It was a joke, and you need to chill.”
“If I can get the dates of the new moons in the realms
with a changing moon or moons,” said Gabby, “I can probably confirm or disprove the theory.”
“I don’t know that we have it available historically,” said Mordecai, “but I’ll have someone from each realm check in with me on the new and full moons going forward, so we’ll have a future record.”
“We can probably estimate it,” said Horse. “Time doesn’t flow exactly the same, but if we concentrate on the past two or three months, we shouldn’t be too far off.”
The radio cut in and we heard, “Marco’s on his way up. Alone.”
Nathan touched his ear. “Copy that.” He looked to Patrick, who stood and walked to the door. I knew he’d wait until he smelled the vampire approaching to open it before Marco knocked. It looked like good manners, but I had a feeling it was a power play. Our guys saying, “We know when you arrive. You can’t sneak up on us.”
I tried to smell for him, but couldn’t pick out his scent until Patrick opened the door.
Marco practically flowed into the room, his steps so graceful. He acknowledged Patrick before looking to me with a huge smile. “It’s good to see you again, though I admit I was disappointed to learn the lovely Cora didn’t accompany you.”
“Cora would’ve enjoyed spending time with you, but had other obligations. Please, have a seat.”
“I won’t stay long. My people tell me they’ve smelled grizzlies around the offices you’ll visit tomorrow. There are concerns of an ambush.”
“Our scouts smelled them,” said Nathan, “but the grizzlies have also been to most of the tourist attractions. The assumption was it’s a family on vacation. Do you have reason to believe otherwise?”
“Nothing specific I can share.”
Everyone in the room seemed to go on alert, and I assumed that was some kind of code for letting them know he had reason but wasn’t at liberty to speak of it.
“We appreciate the heads-up,” said Nathan.
Marco shrugged. “Lauren is under my protection, and keeping her mother alive falls under the heading of protecting the daughter.” He grinned at me. “Plus, I rather like the mom and her friend. Be safe, Luv.”
He turned and left. I crossed my arms and glared at Nathan. “Grizzlies in the area? And you didn’t think to tell me?”
Infinitely Human Page 5