The stench of death surrounded the small house. The front door was open, drifting slightly in the breeze. I hesitated just outside the door, listening for several minutes for any sound of movement or breath. The house was eerily quiet. Stepping inside, I knew what I was going to find, but I wasn’t prepared for the severity of it. Were it not for Thaddeus’s unusual features, I might not have recognized his grotesquely mutilated body on the floor of the kitchen. I had rarely seen a death so gruesome. His killer either hated him with a raw passion, or just plain loved killing.
Beneath the smell of death, I barely caught two other scents in the room. Chris. And Demetrius.
My phone vibrated. A text from Dennis. “She’s at the underwear model’s house.”
I growled, striding out of the house in a fury. From what I’d gathered in my previous visit, Thaddeus was a gentle, shy creature that kept to himself. He’d trusted her. The Chris I once knew would’ve never allowed such pointless brutality. Did she need Demetrius’s blood so badly that she’d stand by and watch Thaddeus be brutally murdered?
When I pulled into the driveway, her car was missing and Dennis’s Cutlass was nowhere in sight. She hadn’t yet returned, which irritated me further. After half an hour of angrily pacing in her yard, I remembered that I once had the keys to her house on my chain. Had she remembered to take them back? I fished my chain out of my pocket. There they were. If I had to wait, I was damn well going to wait inside. Perhaps a search might yield some insight into her relationship with Demetrius. Did he have something over her, or was it just the blood? How far was she willing to go? If she felt she needed his blood to do her job, then it was probably time for her to quit.
The key didn’t work. She changed the locks. Of course she did. I sighed, resigned to wait outside. Presumably the key to the back door no longer worked, either. I didn’t bother to find out.
Another text from Dennis. “She left. Really pissed off, too. Probably another dustup.”
I waited for her in my SUV, running our impending argument through the various possible outcomes. The odds of talking some sense into her weren’t good, but I was going to make a loud, argumentative effort. She needed to break Demetrius’s hold on her and save something of her old self, before it was too late.
After a short wait, she parked her BMW next to me, glowering at me from the driver’s seat with something like loathing. She emerged from her car, ignoring me as I stepped out of the SUV and followed her toward the door of the house. I was doing my best to hold my tongue until we were inside, but she came to a sudden stop before we reached the porch. Her shoulders rose and fell in an exaggerated sigh before she reluctantly turned to face me.
“You already know that Thaddeus is dead. Demetrius didn’t have anything to do with it, and that is all I know,” she stated with a tone of finality. When I followed her to the porch, she gave me a dour look, demanding, “Why are you here?”
I tossed her the pair of keys from my chain. “You changed the locks.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
She didn’t appreciate my concern. I accepted that, but she was going out of her way to be dismissive. “Bad day at the office?” I quipped. That’s when I noticed the bloodstain on her shirt, the slight swelling of her lip, and the bruising around her throat that resembled the print of a hand. My jaw clenched along with my fists, and I felt the hot rise of anger flushing my cheeks.
“Demetrius and I had a misunderstanding,” she explained, glancing aside as she made a half-hearted attempt to cover the marks on her throat with her hand before giving up. She opened the door with a resigned sigh and walked inside, leaving it for me to close behind me. She walked into a hall, heading toward her bedroom, but I wasn’t letting her off so easily.
“Did you stake and behead him?” I asked expectantly, already knowing the answer would be disappointing. The blood belonged to Demetrius—she had no obvious wound—but it wasn’t enough to suggest she’d finished the job. Most likely she’d given him a warning, which was far better than he deserved for laying a hand on her.
“No,” she grumbled, then pivoted sharply on her heels. Her dark brown eyes narrowed into slits as she jabbed a finger at my face. “He better stay that way. Don’t touch him.” She glared for a moment, then walked into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. A moment later, I heard her shower running.
In the years Chris and I had been together, our relationship had never evolved past the fighting. It was the one thing about us that I could always count on—that and the passion. That’s what made being with her so easy and so frustrating. We fought and we screwed and we avoided actual intimacy like the plague. For a time, that had worked. Had she changed, or had I? Was that how I was with Sky? No. Maybe. Sky was different. We fought because she didn’t know our world; she didn’t know to trust me. Or maybe I fought with her to keep her at bay. I glanced down at the floor as I massaged the strain from my forehead.
Demetrius had laid his hands on Chris, and she’d let him live.
I gently turned the door handle and walked into her bedroom to find a trail of bloodstained clothes leading to the closed bathroom door. As much as I hated the thought, I couldn’t rule out that her relationship with Demetrius was something more intimate than a simple blood trade. In that light, was her fight with him much different than her fights with me?
I never tried to kill her.
If she were accepting gifts from him, I would have my answer. I glanced about the bedroom, but I found nothing obvious. A quick search of her dresser drawers revealed nothing, either. I was so intent that I didn’t hear the shower stop. I’d turned to lift her mattress—finding a pair of knives there—when I heard the click of the bathroom door.
Instinctively, I dropped the mattress and jumped onto the bed, posing supine with my arms folded behind my head and my ankles crossed. She emerged from the steamy bathroom wearing a towel wrapped around her curves. Finding me on her bed, she hesitated in the doorway and gave me a suspicious look. As I smiled back, I noticed a bra on the floor beside the dresser that hadn’t been there prior to my search. Her gaze began to follow mine.
“There was a time,” I blurted, drawing her attention, “when if you had a misunderstanding with a vampire, he wouldn’t be around long enough for there to be another.” I held her attention as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood.
“Those vampires weren’t Demetrius,” she snapped. “His status as the Master of the most ruthless Seethe in the country affords him more consideration.”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“Does it matter?” she asked, suddenly suspicious as she noticed something out of place but couldn’t find it.
“If we are going to be together, then yes,” I said, provoking her as I took one step closer to her, placing my foot on the bra.
She laughed, “Is there a we? And when has monogamy been important to you? You have always had a rather distant acquaintance with it.”
“With you, I was always faithful—”
“Until you weren’t.” She dropped her towel as she stared at me, daring me to turn away. My gaze drifted unbidden over her glistening, almond skin. Images from our last night together assaulted my senses. My old passion for her stirred, threatening to overwhelm me until I noticed the web like scar on her abdomen—until she covered it by self-consciously pulling on a t-shirt from a dresser drawer. But she couldn’t hide the bruises on her neck.
“Should we talk about the two bimbos?”
The accusation struck me like a slap. I held her gaze, surrendering nothing as I crossed my arms over my chest. How did she find out? Was that the real reason she left me? “It had been three weeks since you took that job. I asked you not to because it was too dangerous. For all I knew, you were dead.” I thought you were. Either that, or you just weren’t coming back.
“You have a strange way of grieving.”
“And you overreacted, as usual.”
A flash of irritation slowly melted
into a broad, mischievous smile. “You pay that much for a car, you wouldn’t think a little splash of brake fluid would ruin a custom paint job or a few licks with a tire iron would damage the body so much. And I thought the negative effects of sugar in the gas tank was simply a myth.” White-hot anger raised the hairs on my skin as I glared down at her. Only ninety-nine of the ’03 Aston Martin DB7 Vantage Zagatos had ever been built. I’d spent years obtaining one. I’d thought it was destroyed by a random act of vandalism—just punk kids making an incoherent statement. She’d even encouraged the idea! She’d destroyed the one thing I’d loved more than her and lied to me about it.
Attempting to distract me, she asked, “Have the witches contacted Josh?”
I held my ground for a moment, my jaw clenched so tightly I thought my teeth would fuse together. I unclenched my fists and flexed my fingers. When that wasn’t enough, I forcibly swallowed my anger. What’s done is done, I told myself. No need to give her the satisfaction, now. I couldn’t let her get me off-balance.
“Why would they?” I demanded, wary that she was fishing for information. Always scheming.
“I have no idea what deal you have with them to keep Josh as an ally. But I assure you, as strong as Josh is, they are always aware of what is going on with him and your pack. If they aren’t concerned, perhaps they are involved in the attacks.”
I silently waited for her to offer more, but she held her tongue.
“Demetrius thinks of you as his,” I said, changing the subject. Sauce for the gander. “You’re his possession.”
“Hmm, then you two aren’t as different as I thought.”
I gave her a wan smile. “The differences between the two of us are not by any means subtle. Don’t ever compare me to that thing.” Whatever faults she had, naïveté had never been among them. She was too far down the rabbit hole to make a clear assessment of her working relationship with Demetrius. I needed to get her away from him—give her time to come to her senses. “Quit. Come work for us.”
“Switch teams in the middle of the game?” she scoffed. “Quite admirable of you to make such a request. I have ethics. Whether you approve of them or even understand them doesn’t mean I don’t have them. Go home.”
The stray bra still trapped under my boot, I stepped closer, discreetly pushing the bra under the dresser. “Most Hunters retire after five years because by the sixth year they have more enemies than allies, and by year seven, if they haven’t retired, someone retires them for good. You’ve done this for nine years. Ryan, by all accounts, was exceptional,” I admitted, anticipating her argument. “Seventeen years as a Hunter, before he came along, was unheard of.” Despite all those extra years, he’d died the way all Hunters did, unless they got out. I admired her, but the warning signs were screaming; she’d reached her peak as a Hunter and was on the decline. “It’s your time, Chris. Trading with Demetrius isn’t helping you. You have more enemies than you have allies.”
“What exactly do you propose I do?” she snapped. “The real world is just a little too vanilla for me. It won’t let me capture the naughty, shoot or stab the deserving, and be an overall badass without a badge. Isn’t there a distressed damsel somewhere waiting for your help, Ethan? Because I don’t need it.”
I scowled and walked out of the bedroom, pausing in the doorway. “I think you should retire and get a hobby,” I said over my shoulder. “And for the record, being obstinate and bitchy isn’t considered one.” I left without looking back.
CHAPTER 10
By the time I returned to the retreat, I realized I hadn’t seen Dennis’s Cutlass outside Chris’s house. So far he had evaded her notice, which meant he was discreet, but he still had to keep her within his line of sight. I texted him for an update, then spent the next few hours working out my frustrations in the retreat’s gym. Eventually, I was forced to concede that nothing was going to improve my mood. After a shower and a quick meal, I went to the library looking for Josh.
He wasn’t alone. Sky was there as well. And Chris, which surprised me. She’s looking for information, I realized. Nothing that happened between us was going to get in the way of her doing her job—an admirable quality, once. Now it was going to get her killed. Or worse. I frowned. There’s no shame in a tactical retreat.
They continued their conversation, oblivious to my presence in the doorway.
“Witches detect one another’s magic,” Josh explained to Sky. “Like a fingerprint, it leaves a distinct mark. It is so strong that I can sometimes determine the witch that performed it.”
“You were around the creatures for such a short time,” Chris pointed out, “not nearly close enough to sense anything. How can you be so sure?”
“It doesn’t matter, because Ethan was exposed—” Josh’s mouth clamped shut as he saw me scowling in the doorway. Realizing he had said too much, he quickly turned his attention to his hands. “I just know,” he insisted.
Following his previous gaze, the women spotted me in the doorway. Sky seemed intensely curious, while Chris’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Why does Ethan being around it have anything to do with it?” Chris asked, her eyes locked on mine. “Were-animals can’t perform or detect magic.”
I walked into the room. “He knows the witches are not involved. That is all the information you need.” Before she could inquire further, I added, “That’s all the information you will get. No more questions.”
“No,” she said, coldly insistent. “That’s not enough. I need more.”
“That’s quite unfortunate for you.”
She rose, sauntering toward me. “You will not shut me out. Tell me what you know.”
She thought she could back me into a corner, the way she had trapped Josh. I grinned. “I’d like to see you make me.”
We remained like that, posturing, until Chris finally rolled her eyes, made a dismissive sound, then walked past me out of the library. After making sure she wasn’t lurking in the hall, I closed the door.
“Stop sleeping with her,” Josh snapped, rising to meet me.
I scowled down at him. “This again? Are we advising each other on who we should or should not pursue now?” I glanced meaningfully toward Sky, but he was too riled up to notice.
“She’s your Achilles’ heel,” he continued, “your weakness, and you don’t seem to realize it.”
“We aren’t so inept that we would allow our other activities to compromise our ability to do our jobs. I do what is necessary and best for my pack—even if it called for eliminating her, and you know that.”
“Those were just words,” he stated, disappointed. “If anyone else would have threatened to kill us, betrayed the pack, and adamantly worked against us, like she did last year, what would you have done? You definitely wouldn’t have warned them and given them a heads-up before dealing with them. But with her, you extended such courtesies.”
I folded my arms over my chest, grimacing as I endured my brother’s continuing tirade. If he hadn’t slipped up in the first place, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“The very reasons you find yourself drawn to her are the very things that will become our problem. She is smart, resourceful, and inquisitive.” He lowered his voice, suddenly remembering Sky’s presence, but he couldn’t stop himself. “The flimsy excuses you have given me about your peculiar abilities won’t be as easily explained away to her. Your secrets won’t be your own anymore. When she knows, so will Demetrius. Once again, leave her alone.”
I scowled. I didn’t need my dirty laundry aired in public. Not in front of Sky. “I guess if I am too preoccupied with her to do what is necessary, then finally, you will have to. That will be quite interesting to see.” I turned and left before he could reply.
I fumed as I patrolled the grounds, furious at my brother—but he wasn’t wrong. My attraction to Chris was a weakness. Now that her curiosity about my abilities was piqued, she would be relentless in her pursuit of answers. Had it not been for his outburst, sh
e would’ve remained clueless—a point he conveniently left out during his little tirade. Not entirely clueless, I corrected myself. In our time together, I’d given her a number of reasons to suspect my abilities. I’d gotten too close. I’d trusted her too much and let my desire for her blind me to the danger she represented. Last year, she’d endangered the pack by working with the Seethe to capture Sky. Chris had threatened to kill my brother, and I’d let her live. I should’ve killed her. If she’d been anyone else, I would have. Instead, I’d let her live. Eventually she was going to discover the truth about my abilities. No doubt, she would put that knowledge to use against me. She was going to put the pack in danger, once again, and any risk to the pack was a risk to Josh and Sky. At what point, I wondered, had my devotion to the protection of my family and my pack taken second seat to my desires?
I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth, and growled, straining every muscle in my upper body until I ran out of breath. I couldn’t just erase my feelings for Chris. I still cared about her. We didn’t belong together, but I couldn’t just watch her become Demetrius’s toy, either. She was on a path of self-destruction. The sooner I put some distance between us, the better, but that couldn’t happen until we solved the mystery of these attacks—unless I convinced her to retire, first. Unlikely.
There was Quell to worry about as well. I accepted that he fed on his plant instead of humans, but I’d hardly call that admirable. He was a vampire. No matter how hard he worked to hide from that, one day his plant would fail him and his true nature would come rampaging to the surface. I’d seen too often the bloody mess left behind by a were-animal that had finally succumbed to its animal nature after years of resistance. Quell would be no different. If the only way to save Sky was to show her his true nature, I would need to expedite the inevitable.
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