“I smell silver and vamp blood,” Derek said, breath still heaving. He must have run all the way from the St. Philip Apartments. “Silver will kill a vamp. Even a vamp like Leo. If you weren’t trying to kill him, why use silver?”
“It was all I had at hand. And not if he gets fed by his maker. Or a priestess. Like I said. We have options if we act fast.
“I’m reaching behind me to shut off the shower. Then I’m going to grab a towel and we’ll haul Leo out and figure out what happened and how to handle it. I was not trying to kill him. He chased me down, not the other way around.”
I turned off the water. The bathroom was loud with the sound of Derek’s breathing and water dripping. I was acutely uncomfortable with the two men in my bathroom and the nearly true-dead vamp at my pelted but mostly human-shaped feet in my shower, but I was more worried about getting shot than my embarrassment. Healing took time that this situation might not give me.
From the top of the shower stall door I pulled a towel and wrapped it around me. My hair was sticking to my skin, I had soap on me, which itched, and I smelled like a bordello from the soap, but at least I was covered.
“Eli, Derek, enough with the Mexican standoff. I’ll heal from most anything Derek can do to me, but Derek won’t heal. He’ll be dead. And I’ll have to clean up the brains, which is messy and sticky and pretty ick. Now, help me get Leo out of here.” I bent and slid my hands under Leo’s shoulders. I heard the appropriate—though far too slow—sounds of rounds being removed from chambers and guns being holstered.
My gut began to cramp. Nausea rose up in me. Not now, I told myself. Not yet. I breathed deeply, forcing down the pain and sickness. It didn’t seem inclined to go away, but it stopped increasing, more a low ache than a twisting of my entire abdominal cavity’s contents.
Derek helped me roll Leo and together we lifted him and carried him, dripping, from the bathroom, placed him on the kitchen floor, faceup. Leo usually looked dead. He didn’t breathe except to talk, and his heart beat only from time to time. But lying on my floor, wet and bloody, his eyes open and human-looking now that he was sorta dead and not vamped out, he looked really dead. I bent and closed his eyes. “I’m going to get dressed. Don’t touch the stakes. Derek, call Del and tell her to get a healer over here. Eli, call Bruiser and get him over here.”
“Can’t do that, Jane,” Derek said, his voice cold as stone dust. “I left him in bad shape.”
Fear shocked through me. “Do I need to call an ambulance? The cops?”
“He’ll heal,” Derek said shortly.
I kept the relief off my face. Any anger left in my system at Bruiser was gone. It might make me a wishy-washy woman, but I wanted Bruiser alive. If only so I could torture him for being an ass. I said, “Fine. Get me a healer—Gee, or a priestess, or someone.” I left the deadish Leo on my floor and went to rinse and dry off and dress in something more formal than a damp, bloody towel. I also weaponed up in case anyone else had issues with Leo’s current condition.
I was standing in the foyer, braiding my wet hair with pelted, knobby hands, trying to keep the sickness at bay, when the first visitors arrived. Katie entered through the side door like she had been fired through a cannon, which meant she had leaped over the brick fence in the evening gown and heels she was wearing. I wished I’d seen that. But the clothes and her presence meant that she hadn’t been kept safely in HQ. Nor had Leo.
It also meant I needed a new side door. She stalked over the splinters of the old one in her stilettos. Gee DiMercy walked in behind her. I figured he had flown. Neither looked happy. I dropped the braid and stood my ground with a silver stake in one hand and a steel blade in the other. Before I could explain or defend myself, the most nutso vamp I’d ever met showed up at the front door with Bruiser over her shoulder. She didn’t need an invitation to enter. The door blew off its hinges. Again. This time, crime scene tape blew in with it.
The priestess Bethany Salazar y Medina was in my house. Her gaze was empty and fathomless, but her body oozed the scents of rage and vengeance. Bruiser rested across her shoulder as if he weighed no more than the shawl on her other side. He was breathing. He was also out cold, dangling like that shawl, with artful repose. And he was bleeding, his blood soaked through Bethany’s clothing.
The pain in my gut twisted and went hot. I pressed my middle with one hand, the blade pointed away from me. Not now. Not now!
Beast cannot stop it, she thought at me. Price must be paid.