I refused the chair. I was feeling stubborn and ornery. I sat, bloody and exhausted, on the floor of the first level, my back to the wall, watching the cleanup. My involvement here was done. The battle between Leo and de Allyon had resulted in the death of humans, attacked by diseased vamps. Two of Derek’s men had sustained life-threatening injuries, Vodka Martini and Vodka Lime Rickey. Even with a good supply of vamp-blood to heal them, they might not make it. Vampira Carta had been bypassed, we had a vamp war on our hands, and I had no idea where de Allyon was. I hated to think that things couldn’t get much worse—because they always could. They always did.
A congressional committee had been looking at the supernatural problem as it related to law enforcement for ages, trying to come up with a way to apply human law to supernatural creatures. So far, they had not been successful, but scuttlebutt in the vamp hunting community said that PsyLED had been granted sweeping powers to deal with it. With us.
The human police agencies were now involved in this situation, and PsyLED, with Rick acting as OIC and PI, the officer in charge and principal investigator. It was his first big case, and he was coming up with a laundry list of legal charges against the enemy vamps still alive. Rick had called in the crime scene investigators from PsyLED HQ. He had also informed us that the witch circle in the middle of the cinder-block room had been a portal to a cell holding hungry vamps. Like, how was I supposed to know that? And how did he?
Soul followed Rick around like one of his pets, observing and evaluating, agreeing with everything Rick said. Rick was her prized pupil. My arm throbbed. My skin burned. Jealousy skulked through me on pointy little claws.
Close to midnight, Rick finally circled back to me. He knelt near me and said, “You look like hell. You need to shift.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
He chuckled, looking over his crime scene, and went suddenly silent. His wolf was sitting beside Soul, and the werewolf had dropped his head. His hackles rose. He stood and prowled across the room toward us slowly, lifting his paws one at a time, as if he’d just sighted prey. And the prey was me. I watched the huge white wolf, not moving, freezing like a rabbit in the grass. The wolf wasn’t a real wolf, but a werewolf who had been zapped with angel power and was now stuck in wolf form. Pea rode his back, the green catlike grindylow’s claws caught in the beautiful fur. The wolf sped up, almost trotting, his eyes on me, and Pea hissed in warning, tightening her grip.
“Brute, hold,” Rick commanded. The wolf stopped, but his growl went up in volume. Soul studied us across the room, surprised. Pea chattered and yanked on the wolf’s fur, agitated. Rick said, “What’s gotten into him?”
“Me, I think.” To the were, I said, “I took you down once. I can take you down again. And your pet Pea will slit your throat if you bite me. You better think about that before you try to get back at me.”
“You took him down?” Rick asked.
“Yeah. When he was in human form. One punch with a set of brass knucks. I think I broke his jaw.”
Brute, which was a good name for the werewolf, growled deep in his throat, more a vibration than a sound. His silver-blue eyes bored into me. Pea hissed and dug in with her claws; the scent of werewolf blood flooded out. I started laughing, which was probably not the smartest thing I could have done, but I was so tired I couldn’t hold it in.
Rick stepped to the pair and put his hand on Brute’s side. The vibration stopped. Brute lowered his head in threat, but it was a future threat, not one he’d fulfill right now. He snarled, his eyes not leaving mine. The wolf huffed in disgust and dropped to his stomach, putting his head on his paws. Pea mewled and petted the were, grooming his white fur. Rick shook his head. “I have the weirdest life,” he muttered, and he walked off.
A moment later he was back, holding a key. He pointed it at his animal unit. “Stay with Soul, guys.” He lowered his other hand to me for a hand up. “Come on. We’re going for a ride.” I let him pull me to my feet, feeling the new power in his body as he lifted me effortlessly. I followed him outside, my body aching and exhausted.
We ducked under the crime scene tape and went directly to Grégoire’s limo, where Rick pushed me into the passenger seat and drove us out of the city, stopping at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Without a word he went inside, and I lay back in the seat and closed my eyes. I had gotten a nap, but my arm was throbbing, and my skin was burning where the vamp-blood had landed. I must have fallen asleep, because he was back in five seconds with three hams, a box of protein bars, and a ham sandwich. He expected me to shift and heal myself. Rick restarted the limo and took my hand as he pulled out of the lot.
Holding hands, silent, he drove down through Natchez Under the Hill, into the dark, the town’s lights throwing dark shadows into the car. He parked next to the river, the limo engine silent. He stared out over the black water. It was moving fast, eddies and swirls and little fluffs of foam here and there.
“The docks and warehouses and old homes here were all built on the backs of slave labor. Just like New Orleans,” he said. “Now, a century and a half after the fall of slavery, it’s beautiful and awful all at once.”
That was a very un-Rick-like comment. I looked out over the massive waterway, weeping willows and fall-painted trees on its verdant banks. Downstream, where a stream joined the river, there was a small rookery of white egrets, looking like a cloud caught in the branches of dead trees. Rick studied the water, and I turned to him, wondering how much the were-taint, and all he’d been through, had changed him. Was still changing him. I finally broke the silence. “You’re healed,” I said.
He shrugged. “I heal fast now.”
I thought about that. “How was the last full moon?” I asked.
“I did okay.” He shrugged again. “Solved a crime. Got a badge.” After a moment, he said, “Lost my girl.”
Beast rose in me, watching him, intent as if he was prey. Mine, she murmured. “I haven’t gone anywhere,” I said.
“I can’t have sex. If I have sex with you, Pea will kill me. Then she’ll kill you.”
Unexpected tears blurred my vision. I tightened my grip on his hand. He returned the pressure, his gaze still on the river. “There’s more to love than sex,” I said.
He didn’t look at me. “Do you love me, Jane?”