“Leave this earth.”
“Precisely,” he said with that lilt of laughter. But his delight died when he continued, “By the time I returned, the war had begun and ended and Leo was Master of the City, his uncle and most of the previous clan masters dead. The ones who remained were not of the old ways. Like Leo, the new masters did not wish their young brought to true death by the blade of a stranger, at a time chosen by another. They wished to face that mercy-gift alone. The old ways were dying away.
“Leo banished me. He banished the weres. There were many reasons for his enmity,” he said. “They sided with the wrong faction in the war. They broke their own were-laws with impunity, as wolves have always done.”
I wondered which law they had broken. Maybe the one about biting humans, because they sure had bitten the crap out of me.
“Perhaps it was partly a whim; he had always hated the two-natured and Leo was always the passionate one, sensitive, fervent, full of intense emotions. Perhaps he will never allow them to return.”
I gave a half shrug, remembering Leo raving mad after I killed the thing masquerading as his son. But before that he had healed me from a wound that would have maimed a human. I had seen a different kind of passion then. I set my hair-stick stakes in place, the silver tips scraping my scalp. I picked up my cell, checked to see that I had missed three calls and several text messages. Those I ignored for now and brought up my location on the GPS map app and then brought up directions to see me back to a main road. I was only a mile from Booger’s. It was a handy little device.
“When I left, Leo’s prime blood-servant went with me.”
“Uh-huh.” I checked my ammo. Not much left.
“Magnolia Sweets. His sweet Magnolia.” When I didn’t react to the name, he went on, while I changed out empty magazines for full ones. “He loved her to distraction, but she could not stay with him. Within the year, she was gone.”
Blood-servants who no longer sip of their master’s blood age rapidly. Magnolia would have died of old age soon after leaving. Gee however, a self-proclaimed blood-servant, had lived. Yet, he didn’t smell of vamp blood, so his longevity wasn’t part of a new vampire relationship. The youth was his alone and not something he had shared with Magnolia to keep her alive. Maybe it didn’t work that way. What’d I know?
“Leo brought his daughter to peace some few years later, but he never summoned me back. And since that time, the Mithrans have suffered greatly.”
I straddled Bitsa and sat. “How so?”
“To kill their own children? Would it not bring you to the brink of insanity?”
I saw an image from Beast’s past, a vision of dead kits. Their bodies had been ripped and torn apart by claws and teeth. I started. She had never shown me this, and at first I thought, wolves. But then I saw the prints in the soft soil and pooled blood. Mountain lion. A big one. And I smelled his scent in her memory. Our memories. We had tracked the male. Leaped down upon him from a high rock as he lapped at a river, the roaring water and cold wind hiding our presence from him.
I felt the impact as we landed. Driving the breath from both of us. Felt the fierce delight as our claws dug into his flesh. As our fangs bit into his spinal column just above his shoulders. And shook once, hard. The sound/feel/taste as his spine broke. The body collapsing beneath us falling into the water. The shock of cold as we followed him in and under. Released the kill and swam up through hated cold water to the surface. To the bank. Where we shook. And screamed our conquest to the jagged rocks above.
The memory faded and dispersed like a mist under a hot sun, leaving me with the taste of the kit killer in my mouth and the fury of vengeance in my mind. “Yes,” I said softly. “It would.” I puffed out a breath, not liking my next words even before they left my mouth. “But Leo isn’t ready to ask you back. He sent me to tell you to get out of his territory or face the consequences.” I couldn’t read his expression, but giving him that message after he saved my life was wrong on every level I could name. “He said to use whatever measures I thought necessary to make sure you left. That part of the message I’m refusing.” I tried to smile and couldn’t, as something akin to survivor’s guilt trapped me. “I’m sorry.”
“Until the Master of the City returns me to my rightful place in the clans, there will be no peace for him. None for them. No balance in their souls. No tranquility. I am necessary to them.” He tilted his head. “But then ...” He walked around me on the bike, graceful as a flamenco dancer, considering. “I have heard you have killed young rogues caught in devoveo. Perhaps you are the new Mercy Blade of the Mithrans.”
Kit killer, Beast hissed deep inside me.
“No,” I said to them both. I stood and brought my weight down on the kick start. Bitsa roared to life. “No way.” I left him there, on the side of the road. I was miles away, in the city, the lights of vamp headquarters lighting the night, before I remembered several things. Gee had never told me what he was. Gee had started Bitsa as if the witchy locks weren’t there at all. Gee had carried me, somehow, from Booger’s. And my silver chain-mail collar was still missing. I touched my throat, finding only the gold chain and nugget. Gone. The lacerations were healed, but the protection of the collar was absent. Replacing it was gonna cost me dearly. “Crap.”
My official cell rang while I was crossing the bridge and again just as I got to the far side. I pulled over on a patch of worn-out grass and smiled when I saw Molly’s number displayed. “Molly-girl, what’s cracking?”