Skinwalker

Something like shame swept through me. Bliss. She had been injured while under my protection, attacked by a vamp and bled nearly dry. And I had gone racing off after the culprit while the victim still needed care. I was an idiot. “How is she? And how are you?”

 

 

He gestured me toward Katie’s office. “Better now. Bliss has had a hard time recuperating. She needs blood support to continue healing, and with Katie on holiday . . .”

 

Holiday? Is that what they’re calling it? “And you called Leo.”

 

“No. Leo came on his own.”

 

“Oh?” That surprised me.

 

“Leo brought her home the night she was attacked in his club. He was pulling up to the Mojo when the attack took place.”

 

Leo probably saw me leave the club, moving with Beast speed. Combined with the taste he took when he healed my arm, he should have known what I was, and he hadn’t. Of course I now knew less about what I was. A skinwalker? Accidental practitioner of black magic? Troll sat down, releasing a pent breath, part exhaustion, part melancholy.

 

“You cleaned up,” I said, looking around the office. “It looks new.” I remembered the morning the liver-eater had attacked Katie. There had been a fair amount of blood. Not as much as at the Broussards’, the house where Ken and Rose got digested, but enough. I smelled strong cleansers on the air. An air filter hummed in the corner. A big one.

 

Troll flipped a limp hand. “Lot of experience cleaning up blood.”

 

I figured he did, living in a whorehouse with a vamp. But I didn’t say it. I was getting better at controlling my natural rude instincts. “How’re the girls?”

 

“Fine. A couple were patched up at the hospital after the attack, and Leo fed them too. They’re right as rain, now.”

 

“And Miz A?” In an overlay of snapshot images, I remembered the blood and the extent of the housekeeper’s wounds. She had lost a lot of blood and a good portion of deltoid and other upper arm muscles.

 

Troll started to answer, but something changed behind his eyes, a flitting of reconsideration. “She’s better. Still with us.” It didn’t smell like a lie, but the little telltale wrinkles around Troll’s eyes suggested that he wasn’t telling the complete truth either.

 

Better? Still with us? Had she been close to death? Drained enough to be turned? Was Miz A chained in the basement of Leo’s house, a mindless bloodsucking machine? I almost asked. I opened my mouth to ask. And Beast caught the flavor of unfamiliar vamp. Close.

 

I whirled. Saw a blur of vamp speed. Whipped out a cross. Stamped my leg behind its knee. Twisted. Punched with my left hand, holding the cross. I struck it. Knocked it off balance. Rode it down. Trace of scorched vamp flesh.

 

Beast screamed. I ripped away the cross. Brought it down. An inch from her face. She howled and swiveled away. Her fangs were out. There was fresh blood on her mouth. It carried the scent of Indigo. The little blonde with blue eyes. I pulled a stake. A hand gripped my arm with steel strength. It stopped me. I growled, scenting Leo.

 

“Not her, little vampire killer,” he purred. “She is mine. George.”

 

Bruiser, moving faster than a human, knelt at the vamp’s head and pushed my cross away. He slid his hands under the vamp’s shoulders and pulled. Inside me, Beast slunk down into a crouch, watching as Bruiser removed the vamp. Amitee. Leo’s soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Leo was out . . . drinking . . . with his son’s fiancée. Now that was just sick. . . .

 

Then . . . had the vamp been at Katie’s gathering? I didn’t remember seeing her. Could a male liver-eater take a female form? I couldn’t take a male’s. I didn’t think it was possible, but I was unlearning a lot of impossibilities.

 

I let Leo lift me to my feet, like a dance step. He lifted my arm, hand at my hip, turning my body, my feet following, across the vamp’s body beneath me, three steps into Katie’s office. Amitee took off fast. Nearly getting staked musta made her itchy.

 

Leo’s eyes locked mine as we moved, dark and old, bled black, but controlled. Utterly controlled. Beast liked it. Beast liked the power that flowed over us like a warm hand. “Put that away, if you please,” Leo said, his face so close his breath brushed my/our cheeks. No smell of fresh blood on him. He hadn’t fed off the girls.

 

My heart pounded, the hard thump of danger, instant fighting, and faster cessation. I forced down adrenaline, fought to control the shakes quivering along my arms and legs; draped the cross around my head; tucked it under my clothes. I pulled my hand free and stuck the stake into my hair. I wasn’t even sure why I was following his requests. I could feel him pushing at me, testing the parameters of my mind, but this didn’t feel like vamp mesmerization. Not exactly. But there was Beast, telling me to let him have his way for now. Beast, testing the waters for something I couldn’t even imagine. “She’d been feeding. I want to see Indigo. Now,” I said, still parsing the scents.

 

“Tom, would you please ask Indigo to join us,” Leo said.

 

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