“Good,” Adam said quietly. She’d hear him. “That’s it.”
She lost the table leg eventually. She brought it up as a shield when Lenka struck with her knife, taking advantage of an opening Honey had lured her into. The knife sank deeply into the wood. Honey twisted, and Lenka couldn’t keep her grip on the weapon. Honey threw the table leg, knife and all, through one of the plate-glass windows, shattering the glass and leaving the knife out of play unless and until someone decided to go through a window after it.
“She is beautiful,” Bonarata said, mesmerized, his desire scenting the room. “Like a tigress. All muscle and speed.” Lust had changed his eyes, and not even the most mundane human would have looked into that feral face and thought anything but vampire. Even though vampires didn’t need to breathe, he was sucking in great gulps of air, air now scented with blood and sweat and need. His need.
Across the room, Marsilia was watching Bonarata with sad eyes. Not hurt or brokenhearted or anything like that, just sad. The way someone would look at a fallen Ajax or Hercules.
She was wrong. Bonarata wasn’t even down yet, let alone out. But there was no question that his hunger for Honey—for any female werewolf’s blood—was driving him now.
He wouldn’t like having Adam and his people see him like this. He’d remember it later. But so would Adam.
It took her a while—because Lenka was a hell of a fighter—but Honey pinned the other wolf to the floor in a wrestler’s hold. Panting, blood dripping from her mouth and her nose, Honey looked, not at Adam, but at Elizaveta.
“Can this be fixed? I smell witchcraft on this band around her neck,” Honey said.
Adam was starting to think that he should find out more about Bonarata’s witches. According to Bonarata, he had a healer who had mended Mercy’s near-fatal wound. Healing was not something black witches are supposed to be good at, and no white witch would have that kind of power. He’d had someone who’d made a gris-gris that had impressed Elizaveta—Adam knew how to read that old witch.
Elizaveta walked to where the werewolf was pinned to the floor. She sank to her heels and examined the metal band around the werewolf’s neck.
Lenka bucked and struggled, but Honey held her fast. Elizaveta didn’t seem worried.
After a moment, she stood up.
“No,” she said sadly. “The band keeps her under control, but it is a simple thing, if powerful. It makes certain that she follows the orders she is given.”
Honey looked at Adam then.
He said, “It is a kindness.”
She nodded.
She had to let up, just for a second, to get the knife she kept strapped to the inside of her thigh. The one that she hadn’t drawn during the fight because she needed to be sure that killing was the right thing to do.
Lenka almost broke free, but she wasn’t quick enough. She was malnourished, and that had hurt her fighting abilities. She was neither as strong nor as fast as she could have been. Now she was tired, too, and her speed was half what it had been in the beginning, though the fight had been relatively short.
She couldn’t avoid the small blade that slid into the joint between her spine and her head. She died when the blade slipped in, but it took a moment for the air to leave her lungs and her body to quit moving. Honey’s blade wasn’t silver, but it was deadly enough.
Honey pulled the blade out when Lenka was dead. He couldn’t always tell with vampires, but werewolves were easy—their smell changed.
She wiped the blade clean on her pant leg. It wasn’t a prudent place in a building filled with vampires, but he thought she was not in the mood for prudence. She sheathed the blade and accepted Adam’s hand up. She didn’t need his help rising, but he knew the touch of pack would center her. She stood, letting him hold her for half a breath before she slipped away.
As soon as she was standing, Adam turned his attention to Bonarata. Adam knew he’d been taking a chance by turning his back on the vampire. But Honey came first, and he had people in the room who would watch the vampire for him.
As it turned out, Bonarata had had other things to occupy himself with. The Lord of Night was staring at Lenka’s body with an expression Adam had seen on junkies looking at a dime bag, a deep need that overwhelmed any other thought or emotion. But the expression faded as Lenka’s blood died with her. Leaving Bonarata with an expression that looked very much like regret and relief on his face.
“Adam,” said Stefan urgently.
“Beside you,” said Smith, at nearly the same moment.
Adam reached out and wrapped a hand around Honey’s biceps and blocked her with his body as she launched herself at Bonarata.
“Stand down,” he told her, pulling her close to his body so she could smell pack and Alpha. So she could feel his command sink into her bones.
He felt her resistance, though she never pushed against him. She just leaned her forehead to his shoulder and said, “Lenka was a wolf I’d have hunted the moon with. Not a friend. But she was smart and tough. Peter had stories . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Adam didn’t take his eyes off Bonarata, who was beginning to look at Honey the way he’d looked at Lenka. Adam didn’t want to share intimate things in front of the vampire, but for Honey he’d do what he could. He put a smile in his voice. “Peter had a thing for powerful women.”
She laughed wetly against him. “I guess he did. I miss him.”
He kissed the top of her head. “We all do. You should go change your clothes and clean up.” He looked around for someone to send with her.
Stefan said, “I’ll go up with her.” He was watching Bonarata’s face, too.
Dressing Honey to seduce had, in retrospect, been a stupid thing to do. Adam glanced at the body on the floor. A stupid thing, but he couldn’t regret it. This poor creature was free now.
Keeping his body between Bonarata and Honey, Adam turned her over to Stefan. They walked slowly, but no one in the room spoke or moved until after they were gone.
When the door shut behind them, Bonarata blinked and came back to himself. Ignoring the body, as though Lenka had not been his . . . “sheep” was the wrong word, and Adam couldn’t find a right one . . . “victim,” maybe. As though Lenka hadn’t been his victim for centuries, Bonarata said, in a light, casual voice, “I had asked you to meet with me here to tell you that I have disturbing news.”
Standing close behind Adam, Smith inhaled and made a sound, and Adam wondered if he was going to have to send Smith out, too. It was probably a good thing that they weren’t pack; the two of them weren’t connected at all really. Rage was one of those emotions that tended to snowball between pack members.
“What news?” asked Marsilia. Adam thought that she had decided to play mediator, then remembered that he’d asked her to do just that. To get them out of there in as short a time as possible, so he could go find Mercy.
He reached out to Mercy and found her. Just knowing that she was still okay was enough to settle his wolf a bit. But, like Bonarata, Adam made an effort not to look at the dead wolf on the floor. Impossible not to smell her, though.
A chime sounded, a slightly different chime than the one that had announced last meal.
“Ah,” Bonarata said. “First meal. Why don’t we discuss matters over food?”
“Agreed,” said Adam. “We have news for you as well.”
Bonarata led the way into the dining room. Marsilia and Elizaveta followed him. The two goblins, Harris slightly to the back of Larry—like a guard—fell in behind the women. Smith, taking up the tail end of the line, stopped by the dead werewolf. He went down on one knee beside her and touched her forehead.
He bowed his head and said, very softly, “What are you going to do with the body?”