Its expression wasn’t so nice. At the moment, both tiger and man wore the same one—of barely concealed impatience. “I thought I had warned you off,” Cheung said, without preamble.
“Was that what you were doing?” I moved forward, since it wasn’t like I could go back. “I guess the bullet grazing my ear must have confused me.”
“The fact that it missed should have told you as much.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I stopped a yard or so away, close enough to smell his cologne, far enough away to have a chance to reach my weapons. “Maybe next time you could shoot me an e-mail instead?”
Cheung ignored that. “I know your father’s power, dhampir. I have no wish to return you to him in pieces. If you swear to cease interfering in my business, you may go.”
“It would help if I knew what your business is,” I pointed out.
Cheung’s eyes narrowed. “You do not?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
His expression darkened, but he didn’t reply, possibly because the front doors took that moment to slam open, allowing a dozen more vamps to pour into the room. It was starting to look like Cheung didn’t have anybody on staff lower than master level; either that, or he’d left the riffraff at home. These radiated enough power to ruffle my hair, even this far away, which made it a little ridiculous that they were dragging one short, pudgy guy.
He wasn’t halfway across the floor when I recognized him: Raymond, looking a little the worse for wear. He was trying to struggle but not managing it too well considering that neither of his feet was actually touching the floor. A tall vamp with Asian features but a pale blond buzz cut had him by the back of the neck, like an errant puppy.
I crossed my arms and got a grip on the stake up my sleeve.
Cheung noticed but didn’t do anything, other than roll his eyes. He looked past me as Raymond was dragged up to us and forced to kneel. Or maybe his legs just gave out. He looked pretty damn terrified.
“You appear to make enemies wherever you go, Raymond,” Cheung said, looking at him with a slight curl to his lip.
“I g-guess I’m just lucky like that,” Raymond said. It sounded cocky, even with the stutter, and won him a cuff upside the head from the blond. But I didn’t think it had been meant that way. Raymond was at the stage of terror where the mouth is on autopilot because the brain has retreated somewhere inside the skull in order to gibber quietly. If he’d been a human, he’d have soiled himself by now.
“Are you going to tell me what is going on?” I asked Cheung.
“I believe I shall let Raymond do that,” he said, looking with distaste at his cowering subordinate.
Ray looked from me to the boss and back again, but didn’t appear to find anything helpful. “Well?” I prompted.
He swallowed. “Uh. I might have, you know, mentioned that, uh, that the senate had appointed you as my, um.” He stopped, looking at me pitifully. His usually beady blue eyes were suddenly large and soulful, like the aforementioned puppy’s.
Or an albino rat.
“Your what?” I demanded.
“My bodyguard?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and thought about saving everyone a lot of trouble and staking Ray right here. But I doubted he’d told the senate all he knew yet. And without his information, we had pretty much a zero chance of shutting down the smuggling ring he’d been running. Not to mention that the little guy had done me a few pretty big favors recently.
I was going to have to figure a way to get him out of this.
I could always stake him later.
“Then he was lying,” Cheung said, looking satisfied.
I glared at Ray, whose eyes were still doing the huge and pleading thing. He clearly thought this was it. It didn’t help that I was pretty sure he was right.
I sighed and accepted the inevitable. “Not exactly.”
Cheung’s forehead creased slightly. “You are assuming responsibility for him?”