“Well, it’s getting under mine.”
“I like it,” Riley had to say.
Me too,Paz added.
Orion didn’t look as if he’d heard, so Kraft asked, “Can you hear him?”
“No.” Orion glared at the kitten in the rearview. “He refuses to talk to me.”
“Huh. Not even to Kaia?”
“Maybe.”
Paz answered,Sometimes, because the sea witch knows just where to scratch under my chin. And she’s pretty.
Kraft snorted.
“What did he say?” Orion asked.
And of course, because I ate her mother. So I feel an odd kind of closeness with Kaia sometimes.Paz sighed.I could have eaten her too, but she’s pregnant, and I protect expectant mothers. That’s not all that demonic, actually. Funny, huh?
“Sicko,” Kraft muttered.
Riley said, “What?”
“Nothing.” He looked at Orion and made a face, then nodded to the backseat.
Orion said in a low voice, “I’m trying to see if there’s a way to exorcise him without letting Kaia know. She likes him, for some reason.”
I’m her protector, and this brainless idiot would have me exorcised. Please.Paz washed his face.He’d better watch his step, is all I’m saying.
“Better work fast,” Kraft whispered.
Orion gave a subtle nod, and they continued to an address on the edge of a city. A large, two-story house surrounded by dead grass, ice, and dirty snow seemed deserted in the quiet of the night, despite several vehicles sitting in the large front yard.
Kraft heard and saw nothing but cars and the old house, no noise and no movement or light from the inside of the home. Perhaps a spell kept everyone inside a mystery.
“Oh yeah, this looks welcoming,” Riley muttered.
They all stepped outside, including the kitten.
“Shouldn’t we leave him in the car?”
Kraft glanced at Paz.
I’ll be fine. I’m going to scout around. Make sure you don’t leave me behind again, Kraft. Or I’ll devour your soul when you’re sleeping like the dead. Don’t try me.
Kraft sighed. “Leave him.”
The kitten took off and disappeared around a mound of snow.
Riley sniffed.
“Is your sense of smell better than a vampire’s?”
Orion joined him as they followed Riley toward the house. “Good question.”
“Of course,” she said with the arrogance Kraft expected from the berserker. “Wolves have a sense of smell about 100 times greater than that of a human. Then you have dires—lycans—with a smell ten times better than that. And berserkers are the cream of the crop.” She smiled over her shoulder at them. “Vampires, well, I’m not sure how far down the evolutionary ladder you are, but we consider you either enemy or prey.”
