Score one for being a vampire.
I was leaning against a wall in the bar area. Someone had turned the lights on full and the juke box off. At least twenty or thirty people were crammed into the room. Lucky me, it was standing room only. A few even perched on the bar.
Despite the various hostile glares aimed my way, I found my attention drawn to the man sitting calmly at a table directly in front of me, my messenger bag at his feet. Power rose off him, coating my skin like a warm blanket. He was like a bonfire on a cold night, full of life saving warmth that beckoned you but would burn if you got too close.
“You’re not human,” he observed.
When growls met my attempt to stand, I settled back down. Guess I’d be seated for this conversation.
“Never said I was,” I told him. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I specifically told your doormen that I wasn’t human.”
His gaze shifted to the small giant from before. The man gave a slight dip of the chin.
“Did you kill my man?” the alpha asked. That’s the only person this could be. He spoke with too much authority and assurance to be anyone else. Maybe one of the enforcers but I doubted it with the way the pack had created a small oasis of space around him.
“Of course, I didn’t,” I said. “Besides the fact I didn’t even know him, I don’t have the strength to do what was done to the body.”
“Lie,” the big guy said. “He’s the man you asked for at the door.”
“That was Franklin Wade?” I asked. A stony face gave me the answer. “Crap.”
This was not good. My already bad position just got worse.
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to sign for a delivery in his stead as Alpha?” I asked.
Growls rose from the crowd gathered around us.
The man stood and walked towards me. He crouched and leaned close, sniffing me.
“Not human,” he growled.
Claws slowly slid out of his fingertips, gouging the wood floor on either side on my legs. It was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen. Made more terrifying by the perfect control with which he did it and the fierce, ice blue gaze that remained fixed on mine.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I killed your man. Look, I’m with Hermes. I picked up a package earlier tonight with instructions to deliver it to Lou’s Bar where a Franklin Wade was supposed to be waiting.”
I pressed myself hard against the wall behind me. It wouldn’t save me, but it kept me from curling into a sweat soaked ball.
“How did you get in the back?” The voice that came from him was human only in the fact that it used words. The tone was guttural and so deep it vibrated in my bones.
“I walked through the door leading to the alley.”
“Impossible,” the big guy from the front door said. “We have people watching that entrance. They would have stopped you.”
“There was no one there when I came in. I didn’t sense anyone until I smelled the blood.”
The alpha’s eyes sharpened. “Then what?”
I didn’t think he wanted to hear about how I momentarily lost control and was on my way to drink down the owner of that tasty smelling blood.
“I went to see what was wrong and saw a man standing over the body. Then your guy over there startled me, and when I turned back the man was gone.”
“Declan?”
The small giant’s face was thoughtful as he said, “I saw her standing outside the office door and recognized her from earlier. Then I smelled the blood and ran into the room. I didn’t see any man.”
“There was definitely a man,” I said.
“She could be lying,” a woman said from her perch on the bar. Her hair was curly and wild around her head. It matched the feral beauty of her face.
