Leo had drunk Joses’s poisoned, tainted blood for decades. Leo had been partially nutso too for all those decades, but he kept drinking that blood. Why?
Because with it, he could see parts of the future.
I had been fed healing blood from vamps who might also have drunk blood from the poisoned vamp.
I had been bitten by an arcenciel on two different occasions.
We had postulated that timewalking was latent in my skinwalker genes.
Or maybe the venom had changed my magic, making me able to see future possibilities and giving me cancer all at the same time.
“Holy crap in a bucket,” I breathed.
Had Leo seen me in his futures? He hadn’t recognized me when we first met; I was sure of that. But maybe later, after the half-form manifested. Maybe he only saw my half-form in his futures. Maybe only after Bruiser left him. Had Leo seen that I had a chance to... what? Rule the vamps? Kill all the vamps? Keep the arcenciels from plans of their own? What? And what if I did the wrong thing? Would all humans cease to exist? Would the vamps cease to exist? What would that do to history?
“We never told you,” Alex said. “But wehaveto keep you alive.”
“Huh?” I asked, dragging my thoughts back to this conversation.
“But we can’t do that if you don’t trust us,” Eli said.
“We need to be able to talk to you. Tell you what we’re thinking and discuss the potential problems, refine plans like you and Leo used to do,” Alex said.
“And then you stay out of the way and let us do our jobs,” Eli said.
“Keeping you alive,” Alex finished.
I nodded and tucked my mug between my thighs. “Fine. You want me to stay out of the way, right? You want to tell me what you know and let me help with the planning. Then my stupid crown and I will stay safe and sound in my little queenly castle and let my friends and brothers and family go out and die in my place. Right? Like last night? That about it?” I smacked the back of Eli’s skull. Then Alex’s skull. Both men looked at me with astonishment and some bewilderment. “How ’bout I knock some sense into your heads? I suck at twiddling my thumbs. We do this all together, or we don’t do it at all.”
Getting up, I clinked my mug into the kitchen sink hard enough to crack it, stuffed my bare feet into my mudders, and yanked on a thin green slicker. I walked toward the door and yelled, “I’m hungry, and the quiches smell like heaven. So not fair!”
I may have stomped, and stomped some more as I headed into the rain. It was possible. I’d miss that mug.
I strode away from the house, letting the cold rain patter onto me, trickle down my collar, letting the slow fall of water cool me off. “Idiots,” I said.
I heard a doggy chuff and spotted Brute watching me from the overhang of one of the cottages, still and silent. “Men are stupid,” I said.
Brute sat up tall and raised his eyebrows as if considering my statement. He lifted a paw, touching his head. Then he looked at the cottage near him. There were footprints in the soft, rain-wet ground leading to it. They had been there long enough to be full of water. They didn’t belong to Eli or Alex. Worry whispered through me.
Bruiser?
Stepping slowly, as silently as I could in the mucky grass, I approached the cottage window. I heard his voice and a woman’s voice. I didn’t like her cajoling, suggestive tones.
I backed away, raced back inside, toed off the mudders, and sprinted up the stairs to the closet where I kept my own toys. I slid out a plastic container and rummaged around for the Glob, but it wasn’t there. I found it in the pocket of the armor I had worn to the vamp battle and raced back down. Downstairs, I slapped my crown on, feltit adhere to my head, too tight, as always, and patted my pocket where the Glob rested.
Eli was standing at the back door, a nine-mil in one hand, a machete-looking blade in his other, a water resistant pouch cinched at his waist. “What?” he said.
“Don’t know. Brute’s out in the rain, staring at the second cottage.” I pulled on the mudders.
“That’s where we put Monique Giovanni after Shaddock finished healing her gunshot wounds and relieved her pain from the broken wrist,” Eli said.
From the office, Alex called out, “I have footage of Bruiser entering the cottage. Forty-two minutes ago.”
“Too long,” I muttered. “Looks like I may have to slap the back of my Consort’s head too. I’m surrounded by idiot men.”
“This idiot man has your back.”
I looked at Eli, his dark eyes calm and steady. “We okay?” I asked.
