“Bruiser?” I asked. My throat ached and it hurt to swallow, the word more whisper than speech.
“Your Honey Bunch is just fine, Queenie darlin’,” Deon said. His words came from slightly behind me, at my ear.
I swiveled my head as much as I could before a shaft of pain tore my head off my shoulders. Or that was what it felt like. I was cradled in Deon’s arms. I could have said something about that weirdness, but settled on, “You shot vamps. You know how to fight.”
“I’m a lover not a fighter, Queenie. Don’t mean Ican’tfight. Just means I’d rather cook or dance, or play dress-up, or have sex, than shoot people.”
Did I know that? Maybe. My thoughts were really,reallywonky.
Two vamps crawled into the limo with us. Mi-Sook and her wife, whose name I couldn’t remember and who cut herself and began bleeding on my neck and shoulder again. Mi-Sook tore through my ruined wedding dress looking for more injuries, then cut her own wrist and put it to my mouth. I didn’t want to drink, but I needed the blood. I put my lips around the wound in her arm and swallowed her ice-cold blood.
It was . . . tasty. Zingy. I really had to stop drinking vamp-blood.Gack.
Good vampire blood,Beast thought.Strong.
Gack. Gack, gack, gack.
I pulled my mouth away and croaked, “Bruiser?”
“You just asked us, Queenie darlin’. Your man’s fine.”
“Oh.” I swallowed more blood. Cold tongues cleaned and clotted the gashes in my throat and the punctures on both front and back of my shoulder. Bruiser’s wounds and mine were oddly mirrored, though mine was not nearly so severe. I pulled my mouth away when the vamp’s wrist wound closed and said, “She had dog fangs. The one who bit me,” I clarified, speaking now not quite as painful. “She was one of Titus’ people.”
No one responded. I figured they already knew that. Titus killed Leo—the second time.
I had killed Titus and taken his head. But before he died true dead, the vampire had created and maintained a wide and deep coalition of vampires, werewolves, and other supernats. We were still cleaning out pockets of Titus’ people. We had missed a small cell of enemies, it seemed.
The pain in my shoulder eased. I hadn’t been close to immediate death. Had I been, Beast would have taken over and saved us. Presumably. But I’d been savaged. My shoulder and my broken arm were going to require a shift into Beast-form to heal fully.
“Who was she?” I finally asked into the silence. The limo turned right, then left. The whine of crotch rockets sounded nearby. “Who?” I repeated. “The vamp who bit me?”
“Margaret Sarin,” Mi-Sook said. “Once upon a time she stood as fourth to Titus.”
Fourth in line to the leader of one of the greatest dangers I’d ever fought.
“And,” Mi-Sook’s wife said, but stopped, staring at Mi-Sook, her face doing that vampire thing where they became so still they were unreadable.
My brain played Hide and Go Seek with her name, so I did a little finger roll with my good hand to get her to continue. That gesture was very Leo-like.Dang it.
Mi-Sook took a breath and said, “One of the attackers was a werewolf, male.”
Her wife added, “I also smelled a were-bitch, one of the fully insane ones, in the trees. For her to be insane means she was turned before the were-taint was modified,” she tilted her head, “or, it means that some element of the were-taint didn’t vanish along with others afterThe Change.”
“So far as we know, no one has tested that particular part of werewolf life. Either way, the werewolf and his bitch got away.”
I vaguely remembered Mi-Sook sniffing something in the small forest. She had smelled the werewolf. Most packs with female werewolves had been hunted down and destroyed. The females were the most dangerous. In every way. It seemed we had missed one.
Shiloh. . . Why did my thoughts turn to Shiloh?
“Did the wolves bite anyone?” I asked.
“No. No one. Odd for a female to have the ability to control her bloodlust and not bite.”
I said, “A human woman was bitten in the mountains east of the inn about a hundred miles.” I hadn’t considered the possibility a female was involved. Females always built packs. “I permitted Shiloh Everhart Stone to go after the bonus.”
“Ah,” Mi-Sook said, her tone grim. She tapped her comms. “Did Shiloh take anyone with her?” she asked. I could hear a voice reply but the words were blurred, too soft for me to pick up.
What if I had let Shiloh go after one of the worst kinds of weres? Not the male I had expected, but an insane female? Or, even worse, a rebuilt Red Pack? If so, then Shiloh was going into a trap.
