“There was one other thing,” he said. “He has another tattoo in his armpit. It could just be art. I ran it through VINE’s database, but I couldn’t find anything like it listed as having significance. But it’s a painful place to get inked and not one that’s seen a lot.”
“What is it?”
Forrester tucked his clipboard under his arm and leaned over the table. He grabbed Beam’s bony elbow and lifted his arm. Flaccid underarm skin, whatever muscle tone Beam had gone flabby with death, peeled away from his ribs with a dry, sticky sound. Under the gingery stubble of coarse hair in Beam’s armpit, a spindly ink nightshade bloomed.
Only an idiot, after all, would use the publicly known sigil of their organization as the secret sign of membership. The Hounds were a lot of things, but none of them were idiots. Instead the werewolves and their groupies took the thing that could kill them and made it their own. Literally, since normal ink would bleed out of a werewolf’s skin within days.
“People do stupid things when they’re drunk,” Took said. “If it isn’t in the database, I don’t imagine it means anything. The VINE database is quite exhaustive.”
Forrester looked dubious as he stared at the blob of ink as though it might turn into words if he squinted the right way. When it didn’t, he dropped Beam’s arm back onto the table with a meaty thump and scribbled something on his clipboard.
“If anyone would know, you would,” he said. The look Took gave him made him pause. “You were Agent Bennett, right? He was the one who did the latest compilation on the database. I attended his training course on how to use it effectively. That’s why the tattoo stood out.”
Took should have appreciated it. He had spent two years as Took, because the person he’d been before that box in that room had gone forever. The Endorian view on the undead—that they were shells puppeted by a curse that thought it was alive, the soul long gone—should have been a welcome acknowledgment. Instead he felt disoriented at the relegation of his whole life to the past tense, thrown off balance when his balance was already shaken.
“Glad you paid attention,” he said stiffly. His brain scrambled for something to change the subject, and he grabbed at the sudden memory of Forrester’s early, absentminded comment. “You said that Agent Madoc had made this case top priority?”
It hadn’t been top priority last night. It was important because of the children involved, even if they were dead, but not enough to slide it into the category usually used for active, ongoing Hunter attacks. The last time something had been shoved that unceremoniously to the top of the list was when they closed down the compound in Utah.
The expression on Forrester’s face said that Took had missed something. That always put Took’s back up, and frankly, right then, the little pathologist wasn’t on his good side.
“What?”
“I… it’s VINE business,” Forrester said.
“I’m an agent.”
“Bennett was an agent,” Forrester countered. “If you were, then you’d already know what happened.”
The cold storm of anger stirred in Took’s brain for the second time. He could feel it crackle in his marrow, but that was all. Everything warm huddled down inside until it passed.
Forrester stepped back. His hip bumped the edge of the slab and he jumped, dropped the clipboard, and blurted out a nervous laugh. It steamed in front of his lips. “Sorry. I think someone dropped the temp in here again.”
“I—”
A hand scruffed the back of his neck and squeezed down. “Agent,” Madoc said, his voice sharp with anger. “I need to talk to you.Now.”
The familiar command in that word cut through the anger, right down to the ten-year-old boy whose immediate response was “I didn’t do it!”By the time that protest got to his tongue, it had turned into the more respectable “Sir?”
It wasn’t enough to get rid of the anger, but it shrunk back down into Took’s bones. Away from the hot tug of lust that ached in his thighs at the clipped command in Madoc’s voice. He wanted to ignore it, to shove Madoc against a wall and remind him that Took didn’t work for him anymore. He wanted to go down on his knees and do anything Madoc told him in that clipped, controlled voice.
Maybe that would stop Forrester’s cow-eyed admiration of Madoc over Took’s shoulder. As though Madoc could feel the dark chill himself, his fingers tightened on Took’s neck.
“Agent Bennett remains a VINE operative, Doctor,” he said. “His clearance level hasn’t changed.”
Took wondered bleakly if that was real, or if it was because Madoc had taken Took apart and fingered all the bits before he put him back together? He didn’t know. At this point he didn’t know if he even really suspected. Sometimes it just felt like an old, sour habit that he chewed over, like tofu with no seasoning. But he’d trusted that bit of his brain that stitched together motivation his whole life. He couldn’t stop now.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Madoc snapped as he hauled Took down the corridor and into another empty room. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, and the only thing on the desk that was pushed back against the wall was Madoc’s heavy leather combat jacket. He’d stripped down to a thin silk T-shirt and fitted jeans, and maybe that had been for Forrester. It was the last resentful jibe from the cold under Took’s bones. “Do you think you can just kill someone in the middle of the police station and no one will do anything?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Took snapped. “I wasn’t going to kill him, just—”
He trailed off. It was obvious he hadn’t been about to kill a police pathologist, right? But put on the spot, he couldn’t map out what exactly he had been about to do. That was the beauty of the cold, after all—he didn’t have to.
“Did you find your talent?” Madoc asked abruptly as he grabbed Took’s chin to yank his head down. His eyes narrowed as he looked for the reflection of something in Took’s. “It comes to most with the final kiss, but your situation then could have repressed it.”
Took pulled away. “I don’t have any,” he said. He sounded bitter, which made no sense. It wasn’t that he wanted powers, he just didn’t want to be what he was. At the same time, he didn’t want to have to pretend he was something better. “I’m not someone’s surrogate child. I’m not your precious Lawrence to be coaxed along by a Kiss. I’m the mongrel dog the whole fucking town gathered to kick. At least a dozen different bite marks on me, Madoc. That I have enough of me left to button my trousers—”
He choked on the ugly words that filled his throat when Madoc kissed him. His lips were warmer than they’d been last night, his mouth faintly flavored with salt. It should have made Took recoil, but instead he leaned in. He skimmed his hands over Madoc’s sides, the silk cool and slippery over hard slabs of muscle, and it made him ache to pull back.
