“I appreciate that you don’t use my son’s name,” his mom said. “It’s insult enough that you use his body.”
She hung up. Took slumped back against the fence and tilted his head up to the sun. It wouldn’t kill him, not unless he waited there long enough to grow very old and very weak. The papers had been full of that a few years ago. Archaeologists in Russia had found some ancients asleep under the ice. The photos had shown shadows that had to be ten feet tall caught up a glacier as it crawled down from the mountains, and when they uncovered them, the great bodies had just crumbled to ash in the daylight before they could even get a picture. The public had called the archaeologists murderers, and they’d had to go into hiding.
But who had that amount of free time these days? Everyone had things to do.
Took pushed himself off the fence and stalked back into the house. He needed to arrange a flight to Nevada before Liam Waring got the news that his pet wetmouth had been reinstated as a Biter. Took didn’t want to have to talk the man down again.
He remembered the flash of cold, mad rage in the office, and despite the fever sweat of the sun, a chill ran down his back. Liam might not come out of it alive this time.
THE OFFENDEDscream of a cat cut through the house like a rusty chainsaw. It sounded like something was being murdered. Took tucked his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he ducked out of the office.
“I’ll be at the airport at nine,” he said to Madoc’s answering machine. “If you don’t approve the use of the VINE jet, I’ll take a commercial flight.”
He hung up abruptly as he reached the stairs and before he could begin to pad his decision with excuses. It had been a long time since he’d given a crap about the consequences of anything he did—a twinge of guilt for others, sure, but nothing for himself. So why did he care if Madoc was angry about his decision?
Maybe he’d lied to his mother after all and he did have something to lose.
It was an awful thought. He shuddered and put it to the back of his head as he followed the offended swears of his cat to the back of the house, to the guest room, as the VINE agent who’d handed over the safe house to him had described the small back room with the narrow bed and solitary chair. This was the first time that anyone had used it. Took didn’t knock. He just barged the door open.
“What the fuck are you doing to my cat?” he asked sharply. Then he took in the scene and revised the question. “What is my cat doing to you?”
Blood dripped down Pally’s narrow, pretty face in fat, wet ribbons. His eyebrow was laid open, one ear was freshly pierced, and the scratches ran up his face from lip to forehead in ragged stripes. He wiped blood out of his eyes with a lacerated hand.
“Cat?” he said. “It’s a demon.”
“Same thing,” Took said. As though concerned they had forgotten about her, Snack screamed again. She was perched on the bed knob, ears flat and fur bushed out and spiky. Blood stained her paws and muzzle. He reached out, grabbed her under the front legs, and scooped her up. Nine pounds of angry, midsquirm cat dangled from his hand and tried to rabbit kick Pally. “What did you do to piss her off?”
Pally gave him a sharp look of disbelief as he poked his eyebrow back together. “Me? That hellspawn tried to claw my face off.”
As though to prove it, Snack twisted her head around and sank her teeth into Took’s thumb. Her fangs punched through his nail and into the meat beneath, the sharp pain an electric jab up his nerves into his armpit. He tossed her back onto the bed with a curse, and Pally dropped his hand long enough to bark out a mocking laugh.
“See?”
Snack lashed her tail, hissed at both of them, and slunk up the bed to the dead little girl laid out on the pillows. She pawed at the gossamer fine winding sheet with a bloody paw, her claws extended enough to tug at and pluck the fabric.
“And see,” Pally said as he jabbed a finger at the bed. “That’s what that hellcat was doing before, and when I tried to stop it, the bastard thing tried to claw my face off. What sort of animal isn’t scared of our ilk?”
Took shrugged. It was a good question, but he didn’t care. What mattered was that Snack was the only thing that kept something like Luke Bennett alive in that box. Everything else they had picked out of him, gobbets of “him” gone forever, but they couldn’t make him kill the scrap of kitten they had tossed in with him.
If Snack, now a slightly bigger scrap, wanted to eat Pally’s nose for breakfast, she could have it.
“Maybe you should have asked what she wanted,” he said.
Pally snorted. His face was nearly back to pretty again, stitched together seamlessly with only smears of blood to show for his trouble. “Maybe you should have drowned that thing when it would fit in a glass instead of a bucket.”
A snarl twitched at Took’s mouth before he could throttle it back. He wasn’t used to banter from Pally. The old vampire had always interacted with him the same way he now did with Lawrence, quietly competent professionalism. That was respect on his part—most humans rarely rose to his immortal notice. The few who did hadn’t ended well.
But their new friendship didn’t mean he could threaten Took’s cat.
“She doesn’t know what this is,” Took said. He reached down and pulled the folds of silk away from the child’s face. Snack pulled back and sat down, faded blue eyes fixed on the doll-like perfection. “See? Now leave her be, Snack.”
Snack tucked her tail around bloody feet and gave a quiet, barely audible mew.
“Strange animal,” Pally muttered sourly. He grabbed one of the washcloths that Took had, in a vague burst of hospitality, handed to him and wiped his hands. “Where did you get it?”
“What happened to her?” Took countered. “Blood loss and suffocation isn’t enough to kill a dhampir. Not for long. We both know that.”
“It didn’t,” Pally said with a sigh. “She was just down there too long, too young. Like the elders who fossify, a sleep as good as death, she just… gave up and stilled. Dammit, that cat—”
