Instead I slipped silently to the garage and inside. I stood in the darkness, letting my eyes adjust, letting my nose tell me the state of the caged vamp’s health. I heard him breathing, scenting me as well. He was awake. And he no longer smelled sick. He smelled dry and dusty, like old ashes, dead roaches, and shed snakeskins. And he also smelled vaguely meaty, like a raw steak left out at room temp too long. Disgust made my shoulders cringe and made me want to look behind me for ambush, but there was nothing there. I knew that.
I moved through the dark to his cage, whispering. “Hey there, you blood-sucking piece of crap. Is it time for you to die, Francis?”
He didn’t answer. Something slithered across metal and I drew on Beast’s vision to see in the dark. Everything went sharply silver and green, the silver bars of the vamp cage looking like something out of a Disney movie, the thing inside like something out of a Wes Craven or Gregg Hoffman horror film. I leaned against the limo nearby, my weight on my left elbow—and was glad when an alarm didn’t go off—and studied the thing. It was vaguely humanoid, but its eyes were multifaceted, like a fly’s, black and sparkling. His chest was covered by a carapace, gleaming and dark, maybe brown. His hands were trying to transform into pincers, like a crab’s claws, and they were a shimmery dark shade, maybe blue. The transformation had been fast. He was still wearing pants, which was a blessing. His feet were unchanged, except for the toenails, which had grown out curved and thick, like a really bad case of toenail fungus. I let my mouth curl at the thought, knowing from the swivel of his eyes that he could still see in the dark better than I could. Vamp vision was better than Beast’s.
My big-cat growled deep inside and padded close. In Beast’s vision, with the lights off, I could see the faint shimmer of magics on the vamp’s transforming body. And now, standing still and close, I could smell the magics, oddly familiar beneath the ammoniac stench, but the memory wouldn’t come. I let it slide away for now.
“The Cajun vamps. They got you some food?”
“Not enough,” the vamp said, the consonants sounding mushy, as if his mouth didn’t work right anymore. “Hungry.”
“Fame Vexatum,” I said. “Get used to it. If you live, it’ll be the only way you will survive.”
“I would rather die,” Francis said after a long silence.
“That won’t be a problem, actually. In fact, you’ve become a liability. The longer you stay here, the more you heal and transform, the greater chance that you’ll cause me problems.”
“Yes. You speak the truth. You smell of anger.”
“Yep. I’m pretty unhappy. So you give me something right now, something I can use to find my friend, Misha. Something I can use to locate Narkis and Zoltar. Something that will take me to the leader of the Naturaleza. Something. Or I’ll kill you. That’s simple enough.”
He tilted his head, and I realized that his neck had grown thicker and was jointed. Ick. “Our leader, if we had one, would need to communicate with us, mind to mind.”
“Yeah. So?”
“That is my gift. If you are wise, you might determine what it means.”
My whole face scrunched up. “Say what?” The vamp in the cage turned his head away. I shrugged and said, “No more food until you talk, Francis. Not one drop.” I left the garage.
Without looking into the shadows that might be hiding Rick, I entered the B and B, climbed the stairs, and found my bed. Or I’m moderately sure I did, because I woke up lying on my stomach, face mostly buried in pillow, fully clothed, hours later. The sun was still up, light slanting through the blinds. I no longer felt empty inside. Rick had moved on to Monica. I could accept that. I had hurt him so badly when I accused him of killing me that, of course he moved on. Who wouldn’t?
I blinked, lashes hitting the sheets. I didn’t like that Rick had a girlfriend. But I didn’t have to like it. I just had to live with it. I sighed, feeling the mattress move under me.
“I don’t need a guy,” I mumbled into the linen. “I love this bed, and it’s better than any guy.” The memory foam was even better than the mattress back at the freebie house in New Orleans, and that was saying a lot. I rolled over and stretched, pulling muscles that felt a lot better than they had recently. Shifting had been good for me, and when I’d shifted back, I had kept all the hard-earned muscles. I hadn’t been sure I would.
I made my way to the bath, stripped, and stumbled into the tub and beneath a scalding hot spray of water. I stayed that way for a long, long time, breathing in the steam, before I soaped and shampooed and shaved off all the body hair that had grown back with the shift. Feeling better, I shut off the water and wrapped one towel around my head and my body in another; this one was huge, bigger than a beach towel and ten times fluffier. I shoved the shower curtain.
I froze, steam swirling around me. Bruiser leaned against the counter, his arms crossed, his head tilted slightly to the side, an intense look on his face.
He was shirtless, his arms to his sides, lightly gripping the marble countertop at his back, his dress pants hanging low on his hips and resting over his bare arches. A coiling tension stirred within me—Beast rising.
Scattered on the counter behind Bruiser was an electric razor with three large circulating heads, an old-fashioned shaving brush and modern razor, a green deodorant bottle, toothpaste tube and toothbrush, what looked like bottles and jars of cosmetics, and a man’s black leather zippered toiletries bag. There was also a man’s shirt on a hanger, a tie draped around the neck, and a pair of men’s socks on the floor. I’d been too sleepy when I entered to see any of that stuff.
Crap. Bruiser had taken the room next to mine.
Bruiser, who had betrayed me.
Icy heat flushed through me from the soles of my feet to the top of my scalp. I had to stop and swallow down the acidic fury. The memory of being held down as Leo and his heir— My breath stopped in my throat as the remembered pain flashed through me again, the feel of fangs tearing through my throat, ripping, cutting; none of the painkilling, laving tenderness of a true feeding, but the torment of a forced feeding. Tears filled my eyes and one hand lifted to my throat to rest there, my pulse pumping hard beneath my fingers. “You let him force a feeding from me.”
Bruiser’s eyes were hard and hot with some emotion I couldn’t name, some strange combination of anger and self-loathing and unknown purpose. But he didn’t say anything; he just stood there, leaning against the counter, his gaze penetrating.
“I know we’ve talked about this,” I said. “I know I should just be able to forgive and forget. But I still remember. Every time I see you, I remember.”
He didn’t move. He scarcely breathed. Waiting for something I didn’t understand.
“I know,” I said, my throat growing tight and painful with unshed tears, “that you were blood-drunk. I realize that you were dead and the priestess brought you back to life and that assuming command of your own mind after something like that must be nearly impossible. I truly understand that you had no control. But still . . . you let it happen. You were there. Letting them . . .” I took a breath that ached all the way into my lungs, “letting them hurt me.”
Stupid tears rolled out of my eyes and slid down my cheeks. Burning. I caught them on the back of my hand and wiped them on the towel. My fingers were shaking and colder than they should have been on my hot face. I opened my mouth, taking in a breath, scenting the man before me, a tangy scent, prickly and warm, the color of sunlight on sand in Beast’s mind. My big-cat was staring at Bruiser through my eyes, watching him like prey. Silent, she nudged me, and I said, “You have to say something now. I’m done.”